The work covered by this report was undertaken in connection with a general investigation of fuel injection engine principles as applied to engines for aircraft propulsion, the specific purpose being to obtain information on the coefficient of discharge of small round orifices suitable for use as fuel injection nozzles. Values for the coefficient were determined for the more important conditions of engine service such as discharge under pressures up to 8,000 pounds per square inch, at temperatures between 80 degrees and 180 degrees F. And into air compressed to pressures up to 1,000 pounds per square inch. The results show that the coefficient ranges between 0.62 and 0.88 for the different test conditions between 1,000 and 8,000 pounds per square inch hydraulic pressure. At lower pressures the coefficient increases materially. It is concluded that within the range of these tests and for hydraulic pressures above 1,000 pound per square inch the coefficient does not change materially with pressure or temperature; that it depends considerably upon the liquid, decreases with increase in orifice size, and increases in the case of discharge into compressed air until the compressed-air pressure equals approximately three-tenths of the hydraulic pressure, beyond which pressure ratio it remains practically constant.


India has traversed a long way since the economic reforms of the early 1990s, and is now widely recognized as one of the fastest growing countries in the world. In view of Montek Singh Ahluwalia's key role in crafting reforms which helped integrate India with the world economy, this volume in his honour brings together essays by leading experts on the Indian economy and on international economic policy.Grounded in the context of current issues and constraints, the volume is divided into four themes: (i) growth, inequality, and reform; (ii) the evolution of macroeconomic and financial policies; (iii) review of progress in key sectors of the economy; and (iv) India's role and place in the global economy. It spans the main features of India's economic development and addresses a wide range of topics such as growth, inequality, macroeconomic performance, monetary policy, capital markets, infrastructure, human resources, services, global finance, climate change, and international trade. The essays analyse the key economic challenges facing India today and suggest policy measures that can propel India towards inclusive growth.


Background of this research is the traditional market alienation due to unbalance compete with modern market on the retail market in Indonesia. Limited capital, business management simple and limited networks make traditional markets are not able to compete with the modern market. This research use qualitative methods and use a case-based approach (statute approach) the Commission's decision number 09/KPPU-L/2005 and the Commission's Decision No. 03/ KPPU-LI /2000 and history approach, the history of the market Prophet Muhammad's time and during the time of the Islamic empire. In addition, this study also helped to pull through direct surveys in several markets in Jakarta and Medan. The result of this research is models of the pressing role state (sadd) by prohibition of monopolistic practices, intervention of price and the location, state role with a capital acces (fath) by empowering, providing capital assistance, as well as collaboration (jam'u) to encourage cooperation between traditional and modern market.


Abstract Annual bluegrass is a problematic turfgrass weed. Methiozolin is a new, currently unregistered herbicide that selectively controls annual bluegrass in desirable turfgrasses. Studies were conducted to evaluate and compare annual bluegrass control from PRE-applied methiozolin as influenced by rate and soil type and from POST-applied methiozolin as influenced by rate, soil type, annual bluegrass growth stage, and treatment placement. Studies were also conducted to evaluate foliar and root absorption and subsequent translocation of methiozolin by annual bluegrass using radio-tracer techniques. PRE-applied methiozolin controlled annual bluegrass > 99%. POST-applied methiozolin resulted in < 80% control regardless of foliar versus root exposure. POST applications are more effective at higher rates and smaller growth stages. Foliar-plus-soil methiozolin application trended to result in the best control, compared to foliar-only and soil-only applications. Absorption and translocation data indicate that methiozolin is absorbed by both leaves and roots and moderately translocates upward in the plant toward the leaf tip with little to no basipetal translocation. Because control is limited from a single methiozolin application (as observed in POST experiments), successful field application of methiozolin requires multiple and timely applications directed toward the roots and/or foliage of annual bluegrass. Nomenclature: Methiozolin, MRC-01, 5-(2,6-difluoro-benzyloxymethyl)-5-methyl-3-(3-methyl-thiophen-2-yl)-4,5-dihydro-isoxazole; annual bluegrass, Poa annua L.


This Report analyzes a 5% payroll tax that would be imposed on employers in the amount of the Connecticut wages they pay to their employees. An anticipated response to this tax is that employers would shift this tax to their employees by reducing their wages by the cost of the tax. In this case, there would also be a reduction of the existing personal income tax rates by 5 points, but only if there were a reduction in wages. The effect would be to eliminate the 3% and 5% brackets, and would only be applicable to wages; it would not apply to income from dividends, capital gains, interest, rents, royalties, and the like. This "tie-in," that is, the reduction in tax rates only if wages are reduced, should be required or else there would be little incentive for employees to support a wage reduction. Tie-ins, such as this, have many complexities and are examined in the Report.

The goal of the proposal is that workers would have more take-home pay, despite their wages being reduced. This results from a reduction in their taxable income and a reduction in their FICA taxes. Employers would also save in reduced FICA taxes. Consequently, a payroll tax would increase an employee's take home pay at the expense of the federal fisc, which is part of its State charm. Somewhat counter-intuitively, even though wages are reduced, the combination of State income tax savings and the federal income and FICA tax savings means the employee is actually better off and will end up with more take-home pay.

In the event that wages cannot be reduced, the payroll tax becomes an explicit tax on employers. Because wages would not be reduced, employers would not receive any decrease in the amount of FICA taxes they pay and the payroll tax would essentially be a 5% increase in the cost of doing business. In determining the outcomes of a proposed payroll tax, a critical threshold question is whether employers will be able to shift the payroll tax to employees by reducing their wages. If they cannot, there is no reason to adopt a payroll tax. However, this question could be avoided if the tax were elective by employers. Presumably they would not make the election if they thought they could not reduce wages.

Because there are so many moving and interdependent parts, the lack of a fully drafted bill limits what can be said in this Report with any certainty. Nonetheless, the Report identifies many of the issues needing to be addressed, such as what groups could benefit from the tax, how the tax could be imposed on the federal government and tribal nations, and the tax's impact on insurance companies.

The Report suggests that the State reach out to New York to evaluate their experience, which has adopted a similar tax through a credit mechanism, which is a simpler approach than the one Connecticut is considering.


By controlling the transmission of Chagas disease, the challenge of providing assistance to millions of infected patients that reach old age arises. In this study, the socioeconomic, demographic and comorbidity records of all elderly chagasic patients followed at the Pharmaceutical Care Service of the Chagas Disease Research Laboratory were assessed. The information related to the clinical form of the disease was obtained from medical records provided by the Walter Cantídio University Hospital. The profile of the studied population was: women (50.5%); mean age of 67 years; retired (54.6%); married (51.6 %); high illiteracy rate (40.2%); and family income equal to the minimum wage (51.5%). The predominant clinical forms of Chagas disease were cardiac (65.3%) and indeterminate (14.7%). The main electrocardiographic changes were the right bundle branch block (41.0%), associated or not with the anterosuperior left bundle branch block (27.4%). The average number of comorbidities per patient was 2.23 ± 1.54, with systemic arterial hypertension being the main one found (67.0%). It was found that the elderly comprise a vulnerable group of patients that associate aging with cardiac and/or digestive disorders resulting from the evolution of Chagas disease and other comorbidities, which requires special attention from health services to ensure more appropriate medical and social care.


Computer memories continue to serve the role that they first served in the electronic discrete variable automatic computer (EDVAC) machine documented by John von Neumann, namely that of supplying instructions and operands for calculations in a timely manner. As technology has made possible significantly larger and faster machines with multiple processors, the relative distance in processor cycles of this memory has increased considerably. Microarchitectural techniques have evolved to share this memory across ever-larger systems of processors with deep cache hierarchies and have managed to hide this latency for many applications, but are proving to be expensive and energy-inefficient for newer types of problems working on massive amounts of data. New paradigms include scale-out systems distributed across hundreds and even thousands of nodes, in-memory databases that keep data in memory much longer than the duration of a single task, and near-data computation, where some of the computation is off-loaded to the location of the data to avoid wasting energy in the movement of data. This paper provides a historical perspective on the evolution of memory architecture, and suggests that the requirements of new problems and new applications are likely to fundamentally change processor and system architecture away from the currently established von Neumann model.


Text mining was used to extract technical intelligence from the open source global anthrax research literature.An anthrax-focused query was applied to the Science Citation Index/Social Science Citation Index (SCI/SSCI)(SCI, 2006) databases. The anthrax research literature infrastructure (prolific authors, key journals/institutions/countries, most cited authors/journals/ documents) was obtained using bibliometrics, and the anthrax researchliterature technical structure (hierarchical taxonomy) was obtained using computational linguistics/documentclustering. Defence Science Journal, 2008, 58(5), pp.678 -685 , DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dsj.58.1691


United Utilities proposed the construction of a new pipeline from Ravenstown to Grange-Over-Sands, Cumbria (SD 3615 7497 to 3904 7525; Fig 1). The scheme affects areas of archaeological potential from both the prehistoric and historic periods, and the Assistant County Archaeologist at Cumbria County Council Historic Environment Service (CCCHES) therefore recommended that rapid desk-based research and walkover survey should be undertaken for previously undisturbed sections of the pipeline and for areas where archaeological remains are known to exist. In total, 43 sites were identified along the route of the proposed pipeline. Of these, 24 sites were identified through inspection of the Cumbria County Council Historic Environment Record (CCCHER) and other primary sources, which took place during March 2007. The sites consisted of ten findspots, four earthwork sites, and ten buildings or groups of buildings. Of these, eight (Sites 01-03, 09, 14, 20, 23 and 24) were prehistoric in origin, one (Site 05) was Roman, one (Site 22) was early medieval, four (Sites 04, 10, 13, 19) were medieval, six (Sites 06, 07, 11, 12, 17, 21) were post-medieval, and a further four (Sites 08, 15, 16, 18) were of unknown date. Of the buildings, six were listed as either Grade II (Sites 04, 06, 07, 11, 12, and 21) or Grade II* (Site 19), and one of the medieval/post-mediev al buildings (Site 19) has designated Scheduled Monument Status. The walkover survey was undertaken in April 2007. It enabled the enhancement of the descriptions of Sites 06-08 and 19, and identified 19 new sites (Sites 25-43). These mostly comprised post-medieval agricultural features, such as boundaries, trackways, bridges and drainage features (Sites 25-27, 30-33, 35, 36 and 38-43). Six sites (27, 29, 31, 32, 33 and 36) comprised large embankments which most probably correspond to Site 08, identified during the desk-based research. Site 28 is an earthwork feature which potentially represents the remains of a saltern. Reclaimed land, represented by a regular field pattern (Site 37), is likely to relate to the Enclosure Act of 1796. An outcrop of natural limestone (Site 35) was also identified, but proved to be of no archaeological significance. The subsequent topographic survey produced detailed drawings of Sites 26, 27, 31-33 and 36. Due to the potential for further archaeological features along the proposed pipeline corridor, as demonstrated by the initial two phases of works, a targeted watching brief programme to monitor the development was recommended by CCCHES. In addition, the evaluation of Site 36 was also specified. No archaeologically significant structures or features were observed during the course of the watching brief. The evaluation recorded make-up layers for the sea defence and a linear-type feature, which did not appear to relate to the embankment. Develop ment of the study area primarily comprises the historic growth of the villages of Flookburgh and Ravenstown, and the route of the Ulverston and Lancaster railway line, some of the course of which is followed by the proposed development corridor. The mid-nineteenth century railway construction works and the creation of the new village at Ravenstown in the latter years of the First World War represent the most significant disturbance in the study area, and both of these works may have resulted in the destruction of unknown archaeological deposits or features which were not recorded at the time.


The aim of strategic sourcing is to achieve large and sustainable cost reductions, long-term supply stability and minimization of supply risk. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze the role of strategic sourcing on procurement performance in public institutions in Kenya. It has been noted that there is ineffective and non-reliable procurement procedures in public sector in Kenya, this can be attributed by the fact the there is no strategic considerations. This paper will focus on the following concepts supply management, role of IT, outsourcing and multiple sourcing strategies on procurement functions. It involved conducting a systematic review of literature papers in the field of strategic sourcing and procurement by means of content analysis to draw conclusion and recommendations. In conclusion, strategic sourcing increases an organization's buying power to maximize the leverage it has with suppliers for the purposes of reducing cost, enhancing quality and improving supplier diversity. ABSTRACT: Strategic Sourcing, Public Procurement, Performance, Sustainable, Cost Reduction Strategic Sourcing, Public Procurement, Performance, Sustainable, Cost Reduction


When answering a question, people often draw upon their rich world knowledge in addition to the particular context. Recent work has focused primarily on answering questions given some relevant document or context, and required very little general background. To investigate question answering with prior knowledge, we present CommonsenseQA: a challenging new dataset for commonsense question answering. To capture common sense beyond associations, we extract from ConceptNet (Speer et al., 2017) multiple target concepts that have the same semantic relation to a single source concept. Crowd-workers are asked to author multiple-choice questions that mention the source concept and discriminate in turn between each of the target concepts. This encourages workers to create questions with complex semantics that often require prior knowledge. We create 12,247 questions through this procedure and demonstrate the difficulty of our task with a large number of strong baselines. Our best baseline is based on BERT-large (Devlin et al., 2018) and obtains 56% accuracy, well below human performance, which is 89%.


Introduction: Cervical disc herniation and degenerative disease of the cervical spine are the most common causes of cervical cord and nerve root dysfunction. The surgical treatment of cervical radiculopathy is still controversial. Instead of two possibilities, nowadays three possible treatments concur with each other: anterior cervical discectomy without implantation of any structure, anterior cervical discectomy with fusion, and finally, cervical discectomy with implantation of disc prosthesis.
Patients and methods: Twenty patients with cervical disc herniation with radiculopathy, which had not responded to conservative treatment were treated by anterior decompression and cervical disc replacement. All these patients were evaluated preoperatively clinically and radiologically (plain X-rays of cervical spine; A-P, Lateral and dynamic films: flexion, extension and oblique and MRI cervical spine). Nerve conduction study was done to exclude peripheral compression neuropathy and to confirm radiculopathy in selected cases where double entrapment phenomena suspected and followed up for a period of 1 month to 12 months.
The technique followed anterior decompression differed according to the way of reconstruction at each level and the patients were accordingly classified into three groups: group A (1-level fusion); where the anterior decompression was accomplished by single level cervical discectomy, and then insertion of cervical cage at this leve, group B (2-level fusion); where the anterior decompression was accomplished by double level cervical discectomy, and then insertion of cervical cage at both levels, group C (hybrid construct); where the anterior decompression was in the form of one level cervical discectomy, followed by cage implantation at this level and another level cervical discectomy followed by insertion of cervical disc prosthesis at the same time. Functional outcome was assessed according to Odom's criteria. Postoperative plain X-rays of cervical spine (A-P and Lateral) were done at follow-up visits (immediate postoperative, 3 months, 6 months 12 month postoperatively. MRI or CT of the cervical spine is done for patients routinely and for patients not improving or with persistent preoperative complaint or any new neurologic deficit.
Results and Discussion: The ages in our patient population ranged from 30 to 50 years, with a mean of 40 ± 5.9 years (mean ± standard deviation). 11/20 patients (55%) were males, and 9/20 (45%) were females. The commonest level affected is C5-C6 level. The most common complaint of patients is neck pain and radiculopathy. Anterior cervical discectomy followed by single level cervical fusion was done on 13 patients, while 5 patients were subjected to anterior cervical discectomy followed by double level cervical fusion and another 2 patients had anterior cervical discectomy followed by cervical artificial disc replacement at one level and zero profile implant insertion and fusion at another level.
Regarding the mean duration of hospital stay it was 2.4 days in the single level group while it was 3.8 days in the double level group and 4 days in the hybrid group. Regarding the functional outcome 9 patients (69.2%) had excellent outcome in the single level group versus 3 patients (60%) In the double level group and 2 patients (100%) in the hybrid group, while there were 3 patients (23.1%) who had good outcome in the single level group and 1 patient (20%) in the double level group, finally only one patient in the single level group and 1 patient in the double level group who had satisfactory outcome. There were 2 complications in this study, one (7.7%) in the single level group and one (20%) in the double level group. In the single level group 1 patient had removal of prosthesis due to device failure and hypermobility. In the double level group, one patient had temporary dysphagia and dysphonia.
Conclusion: Ideal treatment for cervical degenerative disc disease must deal with and improve its three components (axial neck pain, radiculopathy, and myelopathy), normalize cervical spine biomechanics so not to act as a nidus accelerating the degenerative process, and improves the functional outcome of the patient without serious complications. CDR and ACDF are both effective treatment strategies for managing degenerative conditions of the cervical spine. There is insufficient evidence to show which technique is the most effective and provides the longest-lasting symptom relief.


Context: In developing countries, there is paucity of data regarding knowledge and practices of parents regarding acute respiratory infections (ARIs). Aims: The present study was undertaken to study the knowledge and practices of parents for ARIs. Settings and Design: This was a prospective, cross-sectional study conducted over period of 3 months in pediatric ward of a tertiary care teaching hospital. Subjects and Methods: All the children admitted in pediatrics ward with complaints of ARI were included in the study. Statistical Analysis Used: Statistical analysis was carried out by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences software version 20. Results: A total of 1,752 children were enrolled in the study out of which 885 (50.51%) were males and 867 (49.49%) were females. Only 42.6% of parents answered correct answers about the proper use of antibiotics for children with ARI. Most of the caregivers (58.4%) had poor knowledge about incomplete immunization as a risk factor for developing diseases like diphtheria and pertussis. Majority of caregivers (66.3%) practice home remedies by themselves. Conclusion: The knowledge of caregivers/parents regarding symptoms, risk factors, and complications of ARI was adequate. Better awareness is needed for safe use of antibiotics, and caregivers shall be encouraged to minimize indoor air pollution. More awareness is required for discouraging the practice of visiting quacks as it can lead to serious complications in the child.


We report on a family with a severe form of X-linked dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). Two brothers, the elder requiring heart transplantation, and a maternal cousin presented elevated creatine kinase levels, increased right ventricular diameters and electrocardiographic abnormalities. All complained of exertional cramping myalgia, but none had muscle weakness or a pathological electromyogram. Muscle biopsies of these individuals revealed a mild myopathic picture with atrophic type I and hypertrophic type II fibers. Immunofluorescence using N- and C-terminal antibodies (dys-2, dys-3) against the dystrophin protein showed preserved, but reduced intensity of staining of the sarcolemmal membranes. Using the same two antibodies, Western blot analyses revealed a dystrophin molecule of the expected molecular weight, which was quantitatively reduced by 80%. However, the dys-1 antibody, directed against the mid rod region of the dystrophin protein, did not react with dystrophin both on Western blot and immunofluorescence. Linkage analysis with polymorphic markers of the dystrophin gene revealed an identical haplotype at the 5' region in all affected individuals (two point lod score of 1.93, phi = 0). A deletion of exons 48, 45-53, 2-7 and 1 including the promoter region of the dystrophin gene, as described in rare cases with similar clinical signs could be excluded by multiplex PCR and Southern blot analyses of this DCM family. In addition, a major splice-mutation of dystrophin mRNA was excluded by RT-PCR of skeletal and heart muscle tissue. Therefore, we conclude that a novel mutation in the 5' region of the dystrophin gene phenotypically leads to this severe form of DCM. Extensive analyses of the dystrophin gene, in particular of the sequences coding for the antigenic determinants of the dys-1 antibody in the mid rod region, may identify the molecular cause of this monogenetic form of DCM.


Abstract. Thanks to a hybrid georeferencing unit coupling GNSS and IMU sensors, mobile mapping systems (MMS) with lidar sensors provide accurate 3D point clouds of the acquired areas, mainly urban cities. When dealing with several acquisitions of the same area with the same device, differences in the range of several tens of centimeters can be observed. Such degradation of the georeferencing accuracies are due to two main reasons: inertial drift and losses of GNSS signals in urban corridors. The purpose of this paper is therefore to correct these differences with an accurate ICP-based registration algorithm, and then to correct the MMS trajectory using these retrieved local transformation parameters.The trajectory loop information plays a key role for that purpose. We propose a four-step method starting from a 3D point cloud with overlapping parts, and the trajectory of the mobile mapping system. First, a polygonal approximation of the trajectory is computed in order to first divide the whole registration problem in local sub-issues. Secondly, we aim to find all the potential overlapping acquired areas between these segments using simple bounding box intersections. Thirdly, for each pair of overlapping areas, an efficient variant of the ICP algorithm is proposed to (1) prune cases where segments do not share point clouds of the same areas and (2) retrieve the transformation parameters, for real overlapping cases. Finally, all these transformations are linked together, and fed into a global distance compensation problem, allowing to adjust the MMS trajectories for several passages. As a conclusion, this method is successfully applied to data acquired over Paris (France) with the Stereopolis mobile mapping system.


Identification of those leadership qualities which nurses believe led to their successful attainment of a nursing management position may help in understanding how to identify and foster leadership potential amongst nursing staff. This study asked nurse managers to indicate the important factors which influenced and facilitated their entry to management positions with a particular reference to the development of leadership characteristics. The results suggest that the leadership qualities we expect nurse managers to display evolve in a largely random way. Additionally, there is evidence that the development of leadership skills and attainment of management positions remains fragmented and random in nature. Because of this, individual nurse managers develop leadership skills almost by default using informal strategies to learn and develop. These findings should provide direction to educational providers and senior managers who seek to develop future leaders and managers.


Financial markets are complex systems characterised by the interaction of several heterogeneous agents. The associated dependence structure is non-trivial and exhibits high levels of non-stationarity and non-linearity. These features make the understanding and forecasting of financial risk very challenging, since regularities observed from historical data do not necessarily mirror future behaviours. The main aim of this thesis is to investigate the complexity of the dependence structure through network filtering and clustering techniques. We have relied on these tools because they are data driven, model-independent and lend themselves to dynamical analyses. In particular, we have proposed a novel volatility forecasting tool based on network filtering. Furthermore, we have applied the Directed Bubble Hierarchical Tree (DBHT) clustering method for the first time to financial data, highlighting its advantages over other clustering techniques. We have performed statistical hypothesis tests on the dynamical DBHT clustering, in order to track the evolution of each cluster and how their industry-related information is affected by the market regime. We have studied the evolution of correlation-based filtered networks topology by means of data mining and time series techniques, investigating long-term memory properties and their relation with market risk. We have investigated how different measures of dependence perform and compare in terms of network topology, by combining multiplex tools and network filtering for the first time. We have found that the 2007 financial crisis marks a phase transition between two different regimes of dependence, which display deep dissimilarities in terms of industrial information and remain well distinct for years after the crisis. We have found 10 that different clustering methods display different sensitivity to these structural changes. Moreover we have shown that correlation-based filtered networks display peculiar patterns in their evolution, notably long-term memory and possibly early-warning signals. After having found that a significant interplay exists between dependence structure variations and volatility, we have introduced a novel volatility forecasting tool which relies on this empirical feature. This new tool overcomes the curse of dimensionality, which limits traditional econometric models to porfolios of few assets. The multiplex analysis has revealed that it is crucial to monitor financial dependence with more than one measure at a time, as linear measures turn out to provide an incomplete picture of the dependence structure, especially during financial crises.


The Google Insights data are a collection of recorded Internet searches for a huge number of the keywords, which are available since January 2004. These searches represent a kind of revealed perceptions of Internet users, which are a (possibly not entirely representative) sample of the general public. These data can be used to improve the short-term forecasts or nowcasts of various macroeconomic variables. In this paper, we compare the nowcasts of the growth rates of the real US private consumption based on both the conventional consumer confidence indicators and the Google indicators. The latter are extracted from the Google searches using the principal component analysis. It is shown that the Google indicators are especially successful at predicting private consumption in times of economic trouble, for they are 20% more accurate than the best alternative during the 2008m1-2009m5 forecast period. In addition, Google indicators are available at weekly frequency and not subject to revisions. This makes them an excellent source of information for the macroeconomic forecasting.


In order to acidize whole horizontal well interval uniformly, temporary plugging technology was chosen as one of the most effective methods. Laboratory tests were also carried out to evaluate their diverting properties. The results show that clean self-diverting acid could increase its viscosity during reaction with carbonate, and which made it divert to other layers. And for fiber, it has good temporary plugging and degradable performance, which can meet the demand of uniform acidification and lower damage to oil reservoir. According to the analysis of fiber characteristic, some using principles were also given. This technology was applied on ten wells, and temporary plugging and diverting display could be clearly observed by observing pumping pressure change. Furthermore, final production rate after stimulated was increased obviously. All these results showed that this technology could get a better application effect in horizontal well acidification.


Two-stage liquefaction of Tanito Harum coal (Indonesian sub-bituminous coal) was examined in an autoclave of 50 mL capacity at various temperatures for the first stage and various reaction times for the first and second stages under the hydrogen pressure of 15 MPa, using Fe(10 wt %)Ni(10 wt %) catalyst supported on carbon nanoparticles (Ketjen Black:KB). When the total reaction time in the first and second stages was fixed to 120 min, the best conditions of two-stage liquefaction were at 380 °C for 15 min in the first stage and then at 450 °C for 105 min in the second stage at a hydrogen pressure of 15 MPa, providing the maximum oil yields of 80 and 66 wt % (daf coal base) with or without H-donor solvent, respectively. The results also showed that these conditions produced fewer amounts of hydrocarbon gases and lower sulfur content in the oil. The conversion of H-donor solvent (tetralin) after the liquefaction was much lower (13%) than that of the single-stage liquefaction (21%). In addition, the residue yield was much lower (9%) than that of the single-stage (15%) in the solvent-free liquefaction. It is confirmed that prolonged reaction time in the second stage is more favorable than in the first stage. The effects of the first-stage (low temperature) liquefaction both with and without solvent are discussed to explain the optimum conditions of two-stage liquefaction.


The potential of high-performance thin-layer chromatographic (HPTLC) fingerprinting in identifying differences in sandalwood essential oils from 5 sandalwood species, namely, Santalum album, Santalum spicatum, Santalum austrocaledonicum, Santalum paniculatum, Santalum lanceolatum, and a natural substitute for sandalwood, Osyris lanceolata, was explored. Variation was observed in the profile of bands (RF values and color) and peak intensity profiles displayed by the essential oils across and within the essential oils studied with some bands being unique to the individual species. The potential of HPTLC fingerprinting as a quality control tool in authenticating sandalwood oils in the sandalwood industry was demonstrated in the present study.


The Buah Formation is a carbonate unit of late Neoproterozoic age, exposed in the Jabal Akhdar of northern Oman and the Huqf region of central Oman. The Buah Formation is interpreted as a distally steepened storm-dominated ramp, containing inner ramp tidally influenced oolitic shoal and back-shoal lagoon fades and storm-dominated mid ramp facies. A slope break separates mid-ramp facies from outer ramp facies characterized by accumulation of redeposited carbonates on gently inclined slopes (1-2 degrees). Combined facies stacking patterns and outcrop correlation via δ 1 3 C profiles suggest that Buah carbonates formed as a highstand systems tract characterized by a general upward shallowing of facies and strong lateral progradation. On a regional scale, Buah facies distributions across Oman were controlled by the presence of basement highs defining areas of reduced subsidence, which promoted lateral progradation of the Buah carbonate ramp for tens of kilometers, while the faster-subsiding areas became sites of deep-water deposition.


Abstract
This chapter maps existing patterns of broad-based worker ownership and control in contemporary advanced capitalism and considers future possibilities for expanding democracy within firms. Section one discusses worker ownership and control arrangements in relation to different theories of the firm and shows how these arrangements map onto different national systems. Section two compares Germany, which is characterized by worker control without ownership, and the United States, which is marked by worker ownership without control. Section three explores three pathways through which broad-based worker ownership and control might be deepened and more strongly coupled in the future.


The application of ultrasound to industrial casting processes has attracted research interest during the last 50 years. However, the transfer and scale-up of this advanced and promising technology to industry has been hindered by difficulties in treating large volumes of liquid metal due to the lack of understanding of certain fundamentals. In the current study experimental results on ultrasonic processing in deionised water and in liquid aluminium (Al) are reported. Cavitation activity was determined in both liquid environments and acoustic pressures were successfully measured using an advanced high-temperature cavitometer sensor. Results showed that highest cavitation intensity in the liquid bulk is achieved at lower amplitudes of the sonotrode tip than the maximum available, suggesting nonlinearity in energy transfer to the liquid, while the location of the sonotrode is seen to substantially affect cavitation activity within the liquid. Estimation of real-time acoustic pressures distributed inside a crucible with liquid Al was performed for the first time.


A major challenge in agroecosystems is how to manage the systems so that it reduces crop pests and enhances natural pest control. This thesis investigates patterns of crop pests and top-down effects of birds and arthropod predators in relation to land-use composition across spatial scales. In paper (I) I examined the crop distribution and land-use types in relation to the crop raiding patterns in 15 transectsin sites close to and far from forests along with a questionnaire survey at household level. I found severe crop raiding close to forests, but it had no impact on crop composition growing between the two sites. In paper (II) I examined the effect of forest and tree cover, at local and landscape scales, on the abundance of arthropod predators by collecting specimens from 40 home gardens. My result showed higher abundance of arthropod predators when either the home garden or the surroundings had a high tree-cover, compared to when tree-cover at both scales was similarly either high or low. In paper (III) I investigated the effect of excluding birds and arthropod predators on leaf damage on rape seed in 26 home gardens. I found stronger top-down impacts from arthropod predators on crop pests in tree-poor gardens than in tree-rich gardens. There was no effect of birds. In paper (IV) I explored the effect of landscape complexity on bird and arthropod predation using plasticine caterpillars in 36 home gardens across landscapes. The rate of arthropod predation on caterpillars was higher in simple than in complex landscapes. The rate of bird predation did not vary between complex and simple landscapes. In simple landscapes, arthropod predation was higher than that of birds. The overall results suggest that simplified gardens/landscapes still have enough habitat heterogeneity to support arthropod predators for the significant top-down controlling effect on crop pests. However, I did not find clear effect of complexityon the top-down effect of birds.


Current research suggests that the secretion of beta-endorphin from the pituitary gland may be associated with the refractory hypotension seen in patients with septic shock. Extensive animal research and a few clinical studies have demonstrated that naloxone, a narcotic antagonist, can increase MAP, cardiac output, and cardiac contractility and improve survival in victims of endotoxic shock. The ability of naloxone to improve MAP, however, appears to decrease with prolonged persistent hypotension (greater than eight hours). Studies also suggest that a synergistic effect exists between naloxone and the steroid methylprednisolone in improving the hemodynamics of these patients. In the future, naloxone may prove to be essential in the management of patients in the early stages of septic shock, but more complete clinical trials are warranted. It is imperative that nurses be involved in this type of clinical research.


The distribution of commands issued by experienced users of a computer operating system allowing command customization tends to conform to Zipf's law. This result documents the emergence of a statistical property of natural language as users master an artificial language. Analysis of Zipf's law by Mandelbrot and Cherry shows that its emergence in the computer interaction of experienced users may be interpreted as evidence that these users optimize their encoding of commands. Accordingly, the extent to which users of a command language exhibit Zipf's law can provide a metric of the naturalness and efficiency with which that language is used.


Streptococcus pneumoniae is a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia, meningitis, and sepsis in children worldwide. Nowadays, the antibiotic resistance of S. pneumoniae bacteria has increased worldwide. This makes treatment of S. pneumoniae infections more difficult and stresses the importance of the development of effective vaccines as a strategy to reduce morbidity and mortality caused by S. pneumoniae infection. Currently, two vaccine types are commercially available: a 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV23) and 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7). The PPV23 vaccine was shown to be moderately effective in young adults but not in young children and elderly and also not in immunocompromised patients. Large scale introduction of PCV7 has resulted in an overall decline in invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD). However IPD caused by the non-vaccine serotypes has increased (replacement disease), highlighting the need for inclusion of additional serotypes in improved vaccine formulations to come. In the search of new candidate pneumococcal conjugate vaccines investigations have been made by many researchers on issues such as covering more serotypes, reducing the effect of serotype replacement and making vaccines for a reasonable price and/or more reliable storing properties for use in the third world. Our group has been working on a conjugate vaccine based on a synthetic carbohydrate (neoglycoconjugate) against S. pneumoniae bacteria. In this thesis, we focus on the immunogenicity of a series of synthetic overlapping oligosaccharide fragments corresponding to S. pneumoniae type 14 polysaccharide (Pn14PS) which were conjugated to CRM197 protein and evaluated in a mouse model. We demonstrated that the branched trisaccharide element Glc-(Gal-)GlcNAc is essential in inducing Pn14PS-specific antibodies and that the neighboring galactose unit at the non-reducing end contributes clearly to the immunogenicity of this epitope. The antibodies in sera obtained from mice immunized with neoglycoconjugates of Pn14PS did not cross-react with other S. pneumoniae polysaccharide serotypes and displayed very low binding activity with group B streptococcus type III polysaccharide. We showed that a neoglycoconjugate booster vaccination is required for the activation of memory cells and the establishment of sustained immunity. A booster with native polysaccharide is ineffective to evoke functional antibodies. We observed that codelivery of Quil-A alone or in combination with MPL had the most dramatic effect on antibody- and cell-mediated immune response to neoglycoconjugate of Pn14PS. We concluded that the branched tetrasaccharide Gal-Glc-(Gal-)GlcNAc is a serious candidate for a synthetic oligosaccharide conjugate vaccine against infections caused by S. pneumoniae type 14. The above mentioned synthetic branched tetrasaccharide was used for the synthesis of hybrid gold nanoparticles [GNPs]. In this thesis, we prepared a series of GNPs with different molar ratios of tetrasaccharide, inert D-glucose, and OVA323-339-peptide in a one-step reaction. Their immunogenicity was evaluated in the mouse model. We found that the presence of the T-cell stimulating peptide OVA323-339 in the hybrid gold nanoparticles was a prerequisite for the induction of specific anti-Pn14PS IgG antibodies. We showed that well designed hybrid gold nanoparticles display a promising starting point towards the development of synthetic oligosaccharide-based vaccines.


Geospatial Data infrastructures have been developed worldwide. Geoportals have been created as an interface to allow users or the community to discover and use geospatial data offered by providers of these initiatives. This study focuses on the development of a web national atlas as an alternative means to geoportals, when accessing a Geospatial Data Infrastructure (GDI). From usability studies undertaken during this study, it was apparent that interaction methods and information presented in many geoportals to help user review and make sense of the search results are far from optimal. The virtue of maps and graphics in order to stimulate visual thinking and to provide effective communication before and after 'a search' in current geoportals have not yet been considered essential. As a proposed solution, a national atlas metaphor was developed. The prospective use of the atlas schemata includes the prominent role of maps in the atlas and the organizational approach of the atlas were explored to transform design ideas into a working prototype of an atlas interface metaphor for improved accessibility of the GDI, called Aim4GDI. The Aim4GDI applied the atlas information structure (built as the realization of an adaptation of the atlas schemata) in order to organize thematic maps, images, graphics and information resources related to the GDI including metadata summaries. Metadata summaries are aggregated metadata of geospatial resources in the GDI such as offline data, WMS, and feature services (WFS). The Aim4GDI combines the metadata and query language for the Semantic Web with cartographic design templates in managing and visualizing metadata summaries. This prototype enables users to search and browse geospatial resources through developed visual methods. The table, thumbnail, bull's-eye, and Parallel Coordinate Plots (PCP) views are the visual methods that can help users indicate, compare, and associate the search results. The visual methods that are offered to help users browse and make sense of the geospatial resources include the topic directory and a map viewer, thumbnail, PCP, and in-focus views. In support of browsing interactions, the developed information structure is used as a narrative structure for providing an interactive storytelling presentation to users while browsing. To further demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, an extension of the atlas metaphor to support collaboration efforts via the GDI was developed. The usefulness of the visual methods of the Aim4GDI to help users search, browse, and collaborate with each other using geospatial data offered in the GDI were confirmed in a series of use assessments. It can be concluded that a national atlas metaphor is essential not only to represent a synthesis of knowledge of physical and geographic elements that characterize a country, but also to improve the discovery and use of geospatial resources offered via a GDI. Although this study focused on the use of a national atlas metaphor in the context of the national Dutch GDI, the results of this study are also applicable in order to help other countries advance the role of their national atlases in the world of GDI.


It is increasingly clear that the traditional way of measuring blood pressure in the clinic or office frequently produces numbers that grossly overestimate a patient's true blood pressure level. This effect is often caused by so called "white coat" syndrome. Nowadays, for this reason it becomes more popular so called home monitoring of blood pressure, that attenuates this effect. In the paper, there is described specially telemedicine system for monitoring of blood pressure. The system consists of blood monitor equipment which automatically reports results of up-to-date patient's measurements to the doctor's monitoring and decision support (MDS) system using wireless communication. The MDS system can make an evaluation for the doctor who can immediately intervene if necessary. Introduction of such a system in practice can bring considerable improvement in the treatment of hypertension.


OBJECTIVE
To compare iridocorneal angle grading systems on the basis of gonioscopy and ultrasound biomicroscopy (UBM).

DESIGN
Original cross-sectional observational study.

ANIMALS
22 dogs.

PROCEDURE
Gonioscopy, goniophotography, and UBM were performed on 38 eyes from dogs without clinical evidence of glaucoma in the eyes examined.

RESULTS
Predominant gonioscopic grades derived from goniophotographs were considered normal (n = 26) and mild (12). Ultrasound biomicroscopy angle measurements ranged from 16 to 38 degrees (mean +/- SD, 26.2 +/- 4.5 degrees). Ciliary clefts depicted on UBM images were graded as open (n = 4), compact/narrow (23), and closed (11). Significant differences were not found between UBM-derived ciliary cleft grades and goniophotography-derived dysgenesis grades, nor between UBM-derived ciliary cleft grades and subjective gonioscopic grades.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS
Because gonioscopy allows evaluation of the anterior face of the ciliary cleft, whereas UBM provides cross-sectional information of the iridocorneal filtration angle, UBM may yield more information regarding pathogenesis and prognosis of, and preferred management approaches to, glaucoma. Ultrasound biomicroscopy may also be useful as a predictor of glaucoma or to diagnose early stages of glaucoma.


In statistical signal processing and machine learning, an open issue has been how to obtain a generative model that can produce samples from high-dimensional data distributions such as images and speeches. Generative adversarial networks (GANs) have emerged as a powerful framework that provides clues to solving this problem. A GAN is composed of two networks: a generator that transforms noise variables to data space and a discriminator that discriminates real and generated data. These two networks are optimized using a min-max game: the generator attempts to deceive the discriminator by generating data indistinguishable from the real data, while the discriminator attempts not to be deceived by the generator by finding the best discrimination between real and generated data. This novel framework enables the implicit estimation of a data distribution and enables the generator to generate high-fidelity data that are almost indistinguishable from real data. This beneficial and powerful property has attracted a great deal of attention, and a wide range of research, from basic research to practical applications, has been recently conducted. In this paper, I summarize these studies and explain the foundations and applications of GANs. Specifically, I first clarify the relation between GANs and other deep generative models then provide the theory of GANs with numerical formula. Next, I introduce recent advances in GANs and describe the impressive applications that are highly related to acoustic and speech signal processing. Finally, I conclude this paper by mentioning future directions.


Abstract Geophysical logs recorded over 500 m in Ocean Drilling Program Hole 735B have been analysed to identify the in situ properties and the fracture permeability of basement rocks in the Atlantis II Fracture Zone. Hydrous alteration minerals were most abundant in the upper section of the hole. Packer tests also indicate the highest permeabilities in this zone. This interval is characterized by the presence of several open fractures imaged by the acoustic televiewer and by temperature log indications of fluid flow through transmissive fractures. Negative temperature gradient and large semblance anomalies were found to correlate well with the largest of the observed fracture zones. Most of the 70 identified fractures strike subparallel to the north-south fracture zone and dip steeply WSW. These fractures probably formed as a result of normal faulting on the transform side of the uplifted ridge in the Atlantis II Fracture Zone, where 735B was sited, rather than as a direct result of horizontal plate tectonic motion.


Dyskinesias represent a debilitating complication of levodopa therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD). While we recently demonstrated that levodopa-induced dyskinesia results from increased dopamine D(1) receptor-mediated transmission, we also questioned the possible role of subcellular localization of D(1) and D(2) receptors in mediating these effects as we previously showed that D(1) receptors undergo differential trafficking in striatal neurons of non-dyskinetic PD patients. Taking advantage of a monkey brain bank, we here report changes affecting the cellular and subcellular distribution of D(1) and D(2) dopamine receptors within the striatum of three experimental groups: normal, parkinsonian and dyskinetic L-dopa-treated parkinsonian animals. Our studies at both light and electron microscopy levels show a recruitment of D(1) receptor at the plasma membrane of striatal neurons in the parkinsonian animals and a strong increase of D(1) expression both at the membrane and in cytoplasm of dyskinetic animals, whereas D(2) receptor distribution is only modestly affected in all conditions. Our results rule out the hypothesis of a pathological overinternalization of dopamine receptors in levodopa-induced dyskinesia but raise the possibility for involvement of D(1) receptors in the priming phenomenon through massive and sudden internalization in response to the first ever administration of L-dopa and for an altered homologous desensitization mechanism in dyskinesia leading to an increased availability of D(1) receptors at membrane. Further experiments including parkinsonian monkeys chronically treated with L-dopa that show no dyskinesia and parkinsonian monkeys treated only once with L-dopa are now necessary to confirm our hypothesis.


A one-pot multicomponent aza-Friedel–Crafts reaction was performed under green, neat and heterogeneous conditions in the presence of 1.25 mmol% of 30% w/w silicotungstic acid supported on Amberlyst 15 beads. In a yet unprecedented attempt, both primary and secondary anilines could provide the 3-substituted indole product in good to excellent yields usually at room temperature whilst tertiary anilines gave moderate results. Interestingly all reactions proceeded regioselectively via two separate C–C bond forming reactions rather than C–C and C–N bond forming steps. The catalyst is easy, safe and environmentally-benign to prepare, completely recoverable and recyclable up to 5 times.


Many approaches in constraint based sequential pattern mining have been proposed and most of them focus only on the concept of frequency, which means, if a pattern is not frequent, it is removed from further consideration. Frequency is a good indicator of the importance of a pattern but in real life, however, the environment may change constantly and patterns discovered from database may also change over time. Therefore, the users' recent behavior is not necessarily the same as the past ones and a pattern that occurs frequently in the past may never happen again in the future. So in this paper we have considered recency constraint to overcome this problem. Also we have considered one more constraint, monetary constraint since for making effective marketing strategies it is important to know the value of customer on the basis of what they are purchasing periodically and how much they are spending. So this motivates to consider monetary value of customers for targeting profitable customers. Along with that we have included the concept of mining only target oriented sequential patterns which satisfy RFM constraints to find the happening order of a concerned itemsets only, for taking effective marketing decisions. General Terms Sequence Database, Data mining.


To study a serviceman's satisfaction with how nutrition was organized, the author elaborated a questionnaire containing the sections "nutrition organization quality assessment" and "mess food intake condition quality assessment". Different categories of military men taking food were inquired in a mess. The affirmation "I have no after-meal heartburn" became evidence that the sample was heterogeneous. For detailed analysis, the total sample was divided into two subgroups: those who had (Subgroup 1) and had not (Subgroup 2) a burning sensation after eating. Subgroup II servicemen gave lower scores on the questions about the comfort of food intake, the quality of dishes, a general attitude towards nutrition organization in the mess than did Subgroup I. The study has verified that the developed subsistence quality assurance system is of importance. The questionnaire has provided a valid assessment of the quality of the services given by the mess and revealed a reason for low scores.


Learning faithful graph representations as sets of vertex embeddings has become a fundamental intermediary step in a wide range of machine learning applications. We propose the systematic use of symmetric spaces in representation learning, a class encompassing many of the previously used embedding targets. This enables us to introduce a new method, the use of Finsler metrics integrated in a Riemannian optimization scheme, that better adapts to dissimilar structures in the graph. We develop a tool to analyze the embeddings and infer structural properties of the data sets. For implementation, we choose Siegel spaces, a versatile family of symmetric spaces. Our approach outperforms competitive baselines for graph reconstruction tasks on various synthetic and real-world datasets. We further demonstrate its applicability on two downstream tasks, recommender systems and node classification.


Abstract Considerable attention has been devoted to understanding police socialization and the resulting culture, yet only recently have scholars turned to a network approach to understand the social relationships between officers. We extend these efforts with results from a pilot study of officer networks in a large US police department. Network data are collected from 88 front-line officers to examine officers' informal working relationships. Our findings shed light on the connected nature of officer relationships, showing how personal support networks intersect and diverge from more formal advice and mentorship networks. The study provides an alternative starting point for understanding socialization as a vehicle of officer attitudes, values, and behaviors. Likewise, it demonstrates the applicability of a network approach for understanding departments' social and structural organization. We conclude with a discussion on how officer networks can inform meaningful policy initiatives, including shifting organizational climate, enhancing retention, and curbing abuses.


Additive manufacturing (AM) provides a unique platform for the rapid design and fabrication of complex structures. Printed structures can be used as is or as templates to be decorated with electrochemical deposited nanomaterials, which may be utilised as electrocatalytic sensing platforms. Novel methods are required to determine the electrochemical deposited morphology present on the electrode surfaces. Additively manufactured graphene macroelectrodes (AM-GMs) were fabricated using a commercially available feedstock and molybdenum (di)oxide (MoO2) was successfully electrochemically deposited onto the electrode surface. The electrochemically deposited MoO2 was analysed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), optical interferometry, Raman spectroscopy and multifractal analysis (MFA). Although the electrochemical deposition of MoO2 nanowires were clearly visible using SEM, MFA enabled quantification of the MoO2 nanowires, deposited at a variety of time points (20 – 300 s). MFA was utilised to generate quantitative data, derived from ƒ(α) curves, to determine the area of the electrochemical deposited MoO2 nanowires, including coverage, density, dispersion and clustering. The AM-GMs which were subjected to 300 s (maximum time period) of MoO2 electrodeposition demonstrated the greatest percentage area coverage (20.14 %). The use of such mathematical systems offers an inexpensive method to characterise the parameters of electrochemically-deposited materials.


Du, Y., Huffman, T., Daneshfar, B., Green, M., Feng, F., Liu, J., Liu, T. and Liu, H. 2015. Improving the spatial resolution and ecostratification of crop yield estimates in Canada. Can. J. Soil Sci. 95: 287-297. Canada's terrestrial ecostratification framework provides nested spatial units for organizing national data related to soils, landforms and land use. In the agricultural domain, the lack of national, uniform crop yield data on the ecostratification framework severely hinders our ability to evaluate the biophysical data with respect to economic and climatic conditions. We developed a national crop yield database at the regional (ecodistrict) level by aggregating individual records of an existing but very broad-level sample-derived yield database according to the ecostratification hierarchy. Issues related to the different sampling frameworks and the need for confidentiality of individual records were resolved in order to generate an ecostratified crop yield dataset at a reasonably detailed spatial scale. Sixty crops were first statistically arranged into 37 agronomically similar crop groups in order to increase class size, and these crop groups were aggregated into increasingly large spatial units until confidentiality was assured. The methodology maintained data quality and confidentiality while producing crop yield estimates at the ecodistrict level. Comparison to independent crop insurance data confirmed that the resulting crop yield data are valid where estimates were derived from data released at the level of an ecodistrict or an ecoregion, but not at the ecoprovince level. Our crop yield estimates offer a reasonably high level of spatial precision while remaining within standard confidentiality constraints.


The central role of infrastructure in promoting national economic growth in one hand, yet, on the other hand, low absorption of government budget among infrastructure-related ministries of Indonesia (i.e., Public Works, Transportation, Public Housing and Rural Development), has provided strong motivation to do research in this area. Research framework is developed based on budgeting literature of profit oriented entity as well as current budgeting practice of infrastructure-related ministries in Indonesia.  Generally, the study hypothesized that due to bureaucratic type of government organizations, level of budget absorption is negatively associated with degree of uncertainty in both tasks (Dunk and Nouri, 1998) and environment (Kren and Liao, 1988). We use level of efficiency of the standard systems and procedures to guide budget implementation as proxy to the level of uncertainty. Efficient guidance has adequate clarity and comprehensiveness to guide budget execution, so that additional information to reduce uncertainty of task as well as environment is unnecessary. The questioner is developed from the existing systems and procedures that guide each ministry to interact with both internal as well as external parties. The aim of the questioner is to examine the association between the level of uncertainty with level of budget absorption. Respondents of this study are Kuasa Pengguna Anggaran (KPA) in the Directorate General level in the ministries. They are government officials who have the authority to implements the budget.  Out of the total 48 KPA in the ministries, we sent 21 questioners or 44% of the total population, and received 18 responses or 85.71 % response rate. After examining validity and reliability of the data, the hypotheses are tested in two ways: (i) nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test to examine whether the ministries have different level of task as well as environment uncertainty; (ii) nonparametric rank Spearman and Kendall's tau-b to investigate whether budget absorptions are negatively correlated with the level of uncertainty. The results suggest that the ministries have different level of uncertainty, and also, the level of budget absorption is negatively correlated with the level of uncertainty. Therefore, to increase the level of budget absorption, the budget systems and procedures in the larger ministry such as Ministry of Public Works and Ministry of Transportation with high level of uncertainty should have clearer (i.e., free from ambiguity) and more comprehensive compared to that of the smaller ministries such as Ministry of Public Housing and Ministry of Rural Development.


and 92.3%. The detection rate for trisomies 21, 18, 13 was 88.9% and 75% with a specificity of 95.4% and 91.8%. When NT and DV were done between 10–13 weeks' gestation the detection rate was 77.8% and 85.7% with a specificity of 95.5% and 92.1%. Between 14–16 weeks' gestation the detection rate was 66.7% and 75% with a specificity of 96.8% and 93%. The detection rate for pregnancies in women under 35 years of age was 85.7% and 71.4% with a specificity of 95.8% and 93.2%. For pregnant women above 34 years was 62.5% and 100% with a specificity of 96.1% and 90.9%. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the evaluation of NT thickness and DV blood flow assessment at 10–16 weeks' gestation is a useful tool in the screening for a chromosomal defects in multiple pregnancies.


. The Corona virus disease (Covid-19) pandemic is a multi-dimensional crisis that attacks a country in various fields, such as health and the economy. This is also felt by Indonesia, which has carried out an emergency response period for handling Covid. The Indonesian government is working on the New Normal program. However, to ensure the success of the program, the readiness of each region is needed to implement it. Research on the readiness of an area was conducted using the Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method. Fuzzy AHP is used to calculate the weight for each criterion, while fuzzy TOPSIS is used to examine the readiness and safety of an area to implement the new normal. Both of these methods use Trapezoidal Fuzzy Number (TrFN). The case study in this research is Central Java Province, with the alternative regency and city. The criteria used are the number of positive patients who recover, are treated, died and suspect. The result can be seen that the more patients who recover, the area will be ready to implement the new normal program.


This book is Hebert's most recent entry in the Darby Series, which centers around the residents of the fictional town of Darby, New Hampshire. In 'Howard Elman's Farewell,' Howard Elman is now a widower in his mid-80s who wants to do something great before he dies. On his way to accomplishing this feat, he must grapple with family members, friends, and even a voice in his head. The future of Darby itself may even rest in his hands.


Environmental Stress Conditions in Soybean Production: Soybean Production, Volume Two, examines the impact of conditions on final crop yield and identifies core issues and methods to address concerns. As climate and soil quality changes and issues continue to manifest around the world, methods of ensuring sustainable crop production is imperative. The care and treatment of the soil nutrients, how water availability and temperature interact with both soil and plant, and what new means of crop protection are being developed make this an important resource for those focusing on this versatile crop. The book is a complement to volume one, Abiotic and Biotic Stresses in Soybean Production, providing further insights into crop protection.Presents insights for addressing specific environmental stress conditions in soybean production, including soil, atmospheric, and other contributing factorsFacilitates translational methods based on stress factors from around the worldExamines the future of soybean production challenges, including those posed by climate changeComplements volume one, Abiotic and Biotic Stresses in Soybean Production, providing further insights into crop protection


The Providune project "Conservation and restoration of habitats dune in the sites of the Provinces of Cagliari, Matera and Caserta" (LIFE07NAT/ IT/000519), financed by the European Union for the years 2009-2014, was aimed to protect and restore the "coastal dunes with Juniperus spp." habitat (code 2250*) and other related habitats of community interest characterizing the Mediterranean sandy coasts. In this paper will be shown the main results of the project focusing on the geobotanical studies, ex situ conservation and restoration activities carried out in three Site of Community Importance (SCI) areas selected in the South Sardinia. The geobotanical analyses were carried out in order to characterize the flora and vegetation of the Juniperus habitat and the particular ecological traits of Juniperus macrocarpa respectively. In addition, three detailed maps related to the habitat and vegetation for each coastal dune systems were drawn. To carry out the ex situ conservation of coastal dune plants, germplasm (seeds and fruits) was collected and stored in the Sardinian Germplasm Bank (BG-SAR); moreover effective protocols for the germination of 12 key species of the Juniperus habitat were identified, for the purpose of obtain their propagation and reinforcement. An experimental project to reinforce the native germplasm of structural species of coastal habitats such as Pancratium maritimum, Pistacia lentiscus and J. macrocarpa was realized, using the grafting groups that is sand trap systems that encouraged the embryonic dunes formation and dune consolidation, and permanent plots (bio-mats coconut fiber installed to reduce wind erosion and protect the plant roots) previously installed, with the aim to reinforce species populations and contain habitat fragmentation. Restoration actions were performed ensuring the manual removal of invasive alien plant species and the subsequent planting of native ones. Other measures to reduce the human impacts, mainly due to trampling, such as wooden walkways and light fences were realized. Finally, once completed all conservation actions and interventions, the monitoring protocol to verify their effectiveness has been activated; this action will be implemented in the next five years, based on the post-Life monitoring plan.


Presents a fast recursive technique for estimating a lower-bound performance of data path schedules. The method relies on the determination of an ASAPUC (as soon as possible under constraint) time-step value for the root of the DFG (data flow graph) that is based on the ASAPUC values of its predecessor nodes, etc., until the leaf nodes are reached where this value becomes the regular ASAP value. The method computes a tighter lower-bound than the greedy technique and is only two times slower on the same benchmarks. Synthesis methods that depend on the exploration of the solution space directed by a lower-bound estimation, such a local microcode generation and behavioral synthesis, can benefit from our method. This is because bad solutions can be pruned earlier. We illustrate this dramatic effect on the reduction of the search space during the synthesis of an optimal microcode sequence for the elliptic wave filter benchmark and a fixed data path (containing a multiport RAM and a ROM).<<ETX>>


The quantification of stress in polycrystalline materials by diffraction-based methods relies on the proper choice of grain interaction model that links the observed strain to the elastic stress state in the aggregate. X-ray elastic constants (XEC) relate the strain as measured using X-rays to the state of stress in a quasi-isotropic ensemble of grains. However, the corresponding interaction models (e.g., Voigt and Reuss limits) often possess unlikely assumptions as to mechanical response of the individual grains. The Kröner limit, which employs a self-consistent scheme based on the Eshelby inclusion method, is based on a more physical representation of isotropic grain interaction. For polycrystalline aggregates composed of crystals with cubic symmetry, Kröner limit XEC are equal to those calculated from a linear combination of Reuss and Voigt XEC, where the weighting fraction, x Kr, is solely a function of the single-crystal elastic constants and scales with the material's elastic anisotropy. This weighting fraction can also be experimentally determined using a linear, least-squares regression of diffraction data from multiple reflections. Data on metallic thin films reveals that this optimal experimental weighting fraction, x*, can vary significantly from x Kr, as well as that of the Neerfeld limit (x = 0.5).


In this study, perforation performance tests of multi layered ceramic-metal composite armours consisting of alumina ceramics (99.5% Al2O3) and aluminium Al 2024-T351 back-up materials against a 7.62mm armour piercing (AP) bullet and a 12.7mm AP bullet impact were numerically simulated and then these simulations were verified by the ballistic tests. Nonlinear dynamics finite element simulations are solved with the LS-DYNA lagrangian solver. In the study, new sets of material constants for appropriate material models, which describe the bullet's steel core and aluminium target material deformation better, are obtained. These new material constants are obtained by evaluating stress-strain curve data and also making Depth of Penetration (DOP) simulations and verification tests for each AP bullet and Al 2024-T351 material before perforation performance simulations of ceramic composite structures. The 3D finite element model is generated and compared with 2D simulations. For DOP simulations, the steel core of the bullet is only modelled, but for perforation simulations a full bullet (copper jacketed and filler material) model is used in simulations for the 12.7mm AP bullet. According to the DOP simulation results, Plastic-Kinematics hardening material model is reasonable enough to describe material damage modelling for both bullets and Al 2024-T351 material. Failure strain (FS), which is the most critical value in the simulations, is obtained from stress-strain curve data and also evaluating DOP test results with some correlation for high strain rate condition. The FS value for Al 2024-T351 against a 12.7mm bullet impact is estimated higher than a 7.62mm bullet impact, which is well expressed by strain hardening due to the increased impact area and energy of the bullet. In perforation simulations, bullets and Al 2024-T351 are simulated with a plastic-kinematics hardening material model, but for the ceramics material, a Johnson-Holmquist (JH2) ceramic material model is selected for a good estimation. Ballistic verification tests performed show that numerical simulations are overlapped successfully with the test results with an acceptable difference. With these appropriate material model constants; the fracture conoid in ceramics, bullet deviation from the line of impact and then stopping, bullet end deformation and aluminium bulging is well shown in the simulations.


The paper addresses the concept of smart cities in the modern age. Various definitions and components of smart cities are presented, along with the top ten smart cities in the world. Purposely selected global smart cities were compared to Ljubljana and Zagreb to demonstrate the differences in certain sectors like economy, environment, governance, urban planning, technology, and others. Next, multiple smart city solutions and applications that facilitate the life of citizens in smart cities were examined. Lastly, a mobile application prototype for citizens' reclamations was developed and evaluated in within this thesis.


In continuous multiple criteria problems, finding a distinct preferred solution for a decision maker (DM) is not straightforward. There are few recent studies proposed for this task, and the algorithms developed are cognitively difficult and complex for the DM in general. We propose a novel interactive algorithm to guide the DM in converging highly-preferred solutions in continuous multiple criteria problems. We test our algorithm on portfolio optimization problems formed with the stocks included in the S&P 100 index using expected return, liquidity, conditional value at risk, and mean absolute deviation as criteria. We simulate DM responses with linear and nonlinear preference functions and use various weights for the criteria. The experiments show that our algorithm is able to find highly-preferred solutions in considerably low number of iterations. We also test our algorithm against benchmark algorithms and demonstrate that our algorithm produces superior or comparable results.


The dynamics of squeeze-out of thin liquid films between two solids is perhaps the most central topic in tribology. It is directly relevant for wear and indirectly involved in many other important processes, e.g., adhesion and friction. In this review we present a broad overview of the basic principles of squeeze-out, and present a number of applications to adhesion, friction and wear. We first describe the squeezing of 'thick' liquid films (thickness larger than Å), which can be described using the Navier–Stokes equations of hydrodynamics, and present experimental illustrations for soft solids (rubber) and hard solids (mica). Next we consider molecularly thin liquid films. Here the squeeze-out occurs in a quantized manner involving a monolayer at each step. We discuss the nature of the nucleation of monolayer squeeze-out, where n is the number of trapped monolayers. We consider in detail the nature of the spreading which follows the nucleation and show that the boundary line may exhibit instabilities. Sometimes the squeeze-out is incomplete, resulting in trapped islands. These islands may be pinned, or else they drift slowly to the periphery of the contact area where they get squeezed out through narrow liquid channels. We consider also dewetting at soft interfaces and present an application to the adhesion of soft objects on wet substrates. Finally, we present molecular dynamics and kinetic Monte Carlo simulation results on various aspects of squeeze-out for liquid-like and solid-like lubrication films, and discuss the implications for wear.


Use your smartphone to scan this QR code and download this article ABSTRACT Introduction: The procedure to synthesize silver nanoparticles (SNPs) from Prunus cerasoides leaf extract and their effect on vase life and flower quality of cut carnation were investigated. Methods: SNPs were bio-synthesized from Prunus cerasoides leaf extract and characterized by using UVVis technique, TEM, and SEM images. The postharvest responses of carnation cut flowers to the biosynthesis SNPs were evaluated through vase life, relative fresh weight, vase solution uptake, flower diameter of cut carnation. Results: SNPs were synthesized under optimum conditions, including using the extract of leaf heating at 60oC in 30 min, 4 mM of silver nitrate, pH of 11, and 180 min of reaction time. SNPs exhibited antimicrobial activity and then alleviated the bacterial development in the preservative solution. All treatments with SNPs had improved the vase life and quality of cut carnation compared to the control. A vase solution containing 2% sucrose enhanced the carnation cut flowers. Conclusions: The preservative solution containing 25 ppm SNPs and 2% sucrose showed the best effect. SNPs could be used as a promising antibacterial agent applied in the preservative solution for cut carnation flowers.


Post-training quantization (PTQ) is a neural network compression technique that converts a full-precision model into a quantized model using lower-precision data types. Although it can help reduce the size and computational cost of deep neural networks, it can also introduce quantization noise and reduce prediction accuracy, especially in extremely low-bit settings. How to determine the appropriate quantization parameters (e.g., scaling factors and rounding of weights) is the main problem facing now. Existing methods attempt to determine these parameters by minimize the distance between features before and after quantization, but such an approach only considers local information and may not result in the most optimal quantization parameters. We analyze this issue and propose PD-Quant, a method that addresses this limitation by considering global information. It determines the quantization parameters by using the information of differences between network prediction before and after quantization. In addition, PD-Quant can alleviate the overfitting problem in PTQ caused by the small number of calibration sets by adjusting the distribution of activations. Experiments show that PD-Quant leads to better quantization parameters and improves the prediction accuracy of quantized models, especially in low-bit settings. For example, PD-Quant pushes the accuracy of ResNet-18 up to 53.14% and RegNetX-600MF up to 40.67% in weight 2-bit activation 2-bit. The code is released at https://github.com/hustv1/PD-Quant.


This article reconsiders a specific mishnah—Avot 5:16—which praises a disinterested love, while denouncing expressions of interested love. By referring to the alleged "love" of Amnon and Tamar, Avot 5:16 equates sexuality and interestedness with incest and rape. This exegetical choice is surprising, given the pro-natal and "carnal" trajectory of biblical and talmudic traditions, which can be described as proto-pragmatist in this regard. The paper opens by defining pragmatic interestedness vis-à-vis disinterestedness, while reviewing the prevalence of disinterestedness in modern philosophy. Section 2 examines mishnah Avot 5:16 and its advocacy of disinterested ethic, while suggesting its ideational affiliation with Platonic love and with the Christian Agape. Section 3 argues that within normative-laden Jewish tradition, as well as in classical American pragmatism, we find an embodied and integrative philosophical anthropology (or pragmatic interestedness), which deeply challenges the disinterestedness paradigm of Avot 5:16. Section 4 concludes with some reflections on the relevance of this study for the research of Jewish thought and the Humanities.


Charged particles scattering on moving inhomogenities of the magnetised interstellar medium can gain energy through the process of second-order Fermi acceleration. This energy gain depletes in turn the magnetic wave spectrum around the resonance wave-vector k∼ 1/RL, where RL is the Larmor radius of the charged particle. This energy transfer can prohibit the cascading of magnetic turbulence to smaller scales, leading to a drop in the diffusion coefficient and allowing the efficient exchange of charged dark matter particles in the disk and the halo. As a result, terrestial limits from direct detection experiments apply to charged dark matter. Together with the no-observation of a drop in the diffusion coefficient, this excludes charged dark matter for 103 GeV≲ m/q ≲ 1011 GeV, even if the charged dark matter abundance is only a small part of the total relic abundance.


Tsolova, V. and M. Banov, 2017. Accumulation of microelements in technogenic ecosystems from the vicinity of the "Medet" opencast mine. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 23 (6): 1011–1015 Many studies have recently shown that phytocenosis in the reclaimed lands from the "Medet" mine region are poorly developed and do not provide a dense vegetation coverage. The purpose of this study is assess the accumulation rate and toxicity of some microelements acting as chemical barriers for the vegetation growth in the reclaimed "Sever" dump built in the vicinity of the "Medet" opencast mine. The achieved results showed that Technosols from the "Sever" dump form a geochemical zone with a high total copper content (determined after soil mineralization with aqua regia), which in the upper part of catena (the ridge of the dump) reaches 668.0 mg/kg. Thus it exceeds the threshold of 500 mg/kg, defi ned as intervention (toxic) concentration in Bulgarian legislation with 1.3 times. In comparison to typical concentrations of the element in Bulgarian soils these concentrations are on average 16 fold higher. Mobile concentrations of copper extracted with 1 M NH4NO3 are also toxic and concentration into the birch leaves is comparable with the established in contaminated ecosystems (30.5 mg/kg). Lead, regardless of its high mobility in the studied soils slightly accumulates in plants. The plant species used for reclamation have selective ability to accumulate copper, lead, zinc and manganese and might diversely infl uenced their cycle in studied ecosystem. Birch is a vigorous phyto-extractor of zinc and manganese, since Acacia preferentially accumulates only copper. Fragmental rock texture of subsoil (below 25 cm) is both the physical and chemical barrier to plant development which restricts root penetration and retention of moisture and nutrients.


8.1 Balancing Optics and Sensor Resolution in the Imaging
Chain It is important at this point to look at the combined effect of the optics and sensor on the image quality produced by the camera (Fig. 8.1). We have shown that the optics and the digital sensor each impose a fundamental limit on the detail that can be imaged with a digital camera. The optics spreads out each point from the
scene into a blurred spot, and the detector array divides up and samples the scene into pixels. The Q of a digital camera defines how these two limitations are balanced in the camera design. Understanding these two effects and how they can be managed in the imaging chain is very important to understanding the image quality. 8.2 Spatial Resolution The spatial resolution is defined as the smallest separation between two objects in the scene that allows them to still be resolved as two separate objects in the image (Fig. 8.2). The most common metric for spatial resolution is the Rayleigh criterion, suggested by Lord Rayleigh in 1879, that is based on the diffraction
PSF of light from a clear circular aperture. The Rayleigh criterion states that two points are just resolvable when the location of one point lies on the first zero of the Airy disk from the second point (Fig. 8.3), i.e., the points are separated by (8.1)


Purpose: The objective is to determine the degree of Integrated Reporting (IR) disclosure in annual reports of selected city councils based on seven IR Framework Guiding Principles, namely (1) Strategic focus and future orientation, (2) Connectivity of information, (3) Stakeholder relationships, (4) Materiality, (5) Conciseness, (6) Reliability and completeness and (7) Consistency and comparability. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study performs content analysis on recent online annual reports of ten city councils against the IR Guiding Principles. Findings: Overall, the results indicate that IR is still at infancy and receives low acceptance by city councils. The results demonstrate that strategic aims and objectives were reported without indicating the time frame of the objectives. It was found that the annual report focuses more on the achievements of the department. All the city councils that were under study disclosed engagement activities with the community; used a combination of narrative statements, figures, pictures, and graphs; and disclosed positive information. The executive summary and Mayor's message were provided at the beginning of the annual report to give an overview of the organization's performance. Comparative data was used to benchmark performance across several years, but comparative data against other local authorities was limited. Research Limitation: The limitations include the small sample size, thus the findings from this study should not be generalized. However, it justified the objective to examine the individual disclosure of IR guiding principles by large public sector organizations. Second, the content analysis was performed on the most recent annual reports of selected city councils which may not reflect the overall practice on consistency and comparability. Third, this study focused on seven guiding principles of IR, which is only part of the comprehensive IR framework. Practical Implication: The findings from this study could be used as an input for regulators and other public sector entities to facilitate IR implementation in public sector organizations. Originality/Value: The paper contributes to the existing literature on the current stage of IR implementation in public sector. The findings obtained show that IR, which was initially observed as a private sector initiative, has implications in public sector organizations. Keywords: Integrated reporting, annual report, guiding principles, local council.


This study was designed to test the reliability and validity of an instrument to assess adolescent health status. Reliability and validity were examined by administration to adolescents (ages 11–17 years) in eight schools in two urban areas, one area in Appalachia, and one area in the rural South. Integrity of the domains and subdomains and construct validity were tested in all areas. Test/retest stability, criterion validity, and convergent and discriminant validity were tested in the two urban areas. Iterative testing has resulted in the final form of the CHIP-AE (Child Health and Illness Profile-Adolescent Edition) having 6 domains with 20 subdomains. The domains are Discomfort, Disorders, Satisfaction with Health, Achievement (of age-appropriate social roles), Risks, and Resilience. Tested aspects of reliability and validity have achieved acceptable levels for all retained subdomains. The CHIP-AE in its current form is suitable for assessing the health status of populations and subpopulations of adolescents. Evidence from test-retest stability analyses suggests that the CHIP-AE also can be used to assess changes occurring over time or in response to health services interventions targeted at groups of adolescents.


TORCH screening is used in pregnancy in a wide number of indications. In 1990 the Public Health Laboratory service advised that individual serology tests, rather than a TORCH screen, should be performed depending upon clinical circumstances)1 2. Our group confirmed these findings for fetal medicine indications.1 The aim of this retrospective study was to determine our progress with the use of TORCH in pregnancy. Methods A retrospective review of all TORCH tests requested in St Michael's Hospital in obstetrics and gynaecology between 01/10/2006 and 31/01/2012 was undertaken via the pathology database. Results 742 tests were undertaken over the study period. 40 indications were identified. There were 4 positive tests for CMV (1%), with no cases of confirmed toxoplasmosis or rubella. CMV was found in late miscarriage, recurrent miscarriage and multiple fetal abnormality. Conclusions The incidence of toxoplasma in the UK is 1–2 infections per 1000 pregnancies3 and is normally associated with a maternal illness. Rubella is screened for as part of the routine ante-natal screen. Our findings have further confirmed the targeted approach to serology screening4. We therefore now only perform CMV serology unless there is an overwhelming clinical indication for the addition of toxoplasma testing. References Abdel-Fattah SA, Bhat A, Illanes S, et al. TORCH test for fetal medicine indications; only CMV is necesary in the UK. Prenat Diagn 2005;25:1028-31. PHLS. TORCH screening reassessed: the laboratory investigation of congenital, perinatal and neonatal infection. 1. UK: Public Health Laboratory Service, 1990. Allain JP, Palmer CR, Pearson G. Epidemiological study of latent and recent infection by Toxoplasmosis Gondii in pregnant women in a regional population in the UK. J Infect 1998;36:189-96. Fayyaz H, Rafi J. TORCH screening in polyhydramnios: an observational study. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med 2012;25:1069-72.


This study intended to scrutinize how homonymous lexical items in Afan Oromo result in misunderstandings and confusions among speakers from differing dialect areas. The data for this study were collected from two groups of informants. The first category of informants consisted of twenty high school Afan Oromo teachers who have acquaintance with the media and people speaking different varieties of Afan Oromo. The second category comprised of ten native speakers of Afan Oromo who have spent their entire lives in one geographical area, and thus have barely heard of varieties of Afan Oromo other than theirs. The primary means of data collection for this study was elicitation. As the study established, homonymy which results from lexical variations among the dialects of Afan Oromo causes misunderstandings between speakers from the various dialect areas. Furthermore, the phonological and morphophonemic differences among the dialects of the language and the convention in the writing system of the language which allows speakers to write expressions as they pronounce also contribute to the communication problems by creating ambiguous homonymy-like lexical items.

 Key words: Afan Oromo, dialect, mutual intelligibility, homonymy, communication barriers.


To deliver food security for the 9 billon population in 2050, a 70% increase in world food supply will be required. Predicted climate change emphasises the need for breeding strategies that delivers both a substantial increase in yield potential and resilience to extreme weather events such as heat waves, late frost or severe drought. Heat stress around sensitive stages of wheat development has been identified as a possible threat to wheat production in Europe. However, no estimates have been made to assess yield losses due to increased frequency and magnitude of heat stress under climate change. Using existing experimental data, we refined the Sirius wheat model and incorporated effects of extreme temperature during flowering and grain filling on accelerated leaf senescence, grain number and grain weight. This allowed us, for the first time, to quantify yield losses resulting from heat stress under climate change. We used Sirius to design wheat ideotypes optimised for CMIP5-based climate scenarios for 2050 at 6 wheat growing areas in Europe. The yield potential for heat-tolerant ideotypes can be substantially increased compared with the current cultivars in the future by selecting optimal combination of wheat traits, e.g. optimal phenology and extended duration of grain filling. However, grain yield of heat-sensitive ideotypes was substantially lower and more variable in Hungary and Spain, because extending grain filling for increased yield potential was in conflict with high temperature episodes during flowering and grain filling. Despite much earlier flowering at these sites, the risk of heat stress affecting yields of heat-sensitive ideotypes remained high. Therefore, heat tolerance in wheat is likely to become a key trait for increased yield potential and yield stability in southern Europe in the future.


A linear progression model of follicular lymphomas (FL) FL1, FL2 and FL3A has been favored, since FL3A often co-exist with an FL1/2 component. FL3B, in contrast, is thought to be more closely related to diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), and both are often simultaneously present in one tumor (DLBCL/FL3B). To obtain more detailed insights into follicular lymphoma progression, a comprehensive analysis of a well-defined set of FL1/2 (n=22), FL3A (n=16), FL3B (n=6), DLBCL/FL3B (n=9), and germinal center B-cell-type diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (n=45) was undertaken using gene expression profiling, immunohistochemical stainings and genetic analyses by fluorescence in situ hybridization. While immunohistochemical (CD10, IRF4/MUM1, Ki67, BCL2, BCL6) and genetic profiles (translocations of BCL2, BCL6 and MYC) delineate FL1-3A from FL3B and DLBCL/FL3B, significant differences were observed between FL1/2 and FL3A upon gene expression profiling. Interestingly, FL3B turned out to be closely related to FL3A, not categorizing within a separate gene expression cluster, and both FL3A and FL3B showed overlapping profiles in between FL1/2 and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Finally, based upon their gene expression pattern, DLBCL/FL3B represent a composite form of FL3B and DLBCL, with the majority of samples more closely resembling the latter. The fact that gene expression profiling clearly separated FL1/2 from both FL3A and FL3B suggests a closer biological relationship between the latter. This notion, however, is in contrast to immunohistochemical and genetic profiles of the different histological FL subtypes that point to a closer relationship between FL1/2 and FL3A, and separates them from FL3B.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the influence of diabetes control on serum lipoprotein (a) concentrations.

SETTING
Diabetes clinic of a large metropolitan public hospital, with primary- and secondary-care patients.

DESIGN
A cross-sectional study. Comparisons of lipoprotein (a) concentrations were made between a normal control group, a group of diabetic patients with glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) less than 8.0%, and a group of diabetic patients with HbA1c of 8.0% or higher.

PATIENTS
Ninety-five normal controls and 93 diabetic subjects (49 with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and 44 with noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus).

RESULTS
Sixty diabetic subjects with HbA1c levels of 8.0% or higher had higher (25 mg/dL) median levels of lipoprotein (a) when compared with either 93 normal controls (8.8 mg/dL) or 33 diabetic patients with HbA1c less than 8.0% (7.5 mg/dL) (P = 0.008 and P = 0.012, respectively). A similar pattern of distribution of lipoprotein (a) levels according to degree of metabolic control was seen in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus and noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. No difference in the lipoprotein (a) distribution was noted between diabetic men and women. No correlation was observed between lipoprotein (a) levels and total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglyceride levels.

CONCLUSION
Lipoprotein (a) levels are elevated in poorly controlled diabetic patients. Increased levels of lipoprotein (a) may be a contributing factor to the high risk for atherosclerosis observed in diabetic patients.


Patient education is a must, yet many obstacles prevent the achievement of this important goal. Nurses need to examine methods and approaches that have application in today's practice. These include the nurse's assessment of the patient as well as a self-inventory so a multifaceted plan can be implemented to provide information during each patient care contact point. Suggested methods, such as contracting and use of computers in the education process, are additional ways to involve patients actively so they can maximize their fullest potential in self-care.