Over the postwar, the U.S., Europe and Japan have experienced what may be thought of as medium frequency oscillations between persistent periods of robust growth and persistent periods of relative stagnation. These medium frequency movements, further, appear to bear some relation to the high frequency volatility of output. That is, periods of stagnation are often associated with significant recessions, while persistent booms typically are either free of recessions or are interrupted only by very modest downturns. In this paper we explore the idea of medium term cycles, which we define as reflecting the sum of the high and medium frequency variation in the data. We develop a methodology for identifying these kinds of fluctuations and then show that a number of important macroeconomic time series exhibit significant medium term cycles. The cycles feature strong procyclical movements in both disembodied and embodied technological change, research & development, and the efficiency of resource utilization. We then develop a model to explain the medium term cycle that features both disembodied and embodied endogenous technological change, along with countercyclical markups and variable factor utilization. The model is able to generate medium term fluctuations in output, technological change, and resource utilization that resemble the data, with a non-technological shock as the exogenous disturbance. In particular, the model offers a unified approach to explaining both high and medium frequency variation in aggregate business activity.


Nosocomial infection also called "hospital acquired infection" this includes infections acquired in the hospital but appearing after discharge, and also occupational infections among staff of the facility. The most common types of Nosocomial infections that could occur in a hospital are surgical wound and other soft tissue infections, Urinary tract infections, Respiratory infections, Gastroenteritis, Meningitis. Naturally this work was undertaken with a view to study the problems of postoperative sepsis and other types of infection during hospitalization period and to express more knowledge over this subject. The samples of Pus, Urine, Sputum and Swab Samples from the different parts of the hospitals were collected. These were then cultured into the different media. After the specific duration the cultural and morphological characters were noted. The organism were identified on the basis of characters of the colony, Gram staining, Motility test, Biochemical reactions & coagulase tests. In Burn wound infection it was observed that most sensitive antibiotics against all above mention organism were Piperacillin, Gentamysin, Amikacin. In Noscomial urinary tract infection E. coli was the most common microorganism isolated and showed most sensitivity to Ceftazidime. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common organism isolated from surgical wards and it was most sensitive with the Cefotaxime. From respiratory tract infection most common organism was Staphylococcus aureus and most sensitive antibiotics was Imipenem.


Educational institutions have not escaped the influence of the quality movement, and the FE sector in particular is now being actively encouraged to introduce the BSI's quality assurance standard BS5750. Universities and schools are also attracted by a standard which should improve, if not quality itself, then the management of quality. This book presents an overview of the pitfalls and problems of implementing quality standards in education. It explores theoretical issues, such as the relationship between the customer and academic culture. It also has a strong practical theme, looking at the advantages and disadvantages of quality systems, case studies of attempts at implementation and proposals for future developments across the education sector as a whole.


Today is the world of knowledge economy. The business unit which believes in creating new innovations and implementing this technology in their organization as it always provides an edge over traditional working. Patents are used for preserving this knowledge. A large number of patents are filed every day. Identifying the best patent as per business need and extracting relevant knowledge from patients will help organizations to enhance their business. There are many technologies of data mining that can be suitably used for this purpose. This paper compares the key features of different techniques used for mining hidden patterns from patents.


A model inter-comparison of secondary pollutant simulations over urban areas in Japan, the first phase of Japan's study for reference air quality modeling (J-STREAM Phase I), was conducted using 32 model settings. Simulated hourly concentrations of nitric oxide (NO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which are primary pollutant precursors of particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 µm or less (PM2.5), showed good agreement with the observed concentrations, but most of the simulated hourly sulfur oxide (SO2) concentrations were much higher than the observations. Simulated concentrations of PM2.5 and its components were compared to daily observed concentrations by using the filter pack method at selected ambient air pollution monitoring stations (AAPMSs) for each season. In general, most models showed good agreement with the observed total PM2.5 mass concentration levels in each season and provided goal or criteria levels of model ensemble statistics in warmer seasons. The good performances of these models were associated with the simulated reproducibility of some dominant components, sulfates (SO42−) and ammonium (NH4+). The other simulated PM2.5 components, i.e., nitrates (NO3−), elemental carbon (EC), and organic carbon (OC), often show clear deviations from the observations. The considerable underestimations (approximately 30 µg/m3 for total PM2.5) of all participant models found on heavily polluted days with approximately 40–50 µg/m3 for total PM2.5 indicated some problems in the simulated local meteorology such as the atmospheric stability. This model inter-comparison suggests that these deviations may be owing to a need for further improvements both in the emission inventories and additional formation pathways in chemical transport models, and meteorological conditions also require improvement to simulate elevated atmospheric pollutants. Additional accumulated observations are likely needed to further evaluate the simulated concentrations and improve the model performance.


We revisit a particular ghost-free bimetric model which is related to both partial masslessness (PM) and conformal gravity. Linearly, the model propagates six instead of seven degrees of freedom not only around de Sitter but also around flat spacetime. Nonlinearly, the equations of motion can be recast in the form of expansions in powers of curvatures, and exhibit a remarkable amount of structure. In this form, the equations are shown to be invariant under scalar gauge transformations, at least up to six orders in derivatives, the lowest order term being a Weyl scaling of the metrics. The terms at two-derivative order reproduce the usual PM gauge transformations on de Sitter backgrounds. At the four-derivative order, a potential obstruction that could destroy the symmetry is shown to vanish. This in turn guarantees the gauge invariance to at least six-orders in derivatives. This is equivalent to adding up to ten-derivative corrections to conformal gravity. More generally, we outline a procedure for constructing the gauge transformations order by order as an expansion in derivatives and comment on the validity and limitations of the procedure. We also discuss recent arguments against the existence of a PM gauge symmetry in bimetric theory and show that, at least in their present form, they are evaded by the model considered here. Finally, we argue that a bimetric approach to PM theory is more promising than one based on the existence of a fundamental PM field.


Simple examples are teaching treasures. Finding a concise, effective illustration is like finding a precious gem. When such an example is fun and intriguing, it is educational gold. In this paper, we share the jeopardy dice game of Pig, which has extremely simple rules, engaging play, and a complex optimal policy. We describe its historical uses in mathematics, and share ways in which we have used the game to teach basic concepts in CS1, and intermediate concepts in introductory artificial intelligence, networking, and scientific visualization courses. We also describe the rich challenges Pig offers for undergraduate research in machine learning.


Obesity, the most common chronic disease of childhood, is prevalent among economically disadvantaged children. The Chronic Care and Obesity Care Models are comprehensive health care strategies to improve outcomes by linking primary care best practices and community-based programs. Pediatric providers and community health centers are well positioned to design and implement coordinated and synergistic programs to address childhood health disparities. This article describes a comprehensive project based on the Obesity Care Model initiated at a rural community health center in Hawaii to address childhood obesity including: (1) the health care delivery changes constituting the quality improvement project; (2) capacity and team-building activities; (3) use of the project community level data to strengthen community engagement and investment; and (4) the academic-community partnership providing the project framework. We anticipate that these efforts will contribute to the long-term goal of reducing the prevalence of obesity and obesity associated morbidity in the community.


The design trend of caches in modern processors continues to increase their capacity with higher associativity to cope with large data footprint and take advantage of feature size shrink, which, unfortunately, also leads to higher energy consumption. This paper presents a technique using segmented counting Bloom filters called "Way Guard" to reduce the number of redundant way lookups in large set-associative caches to achieve dynamic energy savings. Our Way Guard mechanism only looks up an average of 25-30% of the cache ways and saved up to 65% of the L2 energy and up to 70% of the L1 cache energy.


BACKGROUND
The Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian (PLCO) cancer screening trial is a randomized clinical trial to test the effectiveness of cancer screening, including the effect of flexible sigmoidoscopy screening on colorectal cancer mortality. Here we report findings from the baseline screening flexible sigmoidoscopy examination.

METHODS
Analyses included 77,465 men and women aged 55-74 years who were enrolled at 10 screening centers. The trial administered baseline risk factor questionnaires, offered 60-cm flexible sigmoidoscopy examinations, referred patients with screen-detected colorectal polyps or masses to personal physicians, and tracked subjects with polyps or masses to determine results from diagnostic follow-up. Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel statistics and logistic regression were used to test for differences in proportions according to sex and age.

RESULTS
A total of 64 658 subjects (83.5%) underwent screening flexible sigmoidoscopy, and at least one polyp or mass was identified in 15,150 subjects (23.4%). Of these, 74.2% received follow-up lower endoscopic procedures. Follow-up lower endoscopy was more frequent in subjects with at least one larger (> or = 0.5 cm) polyp or mass (86.0% [95% confidence interval {CI} = 84.6% to 87.4%] and 81.0% [95% CI = 79.8% to 82.2%] in women and men, respectively) than in those with a smaller (< 0.5 cm) polyp or mass (69.1% [95% CI = 67.5% to 70.6%] and 65.4% [95% CI = 64.1% to 66.7%] in women and men, respectively). The yields per 1000 screened, depending on 5-year age group, were as follows: for colorectal cancer, 1.1-2.5 in women and 2.4-5.6 in men; for advanced adenoma, 18.0-30.4 in women and 36.1-49.1 in men; and for colorectal cancer or any adenoma, 50.6-79.6 in women and 101.9-128.6 in men. Approximately 77% (130/169) of the colorectal adenocarcinoma patients were stage I or II at diagnosis.

CONCLUSIONS
Acceptance of screening flexible sigmoidoscopy was high. Diagnostic follow-up varied according to polyp size, yet cancer or adenoma detection rates met expectations.


Ebola virus (EBOV), a filovirus family member, is a highly pathogenic virus that causes Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) resulting in documented mortality rates in humans as high as 50%. Currently, the basic EBOV virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine contains the Ebola virus (EBOV) matrix VP40 and attachment glycoprotein (GP). VLPs are morphologically and biochemically similar to parental virus, yet because they lack a genome and cannot replicate, are safe enough to be used as vaccines. We hypothesize that addition of a constitutionally active retinoic acid-inducible gene 1 (RIG-I) would enhance the ability of the vaccine to induce interferon-dependent immune functions yielding an improved vaccine. Expression of EBOV VP40 in 293T cells induces the spontaneous production of VLPs into the media supernatant and if expressed with EBOV GP, will produce VLPs studded with the attachment GP. Recombinant chimeric constitutively active (ca)RIG-I-VP40 matrix and a nonfunctional mutant L58A (mu)RIG-I-VP40 matrix genes were constructed to produce VLPs containing constitutively active and nonfunctional RIG-I. Supernatant from 293Ts transfected with caRIG-I-VP40, muRIG-I-VP40 or VP40 along with GP expression plasmids were tested for the presence of VLPs. Western blotting of purified VLPs confirmed the presence of RIG-I in caRIG-IVP40 and muRIG-I-VP40, but not VP40 containing VLPs. Monocyte-like and PMA-differentiated macrophage-like THP-1 Dual cells were treated with nothing, VP40+GP, caRIG-I-VP40+GP, muRIG-I-VP40+GP VLPs as well as LPS and a Vaccinia virus (VACV-70) positive controls and tested for induction of interferon (IFN) signaling. CaRIG-I containing, but not muRIG-I containing VLPs induced interferon signaling from both macrophages and monocytes. The addition of RIG-I to EBOV VLPs revealed an increase of interferon in human peripheral blood monocytes.


Here, in one volume, are two remarkable novels by the chief spokesman of the so-called new novel which has caused such discussion and aroused such controversy. Jealousy, said the New York Times Book Review is a technical masterpiece, impeccably contrived. It is an exhilarating challenge, said the San Francisco Chronicle. The Times Literary Supplement of London called Robbe-Grillet an incomparable artist and the Guardian termed Jealousy an extraordinary book. In his native France, leading critic Maurice Nadeau wrote in France-Observateur that In the Labyrinth is better than an excellent novel: it is a great work of literature, and fellow novelist and critic Claude Roy judged the same work Robbe-Grillet s best book, while here in America the Parade of Books column called In the Labyrinth a highly emotional experience for the reader and went on to predict: Robbe-Grillet will take his place in world literature as a successor of Balzac and Proust. This volume, which offers incisive essays on Robbe-Grillet by Professor Bruce Morrissette of the University of Chicago and by French critics Roland Barthes and Anne Minor, also contains a helpful bibliography of writings by and about the author."


Albertsons has selected Initiate Systems' Identity Hub software to cleanse, match, and link the Rx records of pharmacy customers across the supermarket chain's 2,000 locations. Pharmacists can access up-to-the-minute Rx data in real time for drug utiliza-tion reviews regardless of where the script was filled. Initiate's Web site is at www.initiatesystems.com.


Higher order cumulant analysis is applied to the blind equalization of linear time-invariant (LTI) nonminimum-phase channels. The channel model is moving-average based. To identify the moving average parameters of channels, a higher-order cumulant fitting approach is adopted in which a novel relay algorithm is proposed to obtain the global solution. In addition, the technique incorporates model order determination. The transmitted data are considered as independently identically distributed random variables over some discrete finite set (e.g., set (+or-1, +or-3)). A transformation scheme is suggested so that third-order cumulant analysis can be applied to this type of data. Simulation examples verify the feasibility and potential of the algorithm. Performance is compared with that of the noncumulant-based Sato scheme in terms of the steady state MSE and convergence rate. >


Abstract.  1 A thorough inventory of a Mediterranean oak forest spider fauna carried out during 2 weeks is presented. It used a semi‐quantitative sampling protocol to collect comparable data in a rigorous, rapid and efficient way. Four hundred and eighty samples of one person‐hour of work each were collected, mostly inside a delimited 1‐ha plot. 2 Sampling yielded 10 808 adult spiders representing 204 species. The number of species present at the site was estimated using five different richness estimators (Chao1, Chao2, Jackknife1, Jackknife2 and Michaelis–Menten). The estimates ranged from 232 to 260. The most reliable estimates were provided by the Chao estimators and the least reliable was obtained with the Michaelis–Menten. However, the behavior of the Michaelis–Menten accumulation curves supports the use of this estimator as a stopping or reliability rule. 3 Nineteen per cent of the species were represented by a single specimen (singletons) and 12% by just two specimens (doubletons). The presence of locally rare species in this exhaustive inventory is discussed. 4 The effects of day, time of day, collector experience and sampling method on the number of adults, number of species and taxonomic composition of the samples are assessed. Sampling method is the single most important factor influencing the results and all methods generate unique species. Time of day is also important, in such way that each combination of method and time of day may be considered as a different method in itself. There are insignificant differences between the collectors in terms of species and number of adult spiders collected. Despite the high collecting effort, the species richness and abundance of spiders remained constant throughout the sampling period.


This thesis describes the development of a new topology of coupled line bandpass filter for wideband applications. The concept deals with an even number of identical quarter-wavelength coupled lines that are interconnected to form two parallel paths of series-connected coupled lines. Such way, a bandpass response of order | + 1 is resulted, where n is the number of identical coupled lines used. The existence transmission zero at both sides of the passband constitutes the main advantage of this filter topology, where very good selectivity can be ensured, while wide bandwidth can be achieved. The global synthesis of the proposed topology is presented for the case of second order response. The design synthesis was developed to control the electrical characteristics of the resonator such as bandwidth and also to fix the position of the transmission zeros frequencies. Besides, the fractional bandwidth on the in-band matching level can be controlled by varying the value of characteristic impedances of the coupled lines. For implementation of the second-order filter, the uses of symmetrical and asymmetrical coupled lines are studied in order to obtain better performance. In practice, asymmetrical coupled lines are more flexible in obtaining higher wave coupling, for better in-band matching level. A further combination of identical quarter-wavelength coupled lines in the initial second order topology is proposed for higher order design. The topology of second-order and higher order filters are implemented on microstrip technology using two substrates which are FR-4 and TRF45. Simulations and measurement results are presented to validate the idea.


Background: Considerable thought has been given to the development of dressings and adhesives for use on chronic wounds. Dressings and adhesives used on acute (surgical/traumatic) wounds, however, have not had the same level of scrutiny regarding the skin damage that may be incurred on removal, particularly as the dressings are often removed after short application periods. Aims: To compare the skin adhesive properties of three dressings used for acute wounds in terms of their peel adhesion, pain on removal and their effect on skin post removal. Results: The study shows that dressing A displayed a lower level of adhesion (thus potentially less skin damage), and yet remained in place after 96 hours application. Baseline levels of pain on removal were low, which might account for the fact that no significant differences were observed between the three dressings in respect of this measurement. Application of dressing B showed an increased level of hydration in the skin, which may have clinical implications in terms of maceration. Conclusions: The study demonstrates that the same level of care is required when selecting dressings for acute wounds to ensure that minimal damage is caused to skin which may be as fragile as that close to chronic wounds. Conflict of interest: The study was sponsored by Molnlycke Health Care.


Human type 1 lissencephaly is a severe brain malformation associated with cognitive dysfunction and intractable epilepsy. Mutant mice with a heterozygous deletion of LIS1 show varying degrees of hippocampal abnormality and enhanced excitability. Whether a reduction of LIS1 function affects adult hippocampal neurogenesis, and if so, whether aberrant neurogenesis contributes to the generation of a disorganized hippocampus remain unknown. Previous reports indicate the presence of multiple pyramidal cell layers and granule cell dispersion in LIS1 mutant mice. Here we observed disruption of the subgranular zone and glial fibrillary acidic protein-immunoreactive radial astrocytes in the dentate gyrus of adult LIS1 mice. Using pulse-chase bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) labeling combined with neuronal and glial antibody staining we provide evidence for ectopic adult neurogenesis in LIS1 mice. A gradually decreased survival rate for these newborn granule cells was also demonstrated in LIS1 mice 7 days after BrdU injection. This reduced survival rate was associated with impaired neuronal differentiation 28 days after BrdU administration. Thus, LIS1 haploinsufficiency can lead to abnormal cell proliferation, migration and differentiation in the adult dentate gyrus.


Mushrooms had long been used for medicinal and food purposes since decades. It is now increasingly recognized that correct diet, controls and modulates many functions of human body and consequently participates in the maintenance of state of good health, necessary to reduce the risk of many diseases. The chemical composition and proximate analysis of 4 wild mushroom (Microporus xanthopus, Pisolithus arrhizus, Phellinus linteus and Phellinus wahlbergii) species were analyzed from young and matured sporocarps were collected from the Western Ghats of Shivamogga and Chickmagalur districts. The macro nutrient profiles in general revealed that the wild mushrooms contains the moisture in range of (26.2-90.26%), crude fat (0.350.67%), carbohydrate (14.2-23.76%), crude protein (5.4-33.5%), crude fiber (8.4-13.2%), ash (1.92-9.2%) and nutritive value (86.44-125.84 Cal/100 gm). Among the macronutrients, Na is dominant, which is followed by K, P, Ca and Mg; in case of micronutrients Mn was dominant followed by Cu and Zn all the mushroom samples. In the same time Fe, Pb and Cd was completely absent in all mushroom samples. The results were subjected for statistical analysis. Hence, these nutrient contents revealed that mushrooms were low energy, healthy food and may also be used as a protein supplementary diet. This paper sums up diverse beneficial health effects of mushrooms to humans, in the form of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, minerals, food and drugs and medicines.


Excel files and MATLAB programs for Chapter 2 of "Economic Growth: Theory and Numerical Solution Methods" published by Springer Verlag.


Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) represents a viable therapy option for patients with refractory acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Currently, veno-venous (vv) ECMO is frequently used in patients suffering from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). VV-ECMO was also frequently utilised during the influenza pandemic and experience with this complex and invasive treatment has increased worldwide since. However, data on comparison of clinical characteristics and outcome of patients with COVID-19 and influenza-related severe ARDS treated with vv-ECMO are scarce. This is a retrospective analysis of all consecutive patients treated with vv/(veno-arterial)va-ECMO between January 2009 and January 2021 at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. All patients with confirmed COVID-19 or influenza were included. Patient characteristics, parameters related to ICU and vv/va-ECMO as well as clinical outcomes were compared. Mortality was assessed up to 90 days after vv/va-ECMO initiation. Overall, 113 patients were included, 52 (46%) with COVID-19 and 61 (54%) with influenza-related ARDS. Median age of patients with COVID-19 and influenza was 58 (IQR 53–64) and 52 (39–58) years (p < 0.001), 35% and 31% (p = 0.695) were female, respectively. Charlson Comorbidity Index was 3 (1–5) and 2 (0–5) points in the two groups (p = 0.309). Median SAPS II score pre-ECMO was 27 (24–36) vs. 32 (28–41) points (p = 0.009), and SOFA score was 13 (11–14) vs. 12 (8–15) points (p = 0.853), respectively. Median P/F ratio pre-ECMO was 64 (46–78) and 73 (56–104) (p = 0.089); pH was 7.20 (7.16–7.29) and 7.26 (7.18–7.33) (p = 0.166). Median days on vv/va-ECMO were 17 (7–27) and 11 (7–20) (p = 0.295), respectively. Seventy-one percent and sixty-nine percent had renal replacement therapy (p = 0.790). Ninety-four percent of patients with COVID-19 and seventy-seven percent with influenza experienced vv/va-ECMO-associated bleeding events (p = 0.004). Thirty-four percent and fifty-five percent were successfully weaned from ECMO (p = 0.025). Ninety-day mortality was 65% and 57% in patients with COVID-19 and influenza, respectively (p = 0.156). Median length of ICU stay was 24 (13–44) and 28 (16–14) days (p = 0.470), respectively. Despite similar disease severity, the use of vv/va-ECMO in ARDS related to COVID-19 and influenza resulted in similar outcomes at 90 days. A significant higher rate of bleeding complications and thrombosis was observed in patients with COVID-19.


Reliability is one of the most important characteristics of the system quality. It is defined as the probability of failure-free operation of system for a specified period of time in a specified environment. For micro-processor based systems, reliability includes both software and hardware reliability. Many methods and techniques have been proposed in the literature so far to evaluate and test both software faults (e.g., Mutation Testing, Control Flow Testing, Data Flow Testing) and hardware faults (e.g. Fault Injection). In this paper, we present a survey of proposed techniques and methods to evaluate software and hardware reliability, and we study the possibility to explore them to evaluate the role of the software stack to evaluate system reliability face to hardware faults.


A 65 year old male patient presented with pain, redness and loss of vision in right eye. Slit lamp examination revealed mid dilated, fixed pupil with rubeosisiridis. Intraocular pressure was raised in right eye. Fluroscein examination showed dye leaking in right eye anterior chamber due to iris neovascularisation. Carotid Doppler and CT carotid angiography study showed right common carotid artery atherosclerotic plaque and reduced blood flow in right central retinal artery. Proper ophthalmological evaluation of patient having carotid artery disease is essential for prevention of intractable neovascular glaucoma and permanent blindness.


Recently, Markov sources were shown to be effective in designing pseudo-random test pattern generators with low area overhead for built-in self-test of scan designs. This paper presents a new test pattern generation scheme based on a Markov source and a partial bit-fixing technique. A new method is proposed for the computation of the state transition probabilities of the Markov source based on the statistics of a deterministic test set. This is enhanced by partial bit-fixing logic, which fixes a group of consecutive inputs to all-0 or all-1. Experimental results show that the proposed BIST scheme can achieve 100% fault coverage for large benchmark circuits with reduced hardware overhead and reduced pattern counts compared to the earlier method using Markov sources.


In this paper, we develop a Bayesian multiscale approach based on a multiscale finite element method. Because of scale disparity in many multiscale applications, computational models can not resolve all scales. Various subgrid models are proposed to represent un-resolved scales. Here, we consider a probabilistic approach for modeling un-resolved scales using the Multiscale Finite Element Method (cf., [1, 2]). By representing dominant modes using the Generalized Multiscale Finite Element, we propose a Bayesian framework, which provides multiple inexpensive (computable) solutions for a deterministic problem. These approximate probabilistic solutions may not be very close to the exact solutions and, thus, many realizations are needed. In this way, we obtain a rigorous probabilistic description of approximate solutions. In the paper, we consider parabolic and wave equations in heterogeneous media. In each time interval, the domain is divided into subregions. Using residual information, we design appropriate prior and posterior distributions. The likelihood consists of the residual minimization. To sample from the resulting posterior distribution, we consider several sampling strategies. The sampling involves identifying important regions and important degrees of freedom beyond permanent basis functions, which are used in residual computation. Numerical results are presented. We consider two sampling algorithms. The first algorithm uses sequential sampling and is inexpensive. In the second algorithm, we perform full sampling using the Gibbs sampling algorithm, which is more accurate compared to the sequential sampling. The main novel ingredients of our approach consist of: defining appropriate permanent basis functions and the corresponding residual; setting up a proper posterior distribution; and sampling the posteriors.


The purpose of this study is to investigate the aspects that green technology offers in the education of students with moderate intellectual disability. The theoretical part highlights the technical facilities that green technology offers to education. An analysis of the most recent studies focuses on the use of interactive whiteboard to improve teaching and learning activities. A comprehensive research methodology is proposed by this study. This is based on the use of the educational experiment meant to investigate the impact of using green technology on the learning outcomes of students with intellectual disabilities. Closed responses to the applied questionnaire are also analysed in order to identify the predominant component in assessing students' attitude towards assistive technologies used in teaching, learning and evaluation. Ten students with moderate intellectual disabilities participated in the research. Descriptive and advanced statistical techniques were used to interpret the obtained data. The results show that there are no significant differences between the results of students with intellectual disabilities who attend a lesson based on a green technology type of interactive whiteboard and of those who attend a traditional lesson. There were also identified two principal components which explain the attitude of students with intellectual disabilities towards using assistive technology in education. The results of the study highlight the need to extend the interests of including innovative assistive technologies in the education of students with special needs.


The organization of primary agriculture is dependent upon whether the institutions of a country allow for reverse franchising by farmers. If the transaction costs of managing a farm can be minimized by farmers conducting a form of collective action, such as cooperatives, then the size of farms will be smaller. If farms have to make the products in the firm, which are subject to very large economies of scale than super farms will be the result. The key is the existence of institutions, such as collective action and property rights, that allow for the minimization of costs. For this reason the organization of primary agriculture is, among other things, a public policy issue. In this paper we develop this argument, we sketch a theoretical framework based on a model of adaptive relational contracts, and we present two illustrative examples: the Danish cooperative system, and the Canadian Wheat Board.


Functional gastrointestinal disorders, including the irritable bowel syndrome, account for up to 40% of referrals to gastroenterologists, but accurate data on the natural history of these disorders in the general population are lacking. Using a reliable and valid questionnaire, the authors estimated the onset and disappearance of symptoms consistent with functional gastrointestinal disorders. An age- and sex-stratified random sample of 1,021 eligible residents of Olmsted County, Minnesota, aged 30-64 years were initially mailed the questionnaire; 82% responded (n = 835). In a remailing to responders 12-20 months later, 83% responded again (n = 690). The age- and sex-adjusted prevalence rates per 100 for irritable bowel syndrome, chronic constipation, chronic diarrhea, and frequent dyspepsia were 18.1 (95% confidence interval (CI) 15.1-21.1), 14.7 (95% CI 11.9-17.4), 7.3 (95% CI 5.3-9.3), and 14.1 (95% CI 11.5-16.8), respectively, on the second mailing. Symptoms were not significantly associated with nonresponse to the second mailing; moreover, the estimated prevalence rates were not significantly different from the first mailing. Among the 582 subjects free of the irritable bowel syndrome on the first survey, 9% developed symptoms during 795 person-years of follow-up, while 38% of the 108 who initially had the irritable bowel syndrome did not meet the criteria after 146 person-years of follow-up. Similar onset and disappearance rates were observed for the other main symptom categories. While functional gastrointestinal symptoms are common in middle-aged persons and overall prevalence appears relatively stable over 12-20 months, substantial turnover is implied by the observed onset and disappearance rates; several potential sources of bias do not seem to account for this variation.


Minority and low-income communities are disproportionately affected by obesity, a risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. The iN Touch pilot study was conducted to determine whether use of a mobile Observations of Daily Living (ODL) tracking application with health coaching impacted a variety of health outcomes. The study was a mixed methods pilot using a pre-post-comparison of a single group. Minority youths age 13-24 who were overweight or obese (BMI > 85th percentile for age and gender in adolescents and BMI > 25.0 in adults) from three clinics in San Francisco were enrolled. Twenty-four of 34 participants completed the study (70.59%). Participants were provided an iPod Touch with a customized ODL application from TheCarrot.com that included exercise, food, mood and socializing. Weekly summaries were available to providers. Participants met in person with a lay health coach. Measures included BMI, waist and hip measurements, depression (PHQ-2) and modified patient activation measure (PAM) which assesses the patient's knowledge, skills and confidence to manage health and healthcare. Barriers and facilitators to use of technology were evaluated using semi-structured interviews. Paired t-tests revealed a significant improvement in PAM scores (M = 3.21, SD = 7.472); t(23) = 2.10, p = 0.047 and waist circumference (M = -1.21 inches, SD = 2.52); t(22) = -2.21, p = 0.038. There were no other significant changes. Participants' use of the technology varied significantly, ranging from almost none to multiple times per day. Interviews suggested the technology was easy to use, data entry burden was minimal, and ability to record ODLs was beneficial. We demonstrated significant preliminary success with iN Touch suggesting it is a promising tool for selfmanagement for overweight/obese youths when used in a health coaching program. This application may also provide valuable patient-centered data that is not currently in electronic health records. Katherine Kim, Christina Sabee, Holly Logan San Francisco State University


The focus of this study was on discussing the novel reflow method ISHR (Induction spontaneous heat reflow) used for high-density area array packaging and assembly. Multi-layer under bump metallization (UBM) and Sn3.5Ag lead-free solder ball were laid in the high frequency electromagnetic field. Because of the induction heating, solder balls melted and spread onto the UBM to form solder bumps. The solder bumps could be formed within 2 seconds through this method; meanwhile, the infrared temperature measurement results showed that the rosin substrate temperature was lower. The shear test indicated that the solder bumps made by ISHR can satisfy the mechanical requirement. Finally, the feasibility experiment was performed to demonstrate the application feasibility of this ISHR technology. Through all these experiments, conclusion can be made that the ISHR as a novel reflow method can be applied in microelectronics packaging.


This thesis describes results of translation research (bedside to bench and back) in JDM. It focuses both on the state of literature and the research of biomarkers in JDM with the view to improving the care and outcome of patients. Chapter 2, through the SHARE initiative, gives an overview of the current literature with the goal of providing recommendations for clinicians in both diagnosis and treatment of JDM patients in order to unify the management in Europe. Recommendations were developed by an evidence-informed consensus process resulting in total, in seven overarching principles, 33 recommendations on diagnosis and 19 recommendations on therapy. Topics include assessment of skin, muscle and major organ involvement and treatment suggestion at disease onset and in refractory disease. Disease activity and damage scores have been developed, principally for clinical trials, but may be challenging and time consuming to use in daily clinical practice. Up to now, disease activity and damage score relay mainly on clinical evaluation, so, one of the major setbacks in the care of JDM patients is the lack of an objective marker to define response to treatment and disease remission. Having stated this, we describe in Chapter 3, 4 and 5 the detection of new biomarkers, Galectin-9 and CXCL10 and TNFRII, which have been detected by a multiplex immunoassay. This assay allows the measurement of a large panel of proteins in a single sample and a very small volume and is therefore a technique especially suitable for pediatric patients. We discovered these markers in a study cohort of Dutch patients; they had a remarkably high discriminative power between patients with active disease and those in disease remission, even in a very small cohort (chapter 3). The three proteins have also been shown to normalize in patients, which gained remission after autologous stem cell transplantation (aSCT) and are still high in those in which disease remained active (chapter 4). Of note, the markers did not decline directly after conditioning. Instead, the levels showed a slow and steady reduction after successful transplantation, correlating with improving clinical scores of the patients. This underscores the utility of these markers even in patients with a high immunosuppression. Furthermore, as CXCL10 and Galectin-9 are produced by immune and non-immune cells, these data suggests, that after aSCT non immune cells continue to produce these cytokines and sustain a low inflammation after aSCT. Thanks to an international collaboration with the Juvenile Dermatomyositis Research Group (JDRG) in the UK and with the help of the Dutch JDM patient's organization (Bas Stichting), we were able to validate these markers in a larger cohort. The study showed that Galectin-9 is the strongest biomarker in terms of discriminative power between active and remitting disease (chapter 5). We also measured Galectin-9 in other autoimmune diseases and could show that levels of Galectin-9 was higher in patients with JDM compared to patients with systemic erythematodes lupus or morphea and could discriminate between active disease and disease remission only in JDM. To ease access for patients, we tested these markers also on dried blood spots (DBS). For the DBS, several blood drops are collected on a card, but the tested marker must be stable at room temperature and for a longer time period, as the cards are supposed to be sent from home by mail (chapter 5). Only one of the markers showed enough stability: CXCL10. In conclusion, we validated two biomarkers measured in serum or plasma to discriminate active and remitting disease: Galectin-9 and CXCL-10. Further studies with interventional and prospective design are needed to prove their utility in clinics regarding tapering and stopping medication. In the last chapter (chapter 6), the role of regulatory T cells (Treg) in muscle and peripheral blood of JDM patients was established. We showed that patients with JDM had normal Treg percentages in peripheral blood compared to age matched controls, independent of disease activity, while in patients with high dose steroid treatment increased Treg percentages were observed. Furthermore, Treg from JDM patients in disease remission did exert suppressive function in vitro, while those from patients with active disease were not consistently suppressive. Thus, Tregs are able to migrate towards the inflamed tissue, but somehow are unable to suppress inflammation. In conclusion, Tregs are probably involved in JDM pathogenesis, but are not controlling the disease. Promotion of Treg function and frequency may improve disease outcome.


PURPOSE: To evaluate the arrhythmogenic profile of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy of low ejection fraction and its prognostic significance. METHODS: Data from 40 patients (30 males; mean age: 52±13 years) were analysed including ventricular arrhythmias (24h - Holter monitoring), autonomic balance from heart rate variability in time domain (rMSSD and pNN50 indexes), ventricular late potentials (signal averaged electrocardiogram (ECG)) and dispersion of ventricular repolarization measured from 12-lead ECG. RESULTS: There was a high prevalence of ventricular arrhythmias with at least one episode of nonsustained ventricular tachycardia (VT) in 60% of the patients. Depressed vagal activity was observed in more than half of the patients. In only 30% of the patients the signal-averaged ECG was positive. The dispersion of ventricular repolarization ranged from 20 to 100ms. The presence of >30 ventricular premature beats or nonsustained VT on Holter monitoring was the most significant predictor of cardiac death and sudden cardiac death with a relative risk of 1.9 and 3.2, respectively (p= 0.01 and 0.000). CONCLUSION: In this study population it was noted that patients with dilated cardiomyopathy and low ejection fraction had an abnormal electrical and autonomic cardiac behaviour. These findings could represent risk factors for the ocurrence of life-threatening arrhythmias or fatal events.


The amino acid sequence of 120 residues in the N-terminal region of the α1-chain of calf skin collagen (comprising the cyanogen-bromide-derived peptides α1-CB2, α1-CB4 and α1-CB5) has been determined by automated Edman degradation. The lysyl residue in position 87 is completely hydroxylated, while those in positions 99 and 108 partially hydroxylated. Two substitutions are found with respect to the homologous region of the α1-chain from rat skin collagen. Positions 101 and 102 of calf skin collagen are occupied by Asp-Ala, in rat skin collagen by Asn-Thr. The extensive homology in this region is remarkable and is not found in other regions of the α1 and α2-chain.


The Multi-Blade is a Boron-10-based gaseous thermal neutron detector developed to face the challenge arising in neutron reflectometry at neutron sources. Neutron reflectometers are challenging instruments in terms of instantaneous counting rate and spatial resolution. This detector has been designed according to the requirements given by the reflectometers at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Sweden. The Multi-Blade has been installed and tested on the CRISP reflectometer at the ISIS neutron and muon source in U.K.. The results on the detailed detector characterization are discussed in this manuscript.


Synthetic biology involves reprogramming and engineering of regulatory genes in innovative ways for the implementation of novel tasks. Transcriptional gene regulation systems induced by small molecules in prokaryotes provide a rich source for logic gates. Cross-regulation, whereby a promoter is activated by different molecules or different promoters are activated by one molecule, can be used to design an OR-gate and achieve cross-talk between gene networks in cells. Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1 is naturally transformable, readily editing its chromosomal DNA, which makes it a convenient chassis for synthetic biology. The catabolic genes for salicylate, benzoate, and catechol metabolism are located within a supraoperonic cluster (-sal-are-ben-cat-) in the chromosome of A. baylyi ADP1, which are separately regulated by LysR-type transcriptional regulators (LTTRs). ADP1-based biosensors were constructed in which salA, benA, and catB were fused with a reporter gene cassette luxCDABE under the separate control of SalR, BenM, and CatM regulators. Salicylate, benzoate, catechol, and associated metabolites were found to mediate cross-regulation among sal, ben, and cat operons. A new mathematical model was developed by considering regulator-inducer binding and promoter activation as two separate steps. This model fits the experimental data well and is shown to predict cross-regulation performance.


Approximately 7 cases of spontaneous regression of adult laryngeal carcinoma have been published in the literature since 1900. This case presents a 62-year-old male with a 6-month history of hoarseness who was subsequently diagnosed with a T1aN0M0 left true vocal fold squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) after biopsy. One month following the initial biopsy, histopathological findings on repeat biopsy revealed absence of malignancy and regression of the tumor without radiation. There has been no evidence of tumor recurrence. This case exemplifies how innate immune modulation may play a role in the spontaneous regression of laryngeal SCC, although the mechanism remains unknown.


Background:The self-care regimen necessary in heart failure (HF) is notably complex. A complication to integrating new knowledge and behaviors is that impaired cognition has been frequently reported in patients with HF, which significantly impacts patients' health, admission and mortality rates, and instrumental activities of daily living. Objective:The identification of reliable cognitive screening tools to assess potential difficulties in performing self-care for cardiac populations is essential. As such, the current purposes were to evaluate the validity and stability of the International Shopping List (ISL) auditory learning subtest from the computerized CogState battery as a screening tool in HF populations, determine the ISL's ability to predict functional declines, and evaluate the task's sensitivity in myocardial infarction. Methods:Forty patients with chronic HF were enrolled in a longitudinal study evaluating the impact of a cognitive training intervention. Baseline neuropsychological and behavioral measurements before treatment were used in the current study, including measures of auditory memory, orientation, verbal fluency, processing speed, and activities of daily living, and a subset of patients (n = 17) received repeat testing at 8 weeks on some tasks. Analyses also were performed with patients organized based on myocardial infarction status. Results:The current study indicated that the ISL performed comparably with an established measure of auditory memory (Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised; r = 0.70, P < .001), displayed adequate coefficients of stability (r = 0.53–0.68), and successfully predicted declines over time in daily functioning (&bgr; = .47, P < .001) in our HF sample. Conclusions:The computerized CogState auditory memory subtest, the ISL, seems to be a beneficial tool in evaluating cognitive change in HF patients. Particularly given its cross-cultural sensitivity and ease of administration and scoring, this task may provide assistance to quickly and reliably monitor memory functioning in these vulnerable patients and gauge their potential for self-care behaviors.


At present, there is a limited understanding of nitrogen (N) accumulation, translocation, and utilization in different types of rice grown using different planting methods in a rice–wheat rotation system. Systematic experiments were conducted with six rice cultivars, including two japonica-indica hybrids (JIHR), two japonica conventional rice (JCR) cultivars, and two indica hybrid rice (IHR) cultivars, to study the effects on N use of plants in three transplanting modes: (1) the pothole seedling machine transplanting mode (PM), (2) the carpet seedling machine transplanting mode (CM), and (3) the mechanical direct seeding mode (DM). Results showed that at stem elongation stage, for N content and uptake, the planting methods were ranked in the order PM < CM < DM, and at heading and maturity the order was PM > CM > DM. After stem elongation the rankings for N accumulation, ratio of N accumulation to total N, and N uptake rate were PM > CM >DM. Thus, on the basis of a certain amount of N accumulation in the early growth phase, increasing the N uptake rate and N accumulation in the middle and late growth phases are ways to increase total N uptake for the PM and CM modes compared to DM. In addition, the PM/JIHR treatment had the highest N uptake at maturity. The N contents of leaves, stem-sheaths, and panicles at heading and maturity for the three planting modes were ranked PM > CM > DM. Moreover, the N translocation amount, apparent N translocation rate, and translocation conversion rate of leaves under PM were significantly higher than for CM and DM, which would increase N accumulation in the grain. The N uptake per 100 kg grain and the partial factor productivity of applied N under PM were larger than for CM and DM, but the N use efficiency of grain yield and biomass were smaller for PM than for CM and DM. In conclusion, rice grown using PM, especially JIHR, had higher total N uptake and N utilization compared to the CM and DM modes, and cultivation measures to improve the N use efficiency of grain yield and biomass could be appropriately applied to further improve N use in a rice–wheat rotation system.


Sound field reproduction using Wave Field Synthesis has been so far limited to the positioning of virtual sources and listeners in the horizontal plane only although the underlying formulation (Kirchhoff-Helmholtz) describes the reproduction of 3 dimensional sound fields in a 3 dimensional subspace. However, a strict use of this formulation would require a surface loudspeaker array with an impractical number of loudspeakers. The authors propose here an optimized formulation of Wave Field Synthesis in 3 dimensions that account both for the limitation of localization accuracy of elevated sources and the target listening area size. In contrast to other 3 dimensional sound reproduction techniques such as Higher Order Ambisonics, the proposed approach allows for irregular and incomplete loudspeaker layouts for targeting specific areas for virtual positioning and accounting for practical limitations in loudspeaker positioning. The paper also proposes a subjective evaluation of the proposed approach in an extended listening area. The experiment relies on elevated physical sources (loudspeakers) to be matched in localization with virtual sources reproduced with the proposed approach with a 24 channels loudspeaker array that covers the frontal quarter of the upper half of a rectangular room.


In addition to classroom activities, teachers provide personal and instructional supports meant to facilitate the developing sense of student autonomy. In this article, we offer a way of thinking about autonomy-supportive practices that suggests that such practices can be distinguished at a featural level and that different practices may in fact have different outcomes in terms of student classroom behavior. Specifically, we propose that autonomy support can be manifested in the classroom in at least 3 distinct ways: organizational autonomy support (e.g., allowing students some decision-making role in terms of classroom management issues), procedural autonomy support (e.g., offering students choices about the use of different media to present ideas), and cognitive autonomy support (e.g., affording opportunities for students to evaluate work from a self-referent standard). We offer vignettes of teachers in their classes to illustrate our proposition that autonomy support may be carried out on several planes and may produce different outcomes. Whereas organizational autonomy support may encourage a sense of well-being and comfort with the way a classroom functions and procedural autonomy support may encourage initial engagement with learning activities, cognitive autonomy support may foster a more enduring psychological investment in deep-level thinking.


Abstract Introduction The Breathing Problems Chief Complaint (CC) protocol in the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) was the system's most frequently used protocol. While "severe breathing problems" is a significant predictor of cardiac arrest (CA), previous data have demonstrated that the DELTA-level determinant codes in this CC contain patients across a wide spectrum of acuity. Hypothesis The hypothesis in this study was that certain combinations of caller answers to the breathing problems protocol key questions (KQs) are correlated with different but specific patient acuities. Methods This was a retrospective study conducted at one International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED) Accredited Center of Excellence. Key Question combinations were generated and analyzed from 11 months of dispatch data, and extracted from MPDS software and the computer assisted dispatch system. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate measures between study groups. Results Forty-two thousand cases were recorded; 52% of patients were female and the median age was 61 years. Overall, based on the original MPDS Protocol (before generating KQ combinations), patients with abnormal breathing and clammy conditions were the youngest. The MPDS DELTA-level constituted the highest percentage of cases (74.0%) and the difficulty speaking between breaths (DSBB) condition was the most prevalent (50.3%). Ineffective breathing and not alert conditions had the highest cardiac arrest quotient (CAQ). Based on the KQ combinations, the CA patients who also had the not alert condition were significantly older than other patients. The percentage of CA outcomes in asthmatic patients was significantly higher in DSBB plus not alert; DSBB plus not alert plus changing color; and DSBB plus not alert plus clammy conditions cases, compared to asthmatic abnormal breathing cases. Conclusions The study findings demonstrated that MPDS KQ answer combinations relate to patient acuity. Cardiac arrest patients are significantly less likely to be asthmatic than those without CA, and vice versa. Using a prioritization scheme that accounts for the presence of either single or multiple signs and/or symptom combinations for the Breathing Problems CC protocol would be a more accurate method of assigning DELTA-level cases in the MPDS. Clawson J, Barron T, Scott G, Siriwardena AN, Patterson B, Olola C. Medical Priority Dispatch System breathing problems protocol key question combinations are associated with patient acuity. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2012;27(4):1-6.


. We have obtained medium-resolution spectra of seven UV-bright stars discovered on images of four southern globular clusters obtained with the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT). Effective temperatures, surface gravities and helium abundances are derived from LTE and non-LTE model atmosphere fits. Three of the stars have sdO spectra, including M4-Y453 (T eff = 58800 K, log g = 5.15), NGC 6723-III60 (T eff = 40600 K, log g = 4.46) and NGC 6752-B2004 (T eff = 37000 K, log g = 5.25). All seven stars lie along either post-extended horizontal branch (EHB) or post-early AGB evolutionary tracks. The post-early AGB stars show solar helium abundances, while the post-EHB stars are helium deficient, similar to their EHB progenitors.


It is now evident that host cells have evolved a remarkable variety of antiretroviral activities to defend themselves against viral invaders and in return viruses have developed ingenious ways to circumvent these defences and, in some cases, actually hijack cellular proteins in order to facilitate their replication. Study of this cat and mouse interplay between viruses and their host cells throughout evolution has lead to the identification of some of the most sophisticated antiviral strategies that mammals have developed to prevent viral infection. Recently, a wave of publications has significantly enhanced our understanding of the relationship between human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) and its host, including: 1) the HIV-1 protein Vif and its interaction with host cell nucleic acid editing enzymes; 2) the host cell restrictive factors that provide protection against retroviral infection, such as TRIM5a; and 3) the late domains of retroviruses and their relationship with the host cell vacuolar protein sorting pathway. The focus of this review is to provide an up-to-date account of these important areas of HIV-1 research and highlight how some of these new discoveries can potentially be exploited for the development of novel anti-retroviral therapeutics.


The current generation of community protection laws represents a shift in priorities that may see the individual rights of sex offenders compromised for the goal of public safety. At the center of many judicial decisions under these laws are the risk assessment reports provided by mental health practitioners. The widespread enactment of laws allowing for additional sanctions for sex offenders, and a burgeoning research literature regarding the methods used to assess risk have served to heighten rather than resolve the ethical concerns associated with professional practice in this area. This article examines ethical issues inherent in the use of two assessment methods commonly used with sex offenders in the correctional context, focusing on actuarial measures and polygraph tests. Properly conducted and adequately reported actuarial findings are considered to provide useful information of sufficient accuracy to inform rather than mislead judicial decision makers, although careful consideration must be given to the limitations of current measures in each individual case. Despite its increasing use, polygraph testing is considered controversial, with little consensus regarding its accuracy or appropriate applications. On the basis of the current state of the professional literature regarding the polygraph, its use with sex offenders raises unresolved ethical concerns.


Despite significant improvements concerning the level of realism in Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) simulation, the effects of three-dimensional aspects are still neglected by the majority of packet-based simulation tools. In most of the cases, a planar projection of the road network in question is assumed, leading to a misrepresentation of scenarios including bridges, hilly terrain or elevated infrastructure. In this paper we show that the consideration of three-dimensionality in realistic scenarios can lead to significantly differing results compared to 2D-only simulations. We discuss the requirements and extensions which are necessary in order to provide a three-dimensional simulation environment. This includes the support for three-dimensional antenna patterns as well as a model covering environmental diffraction effects. We examine the implications of three-dimensional aspects on the results of a city-wide simulation scenario showing that the number of vehicles in reach decreases noticeably. The outcome of a second, more specific use case even indicates that proper functioning of this specific application might be completely compromised, in harsh contrast to the result of the common 2D simulation approach, emphasizing the importance of 3D VANET simulation.


Capable of improving surgical quality, perioperative registries can allow performance benchmarking, reliable reporting and the development of risk-prediction models. Well established in high-income countries, perioperative registries remain limited in lower-and middle-income countries due to several challenges. First, ensuring comprehensive data entry forums to power the registries is difficult because of limited electronic medical records requiring sustained efforts to develop and integrate these into practice. Second, lack of adequate expertise and resources to develop and maintain registry software necessitates the involvement of software developers and information technology personnel. Third, case ascertainment and item completion are challenging secondary to poor-quality medical records and high loss-to-follow-up rates, requiring telemedicine initiatives as an adjunct to existing care for the assessment of post-discharge outcomes. Lastly, standardised coding of clinical terminology is warranted for ensuring interoperability of the registries for which adaptation of the existing disease and procedural codes can be a sustainable and cost-effective alternative to the development of new codes.


Rapid urban growth presents considerable challenges to cities in Latin America and calls for tools and mechanisms that can help identify priority areas of work and enable integrated responses for urban sustainability, especially with regard to access and delivery of infrastructure services.
The concentration of population, however, generates high demand for services. When the expansion of the supply of services is inadequate, significant deficits emerge in the coverage and quality of infrastructure and services, including housing. These problems are compounded by weak urban governance. (IDB, 2015)
Thus solutions are required to secure sustainable urban development considering financing limits of cities authorities as well quality of life and environment. Infrastructure planning can either respond to urban growth providing supply by following the demand or it can pro-actively shape urban development in a resource efficient way by providing supply directing the demand. Thus appropriate infrastructure design can serve as an instrument for "soft" urban growth management.
AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology) has been contracted by the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) to develop a tool (model) to simulate urban expansion triggered by infrastructure development and to estimate related infrastructure costs. The tool allows simulating different urban development scenarios based on different assumption on population behaviour and criteria triggering this behaviour. The tool called UIDS (Urban and Infrastructure Development Simulator) allows testing infrastructure networks extensions and estimates the expected infrastructure costs to assist cities in resource efficient as well as cost efficient infrastructure design.
Backbone of the tool is a spatially explicit micro-simulation of urban expansion conducted through an agent-based model (ABM) as well as AIT's MASGISmo simulation platform making use of the RePastJ environment for ABM modeling and R-statistics as well as a PostgreSQL/PostGis database and a GeoServer for Web Map Services (WMS). Single agents representing households of different socioeconomic classes trigger land cover and land use change within an area by moving to certain places. To model dwelling suitability for the agent classes the urban-region landscape is described through attractiveness layers representing different characteristics increasing (or decreasing) the suitability of potential urban expansion areas. The additional infrastructure costs for road network, water- and sanitation network, electricity and gas network, are estimated based on costs per unit (e.g. km pipeline, area covered etc.) and the related supply ratio. Based on the new dwelling allocations the infrastructure costs related to water and sanitation, transportation, and energy are calculated as distribution and connection costs and aggregated to total costs for the city, which are compared between different urban development scenarios.


ABSTRACTAir pollution is a significant hazard to human health. Atmospheric visibility is an aggregative indicator of air pollution and meteorological conditions. Yet, only a few studies have reported the relationship between atmospheric visibility and health risks. This study attempted to utilize atmospheric visibility to assess the effects of air pollution on hospital admissions for respiratory diseases (ICD-9: 460-519). Daily measurements of air pollutants, atmospheric visibility, and Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database were obtained for the year 2010 in Taichung. We compared the differences in different locations (coastal and urban areas). A Poisson regression analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between the atmospheric visibility and the respiratory consultation rate, with adjustment for potential confounding factors, including meteorological factors, spatial variances, and types of air pollution. The primary results indicated that air pollution and atmospheric visibility degradation were both more serious in the urban area than in the coastal area. The atmospheric visibilities were divided into Q1 (25th percentile), Q2 (50th percentile), and Q3 (75th percentile); these divisions show the inversely proportional trend between atmospheric visibility range and health risks. It was also observed the similar inversely proportional trend between particulate matter and health risks. Under the hazard periods of atmospheric visibility ≤ 10 km, the relative significant health risks of 1.088 and 1.042 were observed in the coastal area and urban area, respectively. The relative health risks of particulate matters were 1.053 in the coastal area and 1.101 in the urban area during the periods of PM2.5 ≥ 35 µg m–3. This study establishes a new perspective from which to assess the effects of air pollution on hospital admissions for respiratory diseases by utilizing atmospheric visibility. Additionally, it provides a convenient way for the public to understand the relationship between air pollution and its effects on human health.


To estimate the progress of medicine since the beginning of the nineteenth century, it is necessary to view the conditions of that period. Physicians then were not troubled with obstacles and responsibilities as they are now, as the calling rested on the same basis with all other common enterprises. Practitioners, whether regularly bred or impostors, had liberty to offer their services, and there was little difficulty in justifying their work among the people, who knew much less about medicine than they do now. Quacks with gift of gab and popular manners were sure of success. There were no specialties then, but naturally, in every community, some practitioner sprang up into notoriety whose genius led him to feats of surgery, by which he gained superior fame. Opportunities of medical education were so restricted that a majority of physicians in rural and village communities were either self-taught or served a term of


Recent advances in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), such as the increasing accuracy of Global Positioning Systems (GPSs) technology and the miniaturisation of wireless communication devices, pave the road for Location-Based Services (LBSs). Among these services, m-advertising is predicted to represent a high-yield revenue stream. In this article, the possibilities of using a Location-Aware Mobile Messenger (LAMM) for the purpose of m-advertising is introduced. To avoid m-advertising becoming an extremely intrusive practice by neglecting the user's privacy, the objective of this article is to introduce a location-based advertising platform which complies with the provisions imposed by European Union (EU) law with regard to personal data protection.


Many approaches to explain conceptions of developments in the arts to both peers and a more general audience included diagrams representing networks of related entities such as genealogies of important historical actors or styles. While such visualizations were traditionally created by hand, the recent emergence of extensive digital repositories of art history information enable new means of presentation. This work seeks to explore the potential of openly available data sources to create bottom-up, data driven versions of such network maps of art history. It highlights commonalities and differences between views derived from institutional and crowd-sourced data repositories and compares them with identified historical examples. The results suggest that the available data can be used to create largescale views on specific developments in art history, potentially serving as aid for navigating vast online collections of digitized artworks but also as means of reflection on the origin of the data sources themselves.


Wasserstein distance-based distributionally robust optimization (DRO) has received much attention lately due to its ability to provide a robustness interpretation of various learning models. Moreover, many of the DRO problems that arise in the learning context admits exact convex reformulations and hence can be tackled by off-the-shelf solvers. Nevertheless, the use of such solvers severely limits the applicability of DRO in large-scale learning problems, as they often rely on general purpose interior-point algorithms. On the other hand, there are very few works that attempt to develop fast iterative methods to solve these DRO problems, which typically possess complicated structures. In this paper, we take a first step towards resolving the above difficulty by developing a first-order algorithmic framework for tackling a class of Wasserstein distance-based distributionally robust logistic regression (DRLR) problem. Specifically, we propose a novel linearized proximal ADMM to solve the DRLR problem, whose objective is convex but consists of a smooth term plus two non-separable non-smooth terms. We prove that our method enjoys a sublinear convergence rate. Furthermore, we conduct three different experiments to show its superb performance on both synthetic and real-world datasets. In particular, our method can achieve the same accuracy up to 800+ times faster than the standard off-the-shelf solver.


Six hemicellulosic samples were isolated from cell wall material of dewaxed sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench) leaves by sequential extractions with distilled water, alkali, and organic alkali solvent. The samples were treated with water, 1% NaOH, and 60% ethanol. The organic alkali samples were treated with 1%, 3%, 5%, and 8% NaOH, which yielded 8.3%, 5.4%, 1.0%, 5.6%, 2.5%, and 4.9% hemicelluloses based on the dry initial sweet sorghum leaves, respectively, and resulted in a total release of 81% of all hemicelluloses originally present in the cell wall. The results indicated that water-soluble hemicelluloses contained noticeable amounts of glucose, arabinose, galactose, and xylose, and had a relatively lower molecular weight (17300 g/mol). The four alkali-soluble hemicellulosic fractions, rich in xylose, were more linear, and had higher molecular weights (48500-128000 g/mol) than those of the alkali organic-soluble hemicellulosic fraction. With an increase of NaOH concentration from 1% to 8%, the ratio of arabinose to xylose decreased from 0.29 to 0.01, which implied that the hemicelluloses obtained by the higher concentration of alkali appeared to be more linear. Based on the sugar analysis, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) results, 4-O-methylglucuronoarabinoxylans were the major constituents of the hemicellulosic polymers.


M-type strontium hexaferrite nanocrystals of radar absorbing material (NRAM) i.e. SrFe12O19 were synthesized by modified flux method that combine the controlled chemical co-precipitation process for nucleation and complete uniform growth during annealing with NaCl flux. Uniform structural morphological transformation of nanocrystals from needle to hexagonal prism faces were noticed after annealing with increasing of heat treatment (HT) temperature from 800 to 1200°C for 4h. X-ray diffraction (XRD) results show the formation of various phases with increase in annealing temperature. The crystallinity and crystallite size are found to increase with increase in heat treatment temperature (15-40nm). The superparamagnetic behavior of strontium hexaferrite is confirmed by vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM) wherein it was noticed that magnetic field (10000 gauss max) did not have any effect on these materials. The transformation of magnetic properties i.e. from superparamagnetic to ferromagnetic behaviour after heating at various HT temperatures have been revealed by hysteresis loops under VSM study. The increase in saturation magnetization from 2.44 to 75.03 emu/gm is observed. Formation of ultrafine particles has been confirmed through field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM). About 5 to10% of the needle like crystals in the 'as synthesized' condition were transformed to hexagonal pyramidal structure and most of the crystals are found to have plate like hexagonal structures with increase in heat treatment temperatures. The effect of such systematic morphological transformation of nanocrystals was observed in reflection loss properties in X band (8-12 GHz). The maximum reflection loss of -20.05, -24.31, -24.16, -25.22, -25.12, -24.01 dB at 8.1, 8.6, 9.2, 9.6, 10.7, and 12 GHz respectively are observed for the material heat treated at 1200°C. A significant increment from - 6.5 to -25.22 dB at 9.6 GHz in reflection loss (RL) is noticed due to symmetric morphological growth of RAM nanocrystal during annealing.


Recent corporate collapses have focussed attention on the (un)reliability of financial information. However, although the agricultural sector, which is significant globally, is run primarily using the cooperative form, there is scant research on these users' perception of financial information. Therefore this paper examines members' readership and understanding of the annual reports of a large, fertiliser cooperative. The findings show that there is a lack of readership of the annual report, due to a lack of understanding and a lack of time. A minority of non-readers trust directors to "do a good job". Preparers of information should focus on making reports more user-friendly and evidence suggests that financial information could be released more strategically using other sources of communication, namely other print media and the internet.


Mammalian gametes are derived from a founder population of primordial germ cells (PGCs) that are determined early in embryogenesis and set aside for unique development. Understanding the mechanisms of PGC determination and differentiation is important for elucidating causes of infertility and how endocrine disrupting chemicals may potentially increase susceptibility to congenital reproductive abnormalities and conditions such as testicular cancer in adulthood (testicular dysgenesis syndrome). Primordial germ cells are closely related to embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and embryonic germ (EG) cells and comparisons between these cell types are providing new information about pluripotency and epigenetic processes. Murine ESCs can differentiate to PGCs, gametes and even blastocysts - recently live mouse pups were born from sperm generated from mESCs. Although investigations are still preliminary, human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) apparently display a similar developmental capacity to generate PGCs and immature gametes. Exactly how such gamete-like cells are generated during stem cell culture remains unclear especially as in vitro conditions are ill-defined. The findings are discussed in relation to the mechanisms of human PGC and gamete development and the biotechnology of hESCs and hEG cells.


The increasing popularity of Cloud Computing is leading to the emergence of large virtualized data centers hosting increasingly complex and dynamic IT systems and services. Over the past decade, the efficient sharing of computational resources through virtualization has been subject to intensive research, while network management in cloud data centers has received less attention. A variety of network-intensive applications require QoS (Quality-of-Service) provisioning, performance isolation and support for flexible and efficient migration of virtual machines. In this paper, we survey existing network virtualization approaches and evaluate the extent to which they can be used as a basis for realizing the mentioned requirements in a cloud data center. More specifically, we identify generic network virtualization techniques, characterize them according to their features related to QoS management and performance isolation, and show how they can be composed together and used as building blocks for complex network virtualization solutions. We then present an overview of selected representative cloud platforms and show how they leverage the generic techniques as a basis for network resource management. Finally, we outline open issues and research challenges in the area of performance modeling and proactive resource management of virtualized data center infrastructures.


This paper deals with the derivation of a two-dimensional model within a new theoretical framework that has been recently proposed for the source localization into a domain where a network of detectors is arranged. Specifically the framework is based on the resolution of an inverse problem (source reconstruction) by employing the maximum Shannon entropy principle. The framework is proposed as a general paradigm for the derivation of a specific model and a sensitivity analysis on the detectors position is addressed. Further applications and research directions are also discussed into the last section of the paper.


The Service Availability Forum supports the realization of Highly Available systems by means of standards like the Availability Management Framework (AMF), a middleware service that manages the high availability of services provided by applications through the coordination of their redundant components. AMF configurations for applications, capable of providing and protecting services, can be generated from the software and from a set of configuration requirements (CR). The specification of CR requires a good knowledge of the AMF specification. Users/Customers may not have this AMF knowledge and are usually acquainted to specifying high level characteristics of services of interest. This paper introduces an approach aiming at bridging the gap between user requirements and configuration requirements for the design of AMF configurations.


The Integrated Reporting Framework of 2013 represents the latest international attempt to connect a firm's financial and sustainability (i.e., environmental, social and governance) performance in one company report. An Integrated Report (IR) should communicate "concisely" about how a firm's strategy, governance, performance and prospects, in the context of its external environment, lead to the creation of sustainable value. At the same time, an IR needs to be "complete and balanced", i.e., broadly including all material matters, both positive and negative, in a balanced way. Drawing on impression management studies, we examine a selection of performance determinants to gain insights into the factors associated with conciseness, completeness and balance in IR. The results from a sample of IR early adopters show that in the presence of a firm's weak financial performance, the IR tends to be significantly longer and less readable (i.e., less concise), and more optimistic (i.e., less balanced). We additionally find that firms with worse social performance provide reports that are foggier (i.e., less concise) and with less information on their sustainability performance (i.e., less complete). Our evidence implies that IR early adopters employ quantity and syntactical reading ease manipulation as well as thematic content and verbal tone manipulation as impression management strategies. The results also suggest that such strategies depend not only on the level of firms' performance but also on the type of performance (financial versus nonfinancial/sustainability). This paper adds to the limited literature on IR in sustainability accounting as well as to the research in mainstream financial accounting that examines disclosure quality using textual analysis.


The American School Counselor Association (ASCA) identifies three main domains that should be included in a developmental and comprehensive school counseling program. These domains include academic development, social/emotional development, and career development. This chapter will provide an overview of the career development needs of PK-12 students. It will also offer several online career guidance system suggestions that school counselors and educators may employ to meet both the needs of school-aged students and the demands of career guidance and planning during the formative years of elementary, middle, and high school. Research has shown that the area of career development is significantly lacking in school systems and less emphasis is placed on this domain in comparison to others. Therefore, online career guidance systems that may be accessed by students independently or with educator collaboration may help to bridge this gap.


The Rac1 GTPase is a critical regulator of cytoskeletal dynamics and controls many biological processes, such as cell migration, cell-cell contacts, cellular growth and cell division. These complex processes are controlled by Rac1 signaling through effector proteins. We have previously identified several effector proteins of Rac1 that also act as Rac1 regulatory proteins, including caveolin-1 and PACSIN2. Here, we report that Rac1 interacts through its C-terminus with nucleophosmin1 (NPM1), a multifunctional nucleo-cytoplasmic shuttling protein with oncogenic properties. We show that Rac1 controls NPM1 subcellular localization. In cells expressing active Rac1, NPM1 translocates from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. In addition, Rac1 regulates the localization of the phosphorylated pool of NPM1 as this pool translocated from the nucleus to the cytosol in cells expressing activated Rac1. Conversely, we found that expression of NPM1 limits Rac1 GTP loading and cell spreading. In conclusion, this study identifies NPM1 as a novel, negative regulator of Rac1.


Research on gated communities is moving away from the hard concept of a 'gated community' to the more fl uid one of urban gating. The latter allows communities to be viewed through a new lens of soft boundaries, modern communication and networks of infl uence. The book, written by an international team of experts, builds on the research of Bagaeen and Uduku's previous edited publication, Gated Communities (Routledge 2010), and relates recent events to trends in urban research, showing how the discussion has moved from privatised to newly collectivised spaces, which have been the focal point for events such as the Occupy London movement and the Arab Spring. Communities are now more mobilised and connected than ever, and Beyond Gated Communities shows how neighbourhoods can become part of a global network beyond their own gates. With chapters on Australia, Canada, Europe, South America, Asia and the Middle East, this is a truly international resource for scholars and students of urban studies interested in this dynamic, growing area of research.


Identifying and communicating relationships between causes and effects is important for understanding our world, but is affected by language structure, cognitive and emotional biases, and the properties of the communication medium. Despite the increasing importance of social media, much remains unknown about causal statements made online. To study real-world causal attribution, we extract a large-scale corpus of causal statements made on the Twitter social network platform as well as a comparable random control corpus. We compare causal and control statements using statistical language and sentiment analysis tools. We find that causal statements have a number of significant lexical and grammatical differences compared with controls and tend to be more negative in sentiment than controls. Causal statements made online tend to focus on news and current events, medicine and health, or interpersonal relationships, as shown by topic models. By quantifying the features and potential biases of causality communication, this study improves our understanding of the accuracy of information and opinions found online. Keywords—social media; online social network; causal attribution; natural language processing


This paper is based on the investigation on the status quo of psychological contract among mittelstand enterprise staffs by introducing psychological contract to the field of mittelstand enterprises through literature review and compiling questionnaires. The findings show that to facilitate the management, the establishment of the corresponding psychological contract management measures should take into account of diverse needs of staffs from different age groups and with different length of service and different stages of their career development. On the basis of the above factors, the management measures can be explored from the facet of enterprise organization and individual employee.


The food-safety legislation in Sweden were changed and updated in 1996, much because of demands from the European Union for a common legislation regarding the food-safety issues in the EU. This report discusses how the Swedish authorities are dealing with the new legislation in Sweden. Further on the report presents how the food safety officers in the municipalities in Sweden are implementing this new legislation in their daily work, especially the requirements regarding the HACCP, Hazard Analysis Control and Checkpoints. The report shows that the implementation is quite slow and that many foodsafety-officers don't implement the legislation in the same way all over the country. In some parts of Sweden the officers demands a complete Hazard-analysisplan with Critical checkpoints while in other parts of Sweden the are not the same demands. The reason to why this is possible may be the educational differences between the food safety officers in Sweden. In some municipalities the officers are well educated about the new legislation including HACCP while other municipalities don't afford or take the time to educate their officers. The report also shows that the knowledge of the new legislation is poor among the people who work in the food-section.


Suppression by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of the expression of a target gene is known as RNA interference (RNAi). No quantitative analysis of the effects of RNAi on the expression of specific genes in cultured plant cells has been reported. However, as it is possible to produce populations of cultured plant cells that are uniform and divide synchronously for functional analysis of genes of interest, we performed a quantitative study of the effects of RNAi in such cells. We constructed dsRNA expression plasmids for a luciferase gene under the control of the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter by simply connecting sense and antisense sequences in a head-to-head manner. An RNAi effect was observed 24 hours after the introduction of dsRNA expression plasmids into tobacco BY-2 cells by electroporation. The simple system for suppression of specific genes in plant cells should be useful in attempts to elucidate the roles of individual genes in plant cells.


In this study, a simple and effective direct printing method was developed to print patterned nanowire thin films for UV detection. Inks containing silver or titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanowires were first formulated adequately to form stable suspension for inkjet printing applications. Sedimentation tests were also carried out to characterize the terminal velocity and dispersion stability of nanowires to avoid potential nozzle clogging problems. The well-dispersed silver nanowire ink was then inkjet printed on PET films to form patterned electrodes. Above the electrodes, another layer of TiO2 nanowires was also printed to create a highly transparent photodetector with >80% visible transmittance. The printed photodetector showed a fairly low dark current of 10−12–10−14 A with a high on/off ratio of 2000 to UV radiation. Under a bias voltage of 2 V, the detector showed fast responses to UV illumination with a rise time of 0.4 s and a recovery time of 0.1 s. More photo currents can also be collected with a larger printed electrode area. In summary, this study shows the feasibility of applying inkjet printing technology to create nanowire thin films with specific patterns, and can be further employed for photoelectric applications.


This paper studies the perceived effects on the working conditions in 24 medium sized manufacturing companies, approximately 1.5 year into their implementation of Lean. This is studied quantitatively based on four stakeholders' perceptions (the workers, the managers, the production supervisors and the white-collar workers), based on three factors; changes in the working environment, work with safety for the personnel and level of stress. The results indicate that the physical work environments have improved and the workers and production supervisors report a slight increase in stress. Lastly, all groups report an increase in the work with safety for the personnel.


Toxicity of the fungicide Flutolanil was in vitro tested against 20 isolates of Macrophomina phaseolina and cotton seedlings of ten commercial cotton cultivars. The isolates were recovered from roots of cotton plants obtained from different cotton-growing areas in Egypt. Most of the tested isolates were sensitive to Flutolanil; however, they varied in sensitivity. Twenty-five percent of the isolates were highly sensitive where IC50 ranged from < 1 to 5.1 μg/ml, 20% of the isolates were sensitive where IC50 ranged from 15 to 30 μg/ml, 45% of the isolates were moderately sensitive where 1C50 ranged from 46 to 58.5 μg/ml, and 10% of the isolates were not much sensitive (tolerant) where 1C50 was > 100 μg/ml. Flutolanil was very safe on both shoots and roots of the tested eultivars (1C50 > 100 μg/ml). Treating cotton seeds with Flutolanil resulted in highly significant (P < 0.01) reductions in pathogenicity of 18 isolates and a significant reduction (P < 0.05) in pathogenicity of isolate M29. M1 was the only isolate, which was insensitive to the application of Flutolanil. In vivo toxicity to Flutolanil was not correlated with its in vitro toxicity. However, a highly significant correlation (r = 0.60, P < 0.01) was observed between pathogenicity of isolates and the in vivo toxicity of the fungicide.


Time-resolved simulations present a new opportunity for studying the disturbances responsible for the broadband interaction noise created by the fan stage. In this paper, two vane configurations from the source diagnostic test at the approach rotor speed were computed with PowerFLOW's very large-eddy simulation (VLES) method using two solution strategies: a coarser mesh near the rotor and a trip to trigger turbulent transition on the rotor; and a much finer mesh near the rotor with no trip. The simulated data allow for an investigation of the potential effect from the vane configuration and an in-depth study of the mean and turbulent flow in the interstage gap. A challenge related to post-processing of high-resolution simulations is discussed. Comparison of the flow quantities with previously obtained Reynolds Averaged Navier–Stokes simulation results indicates that little advantage is gained by running a lattice Boltmann method (LBM)/VLES to simply recover the gap flow parameters for use with a lower-order fan broadband interaction noise calculation method. The true benefit of the LBM/VLES is that the noise calculation can be directly and simultaneously completed with the flow simulation. This article is part of the theme issue 'Frontiers of aeroacoustics research: theory, computation and experiment'.


CuO/SiO2 nanocomposite films were prepared by sol-gel process combined with the dip-coating technique. The mean diameter of CuO nanoparticles formed during the heat treatment process and mainly lay in the pores of mesoporous SiO2 matrix increased by increasing the heat treatment temperature. Consequently, compared with mesoporous SiO2 matrix, the pore volume and specific surface area of prepared samples descend. The diffraction peaks of Cu and CuO and the crystalline diffraction ring of CuO with body centered cubic structure can be clearly observed after heat-treated in air and H2 at 800 oC for 1h. By increasing the heat treatment temperature and concentration of CuO, a slightly red-shift could be observed.


The use of random samples to approximate properties of geometric configurations has been an influential idea for both combinatorial and algorithmic purposes. This chapter considers two related notions—ǫ-approximations and ǫ-nets—that capture the most important quantitative properties that one would expect from a random sample with respect to an underlying geometric configuration. An example problem: given a set P of points in the plane and a parameter ǫ > 0, is it possible to choose a set N of O(1ǫ ) points of P such that N contains at least one point from each disk containing ǫ|P | points of P? More generally, what is the smallest non-empty set A ⊆ P that can be chosen such that for any disk D in the plane, the proportion of points of P contained in D is within ǫ to the proportion of points of A contained in D? In both these cases, a random sample provides an answer 'in expectation;' establishing worst-case guarantees is the topic of this chapter.


In this paper, a very efficient semi-blind approach is developed with pulse shaped Multiple-Input- Multiple-Output Orthogonal-Frequency-Division- Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. In digital communication systems, pulse shaping filters and matched filters are used. When the signal's bandwidth becomes larger than the channel bandwidth, the channel starts to introduce distortion to the signal. This distortion is usually seen as inter symbol interference. To control the Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) the pulse shaping filters are used. The pulse shaping filter is realized in the up- sampling domain by a square root raised-cosine filter. By utilizing the knowledge of pulse shaping filters a time domain semi-blind estimation method is developed for the MIMO channel.


THE author of this small booklet is herself a multipara, and can speak with more authority than most on the efficacy of the methods she advocates. Her system of preparation for childbirth is not rigidly adherent to any particular school, but is a composite of the many methods she has tried. The relaxation techniques and exercises described here are easy to learn and practise, and are clearly set forth. The first edition of this book was welcomed by many, and the appearance of the second edition is welcomed even more, particularly since some question. able statements in the first have been eliminated. In addition to the outline of anatomy and physiology accompanying the more didactic part of the manual, this edition carries a brief history of the teaching of relaxation in preparation for childbirth, and a new chart to clarify breathing control in labour. It is essentially a book for the lay mother and should continue to serve its purpose well.


Nowadays, the greatest part of the effort to reduce pollution emissions is directed toward the hybridization of automotive drive trains. In particular, the design of hybrid vehicles requires a complete system analysis, including the optimization of the electric and electronic devices installed on the vehicle and the design of all the mechanical connections between the different power sources to reach the required performances. The aim of this paper is to describe the design and prototype realization of a plug-in hybrid electrical vehicle (PHEV). Specifically, an energetic model was developed in order to analyze and optimize the power flux between the different parts. This model was experimentally validated using a prototype PHEV. In addition, in order to improve the driving range in an all-electric model (all-electric range), a detailed analysis of the inverter control was performed, because this component is one of the key components of the power train. In order to reduce inverter losses and dimensions, several control methods can be adopted. In this paper, a direct self-control strategy for reducing the inverter losses is presented and validated.


An improved hybrid particle swarm optimization (PSO) that incorporates a wavelet-based mutation operation is proposed. It applies wavelet theory to enhance PSO in exploring solution spaces more effectively for better solutions. A suite of benchmark test functions and an application example on tuning an associative-memory neural network are employed to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. It is shown empirically that the proposed method outperforms significantly the existing methods in terms of convergence speed, solution quality and solution stability.