High demand for photovoltaic (PV), battery, and small-scale combined heat and power (CHP) technologies are driving a virtuous cycle of technological improvements and cost reductions in off-grid electric systems that increasingly compete with the grid market. Using a case study in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, this paper quantifies the economic viability of off-grid PV+battery+CHP adoption and evaluates potential implications for grid-based utility models. The analysis shows that already some households could save money by switching to a solar hybrid off-grid system in comparison to the effective electric rates they are currently paying. Across the region by 2020, 92% of seasonal households and ~75% of year-round households are projected to meet electricity demands with lower costs. Furthermore, ~65% of all Upper Peninsula single-family owner-occupied households will both meet grid parity and be able to afford the systems by 2020. The results imply that economic circumstances could spur a positive feedback loop whereby grid electricity prices continue to rise and increasing numbers of customers choose alternatives (sometimes referred to as a "utility death spiral"), particularly in areas with relatively high electric utility rates. Utility companies and policy makers must take the potential for grid defection seriously when evaluating energy supply strategies.


Educational aims To explain the importance of discriminating between different histological types of NSCLC. To explain the differences between large cell carcinoma (NOS) and their variants. To link precise histopathological class with prognosis Summary The histopathological classification of lung cancer was revised in 1999, and, in addition, descriptions of their phenotypic and genetic abnormalities were reported in 2004. Several changes have occurred that increased the clinical significance of lung cancer histopathological classification. These include the subclassification of large cell carcinoma, which was defined on a negative basis (on exclusion criteria), into variants which are defined on objective histopathological positive criteria that endowed them with a strong clinical significance.


: - Networked Control System (NCS) has been one of the main research focuses in academia as well as in industry for many decades and has become a multidisciplinary area. With these growing research trends, it is important to consolidate the latest knowledge and information to keep up with the research needs. In this paper, the NCS and its different forms are introduced and discussed. The beginning of this paper discusses the history and evolution of NCS. The next part of this paper focuses on different fields and research arenas such as: networking technology, network delay, network resource allocation, scheduling, network security in real-time NCS, integration of components on network, fault tolerance, etc. A brief literature survey and possible future direction concerning each topic is included.


This chapter for a book on the regulation of primary securities markets investigates the persistence of the fixed price offering in the United States. Fixed price offerings present a puzzle because economic theory suggests that sellers would maximize returns by offering IPO shares for sale at different prices depending upon characteristics of the buyer or the buyer's order. Contrary to this expectation, however, American companies uniformly sell IPO shares at a single fixed offering price. Moreover, this is true regardless of whether the shares are sold through the traditional book-building process or at auction. This phenomenon is not a function of the legal or regulatory structure governing public offerings in the United States, which neither mandates fixed price offerings nor bars price discrimination in IPOs. Instead, it appears to be a result of the market power of underwriters. A close examination of the offering process reveals a form of implicit price discrimination in which underwriters clearly engage - that is, the selective allocation of shares with resale restrictions. The chapter argues that underwriters favor implicit price discrimination over explicit price discrimination because the benefits of implicit price discrimination redound to the underwriter while explicit price discrimination would benefit issuers and eliminate an important (but hidden) component of underwriter compensation.


Bleomycin‐induced lung fibrosis is a debilitating disease, linked to high morbidity and mortality in chemotherapy patients. The MRTF/SRF transcription pathway has been proposed as a potential therapeutic target, as it is critical for myofibroblast differentiation, a hallmark of fibrosis. In human lung fibroblasts, the MRTF/SRF pathway inhibitor, CCG‐257081, effectively decreased mRNA levels of downstream genes: smooth muscle actin and connective tissue growth factor, with IC50s of 4 and 15 μM, respectively. The ability of CCG‐257081 to prevent inflammation and fibrosis, measured via pulmonary collagen content and histopathology, was tested in a murine model of bleomycin‐induced lung fibrosis. Animals were given intraperitoneal bleomycin for 4 weeks and concurrently dosed with CCG‐257081 (0, 10, 30, and 100 mg/kg PO), a clinical anti‐fibrotic (nintedanib) or the clinical standard of care (prednisolone). Mice treated with 100 mg/kg CCG‐257081 gained weight vs. vehicle‐treated control mice, while those receiving nintedanib and prednisolone lost significant weight. Hydroxyproline content and histological findings in tissue of animals on 100 mg/kg CCG‐257081 were not significantly different from naive tissue, indicating successful prevention. Measures of tissue fibrosis were comparable between CCG‐257081 and nintedanib, but only the MRTF/SRF inhibitor decreased plasminogen activator inhibitor‐1 (PAI‐1), a marker linked to fibrosis, in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid. In contrast, prednisolone led to marked increases in lung fibrosis by all metrics. This study demonstrates the potential use of MRTF/SRF inhibitors to prevent bleomycin‐induced lung fibrosis in a clinically relevant model of the disease.


In the 1960s, Braess showed that the overall system performance of a transportation network can be degraded when a new link is added to the network, given that travelers choose their routes based on the user equilibrium (UE) principle. This phenomenon is often referred to as Braess' paradox (BP). The original five-link BP network has been studied extensively with static link performance functions. In this paper, we revisit the original BP network with a dynamic point-queue model and examine whether the results from the static model would hold for the case with time-dependent queues. For this purpose, we solve the BP problem with the consideration of dynamic queuing that leads the system to a steady state while satisfying the dynamic user equilibrium (DUE) condition at every instant. Our results indicate that the locations of congestion, or "hot spots," of the system are sensitive to the capacity of each link in an intricate manner. The "surprising result" reported in previous studies with link performance functions, that a system can spontaneously grow out of Braess' paradox if the demand is sufficiently high, does not occur with time-dependent queues. Instead, we show that queues in different stages have different impacts on the system performance. The implication of this result is discussed in the context of developing proactive dynamic traffic control strategies that can eliminate the negative impact of BP while keeping the system operating at the DUE condition. Even though this study focuses on the original five-link network, the results illustrate the potential pitfalls of extending insights developed from a static framework for dynamic traffic and the importance of studying the problem with a dynamic framework for real-time traffic control.


This thesis attempted to study the bottom productivity both qualitatively and quantitatively with reference to the distribution of bonthos. The study of the bottom fauna in large reservior lakes is a relatively new field. This work will give more information on an unknown field than previously existed, although its scope is not intend to be exhaustive.


A detailed understanding of the noise processes and errors in near-term quantum computers is essential for accurate calibration of gates, and for achieving optimal performance when executing near-term applications such as quantum chemistry, optimization, or machine learning problems. This paper introduces several sources of noise in superconducting qubit based quantum computers such as those deployed by IBM, describes some of the main techniques for characterizing the resulting errors, and for mitigating the effects of certain errors without access to quantum error correction. We demonstrate experimental application of these techniques on an IBM Quantum system using the open source Qiskit software library.


Coral bleaching, i.e., the loss of photosynthetic algal endosymbionts, caused by ocean warming is now among the main factors driving global reef decline, making the elucidation of factors that contribute to thermotolerance important. Recent studies implicate high salinity as a contributing factor in cnidarians, potentially explaining the high thermotolerance of corals from the Arabian Seas. Here we characterized bacterial community composition under heat stress at different salinities using the coral model Aiptasia. Exposure of two Aiptasia host-algal symbiont pairings (H2-SSB01 and CC7-SSA01) to ambient (25°C) and heat stress (34°C) temperatures at low (36 PSU), intermediate (39 PSU), and high (42 PSU) salinities showed that bacterial community composition at high salinity was significantly different, concomitant with reduced bleaching susceptibility in H2-SSB01, not observed in CC7-SSA01. Elucidation of bacteria that showed increased relative abundance at high salinity, irrespective of heat stress, revealed candidate taxa that could potentially contribute to the observed increased thermotolerance. We identified 4 (H2-SSB01) and 3 (CC7-SSA01) bacterial taxa belonging to the orders Alteromonadales (1 OTU), Oligoflexales (1 OTU), Rhizobiales (2 OTUs), and Rhodobacterales (2 OTUs), suggesting that only few bacterial taxa are potential contributors to an increase in thermal tolerance at high salinities. These taxa have previously been implicated in nitrogen and DMSP cycling, processes that are considered to affect thermotolerance. Our study demonstrates microbiome restructuring in symbiotic cnidarians under heat stress at different salinities. As such, it underlines how host-associated bacterial communities adapt to prevailing environmental conditions with putative consequences for the environmental stress tolerance of the emergent metaorganism.


Mixing under laminar flow conditions is key to a wide variety of industrial fluid systems of size extending from micrometres to metres. Profound insight into three-dimensional laminar mixing mechanisms is essential for better understanding of the behaviour of such systems and is in fact imperative for further advancement of (in particular, microscopic) mixing technology. This insight remains limited to date, however. The present study concentrates on a fundamental transport phenomenon relevant to laminar mixing: the formation and interaction of coherent structures in the web of three-dimensional paths of passive tracers due to fluid inertia. Such coherent structures geometrically determine the transport properties of the flow and thus their formation and topological structure are essential to three-dimensional mixing phenomena. The formation of coherent structures, its universal character and its impact upon three-dimensional transport properties is demonstrated by way of experimentally realizable time-periodic model flows. Key result is that fluid inertia induces partial disintegration of coherent structures of the non-inertial limit into chaotic regions and merger of surviving parts into intricate three-dimensional structures. This response to inertial perturbations, though exhibiting great diversity, follows a universal scenario and is therefore believed to reflect an essentially three-dimensional route to chaos. Furthermore, a first outlook towards experimental validation and investigation of the observed dynamics is made.


Low cyclic behavior of a new type near-α titanium alloy containing rare earth Nd (Ti60) with and without dwell time introduced at maximum tensile strain has been investigated at ambient temperature and 600°C. The results show that, Ti60 alloy exhibits a cyclic softening behavior at almost all strain levels being investigated. The cyclic processes show good agreement with predictions based on the fatigue crack propagation model. At 600°C, the LCF life of Nd-bearing near-α titanium alloy is superior to that at room temperature within the investigated strain range, which indicates that Ti60 alloy is a good candidate for high temperature component under complicated load and temperature conditions. The results also show that the creep-fatigue interaction is related to the strain range applied. The creep-fatigue fracture is characterized by transgranular fracture mode due to the formation of matrix voids induced by Nd-bearing particles.


Until 1870 education in England was mainly the domain of private, corporate and ecclesiastical enterprise, but in 1870 the English State laid the foundation for a national system of primary and secondary education in the form of the new Elementary Education Act. The Act did not declare education to be a purely secular matter, nor did it allow the Church to be involved in education on a nondenominational basis under State supervision. The Education Act established the so-called "dual system", the division of elementary education into Board and Voluntary schools. One of the most prominent contributors to English Catholic attitudes on education in the second half of the nineteenth century was William Bernard Ullathorne (1806-1889), who was a fierce opponent of the "dual system". After a number of years in Australia as Vicar General, he returned to England in 1840 where he subsequently became Vicar Apostolic of the Western and Central Districts. On the re-establishment of the English Catholic hierarchy of bishops in 1850, Ullathorne was made Bishop of Birmingham. He resided in Birmingham until 1888.It is the aim of this work to determine and explain the core of W. B. Ullathorne's long and extensive influence on the educational debate in the last century. It aims at establishing the ways in which he influenced both the laity and the hierarchy in their concepts of what an ideal Catholic education should be. It also examines Catholic attitudes towards the State's new paramount role as the provider of education. This will be done through an extensive study of Ullathorne's writings and correspondence on education, as well as newspapers and periodicals throughout the years 1850-1889.


WITHIN the past few years classic concepts of malaria have been modified by the addition of new knowledge. The details on different strains of Plasmodium vivax (benign tertian), discovery of tissue stages of P. vivax and P. falciparum, and discovery of new therapeutic agents have all added to our understanding of malaria and made rational treatment possible. The majority of these changes have come about through controlled tests in human volunteers, following careful preliminary work in animals. The data on various strains of P. vivax have done much to aid our understanding of the relapse pattern of this type of malaria. Coatney and co-workers* have worked out the life pattern of the St. Elizabeth strain, a temperate zone malaria, and of the Chesson strain, a tropical strain originating in the South Pacific. The Figure shows the relapse pattern of these two strains of P. vivax malaria in experimentally induced infections.


Previous studies document a media-coverage discount in the cross-section of stock returns, which is attributed to Merton's investor-recognition hypothesis. This paper offers a natural experiment for this explanation by focusing on the media coverage of funds, not their underlying positions. Funds are not directly traded by investors; therefore one would not expect an investor-recognition discount in their cross-section. Yet, we document that hedge funds with media coverage underperform no-coverage funds by 3.5% annually over 1999-2008. Although media coverage affects fund flow, underperformance is not channeled through investor fund flow. The effect is more pronounced in funds at the top and bottom of past performance as well as small funds. Since the paper finds that the media-coverage discount in the cross-section of funds is similar to that found in the cross-section of stocks, it follows that Merton's hypothesis need not be the only explanation for the media-coverage discount.


NAIROBI--
 On 17 March 2000, geologist Martin Pickford of the CollA¨ge de France in Paris was arrested near Kenya9s Lake Turkana on a charge of fossil hunting without a permit. According to Pickford, the arresting officer, from the Criminal Investigation Division--the nation9s FBI--presented him with a letter, dated 2 November 1998, stating that his research permit had been revoked. This letter is at the center of a bitter dispute over excavation rights in the Tugen Hills, where Pickford and his co-workers are accused of encroaching on a site long under study by a rival research team (see main text).


BACKGROUND
Tomato pomace (TP) is a coproduct generated by the extraction of tomato pulp, and is a potential source of bioactive molecules. In this study, we isolated several fractions from TP and evaluated their biological properties.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
TP was treated by maceration at room temperature with green solvents (ethanol, ethyl acetate, ethanol:water and ethanol:ethyl acetate) or supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2). The extracts were analyzed by HPLC-DAD to determine their composition, and their antioxidant activity was assessed. The potential therapeutic effects of the isolated fractions were assessed in vitro.

RESULTS
We identified 30 molecules on chromatography profiles, which revealed an abundance in phenolic acids, carotenoids, flavonoids and tannins, with differences in selectivity according to the solvent and pretreatment used. The highest radical scavenging activities were measured at 64-72% inhibition, corresponding to the ethanol or ethanol:water extracts with the highest polyphenol or flavonoid contents. Carotenoid content was increased by chemical pretreatment, to attain levels of 161 mg β-carotene/g ethyl acetate extract. This level of carotenoids seemed to have anti-inflammatory effects, with an IC50 of 9.3 μg/mL. In terms of anti-diabetic effects, the activities of α-glucosidase and α-amylase were best inhibited by extraction in an ethanol-to-water mixture (50:50). Cytotoxicity in a tumor cell line were highest for SC-CO2 extracts (64.5% inhibition) and for ethanol extracts obtained after the enzymatic pretreatment of TP (37% inhibition). Some extracts also had dose-dependent activity against Zika virus.

CONCLUSIONS
New fractions obtained from TP with ecocompatible solvents in mild conditions are rich in bioactive molecules. A comparison of the chromatographic profiles of the extracts led to the identification of several key molecules with therapeutic properties. The chemical pretreatment of TP is justified as a mean of increasing the carotenoid content of ethyl acetate fractions, whereas enzymatic pretreatment can increase the antioxidant activity of ethyl acetate fractions and increase the cytotoxicity of ethanol fractions. The SC-CO2 fraction contained a smaller number of metabolites detectable on HPLC, but it had high levels of cytotoxicity and antioxidant activity. Finally, the fractions obtained appeared to be suitable for use to target one or several of the biological activities studied.


The audiobook experience differs radically from traditional silent reading in several respects, one of them being mental imagery. While mental imagery in silent reading taps equally into the referential (story content; all sensory modalities) and verbal (narrative qua discourse; auditory and kinesthetic) domains, listening activates the auditory circuitry to a degree that leaves little need or capacity for verbal mental images. In traditional silent reading, continuous shifts between referential and verbal imaging coincide with the general distribution of one's attention between story and discourse. But how is attention distributed in narrative audiobook processing? On the one hand, one might speculate that the medium, liberating the listener from the visually taxing burden of reading, allows richer possibilities for referential imaging and a deeper focus on story content. On the other hand, the overt voicing of the discourse can make people attentive to linguistic qualities that otherwise would go unnoticed. Moreover, people use audiobooks widely while performing physical tasks or during transportation, thus receiving a flux of sensorimotor stimuli from the environment concurrent with the spoken narrative. This may interfere with, rather than encourage, referential imagery, or even any deeper focus whatsoever. In my talk I will try to systematize and reconcile some of these contradictions from an aesthetic and psychological perspective. Reviewing extant comparative data on literary listening and reading, I will thus elaborate on recent attempts to define the phenomenology of the audiobook as a specific medium. I will support my conclusions with anecdotal evidence from my own experience of listening to vs. reading Ernest Hemingway's The Garden of Eden, a novel high in referential imageability as well as linguistic craftsmanship.


Seven species of Beatogordius (Nematomorpha) have been reported from South America. A reinvestigation could not reproduce a number of determinations indicated in the literature. B. deshayesi has been a misinterpretation and the status of B. irregularis appears to be very uncertain, because no generic characters could be found. The descriptions of B. alfredi and B. latastei confirm that these species belong to South America only. In B. abaiconus we found adhesive warts anterior of the male cloacal opening. These structures were to date only known from the genus Gordionus. In the posterior end of females from B. alfredi and B. variabilis, short paired rows of bristles were present which had to date only been known from the African species B. equinatus. Two new species, B. funis and B. palustre could be added to the genus.


Deaf participants' sign recall is affected by sign similarity, sign length, irrelevant signing and manual articulatory suppression, suggesting the existence of a phonological loop for signs. In two experiments we explore whether hearing signers (who have learned Spanish Sign Language as second language) use a phonological loop for signs, whether they use their phonological loop for words or whether they use both when recalling sign lists. Articulatory suppression (manual and vocal) and list similarity (word similarity and sign similarity) were manipulated in two experiments. Results clearly suggest that our participants recode orally the signs and use those representations to recall sign lists, but visuospatial information is also used in this task.


With increasing usage of the Internet, energy consumption of network equipment has become a crucial challenge from both an economic and an environmental point of view. This paper combines users' behavior of acc essing the network with energy saving algorithms for energy-aware network equipment, and investigates potential energy savings in the access network. The study is based on a set of traffic data that collected from a real residential fiber-t o-the-home (FTTH) network during three continuous months in 2013. The results show that on average every household link i n the access network can potentially save at least 18% energy co nsumption with sleep-mode enabled equipment.


Lepidopteran insects present a complex organization of appendages which develop by various mechanisms. In the mulberry silkworm, Bombyx mori a pair of mesoand meta-thoracic discs located on either side in the larvae gives rise to the corresponding foreand hind-wings of the adult. These discs do not experience massive cell rearrangements during metamorphosis and display the adult wing vein pattern. We have analysed wing development in B. mori by two approaches, viz., expression of patterning genes in larval wing discs, and regulatory capacities of larval discs following explantation or perturbation. Expression of Nubbin is seen all over the presumptive wing blade domains unlike in Drosophila, where it is confined to the hinge and the wing pouch. Excision of mesoand meta-thoracic discs during the larval stages resulted in emergence of adult moths lacking the corresponding wings without any loss of thoracic tissues suggesting independent origin of wing and thoracic primordia. The expression of wingless and distal-less along the dorsal/ventral margin in wing discs correlated well with their expression profile in adult Drosophila wings. Partially excised wing discs did not show in situ regeneration or duplication suggesting their early differentiation. The presence of adult wing vein patterns discernible in larval wing discs and the patterns of marker gene expression as well as the inability of these discs to regulate growth suggested that wing differentiation is achieved early in B. mori. The timings of morphogenetic events are different and the wing discs behave like presumptive wing buds opening out as wing blades in B. mori unlike evagination of only the pouch region as wing blades seen in Drosophila.


Abstract. Double-layer structures in polar mesospheric clouds (PMCs) are observed by using Solar Occultation for Ice Experiment (SOFIE) data between 2007 and 2014. We find 816 and 301 events of double-layer structure with percentages of 10.32 and 7.25 % compared to total PMC events, and the mean distances between two peaks are 3.06 and 2.73 km for the Northern Hemisphere (NH) and Southern Hemisphere (SH) respectively. Double-layer PMCs almost always have less mean ice water content (IWC) than daily IWC during the core of the season, but they are close to each other at the beginning and the end. The result by averaging over all events shows that the particle concentration has obvious double peaks, while the particle radius exhibits an unexpected monotonic increase with decreasing altitude. By further analysis of the background temperature and water vapour residual profiles, we conclude that the lower layer is a reproduced one formed at the bottom of the upper layer. 56.00 and 47.51 % of all double-layer events for the NH and SH respectively have temperature enhancements larger than 2 K locating between their double peaks. The longitudinal anti-correlation between the gravity waves' (GWs') potential energies and occurrence frequencies of double-layer PMCs suggests that the double-layer PMCs tend to form in an environment where the GWs have weaker intensities.


Application of soil amendments, such as composts, to soil to improve fertility and crop yield is commonplace in horticultural systems. A potential additional beneficial outcome of application of these materials is the augmentation of the soil carbon pool, a vital component of the global C cycle. This research utilises a pre-established long term field experiment in Wisley (UK). Since 2008, amendments that are commonly used by and/or available for use in the wider horticultural community (peat, garden compost, composted bark, bracken and horse manure, and spent mushroom compost) were applied annually (and plants grown) to 3 m x 3 m plots. All of the amendments were successful in elevating soil quality above the bare control plots. Individual soil physico-chemical properties sue as pH, bulk density and nutrient contents were influenced by the application of amendments. Therefore selection of amendment should be driven by individual needs and they can do so with detriment to the overall soil quality. A combination of physical fractionation techniques and nuclear magnetic resonance analysis indicated the difference in total C concentration between treatments results from an increase in unprotected particulate organic matter, rather than an increase in organic matter being occluded in aggregates or in organo-mineral complexes, and persist as a result of accumulation of alkyl C components. A method known as the Tea Bag Index was used to determine decomposition rate constants in each of the plots. The differences seen in decomposition rate in the plots is largely determined by the carbon:nitrogen ratio of the amendment, and the presence of plants on the plots that compete with microorganisms for nitrogen. In fact, nitrogen, and competition for it, was found to be the limiting factor for plant yield, decomposition of amendments and decomposition of the tea bags.


Service to society is one of the form of the tridharma University.
Ideally, the execution of the tridharma university. Ideally, the
execution of the tridharma university is related to one another,
full fill in each other, so what is given to education and teaching
can be applied to help solving problems in society. In another
side the activity which is gonna be done to the service it is better
formered by the doing of the research to know the proper and
needs of the community. Then, the service activity that has been
done is require to be accurated and learned in order to find out
how use full the activity is.
The general aim of the service activity to community is actively
following to help achieving the goal of the national, the regional,
and the local development by way of helping the solving
community development problem in frame of achieving the goal
which is community that developed, fair and properous in
materiil and spirituil. People who become the target of the service
in society is very vast, that can be in individual, group, community
and institution. About the form on the field of the service activity
to society can be formed Bidang Pendidikan dan Pelayanan
Masyarakat or The Education Field and The Community Services;
Pengembangan Wilayah, Pengkajian, Pengembangan dan Penerapan
Hasil Penelitian or The Territory Development, Learning,
Development and The Application of The Research Result; Kuliah
Kerja Nyata or The Real Work Lecture;
Program Penerapan Iptek dan Vucer or The Application Program
of The Science and Technology and Vocer; Program Pengembangan
Budaya Kewirausahaan dan Program Sibermas or The
Development Culture of the Private Business and The Sibermas Program.
Lately, the introduction of the new paradigma in the execution
of the service to society in university, that is the target of society
in some degree; using the science and technology in university
degree; the needs of the investment hind and can be the resource
of the input fund; the sinergism between the program.


In the semiarid area, the structural nature of sandy land is changed due to wind erosion. Furthermore, assessing the changes in the composition and surface roughness in several spatial and temporal scales is significant for the wind erosion model calculations. As a noninvasive approach, remote sensing can be used to improve the study of sandy surface in time and space. In order to characterize the surface structure using the reflectance of sandy land, we analysis the effects of the changes of sandy surface structure on the bidirectional reflectance distribution basing on the multi-angular and hyperspectral measurements in the field; the measured sandy land samples are taken from nature, but the surface structures are artificial: one type is the direction of sand furrows is parallel to the incident direction, the other is the direction of sand furrows is perpendicular to the incident direction. At the same time, we analyzed the effects of surface structure on the bidirectional reflectance factor of sand land and we also retrieve the sandy surface roughness using the reflectance model parameter. The results suggest that both types of sand furrows will influence the distribution of reflectance of sandy land surface, for example, the backward scattering of sandy land increased when the direction of sand furrows is perpendicular to the incident direction, and the range of backward scattering of sandy land expended when the direction of sand furrows is parallel to the incident direction. When we compared the measured reflectance with the modeled results basing on the reflectance model, it is found that the reflectance model can be used to simulate the reflectance property of sandy land surface and prove that the parameter of model is useful for retrieving the surface roughness. This research not only presents the sample for quantifying the structural information of sandy land by the reflectance measurements, but also shows valuable reference for the research of intrinsic optical property of sandy land and the reversion of the texture of sandy land. In other words, this paper can also help the scientists understand the effect of the structural information on the optical properties of sandy land.


For $q$ a prime power, the discrete logarithm problem (DLP) in $\mathbb{F}_{q}$ consists in finding, for any $g \in \mathbb{F}_{q}^{\times}$ and $h \in \langle g \rangle$, an integer $x$ such that $g^x = h$. We present an algorithm for computing discrete logarithms with which we prove that for each prime $p$ there exist infinitely many explicit extension fields $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$ in which the DLP can be solved in expected quasi-polynomial time. Furthermore, subject to a conjecture on the existence of irreducible polynomials of a certain form, the algorithm solves the DLP in all extensions $\mathbb{F}_{p^n}$ in expected quasi-polynomial time.


We consider the fitting of a mixture of two Gompertz distributions to censored survival data. This model is therefore applicable where there are two distinct causes for failure that act in a mutually exclusive manner, and the baseline failure time for each cause follows a Gompertz distribution. For example, in a study of a disease such as breast cancer, suppose that failure corresponds to death, whose cause is attributed either to breast cancer or some other cause. In this example, the mixing proportion for the component of the mixture representing time to death from a cause other than breast cancer may be interpreted to be the cure rate for breast cancer (Gordon,'90a and'90b). This Gompertz mixture model whose components are adjusted multiplicatively to reflect the age of the patient at the origin of the survival time, is fitted by maximum likelihood via the EM algorithm (Dempster, Laird and Rubin,'77). There is the provision to handle the case where the mixing proportions are formulated in terms of a logistic model to depend on a vector of covariates associated with each survival time. The algorithm can also handle the case where there is only one cause of failure, but which may happen at infinity for some patients with a nonzero probability (Farewell,'82).


Addressing the needs of gifted students is predicated on an understanding of many factors not least the nature of giftedness, appropriate curriculum design and specialist pedagogical practices. Knowledge needs to be acquired in context. Preservice teacher education programs tend to focus on pedagogical practices and present preservice teachers with content related to inclusive philosophies, strategies for teaching, and assessment techniques. Many preservice teachers do not have an awareness of the nature of giftedness or understandings around models of curriculum advocated for gifted education, despite practicum experiences and university education. This paper presents two case studies that describe interventions constructed through partnerships with schools to raise awareness of the nature of giftedness and provide concrete experiences for preservice teachers' interactions with gifted students. It will report strategies through which preservice teachers become engaged with gifted students in regular classrooms. Qualitative and quantitative evidence will be presented on the effectiveness of these models.


Web proxy caching servers play a key role in today's Web infrastructure. Previous studies have shown that disk I/O is one of the major performance bottlenecks of proxy servers. Most conventional file systems do not work well for proxy server workloads and have high overheads. This paper presents a novel, User-space, Customized File System, called UCFS, that can drastically improve the I/O performance of proxy servers. UCFS is a user-level software component of a proxy server which manages data on a raw disk or disk partition. Since the entire system runs in the user space, it is easy and inexpensive to implement. It also has good portability and maintainability. UCFS uses efficient in-memory meta-data tables to eliminate almost all I/O overhead of meta-data searches and updates. It also includes a novel file system called Cluster-structured File System (CFS). Similarly to the Log-structured File Systems (LFS), CFS uses large disk transfers to significantly improve disk write performance. However, CFS can also markedly improve file read operations and it does not generate garbage. Comprehensive simulation experiments using five representative real-world traces show that UCFS can significantly improve proxy server performance. For example, UCFS achieves 8-19 times better I/O performance than the state-of-the-art SQUID server running on a Unix Fast File System (FFS), 4-7.5 times better than SQUID on asynchronous FFS, and 3-9 times better than the improved SQUIDML.


The production of the calcium carbonate minerals calcite and aragonite in the ocean is primarily done by different pelagic calcifying organisms: coccolithophorids, foraminifera and pteropods. The contribution of corals to the production of CACO3 is comparatively small. The surface ocean is supersaturated with respect to the two minerals forms of CACO3: aragonite and calcite, while the deep ocean is undersaturated. Most of these calcium carbonate minerals produced near the surface ocean sink through the water column and mainly dissolve in the deep ocean below the saturation horizon where the solubility product of the minerals increases due to increased pressure. CaCO3 formation in the surface ocean and dissolution in the deeper ocean both affect dissolved inorganic carbon and total alkalinity and also the oceanic pCO2. In this study, a global biogeochemical model (REcoM) is used to analyze the production and dissolution of CaCO3 for the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and present day with two different set up of dissolution rate: one is that the dissolution rate of CaCO3 is assumed constant when it sinks through the water column (λ does not depend on Ω ), in other λ has been made depend on Ω. In REcoM, biogenic CaCO3 production is restricted to phytoplankton. In comparison with observation, model simulation with uniform dissolution does a good job at reproducing the global patterns of DIC, alkalinity and Ω although some regional differences remain: too high DIC concentrations in between 800 m to 1200 m ocean depth, high alkalinity concentration in the depth between 1200 m to 2000 m and higher Ω in the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean value. In this study, it is tested that whether changes in the parameterization of the CaCO3 dissolution rate in the model can improve the distribution. Making the dissolution depend on Ω leads to a much improved global oceanic distribution of DIC, alkalinity and Ω. Furthermore, LGM model simulation reproduce the ocean of low temperature, salty and high in alkalinitry and DIC concentration than the present day [Buchanan et al., 2016b, Vo lker and Ko hler, 2013, Zhang et al., 2013]. The overall LGM ocean is high in calcium carbonate saturation than the
present day because of higher [CO2−] concentration.


Purpose: A clinical trial was designed to test the hypothesis that a psychological intervention could reduce the risk of cancer recurrence. Newly diagnosed regional breast cancer patients (n = 227) were randomized to the intervention-with-assessment or the assessment-only arm. The intervention had positive psychological, social, immune, and health benefits, and after a median of 11 years the intervention arm was found to have reduced the risk of recurrence (hazard ratio, 0.55; P = 0.034). In follow-up, we hypothesized that the intervention arm might also show longer survival after recurrence. If observed, we then would examine potential biobehavioral mechanisms. Experimental Design: All patients were followed; 62 recurred. Survival analyses included all 62. Upon recurrence diagnosis, those available for further biobehavioral study were accrued (n = 41, 23 intervention and 18 assessment). For those 41, psychological, social, adherence, health, and immune (natural killer cell cytotoxicity, T-cell proliferation) data were collected at recurrence diagnosis and 4, 8, and 12 months later. Results: Intent-to-treat analysis revealed reduced risk of death following recurrence for the intervention arm (hazard ratio, 0.41; P = 0.014). Mixed-effects follow-up analyses with biobehavioral data showed that all patients responded with significant psychological distress at recurrence diagnosis, but thereafter only the intervention arm improved (P values < 0.023). Immune indices were significantly higher for the intervention arm at 12 months (P values < 0.017). Conclusions: Hazards analyses augment previous findings in showing improved survival for the intervention arm after recurrence. Follow-up analyses showing biobehavioral advantages for the intervention arm contribute to our understanding of how improved survival was achieved. Clin Cancer Res; 16(12); 3270–8. ©2010 AACR.


The interactions between the Fab and single-chain Fv (scFv) fragments of an antibody (NC10) and its antigen, influenza virus neuraminidase, were analysed in the crystal structures of the Fab-neuraminidase and scFv-neuraminidase complexes. To investigate the contribution to binding made by cavities, salt links and hydrogen bonds in the antibody-antigen interface, 14 single amino acid replacements were made at six contact residues in the scFv fragment by site-directed mutagenesis. The binding affinity of each mutant scFv antibody for neuraminidase was determined with a BIAcore optical biosensor. Four of the mutations resulted in large changes in the free energy of binding to neuraminidase (deltadeltaG > 1 kcal/mol) and together may account for approximately 70% of the free energy of binding. Hence these data support the theory that a small number of residues form the 'functional epitope' and are most important for binding of NC10 to neuraminidase. The salt link between antibody residue (Asp)H56 and (Lys)N432 from neuraminidase was demonstrated to be important for affinity, since substitution of (Asp)H56 with Asn caused a large reduction in the free energy of binding (deltadeltaG = +2.8 kcal/mol). Hydrogen bonds provided by (Tyr)L32 and (Asp)H56 were also important for binding: mutation of (Tyr)L32 to Phe resulted in a significant reduction in binding affinity (deltadeltaG = +1.7 kcal/mol). Disruption of hydrophobic interactions (van der Waals contacts) led to significant reductions in affinity also ((Tyr)H99 to Ala, deltadeltaG = +1.5 kcal/mol; (Leu)L94 to Ala, deltadeltaG > +3.0 kcal/mol). An attempt to increase binding affinity by filling a cavity in the interface with a larger antibody side chain was unsuccessful, as the free energy gained by new antibody-antigen interactions did not compensate for the removal of cavity-bound water molecules.


In reinforcement learning, for cost and safety reasons, the policy is usually learned in simulation environments, after which it is applied to the real world. However, the learned policy cannot often adapt because real world disturbances and robot failures lead to gaps between the two environments. To narrow such gaps, policies that can adapt to various scenarios are needed. In this study, we propose a reinforcement learning method for acquiring a robust policy against robot failures. In the proposed method, failure is represented by adjusting the physical parameters of the robot. Reinforcement learning under various faults takes place by randomizing the physical parameters during learning. In the experiments, we demonstrate that the robot that learned using the proposed method has higher average rewards than a conventional robot for quadruped walking tasks in a simulation environment with/without robot failures.


The practical implications of conducting a prospective study into the effects of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in peri- and post-menopausal women are discussed. The minimum number of woman-years of observation required to yield data of statistical significance is around 50,000, which would involve the participation of 1000 general practitioners.


The problem of delay-dependent robust energy-to-peak filtering design for a class of discrete-time switched linear systems with a time-varying state delay and polytopic uncertainties is revisited. The objective is to design a homogeneous switched linear filter guaranteeing the exponential stability of the resulting filtering error system with a minimised robust energy-to-peak disturbance attenuation level under average dwell-time switching scheme. Based on a novel delay and parameter-dependent discontinuous switched Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional combined with Finsler's lemma, a new sufficient condition for robust exponential stability and energy-to-peak performance analysis is first derived and then the corresponding filter synthesis is developed. It is shown that the filter parameters can be obtained by solving a set of linear matrix inequalities. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the advantages and less conservatism of the proposed approach in comparison with the existing approaches.


Exhaustive testing of highly configurable software systems is generally infeasible in practice. For this reason, efficient sampling of the configuration space is important to improve the coverage of testing. A t-way covering array is a list of systematically selected configurations covering all value combinations for every t-way option combinations and it aims to discover faults caused by interactions of configuration options. Despite its many successes, it can be difficult to use covering arrays in practice. Once a traditional t-way covering array is constructed, the system is then tested by running its test cases in all the selected configurations. By doing so, traditional covering arrays assume that all test cases can run in all configurations of covering array. Recent studies, however, show that test cases of configurable systems are likely to have assumptions about the underlying configurations, i.e., they are like to have some test case-specific inter-option constraints. When a configuration does not satisfy the test casespecific constraints of a test case, that test case simply skips the configuration, which prevents the test case from testing all valid combinations of option settings appearing in the configuration an effect called a masking effect. A harmful consequence of masking effects is that they can make the developers to believe that they have tested certain option setting combinations while they in fact have not. A solution approach is to use test case-aware covering arrays a novel type of combinatorial objects for testing that has been recently introduced. Test case-aware covering arrays take test case-specific inter-option constraints into account when computing combinatorial interaction test suites, such that no masking effects caused by overlooked constraints occur. Given a configuration space model augmented with test case-specific constraints, a test case-aware covering array is not just a set of configurations as is the case in traditional covering arrays, but a set of configurations each of which is associated with a set of test cases, indicating the test cases scheduled to be executed in the configuration. Although it has been empirically demonstrated that test case-aware covering arrays, compared to traditional covering arrays, can significantly improve the quality of combinatorial interaction testing by avoiding masking e ects, there is no efficient and effective algorithms to compute them, except for a couple of proof-of-concept algorithms. We conjecture that this greatly hurts the adaptation of test case-aware covering arrays in practice. In this thesis, we have developed simulated annealing-based, efficient and effective algorithms to compute test case-aware covering arrays and a tool implementing these algorithms. We, furthermore, compare and contrast the performance of our algorithms by conducting large-scale experiments in which we used two highly configurable large software systems. The results of our empirical studies strongly suggest that the proposed algorithms are an efficient and effective way of computing test case-aware covering arrays and that they perform better than existing approaches.


Types of lipase specificity are as follows: Positional specificity; fatty acid specificity; stereospecificity; substrate specificity (different rates of lipolysis of different glyceride classes. The acylglycerol used for determination of lipase specificity must be so structured, that specificities are not confused and unambiguous results are obtained. Different substrates and methods for detection of specificity are reviewed and advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Positional specificity can be determined with synthetic dialkylacylglycerols and 2,3-dioleoyl butanediol. Stereospecificity can be detected with enantiomeric dialkylacylglycerols or diacylalkylglycerols.


Potato is after wheat, rice and maize the fourth most important food crop in the world. Potatoes produce more food per unit of water than any other major crop. However, even short periods of water deficit significantly reduce tuber yield in potato. Climate change renders rainfall patterns increasingly unreliable, particularly in potato growing regions in central Asia. Screening tools considering the multiple trait nature of drought tolerance in potato are urgently needed to identify genotypes suited for production under water limited conditions and to accelerate the breeding efforts. An experiment was conducted between September 2012 and January 2013 at an arid coastal site in southern Peru. 30 potato clones were planted in split-plot design with three irrigation regimes: fully watered, alternate irrigation (resulting in a 50% reduction of water input) and terminal drought (irrigation withheld 67 days after planting). Chlorophyll fluorescence, relative chlorophyll content (SPAD) and relative water content were determined thrice in 15 day intervals after withholding irrigation. Quantum Yield was measured once after 30 days of withholding irrigation. In addition, biomass accumulation, root architecture, yield, and harvest index were recorded. Quantum yield was decreased under drought conditions but was not related to changes in SPAD values and no significant differences were found among the genotypes. In contrast, high and stable harvest index and a small reduction in root length under drought were preliminarily identified as promising traits for assessment of drought tolerance in 10 genotypes. For the development of an effective screening tool, the morphological traits identified need to be linked to physiological traits indicating plant water relations. Osmotic adjustment and relative water content in combination with chlorophyll fluorescence are promising candidates for linking physiological adaptation to drought with morphological traits. The effectiveness of such a screening tool will be discussed and preliminary results will be presented.


This paper presents a framework for the creation of transport protocols for mobile hosts that use multiple link layers simultaneously for the same connection. This abstraction provides an end-to-end transport layer channel between two applications that do not have to be aware of host mobility. The channel is composed of multiple network layer sub-channels. A sub-channel is an end-to-end network layer connection that is mapped to one physical interface. Inverse multiplexing is used at the transport level to divide application data into sub-channels, and a rate-based transmission mechanism provides congestion avoidance. The same mechanism is used to differentiate transmission losses from congestion losses, resulting in good throughput in lossy wireless links. Experimental results for two protocols created using this framework validate our design choices.


Coastal areas are highly diverse, ecologically rich, regions of key socio-economic activity, and are particularly sensitive to sea-level change. Over most of the 20th century, global mean sea level has risen mainly due to warming and subsequent expansion of the upper ocean layers as well as the melting of glaciers and ice caps. Over the last three decades, increased mass loss of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has also started to contribute significantly to contemporary sea-level rise. The future mass loss of the two ice sheets, which combined represent a sea-level rise potential of ∼65 m, constitutes the main source of uncertainty in long-term (centennial to millennial) sea-level rise projections. Improved knowledge of the magnitude and rate of future sea-level change is therefore of utmost importance. Moreover, sea level does not change uniformly across the globe and can differ greatly at both regional and local scales. The most appropriate and feasible sea level mitigation and adaptation measures in coastal regions strongly depend on local land use and associated risk aversion. Here, we advocate that addressing the problem of future sea-level rise and its impacts requires (i) bringing together a transdisciplinary scientific community, from climate and cryospheric scientists to coastal impact specialists, and (ii) interacting closely and iteratively with users and local stakeholders to co-design and co-build coastal climate services, including addressing the high-end risks.


Starting from the macroscopic, microscopic and circulatory characteristics of focal liver lesions, we aimed at assessing the possibilities and the limits of their radiological differential diagnosis. We compared the normal hepatic parenchyma (in terms of: general morphology, cellularity, necrosis, macro- and micro-circulation) and the lesions, assessed following the radiological features of echoreflectivity, RX density, contrast dynamics and specific contrast uptake. The association of morphologic and dynamic features can sometimes lead to an excellent diagnostic specificity (by example: angioma); in other fields, interesting results are noted, but the limits of every modality require further evaluation. This study applies to the following focal lesions: angioma, focal hyperplasia, adenoma, regeneration nodule, hepatocarcinoma, metastasis.


Metabolomics, the study of metabolites in a cell, has proven as an applicable approach in cancer research to investigate the altered metabolism of cancer cells and to develop new selective chemotherapeutic drugs. ATX-101 is a novel chemotherapeutic drug that enhances the apoptotic effect of DNA-damaging agents on cancerous cells due to its' APIM-sequence. APIM enables interaction with PCNA, a multifunctional protein involved in DNA repair which is overexpressed in many cancer cells. ATX-A is a non-functioning version of ATX-101 that serves as a negative control. A pilot study on cellular stress responses in human cell lines indicated that ATX-101 affected cancer cells, leaving non-cancerous cells unaffected. These findings made the foundation for this master thesis. The aim of this study is to further investigate the metabolic effects of ATX-101 and ATX-A, when used as a single agent and in combination therapy with the DNA-damaging agent cisplatin, on human embryotic kidney (HEK293) cells. The HEK293 cell line represents a model system for non-cancerous cells, and two biological replicas were used to investigate the effects of ATX-A, whereas one biological replica was used to investigate the effects of ATX-101. A time series exposure (4, 8 and 24 hours) was conducted. To study changes in the endometabolome, targeted analysis was carried out by gas chromatography coupled to a triple quadrupole mass spectrometer (GC-QqQ-MS), and non-targeted analysis was carried out by liquid chromatography coupled to a quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometer (LC-QTOF-MS). Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to uncover characteristic groupings of samples related to different treatment, hence reflecting alterations in the cells' metabolism. Both targeted and non-targeted analysis revealed time-based clustering of HEK239 samples in the PCA plots, and no effects were seen due to different chemotherapeutic treatment. This suggests minor effects of both ATX-A and ATX-101 on the HEK293 cells' metabolism, and holds a promise of a future selective chemotherapeutic treatment with the use of ATX-101. The results in this master thesis coincide with the pilot study and comprehensive studies carried out at NTNU.


The antibody response to the inulin [(In), beta-(2 leads to 1) fructosan] determinant of bacterial levan [(BL), a beta-(2 leads to 6) polyfructosan that contains beta-(2 leads to 1) branch points] requires the presence of the a haplotype of the Igh gene complex. BALB/c (Igh a) mice immunized with BL produce IgG anti-In antibodies of a single spectrotype by isoelectric focusing analysis. C57BL/6 mice, which possess the b haplotype of the Igh gene complex and which fail to produce anti-In antibodies, nevertheless possess a gene, spectrotype regulation gene 1 (Sr-1), that regulates the isoelectric focusing (IEF) pattern of anti-In antibodies in mice of the a haplotype. Thus, the IEF patterns of anti-In antibodies of (BALB/c x C57BL/6)F1 mice and of B.C8 mice (C57BL/Ka . Igh-Ca) are considerably more complex than those of BALB/c. Backcross analysis indicates that Sr-1 is not linked to the Igh complex, the major histocompatibility complex, or to the genes that code for coat color. Studies of the heterogeneity of anti-In antibodies in recombinant inbred lines and their progeny from matings to BALB/c and C.B20 (BALB/c . Igh-Cb) suggest the existence of other regulatory genes.


: Proteolysis of histones H1b and H1(0) is observed after the incubation of rat spleen nuclei at 37 degrees C during 1 hour. Adenosine triphosphate, inorganic pyrophosphate and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide decrease the digestion of histone H1b. ATP, PP1 and NAD+, in the case of 3 hours incubation, do not affect proteolysis of H1 histones in rat spleen nuclei. The incubation of rat liver nuclei at 37 degrees C during 1 hour leads to a decrease of the amount of histone H1b and, to much more extent, H1a. In this case ATP, PP1 and NAD+ increase proteolysis of histone H1a but practically do not affect proteolysis of H1b. After 2-hours incubations histone H1a is completely digested but histone H1b is partially preserved: ATP in this case, as well as in spleen nuclei, decreases proteolysis of histone H1b. During the 3 hours incubation, when histones H H1a and H1b are completely digested, partial digestion of histone H3 being observed, ATP does not prevent from proteolysis of histone H1b. A protein appears between the H2A and H4 histones after heating at 37 degrees C in both spleen and liver rat nuclei. Neither ATP nor PP1 and NAD+ affect the amount of this protein. It is suggested that the location of histones H1a and H1b in different chromatin domains determines the digestion of these histones by ATP-dependent proteinases.


Building content-based search tools for feature-rich data has been a challenging problem because feature-rich data such as audio recordings, digital images, and sensor data are inherently noisy and high dimensional. Comparing noisy data requires comparisons based on similarity instead of exact matches, and thus searching for noisy data requires similarity search instead of exact search. The Ferret toolkit is designed to help system builders quickly construct content-based similarity search systems for feature-rich data types. The key component of the toolkit is a content-based similarity search engine for generic, multifeature object representations. To solve the similarity search problem in high-dimensional spaces, we have developed approximation methods inspired by recent theoretical results on dimension reduction. The search engine constructs sketches from feature vectors as highly compact data structures for matching, filtering and ranking data objects. The toolkit also includes several other components to help system builders address search system infrastructure issues. We have implemented the toolkit and used it to successfully construct content-based similarity search systems for four data types: audio recordings, digital photos, 3D shape models and genomic microarray data.


An amoeba is the image of a subvariety of an algebraic torus under the logarithmic moment map. We consider some qualitative aspects of amoebas, establishing some results and posing problems for further study. These problems include determining the dimension of an amoeba, describing an amoeba as a semi-algebraic set, and identifying varieties whose amoebas are a finite intersection of amoebas of hypersurfaces. We show that an amoeba that is not of full dimension is not such a finite intersection if its variety is nondegenerate and we describe amoebas of lines as explicit semi-algebraic sets.


Given the rapid structural changes that our societies are experiencing, there
 is an urgent need to rethink our values and reformulate the social contract.
 The Universal Basic Income (UBI) is gaining more relevance in academic and
 public debates as the best alternative for a necessary change. This paper
 presents an exhaustive evaluation of the UBI in its normative character with
 an assessment of its convenience according to different theories of social
 justice and concepts of freedom. It is argued that UBI can be a good tool to
 improve the freedom and well-being of individuals, but it is not exempt from
 criticism. The paper puts forward an original financing proposal through the
 creation of a Sovereign Wealth Fund and a new monetary policy design with
 the aim of minimizing these criticisms.


The roles of adventitial vasa vasorum have been highlighted in vascular wall homeostasis. Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is a potent angiogenic factor in physiological and pathophysiological conditions. However, little is known regarding the changes in adventitial vasa vasorum and the mechanism of the formation in hypertensive arteries. Accordingly, endothelial cell proliferation, adventitial vasa vasorum count, and expression of VEGF signaling axis proteins were examined in the ascending aorta of hypertensive Wistar rats that underwent suprarenal aortic constriction. Hypertension not only induced medial and adventitial thickening but also significantly increased adventitial vasa vasorum count by day 28. Preceding the medial thickening, BrdU+-proliferative endothelial cells were observed in the adventitia but not in the media and intima after day 3; they peaked at day 7 and remained modestly increased at day 28. The BrdU+ endothelial cells showed induction of Ets-1, a transcription factor mediating angiogenic response of VEGF. Furthermore, concomitant expression of VEGF and a hypoxia-inducible transcription factor (HIF-1&agr;) was observed in the outer layers of medial smooth muscle cells at day 3 and extended to the middle layers of medial smooth muscle cells at day 7, returning to lower levels by day 28. In conclusion, adventitial vasa vasorum formation was induced by hypertension through the HIF-1&agr;/VEGF/Ets-1 pathway during hypertensive remodeling.


200 Background: Baseline pain has been shown to be a significant predictor of overall survival (OS) in mCRPC pts. The objectives of this analysis were to identify predictors of OA use at 3-months after initiating frontline chemotherapy, and to determine if OA use at 3-months predicts overall OS in mCRPC pts.

METHODS
Data from CALGB 90401, a phase III trial of 1,050 mCRPC pts randomized with equal probability to receive docetaxel, prednisone with either bevacizumab or placebo was analyzed. OA use was collected at baseline and at 3-month follow-up. OA use was classified as: pts not on OA at baseline and at 3-months (OA1); OA at baseline but not on at 3-months (OA2); No OA at baseline but on OA at 3-months (OA3); and OA at both time points (OA4). The logistic regression method was utilized to identify predictors of OA use at 3-months. Furthermore, the proportional hazards model was used to assess the prognostic significance of OA use in predicting OS adjusting for stratification factors.

RESULTS
836 pts had complete OA data. The overall distribution of pts with the associated median survival times is presented in the table. There was a linear trend between OA use and overall survival (log-rank p-value<0.0001). The multivariable hazard ratio (HR) for death was 1.34 (95% CI=1.12-1.61) comparing OA4 vs. OA1. In multivariable logistic regression model, statistically significant predictors of OA at 3-months were OA use at baseline, hemoglobin, and alkaline phosphatase.

CONCLUSIONS
The strongest predictor of OA use at 3-months was use at baseline. In addition, this analysis shows that OA use after initiating chemotherapy is a statistically significant predictor of overall survival in mCRPC pts. These results require prospective validation. [Table: see text].


Abstract Rationale: Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related oropharyngeal cancer is becoming more common, the primary cancer AQ4 usually occult and appearing only as cystic cervical lymph node (LN) metastasis. Distinguishing between a benign cystic lesion and cystic LN metastasis is challenging given their similar radiologic and histologic appearances. Patient concerns: A 54-year-old man presented with a bulging cystic mass measuring 6.4cm on the right side of neck. Diagnoses: Postexcision diagnosis was second branchial cleft cyst. After 2 years, the cystic mass recurred, and HPV-related tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma with cystic metastatic LNs was confirmed after wide tonsillectomy and neck dissection. The previous cystic lesion proved to be a cystic metastatic LN from the same malignancy with additional p16 immunostain. Interventions: The patient was treated with adjuvant concurrent chemoradiation therapy. Outcomes: The patient was followed up in the outpatient department with no evidence of recurrence after 1 year. Lessons: When an adult has a cystic mass in the upper neck, we must rigorously exclude it as a cystic metastatic LN of occult HPV-related oropharyngeal cancer. Additional p16 staining might be helpful.


Nuclear spins are harnessed in many important technologies, including the well established fields of magnetic resonance imaging for medical diagnostics, magnetic resonance spectroscopy in analytical chemistry as well as emerging technologies in quantum information and spintronics. All of these technologies either harness, or are subject to, the behavior of a nuclear spin ensemble. To achieve the most desirable behavior, (large spectroscopic signal or reduction of unwanted fluctuations) the nuclear spin ensemble should be prepared in a pure quantum state. In practice, this ``polarization is typically created by allowing the energy levels of the spins in an applied magnetic field achieve thermal equilibrium. Unfortunately, even with the largest magnets available with fields greater than 20 Tesla, the separation between energy levels is much smaller than kT for all but extreme refrigerated systems. It is then desirable to achieve pure nuclear spin states which are not at thermal equilibrium with the environment. In order to do this, it is necessary to create a situation in which a pure quantum state can be created in a system other than the nuclear spin which then interacts with the nucleus to create a more pure nuclear spin state. In this work we harness the pure photon spin state of circularly polarized light as well as spin transition selection rules of a deep electronic defect in diamond to polarize nuclei. In the first case, we use circularly polarized photons to excite spin polarized electrons in the semiconductor gallium arsenide which equilibrate with bound electronic states at recombination centers. These bound states then polarize nearby nuclear spins through the magnetic hyperfine interaction. While this hyperfine mechanism of nuclear spin polarization was previously known, we have identified a new regime of low optical absorption where the coupling of nuclear quadrupole moments to electric field gradients near recombination centers is the dominant mechanism of nuclear spin polarization. Through a combination of experiment and theory, we determine relative rates of these two mechanisms depending on the rate of optical absorption. Since optical absorption varies as a function of depth in a sample, we predicted that control of these two mechanisms is possible as a function of position in the sample. Using the stray field of a superconducting magnet to supply the gradient field for magnetic resonance imaging, we were able to directly observe patterns of nuclear magnetization on a micron length scale. When combined with in-plane control of the laser and NMR pulse sequences, this technique will give rise to fully 3-dimensional patterns of nuclear magnetization. These patterns may be created in bulk gallium arsenide without the need for lithography or other microfabrication techniques. These regions of magnetized nuclei will enable magnetic control over drifting electrons in future spintronics devices.The paramagnetic nitrogen-vacancy defect in diamond provides a different tool to control nuclei. The ground state spin triplet of this defect may be easily polarized into the Sz=0 state with visible optical illumination. The polarization is due to the symmetry and selection rules within the defect itself and does not require polarized photons. We discovered that, with a sufficient density of defects, the 13 C nuclei in the diamond lattice are spontaneously polarized upon illumination of the sample. We attribute this polarization to a highly refrigerated ``spin temperature among the energy levels created by the magnetic dipole interaction of the many spins in the defect ensemble. This energy reservoir is in thermal contact with the 13 C nuclei, which are driven to highly athermal spin states. We theoretically investigate the thermodynamics of the defect spin ensemble, first with a two-spin ``toy model and more recently have begun a many-spin theoretical approach. The polarization of nuclei in diamond has application in the quenching of nuclear fluctuations in quantum information systems and as a platform for signal enhancement in magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy.


monary complications. In this country the physiotherapeutic regimens of the postoperative patient are largely concerned with teaching effectively controlled breathing, assisting with coughing, percussion, and positioning the chest to allow drainage in such a way as to treat established and serious pulmonary complications. There is only one study4 in which physiotherapy has been shown significantly to reduce the rate of pulmonary complications and in that the physiotherapy was largely concerned with prophylactic deep breathing exercises. When deep breathing and SMI are emphasised as part of the regimen it is likely that alveolar and lobular collapse may be reversed and not progress to collapse consolidation. Cheap instruments exist to aid the patient to perform SMIs, and their wider use would reduce the work load on and demand for physiotherapy staff in the general surgical ward. Undoubtedly there will always be a need for the help of physiotherapists in treating major collapse and consolidation, but we would like to see, meanwhile, an introduction into general physiotherapeutic manoeuvres of some method or other of encouraging and achieving frequent sustained maximum inspirations. JOHN CRAVEN


Prospective identification of patients whose chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) will progress to blast crisis is currently not possible. PP2A is a phosphatase and tumor suppressor that regulates cell proliferation, differentiation, and survival. Cancerous inhibitor of PP2A (CIP2A) is a recently described inhibitor of PP2A in breast and gastric cancer. The aim of this study was to investigate whether CIP2A played a role in CML and whether PP2A or its inhibitor proteins CIP2A or SET could predict clinical outcome. At the time of diagnosis of CML, patients who will later progress to blast crisis have significantly higher levels of CIP2A protein (P < .0001) than patients who do not progress, suggesting that PP2A is functionally inactive. We show that the potential mechanism for disease progression is via altered phosphorylation of the oncogene c-Myc. Knockdown of CIP2A results in increased PP2A activity, decreased c-Myc levels, and a decrease in BCR-ABL1 tyrosine kinase activity. We demonstrate that CIP2A levels at diagnosis can consistently predict patients who will progress to blast crisis. The data show that CIP2A is biologically and clinically important in CML and may be a novel therapeutic target.


A model describing the process of deep-penetration laser welding has been developed by calculating the keyhole profile using a point-by-point determination of the energy balance at the keyhole wall. A formula for heat conduction was derived from the model of a moving line source of heat. The various absorption mechanisms were modelled. The corresponding absorbed power transferred to the keyhole wall balances the conduction losses, which yields the local inclination of the wall. The thermodynamics and the flow of metal vapour inside the keyhole have been calculated. Accordingly, beam damping due to the plasma plume above the workpiece and the mean plasma absorption coefficient in the keyhole could be estimated. The keyhole profile tends to a geometry that distributes the major part of the beam to the front wall owing to higher conduction losses at the upstream side. The reasons for decreasing energy absorption with increasing welding speed are discussed.


Pain and performance anxiety (PA) are common problems among string players. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess and compare PA and prevalence rates and locations of pain in violinists, violists, cellists, and bassists. Subjects completed a questionnaire that included sections on demographics, musical background, practice habits, musculoskeletal problems, non-musculoskeletal problems, and PA. Anthropometric data were gathered on all 115 subjects. Results show that there are differences in both pain and PA across instrument groups. Violinists reported the highest number of pain sites, followed by violists, bassists, and cellists. The left shoulder was the most-often reported pain site, followed by the neck and right shoulder. Aching was the most cited term selected to describe pain. Several anthropometric indices were significantly correlated with pain, notably right thumb to index finger span in both cellists and bassists. In all instrument groups, at least one pain site was significantly correlated with one of four PA questions. Results warrant the development of intervention strategies and further study of the relationship between pain and performance anxiety.


Nuclear features of size, pleomorphism and chromatin clumping are distinctive and quantifiable in the optical Fourier transform of the nucleus. This is shown in photographs of models, tracings and hematoxylin-stained impression smears of various types of nuclei. The size of the transform is inversely proportional to the size of the nucleus. Irregularities in shape (pleomorphism) produce radially symmetric rays of light in the transform. The effect of chromatin clumping is to give a mottled pattern superimposed on the pleomorphism pattern. The transform features can be measured in real time using a ring-wedge or similar detector. These procedures might be used for both automatic screening and objective quantification of diagnoses.


Capnocytophaga, one of the genera of oral bacteria, has been implicated in the pathogenesis of several diseases, including endocarditis, septicaemia and disorders of the oral cavity such as abscesses and periodontal disease. This study examined sonic extracts (SE) of Capnocytophaga strains for their ability to alter lymphocyte function. The SE of tested Capnocytophaga caused dose-dependent suppression of spleen cells in response to mitogen. This suppressive effect was heat-labile and sensitive to the proteolytic enzyme pronase E. The suppressive factor (SF) was purified from SE of C. ochrasea by a combination of ultrogel-AcA34, high-pressure liquid DEAE ion-exchange chromatography and hydroxyapatite columns, which revealed a single band of 14 kDa by SDS-PAGE. Rabbit anti-serum against the purified SF inhibited the immunosuppression induced by SE of C. ochracea with the recovery of lymphocyte proliferation.


Restless leg syndrome (RLS) is a common neurological disorder with an estimated prevalence of 10–35% in people over 65 years of age. Current clinical practice guidelines include the recommendation to check serum ferritin levels and provide iron supplementation if the ferritin level is ≤75 μg/L. We present a case of an 84-year-old man who developed worsening RLS symptoms over the past year despite up-titration of oral ropinirole to maximum daily dose. As part of his workup for RLS, his serum ferritin level was found to be severely low. He was also previously noted to be anemic, so we recommended that he be worked up for iron deficiency anemia. He later received a colonoscopy, which revealed a cecal polyp with high grade dysplasia, and then underwent right hemicolectomy. The patient reported significant improvement in RLS symptoms following the surgery. This case demonstrates the importance of working up iron deficiency anemia in the setting of worsening RLS symptoms, particularly in the geriatric population.


Nowadays, performance improvement in order to reach the economic, technical and social objectives has become essential for all enterprises whose want to be competitive. For this reason, enterprises should set up a decision support system whiwh will give them their performance's level at every moment through different performance indicators. More often, the setting up of such a system is long and difficult and many projects are relinquished before the end. A part of those failures are due to a bad data recovery. This it is the first process of the decisional chain: the most important. Indeed, the whole system is incremented by this process, whiwh will permit the aggregation of the different performance indicators. This article aims to propose models that facilitate the data recovery process improvement during the system conception phase through the results of a performance indicators system definition.


OBJECTIVE
This article reviews the MRI and CT of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Extension of nasopharyngeal tumors, especially into the skull base and the deep facial spaces, is well illustrated on imaging. Assessment of retropharyngeal and cervical lymphadenopathy is important for treatment planning. MRI is commonly used for monitoring patients after therapy.

CONCLUSION
Imaging can detect effect of radiation on surrounding structures. The imaging findings that help to differentiate nasopharyngeal carcinoma from simulating lesions are discussed.


The electromagnetic simulation of the monolithic radial transmission lines for future Z-pinch was performed. Focusing on the difference in the maximum transmitted power efficiency between the electromagnetic simulation and the circuit simulation, the monolithic radial transmission lines with different impedance profiles (exponential, Gaussian, hyperbolic) were compared. The power efficiency for the exponential line is higher than that for the Gaussian lines and the hyperbolic line, which is similar to that from the circuit simulation. However, all the power efficiencies obtained with the electromagnetic simulation are about 15% lower than those obtained with the circuit simulation, indicating the existence of considerable non-TEM modes and a non-ignorable error in the circuit simulation based on the quasi-TEM mode approximation. In consideration of several monolithic radial transmission lines being stacked together and the flat electrodes required by the stacked lines, the hyperbolic line was compared with the exponential line with several wide radial slots cut on the flat electrodes. While the hyperbolic line has a little bit lower transmitted power efficiency than that of the exponential line, it is much easier in fabrication. For this reason, the hyperbolic line was recommended as the best choice.


'UFSun' peach [Prunus persica (L.) Batsch] is released for grower trial by the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. Trees produce attractive, sweet tasting, yellow and non-melting flesh, semi-clingstone fruit intended for fresh use. 'UFSun' is suggested for central and south Florida from Tampa to Orlando and south of Interstate 4. It may be used to replace 'UFGold' peach in south Florida because it sets fruit more reliably at Immokalee, especially under night temperatures near and above 56 F during bloom to shuck split. Trees of 'UFSun' are estimated to require about 100 chill units. We expect 'UFSun' to be grown successfully where 'Flordaprince' and 'TropicBeauty' peaches have been grown. Fruit ripen in late April in Immokalee and in early May at Gainesville. Fruit set is good and with proper thinning (six to eight inches) attain 2 1/4 inch diameter. Fruit are 50 to 70% red over a bright yellow ground color. Eating quality is good, sweet and slightly acid with a pleasing aftertaste with no bitterness.


Introduction Thyroid cancer (TC) is an endocrine tumor whose risk of onset has been rising, so the deep understanding of its molecular mechanism helps formulate new treatment strategies. Methods This paper was aimed at exploring the regulatory mechanism of long non-coding RNA (LncRNA) plasmacytoma variant translocation 1 (PVT1) in TC. The expression of PVT1, miR-423-5p and p21-activated kinase 3 (PAK3) in TC tissues and cell lines was detected by real-time PCR. PAK3 levels were detected by Western blot. Regulatory relationships between target genes and the proliferation, invasion and apoptosis of cells and genes were analyzed. Results PVT1 and PAK3 upregulated while miR-423-5p downregulated in the tissues and cell lines. PVT1 downregulation inhibited TC cells from malignantly proliferating and invading, and promoted their apoptosis. PVT1 specifically regulated miR-423-5p, and its overexpression could weaken the anti-tumor effect of this miR on TC cells. In addition, miR-423-5p directly targeted PAK3, and knocking down its expression could weaken the inhibitory effect of PAK3 downregulation on TC progression. Besides, PVT1 acted as a competitive endogenous RNA to sponge this miR and thus regulate PAK3 expression. Discussion In conclusion, PVT1 can mediate the molecular mechanism of the miR-423-5p-PAK3 axis regulatory network on regulating TC, so it is a new direction of treating the disease.


A study was made of the frequency of chromosome aberrations in human lymphocyte culture after gamma-irradiation (60Co) with doses ranging from 0.05 to 1.0 Gy at dose--rates of 0,005, 0.05 and 0.5 Gy/min. The frequency of structural changes in chromosomes at low doses was higher than it was expected in the case of extrapolating the effect produced by high to low doses of radiation; within the dose range from 0.1 to 0.5 Gy a plateau was registered for aberrations of the exchange type (dicentrics and rings). The abnormal character of the dose dependence of the yield of chromosome aberrations persisted with all three dose - rates under study.


After 1945 rapidly climbing figures of venereal disease infections menaced the health of the war-ridden German population. Physicians sought to gain control over this epidemic and initiated large-scale sex education campaigns to inform people about identification, causes and treatment of VD and advised them on appropriate moral sexual behaviour as a prophylactic measure. Film played a crucial role in these campaigns. As mass medium it was believed film could reach out to large parts of society and quickly disseminate sexual knowledge and moral codes of conduct amongst the population. This essay discusses the transition of the initial central role of sex education films in the fight against venereal disease in the immediate post-war years towards a more critical stance as to the effects of cinematographic education of the young in an East and West German context.


Abstract
Background: The World Health Organization endorsed GeneXpert MTB/RIF (Xpert) assay for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) and multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in 2010. However, the practice of using this novel diagnostic method is still limited in a high TB and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) burden settings, including Ethiopia. Therefore, we conducted this study aimed at describing the first implementation status of Xpert assay in the diagnosis of TB and MDR-TB at Felege Hiwot Referral Hospital (FHRH) and Debre Tabor General Hospital (DTGH), Northwest Ethiopia.
Methods: We analyzed the records of 1922 (FHRH=544 and DTGH=1378) presumptive TB patients diagnosed using Xpert test from 1 November 2015 to 30 April 2016 at FHRH and DTGH, Northwest Ethiopia. All patients who had registered data on their sex, age, HIV status, presumptive MDR-TB status and Xpert results were included for analysis. Data were retrieved directly from GeneXpert result registration log book using data extraction sheet. Data were entered, cleaned, and analyzed using SPSS statistical software package; p < 0.05 was considered to be significant.
Results: Overall Xpert assay properly diagnosed 14.6% of the cases (258/1922). Among these, rifampicin (RIF) resistance was detected at 9.3% (24/258). In the studied settings, clinical data showed that 81.0% (1556/1922) of the cases were MDR- TB. Among the study subjects, 888 (46.2 %) of them were HIV positive. However, TB-HIV co-infection rate was at 41.9% (108/258). Of the total patients registered, 1005 (52.3%) of whom were males. The mean age of patients was 31.1 years with SD of 17.5. Significant predictors of the Xpert test were: age (p=0.000), sex (p=0.009), HIV status (p=0.003) and presumptive MDR-TB (p=0.000).
Conclusions: In the studied areas, large proportion of clinically TB suspected patients were wrongly diagnosed with MDR-TB. Therefore, the use of Xpert assay in health settings with no culture facility will decrease the unnecessary use of anti-TB drugs and improve rapid TB, and MDR-TB detection and proper management of the cases. [Ethiop. J. Health Dev. 2016;30(2):60-65]
Key Words: TB, GeneXpert, MTB/RIF assay, Northwest Ethiopia.


More than 40 years after the inaugural volume's original publication, Ted Genoways brings scholars the latest volume in "Walt Whitman: The Correspondence". Among the more than 150 letters collected in this volume are numerous correspondence concerning Whitman's Civil War years, including a letter sending John Hay, the personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln, a manuscript copy of "O Captain, My Captain!" Additional letters address various aspects of the production of "Leaves of Grass", the most notable being an extensive correspondence surrounding the "Deathbed Edition", gathered by Whitman's friend Horace Traubel, and reproduced here for the first time. Most significantly, this volume incorporates Whitman's early letters to Abraham Paul Leech, first published by Arthur Golden in "American Literature" in 1986. The revelations contained in these letters must be considered among the most important discoveries about Whitman's life made during the last half of the 20th century.


ABSTRACT This time of COVID-19 has compelled higher education institution (HEI) academics to embrace a digitalised curriculum in teaching, learning, and research. A digitalised curriculum is a plan for and/or a plan of teaching, learning, and research, driven by specific hardware, software, and theories. HEI leaders of teaching and learning have been unsuccessful over the years in promoting the use of various kinds of learning management systems (LMSs) with the aim of embracing a digitalised curriculum. The unsuccessful promotion of LMSs was caused by the lack of compelling situations that forced digital technology refugees to use the LMSs. In 2020, when COVID-19, which originated in China, started to affect other countries, academics desperately transformed their minds in embracing the digitalised curriculum. They started to attend any workshops on the use of digital technologies through Zoom. The findings of the study reveal that the transformation experiences of these academics were reflections, translation, rotation, enlargement, and reduction. These transformation experiences addressed the tension between a performance curriculum and a competency-based curriculum. This study explored the transformation experiences of academics at an HEI in South Africa. Zoom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus-group discussions were used for data collection. A mixed method and pragmatic paradigm were used to frame this study. The study applied purposive with convenience sampling in selecting twenty participants. This study concludes by recommending the identification of values or ideologies relevant to the enactment of the digitalised curriculum that comes to the rescue of HEIs at this time of COVID-19 and beyond.


An excellent polarization-dependent gain (PDG) suppression technique using a polarization scrambler is proposed in this letter. Investigations on PDG due to signal-to-signal Raman interaction among 40 wavelength-division-multiplexer signal channels were carried out experimentally to evaluate the system performance after incorporating a polarization scrambler in the system. It was confirmed by experiment that the use of polarization scrambler is an effective way to reduce PDG caused by signal-to-signal Raman interaction.


During the 1990s, many jurisdictions introduced police cautions as an alternative to referral to court for juveniles committing comparatively minor offences. The policy was motivated by a concern that contact with the court system for such offenders might be criminogenic. In recent years, however, elected officials have criticised police cautions as a 'soft option' and this (in some jurisdictions at least) has led to a decline in their use. Past research has often failed to ensure that the comparison group for a police caution consists of children referred to court who could have received a police caution. The current study overcomes this problem and employs a rigorous set of procedures for minimising the risk of selection bias. Our results indicate that cautioning young offenders who have committed comparatively minor offences and who have not previously been referred to court results in a lower risk of reoffending than referral to court. We conclude that restrictions on the use of cautions in these circumstances could increase the risk of juvenile reoffending.


The authors report on comparative measurements of the optical properties of undoped AlAs/GaAs multiple quantum well (MQW) structures grown by conventional molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and by migration-enhanced epitaxy (MEE). The structures were grown in pairs, one by MBE and one by MEE, at the same growth temperature which was varied between 530 degrees C and 680 degrees C. Growth conditions were monitored in all cases by observing RHEED oscillation behaviour and care taken to adjust the MEE conditions so that as nearly as possible each cycle of growth consisted of exactly one monolayer of the group III element. The growth structures were monitored by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and by low-temperature photoluminescence measurements. Analysis of the XRD results shows that the widths of the quantum wells are close to the expected value (75 AA) for the MBE samples for all growth temperatures but tend to be slightly high for the MEE samples. The AlAs/GaAs interfaces are broadened by about 2 monolayers for one interface and 3/4 monolayers for the other. For the MEE samples grown at 630 degrees C and 680 degrees C the XRD spectra show significant deterioration in quality, with large variations in QW period. Analysis of PL spectra shows good agreement of well widths with the XRD measurements but reveals an important difference between the MBE and MEE samples. The latter spectra are dominated by the presence of extrinsic luminescence whereas the former show only intrinsic exciton lines. The exciton linewidths are close to 3 meV for all the MBE samples but are about a factor two larger for MEE samples grown at 530 degrees C and 580 degrees C (the exciton transitions being completely swamped by extrinsic emission for higher growth temperatures). The luminescent efficiencies of the exciton lines in the MEE samples are about an order of magnitude lower than those in the MBE samples. Comparison of excitation and emission spectra from the MBE samples shows no measurable Stokes shift and, taken with the almost constant linewidths, suggests that the interfaces in these samples are all in the pseudo-smooth regime where the terrace lengths are smaller than the exciton diameter.


Originally published in 1971, and now published with a new foreword, this is a book of enduring value and lasting relevance. The authors detail the application, history, and controversies surrounding the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS), used to evaluate military needs and to choose among alternatives for meeting those needs.


Remote and accurate temperature measurements in severe environments are of great importance. A 1525-nm wavelength located in the C band of optical fiber communication is used as a pumping light source for NaYF4:Er3+ phosphor possessing high upconversion efficiency. The upconversion luminescence characteristics were demonstrated in the temperature range of 160-400 K. Based on the thermal coupling energy level theory, the temperature measurement principle of the fluorescence intensity ratio is analyzed. The energy gap between the 2H11/2 and 4S3/2 energy levels of the Er3+ ions is approximately 787cm-1, which is appropriate for a temperature sensor. The experimental results indicated that its maximum temperature sensitivity was 0.00335K-1. The proposed optical fiber temperature sensor indicates good hysteresis and repeatability and has potential applications in resisting electromagnetic interference and remote temperature sensing.


In this study, friction stir processing has been applied to fabricate Al/Al 2 O 3 and Al/SiC surface nanocomposites. Nano sized Al 2 O 3, and SiC particles were used as a reinforcement whereas 6061-T6 aluminum alloy was selected as matrix material. The experiments were conducted at constant process parameters (1150 rpm and 15 mm/min) with changing volume percentage (2, 4 and 6) of nano reinforcements. The approach compared the effect of nano reinforcement on microstructural, mechanical, microhardness and wear properties of surface nanocomposites. Microstructure examinations revealed that Al 2 O 3 and SiC nano particles were distributed into the processed region mainly in the form of clusters. Also, with increasing volume percentage of nano reinforcement increasing the defect formation. Vickers microhardness and tensile tests were conducted to study the mechanical properties of the surface nanocomposites. Superior microhardness properties were obtained along the stir zone. The addition of ceramic particle into the matrix material leads to increase in microhardness but simultaneously decreases yielding strength with an increase of wear resistance. The average coefficient of friction of Al/SiC composites were reduced than Al/Al 2 O 3 composites. The effect of nano reinforcements on wear resistance was increased with increasing volume percentage of nano particles into the matrix material. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.24.3.18220


Wireless quantum communication networks transfer quantum state by teleportation. Existing research focuses on maximal entangled pairs. In this paper, we analyse the distributed wireless quantum communication networks with partially entangled pairs. A quantum routing scheme with multi-hop teleportation is proposed. With the proposed scheme, is not necessary for the quantum path to be consistent with the classical path. The quantum path and its associated classical path are established in a distributed way. Direct multi-hop teleportation is conducted on the selected path to transfer a quantum state from the source to the destination. Based on the feature of multi-hop teleportation using partially entangled pairs, if the node number of the quantum path is even, the destination node will add another teleportation at itself. We simulated the performance of distributed wireless quantum communication networks with a partially entangled state. The probability of transferring the quantum state successfully is statistically analyzed. Our work shows that multi-hop teleportation on distributed wireless quantum networks with partially entangled pairs is feasible,