Tourism has become a major source of economic diversification for many countries, underpinning the service sector and forging effective backward and forward linkages with the rest of the economy, allowing new employment and income earning opportunities. Although, the developed countries account for a higher proportion of global tourism, many developing countries are beginning to take advantage of the huge opportunities offered by tourism. However, only developing countries with effective natural and man-made tourism supporting and enhancing infrastructure have been able to develop their tourism sector and seize the attendant advantages. The need for economic diversification in most developing countries is overwhelming because of their defining mono-cultural economic characteristics where only one or two commodities dominate exports and provides the bulk of foreign exchange from which these countries could reconcile their internal and external balances. Nigeria is one such country seeking to diversify its economy away from crude oil production to maximize employment and income generating opportunities. Nigeria has huge tourism potentials, especially given its natural and diversified landscapes but lacks effective and tourism supporting and enhancing infrastructure. While tourism affords huge employment and income generating opportunities, its impact on bio-physical environment is well acknowledged hence the emphasis on sustainable tourism. Indeed, most of Nigeria's natural landscapes are eco-sensitive areas and exploring them as tourist destinations must be sustainably conducted to enhance the carrying-capacity or regenerative capacity of these landscapes. This paper critically analyses Nigeria's tourism potentials, focusing on the impacts on the wider economy. By appealing to the qualitative method of research, the paper concludes that the tourism sector has huge potentials yet unexplored, which if fully supported, can contribute significantly to the economic diversification and poverty alleviation efforts of the government.


The incidence of hearing loss in early childhood is not exactly defined in the Federal Republic of Germany. There are only some publications on this problem giving incidental information. By analysing this sparse data we tried to determine whether in incidence of hearing loss also applies to the German region. It appears necessary that hearing loss is screened in Germany, considering that other diseases having a lower incidence are also screened.


This report analyzes a survey of a nationally representative sample of sponsors of registered apprenticeship programs. Commissioned by the Employment and Training Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor, the survey includes questions about how sponsors (mainly employers) view their registered apprenticeship programs. The study analyzes these survey responses on the value, benefits, and drawbacks of registered apprenticeship, its integration with the workforce investment systems, apprentice completion and reasons for non-completion, and suggestions for possible improvement. In general, sponsors report highly positive attitudes about registered apprenticeship as a system for training their workforce.


UNLABELLED The surface tension value (gamma min) of tracheal aspirate samples (TA) from newborns depends on lung maturity and is determined by concentrations of surfactant components (phospholipids, surfactant proteins, ions). During tracheal aspirate collecting the aspirate is diluted with physiological saline. Information about TA dilution is necessary for a standardized surface tension measurement. The purpose of this study was to establish an ELISA for determination of secretory IgA (SIgA), to determine the cutoff value of SIgA for surface tension measurement in tracheal aspirates and to test SIgA as marker for tracheal aspirate dilution. PATIENTS In group 1 (normal range determination of gamma min) pharyngeal aspirates of 42 healthy newborns (nb) were investigated. In group 2 (determination of SIgA cutoff value) 15 TA and 8 pharyngeal aspirates of 23 pulmonary healthy nb (group 3) were used for validation of SIgA cutoff value. In group 4 36 TA of 22 nb with respiratory distress syndrome were studied. METHOD The gamma min of group 1 were measured to establish the range of normal gamma min. The TA of group 2 were diluted stepwise and the dependence of gamma min on SIgA concentration were depicted in a diagram. The SIgA cutoff value was estimated by these dilution curves. Below this value the TA are very diluted and a measurement of gamma min is not useful. To test the reliability of SIgA as dilution marker the gamma min and SIgA values of TA from group 3 were determined. After exclusion of TA with reduced SIgA the gamma min of group 3 and 4 were compared. RESULTS For the enzyme immunoassay following performance characteristics were determined: the accuracy (recovery): 95.6%, sensitivity: 4 ng/ml, and precision (intra- and interassay coefficient of variation): 9.8 and 19.1%, respectively. The range of normal gamma min (median (5th and 95th percentile)) amounts to 23.0 (14.8 and 28.7) mN/m. A SIgA cutoff value of 80 ng/ml was estimated. The gamma min from 8 of 27 TA (group 3) were above the normal range of gamma min during examination of the estimated SIgA cutoff value. 5 of these 8 TA had concentrations of SIgA below the cutoff point and could be excluded with the help of SIgA as dilution marker. The median of gamma min was significantly lower (p < 0.001) in group 3 (18.3 mN/m) in comparison to the median (35.8 mN/m) of group 4 (nb with respiratory distress syndrome). CONCLUSION The performance characteristics of the SIgA enzyme immunoassay and the tested reliability of the SIgA cutoff value demonstrate, that a simple determination of surfactant deficiency by surface tension measurement of TA is possible using the concentration of SIgA as dilution marker.


An optimum dual band self-diplexed antenna, particularly suitable to accomplish the demanding requirements of the European Navigation System (GALILEO) is highlighted. The antenna relies on the key enabling technologies previously developed for the pioneering GIOVE-A satellite (Galileo In Orbit Validation Element) successfully flown on 28 December 2005. Its excellent operational status and the quality of transmitted signal are a validation of the technology solutions adopted to the antenna. Both GIOVE-A and the enhanced design will be described, in particular the solutions adopted to improve the overall performance Vs Galileo.


The increasing demand for oil and gas in the world, and the fact that most of the easily accessible reservoirs are in production or already abandoned, result in a need to develop new resources. These may be new reservoirs that have previously been considered uneconomical or impossible to develop, or extended operation of existing fields. Developing smaller reservoirs, means that more wells have to be drilled per barrel, which gives both more and eventually greater challenges as more and more wells are drilled because the wells has to be drilled further and into more difficult formations. Mature fields are drained, which leads to lowering of reservoir pressure and therefore tighter pressure margins for drilling. Because of the challenges with deep water drilling and depleted reservoirs, there is a need to precisely control the pressure profile in the well during drilling in such formations. Some of the parameters that are needed to control the well precisely are not easily obtained during drilling, and an estimation of these will therefore be crucial to be able to use a model to control the well. The transmission of measurements from a well is also often either delayed or absent during periods of drilling, which will cause problems for the control of the well. It is therefore required that an estimation scheme is able to estimate the pressure in the well for the time interval between the updates of the measurements from the well. The conventional method for transmitting measurements from the bottom of the well is by mud pulse telemetry which is pressure waves transmitted through the drilling mud. These measurements will be delayed, so accurate real-time measurements will never be available. To estimate the bottom hole pressure, a extended kalman filter was evaluated. This filter is based on a simple mathematical model derived for the drilling process. The states in the filter is height of mud in the riser, mud weight and different friction factors for the well. The filter is tested when the measurements are continuous available, with delayed update of the bottom hole measurement, and for cases where one of the measurements are absent. A simple controller to control the bottom hole pressure is implemented to control the pressure for reference tracking and during a simulated pipe connection. During simulations, it was not possible to achieve convergence for the friction factor for normal flows, and this led to errors in the other states. The friction factor would only converge to its true value during very high flows during the nominal testing, which led to the other states also achieving their correct values. The problem in estimating the friction factor applied to all different forms for friction parameters. The kalman filter was tested against an artificial well simulated in WeMod, and gave decent estimates of the bottom hole pressure except for at low flows.


Problem statement: Image sensors and communication channels often introduce impulse noise in image transmission. The most common filters available to remove such noise are median filter and its variants but the major drawbacks identified with them are blurring of edge detail and low noise suppression. To preserve the sharp and useful information in the image, the filtering algorithms are required to have intelligence incorporated in them. Approach: This research proposed a particle swarm optimization based approach in the design of filter. The filter weights were adapted and optimized directionally to restore a corrupted pixel in a mean square sense. Results: This results in replacement of noisy pixels by near originals along its edge direction. Various objective parameters like Mean Absolute Error (MAE), percentage of noise elimination, percentage of pixels spoiled showed that the proposed recursive no-reference filter performs 4dB better than the competing filters. Conclusion: This research aimed at presenting a new filtering framework for impulse noise removal using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).


INTRODUCTION
Obstructive uropathy is very common cause of pain abdomen. Recognition of the cause of the pain and level of obstruction is the goal. Ultrasound is the primary modality used for detection and characterization of obstructive uropathy along with conventional radiographs. Obstructive uropathy in early stages can be difficult to diagnose using standard B-mode USG or arterial sensitive index.

AIM
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of renal venous doppler ultrasound in diagnosing acute obstructive uropathy either alone or in addition to arterial doppler study of inter lobar arteries. As there is limited literature available till date on Indian population regarding renal venous doppler in obstructive uropathy, this study can be useful.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fifty patients presenting with features suggestive of obstructive uropathy were studied and compared with non-obstructed kidney of the same patient. Fifty normal individuals were studied and taken as controls.

RESULTS
The mean venous impedance index on the obstructed side (0.26 ± 0.07) was less than the mean venous impedance index on the unobstructed side (0.41 ± 0.08) and was statistically highly significant. There was no statistically significant difference in mean arterial Resistivity Index (RI).

CONCLUSION
Thus renal venous doppler study is a reliable tool in diagnosing cases of acute obstructive uropathy. Though its use as single parameter to identify obstruction still needs further studies, it can be used in conjugation with b mode ultrasound and arterial Doppler to identify obstruction.


Fatty acid content and lipid oxidation products were compared in chicken breast and leg meats derived from birds fed on animal-fat- and vegetable-oil-based diets, supplemented with ginseng prong powder. The first experiment examined polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content and the formation of primary and secondary lipid oxidation products in meats stored at refrigeration temperatures (4 °C) for up to 10 days, while the second experiment examined similar changes in the poultry meats when frozen stored at −18 °C, for up to six months. Results showed that initial lipid hydroperoxide concentrations increased in both breast and leg meat within the first week of refrigerated storage and also was ongoing during the first three to four months of frozen storage. A higher (p < 0.05) PUFA content in leg meat, especially in broilers fed a vegetable-oil-blended diet, corresponded to greater tendency for generation of primary lipid oxidation products after refrigerated and frozen storage (p < 0.05). The inclusion of powdered ginseng prong in broiler diets significantly inhibited (p < 0.05) secondary lipid oxidation products (e.g., malonaldehyde [MDA]) formation in both stored leg and breast meat, compared to controls. Significant interactions (p < 0.05) were obtained for storage time and inclusion of ginseng against production of primary and secondary lipid oxidation in broiler breast and leg meats from broilers fed PUFA-containing diets. We conclude that including ginseng prong in broiler growing diets represents a viable strategy to control lipid oxidation in refrigerated/cold-stored meat products.


Understanding the flow from a cooling hole is very important to be able to properly control film cooling of turbine blades. For this purpose, large eddy simulation (LES) investigation of the flow inside a cylindrical film cooling hole is presented in this paper. Two different geometries, with different hole metering lengths, are investigated at a blowing ratio of 0.5. The main flow structure in the hole are the hairpin vortices that originate from a shear layer formed due to flow separation near the hole entry. The comparison of these hairpin vortices in the two cases with different hole metering length is presented in detail. The results show that in case of the hole with longer length the hairpin vortices dissociate within the hole itself. In such a case a uniform flow is seen at the hole exit. However, when the hole length is significantly decreased, it is shown that these vortices exit the hole and effect the vortex structures outside the hole, thereby accounting for the reduction in film cooling effectiveness. Overall, these results bring forth one other major reason for the reduction in film cooling effectiveness with reduction in hole length, i.e. the exit of in-hole hairpin vortices into the crossflow.


The use of fuel cells for powering AC loads requires to employ power converters and in particular inverters. The efficiency of these devices is usually very high, but they add a current ripple on the fuel cell side that might affect the fuel cell performance and decrease the overall system efficiency more than expected. Previous studies revealed that this performance decrease depends on the impedance spectrum of the fuel cell and in particular on the cut-off frequency of the RC equivalent circuit associated with the charge double layer, which is usually in the typical current ripple frequency range. Therefore, accurate measurements of the fuel cell impedance up to high frequencies (kHz) are necessary. In this paper the high-frequency behavior of a single PEM fuel cell is investigated via impedance spectroscopy and some critical issues concerning the effects of current ripple are discussed.


Abstract A key challenge to promoting decent work in global production networks is how to improve the position of both firms and workers integrated into value chains in which lead firms play a dominant role. Analysis of global production networks and value chains has focused mainly on firms, often overlooking the role of labour. This paper develops a framework for examining the linkages between the economic upgrading of firms and the social upgrading of workers. It examines studies which indicate that firm upgrading can but does not necessarily lead to improvements for workers. Different trajectories and scenarios are explored in order to consider under what circumstances both firm and workers can gain from a process of upgrading.


This dissertation attempts to develop the beginnings of a new approach to understanding the significance of modes of thought marginal and/or external to those of the modern West. I call this approach an anthropology of concepts because it examines concepts and themes belonging to scriptural, philosophical, and poetic traditions as concepts rather than, as normally happens in anthropology, in the context of social practices, historical events, or everyday life. I also call it this because it accordingly involves the close reading and interpretation of the written or oral texts in which concepts are articulated. Concepts, when treated this way, retain their capacity to bring about novel understandings of the real, and to engender thereby theoretical perspectives not attainable through more conventional interpretive means. Such an approach may be necessary if the humanities and social sciences are to continue to hold a critical perspective on a world so enclosed that gaining any distance from its basic schemes of thought has become extremely difficult.The present dissertation undertakes such an anthropology of concepts in order to elaborate what I intend to be a new theory of the psyche and consciousness. Popularly regarded as one of the founders of the New Age spirituality of the United States, Jane Roberts (1925-1984) was a channel (a kind of spirit medium) and visionary mystic who published in the 1960's and 1970's over twenty books that she understood to have been dictated or written through her by different spiritual beings, including one she called Seth. Although these texts were crucial to the popularization of Western occult ideas about reincarnation, magic, and health that were at the heart of the New Age, Roberts's intellectual curiosity and background as an author of science fiction give her writings a speculative, intellectually reflexive, and even manifestly ontological tone that is reminiscent of certain mystical thinkers and that sets them apart from popular religious discourse. My engagement with Roberts' writings focuses, first of all, on the concepts she and her cohort of personalities articulated in the course of addressing what was for her the most pressing question raised by the decades she spent channeling: how could her experience during her trances of being herself and another self in the same instant of time be possible? Her answer was that such an experience--what she called other-consciousness --occurs not through language but when the subject sees itself in the non-sensory, mental images of dreams and the imagination. She was right in the sense that such images, as Jean-Paul Sartre makes clear in Psychology of the Imagination, allow two aesthetic figures or persons to appear as one. My argument is that her claim is significant for showing, surprisingly enough, that contrary to what French philosophy claimed for decades, the other can be brought into and made part of consciousness without being appropriated and consciousness therefore takes a radically altered form. The baseline consciousness of oneself, that is, changes from apperception to a consciousness of oneself as both oneself and another--and even of oneself as a plurality of selves. To make this point, I read concurrently with Jane Roberts' texts the work of Deleuze, showing that she raised in her own fashion some of the same questions about being, time, and the subject as he did, but that the strange context in which she thought led her to furnish significantly different--and now for us, novel--responses to them. Given that a subject that would be at once itself and another would also be both what it actually is and what it otherwise only could have been, I furthermore show how Roberts' work allows one to rethink the Deleuzean (and by implication deconstructive) understandings of the categories of actuality and possibility and another concept--time--to which they are integrally tied. The fact that her writings provide a basis for recasting the thought of such a comprehensive philosopher on matters this fundamental is an indication, I think, of the broad value an anthropology of concepts could hold for humanistic research.


The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to investigate Asian international students' perceptions of linguistic landscape on campus, and (2) to enhance the classroom environment by creating a multilingual linguistic landscape for international students at the campus which is the research setting. The researcher designed a hands-on workshop to create a warm and welcoming environment for the students. (The final product of the workshop is displayed in the hallway in one of the campus buildings.) The researcher investigated how students' motivation, attitude and cultural awareness is affected by the linguistic landscape. The research for this study was conducted with Asian international students at a public, comprehensive state university campus in the northeast United States. The data collected through the survey is analyzed quantitatively, while the interview data used vivo and pattern coding (Saldana, 2016). The main findings from the data indicated the importance of linguistic landscape for international students. It was found that international students are aware of the multilingual linguistic landscape around them, see it as important, and believe it can be used as a tool to increase their language awareness, improve social interaction, and represent their identities.


The consistent and computationally efficient stochastic statistical approach is suggestedto study kinetics of decomposition of metastable alloys. An important parameter of the theory is thesize of locally equilibrated regions at the nucleation stage which is estimated using the ``maximumthermodynamic gain'' principle suggested. For several realistic models of Fe-Cu alloys studied, the re-sults obtained agree well with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. Application of methods developed tostudies of decomposition of Fe-Cu-Mn alloys revealed a great sensitivity of evolution to both the con-figurational and kinetic interatomic interactions in an alloy. Using for these interactions the availablefirst-principle and CALPHAD estimates, we can well reproduce the peculiar features of decomposi-tion of Fe-Cu-Mn alloys observed in experiments.


An effective approach in the application of computational intelligence to mind-games is neuro-evolution. Neural networks are efficient at autonomous learning and pattern recognition tasks, which has led to many outstanding accomplishments in mind-games' playing ability. Neuro-evolution is a practical way that uses an evolutionary framework to train a neural network in a complicated context where credit assignment is hard. However, the neuro-evolution process may stagnate, or result in solutions with a limited quality. Potentially a cause for this problem are the limitations in understanding the neuro-activities as evolution progresses. A possible solution lies in unfolding the dynamics of the evolution process and the types of the strategies evolved as the evolution progresses; thus providing a diagnostic tool in real-time to identify neuro-dynamic causes of stagnation. Rule-extraction techniques are a notable solution to understanding the networks evolved. However, the extracted rules lack the necessary expressiveness to explain game-playing strategies. We call these rules a syntactic representation of the network that lacks semantic power. In this paper, we will present a methodology whereby a computational environment is used to unfold the evolution of a mind-game neuro-player; thus providing semantic power. Within this environment, we propose to extend the role of computer players to act as a "cognitive" functionality model, thus providing deeper kinds of explanations. We use the game of Go to demonstrate the functionality of the methodology. We then demonstrate that this methodology is successful in determining the types of strategies evolved in a neural Go player, and in monitoring the dynamics of the evolution.


This study compared the alterations in p-triglyceride (PT) in 111 protease inhibitor (PI)-naive patients on randomized treatment with either indinavir (800 mg 3 times daily), ritonavir (600 mg twice daily) or ritonavir/saquinavir (400 mg each twice daily) and 2 nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs). PT (non-fasting) was measured at regular intervals until week 48. PT levels were evaluated in relation to PI regime, CD4 cell count and prior NRTI experience. The effect on PT levels of changing PI regime was analysed. For 24 patients fasting and non-fasting PT values were correlated. In the ritonavir-containing arms PT levels increased significantly (median PT at baseline: 1.80 mmol/l; week 36: 2.3 mmol/l; p < 0.001). In the indinavir arm no significant rise in PT levels was observed. Comparing the PI arms at week 48 showed significantly higher levels of PT in the ritonavir-containing arms than in the indinavir arm (p < 0.001). There was a high correlation between fasting and non-fasting PT values (p


Summary

A 15-year-old Quarter Horse mare was examined for significant and progressive lameness in the right front limb. On physical examination, muscle atrophy over the scapular and pectoral regions were noted. A pain response was elicited on palpation of the scapulohumeral joint. No other abnormalities were noted on examination of the limb. Diagnostic nerve blocks ruled out a source of lameness in the distal limb. Arthrocentesis of the scapulohumeral joint was performed and results were within normal limits. Radiographs of the right scapulohumeral joint revealed an extensive, aggressive bone lesion in the proximal humerus, suspected to be an osteosarcoma. After a course of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory therapy, minimal improvement to the lameness was noted. The owner elected to subject the horse to euthanasia due to the lack of significant response to treatment. Post mortem radiographic and histological examinations determined a definitive diagnosis of an osteosarcoma in the proximal humerus.


The aim of this thesis is to answer two questions, namely why Southern French Cathars chose to flee to Italy when persecuted in the early thirteenth century and secondly to assess the extent to which Catharism was a 'universal church'. The first three chapters deal with the separate arrivals of Catharism in Italy and Southern France from the Byzantine Empire. The growth of Catharism's different characteristics in each place is observed, both before and after the mission to both areas of Nicetas, the Byzantine dualist. Subsequent chapters deal with economic, political and cultural links between Southern France and Italy, and the development of Catharism in both areas. The assault by the Inquisition led to the flight of many Cathar perfecti and supporters from Languedoc. Communities of Languedocian Cathars built up within the context of the wider Languedocian community in north Italy. Subsequently there were Southern French Cathars at Cuneo, Alessandria, Pavia, Cremona, Piacenza, Sirmione and there was an unsuccessful attempt to establish a community in the kingdom of Sicily. A recognisable history of these communities can be traced, beginning in Cuneo in the 1240s and ending with the fall of Sirmione in 1276. Within this period there were some limited examples of cooperation between Southern French and Italian Cathars in north Italy. The penultimate chapter deals with the participation of Southern French and Italians in the revival of Catharism in both areas, which was organised from Piedmont in the period 1290-132Q. There follows a brief comparison of the doctrine, ritual and lifestyle of the two sects and how, in the case of the Languedocian Cathars, these were affected by the period in Italy. The conclusion drawn is that economic, cultural and political considerations largely dictated the Languedocian Cathars' choice of refuge and that, although there was an element of universalism in the heresy, regional differences Were more important. The sources used are mainly Inquisition material, and in addition, chronicles, charters, notarial documents and the vidas of the troubadours.


Thermal-ionization isotope-dilution mass spectrometry is a highly precise and accurate method for the determination of potassium concentrations in serum. Although not suited for routine use because of the time and expense required, the technique provides an extremely valuable tool for the characterization of reference materials and for evaluating other analytical methods. The technique has recently been used to determine the concentration of potassium in a human serum standard, NBS Standard Reference Material 909. Seven vials of the serum were chemically processed and then analyzed by two spectroscopists independently, using different mass spectrometers. The results confirm previous work that indicates that a precision of 0.1% relative can be routinely achieved. The systematic errors in the method have been thoroughly evaluated. When the precise results are thus corrected, they are essentially bias free and hence definitive.


Home to the Gullah people, the Sea Islands in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia contain a culturally and ecologically distinct landscape. Descendents of plantation slaves brought to the United States between 1640 and 1850, the Gullah community has maintained a cultural identity that is reflected in a landscape pattern that is often at odds with dominant American culture. By analyzing the history of the development of Gullah culture, the genesis, contemporary meanings, and significance of the Gullah landscape pattern can be read. This article develops an understanding of the Gullah concepts of land ownership, place, community and proxemics, and places those in the context of modern growth management planning issues.


G. Cortes Robles' TRIZ (Russian acronym for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving")–CBR (Case-based reasoning) model has the capacity to accelerate conceptual design and to find inventive solutions. This paper describes how the TRIZ–CBR model can be enhanced by introducing the weight sensitivity. Of course, weight used to measure the relative importance of multiple attributes is a very important component of the similarity function, which has a great influence on the CBR results. By means of weight sensitivity analysis, the similar cases which possess high reference value among retrieved cases can be selected. A laundry drum product example was given to verify the validity of the model.


Nitriles are organic molecules with −C≡N as functional group and often toxic for living organisms. Detoxification can occur via nitrilases that degrade nitriles directly to carboxylic acids and ammonia, or with nitrile hydratases and amidases that convert nitriles to amides and subsequently to carboxylic acids and ammonia. Despite the knowledge of enzymatic degradation pathways, the influence of these compounds on the composition of bacterial communities is unknown. The tolerances of four phylogenetically different bacterial strains without known nitrile detoxification systems (Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Bacillus subtilis, Corynebacterium glutamicum, and Escherichia coli) to the toxic effects of nine nitriles and the corresponding carboxylic acids were determined. Based on these results, the effect of nitriles on diversity and composition of compost-derived bacterial communities was monitored over time by 16S rRNA gene amplicon-based and metagenome analyses. Acetone cyanohydrin, 2-phenylpropionitrile, and pyruvonitrile exhibited a lethal, phenylacetonitrile, 4-hydroxybenzonitrile, and cyclohexanecarbonitrile a growth-suppressing and succinonitrile, acetonitrile, and crotononitrile a growth-promoting effect on the studied communities. Furthermore, each nitrile had a specific community-shaping effect, e.g. communities showing growth-suppression exhibited high relative abundance of Paenibacillus. In general, analysis of all data indicated a higher resistance of Gram-positive than Gram-negative bacterial community members and test organisms to growth-suppressing nitriles. More than 70 putative nitrilase-encoding and over 20 potential nitrile hydratase-encoding genes were identified during analysis of metagenomes derived from nitrile-enrichments, underlining the high yet often unexplored abundance of nitrile-degrading enzymes.


We report a study involving chitosan chains immobilized on poly (ethylene terephthalate) (PET) films by plasma and ultraviolet (UV) grafting modification. The surface structure of the modified PET is determined by means of attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infraed spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results show that the chains of chitosan are successfully grafted on the surface of PET. Platelet adhesion evaluation in vitro is conducted to examine the blood compatibility in vitro. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and optical microscopy reveal that the amounts of adhered, aggregated and morphologically changed platelets are reduced on the chitosan-immobilized PET films. The number of platelet adhered on the modified film is reduced by almost 48% compared to the amount of platelets on the untreated film. Our result thus shows that chitosan immobilized on the PET surface improves blood compatibility.


In this paper, we discuss the mechanism of xenon anesthetic action in spin-mediated consciousness theory in light of the recent experimental findings of Li, et.al. on nuclear spins of xenon isotopes, xenon 131 and xenon 129, attenuating their anesthetic potency in mice. In the spin-mediated consciousness theory put forward in 2002, molecules containing unpaired electron spins, such as oxygen (O2) and nitric oxide (NO), interact with the mind pixels comprised of various nuclear spins in neural membranes and proteins and activate the latter as one of the steps generating conscious experience. Therefore, general anesthetics such as xenon produce anesthesia by perturbing O2 and/or NO pathways in neural membranes and proteins thus blocking and/or distorting their activation functions in consciousness. Naturally, the nuclear spins of xenon 131 and xenon 129 may partially play the activating roles of displaced O2 and/or NO among other possibilities to be briefly discussed and, thus attenuate the anesthetic potency of nuclear-spin-carrying xenon isotopes.


The development trends of ultrasonic devices dictate that frequencies increase, electrode element counts increase, and element pitch dimensions shrink. The high density of the small pitch electrode elements combined with the challenging geometry of the device design, and considerations of acoustic impedance and signal interference, mean that new assembly and packaging techniques are required to be developed to form the interconnection between the high frequency ultrasound (HFUS) arrays and external circuitry. Novel assembly methods using photolithography of new epoxy composite alumina/SU-8 and high density flexible circuits, precision dicing of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material, flexible circuits and SU-8 resin, powder blasting for vias structuring, and conductive and adhesive films bonding are considered as a mass-scale production approach.


Introduction: Polyphenolic compounds have anti proliferative and induced apoptotic features on cancer cells. p-Coumaric acid can be abundantly found in fruits, vegetables, plant production and honey . . Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women in the world. This study aimed to investigate the effect and mechanism of p- coumaric acid on apoptosis of MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Methods: In order to study appoptic effect of p- coumaric acid, MCF-7 breast cancer cells were treated with different concentrations of p- coumaric acid (10, 37, 70, 150 and 300 mM) for 24 h. Cell viability was determined using MTT assay. Apoptosis markers including phosphatidylserine exposure at the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane were measured using flow cytometery for Annexin V affinity. Results: Cell viability of MCF-7 cells was decreased with increasing of p- coumaric acid concentration. Maximal effect of p- coumaric acid was observed in cells that treated with 300 mM for 24h (p< 0.05). Viability assay showed that the IC50 of p- coumaric acid in MCF-7 cells was about 40 mM. p- coumaric acid at dose of 300 mM significantly increased the late apoptotic cells with Annexin V + and propium iodide (PI + ) features after 24 h treatment. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that p- coumaric acid had effective appoptic activity against MCF-7 cells. The results can be helpful in understanding the anticancer mechanism of p- coumaric acid and using it was suggested as an alternative or complementary drug in cancer chemotherapy.


This is one of a series of reports to be published describing research, development, and demonstration activities in support of the National Program for Building Thermal Envelope Systems and Materials. The National Program involves several federal agencies and many other organizations in the public and private sectors who are addressing the national objective of decreasing energy wastes in the heating and cooling of buildings. Results described in this report are part of the National Program through delegation of management responsibilities for the DOE lead role to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 19 refs., 32 figs., 30 tabs.


Standard VLSI implementations of turbo decoding require substantial memory and incur a long latency, which cannot be tolerated in some applications. A parallel VLSI architecture for low-latency turbo decoding, comprising multiple single-input single-output (SISO) elements, operating jointly on one turbo-coded block, is presented and compared to sequential architectures. A parallel interleaver is essential to process multiple concurrent SISO outputs. A novel parallel interleaver and an algorithm for its design are presented, achieving the same error correction performance as the standard architecture. Latency is reduced up to 20 times and throughput for large blocks is increased up to six-fold relative to sequential decoders, using the same silicon area, and achieving a very high coding gain. The parallel architecture scales favorably: latency and throughput are improved with increased block size and chip area.


Collaborative design is a new method for mechanical design and manufacture, how to improve the ability of design is the point problem. Data translation is a key problem for collaborative e design. In the paper, the problem of data translation is solved. Different design software for designer can complete the same task, which is based on the data transition and translation. The XML style of data is established, which is applied to express the relationship of data. The XML to STEP style is presented for system. Data can be transmitted among different software. The integration of system is established. At last, a prototype system is presented to demonstrate the methodology.


Studies were conducted to determine whether glufosinate treatments to glufosinate-resistant cotton caused changes in floral morphology, pollen viability, and seed set. Four glufosinate treatments were included: (1) glufosinate applied postemergence over the top (POST) at the four-leaf stage, (2) glufosinate applied POST at the eight-leaf stage, (3) the first two treatments sequentially, and (4) a POST application at the four-leaf stage followed by (fb) a postemergence-directed stem application (PDS) at the eight-leaf stage. Glufosinate was consistently applied at 0.49 kg ai/ha. A nontreated control was included. Glufosinate treatments did not affect stigma height, length of the staminal column, or pollen viability. However, the distance from the top anther to the tip of the stigma was less in plants treated with an eight-leaf POST treatment than in nontreated plants, although this difference is not likely to influence pollen deposition because in both cases anthers reached above the stigma tip. Plants receiving four-leaf POST fb eight-leaf PDS treatment with glufosinate had eight seeds per boll less than nontreated plants; however, the more rigorous four-leaf POST fb eight-leaf POST treatment did not differ from the nontreated in seeds per boll. Nomenclature: Glufosinate; cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L. Additional index words: Glyphosate, herbicide-resistant crops, transgenic crops. Abbreviations: fb, followed by; PDS, postemergence-directed stem application; POST, postemergence over the top.


Titanium dioxide (TiO2) is a wide-band gap semiconductor with band gaps around 3 eV
for the principal polymorphs rutile and anatase. Although TiO2 has been
commercialized in applications that utilise its special chemical and optical properties, its
band gap should be reduced to improve its performance, especially as an active photo
catalyst. Band gap engineering of TiO2 has therefore attracted many researchers looking
to extend its applicability as a functional material.
Reduction of TiO2 introduces oxygen vacancies, initially forming disordered TiO2–x and
eventually forming the ordered Magneli phases TinO2n–1 ( n 1 x ), which have been
commercialized in battery electrodes. Reduction of TiO2 under a hydrogen atmosphere
is a promising method which can increase the visible-light absorption efficiency of
TiO2, but the mechanism by which hydrogen exposure enhances its electrical properties
is subject to controversy. TiO2 can also be reduced by carbon-containing gases,
including CO, CO2 and CH4. Using methane as a reducing agent has the advantage of
consuming a greenhouse gas in favour of producing oxygen deficient TiO2 for cocatalyst
free methane decomposition processes. Reduced rutile is bluish in colour, while
reduced anatase is black. Slightly reduced anatase or rutile nanoparticles have been
reported to be yellow.
Hydrogen-modified TiO2
In the first part of the project, carried out at Griffith University, the focus was on
fundamentals, particularly the production and influence of O vacancies under vacuum
and hydrogen, aiming to understand the action of hydrogen as a reducing agent. Oxygen
deficient TiO2‒x was produced by exposing rutile to hydrogen at temperatures up to 500
C. Magneli phases were produced by exposing rutile to vacuum at temperatures up to
1100bC. The absorption and desorption of hydrogen were studied by
thermogravimetric analysis at temperatures up to 730 C, with simultaneous mass
spectrometry measurements. The structural modifications caused by hydrogen
absorption and desorption were confirmed by in-situ x-ray powder diffraction
measurements at temperatures up to 1100 C. It was found that the Magneli phases produced also absorbed hydrogen and desorbed higher amounts than hydrogen-modified rutile.
Recent explanations of the enhancement of the electrical properties of hydrogen-modified TiO2 propose mid-band gap states just below the conduction band and, based on the absence of obvious structural changes in x-ray diffraction measurements, relate these to surface disorder. The reasoning behind this conclusion is that the volume of material subject to structural change must be too small to contribute noticeably to the measured diffraction pattern. On the other hand, x-ray diffraction is insensitive to light elements such as oxygen. In-situ high-resolution neutron powder diffraction with deuterium in place of protium was carried out to test this hypothesis, based on the high neutron scattering length of O relative to Ti. A small contraction of the unit cell was found, accompanying the introduction of oxygen vacancies. By refining the O occupancy, it was determined that TiO2–x with x = 0.2 (equivalent in stoichiometry to a Ti5O11 Magneli phase) was formed under 50 bar of deuterium at 500 C. This indicates that vacancies are introduced throughout the volume of the TiO2 particle, because a surface-only structural change would not be resolvable. The sample was bluish in colour as is usual for reduced rutile. It therefore appears that the explanation of enhanced electrical properties owing to surface-only processes is wrong, or at best incomplete.
Reduction and Carburization of TiO2 by Methane
The second part of the project, carried out at University of California Santa Barbara, focused on applications of reduced TiO2. TiO2 reduction was studied using methane-containing gas (CH4-H2-Ar). In addition, catalytic decomposition of methane to hydrogen and carbon over reduced TiO2 surface was investigated. Oxide reduction using methane-containing gas occurs through adsorption and dissociation of methane with formation of adsorbed active carbon. Methane decomposition on metal oxides and solid solutions has been limited by carbon formation and deactivation. Carbon formation in the alkane dehydrogenation process is problematic because even small amounts of carbon can deactivate catalytic surfaces by physically blocking active sites.
Methane pyrolysis experiments were performed in a lab-scale fixed-bed reactor and molten salt environment by flowing CH4 through a molten halide (LiCl-KCl eutectic mixture)/TiO2(Degussa P25) mixture. The highest degree of CH4 conversion (~34% initially) occurred at 1000 °C, but owing to catalyst coking and sintering fell quickly to ~20.0%. Temperature-programmed reaction (TPR) was also performed on the molten salt/additives mixture. The H2 yield of the LiCl-KCl/TiO2 mixture was not much higher than that of plain salt. The salt mixture turned yellow and TiO2 particles precipitated in the bottom of the reactor. Since it is known that CH4 reduces TiO2 to TiO2–x, the yellow colour of the molten salt/TiO2 mixture was likely due to the presence of TiO2–x. The higher density of the TiO2 particles relative to the molten salt, and ability to be wetted by the molten salt, caused them to settle in the reactor. It is concluded that the precipitation of TiO2 particles in the bottom of the reactor caused the low yield of the salt/catalyst mixture. More experiments should be done to confirm the catalytic activity and stability of TiO2 and Magneli phases for methane pyrolysis.


Introduction Left atrial (LA) enlargement is an important risk factor for incident stroke and a key determinant for the success of rhythm control strategies in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). However, factors associated with LA volume in AF patients remain poorly understood. Methods Patients with paroxysmal or persistent AF were enrolled in this study. Real time 3-D echocardiography was performed in all participants and analyzed offline in a standardized manner. We performed stepwise backward linear regression analyses using a broad set of clinical parameters to determine independent correlates for 3-D LA volume. Results We included 210 patients (70.9% male, mean age 61±11years). Paroxysmal and persistent AF were present in 95 (45%) and 115 (55%) patients, respectively. Overall, 115 (55%) had hypertension, 11 (5%) had diabetes, and 18 (9%) had ischemic heart disease. Mean indexed LA volume was 36±12ml/m2. In multivariable models, significant associations were found for female sex (β coefficient -10.51 (95% confidence interval (CI) -17.85;-3.16), p = 0.0053), undergoing cardioversion (β 11.95 (CI 5.15; 18.74), p = 0.0006), diabetes (β 14.23 (CI 2.36; 26.10), p = 0.019), body surface area (BSA) (β 34.21 (CI 19.30; 49.12), p<0.0001), glomerular filtration rate (β -0.21 (CI -0.36; -0.06), p = 0.0064) and plasma levels of NT-pro brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) (β 6.79 (CI 4.05; 9.52), p<0.0001), but not age (p = 0.59) or hypertension (p = 0.42). Our final model explained 52% of the LA volume variability. Conclusions In patients with AF, the most important correlates with LA volume are sex, BSA, diabetes, renal function and NT-proBNP, but not age or hypertension. These results may help to refine rhythm control strategies in AF patients.


Spoken language is different from the written language in its style and structure. Disfluencies that appear in transcriptions from speech recognition systems generally hamper the performance of downstream NLP tasks. Thus, a disfluency correction system that converts disfluent to fluent text is of great value. This paper introduces a disfluency correction model that translates disfluent to fluent text by drawing inspiration from recent encoder-decoder unsupervised style-transfer models for text. We also show considerable benefits in performance when utilizing a small sample of 500 parallel disfluent-fluent sentences in a semi-supervised way. Our unsupervised approach achieves a BLEU score of 79.39 on the Switchboard corpus test set, with further improvement to a BLEU score of 85.28 with semi-supervision. Both are comparable to two competitive fully-supervised models.


This study addresses the Bible as a coping tool in a sample of Swedish practising Christians living with cancer, gathered through a qualitative, in-depth interview study, on religious experiences and expressions that serve in the process of coping with a life situation changed by the disease. Through content analyses, and case studies combining tools from Pargament's coping theory with, above all, role theory, it is shown that the Bible is a part of the coping process for approximately half of the informants. Furthermore, the Bible plays very different roles in the coping process, even for one single person. In the analyzed material, two different ways of using the Bible in the coping process occurs: Biblical passages as bearer of meaning for the informants, and the actual reading as such of the Bible. The former with two different functions in the coping process: (a) in the Biblical passages, see a direct appeal from God to the individual on a personal level and (b) a specific character in a Bible passage serves as an object of identification for the informant. In the coping process, the Bible provides coping tools for the identified coping methods meditative reading, role taking, and (re)interpretation of biblical passages (motivated by a religious tradition). As such, it mainly serves within the framework of the preserving comprehensive coping method. It is also shown that there are changes in the use of the Bible in connection with the changed life situation, as a result of the disease.


In cloud service provisioning scenarios with a changing demand from consumers, it is appealing for cloud providers to leverage only a limited amount of the virtualized resources required to provide the service. However, it is not easy to determine how much resources are required to satisfy consumers expectations in terms of Quality of Service (QoS). Some existing frameworks provide mechanisms to adapt the required cloud resources in the service delivery, also called an elastic service, but only for consumers with the same QoS expectations. The problem arises when the service provider must deal with several consumers, each demanding a different QoS for the service. In such an scenario, cloud resources provisioning must deal with trade-offs between different QoS, while fulfilling these QoS, within the same service deployment. In this paper we propose an elasticity-aware governance platform for cloud service delivery that reacts to the dynamic service load introduced by consumers demand. Such a reaction consists of provisioning the required amount of cloud resources to satisfy the different QoS that is offered to the consumers by means of several service level agreements. The proposed platform aims to keep under control the QoS experienced by multiple service consumers while maintaining a controlled cost.


The strength of agreement between two noninvasive methods of assessing lower limb arterial disease and their relationship to patient symptoms following exercise have been investigated. Color-duplex ultrasound (CDU) and ankle/brachial pressure index (ABPI) (before and after exercise) measurements were obtained from 200 consecutive patients referred to a vascular investigations laboratory. From these patients, 290 limbs were available for study, comprising limbs without previous vascular surgery, from patients without diabetes and who could attempt a walking exercise test. The overall level of agreement between CDU and resting ABPI measurements was 83% (Kappa 0.66). The ABPI technique identified the more serious disease; a resting ABPI of less than 0.6 gave 100% agreement with CDU. With higher resting ABPIs the level of agreement became poorer: 83% (0.6 ≤ ABPI < 0.9) and 76% (normal ABPI ≥ 0.9). The addition of postexercise ABPI measurements in determining significant arterial disease increased the (continued on next page) (Abstract continued) strength of relationship between the two techniques by only 2% (85%, Kappa 0.69). The exercise test was generally limited by the most symptomatic limb in each patient, and the agreement between CDU and postexercise ABPI measurements in these limbs was higher at 93% (Kappa 0.81). In comparison, agreement for the least symptomatic group of limbs was found to be poor (69%, Kappa 0.37). Compared with symptoms after exercise, overall agreements with CDU and ABPI were both 67% (Kappa 0.27). The agreement was better (91%) when the resting ABPI was less than 0.6. The ABPI is biased toward the detection of more severe disease and is more consistent with CDU when the most symptomatic limbs are compared. The relationship between either test and symptoms after exercise is strong only for limbs with major disease.


A model was presented describing the reciprocal influence of disruptions in parent discipline practices on irritable exchanges between the target child and other family members. Disrupted parent discipline and irritable microsocial exchanges within the family were hypothesized to provide a basic training for aggression that generalizes to other settings such that the child is identified by peers, teachers, and parents as physically aggressive. Physical fighting was thought to lead to rejection by the normal peer group, which was hypothesized to feed back to further exacerbate fighting.

Multilevel assessment including interview, questionnaires, laboratory studies, and home observations were carried out with the families of 91 preadolescent and adolescent boys. Nine indicators from the assessment battery were used to define the constructs Inept Parental Discipline, Negative Microsocial Exchanges, Physical Fighting, and Poor Peer Relations. Structural equations (LISREL VI) were used to describe the relations among the constructs. The t values for the path coefficients were significant. A chi-square analysis showed an acceptable fit between the model and the empirical findings.

The findings were interpreted as being consistent with the hypothesis that under certain circumstances, family interaction may serve as basic training for aggression. In the present study, interactions with siblings in the home seemed to serve a pivotal role.


Unlike conventional jet and drop breakup, which forms a cylindrical liquid column, the dripping of a viscous film will form a liquid annulus, which then ruptures and heals due to surface tension and the inner surface forms a retracting tip. We apply a one-dimensional model to analyze the thinning dynamics, which predicts a universal thinning curve and shows good agreement with experimental measurements. The shape of the tip is documented to be conical and the retraction speed is determined by the balance of viscous and capillary stresses. We also show that the drop contains an entrained bubble and possible formation of satellite bubbles in the healed thread.


Horizontal scalability is a major facilitator of recent advances in deep learning. Common deep learning frameworks offer different approaches for scaling the training process. We operationalize the execution of distributed training using Kubernetes and helm templates. This way we lay ground for a systematic comparison of deep learning frameworks. For two of them, TensorFlow and MXNet we examine their properties with regard to throughput, scalability and practical ease of use.


IZA DP No. 15812 DECEMBER 2022 Social Media and the Broadening of Social Movements: Evidence from Black Lives Matter* How do modern social movements broaden their base? Prompted by the viral video footage of George Floyd's murder, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement gained unprecedented scope in the spring of 2020. In this paper, we show that pandemic exposure (COVID-19 related deaths) significantly increased the take-up of social media and subsequently mobilized protesters in whiter, more affluent and suburban counties with low ex-ante probability of protesting. We exploit Super Spreader Events in the early stages of the pandemic as a source of plausibly exogenous variation at the county level and develop a novel index of social media penetration, using information from more than 45 million tweets, google searches and mobility data. We show that a one standard deviation increase in pandemic exposure increased the number of new Twitter accounts by 27% and increased protest propensity by 9 percentage points. Our results suggest that social media can be persuasive and inspire action outside of traditional coalitions. JEL Classification: P16, D7


Objective The main aim of the New-type Rural Cooperative Medical System (NRCMS) put into effect in 2003 was to reduce financial barriers in accessing health care services among vulnerable populations. The aim of this study was to assess the association between NRCMS and income related inequality in hospital utilization among rural inhabitants in Jiangxi Province China. Methods A multistage stratified random cluster sampling method was adopted to select 1838 1879 and 1890 households as participants in 2003/2004 2008 and 2014 respectively. The Erreygers Concentration index (EI) of two measures of hospital inpatient care including admission to hospital and hospital avoidance were calculated to measure income-related inequality. The decomposition of the EI was performed to characterize the contributions of socioeconomic and need factors to the measured inequality. Results An affluent-focused (pro-rich) inequity was observed for hospital admission adjusting for need factors over time. The level of inequity for hospital admission decreased dramatically while hospital avoidance decreased marginally and with a high value (EI -0.0176) in 2008. The implementation of the NRCMS was associated with decreased inequity in 2008 and in 2014 but the associations were limited. Income contributed the most to the inequality of hospital utilization each year. Conclusion The coverage of the NRCMS expanded to cover nearly all rural inhabitants in Jiangxi province by 2014 and was associated with a very small reduction in inequalities in admission to hospital. In order to increase equitable access to health care additional financial protections for vulnerable populations are needed. Improving the relatively low level of medical services in township hospitals and low rate of reimbursement and financial assistance with the NRCMS is recommended.


This paper provides a framework for analysing the character and degree of ownership engagement by institutional investors. It argues that the general term "institutional investor" in itself doesn't say very much about the quality or degree of ownership engagement. It is therefore an evasive "shorthand" for policy discussions about ownership engagement. The reason is that there are large differences in ownership engagement between different categories of institutional investors. There are also differences in ownership engagement within the same category of institutional investors such as hedge funds, investment funds, etc. These differences arise from the fact that the degree of ownership engagement is determined by a number of different features and choices that together make up the institutional investor's "business model". When ownership engagement is not a central part of the business model, public policies and voluntary standards aiming to improve the quality of ownership engagement among institutional investors are likely to have limited effect. Based on an empirical overview of the relative size of different categories of institutional investors, the paper identifies a set of 7 features and 19 choices that in different combinations define the institutional investor's business model. These features and choices are then used to establish a taxonomy for identifying different degrees of ownership engagement ranging from "no engagement" to "inside engagement".


We present an investigation of the large magnetic anisotropy of Fe2P, based on ab initio density functional theory calculations, with a full-potential linear muffin-tin orbital basis. We obtain a uniaxial magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of 664 mu eV/f.u., which is in decent agreement with experimental observations. Based on a band structure analysis the microscopic origin of the large magnetic anisotropy is explained. We also show that by straining the crystal structure, the MAE can be enhanced further.


This paper reports design and implementation outcomes at middle development advance of an educative program based on use and construction of widgets on Wolfram Alpha platform at higher education level for engineering and sciences areas. Widgets were based on Physics and Mathematics curricula under Project Oriented Learning and Blended Learning methodologies. Widgets constructed by teachers are first used by students to appropriate basic concepts of each course on a mobile learning basis; after, students construct their own widgets applying that concepts but involving different applied situations based on curriculum integration. Two phases of this activity help to develop basic and high level thinking. Description of design combining Wolfram Alpha widget developer, Weebly and Jotform tools to set up the widgets, institutional current advances on teachers training, courses involved and current outcomes of project are presented.


Voice shopping using natural language introduces new challenges related to customer queries, like handling mispronounced, misexpressed, and misunderstood queries. Voice null queries, which result in no offers, have negative impact on customers shopping experience. Query rewriting (QR) attempts to automatically replace null queries with alternatives that lead to relevant results. We present a new approach for pre-retrieval QR of voice shopping null queries. Our proposed QR framework first generates alternative queries using a search index-based approach that targets different potential failures in voice queries. Then, a machine-learning component ranks these alternatives, and the original query is amended by the selected alternative. We provide an experimental evaluation of our approach based on data logs of a commercial voice assistant and an e-commerce website, demonstrating that it outperforms several baselines by more than 22%. Our evaluation also highlights an interesting phenomenon, showing that web shopping null queries are considerably different, and apparently easier to fix, than voice queries. This further substantiates the use of specialized mechanisms for the voice domain. We believe that our proposed framework, mapping tail queries to head queries, is of independent interest since it can be extended and applied to other domains.


The nuchal translucency (NT) detection and thickness measurement is a milestone in the prediction of the abnormalities in addition to chromosomal disorders in a fetus in ultrasound imagery. Nuchal translucency is an accumulation of fluids just at bottom of the foetal neck which is closely associated with chromosome abnormalities with cardiac arrest within the pregnancy period of the first trimester. At the hospital, the sonographers manually estimate the thickness of the mid-sagittal plane of nuchal translucency, which is a significant marker for prenatal screening. Such a conventional process done by a technician is quite time-consuming and requires a skilled technician. Within this methodology, an automatic NT detection method based on SIFT keypoint and GRNN is proposed in the midsagittal plane. This Non-invasive approach is crucial not just for the assessment of NT, as well as for the detection of extreme deformities and the identification of high-risk pregnancies. The proposed method is tested on a large image dataset which shows that the proposed technique has better accuracy than well-known state of the art methods. The proposed SIFT and GRNN based method have an error of 0.02 which is very less compared to the SVM, ANN, NB and KNN.


Cruise D381 was made in support of NERC's Ocean Surface Boundary Layer theme action programme, OSMOSIS (Ocean Surface Mixing, Ocean Sub-mesoscale Interaction Study). The ocean surface boundary layer (OSBL) deepens in response to convective, wind and surface wave forcing, which produce three-dimensional turbulence that entrains denser water, deepening the layer. The OSBL shoals in response to solar heating and to mesoscale and sub-mesoscale motions that adjust lateral buoyancy gradients into vertical stratification. Recent and ongoing work is revolutionising our view of both the deepening and shoaling processes: new processes are coming into focus that are not currently recognised in model parameterisation schemes. In OSMOSIS we have a project which integrates observations, modelling studies and parameterisation development to deliver a step change in modelling of the OSBL. The OSMOSIS overall aim is to develop new, physically based and observationally supported, parameterisations of processes that deepen and shoal the OSBL, and to implement and evaluate these parameterisations in a state-of-the-art global coupled climate model, facilitating improved weather and climate predictions. Cruise D381 was split into two legs D381A and a process study cruise D381B. D381A partly deployed the OSMOSIS mooring array and two gliders for long term observations near the Porcupine Abyssal Plain Observatory. D381B firstly completed mooring and glider deployment work begun during the preceding D381A cruise. D381B then carried out several days of targetted turbulence profiling looking at changes in turbulent energy dissipation resulting from the interation of upper ocean fluid structures such as eddies, sub-mesoscale filaments and Langmuir cells with surface wind and current shear. Finally D381B conducted two spatial surveys with the towed SeaSoar vehicle to map and diagnose the mesoscale and sub-mesoscale flows, which, unusually, are the `large scale' background in which this study sits.


Early in every criminal case, the trial judge or magistrate asks the defendant a question which probably violates the defendant's right to silence: "How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?" The defendant confronts the "cruel trilemma," often condemned by the Supreme Court, of lying, confession, or silence in a situation where silence implies guilt. The plea inquiry raises all of the problems that have led the Court to prohibit questioning in other contexts. It interferes with the defendant's dignity, autonomy, and privacy. It is inconsistent with the adversary system, implying that the defendant has a responsibility to establish his innocence. The plea inquiry is a remnant of a day when England had many elements of an inquisitorial system. Of course, the common practice is for defense attorneys to instruct defendants to plead "not guilty" at the plea inquiry, irrespective of their guilt. This practice has deep roots in English history and it probably has enabled courts to avoid dealing with the constitutional problems of the plea inquiry. But the "remedy" to the plea inquiry's constitutional problems has its own problems. The false "not guilty" plea unnecessarily alienates the defendant from the victim and the public, reinforces any inclination the defendant might have had to lie, reinforces a tendency on the part of lawyers to assist clients in lying, and adds to the cynicism which lawyers, clients, and the public feel toward the criminal justice system. This practice merely steers the defendant toward one of the trilemma's "cruel" options-lying. The constitutional, social, and moral problems of the plea inquiry might be worth it if it served a significant purpose, but it does not. All the plea inquiry does is signal whether the defendant will take his trial or not. Rather than pose the current plea inquiry, courts could ask the defendant whether he will plead "guilty" or take his trial or, in the alternative, courts could merely assume that the defendant will take his trial, in the absence of a defendant motion to the contrary.


Public participation is at the heart of democracy and of the environmental justice movement. Most state-level environmental justice policies and regulations focus on improving public participation within administrative processes to ensure that communities have a voice in the environmental decisions that affect them. New York has adopted an environmental justice policy that follows this model and requires enhanced notice, accessible comment opportunities, and improved access to technical information for new major environmental permits issued to facilities proposed in low-income or minority communities. However, New York's policy, like other state participation-focused environmental justice policies, has yet to be evaluated. This work addresses that gap. To do so, I develop six theoretically-tethered criteria of effective public participation (access, fair process, voice, dialogue, recognition, and legitimacy) through a review of the literature on relevant democracy and justice theory, particularly procedural justice and justice as recognition; the role of the administrative state, and the theory and history of environmental justice. I then refine and ground those measures through interviews with community activists, environmental justice advocates and regulatory agency staff and apply the grounded measures in a comparative case study of permitting processes that did or did not trigger New York's environmental justice policy. The data, collected through participant interviews, document review, and survey work and analyzed qualitatively, suggest that New York's policy improves the external framework for participation with marked improvements in objective measures of access and, to a lesser extent, social recognition. The policy creates the space for improvements in voice, dialogue, and institutional recognition, but does not ensure the internal changes to the decision-making structure necessary to guarantee these improvements. Organizational culture of the applicant and/or agency, community identity and composition, source and content of notice, and public meeting structure may also have significant impacts on the effectiveness of public participation and merit further investigation. Achieving Justice through Public Participation: Measuring the Effectiveness of New York State's Enhanced Public Participation Policy for Environmental Justice Communities


Combined with the temperature and gas monitoring demand, a new technology which is called wireless sensor network is used to solve the problems exiting in most cable transmission systems. Base on designing of wireless sensor networks low-power hardware platform using CC2430 and transplanting TinyOS wireless sensor nodes, the design of components are completed by analyzing the system applications platform and design process of nodes. Experimental test results show that the wireless sensor nodes can be target the demand in real-time temperature and gas concentration in coal mine monitoring tasks.


For a sequence $A$ of given length $n$ contained in $\mathbb{Z}_p^2$ we study how many distinct subsums $A$ must have when $A$ is not "wasteful" by containing too many elements in same subgroup. Martin, Peilloux and Wong have made a conjecture for a sharp lower bound and established it when $n$ is not too large whereas Peng has previously established the conjecture for large $n$. In this note we build on these earlier works and add an elementary argument leading to the conjecture for every $n$. Martin, Peilloux and Wong also made a more general conjecture for sequences in $\mathbb{Z}_p^m$. Here we show that the special case $n = mp-1$ of this conjecture implies the whole conjecture and that the conjecture is equivalent to a strong version of the additive basis conjecture of Jaeger, Linial, Payan and Tarsi.


The purpose of this document is to provide practical guidance to support IDB Borrowers, other implementing agencies, and third parties in applying the ESPFs specific requirements related to project supply chain management. This includes, primarily, requirements set out under Standard 1 on Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts, Standard 2 on Labor and Working Conditions, and Standard 6 on Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Resources. Although some of the principles and guidance contained in this note may be of wider relevance, there is a specific focus on supply chains for public infrastructure projects.


Summary Background A persistent sciatic artery (PSA) is a rare vascular anomaly with an estimated incidence of 0.02–0.04% and with a high rate of complications such as aneurysm formation, thromboembolism, and ischemia, that may lead to amputation. Case Report We present a case of a female patient with complete symptomatic ambilateral PSA and with unilateral aneurysm. The aneurysm was excised and the PTFE graft was interposed at the aneurismal sac (femoro-popliteal bypass could not be performed because of the high degree hypoplasia of the superficial femoral artery). The graft endured continuous compression and stretching during regular daily life of the patient. At check-up 18 years after the operation, the Doppler ultrasound showed a patent graft and no new aneurismal dilatation of the sciatic artery. Conclusions To our knowledge the follow-up of the presented case is the longest reported so far in the literature. The uneventful course of the patient confirms that classical aneurysmectomy still constitutes one of the treatment options of PSA aneurysm.


Objective: Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory disorder, which affects around 1%–3% of the human population worldwide. Cardiovascular events are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with psoriasis. Some studies have reported that psoriasis is related to increased arrhythmias. The Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio have been accepted as new markers for the assessment of myocardial repolarization and ventricular arrhythmogenesis. The aim of this study was to assess ventricular repolarization in patients with psoriasis using Tp-e interval and Tp-e/QT ratio. Methods: The study population consisted of 74 patients with psoriasis and 74 healthy volunteers. The diagnosis of psoriasis was based on a clinical or histopathological examination of all patients. QT interval, corrected QT (QTc), QT dispersion (QTd), Tp-e interval, corrected Tp-e, and Tp-e/QT ratio were measured from the 12-lead electrocardiogram. These parameters were compared between groups. Results: According to the electrocardiographic parameters, QT and QTc intervals and QTd were significantly higher in patients with psoriasis than in control subjects (p<0.001; p<0.001; p=0.014; respectively). The Tp-e interval, corrected Tp-e, and Tp-e/QT ratio were significantly higher in patients with psoriasis than in control subjects [93±13 milliseconds (ms) vs. 98±14 ms, p=0.040; 104±17 ms vs. 111±17 ms, p=0.008; 0.23±0.03 vs. 0.25±0.03, p<0.001; respectively]. Additionally, the CRP value was an independent predictor of an increased Tp-e/QT ratio (β=0.537, p< 0.001). Conclusion: Our study revealed that ventricular repolarization features were impaired in patients with psoriasis. Therefore, these patients should be more closely screened for ventricular arrhythmias.


Historical geographic studies on land cover may support the understanding of the recent state. Focusing on coal mining, this process was followed and analyzed in the case of the East Borsod Coal Basin from the early 20th century to the political change. The contemporaneous maps and manuscripts concerning the mining were evaluated using geoinformatic techniques. Moreover, digitalized topographic map coming from the early and late period of mining (1924 and 1989, respectively) were analyzed. To determine the degree of human disturbance hemerobic relations and changes of the given land cover patches were quantified on the basis of the maps of the three military surveys, too. It can be stated that montanogenic subtype of an industrialagricultural landscape has been formed in the Bukkhat area. Beside the concentrated artificial surfaces, however, relative dominance of forest forming the matrix of the landscape remained.


BACKGROUND
Due to the chronic nature of psoriasis, it is important to assess the sustained response of treatments over time.

OBJECTIVE
To assess the efficacy of continuous treatment with guselkumab (an interleukin-23 blocker) through two years in the phase 3 VOYAGE 1 trial.

METHODS
Patients were randomized to placebo, guselkumab, or adalimumab at baseline. Placebo-randomized patients crossed over to guselkumab at week 16 (placebo→guselkumab) and adalimumab-randomized patients crossed over to guselkumab at week 52 (adalimumab→guselkumab); all patients received open-label guselkumab beyond week 52. Efficacy was assessed based on the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI; proportion of patients achieving ≥75%, 90%, or 100% improvement [PASI 75/90/100]) and the Investigator's Global Assessment (IGA; proportion achieving nearly clear [IGA 0/1] or completely clear [IGA 0]). As pre-specified, efficacy data were analyzed using non-responder imputation (NRI; patients with missing data counted as non-responders) after applying treatment failure rules (TFR; patients meeting TFR counted as non-responders thereafter) through week 48 and by applying TFR only from week 52 through 100. All endpoints were also analyzed using NRI and As Observed methodology for the guselkumab group through week 100.

RESULTS
The clinical responses were maintained through week 100 based on all three analyses. Based on pre-specified analyses, proportions of patients who achieved PASI 75, PASI 90, PASI 100, IGA 0/1, and IGA 0 were 94.8%, 82.1%, 49.0%, 82.4%, and 53.8%, respectively, at week 100. Results were similar for the placebo→guselkumab and adalimumab→guselkumab groups at week 100. As expected, proportions of patients achieving these endpoints were similar based on As Observed analyses and slightly lower when the more conservative NRI rules were applied.

CONCLUSIONS
High levels of efficacy were maintained through two years of continuous treatment among guselkumab-treated patients, and efficacy improved through two years among adalimumab-treated patients who crossed over to guselkumab at one year. J Drugs Dermatol. 2018;17(8):826-832.


&NA; A mixed‐methods design was used to explore the outcomes of a 6‐wk, occupational therapist–led Comfortable Cafeteria program designed to build cafeteria supervisors' and students' capacity to create a positive mealtime environment so that all students can successfully participate in and enjoy a healthy meal and socialization with peers. Students whose scores were in the low and mid‐range at the outset had statistically significant improvements in pretest–posttest visual analog scale ratings of participation and enjoyment. Cafeteria supervisors demonstrated statistically significant improvements in their perceptions of knowledge and skills to supervise and to encourage healthy eating. Qualitative findings add further insight into the program, suggesting that students learned prosocial values (e.g., being kind, helping others), supervisors actively encouraged positive social interaction, and occupational therapists enjoyed implementing the program and recognized positive supervisor and student changes as a result of integrating services in the cafeteria.


An effective method to increase the mechanical properties of poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) composite fibers is reported. MWCNTs in the composite fibers were functionalized with PVA through a one-step grafting process by the nondestructive Friedel–Crafts alkylation in an aluminum chloride medium. Under suitable conditions, the resulting functionalized MWCNTs (f-MWCNTs) of the selected content of 0.05 wt% based on the PVA weight were added to a DMSO/H2O (vol ratio = 3/1) mixed solvent, and the f-MWCNTs were highly dispersed in the solution, which remained uniform even after 30 days. The solution was gel spun and the as-spun fibers were hot-drawn to prepare the final PVA/f-MWCNTs composite fibers. The tensile strength and modulus of the fibers were found to be about 926 MPa and 59 GPa, which increased by 280.6% and 421.0% relative to pure PVA fibers, respectively.


In this paper, axisymmetric 8-node and 9-node quadrilateral elements for large deformation hyperelastic analysis are devised. To alleviate the volumetric locking which may be encountered in nearly incompressible materials, a volumetric enhanced assumed strain (EAS) mode is incorporated in the eight-node and nine-node uniformly reduced-integrated (URI) elements. To control the compatible spurious zero energy mode in the 9-node element, a stabilization matrix is attained by using a hybridstrain formulation and, after some simplification, the matrix can be programmed in the element subroutine without resorting to numerical integration. Numerical examples show the relative efficacy of the proposed elements and other popular eight-node elements. In view of the constraint index count, the two elements are analogous to the Q8/3P and Q9/3P elements based on the u-p hybrid/mixed formulation. However, the former elements are more straight forward than the latter elements in both formulation and programming implementation.


The fight against crime aims to prevent the impact on social values. This preventive approach must be based on the principle of legality and should be carried out on the basis of pre-established procedures. At present, criminality has a diverse typology that implies not only a permanent adaptation and diversification of procedures, but also a rigorous definition that must reflect as accurately as possible the hypothesis, disposition and sanction for each type of crime. From a criminological perspective, a series of concepts such as high crime, organized crime, terrorism, drug trafficking, or trafficking in human beings can easily highlight defective definitions. However, there are a number of concepts and philosophies surrounding these types of crime. We propose a review of how crime is defined in order to assess to what extent the identified operational definitions can or must imperatively be improved.


Taxon and character sampling are central to phylogenetic experimental design; yet, we lack general rules. Goldman introduced a method to construct efficient sampling designs in phylogenetics, based on the calculation of expected Fisher information given a probabilistic model of sequence evolution. The considerable potential of this approach remains largely unexplored. In an earlier study, we applied Goldman's method to a problem in the phylogenetics of caecilian amphibians and made an a priori evaluation and testable predictions of which taxon additions would increase information about a particular weakly supported branch of the caecilian phylogeny by the greatest amount. We have now gathered mitogenomic and rag1 sequences (some newly determined for this study) from additional caecilian species and studied how information (both expected and observed) and bootstrap support vary as each new taxon is individually added to our previous data set. This provides the first empirical test of specific predictions made using Goldman's method for phylogenetic experimental design. Our results empirically validate the top 3 (more intuitive) taxon addition predictions made in our previous study, but only information results validate unambiguously the 4th (less intuitive) prediction. This highlights a complex relationship between information and support, reflecting that each measures different things: Information is related to the ability to estimate branch length accurately and support to the ability to estimate the tree topology accurately. Thus, an increase in information may be correlated with but does not necessitate an increase in support. Our results also provide the first empirical validation of the widely held intuition that additional taxa that join the tree proximal to poorly supported internal branches are more informative and enhance support more than additional taxa that join the tree more distally. Our work supports the view that adding more data for a single (well chosen) taxon may increase phylogenetic resolution and support in weakly supported parts of the tree without adding more characters/genes. Altogether our results corroborate that, although still underexplored, Goldman's method offers a powerful tool for experimental design in molecular phylogenetic studies. However, there are still several drawbacks to overcome, and further assessment of the method is needed in order to make it better understood, more accessible, and able to assess the addition of multiple taxa.


For over 40 years the notion of the file, as devised by pioneers in the field of computing, has been the subject of much contention. Some have wanted to abandon the term altogether on the grounds that metaphors about files can confuse users and designers alike. More recently, the emergence of the 'cloud' has led some to suggest that the term is simply obsolescent. In this paper we want to suggest that, despite all these conceptual debates and changes in technology, the term file still remains central to systems architectures and to the concerns of users. Notwithstanding profound changes in what users do and technologies afford, we suggest that files continue to act as a cohering concept, something like a 'boundary object' between computer engineers and users. However, the effectiveness of this boundary object is now waning. There are increasing signs of slippage and muddle. Instead of throwing away the notion altogether, we propose that the definition of and use of files as a boundary object be reconstituted. New abstractions are needed, ones which reflect what users seek to do with their digital data, and which allow engineers to solve the networking, storage and data management problems that ensue when files move from the PC on to the networked world of today.


The rating offered by independent credit assessment institution represents an easy way to summarize the risk return profile of an investment and, especially in the United States, this tool is used also to evaluate the risk return profile of Real Estate investment products. The more relevant rating agencies published rating criteria for the evaluation of real estate indirect investments and defined some guidelines to evaluate fund manager choices and capabilities. In Italy, the law and the characteristics of the markets are quite different from other U.S. or E.U. experience and rating criteria defined for real estate investments in other countries could not be applied directly to Italian real estate funds. The aim of the paper is to study which are the main difference of Italian market respect to other markets that could impact on rating evaluation and how international best practices on real estate rating could be applied to this new scenario. The analysis proposed will consider all real estate funds listed in Italy looking at investment and financing solutions adopted. The last section of the paper tries to make a detailed analysis of the portfolio of real estate investments made by one relevant real estate Italian fund manager. The aim of the analysis is to test which are the limits of standards procedures for evaluating Italian real estate funds and how real estate fund managers can improve the rating assigned by the external credit rating agency according to the real estate investment selection process.


ABSTRACT
The ability to train an orthopaedic resident in all aspects of orthopaedics in 5 years has become increasingly difficult due to the growth in knowledge and techniques, work-hour restrictions, and reduced resident autonomy. It has become nearly universal for our residents to complete at least 1 subspecialty fellowship prior to entering practice. In some subspecialties, the skills necessary to practice competently have become difficult to master. Simply adding to the current length of training may not address these issues effectively and would add to the economic cost of residency training. Novel training pathways that allow residents to focus earlier and in greater depth on their intended subspecialty while maintaining general orthopaedic competencies can be created without lengthening training. It is time to initiate discussions about these possibilities.


A novel and potentially useful optical technique called an "optical funnel" has been developed. The technique utilizes a system in which a microorganism is suspended by equilibrium between the medium flow and the radiation pressure applied in the opposite direction. At equilibrium, i.e., when the force of the laser pressure is equal to the force of the moving stream, the microorganism is captured. At this point, it has the ability to escape on its own power. Since the force applied to the microorganism is calculated on the basis of a ray-optics model, it is possible to measure the magnitude of the microorganism's power. A Trachelomonas volvocina cell was determined to have a power of ∼1 pN. This technique is superior to the laser trapping technique, which is currently used in these determinations, since it is possible to capture numerous organisms in a single experiment, thus allowing the calculation of the average power for an organism with minimal effort, in terms of repetitive samplings and measurements.


. Chromophoric dissolved organic matter (CDOM) significantly contributes to the non-water absorption budget in the Mediterranean Sea. The absorption coefficient of CDOM, a CDOM (λ), is measurable in situ and remotely from different platforms and can be used as an indicator of the concentration of other relevant biogeochemical variables, e.g., dissolved organic carbon. However, our ability to model the biogeochemical processes that determine CDOM concentrations is still 20 limited. Here we propose a novel parametrisation of the CDOM cycle that accounts for the interplay between the light- and nutrient-dependent dynamics of local CDOM production and degradation, as well as its vertical transport. The parameterization is included in a one-dimensional (1D) configuration of the Biogeochemical Flux Model (BFM), which is here coupled to the General Ocean Turbulence Model (GOTM) through the Framework for Aquatic Biogeochemical Models (FABM). Here BFM is augmented with a bio-optical component that revolves spectrally the underwater light transmission. We did run this new 25 GOTM-FABM-BFM configuration to simulate the seasonal a CDOM (λ) cycle at the deep-water site of the BOUSSOLE project in the North-Western Mediterranean Sea. Our results show that accounting for both nutrient and light dependence of CDOM production improves the simulation of the seasonal and vertical dynamics of a CDOM (λ), including a subsurface maximum that forms in spring and progressively intensifies in summer. Furthermore, the model consistently reproduces the higher-than-average concentrations of CDOM per unit chlorophyll concentration observed at BOUSSOLE. The configuration, outputs and 30 sensitivity analyses from this 1D model application will be instrumental for future applications of BFM to the entire Mediterranean Sea in a 3D configuration.


In this paper, continuous plasma extraction under viscoelastic fluid in a straight channel with asymmetrical expansion-contraction cavity arrays (ECCA channel) is demonstrated by exploiting the Dean-flow-coupled elasto-inertial effects. First, the forces experienced by particles in the ECCA channel were discussed. Then, 4.8 μm diameter particles, which mimic the behaviour of red blood cells (RBCs), were used to study the effects of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) concentrations and flow rates on particle viscoelastic focusing. Also, 3 μm, 4.8 μm and 10 μm diameter particles, which are comparable in size to platelets, RBCs, and white blood cells (WBCs), respectively, were used to study the effect of particle size on particle viscoelastic focusing. Finally, plasma extraction from diluted blood samples under viscoelastic conditions was conducted, and the purity of the collected blood plasma was measured. After two series of filtration with the same ECCA channel, the purity of 3 μm, 4.8 μm and 10 μm diameter particles reached 100%, and the plasma purity reached 99.99%, as measured by a hemocytometer. In addition, flow cytometry data further validated the filtration performance of blood plasma. By exploiting the Dean-flow-coupled elasto-inertial effects, the ECCA channel offers a continuous, sheathless, and high purity plasma extraction.


A Pavlovian to instrumental transfer (PIT) task was utilized to investigate the influence of Pavlovian cues on an instrumental behaviour in daily and non-daily smokers. Participants were trained on four arbitrary Pavlovian cues, of which two predicted cigarette and two predicted chocolate outcomes. Subsequently one chocolate and one cigarette cue were extinguished. Participants then learned an instrumental discrimination in which keyboard responses were paired with either cigarette or chocolate outcomes on a 50% reinforcement schedule. In the final transfer stage the cues were presented followed by a choice between the two keys. The cues elicited a bias for the response that had earned the same outcome as the current cue. This outcome specific transfer effect was not sensitive to extinction of either the cigarette or chocolate cues. These findings add to previous animal work, suggesting that extinction does not reduce cue elicited responding in the PIT task, and have implications for treatments involving cue exposure.


'For centuries, the Netherlands has encouraged entrepreneurial spirit, an international perspective and open market policies. These historical factors, along with the country's secure political and economic climate, make it a near perfect environment for international tax planning. This environment is further enhanced by the Netherlands' network of tax agreements with virtually every significant financial territory in the world, as well as the benefits that can be gained from basing intermediate holding companies within the Netherlands Antilles.' 1


This paper presents a design approach for laterally braced cold-fonned steel flexural members with edge stiffened flanges other then simple lips. The design method for flexural members given by Schafer and Pek6z (1999) is used here for designing these complex stiffeners. The method integrates distortional buckling into the unified effective width approach currently used in most cold-fonned steel design specifications. A finite element method was first used to investigate the post-buckling behavior and carry out initial geometric imperfection sensitivity studies for various types of stiffeners. Then parametric studies were carried out for different types of stiffeners to compare the moment capacity detennined by the finite element method, AISI (1996) and the proposed design approach for flexural members given by Schafer and Pek6z (1999).


Kernel sparse representation classification (KSRC), a nonlinear extension of sparse representation classification, shows its good performance for hyperspectral image classification. However, KSRC only considers the spectra of unordered pixels, without incorporating information on the spatially adjacent data. This paper proposes a neighboring filtering kernel to spatial-spectral kernel sparse representation for enhanced classification of hyperspectral images. The novelty of this work consists in: 1) presenting a framework of spatial-spectral KSRC; and 2) measuring the spatial similarity by means of neighborhood filtering in the kernel feature space. Experiments on several hyperspectral images demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented method, and the proposed neighboring filtering kernel outperforms the existing spatial-spectral kernels. In addition, the proposed spatial-spectral KSRC opens a wide field for future developments in which filtering methods can be easily incorporated.


This study provides observational evidence for feedbacks that amplify the short‐term hydrological response associated with the warm phase of the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation. Our analyses make use of a comprehensive set of independent satellite observations collected over decades to show that much larger local changes to cloud (~50%/K) and precipitation (~60%/K) occur than would be expected from the guidance of Clausius‐Clapeyron theory (~7%/K). This amplification comes from atmospheric feedbacks involving shifts in the patterns of latent and radiative heating that mutually act on the dynamics enhancing changes to the hydrological cycle. We also confirm the existence of an opposing negative flux feedback at the ocean surface, driven largely by solar radiation changes, that opposes the surface warming. Estimates of the strength of this and other feedback factors associated with warming in the Niño3 region are provided from observations. These observations are also used to examine comparative processes and feedbacks in model experiments from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project.