Hidden Markov model (HMM) has been a popular mathematical approach for sequence classification such as speech recognition since 1980s. In this paper, a novel two-channel training strategy is proposed for discriminative training of HMM. For the proposed training strategy, a novel separable-distance function that measures the difference between a pair of training samples is adopted as the criterion function. The symbol emission matrix of an HMM is split into two channels: a static channel to maintain the validity of the HMM and a dynamic channel that is modified to maximize the separable distance. The parameters of the two-channel HMM are estimated by iterative application of expectation-maximization (EM) operations. As an example of the application of the novel approach, a hierarchical speaker-dependent visual speech recognition system is trained using the two-channel HMMs. Results of experiments on identifying a group of confusable visemes indicate that the proposed approach is able to increase the recognition accuracy by an average of 20% compared with the conventional HMMs that are trained with the Baum-Welch estimation.


For the mammalian faunas of 24 landbridge islands in the Gulf of Maine (0.003–279 km2 in size), area accounts for 86% of variance in species richness. The slope, z, of the species-area curve is 0.247. For the seven largest islands (>10km2), the non-equilibrium hypothesis of relaxation following saturation in the post-Pleistocene is suggested by (1) elevated slope of the species-area curve (0.353), (2) correlation of species richness with island age (r=- 0.81) and water depth to mainland (r= -0.70), (3) highly non-random nested subsets of species ranked by island area, and (4) discontinuity with the extremely depauperate faunas of oceanic islands of the eastern North Atlantic. The alternative hypothesis of a dynamic equilibrium determined by recurrent immigration and extinction is supported by (1) documented turnover in 16 species, (2) correlation of species-area residuals with distance (r= - 0.90), (3) distribution dependent upon vagility with reduction or absence of hibernators and other poor dispersers, (4) low levels of endemism, and (5) congruence of community structure with that of mainland fauna for both trophic level and body size.

I conclude that while some insular populations may be relictual, the faunal composition of most of these islands is dependent on recurrent colonization, much of which takes place over ice bridges. However, true equilibrium is perturbed by climatic shifts, range expansions, and human disturbance.


The use of ontologies based on knowledge representation architectures to support search and other decision-making problems in production environments has become a critical component of information systems. The process of building such an ontology can now take advantage of tools such as Protege (Gennari et al. 2002) to build an ontology for any given problem domain. There has also been corresponding work done on the development of tools and utilities that measure the "quality" of an ontology and the metrics that can be used to measure different facets of the ontology. In this paper we analyze an existing ontology that has been in use for fifteen years in the domain of process planning for automotive assembly. This system, originally known as the Direct Labor Management System (DLMS), was developed and deployed at Ford Vehicle Operations in the early 1990s (Rychtyckyj 1999). The requirement for maintaining the DLMS knowledge base over the last fifteen plus years has given us a unique perspective into the various maintenance problems and issues that need to be addressed. This paper will discuss those issues and try to frame the ontology quality issue in terms of our experience at Ford Motor Company.


The paper deals with a robust grid synchronization method for single phase highly distorted power grids. Basically, Phase Looked Loops (PLLs) are able to estimate the phase angle of the fundamental harmonic of the grid voltage used in converter control algorithm to correctly set the power transfer between the energy resource and AC grid. Moreover, PLLs also provide αβ voltage components of the grid fundamental harmonic needed to implement vector control algorithm. With the aim to generate a correct angle estimation even in grids with high distortion of the voltage waveform, a PLL algorithm is proposed that exploits a suitable harmonic decoupling network, based on multi-reference frame transformations, to estimate the amplitude and phase of both fundamental and low-order harmonics composing the ac grid voltage. Numerical simulations confirm the high harmonics rejection capability of the proposed algorithm, as well as, good dynamic response to rapid modification of grid harmonic pollution.


Subsequent sections focus on specific anatomic regions: the eye, orbit, visual pathways, and cranial nerves III, IV, and VI; sinonasal and craniofacial region including cranial nerve V; temporal bone, posterior skull base, posterior fossa, and cranial nerves VII-XII; infrahyoid neck and cervico-thoracic junction (thoracic inlet); thyroid and parathyroid glands; major salivary glands; nasopharynx; oropharynx; oral cavity and floor of the mouth; larynx, hypopharynx, and cervical esophagus; trachea; hypopharynx; and cervical esophagus.


This paper looks at why the MDGs were never fully achieved by the year 2015; with a focus on Kenya; and the lessons learned for future. Specifically, it focuses on the place given to language in the implementation of the set goals. The hypothesis in the current work is that language factor is so important that it cannot be ignored in any sustainable developmental agenda. Failure to take cognizance of this is synonymous to planning to fail. This assumption follows from history which has proven that economies that have succeeded in the past in implementing their developmental agenda had to get this fact right. This is because development relies on knowledge and knowledge is created and disseminated through language. This knowledge only becomes relevant when it is disseminated through the most effective and efficient means; that is, in a language that is well understood by the target population. Data that is used in the analysis is provided by 6 policy makers, 6 policy implementers; this is technocrats and 20 citizens (from five Counties); who are all purposively selected. Findings show that the nonutilization of the generated knowledge, which is caused by low receptive rate, that derives from the type of medium that is used negatively worked against the achievement of the MDGs in Kenya. With lessons learned from the implementation of the MDGs, the paper proposes that for the existing and future developmental agenda (including the achievement of the SDGs), policy makers as well as development partners have to consider language as a paramount strategy in the implementation plan; if they are to succeed. It is argued that the starting point has to be in education, where quality and equity is ensured through a common and well understood linguistic system. This study is guided by the constructivism theory of learning that was proposed by Dewey (1916), Piaget (1950), and Vigotsky (1978).


The 2014 European elections have confirmed the status of the Front National (FN) as major political actor and principal anti-EU force in French politics. Amid growing voter discontent with the ruling parties and declining popular support for the EU, the FN has fashioned a powerful programmatic appeal combining economically left-wing protectionist policies with xenophobic, ethno-pluralist and anti-EU positions. This agenda of demarcation has allowed the party to draw a sizeable constituency of voters who feel threatened by the cultural, economic and political consequences of globalization. The French FN exemplifies also the hard Eurosceptic party, rejecting the project of European integration and calling for France's withdrawal from the EU. Anti-EU positions are incorporated into the FN's typical populist radical right agenda which challenges the fundamental liberal and universalistic values of the European Union. Eurosceptic positions resonate with voters who feel that their voice is no longer being heard by the political elite, both national and European. Whilst isolated within European institutions, the FN is set to accentuate its domestic presence into the 2017 elections in France. Most importantly, Marine Le pen's party will continue to instil anti-EU sentiments in the French public, thereby undermining both EU legitimacy and trust in European institutions.


The application of multilevel converters for exciting permanent-magnet machines with low-phase inductance to dc-link voltage ratios facilitates a reduction in high-frequency switching harmonics. However, converter nonlinearities and, in-particular, on-state device voltage drops, create additional low-frequency harmonics. This paper therefore proposes a generic compensation scheme to accommodate the effects of such converter nonlinearities and, in doing so, improve the harmonic quality of the machine phase currents. Experimental results gathered from a prototype five-level diode-clamped converter validate the benefits of the proposed scheme by showing quantitative reductions in low-frequency harmonics.


A full-vectorial finite-element-based approach is used to find accurate modal solutions for the acoustic modes in a Ge-doped planar silica optical waveguide. To enhance accuracy of the solution, the existing structural symmetry is exploited, and rigorous analyses of the interactions between the guided acoustic and optical modes are performed. The stimulated Brillouin scattering frequency and the overlaps between the fundamental and the higher-order transverse and longitudinal acoustic modes and the fundamental quasi-TE optical mode are presented.


A robust adaptive fuzzy control approach is developed for a class of multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with modeling uncertainties and external disturbances by using both the approximation property of the fuzzy logic systems and the backstepping technique. The MIMO systems are composed of interconnected subsystems in the strict-feedback form. The main characteristics of the developed approach are that the online computation burden is alleviated and the robustness to dynamic uncertainties and external disturbances is improved. It is proven that all the signals of the resulting closed-loop system are uniformly bounded and that the tracking errors converge to a small neighborhood around zero. Two simulation experiments are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach developed in this paper.


Open market and e-commerce change the environment of the manufacturing system. In fact, nowadays, vendors are facing a more and more flexible demand. At the same time, we have more accurate tools to study demand evolution and characteristics. This paper reports a methodology to adopt for optimizing the supply chain inventory management (SCIM) taking into account parameters characterizing this uncertain environment. This approach tends to reduce the cost of parameters changing when dealing with a flexible demand. We focus on the management of stochastic parameters characterizing the demand such as stochastic lead time, quantity and rate and other parameters such as delivery time. The objective fixed is to optimize the profit composed of unsatisfied demand, backlog, inventory and production costs. Since an analytical formula of the profit isn't possible, we use Monte Carlo simulation and genetic algorithms. Numerical results are given for two cases.


For over two decades, epidemiological research has provided increasingly stronger
evidence for a link between fruit and vegetable consumption and, cancer and heart
disease. This has led health experts to recommend that people consume at least 5
servings of fruit and vegetables a day. In the UK, as in many European countries, the
average consumption is approximately half the recommended level. Research has also
shown that there are low levels of nutritional knowledge within the community, which
might be one explanation for these low levels.
The present studies examine the associations between cognitions and behaviour for
intake of fruit and vegetables in two different populations, and then test the efficacy of a
tailored intervention for changing eating behaviour, knowledge and attitudes in two
randomised controlled studies.
Two large studies were carried out in different samples of the population. The first
study took place in a cancer screening setting with an older adult sample (n=1054), and
showed that knowledge and attitudes were independent predictors of dietary behaviour.
Data from the baseline survey were used to create a brief, personalised, tailored
intervention designed to increase knowledge, improve attitudes and thereby modify
behaviour. Results from the 6-week follow-up showed that the intervention was
successful in improving nutritional knowledge, changing attitudes to fruit and
increasing fruit and vegetable intake. Increases in intake were correlated both with
increases in nutritional knowledge and positive change to attitudes.
The second study was planned as a replication and extension of the first, with some
improvements in measures and a more representative sample. It took place in a dental
clinic setting (n=1846). Knowledge and attitudes were again shown to be independent
predictors of fruit and vegetable intake, and variations in knowledge accounted for some
of the demographic variations in intake. Subsequently a 3-group design was then used
to test the effectiveness of the tailored intervention, comparing it this time to a general
intervention and an untreated control group. The tailored intervention group produced
significant changes in behaviour and knowledge compared to both the general
intervention and control group, while the general intervention produced only significant
increases to nutritional knowledge.
The results suggest that tailored interventions can be a successful tool to use for
changing knowledge and attitudes, and is more effective than a standard leaflet for
everybody. Therefore it is important to consider the practicalities of using tailoring in
the design of dietary interventions especially for improving fruit and vegetable intake
which have previously been difficult to adjust.
The two studies were limited by self-report measures of intake, and future work needs
to consider incorporating some kind of objective validation. Also while medical
settings proved feasible for carrying out interventions, participants were not representative of the general population, so any extrapolation to the general population
must be cautious. Future research might examine setting effects for efficacy as well as
feasibility. The recent developments in information technology could be used to assist
future intervention studies in producing tailored interventions for larger groups of
people.


We present results of a stellar occultation by the Jupiter Trojan asteroid Patroclus and its nearly equal size moon, Menoetius. The geocentric mid-time of the event was 2013 October 21 06:43:02 UT. Eleven sites out of 36 successfully recorded an occultation. Seven chords across Patroclus yielded an elliptical limb fit of 124.6 by 98.2 km. There were six chords across Menoetius that yielded an elliptical limb fit of 117.2 by 93.0 km. There were three sites that got chords on both objects. At the time of the occultation we measured a separation of 664.6 km (0.247 arcsec) and a position angle for Menoetius of 265.°7 measured eastward from J2000 north. Combining this occultation data with previous light curve data, the axial ratios of both objects are 1.3 : 1.21 : 1, indicative of a mostly oblate ellipsoid with a slight asymmetry in its equatorial projection. The oblate shape is not an equilibrium shape for the current rotation period, but would be if it were rotating with an ∼8 h period. This faster period is consistent with a pre-evolved state of the system with an orbital separation that is 50% smaller. Our best estimate of the system density is 0.88 g cm−3.


The energy insecurity, environmental pollution, climate change and even reduced rainfall in some countries are prime examples of consequences of the world's excessive reliance on fossil fuels. This study suggests that in some southern islands and coastal areas of Iran, two such problems, namely the growing shortage of potable water and air pollution can be addressed by building a wind-powered seawater desalination plant at the locations. To evaluate such project, first the sites that may provide the highest efficiency need to be identified. In this study, 10 ports and 5 islands in southern Iran, which suffer from water shortage but have access to seawater, are identified as preliminary candidate sites for such project. The criteria influencing the suitability of a location are considered to be wind power density, economic feasibility, topographic condition, frequency of natural disasters, population, and the wind farm's distance from desalination facility. After analyzing and weighting the criteria, the locations are ranked using the ELECTRE III method, and the results are validated using the PROMETHEE method. In conclusion, the results of ranking techniques show that Qeshm Island is the best location for construction of a wind-powered seawater desalination plant.


Abstract : The report deals with laminar boundary layer-shock wave interactions in which the pressure rise generated in an external supersonic, inviscid flow is communicated upstream through the boundary layer, and thereby induces flow separation. In order to describe this phenomenon approximately, including the subsequent reattachment of the flow, an integral or moment method is utilized in which the first moment of momentum is employed, in addition to the usual momentum integral (zeroth moment). The theoretical calculations agree quite well with the adiabatic laminar boundary layer-shock wave interaction experiments of Chapman and Hakkinen at moderate supersonic speeds. A comparison between the calculations and the experimental results of Sterrett and Emery on the free interaction upstream of a forward facing step at M = 6.5 also shows good agreement up to the plateau. The highly-cooled laminar boundary layer-shock wave interaction is qualitatively similar to the adiabatic turbulent boundary layer interaction. The limitations of the two-moment method based on a one parameter family of velocity profiles are discussed and the role of a two-moment, two-parameter method such as Wieghardt's is examined briefly.


Purpose of review To review recent studies on epidemiology, diagnosis, pathophysiology, treatment and prevention of delirium in elderly people. Recent findings There is no evidence that the clinical picture of delirium in elderly people differs from that in younger patients, although it may run a more chronic course. Diagnosing delirium in demented patients, however, may be difficult due to overlap in symptoms of delirium and dementia. Systematic use of screening and diagnostic instruments may help to diminish the common underdiagnosis of delirium. Delirium is best understood as the result of multiple interacting predisposing and precipitating factors. In the elderly, predisposing factors that make patients more susceptible for delirium include cognitive dysfunction and older age, while important precipitating factors that directly cause delirium are any somatic events and the use of anticholinergic drugs. Delirium has a significant negative prognostic impact on functional and cognitive outcome, as well as on morbidity and mortality. Haloperidol remains the standard treatment for delirium, while there is some evidence for the efficacy of risperidone. Other atypical antipsychotics, as well as cholinesterase inhibitors, have not yet been sufficiently studied. Results of studies on the effectiveness of systematic screening of populations at risk and standardized interventions to prevent delirium have been inconclusive. Summary In recent years, the emphasis in the approach to delirium has shifted from ad hoc treatment to systematic screening and prevention. Interest has been raised in treatment options other than haloperidol, such as atypical antipsychotics and procholinergic drugs.


The numbers, distribution and feeding habits of Cranes Grus grus were studied in relation to food availability in a cereal-growing farmland at Laguna de Gallocanta, Spain, from October 1981 to March 1983. The seasonal variation patterns of bird numbers and food availability are similar, both showing peaks in autumn and spring and a minimum in January. The correspondence is higher in zones adjacent to the roost, suggesting that birds prefer to forage as close to the roost as possible. Poor feeding conditions in mid-winter determine a decrease in the mean flock size and a higher dispersion of the birds, as well as a reduction in the wintering population size. Cranes utilize cultivated ground and natural grasslands as feeding areas. Sunflower stubble fields are strongly selected in autumn, while cereal stubble and sown fields are mainly utilized in autumn and spring respectively. Natural grasslands are positively selected.


The paper proposed a preprocessing method for scanning samples based on rinsing technology, and solved the effective fabrication problem of AFM scanning samples based on facilitated dispersing SWCNTs with SDS surface active agents. First, the ultrasonication oscillation method was applied, and the uniform alignment of SWCNTs in SDS was realized. Then, SDS solution of different concentrations was scanned and imaged with AFM, the influence of SDS solution on the imaging quality of SWCNTs was analyzed, and the method to effectively fabricate scanning samples after dispersing SWCNTs was found. The results of the experiments showed that the preprocessing of the SWCNTs solution scanning samples was the decisive factor to influence SWCNTs imaging quality, that the result of rinsing SWCNTs scanning samples for 5s at 0.1ml/s with di-ionized water was the best, and that with the same rinsing rate and angle, the rinsing di-ionized water quantity would influence the alignment degree of SWCNTs on the substrates and SDS macromolecules' residual quantity on SWCNTs scanning samples.


IMPORTANCE
Mutations in the GNAL gene have recently been shown to cause primary torsion dystonia. The GNAL-encoded protein (Gαolf) is important for dopamine D1 receptor function and odorant signal transduction. We sequenced all 12 exons of GNAL in 461 patients from Germany, Serbia, and Japan, including 318 patients with dystonia (190 with cervical dystonia), 51 with hyposmia and Parkinson disease, and 92 with tardive dyskinesia or acute dystonic reactions.

OBSERVATIONS
We identified the following two novel heterozygous putative mutations in GNAL: p.Gly213Ser in a German patient and p.Ala353Thr in a Japanese patient. These variants were predicted to be pathogenic in silico, were absent in ethnically matched control individuals, and impaired Gαolf coupling to D1 receptors in a bioluminescence energy transfer (BRET) assay. Two additional variants appeared to be benign because they behaved like wild-type samples in the BRET assay (p.Ala311Thr) or were detected in ethnically matched controls (p.Thr92Ala). Both patients with likely pathogenic mutations had craniocervical dystonia with onset in the fifth decade of life. No pathogenic mutations were detected in the patients with hyposmia and Parkinson disease, tardive dyskinesias, or acute dystonic reactions.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Mutations in GNAL can cause craniocervical dystonia in different ethnicities. The BRET assay may be a useful tool to support the pathogenicity of identified variants in the GNAL gene.


This report highlights the issues faced by local areas against the backdrop of policies or planning models that have directed local development in the past decades (e.g. introduction of new industries such as information technology/bio-technology following the de-industrialisation of mining/manufacturing industries) but today appear less suitable than expected to ensure the sustainability of local development.
This report is timely in discussing cases from 20 countries around the world and particularly signalling local strategies and initiatives for policy consideration and learning. The report considers together issues at the crossroads of modern local development in the context of demographic change: population mobility and urban shrinkage, regeneration strategies to stimulate sustainable growth, and social dynamics underpinning community stability.


Virus-like DNA nanoparticles have emerged as promising vaccine and gene delivery platforms due to their programmable nature that offers independent control over size, shape, and functionalization. However, as biodegradable materials, their utility for specific therapeutic indications depends on their structural integrity during biodistribution to efficiently target cells, tissues, or organs. Here, we explore reversible minor groove binders to control the degradation half-lives of wireframe DNA origami. Bare, two-helix DNA nanoparticles were found to be stable under typical cell culture conditions in presence of bovine serum, yet they remain susceptible to endonucleases, specifically DNAse I. Moreover, they degrade rapidly in mouse serum, suggesting species-specific degradation. Blocking minor groove accessibility with diamidines resulted in substantial protection against endonucleases, specifically DNAse-I. This strategy was found to be compatible with both varying wireframe DNA origami architectures and functionalization with protein antigens. Our stabilization strategy offers distinct physicochemical properties compared with established cationic polymer-based methods, with synergistic therapeutic potential for minor groove binder delivery for infectious diseases and cancer.


Ecologists have concluded that diversity per se in ecosystems is important to ecosystem function and ecological services. Meta-analyses of several hundred investigations showed that a loss of diversity negatively affected ecosystem function (Balvanera et al., 2006; Cardinale et al., 2006, 2011; Tilman, 2012). Specifically, research showed that loss of species diversity decreased productivity, resilience, nutrient cycling, drought tolerance, options for water management, resistance to pests and efficiency of ecosystems while increasing chances of catastrophic disease (Keesing et al., 2010; Tilman, 2012; Washington, 2013). Yet, the planet's biodiversity is affected by explosions in human population, advancing technology and increasing per capita consumption (Wilson, 2002). Lately, some propose that the future of conservation lies in managing nature for human benefit (Kareiva & Marvier, 2007; Kareiva et al., 2007; Nordhaus & Shellenberger, 2007; Marris, 2011; Kareiva, Lalasz & Marvier, 2012a; Duncan, 2013). Directing conservation action for human benefit is nothing new. It recycles the ideas of Gifford Pinchot, maximum sustainable yield and the Brundtland Commission. Here, we critique some recent assumptions in the various forms of this ideology (hereafter, ideology), many of which use human exceptionalism as a justification: (1) nature is a warehouse for human use; (2) humans can construct new ecosystems from non-native species; (3) humans do not have to live within limits; (4) nature is resilient; (5) nature is a social construct; (6) conservationists preach too much doom and gloom; (7) people can manage nature intensively while preserving biodiversity.


We have reported earlier that silica nanodisks are formed by the reverse micelle sol–gel (RMSG) method, from ternary Aerosol OT (AOT)/n-heptane/water mixtures. These nanodisks are formed from the ternary mixtures with higher water contents and containing a significant concentration of FeCl3. Such mixtures undergo a phase separation. The present work seeks to identify the origin of these nanodisks. They are found to be produced from the lower, water-rich layer and not from the upper, oil-rich layer or from the interfacial region. Further, upon increasing the water content by a factor of 10, the phase separation is achieved in the absence of the salt as well. In the next step, the naodisks are observed to form from concentrated aqueous AOT solutions, with no involvement of organic solvents. Polarized optical microscopy and infrared studies reveal the occurrence of lamellar AOT micelles in these media. These micelles act as the templates for the nanodisks. This phenomenon paves the way for the soft chemical ...


Necroptosis is a form of programmed necrotic cell death in mammals that is mediated by a pair of kinases, RIP1 and RIP3, as well as the RIP3 substrate MLKL. We report here that male reproductive organs of both RIP3-and MLKL-knockout mice retain "youthful" morphology and function into advanced age, while those of age-matched wild type mice deteriorate. The RIP3 phosphorylation of MLKL, the activation marker of necroptosis, is detected in spermatogonial stem cells in the testes of old but not in young wild type mice. When the testes of young wild type mice are given a local necroptotic stimulus, their reproductive organs showed accelerated aging. Feeding of wild type mice with an RIP1 inhibitor prior to the normal onset of age-related changes in their reproductive organs blocked the appearance of signs of aging. Thus, necroptosis in testes promotes the aging-associated deterioration of the male reproductive system in mice.


Moderate wine consumption may be associated with specific health benefits and a healthy lifestyle. However, increased amounts of ethanol are cytotoxic and associated with adverse health outcomes. Alcohol reduction in wine might be an avenue to reduce alcohol related harm without forcing consumers to compromise on lifestyle and benefit from positive aspects of moderate consumption. The aim of this review is to give an overview of viticultural and pre and post fermentation methods to produce low-alcohol wine, and to summarize the current evidence on the consumer acceptance and behaviour related to low-alcohol wine. Strategies for the labelling and marketing of wines with reduced alcohol content are discussed.


Cognitive performance is critical to productivity in many occupations and potentially linked to pollution exposure. We evaluate this potentially important relationship by estimating the effect of pollution exposure on standardized test scores among Israeli high school high-stakes tests (2000-2002). Since students take multiple exams on multiple days in the same location after each grade, we can adopt a fixed effects strategy estimating models with city, school, and student fixed effects. We focus on fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and carbon monoxide (CO), which are considered to be two of the most dangerous forms of air pollution. We find that while PM2.5 and CO levels are only weakly correlated with each other, both exhibit a robust negative relationship with test scores. We also find that PM2.5, which is thought to be particularly damaging for asthmatics, has a larger negative impact on groups with higher rates of asthma. For CO, which affects neurological functioning, the effect is more homogenous across demographic groups. We find that exposure to either pollutant is associated with a significant decline in the probability of not receiving a Bagrut certificate, which is required for college entrance in Israel. An implication of this finding is that by temporarily lowering the productivity of human capital, high pollution levels lead to allocative inefficiency as students with lower human capital are assigned a higher rank than their more qualified peers. This may lead to inefficient allocation of workers across occupations, and possibly a less productive workforce.


A simple, cost effective, sensitive, accurate and precise reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic method is developed for the simultaneous determination of impurities in formoterol fumarate and aclidinium bromide in Duaklir Genuair (powder for inhalation) dosage form. Ascentis express C8, 15cm x 4.6mm, 2.7 µ i.d in gradient mode, with mobile phase containing 2% trimethylamine pH adjusted to 3 Orthophosphoric acid, acetonitrile (85:15 v/v) was used. A flow rate of 1.0mL/min and detection was carried out with 250 nm. The retention times of formoterol fumarate and aclidinium bromide were the 4.3 and 6.6min, respectively. The method is validated by determining its sensitivity, precision, linearity, accuracy. The proposed method is simple, rapid, sensitive, accurate and precise and so that it can be applied for routine quality control analysis of formoterol fumarate and aclidinium bromide in Duaklir Genuair (powder for inhalation) dosage forms.


A topographic target light scattering-differential optical absorption spectroscopy(ToTaL-DOAS) system is developed for measuring average concentrations along a known optical path and studying surface-near distributions of atmospheric trace gases.The telescope of the ToTaL-DOAS system points to targets which are located at known distances from the measurement device and illuminated by sunlight.Average concentrations with high spatial resolution can be retrieved by receiving sunlight reflected from the targets.A filed measurement of NO2 concentration is performed with the ToTaL-DOAS system in Shijiazhuang in the autumn of 2011.The measurement data are compared with concentrations measured by the point monitoring technique at the same site.The results show that the ToTaL-DOAS system is sensitive to the variation of NO2 concentrations along the optical path.


The purpose of this study is to examine the mixing behavior of two test fluids flowing via a passive micromixer with protruded structures arranged at the boundary of the mixer. In the analysis, the theoretical model was based on the three-dimensional conservation equations of mass, momentum and species concentration; whereas, the governing equations were numerically solved by using an iterative SIMPLEC algorithm to resolve flow/transport properties. The predicted mixing efficiency at different axial locations was compared with available measured results in the literature for code validation. Numerical experiments were extended to study the shape effect of boundary protrusion structures on mixing enhancement of a passive micromixer with diamond-shaped obstructions.


This paper begins by providing the historical context for the study of the link between productivity and wages and the role of unions in Japan since 1980. Using quantitative data from a variety of surveys conducted by the Japanese Government and qualitative data from field research, it then documents significant changes in the nature of Japanese unions and Shunto wage bargaining and their role in generating the link between productivity and wages during Japan's "Lost Decade" and subsequent quiet recovery. Wages did not lag behind productivity growth during the "Japanese Miracle" that preceded the "Lost Decade" thanks in part to the contribution of an effective neutral third-party institution trusted by all parties to the development of a share economy with strong cooperation between labour and management and a strong link between wages and productivity. During the "Lost Decade", wages started to fall behind productivity growth, however. Negotiations over base wage increases (base-up) were less pervasive, and negotiations over bonuses took centre stage. The idea of establishing the market for annual wage settlements became less relevant, suggesting the diminishing value of the Shunto synchronization of wage negotiations. In the end, the Japanese bonus system proved to be less downward rigid than the base wage, and this downward flexibility of bonuses appears to be a major factor in lagging wages (along with an insufficient increase in the base wage when productivity rises). The possibility that the changing nature of Japanese enterprise unions was an underlying cause of lagging wages is explored, and policy implications are identified.


We propose a theoretical framework to reconcile episodes of V-shaped and L-shaped recovery, encompassing the behaviour of the U.S. economy before and after the Great Recession. In a DSGE model with endogenous growth, negative demand shocks destroy productive capacity, moving GDP to a lower trajectory. A Taylor rule policy designed to reduce the output gap may counterbalance the shocks, preventing the destruction of economic capacity and inducing a V-shaped recovery. However, when shocks are deep and persistent enough, like during the Great Recession, they call for a downward revision of potential output measures, the so-called switching-track, weakening the recovering role of monetary policy and inducing an L-shaped recovery. When calibrated to the U.S. economy, the model replicates well the L-shaped recovery and switching-track that followed the Great Recession, as well as the V-shaped recoveries that followed the oil shock recessions. JEL Classification: E12, E22, E32, O41, E52


Several of the more important endmember-finding algorithms for hyperspectral data are discussed and some of their shortcomings highlighted. A new algorithm - iterated constrained endmembers (ICE) - which attempts to address these shortcomings is introduced. An example of its use is given. There is also a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of normalizing spectra before the application of ICE or other endmember-finding algorithms.


Abstract Purpose: This piece details the evaluation and implementation of a student-led educational intervention designed to train health professionals on the impact of racism in health care and provide tools to mitigate it. In addition, this conference, cosponsored by medical, nursing, and social work training programs, facilitates development of networks of providers with the knowledge and skills to recognize and address racism in health care. Methods: The conference included 2 keynote speakers, an interprofessional panel, and 15 workshops. Participants (n=220) were asked to complete a survey assessing perceptions of conference content and impact. We compared responses pre- and postconference using Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. Results: Of the survey respondents (n=44), 45.5% were medical students, 13.6% nursing students, and 9% social work students; 65.9% self-identified as a race/ethnicity other than non-Hispanic white; and 63.6% self-identified as female. We found that 47.7% respondents reported they were more comfortable discussing how racism affects health (p<0.001), 36.4% had better understanding of the impact of racism on an individual's health (p<0.001), and 54.5% felt more connected to other health professionals working to recognize and address racism in medicine (p<0.001). Conclusion: These findings suggest that a student-organized conference could potentially be an effective strategy in addressing a critical gap in racism training for health care professionals.


ABSTRACT Sand-sized carbonate fecal pellets are a common to dominant constituent of many shallow marine tropical environments. Ovoid pellets 100-1000 µ in median diameter predominate. Pellets may be soft or hardened by intragranular micritization or cementation. Single grain settling of pellets collected from eight shallow marine environments in south Florida and the Bahamas permits calibration with the hydrodynamic behavior of quartz spheres. Well-hardened carbonate pellets settle at rates equivalent to quartz spheres having a median diameter 70 percent to 100 percent of the pellet size. Soft carbonate pellets containing abundant silt settled as quartz spheres 90 to 30 percent in diameter. Soft carbonate pellets composed mainly of aragonite needle mud settled as quartz spheres 60 to 25 ercent in diameter. From this data, preliminary estimates can be made of the shear velocities necessary for entertainment of pellet or peloidal sands and the propensity of suspended versus bedload transport of different grain types and sizes.


2 Abstract: In this paper generalized definition of instantaneous power quantity in the multiphase system under unbalanced and non-sinusoidal supply condition is discussed. In the area of Active Power Line Conditioners (APLC), shunt APLC is widely used in practice. Many reference current generation methods are proposed by different researchers, but most of them work optimally with balanced and sinusoidal source voltage. This paper proposes a novel concept of decomposing the multiphase current vector into different components, which represents different component of the power quantity. The formation of calculating compensation current according Generalised Instantaneous Power Theory (GIPT) and Modified GIPT has been studied. Next, the behavior of a shunt APLC with these two theories has been studied. Performance of shunt APLC tested and compared under unbalanced non-sinusoidal supply condition. Under distorted and/or unbalanced system voltages, GIPT does not compensate properly the load currents and injects harmonic currents into the supply, which are not originated from the non linear load. Necessary modifications in GIPT more general compensation objective is possible.The validity of the proposed control scheme is verified by the simulation study.


The Socio-Spatial History Recorder system provides a one-stop single-user action solution to creating, tagging, geo-coding, archiving, sharing and streaming of digital artifacts. Users of this solution will no longer need to perform intermediary actions to edit, prepare, and publish their digital artifacts to the Internet or their social networks. For example, in the case of digital still images, this system offers a one-click solution to sharing a digital artifact. An user can shoot a picture, geo-code the picture, display the picture in a mapping application, and share it with another user all by one and only one shutter click on the digital still image capturing device. Social sharing rules and rights can be set up in advance or dynamically configured and the digital artifacts can be encrypted if desired or required. Practical uses of this system in the social domain include unobtrusive social sharing of digital artifacts embedded in their rich interactional contexts. Practical uses are also in application domains that require or would benefit from unobtrusive collection of rich ecological data without disrupting and/or interrupting the user's primary activity cycle. ACM Classification


Abstract We argue that the World Bank has successfully marshaled the Ease of Doing Business (EDB) Index to amass considerable influence over business regulations worldwide. The Ease of Doing is a global performance indicator (GPI), and GPIs—especially those that rate and rank states against one another—are intended to package information to influence the views of an audience important to the target, such as foreign investors or voters, thus generating pressures that induce a change in the target's behavior. The World Bank has succeeded in shaping the global regulatory environment even though the bank has no explicit mandate over regulatory policy and despite questions about EDB accuracy and required policy tradeoffs. We show that the EDB has a dominating market share among business climate indicators. We then use media analyses and observational data to show that EDB has motivated state regulatory shifts. States respond to being publicly ranked and some restructure bureaucracies accordingly. Next we explore plausible influence channels for the EDB ranking and use an experiment involving US portfolio managers to build on existing economics research and examine whether the rankings influence investor sentiment within the experiment. Using a case study of India's multiyear interagency effort to rise in the EDB rankings, as well as its decision to create subnational EDB rankings, we bring the strands of the argument together by showing how politicians see the ranking as affecting domestic politics, altering investor sentiment, and engaging bureaucratic reputation. Overall, a wide variety of evidence converges to illustrate the pressures through which the World Bank has used state rankings to achieve its vision of regulatory reform.


This study sought to investigate the status of E-leaming readiness in public secondary schools in Kisumu County given the agreement by educators and policy makers across the world on the importance of ICTs to the future of education. There is also a policy emphasis by Ministry of Education on ICT integration into education and training systems in Kenya. The main objective of the study was to investigate the effect of e-leaming readiness on e-leaming adoption in secondary schools in Kisumu County, and specifically to assess the level of preparedness of public secondary schools in Kisumu County to implement E-leaming so as to enhance access, equity and quality in secondary education. The study revealed that public secondary schools in Kenya lack adequate ICT infrastructure and connectivity to support effective E-leaming delivery. The schools are facing various challenges which can make E-leaming very difficult to implement, only 11.6% of the school confirmed that they get relevant E-leaming materials while 45% confirmed that they were not receiving relevant material from the internet. 45% of the schools confirmed availability of internet in the schools but only 14.8% of the internet is reliable to support e-learning. The region has frequent power outage with 68.1% of the respondent acknowledging that they experience more than 3 times power outage in a month on average. According the respondents, only 6.7% of them were very ready to roll out the eleaming program in the school. The researcher recommends a consistent students and teachers exposure to e-leaming devices to increase their level of e-leaming readiness by increasing computers contact hours including weekends and further investments in ICT infrastructure by the school. The frequent power outage that hinders e-leaming readiness in various schools can also be reduced if the schools invest more on power back-up systems and alternative power sources. Iii Keyw ords: E-learning, readiness, adoption


Small RNAs are known to mediate silencing of transposable elements and other genomic loci, increasing nucleosome density and preventing undesirable gene expression. Post-zygotic development of the Paramecium somatic genome requires elimination of thousands of transposon remnants (IESs) and transposable elements that are scattered throughout the germline genome (Garnier et al. 2004). The elimination process is guided by Piwi-associated small RNAs and leads to precise cleavage at IES boundaries (Bouhouche et al. 2011; Furrer et al. 2017). Previous research suggests that small RNAs induce heterochromatin formation within IESs, which, in turn, is required for DNA elimination (Liu et al. 2007). Here we show that IES recognition and precise excision is facilitated by recruitment of a homolog of a chromatin remodeler ISWI, which depletes target genomic regions of nucleosomes, making the chromatin accessible for DNA cleavage. ISWI knockdown in Paramecium leads to pronounced inhibition of DNA elimination. Furthermore, nucleosome profiling indicates that ISWI is required for IES elimination in nucleosome-dense genomic regions, while other IESs do not require small RNAs or ISWI for excision. ISWI silencing notably also reduces DNA elimination precision, resulting in aberrant excision at alternative IES boundaries. In summary, we demonstrate that chromatin remodeling that increases DNA accessibility together with small RNAs are necessary for efficient and precise DNA elimination in Paramecium.


The quantum chemical method is employed to study the modified asymmetric allylation of benzaldehyde controlled by diisopropyl D-(-)-tartrate auxiliary. All the structures are optimized completely at the B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level. The (R)-secondary alcohol can be achieved mainly through a six-membered ring chair-like transition state structure. From the relative reaction rates theory the main product configuration predicted is in agreement with the experiment result.


PURPOSE
To evaluate the contribution of toxins to the severity of Staphylococcus aureus endophthalmitis.

METHODS
Experimental endophthalmitis was established by injecting rabbit eyes with wild type S. aureus ISP479 and the isogenic attenuated strain, ISP546, defective in expression of the global regulator locus agr. agr regulates expression of at least 19 exoproteins that are potentially important in the pathogenesis of endophthalmitis. Infections were evaluated using electroretinography, slit lamp biomicroscopy, and histology. Two concentrations (approximately 10 and 1000 organisms) of bacteria were injected.

RESULTS
The agr- strain consistently resulted in slower loss of b-wave response when compared to the wild type strain, irrespective of inoculum size. Clinical signs were less severe among the agr- group at 24 and 48 hours when 10 organisms were injected. However, when the number of bacteria injected was increased to 1000, earlier onset of clinical signs was observed, with both groups showing maximum cell and flare and a white fundal reflex at 48 hours after infection. Histologic examination of eyes enucleated 36 hours after inoculation revealed that the wild type strain induced focal retinal destruction and mild vitritis, whereas eyes infected with the agr- strain remained completely normal. Histologic examination carried out when loss of B-wave response was 100% revealed that retinal changes for both groups could not be distinguished.

CONCLUSIONS
These data indicate that toxin production by S. aureus contributes to severity of endophthalmitis by accelerating the rate of onset of retinal damage. Therefore, toxin-targeting therapies instituted early in the course of infection could preserve retinal function.


A nature inspired algorithm Artificial Bee Colony (ABC) has been used in many different application areas within last decade. Modified ABC algorithm for clustering and classification has been applied on different datasets in previous studies of the authors. In this paper an improvement on fitness function is realized and this improved algorithm (MABC) was applied on ECG heart beats. Electrocardiogram signals obtained from MIT-BIH dataset. Total 8 different heart beat types N, j, V, F, f, A, a and R are classified. In order to achieve better classification accuracy, frequency domain features are used in addition to time domain features. Feature selection is done by using divergence analysis. General classification accuracy and sensitivity results of MABC are compared with other methods, linear nearest mean classifier (NMC) and Kohonen's self organizing map (SOM) classifier. The highest accuracy 97.18% on analyzed dataset has been achieved by using the MABC algorithm as developed in this study.


Bottom hole assemblies (BHA) of oil drilling engineering were simplified as simply supported beam, and parametric resonances of BHA in mud drilling and air drilling were studied. Lateral vibration of BHA, which was induced by bit/formation interaction, was described and reduced into Mathieu equation by means of separation of variables and Galerkin method. Modified strained parameter method was adopted in stability analysis. The parametric resonance zones expressed by weight on bit (WOB) are presented here. It is found that drilling method, speed of rotation (SOR), material properties, and length of compression drillstring all can influence parametric resonance zones. So unstable responses can be avoided by adjusting these parameters.


The immediate result of a high degree of occlusion of the pulmonary artery is sudden dilatation of the right ventricle and right auricle, which may best be termed acute cor pulmonale in contrast to the well known cor pulmonale of chronic nature associated with progressive enlargement of the right side of the heart secondary to certain pulmonary diseases. The clinical evidence of the acute cor pulmonale resulting from pulmonary embolism deserves consideration because of the frequency and importance of the condition and of the common difficulty in diagnosis. The growing readiness of surgeons to undertake the operative procedure for the removal of the embolus from the pulmonary artery further emphasizes the importance of establishing the correct diagnosis, and until this can be done the entire procedure must be regarded as extremely hazardous. During the past two years we have encountered several instructive cases of pulmonary embolism which have shown, we


Zinc titanate ceramics having excellent dielectric properties and low sintering temperature are promising materials for RF/microwave multilayer devices. In this paper, the ZnO-V2O5 addition was added to promote the sintering process in order to obtain low-temperature sintered ceramics with high quality factors. The sintering addition could also restrain ZnTiO3 phase from decomposition. Using this method, low-temperature sintered zinc titanate ceramics with excellent microwave dielectric properties of εr~ 25.3, Q×f~15200GHz, and τf ~ -16 ppm/oC were obtained at sintering temperature of 800oC. The low-fired mechanism, microstructure, phase formation and microwave dielectric properties of ceramics were investigated by XRD, SEM, EDS and network analysis techniques, respectively.


We describe a case of spontaneous gastric rupture in a child of 5 years old. The patient reached us in a serious condition; the anamnesis was negative for traumatic events or gastrointestinal disorders. An abdominal X-ray and CT scan revealed free air and fluid in the abdominal cavity, leading to the diagnosis of gastro-intestinal perforation. Submitted to urgent surgery, a rupture of the posterior wall of the stomach was found that was treated with gastrectomy "a la demande". The surgery follow-up was regular. Morphological and immunohistochemical study showed some muscular abnormalities of the muscular gastric wall.


Considering the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger system with multiply components, we provide a novel framework for constructing energy-preserving algorithms. In detail, based on the high order compact finite difference method, Fourier pseudospectral method and wavelet collocation method for spatial discretizations, a series of high accurate conservative algorithms are presented. The proposed algorithms can preserve the corresponding discrete charge and energy conservation laws exactly, which would guarantee their numerical stabilities during long time computations. Furthermore, several analogous multi-symplectic algorithms are constructed as comparison. Numerical experiments for the unstable plane waves will show the advantages of the proposed algorithms over long time and verify the theoretical analysis.


The bending performance test on one ordinary reinforced concrete beam and six RC beams strengthened with basalt fiber sheets(BFRP) is carried out, and the bending performance of the RC beams strengthened with BFRP is analyzed. The experimental results show that BFRP improves the bending performance of the beam. Pasting one layer,two layers or three layers of BFRP, The ultimate strength RC beams were increased by 29%, 56% and 78%. Basalt fiber sheets and concrete beams can work better together and play an effective role in reinforcement.


The purpose of this study was to determine whether diuretic and natriuretic effects are altered in response to intracerebroventricular (ICV) infusion of clonidine in diabetic rats. Diabetes was induced in male Sprague-Dawley rats by 65 mg/kg i.p. injection of streptozocin, and control rats were injected with vehicle 2 wk before the experiment. Blood glucose levels were significantly elevated in the diabetic group (26.3 ± 1.3 mM) compared with the control group (8.4 ± 1.6 mM). Before and during ICV infusion of clonidine (2 μg · kg−1 · min−1 for 45 min), urine flow and sodium excretion were measured from intact and denervated kidneys in anesthetized diabetic and control rats. The ICV infusion of clonidine significantly increased urine flow in both innervated and denervated kidneys from control rats but not from diabetic rats. There was a significant increase in sodium excretion during ICV infusion of clonidine from innervated kidneys of control rats, and denervation abolished this effect. In diabetic rats, clonidine failed to promote natriuresis from intact kidneys, and similar to control rats, did not promote natriuresis in denervated kidneys. This study demonstrates that 1) the diuretic response to the ICV infusion of clonidine is blunted in diabetic rats, and 2) a natriuretic response to the ICV infusion of clonidine is blunted in innervated kidneys of diabetic rats.


We have systematically investigated the effects of divalent dopants (Sr2+, Pb2+, Ba2+) of varying ionic sizes on the structural and electronic properties of BiFeO3. These include multiferroic, magnetic, Mossbauer and optical measurements, and, in particular, the temperature dependence of the magnetic coercivity. Mossbauer results showed that Fe ions retained their trivalent state, and divalent ion substitution at the trivalent site results in generation of oxygen vacancies. Optical measurements showed that the d–d transition energies develop a small blue shift (90–100 meV), consistent with decreased crystal field splitting while the direct band gap also showed blue shift as a consequence of decreased chemical pressure. The saturation magnetization of the system increases with increasing size of the dopant. This enhancement is ascribed to the local lattice distortions induced by the size difference between the host and the dopant, generation of oxygen vacancies and the suppression/destruction of the antiferromagnetic spiral spin structure. We found an anomalous but systematic decrease in the magnetic coercivity (Hc) at low temperatures, which is explained in terms of an effective magnetic anisotropy that includes the effects of magnetoelectric coupling. The almost linear decrease in Hc with decreasing temperature is qualitatively explained within the effective anisotropy model and the Landau mean field formulation. Our findings give further insight into the coercivity mechanism of Bi0.75A0.25FeO3 (A = Sr2, Ba2+, and Pb2+) bulk ferromagnets and suggest that the coercivity of such multiferroics can be tailored by the combination of magnetic anisotropy and magnetoelectric interaction.


1-Pyridin-2-ylmethyl-1H-indole-3-carbaldehyde and 1-((1-benzyl-1H-1,2,3-triazol-4-yl)methyl)-1H-indole-3-carbaldehyde were synthesized. Their condensation with benzyl amine resulted in indole core containing Schiff bases benzyl-(1-pyridin-2-ylmethyl-1H-indol-3-ylmethylene)amine (L1) and benzyl-[1-(1-benzyl-1H-[1,2,3]triazole-4-ylmethyl)-1H-indol-3-yl methylene]amine (L2) respectively, unknown hitherto. The K2CO3-promoted sulfenylation of the indole formed 3-(pyridin-2-ylsulfanyl)-1H-indole (L3), also unknown so far. The yield of L1–L3 was 72–93%. L1 and L2 on reaction with sodium tetrachloropalladate(II) in the presence of CH3COONa give complexes [Pd(L1/L2-H)Cl] (1/2) in which they bind in a tridentate (N, C−, N′) pincer mode. L3 on reaction with [(MeCN)2PdCl2] results in a dimeric palladacycle [Pd(L3-H)Cl]2 (3) with a spiro ring. The precursor aldehydes, L1–L3 and the Pd(II)-complexes derived from them, were characterized using 1H and 13C{1H} NMR and HR-MS. Complexes 2 and 3, ligands L1 and L3 and the precursor aldehydes of L1 and L2 were authenticated with single crystal X-ray diffraction. The Pd–C bond distances (A) are 1.932(8)/2.115(3) (2/3). The Pd–N bond lengths (A) are: 2.063(7) and 2.028(7) for 2 and 2.053(3) and 2.019(3) for 3. These complexes have been found to be efficient as catalysts for the Suzuki–Miyaura coupling of ArCl (3 as a catalyst) and ArBr and allylation of a variety of aldehydes (1 and 2 as catalysts). The optimum loading of the complexes as catalysts is 0.001–0.01 and 1 mol% respectively for the two reactions, which appear to follow a homogeneous pathway.


Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease are reported to be major risk factors to Alzheimer's disease (AD). These risk factors mainly affect the elderly (over age 60) and previously were believed to only promote vascular dementia (VaD). Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular pathology involving structural lesions of the heart and carotid or vertebral artery stenosis stemming from intima media thickening or vessel plaque formation can insidiously reduce blood flow to the brain. Since heart and carotid artery disease are common findings in elderly patients and can provoke chronic cerebral hypoperfusion, we submit that individuals with even very mild memory complaints should undergo screening using echocardiography and carotid Doppler ultrasound. These non-invasive, safe, cost-effective ultrasound techniques can often detect correctable or treatable early lesions involving the carotid arteries and the heart that contribute to cerebral hypoperfusion. Inasmuch as cerebral hypoperfusion can be a pathophysiologic trigger of AD, its prevention or attenuation should tangibly reverse or at least delay the onset and impact of severe cognitive meltdown. This clinical approach may have an important impact in reducing the number of new AD and VaD cases and lessen the catastrophic socio-economic burden these dementias are expected to have on the US healthcare system in the near future.


At present, to enhance students' innovative ability is an important research topic to engineering education. Although engineering students can learn hard engineering techniques step by step through instilled teaching methods, process-based learning methods as well as formulated learning, but there is no conducive to idea generation and creativity promotion. While art has the characteristics of raising questions and breaking the existing thinking, this paper hopes to cultivate students' ability of divergent thinking and enhance their creativity through the implantation of art. In this study, we introduced CAPE teaching strategy, adopted a curriculum of a Taiwan university of science and technology, used case study as main study method to explore art-infused engineering teaching methods and teaching contents. There are four stages of CAPE: inquiry, cooperation, record and reflection. The results show that: (1) The art teachers' teaching contents are corresponding to the divergent thinking categories (Khandwalla, 1993). (2) Classroom contents enables engineering teachers to focus their teaching from purely technical teaching to the technical application level. When the art teacher and the student discuss their creative techniques and presentation form, it will induce students to challenge old methods and generate different solutions.


The majority of WEC (wave energy converter) projects are expensive and pose a large risk to a developer. Currently no developers have been successful in commercialising a WEC. So far, many wave energy feasibility studies have only considered the LCOE (levelised cost of electricity), assessing investment in marine energy technologies from a purely financial point of view. No previous studies have, however, explicitly accounted for development risk as well as the LCOE to determine the feasibility of a project. This paper proposes a new methodology that can be used to account for both risk and the LCOE to give a clearer picture of the feasibility of a WEC development. By combining the LCOE and risk score for a particular development, the "value for risk" can be calculated, presented here as the "RR ratio" ("Risk/Reward ratio"). A number of case studies were chosen to test the model, investigating the RR ratio for a number of different WEC technologies and ranking them to suggest an optimal development path for the industry. Results showed that projects that combine many innovative technologies provide the best "value for risk". These devices overall had the highest risk, suggesting that multiple developers are likely required to collaborate in order to reduce the risk down to acceptable levels for each.


We analyze the sources of changes in the distribution of hourly wages in the United States using CPS data for the survey years 1976 to 2016. We account for the selection bias from the employment decision by modeling the distribution of annual hours of work and estimating a nonseparable model of wages which uses a control function to account for selection. This allows the inclusion of all individuals working positive hours and thus provides a fuller description of the wage distribution. We decompose changes in the distribution of wages into composition, structural and selection effects. Composition effects have increased wages at all quantiles but the patterns of change are generally determined by the structural effects. Evidence of changes in the selection effects only appear at the lower quantiles of the female wage distribution. These various components combine to produce a substantial increase in wage inequality.


Objective: Pressure can influence the folding of nucleic acids, and the effect of pressure depends on the volumetric difference between folded and unfolded states. In this study, we investigated how modification with hexaethylene glycol affected the folding of a guanine-rich DNA oligonucleotide.
Results: The stability of the G-quadruplex formed by the thrombin binding aptamer (TBA), 5'-GGTTGGTGTGGTTGG-3' (loop regions underlined) modified with hexaethylene glycol (HEG) at the 5'-terminus decreased more significantly as pressure increased than did the G-quadruplex formed by the unmodified TBA. The change of partial molar volume, ΔV, of 5-HEG TBA folding was 101 cm3 mol-1, where as that of TBA was 54.6 cm3 mol-1. The HEG at 5' terminus of TBA increased volume of the folded structure due to induction of dehydration. In contrast, replacement of the 5'-most loop of the TBA G-quadruplex with HEG resulted in a ΔV value of 62.8 cm3 mol-1, whereas replacement of the second loop resulted in a ΔV value of 82.8 cm3 mol-1. It has been suggested that bases of the nucleotides in the second loop form stacking interaction with G-quartet but those in the first loop do not.
Conclusion: These results indicate that a 5' covalently linked HEG disrupts the stacked structure of the second loop on the G-quartet; this stacking accompanied dehydration during the quadruplex formation. Thus, modification with poly(ethylene glycol) units enhances the effect of pressure on the folding of G-quadruplex DNA.


[Publisher's description of the book containing this chapter:]

This book brings together academics, practitioners and experts in the field of forensic psychology to demonstrate the scope of the discipline and push its parameters. Its aim is to go beyond introductory texts to challenge perceptions, to raise questions for research and to pose problems for practice. The editors hope to inspire and stimulate debate about how forensic psychology can aid the practice of justice. The book is divided into six sections, addressing key topics from the discipline: investigation and prosecution; testimony and evidence; serious and persistent offending; treatment as intervention; intervention and prevention and punishment and corrections. The contributors are drawn from the UK, the USA and Australia. This updated, revised and significantly expanded edition develops the picture of diversity and depth of forensic psychology; considers ways in which the discipline has progressed and identifies challenges for its future sustainability and growth. Includes a new section on treatment as intervention with contributions on personality disordered offenders; anger control group work with forensic psychiatric inpatients; and developments in treatment for drug misuse offenders. Additional chapters throughout including contributions on UK police interviews; the investigation and prosecution of rape; the effect of gender in the courtroom; forensic psychology and terrorism; the aetiology of genocide; self harm in prisons; post-corrections reintegration and many more. An innovative textbook on forensic psychology exploring application of the subject and setting forensic psychology in a broader context. Demonstrates ways in which forensic psychology can aid the practice of criminal justice. This book will be essential reading for students of forensic psychology and practitioners working in the field.


Background: Although screening programs for chronic kidney disease (CKD) may be of great value, these programs are not yet implemented in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This study focused on proteinuria and examined its prevalence in terms of the number needed to screen for the different risk factors of CKD. Such knowledge would guide the utility of population screening to prevent end-stage renal disease. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Kinshasa on the Second World Kidney Day. A sample of 3,018 subjects was interviewed and the following measurements were performed: blood pressure, body mass index, glycemia and urine protein. Logistic regression analysis was used to identify determinants of proteinuria. Results: The prevalence of proteinuria was 17.1% (95% CI 15.8–18.6). Other CKD risk factors identified were: hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity and metabolic syndrome. To identify 1 case of proteinuria, one would need to screen 4 persons with diabetes, 5 persons with hypertension, 4 subjects having metabolic syndrome, 5 persons aged ≥72 years and 9 persons without any of the conditions mentioned above. Age, overweight and diabetes were the strongest factors associated with proteinuria. Conclusions: This study indicates that proteinuria and traditional risk factors for CKD are very prevalent in Kinshasa. Realistic policies to stem these conditions should be a public health priority.


Sixteen adult Syrian hamsters were exposed 33 times over a 19-day period to enough halothane to induce a deep surgical plane of anesthesia. The exposures caused no significant change in the total amount of lipid in the exposed lungs; however, the percentage of neutral lipid due to cholesterol increased from 29 +/- 5% to 43 +/- 7% while the percentage of free fatty acid decreased from 33 +/- 3% to 22 +/- 5%. Among the phosphoglycerides, there was a slight shift toward more phosphatidyl choline and less phosphatidyl serine, phosphatidyl glycerol, and phosphatidyl ethanolamine.


In previous papers of this series we described an analytical-numerical method to predict deterministically solute transport under uncertainty based on a new Eulerian-Lagrangian theory. We examined the effect that conditioning on hydraulic data has on predicted velocities and concentrations due to instantaneous point and nonpoint sources and discussed the same effect on spatial plume moments, total mass flow rate across a "compliance surface," cumulative mass release across this surface, and the corresponding travel time distribution. Our analysis to date assumed that the initial state of the plume (the source term or initial concentration) is known with certainty and that the groundwater velocity field is Gaussian. In reality, the initial state of the plume is almost never known with certainty, especially when this state is inferred by sampling a plume at some arbitrary time t0 following introduction of the solute into the subsurface (as is the case at many contaminated sites). Likewise, Monte Carlo simulations have shown that in Gaussian log hydraulic conductivity or log transmissivity fields, of the kind often indicated by in situ hydraulic test data, the longitudinal velocity becomes rapidly lognormal as the variance of the heterogeneities increases. In this paper we show how to handle both of these complications by means of our analytical-numerical method of computation. By revisiting our previous examples, we explore the effects that uncertainty in plume initial state and non-Gaussian velocities may have on predicted plume concentrations and uncertainty due to instantaneous point and nonpoint sources with and without conditioning on measurements of log transmissivity or hydraulic head in two dimensions. One of our findings is that the more common Gaussian models are nonconservative (in a regulatory sense) when applied during early dimensionless times to plumes that are initially short in the direction of mean flow.


Neural crest cells (NCC) segregate from neural folds, swim through extracellular matrix, and differentiate in several cell types. During in vivo and in vitro dispersion, NCC display a substantial proliferative rate. Here, we have evaluated this biological behavior under the influence of different substrates. NCC exhibit the highest proliferative activity on fibronectin substrate, with shortening of the G1 period. This fact is reverted by specific antibody pre-treatment of the substrate. Taking into account that NCC migrate along narrow and restricted pathways rich in essential fibronectin, with high proliferative rates, these results indicate that the fibronectin pathway contributes to increase the cell number, leading to a high population pressure that could participate in the early dispersion of NCC.


Won the Third Prize (Category: Entrepreneurship ) in the "Challenge Cup" National Competition – Hong Kong Regional Final, Hong Kong University Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition 2016.


Abstract Purpose  - Capital  structure  choice  remains  a  crucial  decision  alongside  the  vital  choices intended by a corporate since they have a high consequence on the value and the cost of the company. Therefore this study main focus was to examine the effects of selected firms characteristics on the capital structure decisions of companies registered at the Nairobi Stock exchange. Methodology - The study adopted a descriptive research design and used secondary data. The collected data was analyzed with the help of the SPSS software version 23 and presented with the help of frequency distributions, computation of mean and standard deviation. The association between the research variables was presented in a correlation matrix and a regression model. Findings - Firm size showed greatest influence on the company choice of capital structure among the firms followed by asset structure, profitability and liquidity. Further, the regression model also generated adjusted R squared value of 0.692 that is to mean 69.2% of the variations in financing  options  can  be  well  illustrated  by  variations  in  the  firm  size,  asset  structure, profitability  and  liquidity.  The  findings  from  the  study  indicated  an  affirmative  correlation among  firm's  size  and  the  financing  options.  The  findings  also  revealed  an  affirmative association  among  assets  structure  against  the  source  of  financing.  The  findings  from  the research also showed that there is undesirable association among the firm's profitability and source of financing of the firms listed at the NSE while a negative relationship among liquidity and the principal investment was exhibited in the research findings. This leads to a conclusion that rise in company size resulted to a rise in the investment structure of a firm therefore increase in demand to increase the capital base by seeking more financing. The study also found out that an increase in asset structure resulted in an increase in capital structure while an increase in profitability levels resulted in decrease in capital structure; increase in in liquidity levels led to a decrease in capital structure of the firms listed at the NSE. Implications – The study findings emphasize that firms should understand the specific characteristics that influence choice of their respective capital structure in order to opt for the best financing option. The study also further suggested that similar studies should be carried out every three to five years to find out the significance of firm characteristics on choice of capital structure of firms listed at the NSE Value - The findings of the study would be significant to public institutions and other non-listed firms in the choice of financing options and design of capital structure. Policy makers would infer the findings in formulation of relevant capital structure policies.


The parallel execution of discrete-event simulations on commodity GPUs has been shown to achieve high event rates. Most previous proposals have focused on conservative synchronization, which typically extracts only limited parallelism in cases of low event density in simulated time. We present the design and implementation of an optimistic fully GPU-based parallel discrete-event simulator based on the Time Warp synchronization algorithm. The optimistic simulator implementation is compared with an otherwise identical implementation using conservative synchronization. Our evaluation shows that in most cases, the increase in parallelism when using optimistic synchronization significantly outweighs the increased overhead for state keeping and rollbacks. To reduce the cost of state keeping, we show how XORWOW, the default pseudo-random number generator in CUDA, can be reversed based solely on its current state. Since the optimal configuration of multiple performance-critical simulator parameters depends on the behavior of the simulation model, these parameters are adapted dynamically based on performance measurements and heuristic optimization at runtime. We evaluate the simulator using the PHOLD benchmark model and a simplified model of peer-to-peer networks using the Kademlia protocol. On a commodity GPU, the optimistic simulator achieves event rates of up to 81.4 million events per second and a speedup of up to 3.6 compared with conservative synchronization.


Data caching can significantly improve the efficiency of information access in a wireless ad hoc network by reducing the access latency and bandwidth usage. However, designing efficient distributed caching algorithms is nontrivial when network nodes have limited memory. In this article, we consider the cache placement problem of minimizing total data access cost in ad hoc networks with multiple data items and nodes with limited memory capacity. The above optimization problem is known to be NP-hard. Defining benefit as the reduction in total access cost, we present a polynomial-time centralized approximation algorithm that provably delivers a solution whose benefit is at least 1/4 (1/2 for uniform-size data items) of the optimal benefit. The approximation algorithm is amenable to localized distributed implementation, which is shown via simulations to perform close to the approximation algorithm. Our distributed algorithm naturally extends to networks with mobile nodes. We simulate our distributed algorithm using a network simulator (ns2) and demonstrate that it significantly outperforms another existing caching technique (by Yin and Cao [33]) in all important performance metrics. The performance differential is particularly large in more challenging scenarios such as higher access frequency and smaller memory.


Targeting the protein survivin could reduce metastasis by preventing energy production needed for cancer cell motility. Energy for metastasis Survivin is a member of a family of proteins that inhibit cell death, and a drug that inhibits this protein is undergoing clinical testing. Survivin is found both in the cytoplasm and in mitochondria, the organelles that produce ATP (adenosine 5′-triphosphate). Rivadeneira et al. found that in PC3 prostate cancer cells, the mitochondrial pool of survivin enhanced metabolic processes that produce ATP and promoted the relocalization of mitochondria to the areas of the cell that would need energy to fuel the subcellular changes that are required for migration. Targeting survivin, either pharmacologically or with RNA interference, decreased the movement of PC3 cells. Overexpressing mitochondrial survivin in cancer cells that have low motility increased their ability to metastasize in mice. Survivin promotes cell division and suppresses apoptosis in many human cancers, and increased abundance correlates with metastasis and poor prognosis. We showed that a pool of survivin that localized to the mitochondria of certain tumor cell lines enhanced the stability of oxidative phosphorylation complex II, which promoted cellular respiration. Survivin also supported the subcellular trafficking of mitochondria to the cortical cytoskeleton of tumor cells, which was associated with increased membrane ruffling, increased focal adhesion complex turnover, and increased tumor cell migration and invasion in cultured cells, and enhanced metastatic dissemination in vivo. Therefore, we found that mitochondrial respiration enhanced by survivin contributes to cancer metabolism, and relocalized mitochondria may provide a "regional" energy source to fuel tumor cell invasion and metastasis.


Abstract: This study aims to examine the effect between abnormal audit fee, which is the difference between actual audit fee and normal audit fee levels, on the audit quality proxied by accrual discretionary. The study was conducted on 414 samples of manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange for the 2013-2018 observation period. The multiple linear regression test results show a relationship between the main variables is asymmetric, which depends on the sign of abnormal audit fees. For observations with negative abnormal audit fees or below normal audit fee levels, it's showed that there is no significant effect between audit quality and abnormal audit fees. In fact, the findings indicate that there is a negative effect between abnormal audit fees and audit quality when tested on observations with negative abnormal audit fees or above normal audit fees levels. These results indicate that there is a dependence between the auditor and the client when the client pays a high audit fee so that it is possible to let the client manage earnings through discretionary accruals, which decreases the audit quality.


The Minnesota Virtual Clinic is a web-based educational tool using a simulated EMR to expose students to critical basic science and clinical concepts in the context of patient care. The clinic enrolls a group of simulated patients representing a variety of conditions and cultural backgrounds and follows them over time. Students "attend" the clinic weekly to review the latest developments for its patients. The underlying tools facilitate a variety of educational links for any item of information from simple popup windows for definitions to illustrative images and interactive student exercises. At the same time it provides and introduction to certain informatics practices including basic security and use of an EMR for patient care.


The building materials used as a coating on the walls are exposed at different conditions of the weather for long periods of time, reason why is very important to determine the effects of sunlight, heat, humidity and other effects of climate change in the colour and the properties of these materials. In this work was carried out a study on the behaviour of colour and gloss of white cement with some different industrial waste additions submitted to ultra-violet light exposure. The addition of the different materials employed in this work does not modify lightness or chromatic coordinates after the exposure at ultraviolet light, however reduces significantly the gloss of the samples, including white Portland cement.


Transit transfers are a necessary inconvenience to riders. They support strong hierarchical networks by connecting various local, regional, and express lines through a variety of modes. This is true in Seattle, where many lines were redrawn to feed into the Link Light Rail network. Previous transfer studies, using surveys, found that perceived safety, distance, and personal health were significant predictors of transfers. This study aims to use smartcard data and generalized linear modeling to estimate which elements of transfers are commonly overcome—and which are not—among riders boarding the Link Light Rail in Seattle and its suburbs. The aims of this research are twofold: (1) critical analysis of attributes of transfer barriers so that the future station area could serve improved riders' accessibility; (2) equity of transfer barriers among the users by analyzing the user breakdown of the origin lines and the destination. We use Seattle's One Regional Card for All smartcard data among the Link Light Rail riders in the Seattle metropolitan area in 2019, and applied a negative binomial generalized linear model. The model suggests that walking distance and walking grade have significant effects on transfers. For the users' equity analysis, the disabled population tends to transfer less, while the low-income and youth riders populations tend to transfer more often. Future research could incorporate a more mixed-methods approach to confirm some of these findings or include station amenities, such as live schedule updates for common transfer lines.


This paper addresses the area of video annotation, indexing and retrieval, and shows how a set of tools can be employed, along with domain knowledge, to detect narrative structure in broadcast news. The initial structure is detected using low-level audio visual processing in conjunction with domain knowledge. Higher level processing may then utilize the initial structure detected to direct processing to improve and extend the initial classification.

The structure detected breaks a news broadcast into segments, each of which contains a single topic of discussion. Further the segments are labeled as a) anchor person or reporter, b) footage with a voice over or c) sound bite. This labeling may be used to provide a summary, for example by presenting a thumbnail for each reporter present in a section of the video. The inclusion of domain knowledge in computation allows more directed application of high level processing, giving much greater efficiency of effort expended. This allows valid deductions to be made about structure and semantics of the contents of a news video stream, as demonstrated by our experiments on CNN news broadcasts.


Intracellular microelectrodes were used to record from individual cells in midguts isolated from Spodoptera littoralis caterpillars. Recorded potentials, referenced to the basal (haemolymph) surface, showed a bimodal distribution, with maxima in the ranges 0 to −10 and −30 to −40 mV. In experiments where the fluorescent dye Lucifer Yellow CH was ionophoresed from the recording microelectrode, fluorescence was associated with single cells only for membrane potentials more negative than −25 mV. Examination of tissue sections showed these cells to be of both columnar and goblet types, in an approximate 2:1 ratio. This conclusion conflicts with that of a previous study on other caterpillar species, in which it was concluded that the goblet cells had basal membrane potentials of only a few mV. Attempts to discriminate between the two cell types by resistance measurements were unsuccessful. The resistance values obtained were substantially higher than those in the previous study, although they are consistent with those predicted from the overall tissue resistance. The major electrical effect of potassium ion transport inhibition by 1 m-KCN was on the apical membrane, supporting the view that the potassium pump is located there. The major initial effect of potassium ion removal was on the basal membrane, which is as expected if this membrane is permeable primarily to potassium. Our inability to discriminate between goblet and columnar cells by any electrical criterion suggests that both cell types may be able to transport potassium.


We used neural networks (NNs) to model the drying water retention curve (WRC) of 204 sandy soil samples from particle-size distribution (PSD), soil organic matter content (SOM), and bulk density (BD). Neural networks can relate multiple model input data to multiple model output data without the need of an a priori model concept. In this way a high performance black-box model is created, which is very useful in a data exploration effort to assess the maximum obtainable prediction accuracy. We used a series of NN models with an increasing parametrization of input and output variables to get a better interpretability of model results. In the first two models we used the nine PSD fractions, BD, and SOM as input, while we predicted the nine points of the water retention curve. These NNs had 12 input and 9 output variables, predicting WRCs with an average root-mean-square residual (RMSR) water content of 0.020 cm3 cm−3. After a few intermediary models with increasing parametrization of PSD and WRC using (adapted) van Genuchten [1980] equations we arrived at a final NN model that used six input variables to predict three van Genuchten [1980] parameters resulting in a RMSR of 0.024 cm3 cm−3. We found saturated and residual water contents to be unrelated to the PSD, BD, or SOM, therefore the saturated water content was considered to be an independent input variable, while the residual water content was set to zero. Sensitivity analyses showed that the PSD had a major influence on the shape of the WRC, while BD and SOM were less important. On the basis of these sensitivity analyses we established more explicit equations that demonstrated similarity relations between PSD and WRC and incorporated effects of SOM and BD in an empirical way. Despite the fact that we considered a large number of linear and nonlinear variants these equations had a weaker performance (RMSR: 0.029 cm3 cm−3) than the NN models, proving the modeling power of that technique.


[1] Sea level rise (SLR) is an inescapable consequence of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, with potentially harmful effects on human populations in coastal and island regions. Observational evidence indicates that global sea level has risen in the 20th century, and climate models project an acceleration of this trend in the coming decades. Here we analyze rates of future SLR on regional scales in a 40-member ensemble of climate change projections with the Community Climate System Model Version 3. This unique ensemble allows us to assess uncertainty in the magnitude of 21st century SLR due to internal climate variability alone. We find that simulated regional SLR at mid-century can vary by a factor of 2 depending on location, with the North Atlantic and Pacific showing the greatest range. This uncertainty in regional SLR results primarily from internal variations in the wind-driven and buoyancy-driven ocean circulations.


Image composition targets at inserting a foreground object into a background image. Most previous image composition methods focus on adjusting the foreground to make it compatible with background while ignoring the shadow effect of foreground on the background. In this work, we focus on generating plausible shadow for the foreground object in the composite image. First, we contribute a real-world shadow generation dataset DESOBA by generating synthetic composite images based on paired real images and deshadowed images. Then, we propose a novel shadow generation network SGRNet, which consists of a shadow mask prediction stage and a shadow filling stage. In the shadow mask prediction stage, foreground and background information are thoroughly interacted to generate foreground shadow mask. In the shadow filling stage, shadow parameters are predicted to fill the shadow area. Extensive experiments on our DESOBA dataset and real composite images demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Our dataset and code are available at https://github.com/bcmi/Object-Shadow-Generation- Dataset-DESOBA.


Recently, Masked Image Modeling (MIM) achieves great success in self-supervised visual recognition. However, as a reconstruction-based framework, it is still an open question to understand how MIM works, since MIM appears very different from previous well-studied siamese approaches such as contrastive learning. In this paper, we propose a new viewpoint: MIM implicitly learns occlusion-invariant features, which is analogous to other siamese methods while the latter learns other invariance. By relaxing MIM formulation into an equivalent siamese form, MIM methods can be interpreted in a unified framework with conventional methods, among which only a) data transformations, i.e. what invariance to learn, and b) similarity measurements are different. Furthermore, taking MAE [29] as a representative example of MIM, we empirically find the success of MIM models relates a little to the choice of similarity functions, but the learned occlusion invariant feature introduced by masked image - it turns out to be a favored initialization for vision transformers, even though the learned feature could be less semantic. We hope our findings could inspire researchers to develop more powerful self-supervised methods in computer vision community.


A permutation \tau contains another permutation \sigma as a pattern if \tau has a subsequence whose elements are in the same order with respect to size as the elements in \sigma. This defines a partial order on the set of all permutations, and gives a graded poset P. We give a large class of pairs of permutations whose intervals in P have Mobius function 0. Also, we give a solution to the problem when \sigma occurs precisely once in \tau, and \sigma and \tau satisfy certain further conditions, in which case the Mobius function is shown to be either -1, 0 or 1. We conjecture that for intervals [\sigma,\tau] consisting of permutations avoiding the pattern 132, the magnitude of the Mobius function is bounded by the number of occurrences of \sigma in \tau. We also conjecture that the Mobius function of the interval [1,\tau] is -1, 0 or 1.


Intra-annual density fluctuations (IADFs) in tree rings are generally considered structural anomalies caused by deviations from the "normal course" of xylogenesis during the growing season. This definition is based on the bias that, under "normal conditions", cambial activity stops once a year. Each tree ring can thus be dated to one calendar year, which is one of the principles of dendrochronology. The formation of IADFs can be triggered directly by environmental changes, especially in precipitation and temperature, that affect cambial activity and cell differentiation. It can also be the result of limited photosynthesis, due to defoliation induced by biotic or abiotic constraints.Often indicated with alternative terms, IADFs were first described in the 1930s, and recently reported for many trees and shrubs from different ecosystems throughout the world, particularly for Mediterranean species. Different types of IADFs have been detected; their formation and structural properties depend on many factors including tree genotype, age, size, rooting depth, habitat, soil, climate, photosynthetic activity, and allocation strategies. Whether IADFs affect the adaptive capability of plants remains, however, unclear.We provide an overview of the main anatomical features of IADFs and their occurrence in tree rings from various environments and climatic regimes. We propose a simplified way of classifying them and discuss the hypotheses about their functional role and the factors triggering their formation. To understand the ecological role of IADFs better, we recommend a multidisciplinary approach, involving wood anatomy, dendroecology, and stable isotopes, which has already been applied for Mediterranean species. We conclude by considering that IADFs appear to be the "rule" rather than "anomalies" in some ecosystems where they help plants cope with fluctuating environmental conditions. Moreover, their anatomical structure represents a valuable proxy of past climatic conditions at a sub-seasonal resolution and may be relevant to adapt hydraulic functioning of living trees to changing climatic conditions.


One of the conditions for successful livestock breeding and efficient livestock production is to ensure quality feed. High quality feed for livestock is alfalfa, which has a very high nutritional value and its cultivation is also important for crop production in terms of improving the soil structure and nitrogen enrichment. The aim of this paper is to inform about the experimental investigations of alfalfa drying and colour changes under different drying conditions. The results of natural convection at 27.5 °C and 40% relative air humidity are compared with forced convection at 1.2 m s-1 air flow velocity at the same air temperature and with results of drying by natural convection at 50 °C. The dry matter content was measured gravimetrically after drying in a hot air dryer at 105 °C. Higher drying rates shorten the time required for drying and earlier preservation and storage in the hayloft or in the hay bales. This reduces the risk of wetting of feed such by rain and degradation by fungi, etc. A shorter drying time is also important in terms of energy savings. The precise knowledge of the drying process and drying curves allows also to determine the appropriate time for storage and conservation for production of another type of fodder e.g. haylage or silage. The measurement results show a positive effect of higher drying speeds as well as increased air temperature. Higher drying air temperature during convection led to the partial lightening and greater yellowing of the feed.


Current tort reforms cap awards for non-economic damages or make it difficult for plaintiffs to prevail in court. One of the justifications for these reforms is the high cost of positive defensive medicine, defined as physicians ordering more services than a stylized optimal level of care in order to minimize legal risks. However, the extent – and even existence – of defensive medicine is the subject of intense debate. Using comprehensive claims data from Taiwan, this paper contributes to the literature by credibly establishing a causal link between increased malpractice liability and the practice of defensive medicine in obstetrics. Moreover, back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the cost of defensive medicine is small, or approximately 0.3% of total health spending in obstetrics. The results of my empirical investigation also suggest that various institutional and legal factors can enhance or mitigate the effect of defensive medicine. In particular, my paper provides empirical support that enterprise insurance, or malpractice insurance "purchased" at the enterprise rather than the individual physician level, can mitigate the practice of defensive medicine.