This paper presents a model for two-dimensional electrochemical microchannel flow including the propagation of uncertainty from model parameters to the simulation results. For a detailed representation of electroosmotic and pressure-driven microchannel flow, the model considers the coupled momentum, species transport, and electrostatic field equations, including variable zeta potential. The chemistry model accounts for pH-dependent protein labeling reactions as well as detailed buffer electrochemistry in a mixed finite-rate/equilibrium formulation. Uncertainty from the model parameters and boundary conditions is propagated to the model predictions using a pseudo-spectral stochastic formulation with polynomial chaos (PC) representations for parameters and field quantities. Using a Galerkin approach, the governing equations are reformulated into equations for the coefficients in the PC expansion. The implementation of the physical model with the stochastic uncertainty propagation is applied to protein-labeling in a homogeneous buffer, as well as in two-dimensional electrochemical microchannel flow. The results for the two-dimensional channel show strong distortion of sample profiles due to ion movement and consequent buffer disturbances. The uncertainty in these results is dominated by the uncertainty in the applied voltage across the channel.


Answer: We agree that precipitation are triggered by "orographic interaction", however, we found this expression too generic as it includes all type of interaction between a mountain and the atmospheric flow. Here, we are specifically talking about the forced uplift of a moisture flow directed towards a mountain range, hence "cross-barrier moisture flow". In the text "cross-barrier" is always an adjective associated with "wind", "flow" or "moisture transport", and we don't see how " orographic interaction" would have the same meaning. In fact, "cross-barrier flow" is a relatively common expression in the literature on mountain meteorology (e.g. Mountain Meteorology: Fundamentals and Applications, Whiteman 2000, Mountain Weather Research and Forecasting, Bradley et al. 2021)


This thesis examines how the expansion of a steam-powered Royal Navy from the second half of the nineteenth century had wider ramifications across the British Empire. In particular, it considers how steam propulsion made vessels utterly dependent on a particular resource – coal – and its distribution around the world. In doing so, it shows that the 'coal question', almost totally ignored in previous histories, was central to questions of imperial and trade defence, required the creation of infrastructures that spanned the globe, and connected British sailors with a plethora of different imperial, maritime, and foreign peoples.

Although a limited number of studies have highlighted the importance of coal to imperial defence, this thesis considers the wider context of the period 1870−1914 in order to understand the significant place of coal in these discussions. In doing so, it shows coal's place within wider changes to political ideologies, imperial defence schemes, popular imperialism and navalism, knowledge collection, and the growth of the state apparatus.

A robust coaling infrastructure was required to ensure quality naval coal was available globally on a huge geographical scale. This involved a large number of bodies, but this has never been examined by scholars for this period. Although naval coaling relied heavily on the coal export industry, the Admiralty had a key role in ensuring that the infrastructure, particularly after 1880, could cope with increases in ship size and number and competition from its rivals. The thesis also shows how these processes worked on the ground, from testing and purchasing coal to the methods and labour used to load in on warships.

The thesis also shows that the necessity of coaling in foreign stations fostered new interactions between naval personnel and the wider world. Although naval visits to these places are prime examples of British encounters beyond its own shores at the zenith of empire, these are largely absent from existing studies. Thus, it explores how the interactions with local populations, other maritime visitors, and the stations themselves shaped the experience of sailors abroad, and created a maritime community spanning large oceanic spaces.


In this contribution, we investigate the impact of channel correlation on the ergodic capacity, capacity statistics and symbol error rate (SER) for maximal ratio combiner (MRC) multichannel diversity systems over correlated Rayleigh fading channels. We derive exact closed-form expressions for average channel capacity, an upper bound and its asymptotically tight approximation. The capacity statistics moment generating function (MGF), complementary cumulative distribution function (CDF) and probability density function (PDF) derived are valid for arbitrary number of receive antennas. Furthermore, we derive an exact closed expression for general M-PSK modulation. Correlation among channels degrades the system performance as expected.


In order to estimate agroforestry typology of concerned cocoa based agroforests, a study was carry out in the Mbam and Inoubou division, Centre region of Cameroon. It focalized on farmer's agroforests diversity strategies and the relationship between these systems and associated fruit trees planted to raise the revenues. To achieve this goal, 26 sampling plots of 100 x 40 m has been establish in cocoa based agroforests in six rural villages. Inventories conducted in 10.4 ha reveal the presence of 1642 plants species, grouped into 59 species, 41 genera and 25 families. Moraceae, Sterculiaceae, Rutaceae, Mimosaceae, Bignoniaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Anacardiaceae and Arecaceae appears as dominant families and the common genera were Albizia, Citrus and Ficus representing four species each. The average tree density calculated was 172.166 stems per hectare. In terms of species richness and diversity, the Shannon index found was 4.63 and 0.042 was the Simpson index while the Pielou Equitability was 0.46, highlighting the diversity as well as the stability of these types of agro-vegetations. These cocoa plantations are also well diversified with the presence of many associated fruits trees species. A total number of 19 exotic fruits trees species were recorded and among them, only eight species were found indigenous or native. The most frequent exotic tree species was Mangifera indica found in all sampling plots. This study emphasizes the importance of agroforestry systems in the improvement of local livelihoods regarding the frequency of associated edible fruits species, integrated voluntary by farmer to increase their income and thus fighting against poverty and maintaining their wellbeing during the less or unproductive season of cocoa fruits.

 Key words: Agroforest, Cameroon, cocoa tree, exotic species, farmer's livelihoods, Mbam and Inoubou, species richness and density.


The label 'young carers' is often applied to those children who support and care for parents with mental health problems. This paper reviews the range of research on the impact of parental mental health problems on these children and considers the risks that need to be taken into account when they become young carers, but may not receive adequate care themselves. This research material is important when considering child protection strategies, both in relation to the significant harm threshold and when planning for care.


Purpose: The goal of this research is to identify the planning techniques of Smart Green City with Ubiquitous method and carbon-neutral city planning techniques and to induce the main planning techniques through the analysis of relative importance and practical adaptation. Method: First of all, eighteen planning techniques were derived and categorized into three organization systems and six sectors through literature review and FGI analysis considering the applicability of Ubiquitous service for carbon-neutral city planning techniques. Secondly, based on expert surveys and AHP analysis, the importance of Smart Green City planning techniques was evaluated. Thirdly, using case study, six cases related to Smart Green City were analyzed for the current status of application of planning techniques. Lastly, considering the importance of planning techniques and practical aspects, the characteristics of Smart Green City and its implication were estimated. Result: Energy, Resource and Waste and Transportation sector were identified as important sectors for Smart Green City. In addition, 'Construction of Smart Grid', 'System for Utilization of New & Renewable Energy', 'Smart Resource Circulation Management System', 'Establishment of Public Transportation Information System basis', 'Construction of Pedestrian / Bicycle oriented Road Environment' are essential planning techniques to create Smart Green City.


This paper deals with Wound Rotor Synchronous Motor (WRSM) purposely designed for Integrated Starter and Generator (ISG) installed in 42V automotive electrical system. Not only design objective and specifications of WRSM, but its adaptive design to minimize torque ripple and back-EMF Total Harmonics Distortion (THD) are considered. Furthermore, design characteristics of designed prototype have been investigated numerically in terms of torque, back EMF, loss, and efficiency, which are verified by performance comparison with Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine based on Finite Element Analysis (FEA).


DNA methylation has been implicated in chromatin condensation and nuclear organization, especially at sites of constitutive heterochromatin. How this is mediated has not been clear. In this study, using mutant mouse embryonic stem cells completely lacking in DNA methylation, we show that DNA methylation affects nuclear organization and nucleosome structure but not chromatin compaction. In the absence of DNA methylation, there is increased nuclear clustering of pericentric heterochromatin and extensive changes in primary chromatin structure. Global levels of histone H3 methylation and acetylation are altered, and there is a decrease in the mobility of linker histones. However, the compaction of both bulk chromatin and heterochromatin, as assayed by nuclease digestion and sucrose gradient sedimentation, is unaltered by the loss of DNA methylation. This study shows how the complete loss of a major epigenetic mark can have an impact on unexpected levels of chromatin structure and nuclear organization and provides evidence for a novel link between DNA methylation and linker histones in the regulation of chromatin structure.


To understand a stability of the orbital-modulated (OM) state in Sr2-xRxMnO4 (R = Pr, Nd), the crystallographic features of oxide samples with 0.20 < x ≤ 0.50, prepared by the coprecipitation technique, have been investigated by transmission electron microscopy. When the Pr content x corresponding to the eg-electron concentration increased from x = 0, the OM state appeared in 0.20 < x ≤ 0.40 as a neighboring state of an orbital ordered (OO) state around x = 0.20. The interesting features are that around x = 0.44 there is a nanometer-sized coexisting state consisting of the OM and disordered tetragonal (DT) states, and that an average size of OM-state regions in the coexisting state decreases with increasing the eg-electron concentration. In addition, the so-called CE-type antiferromagnetic state found in Sr1.5La0.5MnO4 is absent in the Nd and Pr cases. This suggests that the stability of the OM state is not directly associated with charge ordering of eg electrons, but basically due to only their orbital ordering.


People instinctively recognize facial expression as a key to nonverbal communication, which has been confirmed by many different research projects. A change in intensity or magnitude of even one specific facial expression can cause different interpretations. A systematic method for generating facial expression syntheses, while mimicking realistic facial expressions and intensities, is a strong need in various applications. Although manually produced animation is typically of high quality, the process is slow and costly-therefore, often unrealistic for low polygonal applications. In this paper, we present a simple and efficient emotional-intensity-based expression cloning process for low-polygonal-based applications, by generating a customized face, as well as by cloning facial expressions. We define intensity mappings to measure expression intensity. Once a source expression is determined by a set of suitable parameter values in a customized 3D face and its embedded muscles, expressions for any target face(s) can be easily cloned by using the same set of parameters. Through experimental study, including facial expression simulation and cloning with intensity mapping, our research reconfirms traditional psychological findings. Additionally, we discuss the method's overall usability and how it allows us to automatically adjust a customized face with embedded facial muscles while mimicking the user's facial configuration, expression, and intensity.


Dorokhin Victor - Postgraduate Student, Law Faculty, Saint Petersburg State University. Address: 7, 22 Liniya VO, Saint Petersburg, 199026, Russian Federation. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com paper deals with the biography and the landmarks in the intellectual activity of Richard A. Posner, an American legal theorist, one of the founders of a modern jurisprudence theory, i.e. economic analysis of law. In this article, which is an introduction to the translated article by Posner Creating a Legal Framework for Economic Development, the author of the article focuses on the contribution of the legal theorist to the modern discussions on the balance between economics and law and the explanation of human behavior. The author of the article stresses that Posner's achievement is the application of the economic theory to understand the behavior of the subjects of law and to regulate the activity of various public institutions including those of antimonopoly policy, utilities and telecommunication market, as well as the issues of civil law responsibility, contract and procedural law. R. Posner has developed and justified the theory that common law may be best interpreted via the intention of judges to maximize the economic efficiency to resolve legal cases and extrapolated the economic analysis of law to new for such an analysis aspects, i.e. family relations, race discrimination, privacy, judicial practice. As to the economic analysis of law, Posner specifies two major causes. First, people even taking non-market decisions e.g. selecting a driving speed show rationale and maximize benefit from a certain decision considering the costs related to this choice. Secondly, norms of law set prices on a certain decision. Thus, changes of prices influence the quantity of activity which a person is ready to perform. The author is confident that studying Posner's ideas is a relevant task for Russian jurisprudence.


Moral disengagement refers to cognitive processes of misrepresenting immoral acts in order to justify them. Research on moral disengagement factors in violent video games assumes that the digital representation of violence in video games is meaningfully similar to the cognitive misrepresentation of immoral acts that defines moral disengagement. Thus, the story worlds of violent video games are thought to misrepresent violence as being justified in order that players may morally disengage from their violent actions. This article challenges the moral disengagement perspective on violent video games by demonstrating its empirical reliance on a conceptual misunderstanding: The story worlds of most video games are not representational; they do not deviously misrepresent an underlying reality against which players ought rightfully to judge their own in-game conduct. Rather, video games simply present a story world that is as real or unreal as the violence that occurs within it. Therefore, moral disengagement theory is not readily applicable to the story worlds of video games. The article proceeds to show how this misconception leads researchers to draw empirically false and topically fraught conclusions about how players perceive and respond to violence in video games. Thus, the article challenges the moral disengagement literature's claim to meaningfully inform the pervasive debates surrounding violent video games.


Although Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic created negative consequences in education as a virus affecting the world, in general, the technological developments experienced today are reshaping the entire world. This study aims to examine the relationship between academic procrastination behaviours and problematic Internet usage of high school students during the COVID-19 Pandemic. This study is in the form of a descriptive survey, and the survey method was used in the study. The population of the study in the 2020–2021 academic year consisted of 350 students who studied in vocational schools affiliated to the Northern Cyprus. In this study, academic procrastination and problematic Internet usage scales were used as data collection tools. As a result, in the Pandemic Period, the relationship between male students' problematic Internet usage and academic procrastination behaviours is significantly higher than that of female students. In the first years of high school, problematic Internet usage of students was seen to be higher than in the later years. Problematic Internet usage of students is increasing according to the frequency of Internet usage. It has been observed that the academic procrastination behaviours of high school students also increase during the day due to their stay connected to the Internet. As problematic Internet usage of students decreases, general grade point average (GPAs) increase. As academic procrastination behaviours of students decrease, their GPAs increase. As academic procrastination behaviours of students decrease, so do problematic Internet usage levels. In general, students reported that they rarely had problematic Internet usage and that they had a number of academic procrastination behaviours. * ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: : Murat Tezer, Mathematics Education Department, Near East University, Nicosia, Cyprus. E-mail address: firstname.lastname@example.com Tezer, M., Ulgener, P., Minalay, H., Ture, A., Tugutlu, U. & Harper, M. G. (2020). Examining the relationship between academic procrastination behaviours and problematic Internet usage of high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic period. Global Journal of Guidance and Counseling in Schools: Current Perspectives 10(3), 142-156 https://doi.org/10.18844/gjgc.v10i3.5549 143


The Ras/PI3K/ERK signaling network is frequently mutated in various human cancers including cervical cancer and pancreatic cancer. Previous studies showed that the Ras/PI3K/ERK signaling network displays features of excitable systems including propagation of activity waves, all-or-none responses, and refractoriness. Oncogenic mutations lead to enhanced excitability of the network. A positive feedback loop between Ras, PI3K, the cytoskeleton, and FAK was identified as a driver of excitability. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of targeting signaling excitability by inhibiting both FAK and PI3K in cervical and pancreatic cancer cells. We found that the combination of FAK and PI3K inhibitors synergistically suppressed the growth of select cervical and pancreatic cancer cell lines through increased apoptosis and decreased mitosis. In particular, FAK inhibition caused downregulation of PI3K and ERK signaling in cervical cancer but not pancreatic cancer cells. Interestingly, PI3K inhibitors activated multiple receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), including insulin receptor and IGF-1R in cervical cancer cells, as well as EGFR, Her2, Her3, Axl, and EphA2 in pancreatic cancer cells. Our results highlight the potential of combining FAK and PI3K inhibition for treating cervical and pancreatic cancer, although appropriate biomarkers for drug sensitivity are needed, and concurrent targeting of RTKs may be required for resistant cells.


Research suggests that significant relationships exist between rural population change and natural amenities .Thus, understanding and predicting domestic migration trends as a function of changes in natural amenities is important for effective regional growth and development policies and strategies .In this study, we first estimated an econometric model which showed the effects of natural amenities, such as climate and landscape variables, on rural population migration patterns in the United States between 1990 and 2007 .The estimated model was then used to predict the effects of changes in these variables on rural county net migration and population growth to 2060 under alternative future climate and land use projections .Results suggest that people prefer rural areas with mild winters and cooler summers; thus we can expect a direct impact of climate change on population migration when areas associated with these conditions change .Results also suggest preference for varied landscapes that feature a mix of forest land and open space (e g , pasture and range land) .During the projection period from 2010 to 2060 in the United States, changes in natural amenities were predicted to have positive effects on rural population migration trends in most parts of the Intermountain and Pacific Northwest regions, and some parts of the Southeastern, South Central, and Northeastern U S .regions (e g , Southern Appalachian Mountains, Ozark Mountains, northern New England) .Changes in natural amenities were predicted to have negative effects on rural population migration trends during the projection period in Midwestern regions (e g , Great Plains and North Central regions)


This report provides an introductory review of the field of mobile robot navigation, with a domanial bias towards unstructured outdoor environments. The navigational process is reviewed in terms of the following fundamental elements: locomotion mechanism, control system, sensing, environmental mapping, path planning, and localisation. These elements are also described using several representative examples of experimental robotic systems, which have been developed for various complex tasks in outdoor environments. Some of these tasks include cross-country and interplanetary exploration, search and rescue, law enforcement, and military operations. It is important to note that this field is still in its technological infancy. Compared to a robot's potential applicability, somewhat borne out of our own imagination, there exists a substantial amount of research yet to be done and, hence, there is ample room for aspiring roboticists to join the research efforts. Currently, there are numerous open problems that need to be solved before mobile robots can be released into the real-world for affordable, flexible and reliable service. This report discusses a few of the significant problems of late, and provides several avenues for future research. 1 MECSE-17-2004: "A Review of Outdoor Robotics Research", D. J. Spero


In this modern era, the network related applications, programs and services are growing enormously but the network security issues also grow along with them. Keeping the network secure is a challenging and a crucial task. To maintain the secure network there must be some system which can detect and identify any malicious activity happening in network. This system is called as Intrusion Detection System. There are many traditional network security tools and techniques of preventing intrusion like firewalls, anti-virus, encryption-decryption, access control etc. But all are not effective in protecting network from increasing attacks. The network traffic can be categories into normal and intrusive traffic using Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. Here, the preliminary comparative study regarding which type of machine learning algorithm performs better in identifying the attacks namely Denial of Service, Probe, User to Root and Remote to Local. The NSL-KDD dataset is used to study features and behavior of malicious attacker using machine learning techniques. This study can be taken as reference for mechanical engineers for developing a safe automation in industrial atmosphere and automation in automobile.


Identity formation in political and occupational domains was examined from young to middle adulthood based on an ongoing longitudinal study. In addition to the participants' identity status (diffused, moratorium, foreclosed, achieved), we assessed their perceived importance of politics, future orientation, and career stability four times in adulthood, at ages 27, 36, 42, and 50. The number of participants varied between analyses, from 168 to 291. Changes in the economic situation in Finland from 1986 to 2009 provided a context for the study. Data collections at ages 36 (in 1995) and 50 (in 2009) took place during economic recessions, and at age 42 (in 2001) during an economic boom. The results were discussed from both age-graded and history-graded perspectives. Developmental trends in political and occupational identity were reversed across age and changes in the economic situation. Political identity was at its lowest level and occupational identity was at its highest level at age 42 during the economic boom. Political identity progressed at a time of economic recession at age 50, whereas occupational identity regressed. In women, identity changes were associated with personal career stability. The perceived importance of politics increased concurrently with political identity achievement. During the recession when they were age 50, women tended to worry about future financial problems, while men perceived their future depending decreasingly on themselves and increasingly on the world situation. The results indicate that macro-level economic conditions may have psychological implications on people's conceptions of themselves that are worth considering in developmental studies.


Broadband wireless systems require low complexity equalizers which can cope with long channel impulse responses and severe intersymbol interference (ISI). In this paper, a frequency domain (FD) approach for adaptive blind equalization for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems is proposed. As an initial step, a time domain (TD) block based updated adaptation is first developed which updates the equalizer coefficients once per each block of data symbols. As such, this algorithm can be equivalently implemented in the FD to reduce computational complexity associated with the symbol by symbol TD update. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can successfully separate and equalize the received signals with a significantly lower computational complexity than a corresponding TD approach


A memory leak in a Java program occurs when object references that are no longer needed are unnecessarily maintained. Such leaks are difficult to understand because static analyses typically cannot precisely identify these redundant references, and existing dynamic analyses for leak detection track and report fine-grained information about individual objects, producing results that are usually hard to interpret and lack precision. We introduce a novel container-based heap-tracking technique, based on the observation that many memory leaks in Java programs occur due to containers that keep references to unused data entries. The novelty of the described work is two-fold: (1) instead of tracking arbitrary objects and finding leaks by analyzing references to unused objects, the technique tracks only containers and directly identifies the source of the leak, and (2) the approach computes a confidence value for each container based on a combination of its memory consumption and its elements' staleness (time since last retrieval), while previous approaches do not consider such combined metrics. Our experimental results show that the reports generated by the proposed technique can be very precise: for two bugs reported by Sun and for a known bug in SPECjbb, the top containers in the reports include the containers that leak memory.


Background and Purpose: Patients with higher Spetzler-Martin grade cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) are associated with poorer neurologic and clinical outcomes. Four dimensional computed tomography angiography (4D-CTA) is newly and promising technique in the diagnosis of patients with cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). The purpose of this retrospective study was to investigate the utility of 4D-CTA using whole-brain 320- detector row CT for assessing cerebral AVMs compared with conventional angiography (CA). Materials & Methods: Participants comprised patients admitted to our institution from November 2010 to March 2012 due to cerebral AVMs, who underwent both 4D-CTA and CA within 14days. The diagnosis of AVM was finally confirmed by CA. Two readers reviewed 4D-CTA and CA under consensus regarding detection rate of the AVMs, each component of the AVMs (feeders, nidi, drainers) which was scored using four-point grading scale (excellent=3, good=2, fair=1, poor=0), and the Spetzler-Martin (S-M) grade. Results: During study periods, eleven patients met our criteria. In every case, cerebral AVM was diagnosed by 4D-CTA. The average score for feeders, nidi, and drainers was 2.0, 2.3, and 2.5 in 4D-CTA and 2.4, 2.6, and 2.7 in CA, respectively. The average score of S-M grade was both 2.0, and matched in 11/11 patients. There were no significant differences statistically between two modalities (P Conclusion: 4D-CTA using 320-detector row CT is a very reliable method and offered diagnostic performance equivalent to CA in detecting and predicting S-M classification of cerebral AVMs.


Abstract Some plant pathogens manipulate the behavior and performance of their vectors, potentially enhancing pathogen spread. The implications are evolutionary and epidemiological but also economic for pathogens that cause disease in crops. Here we explore with models the effects of vector manipulation on crop yield loss to disease and on the economic returns for vector suppression. We use two frameworks, one that simulates the proportional occurrence of the pathogen in the vector population with the option to eliminate vectors by a single insecticidal treatment, and one that includes vector population dynamics and the potential for multiple insecticidal sprays in a season to suppress vectors. We parameterize the models with published data on vector manipulation, crop yields as affected by the age of the plant at infection, commodity prices and costs of vector control for three pathosystems. Using the first framework, maximum returns for treating vectors are greater with vector manipulation than without it by approximately US$10 per acre (US$24.7/ha) in peas infected by Pea enation mosaic virus and Bean leaf roll virus, and approximately US$50 per acre (US$124/ha) for potatoes infected by Potato leaf roll virus. Using the second framework, maximum returns for controlling the psyllid vectors of Candidatus Liberibacter solanacearum are 50% greater (approximately US$400/acre, US$988/ha) but additional returns for multiple weekly sprays diminish more with vector manipulation than without it. These results suggest that the economics of vector manipulation can be substantial and provide a framework that can inform management decisions.


Let $R$ be a commutative ring (with 1) and let $Z(R)$ be its set of zero-divisors. The zero-divisor graph $\Gamma(R)$ has vertex set $Z^*(R)=Z(R) \setminus \lbrace0 \rbrace$ and for distinct $x,y \in Z^*(R)$, the vertices $x$ and $y$ are adjacent if and only if $xy=0$. In this paper, we consider the domination number and signed domination number on zero-divisor graph $\Gamma(R)$ of commutative ring $R$ such that for every $0 \neq x \in Z^*(R)$, $x^2 \neq 0$. We characterize $\Gamma(R)$ whose $\gamma(\Gamma(R))+\gamma(\overline{\Gamma(R)}) \in \lbrace n+1,n,n-1 \rbrace$, where $|Z^*(R)|=n$.


Introduction: According to recent studies, ART regimens require 70-90% adherence in order to be effective. However, sustaining adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) over the long term requires accurate and consistent monitoring and this is a particular challenge. In Ethiopia different studies have done on adherence to ART in different region and reporting inconsistent findings across each region.
Methods: Cross sectional study design was used to assess the adherence and factors that affect adherence to ART in Dire Dawa. Simple random sampling technique was utilized to select the intended sample size and the sample size was calculated using single proportion formula considering the proportion of adherence p=0.74, which is taken from the study conducted in Yirgalem Hospital. Data was collected using structured questionnaire and interviewing the respondents included in the study after taking the unique ART number from the sampling frame. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS Version 16 for windows.
Results: The study revealed that ART adherence level was suboptimal (65%); whereas, the rest (35%) were non adherent (missed one or more dose) in the last seven days (non-adherent). Family support (p=0.001), having regular follow up (p=0.012) and trust each other with clinicians (p=0.01) were found to be associated with ART adherence positively.
Conclusion: The assessment of ART adherence was relatively poor when compared to others studies done. It was in disagreement with optimal adherence level. The adherence to ART was (65%); whereas, the rest (35%) missed doses (one and more) of their drugs in the last seven days (non-adherent). Among female respondent 59% adhered to ART while among the male respondents 41% adhered to their treatment indicating good adherence among female.


The purpose of this study intended to verify the relationship between religion (religiosity/spirituality) and the comfort level of sexual orientation. For this purpose, this study collected the data of 74 participants that are above college age through survey link. The participants completed the survey consisting of three scales to assess religiosity, spirituality, and the comfort level of sexual orientation. Subsequently, this article processed the data using SPSS 25.0 version. After calculating Cronbach's α to test the reliability of three instruments, this work produced Pearson's coefficient for testing hypotheses. The results are as follows. First, Religiosity had no significant correlation with the comfort level of sexual orientation. Second, spirituality had the significant negative relationship with the comfort level of sexual orientation. The implications of research results are discussed along with the previous investigations, and then some future directions are suggested with limitations of the current work.


Abstract Question: Does canopy tree regeneration response to different large disturbances vary with soil drainage? Location: Old-growth conifer (Dacrydium and Dacrycarpus), angiosperm (Nothofagus and Weinmannia) rain forest, Mount Harata, South Island, New Zealand. Methods: Trees were aged (1056 cores) to reconstruct stand history in 20 (0.12 - 0.2 ha) plots with different underlying drainage. Spatial analyses of an additional 805 tree ages collected from two (0.3 – 0.7 ha) plots were conducted to detect patchiness for five canopy tree species. Microsite preferences for trees and saplings were determined. Results: There were clear differences in species regeneration patterns on soils with different drainage. Conifer recruitment occurred infrequently in even-aged patches (> 1000 m2) and only on poorly drained soils. Periodic Nothofagus fusca and N. menziesii recruitment occurred more frequently in different sized canopy openings on all soils. Weinmannia recruitment was more continuous on all soils reflecting their greater relative shade-tolerance. Distinct periods of recruitment that occurred in the last 400 years matched known large disturbances in the region. These events affected species differently as soil drainage varied. Following earthquakes, both conifers and N. menziesii regenerated on poorly drained soils, while Nothofagus species and Weinmannia regenerated on well-drained soils. However, Dacrydium failed to regenerate after patchy storm damage in the wetter forest interior; instead faster-growing N. fusca captured elevated microsites caused by uprooting. Conclusions: Underlying drainage influenced species composition, while variation in the impacts of large disturbance regulated relative species abundances on different soils.


Nowadays, in developed countries, the excessive food intake, in conjunction with a decreased physical activity, has led to an increase in lifestyle-related diseases, such as obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type -2 diabetes, a range of cancer types and arthritis.
The socio-economic importance of such lifestyle-related diseases has encouraged countries to increase their efforts in research, and many projects have been initiated recently in research that focuses on the relationship between food and health.
Thanks to these efforts and to the growing availability of technologies, the food companies are beginning to develop healthier food. The necessity of rapid and affordable methods, helping the food industries in the ingredient selection has stimulated the development of in vitro systems that simulate the physiological functions to which the food components are submitted when administrated in vivo. One of the most promising tool now available appears the in vitro digestion, which aims at predicting, in a comparative way among analogue food products, the bioaccessibility of the nutrients of interest.. The adoption of the foodomics approach has been chosen in this work to evaluate the modifications occurring during the in vitro digestion of selected protein-rich food products. The measure of the proteins breakdown was performed via NMR spectroscopy, the only techniques capable of observing, directly in the simulated gastric and duodenal fluids, the soluble oligo- and polypeptides released during the in vitro digestion process. The overall approach pioneered along this PhD work, has been discussed and promoted in a large scientific community, with specialists networked under the INFOGEST COST Action, which recently released a harmonized protocol for the in vitro digestion. NMR spectroscopy, when used in tandem with the in vitro digestion, generates a new concept, which provides an additional attribute to describe the food quality: the comparative digestibility, which measures the improvement of the nutrients bioaccessibility.


There are seventeen million people in the world who are stateless, not considered as citizens by any state. They suffer due to the current function of citizenship in the nation-state system, occupying a legal space outside of the system, yet, their lives are very much blighted by the system itself. This research examines the possibility that global citizenship could be a means to address statelessness. Global citizenship, unlike (national) citizenship, is, in theory, inclusive, and membership is based on our shared humanity. However, when approaching the global citizenship literature, two concerns became apparent. First, there is a significant lack of theorisation on the stateless in the discourse, and second, some scholars make the assumption that a global citizen has citizenship of a state – which the stateless do not. To begin to overcome these concerns, this research develops and implements a stateless centric perspective on global citizenship, using it to analyse the situation of the stateless in the case of Lebanon. The stateless centric approach developed here, views global citizenship through the actions and perspectives of those addressing statelessness. With four large and protracted stateless populations, Lebanon provides an empirically rich context, within which to undertake this research. The findings of the stateless centric perspective problematise the received wisdom of citizenship, the nation-state and allows for the exploration of the expressions and tensions in the practices of global citizenship. Drawing on a contextualised understanding of these practices, a 'patchwork' approach to global citizenship is proposed. This sees the creation of a public political space as an act of global citizenship, when it draws on universal principles. These universal principles are used to justify this space, taking on an instrumental role. It is a patchwork as these spaces can be seen in the wider global context, as either directly or indirectly connected, through their shared use of universal principles. By centralising the stateless in our conceptualisations of the nation-state, citizenship and global citizenship, the value of taking a stateless centric perspective, and its ability to draw out further nuances in the debate, is shown.


This study investigated the possible correlation between the degree of hearing impairment caused by neonatal purulent meningitis and the levels of CD64 and PCT in cerebrospinal fluid of patients, and assessed the prognostic value of such levels. We recorded data from 156 cases of neonatal purulent meningitis retrospectively. All the patients received brainstem response audiometry, and cerebrospinal fluid samples were collected within the first day after admission through lumbar puncture. Flow cytometry was used to detect CD64 levels and enzyme-linked fluorescent assay was used to detect PCT levels. The children with hearing impairment were followed up for 1 year and brainstem response audiometry was performed again in them. We found that 43.59% of the children showed different degrees of hearing impairment, and 55% of them did not fully recover. The levels of PCT and CD64 in cerebrospinal fluid of children with hearing impairment were significantly higher than those of children with normal hearing (P<0.01). The levels of PCT and CD64 in mild, moderate and severe hearing impaired children increased gradually with higher degrees of impairment, and the differences between groups were significant (P<0.01). During the follow-up, it was found that the levels of PCT and CD64 in children correlated well with the degree of hearing recovery, and the differences between groups were significant (P<0.01). In our study, approximately 1/4 children with purulent meningitis showed long-term hearing impairment. Based on our analyses, the levels of CD64 and PCT in cerebrospinal fluid can be used to predict the degree and long-term prognosis of hearing impairment caused by purulent meningitis in children.


This groundbreaking book, by three world-renowned psychologists, reveals how professionals succeed in carrying out work that is both expert and socially responsible in relentlessly market-driven times. What does it mean to carry out "good work"? What strategies allow people to maintain moral and ethical standards at a time when market forces wield unprecedented power and work life is being radically altered by technological innovation? These are the questions at the heart of this important collaboration by three leaders in psychology. Enlivened with stories of real people facing hard decisions, Good Work offers powerful insight into one of the most important issues of our time and, indeed, into the future course of science, technology, and communication.


In this thesis, I will argue that the existence of moral facts does not rely on the existence of a reason for action, and that moral facts can be made sense of in other ways. My thesis is both a reply to a type of moral error theory that has been advanced by Richard Joyce and John Mackie, and an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments.  The argument for error theory that I respond to is roughly as follows: moral judgments are judgments about external practical reasons. But external reasons do not exist, and so no moral judgment is ever true. In the first part of my thesis, I will argue in favour of the latter premise of the error theorist's argument, but against the former: external reasons do not exist, but moral judgments are not committed to them.  In the second half of my thesis I build up a positive account of what moral judgments involve. If moral judgments are not judgments about reasons, then what are moral judgments about? I develop the widely supported idea that moral judgments are judgments that are based on welfarist considerations, and attempt to give this idea a more precise formulation than what has been previously offered. From this account, I go on to develop an account of the truthmakers of moral judgments. The account I end up with is an ideal observer theory that I believe makes sense of a broad range of intuitions about morality.  My hope is that this thesis will be of interest to others who feel the pull of moral error theory, but would prefer to see moral success theory vindicated.


This guide will help navigate you toward resources in our collection that will get you more in touch with nature.


Abstract For decades, vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) have been the oral treatment of choice for many thromboembolic conditions. The limitations of VKAs include the need for monitoring through blood testing, drug interactions, and narrow therapeutic windows. These shortcomings have led to the development of direct oral anticoagulants. These new oral agents act on specific targets in the coagulation cascade (eg, factor Xa, thrombin) and negate some of the shortcomings of VKAs. This article reviews the roles of dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban in stroke prevention in nonvalvular atrial fibrillation, for prevention of venous thromboembolism after orthopedic surgery, and in the treatment of venous thromboembolism. Direct oral anticoagulants are at least as efficacious and safe as traditional anticoagulation therapy.


A production trial in the San Joaquin Valley of California was conducted where canopy microclimate of Syrah 05/SO4 grapevines was altered through three pruning systems and two leaf removal treatments arranged factorially to rejuvenate vineyards with declining productivity. Vines were either pruned by hand to 44 nodes each, mechanically box-pruned to a 10 cm hedge, or cane-pruned by hand to six 8-node canes arranged in opposing directions of the row with horizontal canopy separation. Outer surface layer of leaves were either removed mechanically 20 days postbloom on the east side of the canopy in a 45 cm zone above the cordon in the fruit zone or not removed. Yields from spur- and mechanically box-pruned vines were considered too low for the study area, and leaf removal had no effect on yield components. Spur-pruned vines reached 24 Brix earlier than mechanically box-pruned and cane-pruned vines in each year. Leaf removal had no effect on fruit composition of Syrah at harvest. Berry skin phenolics were not consistently affected by treatments applied. Cane pruning resulted in 3.8 leaf layers, with 32 shoots per 30 cm of row, 7.77 kg/kg Ravaz index, and consistently ripened 22 tons/ha to 24 Brix and should therefore be used in the San Joaquin Valley to improve yields in vineyards with declining productivity. The study identified a pruning system for vineyards in warm climates that can sustain yields and provides management information for growers on how to rejuvenate vines that have declined in productivity.


Context: Pumpkin ( Cucurbita maxima ) is highly polymorphic vegetable species and its polymorphism can be analyzed by isozyme molecular marker. Objective: To analyze genetic polymorphism among 10 locally grown pumpkin cultivars by isozyme. Materials and Methods: Fresh leaves of young plant of different cultivars were used for enzyme extraction. Enzyme extracts were prepared by homogenizing of 2 g sample of each cultivar. Prechilled mortar and pestle nestled in ice along with 1% polyvinylpyrrolidone and 2 ml of chilled extraction buffer were used prior to centrifuge. N-PAGE was conducted for different isozymes and stained the gels with specific chemicals for band development. Results : Five isozymes (peroxidase, esterase, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase and malate dehydrogenase) were tested for genetic polymorphism analysis of pumpkin cultivars. Among them esterase, peroxidase and alkaline phosphatase showed polymorphism in different cultivars with 75-, 58.33- and 41.18% respectively. But acid phosphatase and malate dehydrogenase did not show any polymorphism. Esterase and peroxidase produced band quickly than others. Relative mobility of first band of esterase, peroxidase, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase and malate deghdrogenase was 0.063, 0.045, 0.262, 0.07 and 0.093 respectively Conclusion : Out of five isozymes, effective polymorphism was found in esterase and peroxidase test DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbs.v19i0.13006 J. bio-sci. 19 89-93, 2011


The relation between static and dynamic Lyapunov functions weighting is discussed. It is shown that, under some technical assumptions, stabilizability by means of static weighting implies stabilizability by means of dynamic weighting. The existence result is illustrated by means of an example which highlights that the design based on dynamic weighting requires less a-priori information on the system to be stabilized.


Inferring the abstract relational and causal structure of the world is a major challenge for reinforcement-learning (RL) agents. For humans, language--particularly in the form of explanations--plays a considerable role in overcoming this challenge. Here, we show that language can play a similar role for deep RL agents in complex environments. While agents typically struggle to acquire relational and causal knowledge, augmenting their experience by training them to predict language descriptions and explanations can overcome these limitations. We show that language can help agents learn challenging relational tasks, and examine which aspects of language contribute to its benefits. We then show that explanations can help agents to infer not only relational but also causal structure. Language can shape the way that agents to generalize out-of-distribution from ambiguous, causally-confounded training, and explanations even allow agents to learn to perform experimental interventions to identify causal relationships. Our results suggest that language description and explanation may be powerful tools for improving agent learning and generalization.


We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Band 6 observations of dust continuum emission of the disk around WW Cha. The dust continuum image shows a smooth disk structure with a faint (low-contrast) dust ring, extending from ∼40 au to ∼70 au, not accompanied by any gap. We constructed the simple model to fit the visibility of the observed data by using the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) method and found that the bump (we call the ring without the gap the bump) has two peaks at 40 au and 70 au. The residual map between the model and observation indicates asymmetric structures at the center and the outer region of the disk. These asymmetric structures are also confirmed by model-independent analysis of the imaginary part of the visibility. The asymmetric structure at the outer region is consistent with a spiral observed by SPHERE. To constrain physical quantities of the disk (dust density and temperature), we carried out radiative transfer simulations. We found that the midplane temperature around the outer peak is close to the freezing temperature of CO on water ice (∼30 K). The temperature around the inner peak is about 50 K, which is close to the freezing temperature of H2S and also close to the sintering temperature of several species. We also discuss the size distribution of the dust grains using the spectral index map obtained within the Band 6 data.


Construction Waste Management is part of a growing movement towards a sustainable world. Ninth Malaysia Plan had played a significant role in the demands of executing major residential housing project developments where it has been observed that the construction wastes was one of the priority waste streams. The lacking in the highlighting of the proper flows of construction waste process has called for a need to contextualize, explore and document its practice in the construction industry to identify the current existing process o f construction waste management, the challenges and the major types and composition of construction waste generated. The aim of this research is to develop the supply chain framework. This aim was achieved through preliminary study and case studies methods where were conducted in the Klang Valley using the qualitative and quantitative methods. First, semi-structured interview was conducted among 20 contractors (G7) to identify the current existing process for construction waste management. The second method distributes the questionnaires and 60 responses from contractors (G7), clients and consultants were received on the challenges in the construction waste management process. Third method conducts the survey on the heap of waste through observation (visual estimation) to identify the major types and composition for construction waste generated. The main conclusions drawn from the findings gathered. The study proposes the supply chain framework to improve the construction waste management process whereby indirectly reducing the amount of construction waste from being directly disposed in landfills through reusing and recycling process.


We report the discovery of the first identified pulsating DA white dwarf, WD J1916+3938 (Kepler ID 4552982), in the field of the Kepler mission. This ZZ Ceti star was first identified through ground-based, time-series photometry, and follow-up spectroscopy confirms that it is a hydrogen-atmosphere white dwarf with Teff = 11,129 ± 115 K and log g = 8.34 ± 0.06, placing it within the empirical ZZ Ceti instability strip. The object shows up to 0.5% amplitude variability at several periods between 800 and 1450 s. Extended Kepler observations of WD J1916+3938 could yield the best light curve, to date, of any pulsating white dwarf, allowing us to directly study the interior of an evolved object representative of the fate of the majority of stars in our Galaxy.


Abstract In the last century, a global transformation of Earth's surface has occurred due to human activity with extensive agriculture replacing natural ecosystems. Concomitant declines in wild and managed bees are occurring, largely due to a lack of floral resources and inadequate nutrition, caused by conversion to monoculture-based farming. Diversified fruit and vegetable farms may provide an enhanced variety of resources through crops and weedy plants, which have potential to sustain human and bee nutrition. We hypothesized fruit and vegetable farms can enhance honey bee (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Apis mellifera Linnaeus) colony growth and nutritional state over a soybean monoculture, as well as support a more diverse wild bee community. We tracked honey bee colony growth, nutritional state, and wild bee abundance, richness, and diversity in both farm types. Honey bees kept at diversified farms had increased colony weight and preoverwintering nutritional state. Regardless of colony location, precipitous declines in colony weight occurred during autumn and thus colonies were not completely buffered from the stressors of living in a matrix dominated with monocultures. Contrary to our hypothesis, wild bee diversity was greater in soybean, specifically in August, a time when fields are in bloom. These differences were largely driven by four common bee species that performed well in soybean. Overall, these results suggest fruit and vegetable farms provide some benefits for honey bees; however, they do not benefit wild bee communities. Thus, incorporation of natural habitat, rather than diversified farming, in these landscapes, may be a better choice for wild bee conservation efforts.


In the rabbit, as in various other species, the presence of a cholinergic vagal afferent contingent has been demonstrated previously using biochemical and immunohistological approaches at the nodose ganglion level, where vagal afferent cell bodies are located. This structure is completely devoid of synaptic contacts. In the present study, somatic acetylcholine release is demonstrated on different types of in vitro rabbit nodose ganglion preparations (fragments of nodose tissue or isolated cell bodies) using chemiluminescent detection. Acetylcholine endogenous content was measured and was shown to be greater in the right nodose ganglion compared to the left. This difference was also observed when spontaneous and potassium chloride‐evoked acetylcholine release was measured in extracellular fluid after a 15‐min incubation of nodose ganglion fragments. Calcium removal totally blocked this somatic release. A kinetic study of acetylcholine release was also performed by placing the samples (nodose ganglion fragments or isolated cell bodies) directly in front of the photomultiplier, allowing the direct monitoring of (acetylcholine + choline) and choline effluxes. The net acetylcholine release was then deduced by subtraction. Identical kinetics was obtained with the two different nodose ganglion preparations used. This somatic release is calcium‐dependent. The occurrence of acetylcholine release at the nodose ganglion level is discussed in comparison with the events occurring in the cholinergic nerve endings. These mechanisms could be implicated in the premodulation of the vagal afferent messages conveyed from the periphery to the central nervous system.


By event-related potentials (ERP) during a counting Stroop task it was shown that the elderly with excess in theta activity in their electroencephalogram (EEG) are at risk of cognitive decline and have a higher neuronal activity during stimulus categorization than the elderly with a normal EEG. It was suggested that this increased neuronal activity could have a compensatory function. However, the quantification of energy associated with the enhanced neuronal activity was not investigated in this group. By wavelet analysis, we measured total and relative energy in ERP during the execution of a counting Stroop task in two groups of elderly: one with excess in theta activity (Theta-EEG, n = 23) and the other with normal EEG (Normal-EEG, n = 23). In delta, theta, and alpha bands, the Theta-EEG group used a higher amount of total energy as compared to the Normal-EEG group for both types of stimuli, interference and no interference. In theta and alpha bands, the total energy was higher in the Theta-EEG group, specifically in the window of 258-516 ms, coinciding with stimulus categorization. Given that no major behavioral differences were observed between EEG groups, we suggest that a higher energy in delta, theta, and alpha bands is one of the neurobiological mechanisms that allows the Theta-EEG group to cope with the cognitive demands of the task. However, this increased energy might not be an effective mechanism in the long term as it could promote a metabolic and cellular dysregulation that would trigger the transition to cognitive impairment. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT By using wavelet transform analysis we report that the elderly with excess in theta activity show a higher energy in delta, theta, and alpha bands during the categorization of stimuli in a counting Stroop task. Our findings imply that this increase neuronal activity might be related to a dysregulated energy metabolism in the elderly with theta excess that could explain the progress to cognitive impairment in this group. The analysis of energy by wavelet transform in data obtained by ERP complements other techniques that evaluate the risk of cognitive impairment.


Reducing the phenomenon of food waste and effective management of already wasted food in the form of post-consumer waste, included in the source-separated organic fraction of municipal solid waste (SS-OFMSW) from households and catering facilities, are some of the key challenges of the circular economy (CE), in particular in highly urbanized areas. The basis for the effective use of this waste is the knowledge of its physical and chemical properties. The main objective of the paper is to identify the key technological and organizational parameters for selective collection determining the characteristics of the SS-OFMSW and, consequently, the optimal path for its management. This paper presents the results of qualitative research of SS-OFMSW generated in the capital of Poland—Warsaw—coming from three sources: multi- and single-family housing and catering facilities. The collection efficiency of this waste was determined in the form of quality in container rate (QCR = 92–97%) and variability in terms of impurities and admixtures present in it (CV = 56–87%). High variability indicates that the system of selective waste collection in Warsaw is immature, which may hinder undertaking activities in the field of waste management planning. The study confirmed the suitability of the tested SS-OFMSW for organic recycling, especially using anaerobic digestion (AD), to which it is predisposed by water content, C/N, and biomethane potential (BMP). All tested food waste is characterized by a high yield of biogas in the range of 384–426 m3/Mg VS and an average share of methane in biogas at the level of 52–61%. Fertilizer properties, moisture, and its gas potential show little variability (CV ≤ 16%), which means that these data can be treated as stable data. The obtained results indicate the optimal direction for the collection and processing of SS-OFMSW based on post-consumer food waste in urbanized areas.


Iridium nuclei at and beyond the proton drip line have been studied via fusion evaporation reactions. A reaction of 92Mo(78Kr, p2n) at a beam energy of 360 MeV and target thickness 500 µg cm−2 was employed to study 167,167mIr. A reaction of 112Sn(58Ni, p2n) at a beam energy of 266 MeV and target thickness 500 µg cm−2 was used to study 169,169mIr. The experiments were performed at the University of Jyvaskyla utilizing the RITU separator in conjunction with the focal plane GREAT spectrometer and the JUROGAM Ge array at the target position. Excited states feeding both the ground state and isomeric state in 169Ir, excited states feeding the ground state of 167Ir and the ground state alpha decay of 165Re have been observed for the first time along with excited states feeding 167mIr. Experimental spectroscopic factors and reduced widths have been obtained for the proton and alpha decay of these nuclei.


BACKGROUND
Currently available topical otic preparations contain a variety of antibiotics and other ingredients that are potentially damaging to the middle and inner ear. There is therefore a need to identify agents that are safe as well as effective for topical otologic use. In pursuit of that goal, we used an animal model to evaluate the ototoxic potential of the broad-spectrum, penicillin derivative ticarcillin--both alone and combined with clavulanic acid (a beta-lactamase inhibitor).

METHODS
Twenty chinchillas served as subjects. Ten of the animals were given a single middle ear application of ticarcillin; the remaining 10 animals received ticarcillin disodium plus clavulanate potassium (Timentin). Five animals from each of the two groups were killed after 1 week to assess short-term effects and the other five animals in each group were kept for 4 weeks before their temporal bones were removed for histologic study.

RESULTS
Significant toxic effects, involving both the middle and inner ear, were observed in all experimental groups. Alterations of the middle ear at 1 week included inflammation, hemorrhage, and effusions. Middle ear cholesteatomas were observed at 4 weeks. Inner ear changes seen at 1 and 4 weeks included hair cell loss, supporting cell degeneration, and strial damage.

CONCLUSION
The study results indicate that ticarcillin should not be considered for further evaluation as a possible antibiotic for use in ototopical preparations.


The proliferation of intelligent systems in today's military demands increased focus on the optimization of human-robot interactions. Traditional studies in this domain involve large-scale field tests that require humans to operate semiautomated systems under varying conditions within military-relevant scenarios. However, provided that adequate constraints are employed, modeling and simulation can be a cost-effective alternative and supplement. The current presentation discusses a simulation effort that was executed in parallel with a field test with Soldiers operating military vehicles in an environment that represented key elements of the true operational context. In this study, "constructive" human operators were designed to represent average Soldiers executing supervisory control over an intelligent ground system. The constructive Soldiers were simulated performing the same tasks as those performed by real Soldiers during a directly analogous field test. Exercising the models in a high-fidelity virtual environment provided predictive results that represented actual performance in certain aspects, such as situational awareness, but diverged in others. These findings largely reflected the quality of modeling assumptions used to design behaviors and the quality of information available on which to articulate principles of operation. Ultimately, predictive analyses partially supported expectations, with deficiencies explicable via Soldier surveys, experimenter observations, and previously-identified knowledge gaps.


Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the fields that the compressed sensing theory is well utilized to reduce the scan time significantly leading to faster imaging or higher resolution images. It has been shown that a small fraction of the overall measurements are sufficient to reconstruct images with the combination of compressed sensing and parallel imaging. Various reconstruction algorithms have been proposed for compressed sensing, among which augmented Lagrangian based methods have been shown to often perform better than others for many different applications. In this paper, we propose new augmented Lagrangian based solutions to the compressed sensing reconstruction problem with analysis and synthesis prior formulations. We also propose a computational method which makes use of properties of the sampling pattern and the singular value decomposition of the system transfer function to significantly improve the speed of the reconstruction for the proposed algorithms in Cartesian sampled MRI. The proposed algorithms are shown to outperform earlier methods especially for the case of dynamic MRI for which the transfer function tends to be a very large matrix and significantly ill conditioned. It is also demonstrated that the proposed algorithm can be accelerated much further than other methods in case of a parallel implementation with graphics processing units.


Collective rotations and tilts of oxygen polyhedra play a crucial role in the physical properties of complex oxides such as magnetism and conductivity. Such rotations can be tuned by preparing thin films in which dimensionality, strain, and interface effects come into play. However, little is known of the tilt and rotational distortions in films a few unit cells thick including the question of if coherent tilt patterns survive at all in this ultrathin limit. Here, a series of films of perovskite LaNiO3 is studied and it is shown that the phonon mode related to oxygen octahedral tilts can be followed by Raman spectroscopy down to a film thickness of three pseudocubic perovskite unit cells (∼1.2 nm). To push the limits of resolution to the ultrathin regime, a statistical analysis method is introduced to separate the Raman signals of the film and substrate. Most interestingly, these analyses reveal a pronounced hardening of the tilt vibrational mode in the thinnest films. A comparison between the experimental results, first principles simulations of the atomic structure, and the standing wave model, which accounts for size effects on the phononic properties, reveals that in the ultrathin regime, the Raman spectra are a hybrid entity of both the bulk and surface phononic behavior. These results showcase Raman spectroscopy as a powerful tool to probe the behavior of perovskite films down to the ultrathin limit.


This clear and up-to-date introduction to Administrative Law, written specifically for the paralegal, is a straightforward text that explains how administrative agencies are created, how they are structured, and how they function. Classroom tested through three editions, Basic Administrative Law for Paralegals, Fourth Edition, offers not only a grounding in the basics of Administrative Law but practical advice for employment opportunities for paralegals in the field. Among the features that make this text such a reliable resource: * thorough topical coverage -- from how administrative agencies are created to agency discretion, rules and regulations, clients' rights, investigations, informal and formal proceedings, and judicial review * numerous visual aids and learning tools -- such as charts and figures, examples, chapter summaries, key terms, and review questions * end-of-chapter exercises and resources -- including crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blank exercises, and lists of useful websites * an electronic workbook on CD bound into the book -- providing ample opportunity for practice * a chapter dedicated to paralegal skills and careers -- delving into career opportunities for paralegals in both the private and public sectors New to the Fourth Edition: * the electronic workbook has been thoroughly updated and offers research exercises and guidance for accessing laws, rules, and agencies online * the "Paralegal Practice" boxes contain new topics, including retirement and immigration law * updated forms This current, affordable text, directed exclusively at the paralegal, is an excellent choice for teaching your students the fundamentals of Administrative Law as well as providing them with a realistic, practical look at career opportunities.


Abstract
 One of the problems in almond production is self-incompatibility in this plant, which is considered as an important improvement point for this tree. Self-incompatibility causes non-uniformity and garden management problems. Most cultivars of almonds have gametophytic self-incompatibility that is controlled by a multi-allelic gene site. The inoculation inhibitor factor in this inhibitory system is the stop of pollen tube growth in the style. This study aims to detect and determine the self-compatible genotype from among the studied samples and determine the self-incompatibility alleles in the studied masses. For the experiment, the leaf samples were collected from 100 almond genotypes that had good products in recent years. The DNA of young leaf samples in these genotypes was extracted using Gept and Celeg (1989) method with a few changes. Today, various methods have been invented for detecting the genotypes and self-compatible cultivars from selfincompatible cultivars as well as S alleles in almonds, including the PCR method. Therefore, in order to detect S alleles in different almond and some hybrid genotypes, the exclusive primer pairs, including AS1II-AmyC5R, ConF-ConR and Cebador2-Cebador8, were used in the polymerase chain reaction. All of the primers have been used by other researchers to detect almond alleles and the effectiveness of these pairs of primers was confirmed in this experiment. Using the AS1IIAmyC5R and Cebador2-Cebador8 primers, the Sf allele with the size of 1200 base pairs was detected. Using the ConF-ConR pair of primer, the S1, S2, S3, S10, S11, S23, and S31 alleles were detected in the self-incompatible samples. Using AS1II-AmyC5R pair of primer, the known alleles of S3, Sf, S2, S1, S5, S10, S11, S23, and S13 were detected. The other bands obtained from the PCR were related to the known self-incompatibility alleles that might be considered as new alleles. In the study population in this research, S1, S2, S3, and S11 alleles had higher frequency.


MIRIAM has established a sub-project (SP), designated SP 1, to deal with measurement methods for rolling resistance and related issues. This subject forms the most fundamental basis for the MIRIAM ambition to consider rolling resistance in pavement management or other types of infrastructure systems. Without robust measurement methods and equipment that can use them there will be no reliable data as input to such systems and the end result will be most uncertain, if useful at all.In order to develop and study measurement methods, there must be a basic understanding of the influencing parameters as well as what energy losses that should be included in the concept of rolling resistance. These issues are, therefore, important parts of the work in SP 1.This report is intended to provide basic knowledge about the part of the tyre and road interaction which relates to rolling resistance; for example, the mechanisms that create rolling resistance, and the influence on rolling resistance of various tyre and road parameters. The intention is also to suggest a definition of rolling resistance for the purposes of this project, as well as to provide some detailed state-of-the-art knowledge about the measurement methods and equipment that are useful for collecting rolling resistance data.


The occurrence of selling and buying transactions cause every companies to do their VAT obligations. Tax reported by PT X which appear to be wrong can be subdued by overbooking, therefore PT X had to bear administrative sanctions. The purpose of this research is to analyze basic considerations from Directorate General of Taxes in making regulations regarding the incorrect transfer of Taxable Services from outside the custom territory which cannot be overbook and analyze whether the administrative sanctions given to taxpayer are appropriate, with Ease of Administration principle in deliberation. This research used a qualitative approach with in-depth interview and literature study for data collection. The result of this research concludes that the primary consideration Directorate General of Taxes made regulations concerning the incorrect transfer of Taxable Services from outside the customs territory is because Intangible Taxable Goods and Taxable Services from outside the customs territory are susceptible to being used by Taxpayers for the purpose of avoiding tax and the Government's control are not fully reliable. Because the regulations do not allow to do the overbook, alternative ways taken by PT X to resolve the incorrect transfer of tax is restitution, which causes administrative sanctions. With that being said, administrative sanctions that occur as a result of wrong transfer of tax do not fulfill the Ease of Administration principle.


Individuals often express their opinions on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook during public events such as the U.S. Presidential debate and the Oscar awards ceremony. Gleaning insights from these posts is of importance to analyzing the impact of the event. In this work, we consider the problem of identifying the segments and topics of an event that garnered praise or criticism, according to aggregated Twitter responses. We propose a flexible factorization framework, SOCSENT, to learn factors about segments, topics, and sentiments. To regulate the learning process, several constraints based on prior knowledge on sentiment lexicon, sentiment orientations (on a few tweets) as well as tweets alignments to the event are enforced. We implement our approach using simple update rules to get the optimal solution. We evaluate the proposed method both quantitatively and qualitatively on two large-scale tweet datasets associated with two events from different domains to show that it improves significantly over baseline models.


Although the main reason for the lack of distinct dose-response and -toxicity relationships for anti-cancer agents is due to variability in pharmacodynamics, variability in pharmacokinetics may also contribute. Hence, not only describing and quantifying the relationship between pharmacokinetics and dose-limiting toxicities, but characterising the pharmacokinetics and its associated variability are of obvious importance in the process of developing dosing strategies for anti-cancer regimens. The aim of this thesis was to characterize the pharmacokinetics of fluorouracil (5-FU), epirubicin (EPI), 4-hydroxycyclophosphamide (4-OHCP), docetaxel (DTX) and busulphan (Bu) and, additionally, the relationship between the pharmacokinetics and the haematological toxicity of the fluorouracil-epirubicin-cyclophosphamide and epirubicin-docetaxel regimens. The pharmacokinetics of the combination EPI-DTX (ED) was studied in rats and patients, whereas the pharmacokinetics of Bu and 5-FU-EPI-4-OHCP (FEC) and haematological toxicity of the FEC and ED regimens was studied in patients only. All data analysis was performed using the NONMEM program. For all studied drugs, except 4-OHCP, course-to-course variability was found to be less than the inter-individual variability in the pharmacokinetic parameters and thereby therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) may be a suitable approach for dose individualisation of all studied drugs, except CP. The development of haematological toxicity after treatment was described well by a semi-physiological model. In the case of the ED regimen, the model appeared to be able to estimate the respective contribution of EPI and DTX to the bone marrow toxicity. Thus, using the final PK-PD model in the individualisation process may further improve the probability of prescribing the most appropriate dose regimen for a patient early in the treatment period. A dosing program was constructed by implementing the final Bu population model into Excel, which resulted in a flexible and easy to use dosing tool. Similar programs may be constructed and used for dose individualisation of other anti-cancer drugs.


Twenty-two patients who had an episode of transfusion-associated hepatitis not positive for hepatitis B antigen were examined for development of antibody to heaptitis A and B antigens, cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus. Antibody response to the 27-nm virus-like hepatitis A antigen was measured by immune electron microscopy. In none of the 22 patients studied did serologic evidence of infection with hepatitis A virus develop during the study period. Nine of the 22 patients had antibody responses to cytomegalovirus, but it was difficult to relate these seroconversions to their hepatitis. In addition, all 22 patients had pre-existing antibody to the Epstein-Barr virus. It seems likely that at least a proportion of such antigen-negative transfusion-associated hepatitis is caused by other infectious agents, not yet identified.


ZAP70-related severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) is a defect of the immune system characterized by absent or extremely low CD8+ T-cells and abnormal T-cell receptor signaling. This form of SCID is relatively rare with about 20 cases currently described in the literature and typically presents in infancy with recurrent opportunistic infections, failure to thrive, and gastrointestinal symptoms. This report describes a case of ZAP70-related SCID that was initially diagnosed as incomplete (atypical) Kawasaki disease. A 7-month-old infant presented with two weeks of fever, leukocytosis (33.5 K/μL) and anemia. No infectious etiology was identified and clinical presentation, along with laboratory work-up, suggested incomplete Kawasaki disease. He was treated with a single infusion of IVIG and 72 hours of high dose aspirin with resolution of fever. Seven months later, he presented again with three weeks of fever, persistent leukocytosis, failure to thrive and varicella infection following vaccination. During hospital admission, flow cytometric analysis was conducted to characterize atypical lymphocytes present in peripheral blood.  The results revealed nearly absent CD8+ T-cells with a CD4+/CD8+ ratio of 40:1. Subsequent studies demonstrated the absence of ZAP70 expression on T-cells and NK-cells by flow cytometry. Additional testing revealed markedly decreased to absent CD45+ total lymphocyte proliferative response to mitogens and antigens. The patient was diagnosed with ZAP70-related SCID and was referred for further evaluation and bone marrow transplantation. He is currently doing well, apart from minor GVHD, 2 years post-transplant. [N A J Med Sci. 2017;10(1):29-31. DOI: 10.7156/najms.20171001029]


Previously we showed that a thiol‐reactive heavy metal, HgCl2, crosslinked multiple cell surface receptors through a ligand‐independent pathway, which produced massive aggregates of phosphotyrosine (PTYR)‐containing proteins beneath plasma membrane [Nakashima et al. (1994): J Immunol 152:1064–1071]. In this study we characterized these unique aggregates at the molecular level. The lysates in Brij 96 of thymocytes treated with HgCl2 were separated into the supernatant and pellet fractions by simple centrifugation. Selected PTYR‐containing proteins and p56lck appeared in the pellet fraction as quickly as 5 s after exposure to HgCl2, and were further increased in amount by 5 min. Although the mechanism of triggering these events was redox‐linked, the majority of proteins in the Brij 96‐insoluble aggregates were dissociated in SDS‐PAGE under nonreducing condition. This suggested that PTYR‐containing proteins and p56lck themselves do not form dimer or polymer directly by thiol‐mediated bond. The pellet fraction was further found to include some other signal delivery elements, such as GTPase activating protein, phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase, and mitogen‐activated protein kinase. Finally, all of these signal elements and selected PTYR‐containing proteins were collected in the same fraction by the sucrose density gradient centrifugation. These results suggest a unique redox‐linked pathway of formation of a giant signal complex.


Though space-time metaphor is one of the universals of semantic typology and a source of regular prepositional and adverbial polysemy in many languages, this phenomenon is much rarer in deixis; thus, spatial deictics develop temporal meanings not as frequently. However, space-time metaphor in deixis is not as exotic as it might seem, as demonstrated by the Russian spatial proximity markers tut and zdes' 'here', which develop temporal meanings — the meaning of consecutivity and the meaning of temporal proximity. Temporal meanings of these adverbs inherit some of the semantic peculiarities they display in their spatial meanings. Tut is strongly deictic in its spatial meaning and always points to the location of the speaker at the moment of speech, thus demonstrating semantic syncretism of 'space' and 'time'. Temporal meanings of tut preserve this syncretism. In the meaning of consecutivity tut points to two quickly following events that take place within one round of observation in one space and one short period of time. In its meaning of temporal proximity it acts as a marker of actuality, consisting of the following semantic elements: (a) a time period which includes the moment of speech, and such moments preceding and following it that are sufficiently close to the moment of speech to retain connection with it; (b) a physical or mental space that includes the speaker; (c) a situation in which the speaker is either a participant or an observer; (d) a resulting situation. Besides semantic peculiarities, tut has a special semigrammaticalized status (it is not a full-fledged adverb, but rather a semi-formed grammatical marker); communicative peculiarities (it cannot be part of rheme or contrastive theme); prosodic properties (it is a clitic). The adverb zdes' has non-deictic usages in its spatial meaning, strong spatial semantics, and frequently has wide scope in the sentence, referring to the whole situation rather than to the predicate alone. As a consequence, it does not develop a full-fledged meaning of proximity to the moment of speech, and in its consecutive meaning introduces the notion of a background situation which serves as a backdrop for a certain event.


: This is a review about the secular acceleration of psychic an somatic development over the last two decades. Based on empirical studies published in this field, the final tendency of this trend in growth and puberty, its continuance in sexual behaviour and mental capacity, as the possible consequences for personality development are discussed. The secular trend is interpreted as an effect of modification limited for genetic and ecological reasons.


A simple replication-based mechanism has been used to achieve high data reliability of Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS). However, replication based mechanisms have high degree of disk storage requirement since it makes copies of full block without consideration of storage size. Studies have shown that erasure-coding mechanism can provide more storage space when used as an alternative to replication. Also, it can increase write throughput compared to replication mechanism. To improve both space efficiency and I/O performance of the HDFS while preserving the same data reliability level, we propose HDFS+, an erasure coding based Hadoop Distributed File System. The proposed scheme writes a full block on the primary DataNode and then performs erasure coding with Vandermonde-based Reed-Solomon algorithm that divides data into m data fragments and encode them into ndata fragments (n>m), which are saved in N distinct DataNodes such that the original object can be reconstructed from any m fragments. The experimental results show that our scheme can save up to 33% of storage space while outperforming the original scheme in write performance by 1.4 times. Our scheme provides the same read performance as the original scheme as long as data can be read from the primary DataNode even under single-node or double-node failure. Otherwise, the read performance of the HDFS+ decreases to some extent. However, as the number of fragments increases, we show that the performance degradation becomes negligible.


The degradation in water of the most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, is still under debate. Experimental disagreements on this process exist and there are only a few theoretical studies to support any conclusions. Moreover, the relationship between glyphosate and glycine is underestimated. Besides the structural similarity, glycine is a product of glyphosate degradation; hence, their studies are complementary. In this study, two mechanisms for the decomposition of the glyphosate molecule and glycine molecule in water are proposed. These mechanisms were explored by using quantum mechanical calculations. A combined microsolvation/PCM approach was employed to find and characterize their transition states, by which the reaction pathways were determined via the IRC method. The results have shown that the degradation processes might occur via a C-C bond cleavage, through a concerted mechanism, whereby the proton transfers and the CO2 detachments occur simultaneously. The second mechanism had two consecutive steps, a decarboxylation followed by the proton transfers. The water molecules served as a conduit for the proton transfers, away from the amine group (or the phosphonate, glyphosate case). Their function was to assist the reactions in a water-mediated decarboxylation. In these particular cases, the free energy of activation was 42.68 and 42.28 kcal mol-1 for the glycine structure and the glyphosate structure, respectively. These results agreed with the photodegradation and thermodegradation of glyphosate, as well as with the spontaneous decarboxylation of glycine. A concerted mechanism might be expected to yield C-P and C-N bond cleavages in the glyphosate molecule.


Physical inactivity, screen time and sedentary behaviour among young children is increasing. These factors have an impact on future health conditions increasing the risk of metabolic, cardiovascular and posture diseases. The World Health Organization has issued the guidelines on physical activity, sedentary behaviour and sleep for children of less than 5 years of age that shows contributing factors for healthy individuals starting from early childhood. Only few studies show the true state of posture diseases among preschool children. In our study we tried to find the problems of posture symmetry and type among young children for first time in Latvia. The conclusions after the study were similar to tendencies in the world. The posture disorders and asymmetrical posture increased with the age of children and sedentary behaviour (TV and computer) had a negative impact on the posture status.


The 2D discrete shearlet transform for a given function f in L(R) has been defined through dilation, shear and translation parameters in such a way that the continuity of f at (0, 0) can be studied by means of the convergence of the discrete shearlet transform as the dilation parameter converges to zero. Computer experiments illustrate this property by detecting edges in images that correspond to discontinuities.


We consider the problem of predicting a protein sequence from its backbone atom coordinates. Machine learning approaches to this problem to date have been limited by the number of available experimentally determined protein structures. We augment training data by nearly three orders of magnitude by predicting structures for 12M protein sequences using AlphaFold2. Trained with this additional data, a sequence-to-sequence transformer with invariant geometric input processing layers achieves 51% native sequence recovery on structurally held-out backbones with 72% recovery for buried residues, an overall improvement of almost 10 percentage points over existing methods. The model generalizes to a variety of more complex tasks including design of protein complexes, partially masked structures, binding interfaces, and multiple states.


We focus on graph-to-sequence learning, which can be framed as transducing graph structures to sequences for text generation. To capture structural information associated with graphs, we investigate the problem of encoding graphs using graph convolutional networks (GCNs). Unlike various existing approaches where shallow architectures were used for capturing local structural information only, we introduce a dense connection strategy, proposing a novel Densely Connected Graph Convolutional Network (DCGCN). Such a deep architecture is able to integrate both local and non-local features to learn a better structural representation of a graph. Our model outperforms the state-of-the-art neural models significantly on AMR-to-text generation and syntax-based neural machine translation.


There is an escalating prevalence of heart failure (HF) with high mortality. Compared with other races, African Americans face a higher incidence of HF at earlier age of onset, with more rapid progression, and with increased family care burden and greater care costs and disparity in health care services at the end of life (EOL). Concomitant out-of-pocket HF costs and care demands indicate the need for early discussion of palliative and EOL care needs. We therefore developed and pilot tested a culturally sensitive intervention specific to the needs of African American HF patients and their families at the EOL. Our pilot study findings encompass patient and caregiver perspectives and align with the state of EOL science. The ultimate long-term goal of this intervention strategy is to translate into practice the preferred, culturally sensitive, and most cost-efficient EOL care recommendations for HF patients and families.


BackgroundNeonatal jaundice is commonly seen in preterm new born and phototherapy treatment of choice when indicate. Phototherapy is an efficient treatment although there is some side effect present. These side effect may be on behavioural and physiological in some organ and there is also changes in stages of sleep cycle and circadian rhythm during and after phototherapy for few days. These changes in sleep cycle due to the neurotransmitter tryptophan and there is also changes is hormones like decreased in the growth hormones and there is changes in the melatonin which may affect with sleep cycle. there is some study done which suggestive that phototherapy will affect the stages of sleep but there is solid information available whether there is any effect of phototherapy on cardiorespiratory activity. Some old study is suggestive of there is increased in heart rate and decreased in the SBP systolic blood pressure during phototherapy. Phototherapy cause to increase the respiratory rate and heart rate during phototherapy. Objectives: To determine the outcome of phototherapy after 24hrs, 48hrs, 72hrs, and >72hrs on cardiac function in term neonates with hyperbilirubinemia. ResultsAfter completion of the study we will come to know the effect of phototherapy on cardiac function and also get the idea for how many hours ( <24hrs / 48hrs. 72hrs or > 72hrs) we can give safe phototherapy to the neonate with hyperbilirubinemia without affecting the cardiac function. Or is there any need for cardiac shielding during phototherapy. ConclusionAfter completion of the study we will come to know the effect of phototherapy on cardiac function in term neonate who is having neonatal hyperbilirubinemia. KeywordsPhototherapy on Cardiac Function, Hyperbilirubinemia INTRODUCTION Neonatal jaundice is commonly seen in preterm newborn and phototherapy treatment of choice when indicate. Phototherapy is an efficient treatment although there is some side effect present. These side effect may be on behavioral and physiological in some organ and there is also changes in stages of sleep cycle and circadian rhythm during and after phototherapy for few days. These changes in sleep cycle due to the neurotransmitter tryptophan and there is also changes is hormones like decreased in the growth hormones and there is changes in the melatonin which may affect with sleep cycle.it is reported that melatonin production is started from birth and its production is increased by decreased in European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine ISSN 2515-8260 Volume 7, Issue 2, 202


PURPOSE
To determine the response rate and survival of chemotherapy-naive patients with extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) treated with topotecan, and to determine the relationship of topotecan pharmacokinetics with response and toxicity.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Forty-eight patients with previously untreated, extensive-stage SCLC received 2.0 mg/m2 of topotecan daily for 5 days. The first 13 patients were treated without colony-stimulating factor (CSF) support; the next 35 patients received 5 micrograms/kg of granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) for 10 to 14 days starting on day 6. Cycles were repeated every 3 weeks for a maximum of four cycles. Patients who had a partial response to topotecan after four cycles, stable disease after two cycles, or progressive disease at any time received salvage chemotherapy with cisplatin and etoposide. Topotecan pharmacokinetics were measured using a four-point sampling scheme.

RESULTS
Of 48 patients, none had a complete response and 19 had a partial response, for an objective response rate of 39% (95% confidence interval [CI], 25.2% to 53.0%). The median response duration was 4.8 months (95% CI, 3.0 to 7.3). After a median follow-up duration of 18.2 months, the overall median survival time was 10.0 months (95% CI, 8.2 to 12.7); the 1-year survival rate was 39% (95% CI, 25.2% to 53.0%). Eight of 34 patients (24%) who received salvage chemotherapy responded. Four of 17 patients who did not respond to first-line therapy with topotecan responded to cisplatin and etoposide. The most common toxicity was hematologic. Ninety-two percent of patients treated without G-CSF developed grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, compared with 29% who received G-CSF. However, the incidence of neutropenic fevers was similar between the two groups (8% and 11%, respectively), and one patient in each group died of neutropenic fevers. There were no differences in objective tumor response, duration of response, time to treatment failure, or survival between the 13 patients who entered the study before G-CSF administration was mandated and the 35 patients who entered after and received G-CSF. There was poor correlation between the WBC count and absolute neutrophil counts (ANCs) and both the area under the curve (AUC) and maximum concentration++ (Cmx) of total topotecan in plasma. There was no correlation between the tumor response and either AUC or Cmx of total topotecan.

CONCLUSION
The activity of topotecan in extensive-stage SCLC noted in this study warrants further investigation of this agent in phase III clinical trials.


This paper probes into the reasons about surface crack on the SS400 steel through analyzing FTSC. The results show that: the surface crack is mainly produced by the high content inclusion in SS400 steel and the fluctuation of inclusion makes the mould flux have bad performance. The protective slag is not filled fully which worsens the condition of heat transfer and makes the solidified shell uneven, thus it is easy to produce crack in the normal forces. Secondly , the slag entrapment and high content of sulfur is the another reason . There are a lot of calcium-aluminate ,silicates, sulfides which have high melting point and low plasticity in crack inside and around and their content gravely deviates from normal state. The effect of inclusion to crack is three times than the slag entrapment and just as the slag entrapment to high sulfur content