In the past decades, concentrically braced frames (CBF) have been frequently employed as earthquake resistant systems for low- and middle-rise buildings. Their configuration and straightforward design made them appealing for engineers. It is noted that building structures designed and built in Canada prior to 1970 were not proportioned to carry seismic loads, while those constructed between 1970 and 1985 were designed to withstand lower seismic forces than those required by the current code. As a consequence, these buildings are characterized by lack of seismic resilience and therefore are vulnerable to earthquakes. Herein, the building's resilience is defined as the capability of a system to maintain a level of functionality in the aftermath of an earthquake event and is characterized by the performance metrics such as fragility, loss, and recovery functions.

To quantify the seismic resilience of existing office buildings, a methodology was proposed and exemplified in a case study comprising of 3- and 6-storey fictitious CBF office buildings located in Quebec City and Vancouver. These buildings were designed in accordance with the requirements of the 1980 edition of the National Building Code and CSA/S16.1-M78 standard. It is noted that before 1985, Quebec City and Vancouver were located in the same seismic zone (the seismic demand was identical) and the Vancouver buildings were selected for comparison purpose.

The proposed seismic resilience methodology consists in selecting the Rehabilitation Objective Class and the associated performance levels corresponding to earthquake hazard levels (e.g. 2%/50 yrs., 10%/50 yrs. and 50%/50 yrs.). To achieve this step, nonlinear dynamic time-history analyses are required and fragility curves computed for different hazard levels for both existing and retrofitted 3- and 6-storey fictitious buildings were generated from the Incremental Dynamic Analysis curves (IDA). Both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainties were considered. The loss estimation model is a function of system's components deficiency determined by the use of performance limit thresholds for different damage states. In addition, functionality curves computed for different hazard levels using an exponential recovery model are also shown.

The seismic assessment process was done according to performance based design principles and nonlinear time-history analysis by means of IDA using the OpenSees framework (Open System for Earthquake Engineering Simulation). Herein, all studied buildings were assessed against the current code demand. Based on the results, the buildings located in Quebec City and Vancouver show deficiencies at the level of structural members, especially the buildings located in Vancouver. Moreover, all brace-to-frame connections had insufficient strength and showed failure due to shearing of the welds. As reported from IDA curves, all existing buildings experienced collapse when subjected to ground motion intensities in agreement with the current code demand and a retrofit action was required.

To respond to the Rehabilitation Objective Class defined as Basic Safety by the ASCE/SEI 41-13 provisions, the selected rehabilitation strategy consisted in local strengthening of system's components (e.g. cover plating steel columns or beams and gusset plate replacement). According to the results, when the 3- and 6-storey retrofitted buildings located in Quebec City were subjected to ground motions scaled to the current code demand, their functionality was higher than 86.67% and 75.7%, respectively. Conversely, for the Vancouver buildings, besides the retrofit action, it is suggested to double the number of CBFs in order to pass the current code requirements. In conclusion, the proposed retrofit scheme for Quebec City buildings was able to improve the building performance and implicitly its earthquake resilience.


Smokeless tobacco is a commonly used drug in the world. Tobacco use in any form is a rising crisis for the population in developing countries. Tobacco contributes significantly to oxidative stress induced morbidity and mortality. The study was aimed to evaluate the effect of vitamin C supplementation on serum cotinine, malondialdehyde (MDA) and serum vitamin C level in smokeless tobacco (ST) chewers. In addition, the study was aimed to evaluate the effect of duration of tobacco chewing on above-said parameters. A total number of 338 healthy participants of aged between 31 to 60 years were classified into two groups comprising of tobacco chewers and tobacco non-chewers. Tobacco chewers group further divided into three subgroups with respect to tobacco chewing duration. Participants were asked to take 1000 mg of vitamin C daily for 45 days. Serum cotinine, MDA and serum vitamin C were measured in all the participants before and after supplementation of vitamin C. Serum cotinine (p<0.001) and MDA (p<0.001) were significantly increased whereas serum vitamin C level (p<0.001) was significantly decreased in smokeless tobacco chewers as than to controls. However, serum cotinine (p<0.001) and MDA (p<0.001) were significantly decreased whereas vitamin C (p<0.001) level was significantly increased in both the groups after supplementation of vitamin C as compared to before. It was observed that the changes become more prominent with increased smokeless tobacco consumption duration. Daily intake of vitamin C may be beneficial to restore the oxidant-antioxidant balance in tobacco chewers.


Measured capacitance coefficients of parallel microstrip lines with widths between 10-20 mu m, spaces between 5-60 mu m, and dielectric thickness between 10-15 mu m on silicon substrates are reported. The experimental data are compared with results computed from a two-dimensional finite-element simulation program called WIRECAP. The comparison shows good agreement, with an accuracy of +or-5% for the total capacitance and not=20% for the coupling capacitance. WIRECAP is also shown to be in good agreement with other available simulation programs, such as the University of Arizona capacitance calculator (UAC) program. The measured near-end crosstalks are reported and it is shown that they can be accurately predicted by using the measured coupling capacitance. >


Three studies, conducted on graduate level, show findings that students with highly proactive behavior are more likely to succeed in a Learning Management System (LMS) environment. Statistical analysis techniques were used in the studies. In the second study the concept of continuous proactivity was introduced to observe if a study-group was more likely to succeed in the lesson compared to a control-group, and in the third study, proactivity was applied to the entire class. This paper reports the results of the second and third studies and introduces the concept of "continuous proactive learning strategies" to frame the future development of proactive rules in LMS.


ABSTRACT The most obvious disadvantage of lignites is high water content (25–65%). In this study, experiments were carried out to determine the mechanical dewatering characteristics of Konya Ilgın lignite, which has 8935 kJ/kg low heating value and 45.15% water content. The main parameters investigated in the dewatering experiments were water/dry lignite ratio, pressure, and duration of compression. The tests were carried out by varying time from 5 to 20 min and by varying pressure from 100 to 600 bar. Results showed that the dewatering rate increased with the increase of water/dry lignite ratio, pressure, and duration of compression. The increase was not linear and tend to decrease with an increase in each variable. Pressure was more effective than duration of compression for reducing final moisture content.


There is a critical need in the United States to understand how to best prepare preservice teachers for effectively teaching the steadily growing number of PK-12 English learners. The study described in this article, situated in a teacher preparation program in a small, private college in a largely monolingual, monocultural area of the northeastern United States, expands the extant research around this urgent conversation. Specifically, the effects of a set of research-based learning experiences on the readiness of 18 White preservice teachers to create culturally responsive teaching and learning environments for English learners were investigated. Results suggest that carefully constructed learning experiences can positively affect future educators' preparation for teaching English learners, even in largely monocultural, monolingual geographical areas. Outcomes will interest teacher educators in homogeneous areas who strive to prepare future educators for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse school-age learners in principled ways in countries with growing numbers of children who speak other languages.


How can teachers recognise and promote creativity in their pupils, without a personal understanding of the experience of being creative themselves? This chapter addresses some of the conceptual frameworks that can be used to help us recognise and think about creativity, and illustrate some of these theoretical approaches by describing creative practices in a project using ICT as a tool to develop ideas and make things happen.
This chapter will also raise some questions and discussions to help the reader to think about:
• how we might recognise creativity in ourselves, in other people, in our communities and in our wider societies;
• how these ideas about creativity can be expressed and developed through using information and communication technologies (ICT);
• how we might approach our own teaching to reflect creativity for our pupils and for ourselves.


This paper present formation principle of any spherical trajectory curve, and kinematic track of spherical 2-DOF parallel manipulator with actuation redundancy was planned by trajectory planning method that acceleration is continuous segmental function in Cartesian space, in order to guarantee that angular displacement, angular velocity and angular acceleration curve is smooth and continuous, and forward kinematics was simulated by virtue of ADAMS software. At the same time, based on dynamic analysis, smooth and continuous driving torque curve of three actuated joints were obtained by force optimization method. This kind of trajectory planning method laid the foundation for redundant actuation control of the manipulator.


This paper analyzes the effects of specific and ad valorem taxation in an industry with downstream and upstream oligopoly. We find that in the short run, i.e. when the number of firms in both markets is exogenous, the results concerning tax incidence tend to be qualitatively similar to models where the upstream market is perfectly competitive. However, both overand undershifting are more pronounced, potentially to a very large extent. Instead, in the long run under endogenous entry and exit overshifting of both taxes is more likely to occur and is more pronounced under upstream oligopoly. As a result of this, a tax increase is more likely to be welfare reducing. We also demonstrate that downstream and upstream taxation are equivalent in the short run while this is not true for the ad valorem tax in the long run. We show that it is normally more efficient to tax downstream.


High speed architectures for finding the first two maximum/minimum values are of paramount importance in several applications, including iterative (e.g., turbo and low-density-parity-check) decoders. In this brief, stemming from a previous work, based on radix-2 solutions, we propose higher and mixed radix implementations that improve the architecture latency. Post place and route results on a 180-nm CMOS standard cell technology show that the proposed architectures achieve lower latency than radix-2 solutions with a moderate area increase.


We present a Supernova (SN) feedback model that succeeds at describing the chemical and energetic effects of SN explosions in galaxy formation simulations. This new SN model has been coupled to GADGET-2 and works within a new multiphase scheme which allows the description of a co-spatial mixture of cold and hot interstellar medium phases. No ad hoc scale-dependent parameters are associated to these SN and multiphase models making them particularly suited to studies of galaxy formation in a cosmological framework. Our SN model succeeds not only in setting a self-regulated star formation activity in galaxies but in triggering collimated chemical-enriched galactic winds. The effects of winds vary with the virial mass of the systems so that the smaller the galaxy, the larger the fraction of swept away gas and the stronger the decrease in its star formation activity. The fact that the fraction of ejected metals exceeds 60 per cent regardless of mass, suggests that SN feedback can be the responsible mechanism of the enrichment of the intergalactic medium to the observed levels.


When a black hole radiates particles, it losses energy and shrinks, the horizon contracts from its original radius to a new smaller radius. This leads to the separation between the initial and final radii, which sets the barrier for the particles to tunnel. We develop the work of Parikh [Phys. Rev. Lett. 85 (2000) 5042; Gen. Rel. Grav. 36 (2004) 2419] to a Horowitz–Strominger black hole, i.e. applying the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation and semi-classical method to calculate the rate of the Hawking radiation. The result agrees with Γ~e−2ImI = eΔSBH. It is also proven that the energy spectrum deviates from exact thermality.


Objective: Investigation of the safety, tolerability, and treatment effect of nusinersen treatment in non-ambulatory adults with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA). Methods: Non-ambulatory individuals, aged 18 years or older with genetically confirmed 5q SMA were enrolled. In participants with spinal fusion, fluoroscopy guided cervical C1–C2 lateral approach was used. Outcomes at 2, 6, 10, and 14 months post-treatment were compared with baseline assessment. Forced vital capacity (FVC) was the primary outcome, and RULM, HFMSE, the modified SMA-FRS, and ulnar nerve electrophysiology [compound muscle action potential (CMAP), single motor unit size, and motor unit number] were secondary. Adverse and serious adverse events and clinically significant vital sign or lab abnormalities were recorded. Results: Results from 12 women and 7 men (mean age: 39.7 ± 13.9, range: 21–64 years) were analyzed. No clinically significant changes of vital signs or laboratory parameters were observed. Five participants were hospitalized for pneumonia. Other adverse events included headache, back pain, cervical injection site pain, and upper respiratory and urinary tract infections. High baseline protein/creatinine ratio without significant change on treatment noted in 4 participants. FVC was feasible in all participants. HFMSE and RULM were not feasible in the majority of participants. FVC and functional outcomes were stable without improvement. CMAP and single motor unit potential sizes showed enlargement while motor unit numbers were stable. Conclusions: Nusinersen, including C1/C2 delivery, was safe overall and well-tolerated. Several outcome measures were limited by floor effect. Overall, treatment resulted in stability of motor outcomes, but motor unit and CMAP size were increased.


One of the important tasks in sensor networks is classifying moving vehicles. Fusion of large amount of sensor measurements can improve network performance and reduce the consumption of sensor network resource. We study using continuous measurements of multiple sensor nodes to improve the classification performance by spatio-temporal fusion and fault detection. Time series decisions of single sensor node are aggregated to make a reliable classification estimation. A fusion center combines local classification decisions and evaluates the correctness of these decisions. A correctness status is sent back to each sensor node. Based on the status, sensor nodes can adjust their temporal fusion result. Simulation results demonstrate the validity of our method.


Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a technique where a machine can understand human better and thereby reduce the distance between human being. NLP was implemented in MyParser, acting as a tool of parsing sentence. This research aimed to develop a sentence parser application for teachers and learners of the Malay language who faced difficulties in comprehending the grammar and phrase structure. There are three major processing steps that have been drawn which are Input Component, Parsing Engine and Output Component. Parsing engine phase involved pre-processing phase; the use of 'Tokenizer' and 'Part Of Speech' (POS). The input component is a simple sentence provided by an expert of Malay Language (Munsyi Dewan). It is categorized based on the inference rule implemented in MyParser. This study is significant in designing inference rules for Malay Language sentences, focusing on the relationship between computing language. The output was labelled according to each phrase following the Malay Context Free Grammar (CFG) rule. Thus, parsing technique is an essential component to be considered in parsing application development. Besides that, MyParser application was developed to process Malay simple sentence by categorizing them into different grammar and phrase structure. The target groups for this application are students and teachers of Malay Language subject in primary school. MyParser was evaluated using 100 training data which were agreed by a qualified expert on Malay Language of Malaysia (Munsyi Dewan). More than thousand words were stored in the database. This application was found to be able to visualize correct sentence with its labelled graphical tags. MyParser was tested by different level of teachers from primary and secondary school and Munsyi Dewan. The results proved that MyParser achieved more than 90% accuracy in constructing sentences based on its grammatical rule.


Optically superior (high photoluminescence quantum yield (PLQY), high molar extinction coefficient) and chemically robust (high photochemical stability) semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) which can be synthesized in large scale with easier and reproducible chemical synthesis route, are of very high demand for potential applications like single particle tracking and single photon emission. These specialized applications requires stable emission at the single particle level for significantly longer durations i.e. PL blinking, blueing and bleaching needs to be stopped or significantly suppressed. An otherwise bright and photostable core/shell (CS) QDs at the ensemble level could not serve the purpose at the single particle level. Very recently core/gradiently alloyed shell/shell (CAGSS) QDs shows tremendous potential as a superior optical probe at the ensemble level. The optical properties (molar extinction coefficient, PLQY, photostability) are at par (if not superior) with conventional core/shell QDs like CdSe/CdS or CdSe/ZnS at the ensemble level. It has been argued in literature that, for CGASS QDs, smoothening of lattice parameters at the interface results in reduced population of defect traps and softening of confinement potential causes enhanced confinement for the photogenerated charge carriers as well as reduction of non-radiative Auger recombination (AR) processes. These arguments suggest that CGASS QDs should in principle be able to suppress PL blinking, blueing and bleaching processes, however no such detailed study existed in literature. Moreover 'one-pot one-step' synthesis scheme for these CGASS QDs offers opportunity for large scale synthesis in a much reproducible manner which is not possible for conventional SILAR based synthesis technique for core/shell QDs.

Very little is known about the excited state PL decay dynamics (electron-hole recombination dynamics) of these CGASS QDs. For core-shell QDs, compositional similarity do not ensure similar optical behaviour. There exists discrepancies in understanding the PL decay dynamics for core-shell QDs. Proper understanding of PL decay dynamics of CGASS QDs is clearly lacking which is very important for optoelectronic and photovoltaic applications. It is also necessary to correlate spectral and temporal optical properties of CGASS QDs at the ensemble as well as at the single particle level. At the single particle level efficacy of gradient alloying towards suppression of undesired processes (blueing, bleaching and blinking) is worth probing. Effect of gradiently alloyed shelling on PL blinking dynamics has not been explored in details too. Apart from that in literature there are very few reports regarding correlation between the optical behaviour at the ensemble and at the single particle level. It would also be interesting to probe the effect of varying degree of radiative recombination on PL blinking dynamics with CGASS QDs having different PLQY. Thus, at the beginning of this thesis work, the quest for understanding the photophysics of CGASS QDs in detail has been indispensable, so that the potential of this material in practical applications can be fully explored.
In the first chapter of the thesis QD has been introduced, with the description of quantum confinement effect. The development of core to core/shell to core/shell/shell QDs has been discussed and a brief overview of previous literature work related to photoluminescence spectroscopy of QDs both at ensemble and single particle level along with ultrafast exciton dynamics. Basic introduction about CGASS QDs has been provided.
In the second chapter, details of one-step one-pot synthesis scheme has been described along with the characterisation of the materials. The instrumentation details of steady state and time resolved optical measurements at the ensemble level and single particle level have been provided. Analyses and fitting of the intensity decay data at the ensemble level and analysis of the single particle blinking dynamics also have been described. For single particle measurement a home build Confocal and TIRF setup have been used. For ultrafast measurements a femtosecond based pump-probe transient absorption setup has been used.
In the third chapter, correlation between spectral and temporal optical behaviour of differently emitting CdSe based CGASS QDs have been shown. Highly luminescent (PLQY as high as 0.96) QDs have been synthesized in "one pot" using the reactivity difference between Cd & Zn precursors and Se & S precursors. All differently emitting (blue to green to orange to red) CGASS QDs exhibit similar spectral and temporal optical behaviour in a reproducible manner. The excited-state decay dynamics has been explained with a simple three-level model. Pico-nano second excited state dynamics and steady state optical behaviour (PLQY) could be successfully correlated and from a multi-exponential decay trace, the role of different time constants of the PL decay at the ensemble level can be understood reasonably well.
In the fourth chapter, optical behaviour of different colour emitting single CGASS QDs have been shown. These CGASS QDs could successfully suppress undesired processes at the single particle level. Elimination of blueing and bleaching have been achieved. Different colour emitting CGASS QDs are shown to be extremely photostable at the single particle level for 1 h or even longer even under air atmosphere. Significantly suppressed PL blinking behaviour with average size less than 7 nm and emitting in entire range of visible spectrum i.e. from blue to green to orange to red could be achieved in CGASS QD systems. Single particle level investigation has been successfully correlated with the ensemble level property. The enhancement of radiative recombination rate and the suppression of non-radiative Auger recombination rate have been observed to be consonant with each other. The orange emitting CGASS QD has the maximum near unity PL QY, i.e. with highest degree of radiative recombination rate and most suppressed non-radiative Auger recombination rate.
In the fifth chapter, excitation energy dependent variation of PL efficiency (PLQY) for CGASS QDs have been shown. With increasing excitation energy above band edge the PLQY decreases. The reasons behind this apparent violation of 'Vavilov's rule' have been investigated employing ultrafast dynamics at the ensemble level in combination with PL blinking dynamics at the single particle level. Decreasing extent of hot electron trapping, and increasing extent of hot hole trapping towards the band edge lead to enhanced PLQY for lower energy excitations. While comparing excitation energy dependent variation of PL efficiency for CGASS QDs and CS QDs, it could be shown that for similar variation of excitation energy the variation in PLQY is only ~ 1.6 fold (from ~ 0.90 to ~ 0.56) for CGASS QDs in comparison to 9 fold (from ~ 0.92 to ~ 0.10) for CdSe/ZnS CS QDs. This observation indicates that CGASS QD could provide improved confinement for the photogenerated charge carriers from trapping throughout the excitation energy landscape in comparison to CS QDs and thus, optical superiority of CGASS QD over CS QDs could be evidenced.
In the sixth chapter a brief overview of the conclusions drawn in chapter third, fourth and fifth have been mentioned. In addition, a few still unresolved questions have been delineated. Possible experiments to shed light in the directions from which answers for those questions can be obtained have been elaborated.


The basics of digital literacy begin to form at an early age, and as they grow older, digital literacy must continue to evolve, adapting to the rapidly changing digital world. The first (both in importance and in time) after the family cognitive social institution for most people is the educational system, or rather, the system of preschool education. The problem of increasing the digital literacy of preschool teachers, their willingness to use information technology in educational activities is clearly relevant. Studies have shown an insufficiently high level of digital literacy of future teachers. The goal of this work is to strengthen the digital literacy component in preparing future preschool educators. The authors of the article conducted an experimental study on the introduction of a new program of study of the discipline "Information Technology" at the Elabuga Institute of Kazan (Volga) Federal University. This program includes the following modules: "Interactive Didactic Games", "Animation Basics", "Programming Basics" and "Network Technologies". Based on an analysis of the design work for each module, as well as a survey of 68 respondents of different age categories who took part in the study, an increase in the level of digital literacy of future teachers in all indicators, an increase in the number of people wishing to use information technology in their professional activities, as well as a positive attitude of future teachers to the proposed program.


A series of flavones derivatives were synthesized from reaction of o-hydroxyacetophenone and various acids via ester and β-diketone using traditional Baker-Venkatraman rearrangement. Even if the method used is traditional, the noteworthy aspect of the protocol is yields obtained were excellent. The synthesized compounds are having various well known applications like antibacterial application.


Background:Distal femur fractures occur following high-energy impact in young patients or low-energy injury in elderly patients with osteopenic or osteoporotic bone.This study is aimed to compare the results of retrograde Nailing versus plating technique in distal femoral fractures regarding both clinical and radiological alignment. Patients and methods:This study was conducted on 18 patients with distal femoral fractureswho divided into two groups; Group A treated by retrograde femoral nail (RGN) and group B treated by Plating technique. All patients were subjected to clinical and radiological measurements to assess the outcomes after surgery. Results:Clinical measurements in normal limb was 4.66±1.32 in retrograde nail group while it was 4.88±1.58 in plating group, the MAD in fractured limp clinically was 5.38±1.89 in retrograde nail group while it was 6.48±2.31 in plating group. The radiological MAD showed significant difference between the normal and operated side. Mechanical Lateral Distal Femoral Angle (mLFDA) in fractured limb was 88.66±2.54 in retrograde nail group while it was 89.33±3.67 in plating group (P=0.663). Medial Proximal Tibial Angle (MPTA) in fractured limb was 87.77±1.85 in retrograde nail group while it was 87.88±3.48 in plating group. In spite of the excellent results in RGN group compared with group (B), the overall results showed no significant difference statistically between the two groups. Conclusions: Retrograde nailing is a good fixation system for fractures of distal femur with better outcome in terms of range of movements, less infection rate and early mobilization.


Hamsters were exposed to greater than 95% O2 continuously for up to 5 days to determine longitudinal changes in the diffusive conductance of the alveolar epithelium and capillary endothelium as a result of hyperoxia. Permeability X surface area (PS, cm3/s X 10(-4)) was measured by isolated, perfused lung techniques. Alveolar epithelium PS for [14C]sucrose and 125I-bovine serum albumin (BSA) were determined at seven exposure times. Control PS (sucrose) and PS(BSA) averaged 1.00 and 0.022, respectively. Values were unchanged until 4.5 days, when significant increases in both, but especially PS(BSA), occurred. After 5 days, PS values were 4.69 and 0.691, respectively. Capillary endothelium PS for 125I-BSA and fluoresceinisothiocyanate dextran-150 (D-150) were measured at four exposure times. Control endothelium PS(BSA) and PS(D-150) averaged 0.232 and 0.048, respectively. These values were also unchanged after 4 days but increased to 0.440 and 0.131 after 5 days. Wet lung weight significantly increased after only 4 days. Hyperoxia thus increased both endothelium and epithelium PS, but epithelium changes were much greater. These functional changes do not occur for several days, occur simultaneously, and follow increases in lung wet weight.


We study the interaction between the AIMD (Additive Increase Multiplicative Decrease) congestion control and a bottleneck router with Drop Tail buffer. We consider the problem in the framework of deterministic hybrid models. First, we show that the hybrid model of the interaction between the AIMD congestion control and bottleneck router always converges to a cyclic behavior. We characterize the cycles. Necessary and sufficient conditions for the absence of multiple jumps of congestion window in the same cycle are obtained. Then, we propose an analytical framework for the optimal choice of the router buffer size. We formulate the problem of the optimal router buffer size as a multi-criteria optimization problem, in which the Lagrange function corresponds to a linear combination of the average goodput and the average delay in the queue. The solution to the optimization problem provides further evidence that the buffer size should be reduced in the presence of traffic aggregation. Our analytical results are confirmed by simulations performed with Simulink and the NS simulator.


Adhesive and aggregating properties of the blood platelets are dependent to a higher degree on phospholipid content of their cellular membranes. A tendency of the blood platelets to hyperaggregation was seen in patients with diabetes mellitus. The aim of these studies is to investigate lipid composition of the blood platelets in healthy subjects and in patients with diabetes mellitus during the treatment. Sixty five diabetic patients and 18 healthy humans were examined. A significant decrease in sphingomyelin content down to 10.4% (normal 15.2%) and an increase in phosphatidylserine concentration up to 11.7% (normal 6.8%) were observed in diabetic patients in the process of determination of phospholipid content in the blood plate lets. The changes were revealed in phospholipid content, when calculation was carried out in micrograms/100 mg of protein. During the decompensation stage a decreased concentration of total phospholipids and their choline-containing fractions is observed in the presence of rising phosphatidyl and cholesterol contents and the cholesterol-phospholipid ratio. In diabetes compensation stage the lipid composition of the blood platelets is absolutely within normal.


Garden asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) is a commercially important crop species utilized for its excellent source of vitamins, minerals and dietary fiber. However, after harvest the tissue hardens and its quality rapidly deteriorates because spear cell walls become rigidified due to lignification and substantial increases in heteroxylan content. This latter observation prompted us to investigate the in vitro xylan xylosyltransferase (XylT) activity in asparagus. The current model system for studying heteroxylan biosynthesis, Arabidopsis, whilst a powerful genetic system, displays relatively low xylan XylT activity in in vitro microsomal preparations compared with garden asparagus therefore hampering our ability to study the molecular mechanism(s) of heteroxylan assembly. Here, we analyzed physiological and biochemical changes of garden asparagus spears stored at 4 °C after harvest and detected a high level of xylan XylT activity that accounts for this increased heteroxylan. The xylan XylT catalytic activity is at least thirteen-fold higher than that reported for previously published species, including Arabidopsis and grasses. A biochemical assay was optimized and up to seven successive Xyl residues were incorporated to extend the xylotetraose (Xyl4) acceptor backbone. To further elucidate the xylan biosynthesis mechanism, we used RNA-seq to generate an Asparagus reference transcriptome and identified five putative xylan biosynthetic genes (AoIRX9, AoIRX9-L, AoIRX10, AoIRX14_A, AoIRX14_B) with AoIRX9 having an expression profile that is distinct from the other genes. We propose that Asparagus provides an ideal biochemical system to investigate the biochemical aspects of heteroxylan biosynthesis and also offers the additional benefit of being able to study the lignification process during plant stem maturation.


Human capital is an increasingly important resource for companies which are moving towards a more knowledge-oriented economy. Employees' knowledge, motivation and ability can therefore, in line with the trend, create a competitive advantage for organizations. Talent Management has evolved to meet the changing demands of the labor market and to take advantage of employees' abilities. The purpose of this study was to illustrate how three companies in a knowledge-intensive industry, the accounting profession, practice Talent Management and analyze and explain what shaped its practice. In order to fulfill the purpose the study had a deductive approach where previous theories analyzed the study's empirical information. Institutional theory has been used as a meta-theory, combined with previous studies on Talent Management and management literature. Case studies where made at three of the largest accounting firms, all of which belong to international associations. The approach was semi-structured interviews with three HR directors. The study has identified some key factors explaining what formed the accounting firms practical work on Talent Management. The results of the study shows that the three studied falls ways to work with Talent Management well coincide with how management literature describes the work. The three cases have generally a humanistic approach to Talent Management, where institutional forces have influenced how Talent Management shaped its practice.Keywords: talent management, talent, human capital accounting firms, institutional theory.


The article outlines a theoretical framework for understanding education policy and education reforms based on the concept of knowledge regimes. The concept refers to understandings and definitions of governance and procedural aspects, manners of governing and curriculum issues, thus it comprises contents, structures, and processes of education policy and governance. The article discusses how the concept may be helpful in understanding the complexity and ambiguity of education policy and development. The article argues that the concept of knowledge regimes enables us to gain a better understanding of education policy, the politics of education, and the political in education. Greater awareness of knowledge regimes can also help us to better understand both the circulation of national policy documents and technical and administrative plans, and the situation of those involved in education practice.


OBJECTIVES
This report presents 2013 fetal and perinatal mortality data by maternal age, marital status, race, Hispanic origin, and state of residence, as well as by fetal birthweight, gestational age, plurality, and sex. Trends in fetal and perinatal mortality are also examined.

METHODS
Descriptive tabulations of data are presented and interpreted.

RESULTS
A total of 23,595 fetal deaths at 20 weeks of gestation or more were reported in the United States in 2013. The U.S. fetal mortality rate was 5.96 fetal deaths at 20 weeks of gestation or more per 1,000 live births and fetal deaths, not significantly different from the rate of 6.05 in 2012. The lack of decline in fetal mortality in recent years, coupled with declines in infant mortality, meant that more fetal deaths than infant deaths occurred in the United States for 2011–2013 (although the rates were essentially the same). In 2013, the fetal mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women (10.53) was more than twice the rate for non-Hispanic white (4.88) and Asian or Pacific Islander (4.68) women. The rate for American Indian or Alaska Native women (6.22) was 27% higher, and the rate for Hispanic women (5.22) was 7% higher, than the rate for non-Hispanic white women. Fetal mortality rates were highest for teenagers, women aged 35 and over, unmarried women, and women with multiple pregnancies.


One of the most important uses of artificial neural networks is to forecast non-linear time series, although model-building issues, such as input selection, model complexity and parameters estimation, remain without a satisfactory solution. More of research efforts are devoted to solve these issues. However, other models emerged from statistics would be more appropriated than neural networks for forecasting, in the sense that the process of model specification is based entirely on statistical criteria. Multivariate adaptive regression splines (MARS) is a statistical model commonly used for solving nonlinear regression problems, and it is possible to use it for forecasting time series. Nonetheless, there is a lack of studies comparing the results obtained using MARS and neural network models, with the aim of determinate which model is better. In this paper, we forecast four nonlinear time series using MARS and we compare the obtained results against the reported results in the technical literature when artificial neural networks and the ARIMA approach are used. The main finding in this research, it is that for all considered cases, the forecasts obtained with MARS are lower in accuracy in relation to the other approaches.


Introduction: Hoarding disorder is a complex and not well-understood psychological state that affects millions of people worldwide. Aim: The purpose of this study was to examining the relationship between experimental avoidance and autism spectrum traits and hoarding behaviors with the mediating role of hoarding cognitions. Method: The present study was descriptive of correlational type and the statistical society of this study was all students of Birjand Azad University in the academic year of 2016-17. The sample consisted of 369 people who were selected by random cluster sampling and completed the Saving Inventory-Revised, hoarding cognitions questionnaire, experiential avoidance questionnaire and autism spectrum quotient. Results: The findings of the study showed that experiential avoidance has a positive and significant relationship with aspects of hoarding, while the autism spectrum traits have no relationship with the cognitive and behavioral aspects of hoarding. In addition, a finding on mediating role showed that in the proposed model, only the experiential avoidance has a


This study investigated sentence-processing strategies adopted by advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English in the context of an English structure with which NNSs reportedly have an acquisition difficulty (e.g., Swan & Smith, 2001)—namely, modal perfect (MP). Participants read MP sentences such as He could have worked at the shoe factory and closely related analogous sentences (e.g., He could have work at the shoe factory), and reading times and errors were measured in an online grammaticality-judgment task. It was hypothesized that NSs would have a processing preference for MP sentences compared to the analogues, reflecting the primacy of syntactic information in NS processing and a preference for late closure, whereas NNSs would show no such preference because they rely less on syntactic information when processing sentences. The results revealed, however, that both NSs and NNSs read MP sentences more quickly and with fewer errors than the closely related analogues, consistent with a processing preference for MP sentences. Both groups were also influenced by word-category frequency information, which moderated, but did not fundamentally alter, their syntactic preference for MP. The significance of these findings is discussed in terms of models of second-language sentence processing and NNSs' reported MP acquisition difficulty.


The paper deals with the motion planning problem for a rolling sphere with limited contact area. The system under consideration is represented by a hemispherical object that can roll without slipping or spinning on the plane. Under the constraints imposed on the size of the contact area, the construction of motion can be regarded as a problem of parallel parking in a finite number of movement steps. A motion strategy, realizing the movement steps by tracing generalized figure eights on the hemisphere, is introduced. Two different algorithms for this motion strategy, the circle-based and the generalized Viviani-curve-based ones, are proposed. The convergence of the algorithms is analyzed, and the computational feasibility of these algorithms is verified under simulation.


Abstract Purpose: Herceptin is widely used in treating Her2-overexpressing breast cancer. However, the application of Herceptin in prostate cancer is still controversial. Our previous results have indicated the relevance of Her2 in the transition of the androgen requirement in prostate cancer cells. In this study, the effects of radioimmunotherapy against Her2 in prostate cancer were investigated. Materials and methods: DU145, an androgen receptor-negative prostate cancer cell line, was used in vitro and in vivo to evaluate the effects of Herceptin labeled with a beta emitter, Rhenium-188 (Re-188). Its effects on cell growth, extent of apoptosis, the bio-distribution of Re-188 labeled Herceptin (Re-H), and protein levels were determined. Results: Treatments with Re-188 and Re-H reduced the proliferation of DU145 cells in dose- and time-dependent manners compared to the Herceptin-treated group. Growth inhibition and apoptosis were induced after Re-H treatment; growth inhibition was more distinct in cells with high Her2/p-Her2 levels. Our in vivo xenograft studies revealed that Re-H treatment significantly retarded tumor growth and altered the levels of apoptosis-related proteins. The bio-distribution of Re-H in mice demonstrated a tissue-specific pattern. Importantly, the levels of p35 protein, which is related to cancer cell survival and invasion, dramatically decreased after Re-H treatment. Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that Re-188-labeled Herceptin effectively inhibited the growth of DU145 cells compared to the Herceptin- and Re-188-treated cohorts. This implies that targeting Her2 by both radio- and immuno- therapy might be a potential strategy for treating patients with androgen-independent prostate cancer.


Background: Forearm fractures are one of the most common upper extremity injuries requiring surgery in professional football. Surgical fixation of forearm fractures may speed recovery and decrease games missed in football. Methods: National Football League (NFL) players who underwent forearm fracture open reduction and internal fixation (ORIF) were identified. Matched controls (position, age, experience, performance) were identified. Control and case performance scores were calculated using a standardized scoring system. Return to sport (RTS) in the NFL was defined as playing in a single NFL game after surgery. Comparisons between case and control groups and preoperative and postoperative time points were made using paired-samples Student t tests. Results: Thirty-six surgeries were analyzed following ORIF. Thirty-three were able to RTS in the NFL at an average of 152.1 + 129.8 days. Controls had a significantly longer NFL career (P < .001) and played in significantly more games per season (P = .026) than players who underwent surgery. There was a significant (P = .013) decrease in games/season for DBs following surgery. No significant difference was seen in postoperative performance scores compared with preoperative scores among any positions, nor in postoperative and postindex performance scores compared with matched controls. Conclusion: There is a high rate of RTS in the NFL following forearm fracture ORIF. Following surgery, players' careers were 1 year shorter and played nearly 2 fewer games per season than matched controls. Games per season following surgery was significantly lower among DBs when compared with presurgery. Postoperative performance scores were not significantly different compared with preoperative and when compared with matched controls.


Background And Objective:Dental implants have been universally accepted as the best option for prosthetic rehabilitation of missing teeth.A material of choice for manufacturing dental implants was for long time commercially pure titanium due to its excellent bio compatibility and mechanical properties. Zirconia seems to be a suitable alternative dental implant material because of its tooth like color and biocompatibility. The most promising novel alternative to titanium is polyetheretherketone (PEEK) which is a partially crystalline poly aromatic linear thermoplastic substance. The objective of this study is to study and compare the mechanical properties of titanium, zirconium and PEEK implant materials using three dimensional finite element analysis. Methodology: A randomly chosen computerized tomography was used to obtain the digital model in the initial phase of the work. Only the part portion corresponding to tooth number 35 will be extracted from this model. Screwed cylindrical implants of length 12 mm and diameter 4mm will be modeled and simulated to be placed in the section of the bone. The different models used were model A - Titanium, model B – Zirconium, and model C - PEEK implant models. All models were identical, except for the properties of the used materials and all were exported to the Ansys Workbench V10 finite elements simulation software. Vertical and oblique (45 degree) loads in relation to the long axis of the tooth with 100 N in magnitude were applied. Stress analysis performed by comparing the Von Mises stress components. Fatigue strength and mode of failure were also assessed for the three implant materials. Results: Maximum stress in the peri-implant bone when titanium implant was placed in 35 region was 281.40 Mpa under axial load of 100N. Maximum stress when zirconia implant was placed is 277.99 MPa and when peek implant was placed which amounts for 286.78Mpa. Titanium sustains more life cycle (832840.00) compared to Zirconium (743070.00) and PEEK has much less life cycle (302460.00). Factor of safety is rated on a scale of 0 -15 and results were Titanium (12.42) and Zirconium (11.16) had almost similar values. Peek (6.15) had low safety factor compared to Titanium and Zirconia. Conclusion:Titanium was superior to other two groups in all the properties considered. These results prove why Titanium is still considered to be the gold standard material of choice for dental implant fabrication.


ABSTRACT While many studies have sought to understand the association between merit-based pay and organizational performance, few have assessed the psychological well-being of employees in agencies with such incentive schemes. We show that employees in agencies with merit-based pay are less satisfied with their organization than are those working in agencies that do not implement the incentive systems. We also show that this negative effect is larger in the case of organizational satisfaction than for pay satisfaction or employee satisfaction with the job itself.


Multinational Companies (MNCs) in the pharmaceutical industry today face formidable challenges in China, the world's second largest pharmaceutical market after the U.S. Not only is China the world's largest source of counterfeit and substandard drugs, Chinese authorities have also recently targeted MNCs as part of a crackdown on bribery and competition law violations. In addition, China has a number of technology transfer laws that seem designed to force MNCs to provide uncompensated access to their proprietary technology protected by patents and trade secrets. All of these problems can be traceable to China's rising nationalism and protectionism in its dealings with foreign companies and nations in international business and trade. These are daunting problems but while MNCs focus their efforts on short-term technical solutions, only a long-term approach focusing on legal and political reform can provide a lasting solution.


Background—Certain proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) interfere with clopidogrel metabolism, potentially attenuating P2Y12 receptor inhibition. Previous observational and randomized trials report conflicting results regarding the clinical significance of this pharmacological interaction. We examined the interaction between concomitant administration of PPI and clopidogrel on platelet reactivity and clinical outcomes in the large-scale, prospective Assessment of Dual AntiPlatelet Therapy With Drug-Eluting Stents study. Methods and Results—On-treatment P2Y12 platelet reactivity testing was performed using the VerifyNow assay after clopidogrel loading and successful drug-eluting stent implantation at 11 sites in the United States and Germany. PPIs were prescribed at the discretion of treating physicians; patients were followed for 2 years. High platelet reactivity was defined as P2Y12 reactivity units >208. Of 8582 enrolled patients, 2697 (31.4%) were taking a PPI at the time of coronary intervention. After adjustment for differences in baseline characteristics, PPI use was independently associated with high platelet reactivity (odds ratio, 1.38: 95% confidence interval, 1.25–1.52, P=0.0001). A total of 2162 (25.2%) patients were prescribed a PPI at hospital discharge. In a propensity-adjusted multivariable analysis, discharge PPI use was independently associated with increased risk for postdischarge major adverse cardiac events (cardiac death, myocardial infarction, or ischemia-driven target lesion revascularization) at 2-year follow-up (hazard ratio, 1.21; 95% confidence interval, 1.04–1.42, P=0.02). Conclusions—In patients treated with clopidogrel after successful drug-eluting stents implantation, the concomitant administration of PPI was associated with high platelet reactivity and a greater rate of adverse outcomes during long-term follow-up. Additional studies are warranted to determine the risk–benefit ratio of PPIs in patients with drug-eluting stents treated with clopidogrel. Clinical Trial Registration—URL: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. Unique identifier: NCT00433966.


Abstract Complementary (c)DNA clones corresponding to the full‐length genome of T36CA (a Californian isolate of Citrus tristeza virus with the T36 genotype), which shares 99.1% identity with that of T36FL (a T36 isolate from Florida), were made into a vector system to express the green fluorescent protein (GFP). Agroinfiltration of two prototype T36CA‐based vectors (pT36CA) to Nicotiana benthamiana plants resulted in local but not systemic GFP expression/viral infection. This contrasted with agroinfiltration of the T36FL‐based vector (pT36FL), which resulted in both local and systemic GFP expression/viral infection. A prototype T36CA systemically infected RNA silencing‐defective N. benthamiana lines, demonstrating that a genetic basis for its defective systemic infection was RNA silencing. We evaluated the in planta bioactivity of chimeric pT36CA‐pT36FL constructs and the results suggested that nucleotide variants in several open reading frames of the prototype T36CA could be responsible for its defective systemic infection. A single amino acid substitution in each of two silencing suppressors, p20 (S107G) and p25 (G36D), of prototype T36CA facilitated its systemic infectivity in N. benthamiana (albeit with reduced titre relative to that of T36FL) but not in Citrus macrophylla plants. Enhanced virus accumulation and, remarkably, robust systemic infection of T36CA in N. benthamiana and C. macrophylla plants, respectively, required two additional amino acid substitutions engineered in p65 (N118S and S158L), a putative closterovirus movement protein. The availability of pT36CA provides a unique opportunity for comparative analysis to identify viral coding and noncoding nucleotides or sequences involved in functions that are vital for in planta infection.


In this research samples of PVOH were synthesized at various reaction conditions (temperature, time, and amount of catalyst). First at 25˚C and 45˚C and constant catalyst weight samples of PVOH were prepared with different degree of hydrolysis at various times. For investigation of the effects of temperature, at times 20 and 40 min and constant weight of catalyst PVOH was prepared at various temperatures. Increasing the time and temperature of the hydrolysis reaction caused increasing degree of hydrolysis and reducing the molecular weight of the samples. Considering the variation of reaction condition, the effects of each parameter on molecular weight, degree of hydrolysis and conversion were investigated individually and also collective. Also, by an artificial neural network method, using experimental results (temperature, time and catalyst amount as input and conversion, degree of hydrolysis and molecular weight as output) a network by Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) back propagation with tan-sigmoid transfer function was established. Finally, the established model presented a good prediction capability and enabled us to predict the output in terms of arbitrary in puts. PVOH is an important polymer and prediction its properties during production significantly improves the quality of the products. Neural network technique is used to model the chemical processes to predict the behavior of the process. In this research we investigated the effects of various processing parameters on the properties of PVOH.


In this paper, jasmine microcapsule was synthesized by in-situ polymerization and was applied on cotton fabric with UV curing method. The jasmine microcapsule was verified by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Size distribution was evaluated using particle size analysis. The finishing durability was studied by human olfactory sensations and an optimal finishing process was determined. The results suggest that UV curing will be promising for use in aroma finishing.


Parameters of heart rate variability would explain changes in heart rate during the disease status in cows and to evaluate whether such changes might provide a more sensitive and quantitative indicator of these conditions than crude indices. For this purpose, we recorded electrocardiograms for 24 hr using a Holter-type electrocardiograph and applied power spectral analysis of heart rate variability in both five clinically healthy and four hospitalized cows. The significant findings of the current investigation were that the diurnal variations of autonomic nervous function are abolished in cows that are sick. This abnormal rhythm was induced by predominant parasympathetic inhibition in these cows. Therefore, the heart rate variability may be a useful indicator of sickness condition in cows.


The influence of insulin on the contamination of the carp Cyprinus carpio with the monogenetic fluke Dactylogyrus vastator is studied. Fishes reacted to the introduction of the hormon by the decrease in the degree of intensity of infection and by the increase in the number of lifeless parasites on gills, by contrast to control fishes and fishes processed with stress hormones (adrenaline and cortisol). We assume that the decrease in the abundance index in live monogenetic fluke and the increase in the number of lifeless oness is caused by the deficiency of nutrients accessible for the growth and development caused by activation of hormone-induced anabolic processes and stimulation of mechanisms of immune protection.


Background: There is no generally agreed classification scheme for the many different vegetation formation types occurring in the tropics. This hinders cross-continental comparisons and causes confusion as words such as 'forest' and 'savanna' have different meanings to different people. Tropical vegetation formations are therefore usually imprecisely and/or ambiguously defined in modelling, remote sensing and ecological studies. Aims: To integrate observed variations in tropical vegetation structure and floristic composition into a single classification scheme. Methods: Using structural and floristic measurements made on three continents, discrete tropical vegetation groupings were defined on the basis of overstorey and understorey structure and species compositions by using clustering techniques. Results: Twelve structural groupings were identified based on height and canopy cover of the dominant upper stratum and the extent of lower-strata woody shrub cover and grass cover. Structural classifications did not, however, always agree with those based on floristic composition, especially for plots located in the forest–savanna transition zone. This duality is incorporated into a new tropical vegetation classification scheme. Conclusions: Both floristics and stand structure are important criteria for the meaningful delineation of tropical vegetation formations, especially in the forest/savanna transition zone. A new tropical vegetation classification scheme incorporating this information has been developed.


Discussion and analysis on international climate policy often focuses on the rather abstract level of total national and regional greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. At some point, however, emission reductions need to be translated to consumption level. In this article, we evaluate the implications of the strictest IPCC representative concentration pathway for key consumption categories (food, travel, shelter, goods, services). We use IPAT style identities to account for possible growth in global consumption levels and indicate the required change in GHG emission intensity for each category (i.e. GHG emission per calorie, person kilometer, square meter, kilogram, US dollar). The proposed concept provides guidance for product developers, consumers and policymakers. To reach the 2 °C climate target (2.1 tCO2-eq. per capita in 2050), the GHG emission intensity of consumption has to be reduced by a factor of 5 in 2050. The climate targets on consumption level allow discussion of the feasibility of this climate target at product and consumption level. In most consumption categories products in line with this climate target are available. For animal food and air travel, reaching the GHG intensity targets with product modifications alone will be challenging and therefore structural changes in consumption patterns might be needed. The concept opens up possibilities for further research on potential solutions on the consumption and product level to global climate mitigation.


Introduction:
 Despite promising success in animal models, neuroprotective strategies remain limited in clinical applications. There is a growing interest in endogenous mechanisms of ischemic protection in the human brain and their potential therapeutic application. In this study we investigated if a history of untreated peripheral vascular disease (PVD) could act as a form of "remote ischemic preconditioning" and induce tolerance to cerebral ischemic events in terms of clinical outcomes after ischemic stroke.

 Methods:
 We performed a retrospective review of a prospectively collected database of 1,473 patients who presented to our institution with ischemic strokes between October 2005 and February 2011. Patients with a history of peripheral vascular disease were identified. A balanced control group within the same database was determined by using a matching algorithm that considered the following characteristics: age, sex, ethnicity, history of hypertension, prior TIA's, diabetes mellitus, tobacco use, and NIHSS at presentation. The groups were compared in terms of modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at discharge and mortality.

 Results:
 Forty-five patients were identified to have untreated PVD.
 Table 1
 summarizes the demographic and risk factor proportions for each group. Age, gender, NIHSS at presentation and past medical history were comparable among the groups. Non-fatal outcomes were not significantly different in the case and control groups. There were 23 patients (51.1%) with a mRS of 3 or less with PVD compared to 22 patients (48.9%) in the control group and 18 patients (39%) with a mRS of 4 or 5 with PVD compared to 14 patients (31.1%) in the control group. However, the mortality rate was significantly different, with 4 deaths (8.9%) in the PVD group versus 10 deaths (22.2%) in the control group (Odds Ratio 0.85, 95% CI 0.7-1.0).

 Conclusions:
 In a retrospective cohort of patients and case-matched controls with ischemic stroke, a history of untreated peripheral vascular disease (PVD) is associated with a lower mortality rate secondary to stroke. PVD could act as a form of "remote ischemic preconditioning" and induce tolerance to cerebral ischemic events in terms of reduction of stroke-related mortality.


: Organ transplant recipients may develop cutaneous complications related to long-term immunosuppressive drug treatment (prednisolone, azathioprine, cyclosporine). These complications are either related to the immunosuppression per se, such as common warts, dermatophytosis, premalignant lesions, and skin cancer, or drug-specific effects, such as acne, rosacea, and hypertrichosis. Organ transplant recipients have a markedly increased risk of developing skin cancer, especially squamous cell carcinoma, but also basal cell carcinoma, Kaposi's sarcoma and malignant melanoma. Patients should be encouraged to avoid sun exposure, a well-known risk factor for skin cancer, and to use sun protection measures. Patients with skin lesions suspected to be malignant should be referred to a dermatologist. Close dermatological follow-up of patients diagnosed with post-transplant skin cancer is essential.


A random sample of 220 CGCA members was surveyed, using a 44 Item Counsellor Role Questionnaire (CRQ), for present and preferred functions and responsibilities. Their clients and administrators were asked to respond to the CRQ in terms of how frequently CGCA members should perform each item. The most frequently reported activities of counsellor respondents were in the area of counselling clients with educational-vocational and personal-social psychological problems. Sixty per cent of counsellor respondents did not engage in group methods, consultation with other counsellors, public relations activities and research as often as they felt they should. Counsellors differed with their clients on twice as many CRQ items as they did with their administrators. Counsellors, clients, and administrators reached consensus on eight CRQ items, including counselling for educational-vocational and personal-social problems; confidential note-taking; consultation with other counsellors, community service agencies, and other helping professionals; and client follow-up.


Theories of choice and judgment assume that agents behave rationally, choose the higher expected value option, and evaluate the choice consistently (Expected Utility Theory, Von Neumann, & Morgenstern, 1947). However, researchers in decision-making showed that human behaviour is different in choice and judgement tasks (Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1968; 1971; 1973). In this research, we propose that psychological engagement and control deprivation predict behavioural inconsistencies and utilitarian performance with judgment and choice. Moreover, we explore the influences of engagement and control deprivation on agent's behaviours, while manipulating content of utility (Kusev et al., 2011, Hertwig & Gigerenzer 1999, Tversky & Khaneman, 1996) and
decision reward (Kusev et al, 2013, Shafir et al., 2002).


The paper deals with ontology modelling for the purpose of design and creating of knowledge ontology for thematic cartography. The prepared ontology represents a database of selected declarative cartographical knowledge subsequently employed in the intelligent system for interactive support of thematic map design. The knowledge system pilot project under development is intended for users without necessary cartographical knowledge to whom such system will enable interactive creation of a thematic map and will provide them with support to this aim. The paper brings up information on possibilities of a domain expert (cartographer) in the endeavour to seize domain knowledge of thematic cartography and to express them in a formalized way. OWL ontology concentrates, formalizes and organizes declarative knowledge of thematic cartography domain. The result is the database containing taxonomy of terms hierarchically arranged into categories as well as description of their mutual relations.


Hien, T. Q, T. T. Hoan, M. A. Khoa, T. T. Kien and T. Q. Trung, 2018. Comparison on the effects of several leaf meal kinds included in diets of laying hens on egg yield and quality. Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 24 (2): 303–309 The aim of this experiment is to determine the way to include some kinds of leaf meals in the diets of Luong Phuong parent stock and the effect it will have on egg yield and quality of laying hens. Cassava, leucaena leaf meals (CLM, LLM) and stylosanthes grass meal (SGM) were used in this trial. The experiment employed 630 laying hens, 84 roosters, allocated into 7 groups; each group consisted of 30 hens and 4 roosters in triple replication. The experimental groups were named as: The Control (CG), Experiment 1A, 2A, 3A and 1B, 2B, 3B. The diet offered to the Control was called the basal diet (BD) without inclusion of leaf meals; its ME and CP content complied with requirement standards for colored feather production parent stocks. The diets offered in the A groups were formulated with the edition of 6% CLM (for 1A), 6% LLM (for 2A) and 6% SGM (for 3A) with correction for ME and CP content which was similar to that of the BD (the fi rst method). The diets provided for the B experimental groups were prepared by replacing 6% BD with CLM (for 1B), with LLM (for 2B) and with SGM (for 3B). This replacement without correction of ME and CP content met the requirement standard (the second method). The results showed that there was similar effect of CLM and LLM on egg yield and quality while the effect of SGM was signifi cantly lowered. The effect of the fi rst method of leaf meal inclusion into the diets was better than that of the second method. However, CLM and LLM showed good results in both methods, whereas SGM only had good result in the fi rst method.


By considering a radiating gas as a single quantum-mechanical system, energy levels corresponding to certain correlations between individual molecules are described. Spontaneous emission of radiation in a transition between two such levels leads to the emission of coherent radiation. The discussion is limited first to a gas of dimension small compared with a wavelength. Spontaneous radiation rates and natural line breadths are calculated. For a gas of large extent the effect of photon recoil momentum on coherence is calculated. The effect of a radiation pulse in exciting "super-radiant" states is discussed. The angular correlation between successive photons spontaneously emitted by a gas initially in thermal equilibrium is calculated.


Background Isabel Hospice provides care for a population of 350,000 across eastern Hertfordshire. Changes in our population and an increasing focus on choice in place of care have resulted in a growing demand for services to support patients to live and die at home. To inform future community service development, the hospice organised a series of focus groups for patients, carers and professionals. However, it was recognised that this method of engagement would only reach a limited number of stakeholders. Aim To identify the priorities for community specialist palliative care service development of both stakeholders from local health and social care organisations and hospice staff. Methods A postcard was developed asking the respondent to list 'five things I would like a community specialist palliative care service to provide'. The postcards also captured basic demographic data about the respondent. Over 300 postcards were distributed, with a covering letter, to local stakeholders including primary care teams, acute and mental health trust staff, adult care services and local voluntary sector organisations. Electronic versions of the postcard were distributed to all hospice staff and volunteers. Results External respondents – 43 cards were returned, including 17 from district nurses and 14 from GPs. These included a total of 171 suggestions for what respondents would like the hospice to provide. The most popular themes were provision of 'hands on' care and access to advice and support 24/7. Internal respondents – 52 cards were returned, 17 from clinical staff and 31 from volunteers. These included a total of 157 suggestions, with the majority focusing on the development of day hospice and outpatient services. Conclusion By adopting the novel approach of distributing the 'five things' postcard, the hospice was able to gather much wider stakeholder feedback than would have been possible by the use of focus groups alone.


Facilities that provide cancer care are increasingly promoting their services directly to the public through advertisements. In the past few years, cancer center advertising has received criticism for making unsupported claims about survival, omitting risk information, and using emotional language. Although there is a large body of evidence regarding the content, impact, and regulation of pharmaceutical advertising, there is little known about that of cancer centers. This study aimed to assess the evidence regarding advertising by facilities that provide cancer care. The author conducted a rapid review of publications that analyzed the content of cancer center advertising published before February 15, 2013. Only two peer-reviewed studies were selected for inclusion from 353 publications identified by the review. Both were cross-sectional studies and reported the use of emotional appeal and patient testimonials as advertising strategies. While the number of studies found was too small and their methods and quality too variable to allow for any confident conclusions to be made, this study identified a considerable gap in the literature. Descriptive studies of the content of cancer center advertising are needed to move the debate forward and inform studies measuring the impact on the public. Understanding the messages conveyed through cancer center advertisements and their effect on the population are of high public health importance, as such messages have the potential to affect health costs, patient preferences and expectations about treatment, and the provider-patient relationship.


Information sources, creation of informant networks and labors of local intelligence have become very important goals in political power calculations of the paramilitary and insurgents. Phenomena of information and rumor can disclose central aspects to understand the direction of events yet to be seen in local politics. The text presents a phenomenological analysis of information (and its deviations) to understand the dynamics of armed conflict at a local level.


A collection of shrimp from deep reefs in the Dutch Caribbean is described. Most material originates from the Bonaire deep reef expedition (2013) by Wageningen Marine Research of Wageningen University. Some additional material was available from dives on Curaçao (2014). A new species of Pseudocoutierea Holthuis was recognized in the material collected off Bonaire. The new species is described and illustrated and its position in the phylogeny of the genus Pseudocoutierea analyzed. A key to the species in the genus is presented.


Designing Socio-Technical (ST) systems requires the designer to account for the intrinsic and interrelated characteristics of the tasks, actors, technologies, and environment. Requirements analysis informs the design of information systems. However, few approaches have emerged to analyze requirements for ST systems, which is considered complex, time consuming, and requires a large body of knowledge. In this paper we present a process model that aims to help identifying ST systems requirements. The process model assumes that ST systems characteristics of tasks, actors, technologies, and environment can help identifying a set of ST imbalances that in turn helps in the identification process of requirements. The applicability of the process model is demonstrated by identifying example requirements of self-care systems and results are presented.


SUMMARY A characteristic feature of mammalian dentition is the evolutionary reduction of tooth number and replacement. Because mice do not replace teeth, here we used Sorex araneus, the common shrew, as a model to investigate the loss of tooth replacement. Historically, shrews have been reported to initiate the development of several, milk or deciduous teeth but these soon become rudimentary and only the replacement teeth erupt. Shrews thus offer a living example of a derived mammalian pattern where the deciduous tooth development is being suppressed. Based on histological and gene expression analyses of serial sections, we suggest that S. araneus has discernible tooth replacement only in the premolar 4 (P4) position. Both generations of teeth express Shh in the enamel knot and in the inner enamel epithelium. Nevertheless, the deciduous P4 (dP4) is reduced in size during embryogenesis and is eventually lost without becoming functional. Analysis of growth shows that P4 replaces the dP4 in a "double‐wedge" pattern indicative of competitive replacement where the suppression of the deciduous tooth coincides with the initiation of its replacement. Because activator–inhibitor mechanisms have been implicated in adjacent mouse molars and in transgenic mice with continuous tooth budding, we suggest that evolutionary suppression of deciduous teeth may involve early activation of replacement teeth, which in turn begin to suppress their deciduous predecessors.


The numerical solution of the partial differential equation (PDE) of the received signal strength from fixed transmitting stations as derived from Maxwell's wave equation is presented in this paper. The received signal strength level (RSSL) at a defined distance from a source point (base transceiver station) was simulated for two real environments described as Sites 1 and 2. The values of RSSL were taken at different nodes and at different radial directions away from the source point using the Finite Element Method (FEM) tool of the MATLAB package. The hexagonal geometry with no describing function was assumed for the cell. A 3-D model of the power received versus distance was obtained, and the numerical solution of the model presented. The numerical results obtained from the 3-D model were compared with the results of the drive test conducted in Sites 1 and 2 for functional GSM radio networks in the areas. The suitability of the method was justified for the two sites with a 5.55dB standard deviation of error for network A in Site 1 and 8.36dB and 3.40dB standard deviations of error for networks A and B respectively for Site 2.


Chinese scene text reading is one of the most challenging problems in computer vision and has attracted great interest. Different from English text, Chinese has more than 6000 commonly used characters and Chinese characters can be arranged in various layouts with numerous fonts. The Chinese signboards in street view are a good choice for Chinese scene text images since they have different backgrounds, fonts and layouts. We organized a competition called ICDAR2019-ReCTS, which mainly focuses on reading Chinese text on signboard. This report presents the final results of the competition. A large-scale dataset of 25,000 annotated signboard images, in which all the text lines and characters are annotated with locations and transcriptions, were released. Four tasks, namely character recognition, text line recognition, text line detection and end-to-end recognition were set up. Besides, considering the Chinese text ambiguity issue, we proposed a multi ground truth (multi-GT) evaluation method to make evaluation fairer. The competition started on March 1, 2019 and ended on April 30, 2019. 262 submissions from 46 teams are received. Most of the participants come from universities, research institutes, and tech companies in China. There are also some participants from the United States, Australia, Singapore, and Korea. 21 teams submit results for Task 1, 23 teams submit results for Task 2, 24 teams submit results for Task 3, and 13 teams submit results for Task 4. The official website for the competition is http://rrc.cvc.uab.es/?ch=12.


Genetic modification and genetically modified organisms (GMO) remains a controversial issue. Latvian consumers' attitude towards genetic modification and GMO have been characterized as negative using Eurobarometer data, but so far no specific investigation of Latvian consumers has been done in this field. The aim of this study was to analyse Latvian consumers' attitude towards genetic modification and GMO, the subjective and objective knowledge about this questions and acceptability of use of GMO in different application areas. Main task in frame of this research is to summarize different literature and data available to outline some of factors that influence attitudes towards GMO: mainly public subjective and objective knowledge, perception on risk and benefits, and ethical concerns. The survey method was chosen as a tool to collect data and elicit Latvian consumers' attitude towards use of GMO in different industries. The survey was composed of 18 questions; seven of them have been structured on one to ten-point scale. The survey data of Latvia's inhabitants (N = 1184) were collected by the telemarketing company from September 2014 until June 2015.  To select the units to be included in the sample systematic sampling was applied - every twentieth inhabitant was approached by phone call and invited to answer on survey questions. The results of Latvian consumers' survey showed that Latvians' acceptability of genetic modification varies by application area; genetically modified non-food products are more accepted than GM food and feed products. Ethical and moral aspects play essential role among Latvian consumers. Respondents' subjective and objective knowledge of genetic modification and GMO differs. The findings would be essential to policy makers when designing risk-communication strategies targeting different consumer segments to ensure proper discussion and addressing potential concerns about genetic modification.  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.10.14628


The adaptation of universities to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) plays an essential role in society, creating new knowledge, transferring it to students by means of new and more active methodologies aimed at learning that will enable students to put everything they learn into practice. However, such methodologies are not equally applicable in all subjects. Subjects such as Manufacturing Technology, taught at different levels in both undergraduate and graduate levels, are descriptive to a great extent. This descriptive nature must be supported by new technologies if these subjects claim to be more attractive to students. In this paper some examples of successful case studies are presented. They represent the new way of understanding the teaching replacing the old concept of traditional classroom lecture by more interactive ones and, therefore, more attractive to students.


Cluster analysis is required in text mining for grouping objects. Cluster analysis consists of different algorithms and methods for grouping objects of similar kinds into respective categories. Cluster analysis is exploratory data analysis tool which aims at sorting different objects into groups in a way that the degree of association between two objects is maximal, if they belong to same group and minimal otherwise. It can be used to discover structure in data without providing an explanation or interpretation. Cluster analysis simply discover structure in data without explaining, why they exist. Aim of text mining, text clustering is to divide collection of text document into different category group should be of little similarity. Cluster is comprised of number of similar object collected or grouped together. Cluster analysis is tool for exploring structure of data clustering is subjective or problem dependent. Basic objective in cluster analysis is to discover natural grouping of items. Quantitative scale is developing which measure association between object, these scales are referred as similarity measure.


Central effects of sex steroids on cardiovascular regulation and on behavior were investigated by injecting conjugated estrogens i.c.v. in conscious or anesthetized rats. Conjugated estrogens (0.1-10 micrograms) produced dose-related increases in pressure and behavioral excitation in all rats and drinking in some rats. Marked increases ii pressure and excitation with tonic convulsions resulting in death were produced by similar injections of conjugated estrogens (100 micrograms). Pretreatment with angiotensin I converting enzyme inhibitor or angiotensin II analog abolished both vasopressor responses and behavioral excitation in conscious rats. When rats were later anesthetized with urethane to allow recording of sympathetic nerve activity, 10 and 100 micrograms of conjugated estrogens produced dose-related vasopressor responses accompanied by corresponding increases in peripheral sympathetic nerve activity. Again, converting enzyme inhibitor or angiotensin II analog abolished the increases in both blood pressure and sympathetic nerve activity. By contrast, when conjugated estrogens were injected i.v. up to 2 mg/kg, neither blood pressure nor sympathetic outflow was affected. Collectively, our results suggest that conjugated estrogens infused centrally activate a renin-angiotensin system in the brain, which results in sympathetic hyperactivity leading to blood pressure elevation.


The history of the evolution of humanity is still not clearly known in anthropology and science because of lack of concrete human data that would enable us to objectively explain it. The creationism-evolutionism debate is controversial. The evolution of humanity involves man (the self), the physical world and the universe. Findings in anthropology and modern quantum physics, and human history are reviewed in this study. On the basis of the above review, a new hypothesis concerning the beginning and future of modern man, Homo sapiens is proposed from the perspective of the author's ultron-logotron theory of self and consciousness: mind and matter.


One way to reduce the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases on climate is to inject carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial sources into deep geological formations such as brine formations or depleted oil or gas reservoirs. Research has and is being conducted to improve understanding of factors affecting particular aspects of geological CO2 storage, such as performance, capacity, and health, safety and environmental (HSE) issues, as well as to lower the cost of CO2 capture and related processes. However, there has been less emphasis to date on system-level analyses of geological CO2 storage that consider geological, economic, and environmental issues by linking detailed representations of engineering components and associated economic models. The objective of this study is to develop a system-level model for geological CO2 storage, including CO2 capture and separation, compression, pipeline transportation to the storage site, and CO2 injection. Within our system model we are incorporating detailed reservoir simulations of CO2 injection and potential leakage with associated HSE effects. The platform of the system-level modeling isGoldSim [GoldSim, 2006]. The application of the system model is focused on evaluating the feasibility of carbon sequestration with enhanced gas recovery (CSEGR) in the Rio Vista region of California. The reservoir simulations are performed using a special module of the TOUGH2 simulator, EOS7C, for multicomponent gas mixtures of methane and CO2 or methane and nitrogen. Using this approach, the economic benefits of enhanced gas recovery can be directly weighed against the costs, risks, and benefits of CO2 injection.


With the advancement in networking services, network security has become the key facet in our digital world. The term network security constitutes prevention of network and network resources by ceaseless monitoring and thereby denying the services like user access to network resources and modification of network configuration details from unauthorized users. Firewalls are one such network security system that monitors the inbound and outbound traffic of the network, this observation relies on two principal factors, Stateless and Stateful firewalls. The Stateless firewalls track the source and destination address of every incoming and outgoing data packets whereas the Stateful firewalls track each packet in the network by reading the entire header and thus it can read the type of data being transmitted. "PLUTO – A home office firewall" is a stateless firewall which can be used in Linux environment. The main motto behind developing the PLUTO as real time firewall is to demonstrate a real-time application for home office users through which they can secure their network.


Background: Ziprasidone and bupropion are medications prescribed for mood and behavior disorders. They have apparently safe cardiac safety profiles in both therapeutic and supratherapeutic doses, but recently the Federal Drug Administration has issued a caution regarding ziprasidone use in combination with other drugs that are known to prolong the QTc interval. Case Report: A 17-year-old male developed a widened QRS and a prolonged QTc interval following an overdose of ziprasidone and bupropion. He required hospital admission for aggressive cardiac monitoring and antidysrhythmic therapy, stabilizing to baseline by 80 hours postingestion. Conclusions: We present a case that underscores the potential cardiotoxicities of these medications. Ziprasidone and bupropion ingestion can be associated with cardiotoxicities that may require several days of aggressive cardiac monitoring and treatment.


The effect of decreased accessibility on passenger usage of the Detroit airport is investigated using techniques of statistical inference. The purpose is to demonstrate the usefulness, even necessity, of these techniques for the proper analysis of many of the data that arise in transportation engineering problems. The great variability inherent in growth rates for individual city-pairs makes isolation of the accessibility effect at Detroit difficult. However, after certain adjustments to the data, an analysis of variance strongly indicates the presence of an accessibility effect on 1946 to 1947 growth. Conversely, the data do not offer any evidence of further accessibility effects on growth rates in later years. A point estimate of the percentage of passengers lost because of relocation is 28.7%, and 95% confidence limits are 12.4% to 41.9%.


In this paper, there are two kinds of impact vibration models: rigid impact model and elastic model. The dynamic responses of the two kinds of gear impact models are compared by experimental and numerical analysis. Firstly, establish the motion equations of the two models. Secondly, verify the correctness of the mechanical models through experimental analysis. Comparing the results of the numerical and experimental analysis, we can find that the intensity noise of gear vibration is reduced by the elastic boundary. Finally, the dynamic bifurcation characteristic of dimensionless excitations magnitude and backlash will be analyzed as well.


Abstract. The verification of a measurement system is an essential part of system development. For this purpose, various guidelines can be used to evaluate and validate photogrammetric systems. However, these guidelines are only designed to validate systems that observe a static scene. Hence, these guidelines cannot validate measurement systems that observe dynamic scenes. In addition, reference data is not available for most systems, making verification significantly more difficult or not a practical solution. In this work, a simulation-based verification approach is presented. The presented approach allows the analysis of complex systems and the investigation of specific processing steps. The approach is based on a Monte Carlo simulation, which only requires the probability density distributions of the input data and synthetic reference data. For this purpose, the probability density distributions of the input data are determined by kernel density estimation to generate realistic input data. The application is a wind tunnel test, where aerodynamic and structural dynamic phenomena are observed at a wind turbine model. The measurement system consists of four high-speed cameras, which acquire the rotor blades' deformations. The objective of the simulation is to evaluate the complete process regarding the accuracy and precision of the measurement system. Experimental data can be used to estimate the quality of the simulation. It was shown that the simulation produces realistic results and that it is suitable for validating dynamic measurement systems. The simulation showed that the precision and accuracy of the system are highly dependent from the estimation of the self-motion. The achieved accuracy is still high and allows the detection of small-scale blade deformations.


China's manufacturing industry is now the 4th largest manufacturing power in the world, second only to the US, Japan, and Germany. Large but not strong, it is still way behind developed countries. In the technical standard field, the gap between China's manufacturing industry and industrially developed countries is showing that there is a low level of technological standards and lack of professional talent versed in technical standards. A technical standards strategy is of importance to the development of China's manufacturing industry has been as one of the major strategies in the 10th Five-Year Plan period. The overall objective of the strategy for China's technical standards should be capable of supporting Chinese enterprises and products in entering the international market and ensuring the superiority of China's key industries in international competition. The implementing tactics of the strategy are all-round tracking, effective adoption, crucial participation, and strong dominance.


The study aims to explore how 18 M.A. TESOL students, who are prospective or experienced ESL/EFL teachers, perceive poetry writing in a second language. A qualitative interview-based design was utilized. Following Iida's (2012a) analytical framework in examining EFL students' perceptions toward writing haiku in English, this current study investigates 18 prospective ESL/EFL teachers' perspectives through the lens of difficulty, value, emotion, and attitude. In order to validate the coding of the interviews, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) test was computed among three interview coders including the primary researcher, which yields a great agreement rate at .86. The results indicate that while these prospective ESL/EFL teachers understand writing poetry in a second language involves various difficulties, they acknowledge the values of utilizing poetry writing in second language classrooms. The results also show that writing poetry in a second language contains both positive and negative emotions, but positive ones are more frequently addressed. Most importantly, the data suggests that writing poetry in a second language is considered as an applicable practice in ESL/EFL language classrooms.


In this study, we used measurements of occupational exposures to pesticides in agriculture to evaluate health risks and analyzed how the federal regulatory program is addressing these risks. Dose estimates developed by the State of California from measured occupational exposures to 41 pesticides were compared to standard indices of acute toxicity (LD50) and chronic effects (reference dose). Lifetime cancer risks were estimated using cancer potencies. Estimated absorbed daily doses for mixers, loaders, and applicators of pesticides ranged from less than 0.0001% to 48% of the estimated human LD50 values, and doses for 10 of 40 pesticides exceeded 1% of the estimated human LD50 values. Estimated lifetime absorbed daily doses ranged from 0.1% to 114,000% of the reference doses developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and doses for 13 of 25 pesticides were above them. Lifetime cancer risks ranged from 1 per million to 1700 per million, and estimates for 12 of 13 pesticides were above 1 per million. Similar results were obtained for field workers and flaggers. For the pesticides examined, exposures pose greater risks of chronic effects than acute effects. Exposure reduction measures, including use of closed mixing systems and personal protective equipment, significantly reduced exposures. Proposed regulations rely primarily on requirements for personal protective equipment and use restrictions to protect workers. Chronic health risks are not considered in setting these requirements. Reviews of pesticides by the federal pesticide regulatory program have had little effect on occupational risks. Policy strategies that offer immediate protection for workers and that are not dependent on extensive review of individual pesticides should be pursued. ImagesFigure 1.


ABSTRACT The poor availability and high cost of quality forage seed provide a major limitation to the productivity of resource-poor dairy farmers in Pakistan. The cost can be minimized if such seeding rates are used to provide optimal forage and seed yields. A field experiment was therefore conducted to investigate the effect of different seeding rates (10, 15, 20, and 25 kg/ha) of Agaitti Berseem-2002 on forage and seed yield components, and forage quality. The results revealed that the seeding rate significantly (P < 0.05) affected number of seeds/m2, seed weight, seed yield and acid detergent fiber (ADF). However, seed rate effects on all the remaining forage and seed yield traits, and quality parameters were found to be non-significant (P > 0.05). The highest value for number of heads/m2 (471) was achieved at a seeding rate of 25 kg/ha, whereas the highest thousand seed weight (3.99 g) and estimated seed yield (687 kg/ha) were obtained at 20 kg/ha, and ADF of forage (20%) was found at a seeding rate of 15 kg/ha. The lowest values for number of heads/m2 (287), seed weight (3.33 g) and estimated seed yield (328 kg/ha) were recorded at a seeding rate of 10 kg/ha. There was no significant difference found between 15 and 20 kg/ha seeding rates in relation to forage yield and quality parameters. Therefore, a seeding rate of 10 kg/ha is recommended to attain the highest forage yield of better quality, whereas a seeding rate of 20 kg/ha provided higher seed production than 10, 15, and 25 kg/ha.


Background: In 2015, Swedish Medical Center recorded 114,282 patient requests for interpretation in 143 different languages. CHNAs and interviews with community leaders identified the importance of cultural and linguistic competency when designing healthcare services. Our goal was to reduce language barriers for the most-used languages and improve the care experience for limited English proficiency (LEP) communities at Swedish. Methods: We began by reviewing CHNAs and having discussions with various LEP community stakeholders about their experiences at Swedish. We developed an in-language patient satisfaction survey for baseline and compiled translated forms and documents. Once we reviewed the data, we created a communication plan for units and clinics that would engage charge nurses, and we distributed language aids. We created updated forms and documents and developed a training program to internally share and educate caregivers. Postintervention, we again conducted the patient satisfaction survey. Results: LEP patients' knowledge of how to use interpretive services increased from baseline to postintervention, and LEP patients' reported ease of communication also improved. This intervention showed that we could raise awareness through project presentation to leadership and staff, that we should develop interpreter services training and embed a presentation about these services in the monthly and yearly new provider and resident orientation, and that we should include language scenarios in the Culture of Safety training. Conclusion: LEP patients and staff alike have frustrations when it comes to the impact of communication limitations on patient care. We believe that the interventions developed in this project have the potential to improve numerous patient/staff interactions and patient experiences. Although data collection to support this conclusion has been difficult, we received positive feedback from the nursing staff regarding the compilation and organization of frequently used documents. Our hope is that our Interpretive Services Department can build upon this work to sustain, scale, and spread our efforts to the entire Swedish Health Services system.