The investigation into the cushioning properties of multi-layer corrugated boards is a hotspot issue in the packaging field. People one after another investigate into the compressive properties based on experiments. As far as authors' knowledge is concerned, no theoretical research on compressive constitutive relation for multi-layer corrugated boards has ever been reported in literature. Therefore, we investigated into the compressive properties of multi-layer corrugated boards and analyzed their compressive breakage mechanism. The compression curve of multi-layer corrugated boards presents the three sections of linear elasticity, sub-buckling going with local collapse and densification. We constructed the compressive constitutive equation by a subsection function. The equation is standardized by the solid modulus Es of corrugated sandwich materials. Focusing on the structure characteristics, it can express the compression resistance and cushioning properties in the same curve for different basis materials. Comparison between the theory and experiments shows that a good consistency is achieved between theoretical and experimental stress-strain curves. By means of the compressive constitutive equation, the compression resistance and cushioning properties can be evaluated without more experiments, which facilitates the optimization of the structure of the corrugated sandwich structure and the optimized design of the cushioning package.


This guide lists books, journals, websites and databases for locating country financial risk information including sovereign ratings and in-depth country analyses. Step-by-step instructions for obtaining reports in EIU and Lexis-Nexis are also provided.


THE WHITE HOUSE Office of Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 1, 1996 STATEMENT BY THE PRESIDENT Removal of Nuclear warheads from Ukraine and Agreement on CFE Flank Issue Ukrainian President Kuchma has announced that all nuclear warheads have been removed from the territory of Ukraine. This is a remarkable achievement. In 1991, there we=e more than 4000 strategic and tactical nuclear warheads in Ukraine. Today there are none. I applaud the Ukrainian government for its historic contribution in reducing the nuclear threat. When the Presidents of Ukraine, Russia and I signed the January 1994 Trilateral Statement on this issue, we looked forward to a day that has now arrived. The trust and cooperation the United States and Ukraine have established in resolving this issue are a cornerstone of a broad and productive relationship. Ukraine has embarked on a bold course of political and economic reform, laying the foundations for democracy and a market economy. We remain committed to supporting Ukraine through its ambitious and for-sighted reforms and to working with Ukraine and our European partners to promote Ukraine's integration into the European community. I also want to note the fact that both the United States and Russia are ahead of the reduction schedule provided for in the START I Treaty. To date, the United States has eliminated 750 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, and about 800 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles in the former Soviet Union have been eliminated, including more than 700 in Russia. The Cooperative Threat Reduction (Nunn-Lugar) program has played a major role in the elimination of these weapons in the former Soviet Union and in the denuclearization of Ukraine. I have asked Secretary Perry to meet next week with his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts, Ministers Shamrov and Grachev, and mark the successful implementation of the Trilateral Statement by visiting a destroyed ICBM silo and a former nuclear weapons storage facility in Ukraine. In doing so, they will celebrate another important step in making the world safer for us all. On this day of important milestones, I also welcome the agreement that was reached today in Vienna by the 30 nations party to the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty. This agreement resolves e difficult problem that had arisen concerning the level of Russian and Ukrainian military equipment allowed on the northern and southern flank of the CFE region. This agreement is the culmination of two years of negotiations led by the United States. I congratulate all parties, including our NATO allies, Russia, Ukraine and the states of the Caucasus and Central and Eastern Europe, for their hard work, cooperation and dedication to preserving the integrity and effectiveness of this crucial Treaty. The CFE Treaty is a key element of a new, more stable Europe. The Treaty has resulted in the destruction of over 50,000 tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery pieces, combat aircraft and attack helicopters. It has also established a system of transparency measures, which will increase confidence through on-site inspections, notifications and information exchanges. THE WHITE HOUSE office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release June 1, 1996 FACT SHEET Removal of Nuclear Warheads from Ukraine The U. …


The aim of this paper is to explore the reasons of gold price volatility. It analyses the information function of the gold future market by open interest contracts as speculation effect, and further fundamental factors including inflation, Chinese yuan per dollar, Japanese yen per dollar, dollar per euro, interest rate, oil price, and stock price, in the short-run. The study proceeds to build a Dynamic OLS model for long-run equilibrium to produce reliable gold price forecasts using the following variables: gold demand, gold supply, inflation, USD/SDR exchange rate, speculation, interest rate, oil price, and stock prices. Findings prove that in the short-run, changes in gold price does granger cause changes in open interest, and changes in Japanese yen per dollar does granger cause changes in gold price. However, in the long-run, the results prove that gold demand, gold supply, USD/SDR exchange rate, inflation, speculation, interest rate, and oil price are associated in a long-run relationship.References


What is a good monetary policy rule for stabilizing the economy? In this paper, efficient policy rules are computed using the FRB/US large-scale open-economy macroeconometric model. Simple three-parameter policy rules are found to be very effective at minimizing fluctuations in inflation, output, and interest rates: Increases in rule complexity yield only trivial reductions in aggregate variability. Under rational expectations, efficient policies smooth the interest rate response to shocks and use the feedback from anticipated policy actions to stabilize inflation and output and to moderate movements in short-term interest rates. Policy should react to a multi-period inflation rate rather than the current quarter inflation rate; in fact, targeting the price level, as opposed to the inflation rate, involves only small additional stabilization costs. These results are robust to parameter and model uncertainty and the imposition of the non-negativity constraint on nominal interest rates. However, if expectations formation is invariant to policy, as in backward-looking models, the expectations channel is shut off and the performance of policies that are efficient under rational expectations may, as a result, deteriorate markedly; efficient policies, in contrast, exploit systematic expectational errors.


We describe a method for computing an implicit function that represents a surface by its zero level set, given a set of points scattered over the surface and associated with surface normal vectors. This implicit function is defined as a linear combination of compactly supported radial basis functions. Our method is suitable for testing whether a given point is interior or exterior to the surface, previously only associated with globally supported or globally regularized radial basis functions. We use a two-level interpolation approach. In the coarse scale interpolation, we set basis function centers by a grid that covers the enlarged bounding box of the given point set and compute their signed distances to the underlying surface using local quadratic approximations of the nearest surface points. Then a fitting to the residual errors on the surface points and additional off-surface points is performed with fine scale basis functions. The final function is the sum of the two intermediate functions and is a good approximation of the signed distance field to the surface in the bounding box. Examples of surface reconstruction and set operations between shapes are provided.


What are the best states for physicians to practice in? Find out in Physicians Practice Best States to Practice 2020 exclusive data project. For our analysis, our editors ranked the states based on 2019 data covering five categories:


ABSTRACT Although the source of drinking water (DW) used in hospitals is commonly disinfected, biofilms forming on water pipelines are a refuge for bacteria, including possible pathogens that survive different disinfection strategies. These biofilm communities are only beginning to be explored by culture-independent techniques that circumvent the limitations of conventional monitoring efforts. Hence, theories regarding the frequency of opportunistic pathogens in DW biofilms and how biofilm members withstand high doses of disinfectants and/or chlorine residuals in the water supply remain speculative. The aim of this study was to characterize the composition of microbial communities growing on five hospital shower hoses using both 16S rRNA gene sequencing of bacterial isolates and whole-genome shotgun metagenome sequencing. The resulting data revealed a Mycobacterium-like population, closely related to Mycobacterium rhodesiae and Mycobacterium tusciae, to be the predominant taxon in all five samples, and its nearly complete draft genome sequence was recovered. In contrast, the fraction recovered by culture was mostly affiliated with Proteobacteria, including members of the genera Sphingomonas, Blastomonas, and Porphyrobacter. The biofilm community harbored genes related to disinfectant tolerance (2.34% of the total annotated proteins) and a lower abundance of virulence determinants related to colonization and evasion of the host immune system. Additionally, genes potentially conferring resistance to β-lactam, aminoglycoside, amphenicol, and quinolone antibiotics were detected. Collectively, our results underscore the need to understand the microbiome of DW biofilms using metagenomic approaches. This information might lead to more robust management practices that minimize the risks associated with exposure to opportunistic pathogens in hospitals.


The management of patients with non‐obstructive azoospermia (NOA) involves testicular sperm extraction (TESE or microdissection TESE) combined with intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Sperm retrieval is successful in up to 50% of men with NOA; however, there is no single clinical finding or investigation that can accurately predict a positive outcome. Several studies have concluded that testicular biopsy is the best predictor of a successful TESE. The present study shows that the strongest predictor of the success of TESE is when tubules with mature spermatozoa (Johnsen score ≥8) are found in the histopathology specimen, irrespective of the overall state of spermatogenesis. The findings suggest that a lower limit threshold value of 2% of tubules with spermatogenesis in the histopathology specimen will result in a positive sperm retrieval. However, it is not practical to perform a diagnostic biopsy before TESE because this would mean that patients undergo two surgeries, which adds to the cost and increases the complications. The diagnostic biopsy is best coupled with an initial TESE before starting the ICSI cycle. Based on the findings of the histopathology specimen, patients may be then offered a repeat TESE if more sperm is needed on the day of ovum pick‐up and ICSI. Also, if the initial TESE was negative, the biopsy result will help in the decision to offer a repeat TESE. This regimen is more cost‐effective because the ICSI cycle will be started only if adequate sperm is retrieved.


The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), provides a standard computer-readable format for privacy policies and a protocol that enables web browsers to read and process privacy policies automatically. P3P enables machine-readable privacy policies that can be retrieved automatically by web browsers and other user agent tools that can display symbols, prompt users, or take other appropriate actions. We developed the AT&T Privacy Bird as a P3P user agent that can compare P3P policies against a user's privacy preferences. Since P3P was adopted as a W3C recommendation in April 2002, little work has been done to study how it is being used and, especially, its impact on users. Many questions have been raised about whether and how Internet users will make use of P3P, and how to build P3P user agents that will prove most useful to end users. In this paper we first provide a brief introduction to P3P and the AT&T Privacy Bird. Then we discuss a survey of AT&T Privacy Bird users that we conducted in August 2002. We found that a large proportion of AT&T Privacy Bird users began reading privacy policies more often and being more proactive about protecting their privacy as a result of using this software. Unfortunately, the usefulness of P3P user agents is severely limited by the number of web sites that have implemented P3P. Our survey results also suggest that if it becomes easier to compare privacy policy across e-commerce web sites, a significant group of consumers would likely use this information in their purchase decisions.


This article employs the quantitative research of residential satisfaction in two localities in Prague with different civic amenities. The results show that the presence of civic amenities in the neighbourhood has a significant effect on residential satisfaction, which is comparable to the importance of the quality of housing and the perceived quality of the neighbourhood. The relationship between the presence of civic amenities and residential satisfaction is affected by differences in the perceived importance of amenities between the residents of housing estates and suburbs, and by the position of households in the household life cycle.


China accounts for an estimated 22% of global suicides, or roughly 200,000 deaths every year. In India, twice as many people took their own lives in 2010 as died from HIV/AIDS. By comparison, the World Health Organization estimates that suicides in high-income countries total only 140,000 a year. Suicide rates in Japan and South Korea, however, are similar to China9s (see sidebar), suggesting that this is a regional public health issue. And yet suicide in Asia is poorly understood. Emerging research is now filling that gap—and overturning prevailing notions. While mental illness remains an important correlate in Asia, researchers may learn more from a victim9s family, religion, education, and personality. New findings suggest that some researchers may have misread correlation as causation.


At present, how to make the computer understand the text message of humanity automatically is a very important issue in computer information technology field. And the problem of word sense disambiguation is a bottleneck of the understanding of natural language. This paper describes the current research situation of word sense disambiguation, introducing its background and application, analyzing various mature approaches, comparing the merits and shortages of those methods, taking a brief introduction of context and international evaluation method of word sense disambiguation and finally making a conclusion of its future and development trend.


An intrauterine pressure catheter (IUPC) is a device placed inside a pregnant woman's uterus [2] to monitor uterine contractions during labor. During labor, a woman's uterus [2] contracts to dilate, or open, the cervix [3] and push the fetus [4] into the birth canal. The catheter measures the pressure within the amniotic space during contractions and allows physicians to evaluate the strength, frequency, and duration of contractions. Those measurements enable physicians to evaluate the progression of labor and intervene when contractions are too weak to properly dilate a laboring woman's cervix [3] to successfully deliver a fetus [4]. Though IUPCs are not used routinely, they are important in cases where external fetal monitoring is not sufficient to monitor a difficult labor. Intrauterine pressure catheters give physicians an extremely accurate measurement of intrauterine pressure, making it possible to determine whether intervention is needed to progress the labor.


We present a comprehensive Bangla spelling checker that improves the quality of suggestions for misspelled words. The complex rules for Bangla spelling presents a significant challenge in producing suggestions for a misspelled word when employing the traditional methods; one must take phonetic similarity into account for suggested alternatives to be reasonably accurate. In Bangla there are several algorithms available for spell checking, however, none of these considers the complex orthographic rules of Bangla. As a result, spelling checker application does not perform well. In this paper, we describe the process of checking the spelling of a Bangla document (i.e. detecting misspelled words, generating suggestions for misspelled word, and ranking the suggestions), compare the methodologies with existing solutions available in the literature, and then propose solutions for each step. Finally, we conclude by showing the performance and evaluation of our proposed solution.


Extensive inelastic neutron scattering measurements of phonons on a single crystal of CaFe2As2 allowed us to establish a fairly complete picture of phonon dispersions in the main symmetry directions. The phonon spectra were also calculated by density functional theory (DFT) in the local density approximation (LDA). There are serious discrepancies between calculations done for the optimized structure and experiment, because the optimised structure is not the ambient pressure structure but is very close to the collapsed structure reached at p = 3.5 kbar. However, if the experimental crystal structure is used the calculation gives correct frequencies of most phonons. The most important new result is that linewidths/frequencies of certain modes are larger/softer than predicted by DFT-LDA. We also observed strong temperature dependence of some phonons near the structural phase transition near 173K. This behavior may indicate anomalously strong electron phonon coupling and/or anharmonicity, which may be important to the mechanism of superconductivity.


Summary.  We consider rules for discarding predictors in lasso regression and related problems, for computational efficiency. El Ghaoui and his colleagues have proposed 'SAFE' rules, based on univariate inner products between each predictor and the outcome, which guarantee that a coefficient will be 0 in the solution vector. This provides a reduction in the number of variables that need to be entered into the optimization. We propose strong rules that are very simple and yet screen out far more predictors than the SAFE rules. This great practical improvement comes at a price: the strong rules are not foolproof and can mistakenly discard active predictors, i.e. predictors that have non‐zero coefficients in the solution. We therefore combine them with simple checks of the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions to ensure that the exact solution to the convex problem is delivered. Of course, any (approximate) screening method can be combined with the Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions to ensure the exact solution; the strength of the strong rules lies in the fact that, in practice, they discard a very large number of the inactive predictors and almost never commit mistakes. We also derive conditions under which they are foolproof. Strong rules provide substantial savings in computational time for a variety of statistical optimization problems.


Biological control of spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe) is an ongoing topic of research that holds ecological importance due to the extent to which knapweed has spread across the Western United States. Using herbivores (insects) as biological controls of spotted knapweed can be successful at reducing plant density in certain habitats. However, the exact relationship among the insects, knapweed, and abiotic factors affecting knapweed growth such as precipitation, remains uncertain. Through collection and dissection of knapweed seedheads, I estimated densities of two insects, Larinus minutus and Urophora affinis, as well as the average number of seeds produced by seedheads of spotted knapweed at a long-term study site in the Front Range of Colorado The data I collected were then added to a data set collected at this site extending back to 2002, which represents the longest data set of its kind presently available. After inclusion of my data, I found a positive trend between precipitation and seed production that differed from the findings of previous work. Insect presence decreased the number of seeds per seedhead, and this effect was independent of the amount of precipitation. I also found that the interaction of the two species of insects in the seedheads negatively affected the individual effectiveness of each insect, although not significantly, which supports previous research. My findings will benefit model predictions for knapweed spread and inform land management decisions about spotted knapweed infestations in the Rocky Mountain Front Range.


Agricultural lenders in the six Northwest Iowa counties serve over 100 dairymen, representing production from over 57,000 cows. Add to that Siouxland producers in the surrounding states and the numbers double. A review of programing for dairy lenders in Siouxland found that little programing had been directed to dairy lenders specifically in recent years. With the stresses of low milk prices, variable feed prices and high land prices, lenders were often using dated budgets and formulas to evaluate profitability of dairy enterprises. A Dairy Lenders Seminar for the Siouxland area was developed based on the Tri- State Lenders Conference (IA, IL, WI) as a template, conducted and evaluated in November 2017. 41 lenders came from four states, representing 14 lending institutions plus four other industries. From those that returned program evaluations their attendance translated to 65 dairies, 69,725 milking cows and 97,400 acres producing feed for those cows. Overall, 88 percent of respondents were mostly, or completely satisfied with the activity and 100 percent would recommend the activity to others. In addition, 65 percent anticipated benefiting economically as a direct result of what they learned from this Extension activity. When asked about the presenters, 100 percent were mostly or completely satisfied with their knowledge and responses to questions. Over 73 percent of the lenders indicated that one or more of their clients planned on expanding their herds; Fourteen percent predicted at least one of their clients would exit the industry; and 17 percent believed that one or more of their clients would add robotic milkers to their operations. We evaluated increase in the level of understanding and found that the highest change was in the understanding comparing profitability of conventional, organic and grazing dairies at 88 percent. Next, was dairy component markets and how it affects farm-gate prices plus the information on analyzing enterprises for profitability, both at 55 percent. Finally, plans to adopt a practice or technology as the result of a program is the truest measure of success for Extension programs, with 100 percent of respondents indicating the commodity market updates would be most likely. Overall, this initial Siouxland Dairy lenders Seminar was highly successful and will be held annually in the future.


Heat recuperation is often used to improve the overall cycle efficiency of gas turbines. However, generally in small- scale gas turbines, it has a negative effect on turbine inlet temperature, pressure ratio and pressure drops, and thus decreases the overall cycle efficiency. In this paper, a thermodynamic model is performed to evaluate recovered heat as a function of heat exchanger effectiveness, pressure drops, and defines the overall cycle energy and exergy efficiency. A high heat exchanger effectiveness, and low pressure drops are favorable to achieve maximal cycle energy efficiency. The main challenge in recuperator designis to find compromise between these conflicting requirements. Hence, a thermodynamic model is developed to determine recuperator design with an aim to maximize overall cycle energy and exergy efficiency. Further, to analyze Iran's manufacturing and its technological capabilities,a pre-requisite is considered for the proposed model. Hence, Iran's capability level could be determined. Finally, a case study of selecting recuperator of a 200kW gas turbine is conducted. Industrial gas turbines show performance characteristics that distinctly depend on ambient and operating conditions. They are influenced by site elevation, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. Proper application of gas turbines requires consideration of these factors. Thus, in this study, the effect of ambient conditions on overall cycle energy and exergy efficiency is performed by the proposed thermodynamic model.


Why do people use idioms, especially given one common assumption that, in order to understand an idiomatic phrase, we must first consider and reject its literal meaning? And why would such figures of speech, presumably requiring extra cognitive effort, be so common? A corpus of speech from physician training groups was analyzed for its use of various figures of speech. Thee idioms observed in this natural language sample were noted both for their frequency and for the type of lexical items that appeared in over three-quarters of the idiomatic phrases observed; namely, words that referred to the senses (seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and olfaction) and space. Based upon the lexical analysis of these naturally occurring idioms, the theory of embodied cognition is offered as one explanation for why speakers might tend to employ certain conventionalized phrases and why they might be so common in the language. One suggestion for future research is to confirm the speech processing relevance of identified lexical categories in idiomatic phrases by observing the performance of accompanying iconic gestures during speech.


We examine the processes of formation and destruction of LiH molecules in the primordial gas at temperatures T \leq 5000 K in the framework of standard Friedmann cosmological models and we compute the optical depth of the Universe due to Thomson scattering of cosmic background photons on LiH. With the help of a simple model of evolution of a spherical density perturbation we follow the linear growth and the subsequent collapse of protogalactic clouds of various masses, evaluating consistently their physical characteristics and chemical composition. We determine the expected level of anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation due to the presence of LiH molecules in high-redshift protogalactic clouds. We conclude that LiH spectral features generated in the primordial gas are hardly detectable with current techniques and instrumentation.


A supercomputing hyper-grid spanning two continents was created to move a step towards interoperability of leading grids. A dedicated network connection was established between DEISA, the leading European supercomputing grid, and TeraGrid, the leading American supercomputing grid. Both grids have adopted the approach of establishing a common, high performance global file system, the wide-area version of IBM's GPFS. Teragrid's approach is based on a single site server solution under Linux, hosted by San Diego Supercomputer Centre, DEISA's approach is a multi-site server solution, with currently servers in France, Germany and Italy. These two grid-internal global file systems were interconnected over a dedicated, trusted network connection. During the Supercomputing Conference 2005, grand challenge applications were carried out both within DEISA and within TeraGrid, and results were written transparently to the combined global file system with physically distributed locations of the involved disk systems. Simulations were carried out in Europe and in America, and results were directly written to the respective remote continent, accessible for all participating scientists in both continents, and were then directly further processed for visualization in a third location, the SC05 exhibition hall in Seattle. Grand challenge applications used for the demo included a protein structure prediction and a cosmological simulation carried out at San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), US (www.sdsc.edu) and a Gyrokinetic turbulence simulation and also a cosmological simulation carried out at Garching Computing Centre of the Max Planck Society (RZG), Germany (www.rzg.mpg.de)


The gastrointestinal tract of the alpaca (Vicugna pacos) is most efficiently adapted to its habitat at high altitudes. Alpacas, just like ruminants, feed on hardly digestible forage. However, it has been demonstrated that the anatomy of the camelid digestive tract has developed independently of ruminants and not in homology to them. Despite a long history of domestication and an increasing number of animals worldwide, little research has been done on the intestinal anatomy of alpacas. The purpose of this study was to describe the anatomical features of the alpaca's intestines and to explain anatomical peculiarities in the context of evolutionary function and morphology. Another goal of this study was the demonstration of weaknesses of the intestinal anatomy predisposing alpacas to certain clinical presentations. Six animals were used for dissection. The basic structure of the intestines was comparable to that in ruminants. However, a number of characteristic peculiarities were found in alpacas, like the duodenal ampulla and the proximal and distal loop of the ascending colon. The jejunum and ileum, unlike those of ruminants, had their own mesentery largely separated from the ascending mesocolon. The main blood supply was provided by the cranial and caudal mesenteric artery. The particular lymph nodes were located along the branches of these two arteries. The spiral colon seemed to play a major role in intestinal digestion and water resorption. The size of the distal fermentation chamber allows the presumption that alpacas belong to the group of animals practicing a fractionated fermentation in the proximal and distal fermentation chambers. Anat Rec, 301:1840–1851, 2018. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Algorithmic decision support is rapidly becoming a staple of personalized medicine, especially for high-stakes recommendations in which access to certain information can drastically alter the course of treatment, and thus, patient outcome; a prominent example is radiomics for cancer subtyping. Because in these scenarios the stakes are high, it is desirable for decision systems to not only provide recommendations but supply transparent reasoning in support thereof. For learning-based systems, this can be achieved through an interpretable design of the inference pipeline. Herein we describe an automated yet interpretable system for uveal melanoma subtyping with digital cytology images from fine needle aspiration biopsies. Our method embeds every automatically segmented cell of a candidate cytology image as a point in a 2D manifold defined by many representative slides, which enables reasoning about the cell-level composition of the tissue sample, paving the way for interpretable subtyping of the biopsy. Finally, a rule-based slide-level classification algorithm is trained on the partitions of the circularly distorted 2D manifold. This process results in a simple rule set that is evaluated automatically but highly transparent for human verification. On our in house cytology dataset of 88 uveal melanoma patients, the proposed method achieves an accuracy of 87.5% that compares favorably to all competing approaches, including deep"black box"models. The method comes with a user interface to facilitate interaction with cell-level content, which may offer additional insights for pathological assessment.


Abstract Podpeč Limestone is characterized by its dark grey or nearly black colour, contrasting with white fossil shells of the mollusc Lithiotis. This formation, which has been dated as Lower Jurassic, occurs in southern and southwestern Slovenia and is particularly conspicuous in areas SW of Ljubljana. The main quarry, which is not active, is located near the village of Podpeč near Ljubljana and has been recognized as a geological site of national importance; as such, it is officially protected as a natural monument. The utilization of Podpeč Limestone was first documented during the Roman period in Slovenia. At the end of the 5th century AD, with the decline of the Roman Empire, stone-cutting ceased at Podpeč for many centuries. Towards the end of the 19th century Podpeč Limestone became better-known. During the first half of the 20th century significant stonecutting workshops were established in Podpeč with most stone being supplied from the main quarry. The internationally renowned Slovenian architect Jože Plečnik (1872–1957) used Podpeč Limestone in various Slovenian buildings, some of national importance. The utilization and national recognition of Podpeč Limestone within Slovenia provide abundant support for its nomination as a Global Heritage Stone Resource.


The SR family proteins and SR-related polypeptides are important regulators of pre-mRNA splicing. A novel SR-related protein of an apparent molecular mass of 53 kDa was isolated in a gene trap screen that identifies proteins which localize to the nuclear speckles. This novel protein possesses an arginine- and serine-rich domain and was termed SRrp53 (for SR-related protein of 53 kDa). In support for a role of this novel RS-containing protein in pre-mRNA splicing, we identified the mouse ortholog of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae U1 snRNP-specific protein Luc7p and the U2AF 65 -related factor HCC1 as interacting proteins. In addition, SRrp53 is able to interact with some members of the SR family of proteins and with U2AF 35 in a yeast two-hybrid system and in cell extracts. We show that in HeLa nuclear extracts immunodepleted of SRrp53, the second step of pre-mRNA splicing is blocked, and recombinant SRrp53 is able to restore splicing activity. SRrp53 also regulates alternative splicing in a concentration-dependent manner. Taken together, these results suggest that SRrp53 is a novel SR-related protein that has a role both in constitutive and in alternative splicing.


Using a computable general equilibrium model, this paper examines the growth and welfare effects of three macroeconomic shocks in Uganda during the period 2010 17:changes in terms of trade, changes in international oil prices, and changes in development assistance inflows. Our analysis reveals four key findings. First, the largely positive impact of these three shocks on agriculture and services appears to offset the negative impact on industry leading to minimal deviations in real GDP growth from the business-as usual scenario. Moreover, the three shocks only lead to short-term as opposed to permanent deviations from trend growth in real GDP. Second, the three shocks are transmitted to the domestic economy and real GDP growth through changes in the terms of trade, exchange rate, and cost of production. Third, household welfare decreases and remains below the business-as-usual scenario during the entire simulation. Fourth, the poverty reduction rate is lower under the three external shocks compared to the business-as-usual scenario.


In order to study the role that the government played in the green supply chain, we constructed a supply chain model by two kinds of manufacturers, consumers and government environmental fund, on this basis, the optimal government subsidies and products' optimal production and price were obtained by game theory and utility function. Then, according to the results of numerical example we draw the conclusion that if the government adopts optimal subsidies policy, social welfare will be substantially increase, and the demand for green products will rise too, on the other side, the prices will be bring down. It is shown that with the guidance of the government subsidy mechanism, the green supply chain will be on the track that is conducive to the rapid development of environmental protection.


Generation of electromagnetic oscillations in the long-wavelength part of the terahertz range by GaAs diodes is investigated. Diodes are planar structures with a length of 1.28 μm, a width of 0.32 μm and a concentration of donor impurity of 6·1022 m – 3. Diodes include a conductive channel placed on a semiinsulating substrate, two contacts and an active side boundary in the form of an n-type region located between the channel and the metal electrode electrically connected to the ohmic contact of the anode. Electronic processes in the structure are analyzed by means of Ensemble Monte Carlo method. Current instabilities occurring in such a diode connected with the effect of inter-valley electron transfer are shown up. Dependences of direct current on voltage do not have a pronounced region with negative differential conductivity, which may be due to the existence of regions with high electric field strength in the anode part of the diode. Our research reveals that the simultaneous existence of the effect of interval valley electron transfer in the channel and in the region of lateral boundary leads to an increase in the frequency of oscillations and an expansion of the frequency range. Oscillation efficiency and frequency properties of the diodes are determined. The frequency range of diodes is established to be in the range from 100 to 300 GHz. The maximum generation efficiency is about 3 % at a frequency of 160-180 GHz. The influence of the position and size of the elements forming the active side boundary on the frequency and energy properties of diodes is explored. The operating frequency range of diodes is shown to be determined mostly by the thickness of the side boundary element. The maximum oscillation frequency (up to 300 GHz) and frequency bandwidth are obtained for diodes with a thickness of the side boundary element of 0.32 μm, but with the maximum efficiency of less than 1.4 %.


Due to the rapid growth of cities in Africa, a larger number of farmers is living in the rural hinterland providing food to urban residents. However, empirical evidence on how urbanization affects these farmers is scarce. To fill this gap, this paper explores the relationship between proximity to a city and the production behavior of rural staple crop producers. More in particular, we analyze unique data from teff producing farmers in major producing areas around Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. We find that farmers more closely located to Addis Ababa face higher wages and land rental prices, but because they receive higher teff prices they have better incentives to intensify production. Moreover, we observe that modern input use, land and labor productivity, and profitability in teff production improve with urban proximity. There is a strong and significant direct effect of urban proximity, which is suggested to be related with more use of formal factor markets, less transaction costs, and better access to information. In contrast, we do not find strong and positive relationships of rural population density increases - as an alternative source of agricultural transformation - as they seem to lead to immiserizing effects in these settings. Our results show that urban proximity should be considered as an important determinant of the process of agricultural intensification and transformation in developing countries.


This article is about drafting multilingual legislative texts in three cantons of Switzerland that have German and French as their official languages and a fourth canton that has German, Italian and Romansh as its official languages. Three drafting models are variously used in these cantons: co-drafting, co-revision and co-editing. The article describes each of these models and assesses their effects both in terms of the volume (quantity) and the quality of legislation produced.


This paper presents a novel control system for the operation of a switched reluctance generator (SRG) driven by a variable speed wind turbine. The SRG is controlled to drive a wind energy conversion system (WECS) to the point of maximum aerodynamic efficiency using closed loop control of the power output. In the medium and low speed range, the SRG phase current is regulated using pulsewidth-modulation (PWM) control of the magnetizing voltage. For high speeds the generator is controlled using a single pulse mode. In order to interface the SRG to the grid (or ac load) a voltage-source PWM inverter is used. A 2.5-kW experimental prototype has been constructed. Wind turbine characteristics are emulated using a cage induction machine drive. The performance of the system has been tested over the whole speed range using wind profiles and power impacts. Experimental results are presented confirming the system performance.


Objective To develop a process to improve patient outcomes from deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery for Parkinson disease (PD), essential tremor (ET), and dystonia. Methods We employed standard quality improvement methodology using the Plan-Do-Study-Act process to improve patient selection, surgical DBS lead implantation, postoperative programming, and ongoing assessment of patient outcomes. Results The result of this quality improvement process was the development of a neuromodulation network. The key aspect of this program is rigorous patient assessment of both motor and non-motor outcomes tracked longitudinally using a REDCap database. We describe how this information is used to identify problems and to initiate Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to address them. Preliminary outcomes data is presented for the cohort of PD and ET patients who have received surgery since the creation of the neuromodulation network. Conclusions Careful outcomes tracking is essential to ensure quality in a complex therapeutic endeavor like DBS surgery for movement disorders. The REDCap database system is well suited to store outcomes data for the purpose of ongoing quality assurance monitoring.


Diversity in recommendation has been studied extensively. It has been shown that maximizing diversity subject to constrained relevance yields high user engagement over time. Existing work largely relies on setting some attributes that are used to craft an item similarity function and diversify results. In this paper, we examine the question of learning diversity attributes. That is particularly important when users receive recommendations over multiple sessions. We devise two main approaches to look for the best diversity attribute in each session: the first is a generalization of traditional diversity algorithms and the second is based on reinforcement learning. We implement both approaches and run extensive experiments on a semi-synthetic dataset. Our results demonstrate that learning diversity attributes yields a higher overall diversity than traditional diversity algorithms. We also find that training policies using reinforcement learning is more efficient in terms of response time, in particular for high dimensional data.


In this study, strontium doped hydroxyapatite (SrHA) nanopowder was synthesized through a sol-gel method. Strontium concentration was varied from 0 to 15 mol%. The obtained gel was then dried and subsequently subjected to 900 °C calcination. SrHA porous bodies were fabricated by using polymeric sponge method with different chemical compositions (0, 2 and 10 mol% SrHA). To prepare the porous samples, the synthesized SrHA powders was mixed with distilled water and appropriate amount of dispersing agent followed by drying in the ambient air for 72 hours. The dried impregnated sponges were then sintered at 1300°C for 3 hours. The XRD patterns showed high crystallinity of HA phase only for all porous samples. Morphological evaluation by FESEM measurement revealed that the SrHA scaffolds were characterized by a uniform distribution of interconnected pores (200-800 µm). Compression test on the porous scaffolds revealed that doping 10 mol% of strontium in HA has increased the compressive strength compared to the undoped HA.


At current stage business development cannot be imagined without social networks. The customers spend more and more time in social networks and get most part of the information from them. Therefore, for the companies, the social media is a powerful tool for attraction of clients and for competition. Usingthe social media marketing is particularly popular in tourism industry. Technological changes in mass media allow immediate distribution of information in the sphere of tourism. Reasonable using of social networks in tourism requires creative marketing approaches ensuring coverage of the target audience to maximal possible extent. Sites of social media became the primary source of information for the destination management organizations. Usually the tourists trust online information and before commencement of travel they visit the forums and online reviews, as well as specialized blogs. Hence, there is a close relationship between involvement of tourists' social network sites and change in their behavior. Technological development and globalization of media creates new opportunities providing sharing the information between tourist consumers through blogs, web sites or destination sites. The destinations need creative and powerful social media marketing strategies to attract potential visitors. Social media helps the destinations to communicate with the visitors at relatively low costs and higher effectiveness than traditional communication methods. Social media, as an instrument for stimulation is used for the purposes of interactive marketing. Though, it is notable that there is a growing number of visitors, who use social media applications, creating new challenges in entire tourism industry. As social media plays a significant role in the activities of travel agencies, we found reasonable to find out the level of satisfaction of the foreign tourists with the activities of Georgian tourist companies in social media. Market research showed
that of social media platforms, among the foreign tourists the most widespread is Facebook. 85.1% of the respondents use it. It is followed by YouTube (54.7%), Instagram (32.4%), Google+ (31.1%), Linkedin (29.9%), Twitter (27.2%) and MySpace (15.5%). 14% of the respondents use the other social networks (Pinterest, Tumblr, Flickr, Reddit, Ask.fin, Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki). Study demonstrated interest of the respondents to the information provided by the sites related to tourism, their trust and satisfaction. Analysis shows that the respondents are satisfied with the social media marketing offered by Georgian travel agencies to certain extent. As a result of our market study we can conclude that Georgia is an attractive destination for the foreign tourists. Therefore, the number of repeated visits to Georgia increases from year to year. In making choice of Georgian travel agencies, the foreign tourists basically rely on the information in social networks and word-of-mouth marketing. Though, interest, trust and satisfaction of the foreign customers to social media marketing offered by Georgian travel companies are at the average level. Therefore, foreign tourists evaluate media marketing activities conducted by Georgian tourist companies as average and this underlines insufficient activity of Georgian tourist companies in social networks. With the help of marketing research obtained levels of interest, reliability and satisfaction of foreign tourists in relationto social media marketing provided by Georgian destinations.On the basis of analysis of the research results statistically significant values were obtained that show influence of the activity, interest and reliability regarding to social media marketing provided by Georgian destinations on the foreign tourists' satisfaction.In the work statistically significant value is also received reflecting the influence of the social media activity provided by Georgian destinations on buying behavior of foreign tourists'.


We propose a model universe, in which the dimension of the space is a continuous variable, which can take any real positive number. The dynamics leads to a model in which the universe has no singularity. The difference between our model and the standard Friedman-Robertson-Walker models become effective for times much before the presently accepted age of the universe.


Knowing history is important to the student. However, we had never removed the old habit of teaching history by memorization. Who? Where? What? When? This has become the standard of teaching history. The best way to narrate history is to tell it's story. To do this, we must know all the facts that can be learned. We try to learn everything, the smallest details, if possible. And what I mean by this is including trivia or what we can call, gossip. Then we narrate. A word about trivia. Trivia attracts listeners. In fact, it is the spice of a historical narration. But teachers or writers must be careful in using it. They must only provide a sprinkling of it in their lessons or articles. They are not tsismosos or tsismosas. They must not divert their listeners or readers from the fact that what they are saying or writing is worth listening to or reading. They must blend the general topic with the trivia.


Songbirds vocalizing in helium show a change in the spectral quality of their vocalizations. This effect is due to an increase in the speed of sound in helium that in turn alters the resonance properties of the vocal tract. Here, this approach is extended to a psittacine, the budgerigar (Melopsittacus undulatus), whose syringeal anatomy and innervation differ from that of a songbird. Contact calls from birds vocalizing in heliox (70/30 helium/oxygen environment) showed an overall increase in the amount of energy at frequencies above the fundamental, slight changes in the frequency of the fundamental and harmonics, and some change in the level of harmonics. Calls produced by a syringeally denervated bird showed more dramatic changes. Recordings from live birds were compared with sounds produced by various simple "artificial" tracheal and syringeal models. Results suggest that budgerigars produce contact calls using the syringeal membranes as a unitary sound source which produces acoustic energy in a narrow frequency band whose fundamental frequency is matched to the resonant frequency of the trachea. The syrinx is not normally coupled to the tracheal resonator, and resonances probably play only a minor role in shaping the spectrum of contact calls.


infinity at type 2. But when one examines this proof, one sees that it comes straight from axiom 9: ab = cd•-• a = c & b = d. But this itself is just an axiom of infinity for typesymbols; it would be false if every type-symbol had to be represented by a concrete inscription in a finite universe. And once an axiom of infinity for conceptual objects has been admitted, it would seem more rational to allow these objects to form an additional basic type. This argument also suggests that axiom 9 is independent; perhaps it could be proved so by using a model which contained non-standard finite types. The book is very clearly written, and the proofs—given in superabundant detail—are easy to follow. R. O. GANDY


ABSTRACT Background: Generating estimates of health indicators at the global, regional, and country levels is increasingly in demand in order to meet reporting requirements for global and country targets, such as the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, such estimates are sensitive to availability of input data, underlying analytic assumptions, variability in statistical techniques, and often have important limitations. From a user perspective, there is often a lack of transparency and replicability. In order to define best practices in reporting data and methods used to calculate health estimates, the Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) working group developed a minimum checklist of 18 items that must be reported within each study publishing health estimates, so that users may make an assessment of the quality of the estimate. Objective: We conducted a scoping review to assess the state of reporting amongst a cross-sectional sample of studies published prior to the publication of GATHER. Methods: We generated a sample of UN reports and journal articles through a combination of a Medline search and hand-searching published health estimates. From these studies we extracted the percentage of studies correctly reporting each item on the checklist, the proportion of items reported per study (the GATHER performance score), and how this score varied depending on study type. Results: The average proportion of items reported per study was 0.47, and the poorest-performing items related to documentation and availability of input data, availability of the statistical code used and the subsequent output data, and a complete detailed description of all the steps of the data analysis. Conclusions: Methods for health estimates are not currently fully reported, and the implementation of the GATHER guidelines will improve the availability of information required to make an assessment of study quality.


The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of human resource (HR) practices on organizational performance through the mediating role of psychological contract (expressed by the influence of employer on employee promises fulfillment through employee attitudes). The study is based on a national sample of 78 organizations from the public and private services sector in Greece, including education, health, and banking, and on data obtained from 348 employees. The statistical method employed is structural equation modeling, via LISREL and bootstrapping estimation. The findings of the study suggest that employee incentives, performance appraisal, and employee promotion are three major HR practices that must be extensively employed. Furthermore, the study suggests that the organization must primarily keep its promises about a pleasant and safe working environment, respectful treatment, and feedback for performance, in order for employees to largely keep their own promises about showing loyalty to the organization, maintaining high levels of attendance, and upholding company reputation. Additionally, the study argues that the employee attitudes of motivation, satisfaction, and commitment constitute the nested epicenter mediating construct in both the HR practices–performance and employer–employee promise fulfillment relationships, resulting in superior organizational performance. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Choline metabolism and phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis were studied in renocortical slices of rats rendered diabetic with streptozotocin. The rates of [14C]choline incorporation into both acid-soluble and acid-insoluble fractions were increased in diabetic relative to control kidneys. While choline uptake into the control kidneys reached a plateau after 30 min of incubation, the tissue uptake of choline by the diabetic kidneys showed a time-dependent increase over 120 min, rising to a level exceeding that of control kidneys. In the control kidney, the oxidation of choline to betaine was similar to the level of phosphocholine accumulation during the first 30 min, while the formation of phosphocholine in the diabetic kidney was 1.9-fold higher than that in the control kidney (P less than 0.02) and 1.4-fold higher than the formation of betaine in diabetics (P less than 0.05). These data suggest that most of the choline transported into cells enters the Kennedy pathway by phosphorylation to phosphocholine in diabetic kidneys. The diabetic kidney also demonstrated a marked increase in the formation of three choline-containing phospholipids; phosphatidylcholine, lysophosphatidylcholine, and sphingomyelin. The treatment of diabetes with insulin restored these abnormalities toward normal. The absolute content of phosphatidylcholine significantly increased in diabetic kidneys (P less than 0.05) while contents of other major phospholipids and total lipid phosphorus in diabetic kidneys were not different from those in control kidneys. Our results indicate that renal hypertrophy in experimental diabetes is associated with a stimulation of the biosynthesis of renal phosphatidylcholine, presumably caused by an enhanced tissue uptake of choline and a stimulation of choline kinase. Since an enhancement of the membrane phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis is one of the early responses to growth signals, an alteration in phosphatidylcholine biosynthesis may contribute to the development of renal hypertrophy in experimental diabetes.


In this article, we will further the explanation of the state's changing role in health care systems belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). We build on our analysis of twenty-three OECD countries, which reveals broad trends regarding governments' role in financing, service provision, and regulation. In particular, we identified increasing similarities between the three system types we delineate as National Health Service (NHS), social health insurance, and private health insurance systems. We argue that the specific health care system type is an essential contributor to these changes. We highlight that health care systems tend to feature specific, type-related deficiencies, which cannot be solved by routine mechanisms. As a consequence, non-system-specific elements and innovative policies are implemented, which leads to the emergence of "hybrid" systems and indicates a trend toward convergence, or increasing similarities. We elaborate this hypothesis in two steps. First, we describe system-specific deficits of each health care system type and provide an overview of major adaptive responses to these deficits. The adaptive responses can be considered as non-system-specific interventions that broaden the portfolio of regulatory policies. Second, we examine diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) as a common approach for financing hospitals efficiently, which are nevertheless shaped by type-specific deficiencies and reform requirements. In the United States' private insurance system, DRGs are mainly used as a means of hierarchical cost control, while their implementation in the English NHS system is to increase productivity of hospital services. In the German social health insurance system, DRGs support competition as a means to control self-regulated providers. Thus, DRGs contribute to the hybridization of health care systems because they tend to strengthen coordination mechanisms that were less developed in the existing health care systems.


We have performed a survey for new members of the Upper Sco association that have circumstellar disks using mid-infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Through optical and near-infrared spectroscopy, we have confirmed 185 candidates as likely members of Upper Sco with spectral types ranging from mid-K to M9. They comprise ∼36% of the known disk-bearing members of the association. We also have compiled all available mid-infrared photometry from WISE and the Spitzer Space Telescope for the known members of Upper Sco, resulting in a catalog of data for 1608 objects. We have used these data to identify the members that exhibit excess emission from disks and we have classified the evolutionary stages of those disks with criteria similar to those applied in our previous studies of Taurus and Upper Sco. Among 484 members with excesses in at least one band (excluding five Be stars), we classify 296 disks as full, 66 as evolved, 19 as transitional, 22 as evolved or transitional, and 81 as evolved transitional or debris. Many of these disks have not been previously reported, including 129 full disks and 50 disks that are at more advanced evolutionary stages.


In developed market economies, financing the operation of enterprises is carried out mainly through the mechanism of financial markets. The financial market is a place where supply and demand for funds are met. Subject to trading on this market is a specific commodity-money. A fee that should be paid on money is interest. Credit markets perform basic economic function of channeling funds from entities that have excess funds to those entities that have a shortage of them, because they are willing to spend more than what they have. In other words, the credit markets perform the function of the allocation of funds in the economy. As savers and borrowers of free funds in the economy usually occur households, but that does not mean that businesses and government (state and local governments) and foreign legal and physical persons do not appear occasionally as economic units, which offer their free capital in the financial market.


Following the outburst of the unusual variable star V838 Monocerotis in 2002, a spectacular light echo appeared. A light echo provides the possibility of direct geometric distance determination, because it should contain a ring of highly linearly polarized light at a linear radius of ct, where t is the time since the outburst. We present imaging polarimetry of the V838 Mon light echo, obtained in 2002 and 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the Hubble Space Telescope, which confirms the presence of the highly polarized ring. Based on detailed modeling that takes into account the outburst light curve, the paraboloidal echo geometry, and the physics of dust scattering and polarization, we find a distance of 6.1 ± 0.6 kpc. The error is dominated by the systematic uncertainty in the scattering angle of maximum linear polarization, taken to be θmax = 90° ±  5°. The polarimetric distance agrees remarkably well with a distance of 6.2 ± 1.2 kpc obtained from the entirely independent method of main-sequence fitting to a sparse star cluster associated with V838 Mon. At this distance, V838 Mon at maximum light had MV ≃ −9.8, making it temporarily one of the most luminous stars in the Local Group. Our validation of the polarimetric method offers promise for measurement of extragalactic distances using supernova light echoes.


Whereas
the pulp and paper industrial sector—considered the second highest consumer of
freshwater in Europe—has already been provided with sufficient wastewater
characterization and treatment technologies, other wood-based industries (e.g.
furniture, floor production), which do not use water for manufacturing
processes, generate different wastewater streams after: 1) cleaning/washing of machinery that
applies adhesives and coatings onto wood surfaces; 2) cleaning/washing of
machinery that applies specific products for the curing phase of adhesives; 3)
cleaning/washing of sharp planar blades used for the sawn process and to
prepare wood surfaces for the adhesive application; 4) cleaning/washing of the
floor; 5) cleaning/washing of trucks and vehicles. The dilution of
low-volumes of highly polluted wastewater is not acceptable any longer since
conventional treatment plants are not designed for these types of industrial
wastewater. There is
a need for proper characterization, treatability studies, designing and testing
alternative small size and cost-effective treatment systems for on-site
implementation. Treatment systems based on sorption mechanisms are flexible,
easy to operate and generate less sludge and several low-cost sorbents
generated by forestry activities have advantageous physico-chemical
characteristics. The current paper presents the preliminary results from a
pilot treatment system consisting of an equalization tank,
settling/sedimentation and two sorption reactors in parallel using Pinus sylvestris sawdust as sorbent
implemented as part of an integrated water management plan in a wood-floor
industry. The simple to operate and cost-effective pilot treatment system performs
satisfactorily during an initial period of operation. The study shows an
average 39% - 54% reduction of TPH; 17% - 38% reduction of oil; 2% - 15% of
reduction of COD and; 11% - 74% reduction of most toxic metals but for Co, Ni
and Zn in the system B. Based on these results, Pinus sylvestris sawdust is a potential low-cost and abundant material to be considered for
industrial wastewater treatment plants.


For oil recovery or CO2 storage, "reservoirs" are commonly used to designate geological structures where oil can be found or CO2 can be stored. All reservoirs present a heterogeneity in terms of rock type and properties (such as porosity and permeability). In addition, some of these reservoirs present fractures and faults. Fractured reservoirs are an important part of the oil reserves in the world (Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, etc.) and some of them are important reservoirs in terms of oil volume and productivity in spite of the fractures. In addition, studies of reservoirs for geologic storage of CO2 have shown the existence of diffuse fractures and faults and their strong impacts on flow.A key point in fractured reservoirs is to understand the geometry and hydraulic conductivity of the network formed by the fractures. This requires the construction of a reservoir model that integrates all available conceptual knowledge and quantitative data.The topic of the present paper deals with a new methodology able to perform the history matching of a fractured reservoir model by adapting the sub-seismic fault properties and positions. The main difficulty of this work is to generate a sub-seismic fault network whose fault positions can be easily modified while respecting the statistical fault model. The sub-seismic fault model we have chosen allows us to obtain a sub-seismic fault network that is consistent with the seismic fault network and that succeeds in capturing the specific spatial organization of the faults. In a first step, the geometry of the seismic fault network is characterized using fractal methods. Sub-seismic faults are then generated according to a stochastic algorithm. Finally, the geometry of this discrete fracture network is optimized in order to match the hydrodynamic data about the reservoir. The optimization algorithm modifies the sub-seismic fault positions, leading to the history matching of the reservoir model. Fractal properties are preserved during the deformation process. These different steps are demonstrated on a realistic synthetic case.


We study electronic Raman scattering of phosphorus and nitrogen doped silicon carbide (SiC) as a function of temperature in the range 7K < T < 300K. We observe a series of peaks in the Raman spectra which we assign to electronic transitions at nitrogen and phosphorus donors on different lattice sites. These transitions are identified as valley orbit transitions of the 1s donor ground state. From the polarization dependence of the observed peaks, we find that all electronic Raman signals have E2-symmetry of C6v for the hexagonal polytypes (6H-SiC and 4H-SiC) and E-symmetry of C3v for 15R-SiC. We find a reduction of the intensities of all valley-orbit Raman signals with increasing temperature and ascribe this reduction to the decreasing occupation of donor states.


Human-Object Interaction (HOI) detection is a task to predict interactions between humans and objects in an image. In real-world scenarios, HOI detection models are required systematic generalization, i.e., generalization to novel combinations of objects and interactions, because it is highly probable that the train data only cover a limited portion of all possible combinations. However, to our knowledge, no open benchmark or existing work evaluates the systematic generalization in HOI detection. To address this issue, we created two new sets of HOI detection data splits named HICO-DET-SG and V-COCO-SG based on HICO-DET and V-COCO datasets. We evaluated representative HOI detection models on the new data splits and observed large degradation in the test performances compared to those on the original datasets. This result shows that systematic generalization is a challenging goal in HOI detection. We hope our new data splits encourage more research toward this goal.


Purpose
This paper aims to examine a type of interorganizational learning called Industry Peer Networks (IPNs), in which a network of non-competing small businesses cooperates to improve their skills and to stay abreast of the industry trends, so that the firms remain competitive in the local and regional markets. The key characteristic of an IPN is the regular gathering of peers in small groups (typically 20 or fewer carefully selected members) in an atmosphere of significant trust, guided by a facilitator, to participate in a series of formal and informal activities through established guidelines, to share knowledge about management and marketing, exchange information about industry trends beyond their core markets, discuss issues related to company performance and provide constructive criticism about peer companies.

Design/methodology/approach
The qualitative research on the context included visits to 13 peer meetings, three workshops for peer members, seven semi-structured interviews with members and many communications with the founder, chairman, committee chairpersons and several facilitators of peer meetings that spanned across five years. Data collection and analysis followed grounded theory building techniques.

Findings
The authors identified both cooperative and competitive learning practices that a small business could carry out to grow from a novice to an expert IPN peer member. The cooperative elements such as peer discussions, disclosure of financial data and exposure to various business models allow member firms to learn vicariously through the successes and/or failure of their peers. At the same time, the competitive elements such as service delivery critiques, business performance benchmarking and firm ranking also prompt the members to focus on execution, to emphasize accountability and to strive for status in the network. The IPN in this research has also built network legitimacy over time, and it has sustained a viable administrative entity that has a recognizable form and structure, whose functions are to strategically manage network activities and network growth to attract like-minded new members.

Research limitations/implications
First, because this research focused on fleshing out the transformative practices engaged by IPN peers, it necessarily neglected other types of network relationships that affect the small businesses, including local competitors, vendors and customers. Second, the small employment size of these firms and the personal nature of network ties in the IPN may provide an especially fertile ground for network learning that might not exist for larger firms. Third, the technology-intensive and quality-sensitive nature of IT firms may make technological trend sensitization and operating efficiency more competitive advantages in this industry than in others. Finally, although participation in IPN is associated with higher level of perceived learning, the relationship between learning and business performance is not yet articulated empirically.

Practical implications
The study contributes to the understanding of cooperative/competitive transformative practices in the IPN by highlighting the defining features at each transformation stage, from firms being isolated entities which react to market forces to connected peers which proactively drive the markets. IPNs are most effective for business owners who are at their early growth stage, in which they are positioned to grow further. Nevertheless, the authors also present the paradoxical capacity of IPNs to propel firms along trajectories of empowerment or disengagement.

Social implications
As 78.5 per cent of the US firms are small businesses having fewer than 10 employees, the knowledge of firm and IPN transformation is important for both researchers and advocates of small businesses to understand the roots of success or failure of firms and the IPNs in which they are embedded.

Originality/value
Earlier research has not explored the network-level effects as part of a full array of outcomes. Instead, research involving IPNs has focused primarily on the motivation and immediate firm-level outcomes of IPNs. Research to this point has also failed to examine IPNs from a developmental perspective, how the firms and the IPN as a network transform over time.


Abstract We have attempted to delineate a logical and rational approach to the recognition and management of postoperative infections. The reader is urged to use the tenets presented strictly as guidelines. Each and every treatment regimen must be tailored to the individual case. The priorities of early detection and treatment as well as the routine ordering of Gram stain and culture and sensitivity studies must never be ignored. The best prevention of bone infection is high serum levels of antibiotic in the early stages of management. Also, medications should have a high osseous perfusion rate. Among these are the cephalosporins, oxacillins, cloxacillins, and penicillins. After making a definitive diagnosis of osteomyelitis, radiographic evidence may be anticipated from 21 days after the start of infection. Bone scans will demonstrate this condition much sooner and allow for earlier treatment. There are two basic requirements for effective antibiotic therapy. The antibiotic chosen must be capable of inhibiting the growth of the agent or agents causing the infection (this requires an identification of the infecting bacteria and the selection of an antibiotic effective against that organism). Secondly, a therapeutically effective concentration of the antibiotic must reach the infected tissues for a sufficient period of time to allow the antimicrobial activity of the compound to be effective. This requires a blood supply capable of delivering the antibiotic in the blood to the affected tissues. Furthermore, the physiologic state of the patient, the nutritional status, and the immunosuppressive systems should be supported by the means necessary to initiate host reactions against the invading organism. Three last principles may be added to this antibiotic prescribing regimen. (1) When using broad-spectrum antibiotics, be constantly aware of the likelihood of superinfection. This is the overgrowth of bacterial organisms present on the skin as normal flora that multiply rapidly when the surrounding flora is destroyed by the broad-spectrum antibiotic. (2) Ancillary measures including heat, elevation, and immobilization should be employed when conditions permit. (3) Always check for allergy before prescribing an antibiotic. There are no certainties in the treatment of infections; the regimens may change daily as newer and more effective medications are marketed. Nonetheless, the principles remain unchanged. Clinical disease results only when the invading agent evokes anatomic and functional damage in the course of obtaining the necessary requirements for survival.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)


Alumina-SiC nanocomposites have attracted the interest of material scientists due to their excellent mechanical and thermomechanical properties. Compared to alumina they offer higher strength, toughness and reliability. The high creep resistence of alumina-SiC makes it attractive for high temperature structural applications. Commercial applications however require performing and reliable manufacturing technologies. Ceramic injection molding (CIM) was chosen for the production of small and complex shaped components with narrow dimensional tolerances used in engineering applications. For axially symmetric, elongated component geometries such as tubes or rods, thermoplastic extrusion is a more appropriate forming technology. In this study the complete process cycle of thermoplastic extrusion and injection molding was evaluated with the aim to evaluate their suitability for industrial production of alumina-SiC nanocomposites. Compounding of the feedstocks, forming by CIM and extrusion and the subsequent thermal treatment – debinding and pressureless sintering were investigated. Intermediate and final products were characterized with respect microstructure and mechanical.


Abstract. The European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Explorer Atmospheric Dynamics Mission Aeolus is the first satellite mission providing wind profile information on a global scale, and its wind products have been released on 12 May 2020. In this study, we verify and intercompare the wind observations from ESA's satellite mission Aeolus and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) fifth generation atmospheric reanalyses (ERA5) with radiosonde (RS) observations over China, to allow a fitting application of Aeolus winds. Aeolus provides wind observations in aerosol-free (referred to as Rayleigh-clear winds) and cloudy atmospheres (Mie-cloudy winds). In terms of Aeolus and RS winds, the correlation coefficient (R) and mean difference of Rayleigh-clear (Mie-cloudy) vs RS winds are 0.90 (0.92) and 0.09±9.62 (−0.59±8.05) m/s, respectively. The vertical profiles of wind speed differences between Aeolus and RS winds are opposite to each other during ascending and descending orbits, indicating that the performance of Aeolus wind product is affected by the orbit phase. The comparison of ECMWF winds relative to Aeolus winds provides the R and mean difference of Rayleigh-clear (Mie-cloudy) winds, which are 0.95 (0.97) and −0.16±6.78 (−0.21±3.91) m/s, respectively. The Rayleigh-clear and Mie-cloudy winds are almost consistent with the ECMWF winds, likely due to the assimilation of Aeolus wind observations into the ECMWF winds. Moreover, we find that among the results of comparing Aeolus with RS and ECMWF winds, the wind speed difference of Rayleigh-clear winds is large in the height range of 0–1 km, especially during descending orbits. This indicates that the performance of low-altitude Rayleigh-clear wind products could be affected by the near-surface aerosols. In addition, the R and mean difference between ERA5 and RS zonal wind components are 0.89 and −1.46±6.33 m/s, respectively. The RS zonal winds tend to be larger than those from ERA5. The wind speed difference between RS and ERA5 zonal winds in low-lying area is low and insignificant, while it is relatively high and significant over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau areas. Overall, the Aeolus winds over China are similar to the RS and ECMWF winds. The RS and ERA5 zonal winds are somewhat different over high altitude area, but these differences are acceptable for application of wind products. The findings give us sufficient confidence and information to apply Aeolus wind products in numerical weather prediction in China and in climate change research.


Superconducting qubits provide a promising path toward building large-scale quantum computers. The simple and robust transmon qubit has been the leading platform, achieving multiple milestones. However, fault-tolerant quantum computing calls for qubit operations at error rates significantly lower than those exhibited in the state of the art. Consequently, alternative superconducting qubits with better error protection have attracted increasing interest. Among them, fluxonium is a particularly promising candidate, featuring large anharmonicity and long coherence times. Here, we engineer a fluxonium-based quantum processor that integrates high qubit coherence, fast frequency tunability, and individual-qubit addressability for reset, readout, and gates. With simple and fast gate schemes, we achieve an average single-qubit gate fidelity of 99.97% and a two-qubit gate fidelity of up to 99.72%. This performance is comparable to the highest values reported in the literature of superconducting circuits. Thus our work, within the realm of superconducting qubits, reveals an alternative qubit platform that is competitive with the transmon system.


If an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) is to be operated at sea in the proximity of other vessels it must be equipped with a Collision Avoidance System (CAS). This system must comply with the rules for avoiding collision that govern the seas, the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS). In this thesis a COLREGS compliant CAS using Simulation-Based Model Predictive Control (SB-MPC) has been implemented. The four main scenarios used to test the method's behavior and COLREGS compliance is: headon, overtaking, and crossing from port and starboard. Several more complicated scenarios are also studied to see how the method deals with more complicated situations. The tests were performed within a Robotic Operating System (ROS) framework using a non-linear ship model to predict the ASV's movements. The tests were then repeated using a linear model. The behavior of the system is discussed and compared with the behavior of the ASV equipped with a CAS based on the Velocity Obstacle (VO) algorithm. After the simulation study was completed the CAS was also tested on the On-board System Simulator (OBS) of Maritime Robotics to prepare for full-scale experiments. These simulations were using live Automatic Identification System (AIS)-data from ships in the Trondheimsfjorden. The CAS performed well during the simulations, both within the ROS framework and in the OBS environment. However, finer tuning is still needed to get optimal performance. Full-scale testing was also attempted, but not completed, mostly due to the lack of suitable obstacle vessels.


One form or other of the Barnett formula has been operational since 1978. However, while the government has published annual figures for the Scottish Block, and for its post devolution successor, the Scottish DEL, it has failed to publish the corresponding expenditure aggregate for England. This corresponding English aggregate has no administrative meaning in itself in the English context, since it consists of elements of programmes of a number of Whitehall Departments: this is why, presumably, the government has not bothered to publish this figure. But without knowledge of this aggregate, it is not possible to check directly how the corresponding aggregates in England and Scotland have evolved. Secondly, the government does not publish the detailed calculations on how Barnett is applied. Barnett did not apply at all strictly for t he first fifteen years of its existence. In particular, prior to 1993, in establishing the new end-planning year at the start of each public expenditure planning round, the previous end year figure for both Scotland and England was uprated for inflation. This meant that a substantial part of the cash increases required for inflation was taken out of the Barnett discipline. (HM Treasury (1997)). Finally, although the Barnett formula is simple to state in words, it is difficult, without going into the algebra, to uncover the subtlety of how Barnett interacts with differences in population growth between Scotland and England. This paper is primarily intended to provide an estimate of the size of the squeeze on Scottish expenditure implied by the SR 2000, over the planning period for that review. Our findings are that Scotland will experience a relative squeeze of over £ 1 billion by 2003-04, compared with the funding it would have received on English expenditure growth rates.


Summary

1
Mathematical models suggest that 'costs of reproduction' (decrements in an organism's probable future reproductive output due to investing in current reproduction) are major determinants of life-history evolution.

2
Pregnancy decreases locomotor performance in many taxa, and could render reproducing females more vulnerable to predators. To evaluate the importance of this 'cost of reproduction', however, we need to know the magnitude of performance decrement induced by reproduction relative to that induced by other factors in the animal's biology.

3
Studies on adult female skinks (Lampropholis guichenoti) confirm that pregnancy significantly impairs maternal locomotion, but also show that factors such as a moderate decrease in body temperature, a large meal or loss of the tail reduced locomotor speeds even more than did pregnancy. Thus, reproductive state probably causes only a minor proportion of the total temporal variation in a female skink's locomotor ability.

4
In such a system, even a large effect of pregnancy on running speeds may not impose a significant selective pressure on reproductive investment.

5
Climate and foraging modes may affect the degree to which locomotor speeds are influenced by pregnancy vs. other factors, offering a potential explanation for the lower overall reproductive investment per clutch in tropical vs. temperate-zone reptiles, and in lizards vs. snakes.


At present, the threat of a biological terrorist event with a dangerous pathogen and its insidious impact are among the most, yet least understood, threats to civil society today. The use of manufactured weapon, such as bomb, will produce consequences limited in time hence the most of the damage occurs immediately. By contrast, the use of a biological weapon is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. Many biological agents could be used as biological weapons. The CDC bioterrorism list includes 45 biological agents that have been targeted as most likely to be used in bioterrorism attack. Of these, six have been designated as ''high priority'' agents: Bacillus anthracis, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Brucella spp., botulinum toxin produced by Clostridium botulinum and Variola major virus. Beside the pathogenic impact, the use of these agents will likely produce widespread panic, which will quickly overwhelm local law enforcement, as well as providers of health care. Since the majority of these agents require an incubation period before disease becomes noticed, the terrorists often escape without notice. The Portuguese National Institute of Health (PNIH) is prepared to recognize and respond to a biological event, including bioterrorism, having responsibilities in the determination of the etiological agent's and its susceptibility to antibiotics. In order to ensure quick and reliable results, a laboratory algorithm was developed, taking in account the human and technical resources available. This algorithm was tested within a framework of an external quality control scheme and the results obtained demonstrated that the performance of our lab is at the same level of other European reference labs, even if the human, technical and financial resources are quite different. The PNIH also have the responsibility to inform other health and criminal authorities whenever an unusual biological agent is detected. Therefore, the role of PNIH is essential, promoting a rapid laboratory response and contributing to risk communication between the several authorities with responsibilities in the establishment of preparedness plans and measures that will contribute to control and mitigate the effects of bioterrorism attack on public health.


Human intention inference is the ability of an artificial system to predict the intention of a person. It is important in the context of human-robot interaction and homeland security, where proactive decision making is necessary. Human intention inference systems at test time is given a partial sequence of observations rather than a complete one. At a trajectory level, the observations are 2D/3D spatial human trajectories and intents are 2D/3D spatial locations where these human trajectories might end up. We study a learning approach where we train a model from complete spatial trajectories, and use partial spatial trajectories to test intention predictions early and accurately. We use non-parametric Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) as the learning model since GPR has been shown to model subtle aspects of human trajectory very well. We also develop a simple geometric transfer technique called Naive Registration (NR) that allows us to learn the model using training data in a source scene and then reuse that model for testing data in a target scene. Our results on synthetic and real data suggests that our transfer technique achieves comparable results as the technique of training from scratch in the target scene.


The role of preventive diplomacy is to prevent the emergence of violent conflicts, to prevent on-going conflicts from spreading and to prevent the relapse of an already settled conflict. The purpose of this article is to critically assess the existing gaps within the concept of preventive diplomacy that render it less appropriate in preventing and managing African conflicts in the post-Cold War era. The article gives an overview of the historical development of preventive diplomacy, referred to as orthodox preventive diplomacy. It examines the existent missing link within the concept of orthodox preventive diplomacy, and explains why the concept was ineffective in resolving African conflicts and preventing their recurrence. In conclusion, it is asserted that, given the fact that both the character and the agents of conflicts changed from interstate to intrastate, a new preventive diplomacy is needed to successfully prevent deadly conflicts before they occur. A qualitative research method, with an exploratory approach, was adopted.


Often, calculi for manipulating and reasoning about programs can be recast as calculi for synthesizing programs. The difference involves often only a slight shift of perspective: admitting metavariables into proofs. We propose that such calculi should be implemented in logical frameworks that support this kind of proof construction and that such an implementation can unify program verification and synthesis. The proposal is illustrated with a worked example developed in L.C. Paulson's (1990) Isabelle system. We also give examples of existent calculi that are closely related to the methodology we are proposing and others that can be profitably recast using the approach.<<ETX>>


We experimentally and numerically show that chirality can play a major role in the nonlinear optical response of soft birefringent materials, by studying the nonlinear propagation of laser beams in frustrated cholesteric liquid crystal samples. Such beams exhibit a periodic nonlinear response associated with a bouncing pattern for the optical fields, as well as a self-focusing effect enhanced by the chirality of the birefringent material. Our results open new possible designs of nonlinear optical devices with low power consumption and tunable interactions with localized topological solitons.


Thus far, electrophysiological research on creativity has employed production tasks and measured changes in the alpha band in time windows lasting several seconds, while participants produced creative ideas. These studies had, however, limited temporal resolution, which made it difficult to identify specific cognitive processes underlying creative thinking. In the current study, we employed a modified version of the alternate uses task, in which participants evaluated word pairs representing the common, creative, and impossible uses of objects according to how (im)possible and (un)common they seemed. In the even-related potential (ERP) analysis, a graded effect was found, with impossible uses evoking the largest, common the lowest, and creative intermediate N400 amplitudes. Moreover, greater power in the upper alpha band was observed in the creative than common condition in the time window between 400–1000ms. Interestingly, this effect was absent in the lower alpha band, which differs from previous reports in which an increase in both the upper and lower alpha bands was found. The graded N400 effect can be interpreted as reflecting increased activity in semantic memory needed to evaluate the creative word pairs. The difference in the upper alpha band might index increased semantic processing demands and larger inhibition of task-irrelevant information on creative than common trials. Since task demands remain comparable on all trials, these findings seem directly related to cognitive processes involved in evaluating creative ideas.


A cryo Electron Microscopy dataset is composed on tomographic projections of an object (e.g. a macromolecule). The projection orientation information is unknown. The scope of this paper is the projection parameterization in the case of a deformable object. An overview of the parametrization methods is presented. Then a new approach based on manifold learning is detailed. Finally, an evaluation method for each substep of the parameterization is proposed. The resulting evaluation of the different methods on a 2D synthetic database shows the efficiency of our approach.


THIS IS an interesting study regarding a unique form of euthanasia, 1 and it addresses an important and underemphasized issue of quality of death for patients after discontinuation of dialysis. There has been a marked increase in dialysis withdrawals during the past few years. 2 At the start of the Medicare End-Stage Renal Disease Program in 1972, the dialysis population usually consisted of young and, apart from renal disease, healthy patients. However, patients currently undergoing dialysis have relatively poorer quality of life and are older. 3,4 Accordingly, more withdrawals are anticipated in the future. See also page 42 Although the authors found that most patients had a "good death" as ascertained by various subjective scoring techniques, several patients appeared to have a "painful ending" related to pain control and comfort measures. This information is important not only because it raises an issue in the care of patients with dialysis discontinuation


During the last months and years the English expression 'gender' has become a well-known word all over Germany, often with the annex 'mainstreaming'. Gender mainstreaming was initiated as a political strategy by the Women's World Conference in Beijing in 1995 and adopted by the European Union in 1997 (COM(96)76 final). It basically means that all actions and initiatives planned have to be tested as to their effects on women and men and should not be taken if they disadvantage either one. But gender is also a category in the discussion about democratic features. Gender democracy means that males and females should be represented equally in the public, political, cultural, social and economic sphere of a society. On this background, this paper traces the gender issue in the field of organizations in the social sector of Germany, in particular the 'welfare organizations'. In this article, 'welfare organizations' is used as a translation of the German word 'Wohlfahrtsverbande'. The reason for this choice is the endeavor to indicate their difference from for instance English 'charitable associations' or French 'associations sociale et sanitaire', because social organizations in the EU-member states differ considerably in regard to their history, function, self-image , financing, political power etc.. The terms 'social non-governmental organizations' (NGOs) or 'social nonprofit organizations' (NPOs ) are used synonymously.


The applications of high-temperature superconductors (HTS) in electric power components have been widely reported and various studies have been made to define their alternating current (AC) losses-a key design parameter for many practical high power electrical engineering applications. However, very few studies over the range 25 to 45 K have been conducted even though this is one of the favored temperature ranges for cost-effective applications of HTS. Methods and techniques used to characterize and measure these losses have been so far grouped into `electrical' and `calorimetric' approaches with external conditions set to resemble the application conditions. In this paper, we present an approach using the calorimetric method to accurately determine losses in the superimposed AC and DC fields likely to be experienced in practical devices such as Fault Current Limiters. This technique provides great simplification compared to pick-up coil and lock-in amplifier methods and is applied to a lower temperature range. The preliminary loss data at 40 K will be presented in applied AC magnetic fields with DC fields up to 1T. The data of losses obtained on this sample will allow the estimation and minimization of losses in practical high power HTS coils and will be used in the verification of numerical coil models.


Various police and partnership schemes claim to address vulnerability, either as an end in itself, or as a means of crime reduction. However, project staff do not articulate always what is meant by 'vulnerability,' or relate it necessarily to victimization risk. This paper considers what the notions of 'vulnerability' and 'risk' mean, and how they are tackled and prioritized. Some lessons are provided from the UK Reducing Burglary Initiative. The paper argues that un‐evidenced assumptions of vulnerability and risk need to be avoided. Additionally, a decision to focus on vulnerability is, mostly, one to reduce disadvantage rather than crime.