Engineered Metal Mesh Foil Bearings (MMFB) are a promising low cost bearing technology for oil-free microturbomachinery. In a MMFB, a ring shaped metal mesh (MM) provides a soft elastic support to a smooth arcuate foil wrapped around a rotating shaft. The paper details the construction of a MMFB and the static and dynamic load tests conducted on the bearing for estimation of its structural stiffness and equivalent viscous damping. The 28.00 mm diameter, 28.05 mm long bearing, with a metal mesh ring made of 0.3 mm Copper wire and compactness of 20%, is installed on a test shaft with a slight preload. Static load versus bearing deflection measurements display a cubic nonlinearity with large hysteresis. The bearing deflection varies linearly during loading, but nonlinearly during the unloading process. An electromagnetic shaker applies on the test bearing loads of controlled amplitude over a frequency range. In the frequency domain, the ratio of applied force to bearing deflection gives the bearing mechanical impedance, whose real part and imaginary part give the structural stiffness and damping coefficients, respectively. As with prior art published in the literature, the bearing stiffness decreases significantly with the amplitude of motion and shows a gradual increasing trend with frequency. The bearing equivalent viscous damping is inversely proportional to the excitation frequency and motion amplitude. Hence, it is best to describe the mechanical energy dissipation characteristics of the MMFB with a structural loss factor (material damping). The experimental results show a loss factor as high as 0.7 though dependent on the amplitude of motion. Empirically based formulas, originally developed for metal mesh rings, predict bearing structural stiffness and damping coefficients agreeing well with the experimentally estimated parameters. Note, however, that the metal mesh ring, after continuous operation and various dismantling and reassembly processes, showed significant creep or sag that resulted in a gradual decrease of its structural force coefficients.Copyright © 2009 by ASME


Background The Safe Children Community Deutschlandsberg was expanded to the Safe Children Community of Southwest Styria which now comprises three districts. Initiation, development and implementation of successful projects and programs have furthered the reduction of child injury rates. Additionally, evaluation of programs, measures, and injury data was carried out to determine whether the efforts achieved the desired results. Methods The steering committees of each district comprising all relevant representatives established working groups for categories such as safety in traffic, at home, in school and preschool, during sports, and during leisure time, as well as injury surveillance. A variety of child-safety activities in different settings were developed, involving as many organisations, institutions, schools and professional groups as possible, as well as local media. Results Data surveillance demonstrated a reduction in child injuries. The relative injury rate of the Safe Children region decreased from 216/1000 in 2012 to 201/1000 in 2014. The pilot district Deutschlandsberg (designated in 2011 as the first Safe Children Community) was able to reduce the child injury rate from 195 in 2012 to 180 in 2014. Conclusions Motivating a community to carry out injury-prevention initiatives is much easier when the focus is on children. It is also very useful to have champions from all public and private sectors and areas on the steering committees and in the working groups. In addition, it is helpful if a structure of participation is supported by the top-down-principle in the public sector. Despite all the internal motivation, a Safe Children Community has to be driven by external input and expertise. In order to develop and realise projects and receive the attention of Safe Kids Austria as a coordinating body, it is important to have the financial support of the Styrian Government and the districts themselves.


The research mean to known the effect kind of variety and solid organic manure's dosage and the interaction of them towards the growth and natural result of red Chili. The research is carried out in Donohudan Village, Ngemplak District, Boyolali regency in an attitude of 96 meters about the sea level, using Regosol soil from March 8 until July 10 2006. The Research implements split plot trials with based pattern of Randomized Completed Block Desight (RCBD) which consists of two factors : (1) Kind of variety (V) as a primary treatment factor (main plot) (V 1 = Hot Beauty ; V 2 =  TM 999; V 3 = Prabu). (2) Dosage of manure 9D) as a secondary treatment factor (subplot) (D 1 = tons / ha; D 2 = 12 tons / ha; D 3 = 14 Tons / ha). The research result : (1) kind of variety results the real differences fruits the plant's height, number of fruit red per plant, weight fruits per plot and the weight of green fruit per plot. It also real differences towards dry weight and fresh weight but it shows no difference at one which is bloomy, the weight of red fruits per plants, the weiht of green fruits per plot, amount of failing product per plost as weel as the weight weight of failing products. (2)The dosage of solid organic manure no real difference towards the plant's height. Fresh weight, the bloomy plants, the weight of red fruits per plant, amount of red nautral produch per plot, amount of filling product and the weight of filling product it shows, on the contrary, the real differences towards "brangkasan" dry weight, amount of green natural product and its weight as well as amount of red natural product per plot. (3) interction between both variety and solid organic manure's dosage non significant results ar entire research parameters. (4) The highest weight of red chili per plot is found in the combination V 3 D 3 (Prabu variety 14 tons/ha) 17.417 kg/plot (24.2 tons/ha) and the lowest one is found in the combination V 1 D 0 (Hot Beauty variety, solid organic manure), that's is 12.597 kg/plot (17.5 tons/ha).


PDF has become a de facto standard for exchanging electronic documents, for visualization as well as for printing. However, it has also become a common delivery channel for malware, and previous work has highlighted features that lead to security issues. In our work, we focus on the structure of the format, independently from specific features. By methodically testing PDF readers against hand-crafted files, we show that the interpretation of PDF files at the structural level may cause some form of denial of service, or be ambiguous and lead to rendering inconsistencies among readers. We then propose a pragmatic solution by restricting the syntax to avoid common errors, and propose a formal grammar for it. We explain how data consistency can be validated at a finer-grained level using a dedicated type checker. Finally, we assess this approach on a set of real-world files and show that our proposals are realistic.


It is often assumed that a revelation must be new and innovative, and that the point of a new sacred text must be to revitalize the heritage. Yet, in the Tibetan Nyingma Treasure Revelatory tradition, the ongoing vitality of textual production often has more to do with the fresh blessings rather than altogether novel content. This book is the first to analyse precise continuities and changes in comparing the new and the old, considering examples of the creation and development of tantric revelations, including further reworkings in subsequent generations. In doing so, the focus enlarges to encompass materials from the broader religious heritage, as well as from specific lineages of related visionary lamas. By identifying such exact linkages and departures, it is possible to answer questions both of how and why developments may occur, not limiting the purview merely to the individual stories of the virtuoso lamas producing the books, but looking also to the tantric communities of which they are a part. The case studies in the book stem from the prolific writings of the famous twentieth-century scholar-lama Dudjom Jigdral Yeshe Dorje Rinpoche, who contributed to numerous revelatory traditions of the past, as well as producing his own revelations. They concern a single tantric deity, Vajrakīlaya, the most popular Nyingma deity, whose tantras and ritual practices stem from the earliest formulations of Tibetan tantric Buddhism, and who is closely connected with the culture heros and founding fathers of the Nyingmapa. This particular focus gives us the opportunity to discover patterns in the creation of new tantric texts which have significance beyond the specific examples.


Virtualization, well established in enterprise computing, is finding its way into embedded systems. However, the use cases differ dramatically between the domains, and this results in significant differences in the requirements on the virtual-machine technology.

This paper examines a number of typical virtualization use cases from the CE domain, and the resulting requirements imposed on the hypervisor. We find that enterprise-style hypervisors are ill-matched to the requirements of the embedded domain, which are characterised by low-overhead communication, real-time capability, small memory footprint, small trusted computing base, and fine-grained control over security. We present the OKL4 hypervisor, a member of the L4 microkernel family, designed for embedded-systems use. We outline OKL4's relevant properties with an emphasis on its security mechanisms, and compare its performance to a version of Xen that has recently been promoted for CE use. We conclude that OKL4 is superior to enterprise-style hypervisors for use in CE devices.


Facing the onset of the Winter festivities, gluttony, over consumption, alcohol-fuelled misunderstandings and emotional disputes BROQWiEM and I would like to invite you to slow down, consider what you are about to do to yourself, be mindful of your body and the long month to come, enjoy good food and reflect on the processes of consumption, digestion, sharing and eating as part of a community.

Reflection on Digestion: A Performance Dinner is a participatory performance dinner by Amanda Couch that reflects on the process and image of digestion through food and language.

The event is presented in six chapters, four of which are gastronomic dishes prepared from the alimentary canal: tongue, stomach, liver and intestines. The feast is served alongside the presentation of a text: Artistic, philosophical, historical and physiological narratives converge on these organs to explore how we cognitively and bodily digest knowledge and experience.

Reflection on Digestion embodies an experiential approach to the transmission of information by placing the diner, their senses and interior body at the centre of the creation of meaning and understanding. By reflecting on the direct experience of eating alongside historical and contemporary narratives of digestion, participants and host - Amanda Couch, literally and metaphorically ruminate on the processes of ingestion, digestion, and subjectivity, and on embodied ways of knowing.


According to many inter-disciplinary scholars, including, notably, Alasdair MacIntyre and Jerome Bruner, human action draws on and is shaped by available cultural narratives. Nursing is no exception to this fact, and it is this which has prompted the creation of this paper which argues that the development of narrative competence in nursing ought to be a pressing curricular imperative. At a broad level, narrative competence refers to a finessed, ethicallycharged respect for human lived and storied experience. At the level of professional development, it demands that nurses must constantly strive to improve on their abilities around attending, interpreting and intelligently responding to the stories of people in their care (Charon 2007, Bach and Grant, 2015). Doing so facilitates empathic and trustworthy practice through sensitive attunement to existential qualities such as inner hurt, despair, hope, grief, and moral pain. All of these qualities accompany the health problems that patients and clients experience, and are of course more fundamentally inscribed within the human condition.


Background: Epidemiologic researches about oral mucosal lesions (OML) and possible relationships between OML and some habits or conditions have been performed in different populations. Objective: To determine the prevalence of oral mucosal lesions and relationship between OML and black tea, tooth brushing-habits, smoking, alcohol consumption, denture use on the oral mucosal lesions. Subjects and Methods: In this cross-sectional prospective clinical study, randomize selected 930 dermatology outpatients were examined using WHO criteria for oral mucosal lesions in our tertiary state hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, between September 2012 and December 2012. Results: Oral mucosal lesion was recorded in 500 (53.8%) subjects (164 (%32.8) female). The mean age of the patients was 41.3±1.99 years (ranging from 18 to 88). Frictional keratosis, nicotine stomatitis, and gingivitis were significantly more prevalent among the alcohol drinkers. Frictional keratosis was seen significantly higher in patients with denture. Heavy smoking was the risk factor for nicotine stomatitis, pigmentation, frictional keratosis, and gingivitis. Drinking black tea was found to be a significant risk factor for occurrence of nicotine stomatitis, xerostomia and gingivitis. Conclusion: This study has provided information about the epidemiologic aspect of oral mucosal lesion in this region. Public health policies should be implemented in order to manage this problem rationally.


The present paper modifies and extends the recently developed equivalent static load method for the optimization of dynamically loaded linear elastic finite element systems with a huge number of degrees of freedom. In the equivalent static load method, dynamic loads have been transformed into equivalent static loads. This leads to an equivalent static response optimization with multiple loading conditions instead of a dynamic optimization problem. In the present paper, the equivalent static load algorithm is modified and extended by introducing a fatigue analysis in the iterative optimization procedure, where damage is used as suitable termination criterion of the iteration, as well as for the determination of a single and meaningful equivalent static load that leads to maximal damage in the structure. During the evolution process the structure is systematically stiffened by using the solid isotropic microstructure with penalization approach until a user-defined damage level is reached. Three standard examples from literature and an industrial application with a large number of degrees of freedom (600,000) demonstrate the computational efficiency of the proposed method.


The capability of a runway pavement to rapidly drain water buildup during periods of precipitation is crucial to minimize tire hydroplaning potential and maintain adequate aircraft ground operational safety. Test results from instrumented aircraft, ground friction measuring vehicles, and NASA Langley's Aircraft Landing Dynamics Facility (ALDF) track have been summarized to indicate the adverse effects of pavement wetness conditions on tire friction performance. Water drainage measurements under a range of rainfall rates have been evaluated for several different runway surface treatments including the transversely grooved and longitudinally grinded concrete surfaces at the Space Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF) runway at NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The major parameters influencing drainage rates and extent of flooding/drying conditions are identified. Existing drainage test data are compared to a previously derived empirical relationship and the need for some modification is indicated. The scope of future NASA Langley research directed toward improving empirical relationships to properly define runway drainage capability and consequently, enhance aircraft ground operational safety, is given.


Social question answering (SQA) services are a popular way for people to exchange information. Unfortunately, the quality of information exchanged can be variable and few studies focus on the quality of questions asked. To address this, we explored the influence of textual features on question quality based on 126 questions taken from five different categories of Yahoo! Answers labeled as "Bad" by human assessors and then revised to be "Good" by them. Findings indicate significant differences between the means of each feature before and after revision, suggesting the potential for an automated system that could flag questions of poor quality. In addition, by exploring the relationship between features contributing to good quality questions, we suggest a simple set of strategies askers can take when writing a question in order to improve its chances of receiving a satisfactory answer.


This case describes the waste management industry and a clean technology solution for landfill diversion and renewable energy production. The (A) case focuses on the operational characteristics of waste management and waste to energy, and the characteristics of the waste management industry. The intent of the (A) case is to have students perform operational analysis on the organic waste to energy process to evaluate whether a potential new plant is economically feasible and attractive. The (B) case focuses on the sourcing dilemma: pre-processing vs. source separation. To ensure that its waste input fuel is of sufficiently high quality (i.e., low level of inorganic contaminants), the company can either build a pre-processing facility to sort incoming waste to filter out contaminants, or work with suppliers to source separate their waste stream.Learning Objective:Illustrate the societal and operational challenges inherent in waste management. Provide framework to students for evaluating possible solutions.


Bilateral electrolytic lesion of the striatum disturbs the ability of haloperidol (0.1 mg/kg) to normalize the avoidance behaviour of rats given amphetamine (5 mg/kg). Low doses of the neuroleptic (0.03--0.06 mg/kg) potentiate the inhibition of amphetamine-induced stereotypy that occurs after discontinuation of repeated electric stimulation of the cat caudate nucleus. Participation of the striate mechanisms in the realization of specific psychotropic acitivity of neuroleptics is suggested.


This study examines how the goal orientation of individuals, rather than the goals of a search task, influences information search behavior for 2 discrete stages of the Internet search process. In an Internet-based experiment (N = 106) with temporarily activated motivational orientation (promotion vs. prevention) and message goal frames (gain vs. loss) as independent variables, it was demonstrated that participants selected information that was congruent with their motivational orientation although they did not necessarily spend more time attending to their selection. Participants with the promotion orientation exhibited more scanning behavior and viewed more web pages but spent less time on the Internet search. Congruency effects resulted in higher user engagement, which mediated the congruency effects on the perceived message quality of the health content. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.


Thin films of La5/8-yPryCa3/8MnO3 (y approximate to 0.4) have been grown on single crystal SrTiO3 (001) by RF sputtering. The structural and surface characterizations confirm the epitaxial nature of these film. However, the difference between the omega-scan of the (002) and (110) peaks and the presence of pits/holes in the step-terrace type surface morphology suggests high density of defect in these films. Pronounced hysteresis between the field cooled cooling (FCC) and field cooled warming (FCW) magnetization measurements suggest towards the non-ergodic magnetic state. The origin of this nonergodicity could be traced to the magnetic liquid like state arising from the delicacy of the coexisting magnetic phases, viz., ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic-charge ordered (FM/AFM-CO). The large difference between the insulator metal transitions during cooling and warming cycles (T-IM(C) similar to 64 K and T-IM(W) similar to 123 K) could be regarded as a manifestation of the nonergodicity leading to supercooling of the magnetic liquid while cooling. The nonergodicity and supercooling are weakened by the AFM-FM phase transition induced by an external magnetic field. TIM and small polaron activation energy corresponding the magnetic liquid state (cooling cycle) vary nonlinearly with the applied magnetic field but become linear in the crystalline solid state (warming cycle). The analysis of the low temperature resistivity data shows that electron-phonon interaction is drastically reduced by the applied magnetic field. The resistivity minimum in the lower temperature region of the self-field warming curve has been explained in terms of the Kondo like scattering in the magnetically inhomogeneous regime.


Magnesium borate (Mg2B2O5) whisker was successfully synthesized by high temperature flux method using Magnesium chloride, boric acid, sodium hydroxide and sodium chloride as raw materials.The as-prepared product was characterized by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM), Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and X-Ray Photoelectron Spectrometry (XPS). The results showed that the as-prepared sample had triclinic structure and consisted of whisker-like particles with an average diameter about 1.25 μm and length up to 40μm. XPS results confirmed that the molar ratio of each atom agreed with the stoichiometric composition of Mg2B2O5. The growth mechanism was briefly discussed.


The cortical control of gait is an important aspect of locomotive function in healthy and diseased states. Here we used electroencephalography (EEG), signal processing, and machine learning methods to capture neural signals related to movement preparation of gait in healthy controls and in Parkinson's disease patients with freezing of gait (FOG). We focused on pre-movement EEG in tasks that required natural ambulation of the subjects through the environment with the ultimate goal of application to brain computer interfaces. First we aimed to predict the intent to start gait before the onset of any movement in normal, healthy individuals, and to distinguish this signal from different actions such as standing and pointing. Wavelets were used as features in LDA classification, which resulted in errors as low as 17% when averaged across nine subjects. The neural signal used for classification mostly consisted of contributions from slow cortical potentials (0.1-1 Hz) with additional, smaller contributions from mu (8-13 Hz) and beta (14-25 Hz) frequency bands from channels located over sensorimotor cortex. We then examined this pre-movement period in subjects who experience freezing of gait (FOG) to determine how PD FOG patients differ from healthy controls in baseline neural activity and how these measures change with visual modulation of the environment. The spectral activity and connectivity in and between occipital, parietal, and motor regions were assessed by using EEG signals recorded at channels Oz, Pz, and Cz in a network analysis of causal information flow. The results suggest possible pathological over-binding of cortical areas important for sensory integration and motor control through increased baseline theta and beta oscillations in freezing of gait patients who respond to visual feedback


The author was the director or co-director of a specialty Deaf psychiatric inpatient unit for 17 of its 23 years. This program was established as a culturally affirmative mental health program. The author reflects back on what this has meant and how the unit staff struggled to create a program that was both culturally and clinically competent. In Part 1 of this two part article, the lessons learned about some unique clinical challenges are discussed. These involved the challenges of working with ASL competent deaf persons and with deaf persons with severe language dysfluency in their best language, sign. The question of whether some of the deaf clients have a unique clinical syndrome involving severe language deprivation and an array of psychosocial deficits and behavioral problems is also discussed. Part II of the article discusses lessons learned about adaption of best practices in psychiatric rehabilitation for language and learning challenged deaf persons. In Part II, the author also reviews the lessons learned about staff and program development including the need to balance cultural and clinical competence and respond skillfully to Deaffhearing cross-


The objective of this study was to determine whether butchery owners in rural Botswana are aware of the New Livestock and Meat Industries Act of 2006 and their perceptions as to how it will affect their businesses. The study further sought to determine whether the present slaughter facilities were compliant with the New Act. A structured questionnaire was administered to butcheries in selected villages of Kgatleng (n=9) and Kweneng (n=4) districts to get butchery owners' views about the New Act and how it will affect their businesses. Data was analysed using frequencies. The study found that the majority (77%) of butcheries in the study area were aware of the New Act and were in fact in agreement with it. However, all the butchers doubted the ability of the Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) to implement and enforce the new regulations because of lack of personnel. The study also found that all the slaughter facilities owned by the butchers interviewed were not compliant with the new regulations. As a result, butchers felt that the New Act will increase their costs as they will be required to either build new abattoirs that are complaint with the new regulations or hire the abattoirs approved by DVS.


In view of the characteristics of numerical control turntable servo system directly driven by permanent magnet ring torque motor, which is susceptible to load disturbance and parameter variation, a dynamic-integral sliding mode position controller is designed. Dynamic sliding mode control means making differential operation to switching function of conventional sliding mode control, thus, a new switching function can be obtained. The discontinuous terms are transferred to first or higher derivative of control quantity. Therefore, the dynamic sliding mode control law is continuous timely, and then the chattering can be effectively reduced. Meanwhile, in order to ensure the steady-state accuracy of system, the integral term is introduced in the switching function to realize dynamic integral sliding mode control. The simulation results indicate that dynamic-integral sliding mode control of permanent magnet ring torque motor has favorable dynamic response and strong robustness, and it is effective to weaken the chattering.


An extrusion-based additive manufacturing process, called the Ceramic On-Demand Extrusion (CODE) process, for producing three-dimensional ceramic components with near theoretical density is introduced in this paper. In this process, an aqueous paste of ceramic particles with a very low binder content (<1 vol%) is extruded through a moving nozzle at room temperature. After a layer is deposited, it is surrounded by oil (to a level just below the top surface of most recent layer) to preclude non-uniform evaporation from the sides. Infrared radiation is then used to partially, and uniformly, dry the just-deposited layer so that the yield stress of the paste increases and the part maintains its shape. The same procedure is repeated for every layer until part fabrication is completed. Several sample parts for various applications were produced using this process and their properties were obtained. The results indicate that the proposed method enables fabrication of large, dense ceramic parts with complex geometries.


Several feminist philosophers of science have argued that social and political values are compatible with, and may even enhance, scientific objectivity. A variety of normative recommendations have emerged regarding how to identify, manage, and critically evaluate social values in science. In particular, several feminist theorists have argued that scientific communities ought to: 1) include researchers with diverse experiences, interests, and values, with equal opportunity and authority to scrutinize research; 2) investigate or "study up" scientific phenomena from the perspectives, interests, and conditions of marginalized stakeholders potentially affected by the research; and 3) make gender, ethnicity, class, and geographical location "visible," or use them as categories of analysis when appropriate. Yet, more work is needed to determine what exactly these recommendations would require, and the benefits they would yield, in specific research contexts. Using the recent development of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines, we examine how these three feminist recommendations would have applied. We argue that these principles would have yielded several epistemic and social benefits in the HPV case, as well as in biomedical research more generally. That is, biomedical research guided by these principles would not only be epistemically superior, but also more socially responsible.


Companies may choose to outsource parts, but not all, of their call-center operations. In some cases, they classify customers as high or low value, serving the former with their in-house operations and routing the latter to an outsourcer. Typically, they impose service-level constraints on the time each type of customer waits on hold.

This paper considers four schemes for routing low-value calls between the client company and the outsourcer. These schemes vary in the complexity of their routing algorithms, as well as the sophistication of the telephone and information technology infrastructure they require of the two operations. For three of these schemes, this paper provides a direct characterization of system performance. For the fourth, most complex, scheme the paper provides performance bounds for the important special case in which the service requirements of high- and low-value callers are the same. These results allow the systematic comparison of the performance of the various routing schemes. The results suggest that, for clients with large outsourcing requirements, the simpler schemes that require little client-outsourcer coordination can perform very well.


Thirty-two elderly patients with symptomatic osteoarthritis, mainly of the hip and/or knee joints, were treated at random with either 400 mg sulindac or 1200 mg ibuprofen per day for 12 weeks. Clinical assessments were made before, during and after treatment of disease activity, weight-bearing pain, night pain, and pain on active and passive movement. Objective measurements were also made of duration of inactivity stiffness, knee flexion and hip abduction. The results showed that after treatment there was significant symptomatic improvement in the patients in both groups. Apart from night pain, the differences between the groups in the subjective parameters at Week 12 were significant in favour of sulindac. Overall assessment of response to treatment also showed a significant preference for sulindac by patients and physician. Both drugs were well-tolerated although 1 patient on sulindac had to be withdrawn because of a skin rash.


Thegovernance  of Private Tahfiz Institutions  (hereinafterreferred  to  as  PTI) in Malaysiahas faced numerous challenges. Poor and insufficient infrastructureand facilities,unstandardized and inappropriate management are amongst the emerging difficulties due to fully  dependent  on  government  supports  and  charitable  endowment(waqf).Accountability issue  in  crowd  fundraisingand  donation,lack  of  financial  resources  are another  demerit associated  with Private Tahfiz Institutions. This paper, therefore,aims to firstlydescribethe concept  of  Social  Entrepreneurship  from  the  Islamic  Perspective  and  its  integration  in  the PTIgovernance to further  embark  theTahfizpreneur  Model.This  study  seeks  to  highlight three key elements in the proposed formationof Tahfizpreneur Model namely:(i) the actual problems  of  PTI(ii) The ITS's administrators'knowledge on  the  Islamic  Entrepreneurship(iii) Effective  marketing  strategies  on  the  Private  Tahfiz  entrepreneurship  products. These three  essential  elements  need  to  be  collectively  integrated  and  holistically  embraced  to produce Tahfizpreneur Models applicable throughout PTIin Malaysia. Hence,in an attempt to  transform the  existing  governance  of  PTI,  this study  further  suggests  that  this endeavourshould  gain  full  supportand  requires  the  cooperation  from  various authoritative  bodies. Mainly, the Stakeholders Tahfiz in Malaysia through the Department ofIslamic Development Malaysia  (JAKIM),  National  Institute  of  Entrepreneurship  (INSKEN),Higher  Education Institutions  (IPT)  and  State  Islamic  Religious  Council  (MAIN)are  the  core government agencies  whoshould  effectively  joint  effort  and  increasingly  work  together to  achieve  the ultimate  goal  ofthe NationalTahfizEducation  Policy  (DPTN)in  strengthening  Tahfiz Institution in this country


Sexualized violence against children is a topic that many in our North American society find uncomfortable to discuss freely. Alongside this very common discomfort with the topic is a general lack of dialogue. As a society, we long ago created an accepted way of discussing the topic that constrains these events to a certain light or perspective. The language of sexual interaction (which is mutual) rather than language of violent interaction (which is unilateral) is most often used when we talk about this violation of children; we talk about acts of 'fondling' and 'intercourse' with a minor. Do we believe that children are engaged in sexual relations? Sexual acts are defined as mutual and the sexual terms we use for these acts imply consent. Rape is violence that is sexualized, forced and unilateral. Accurate language that takes into consideration authentic concise definitions of terms and that accurately reflects the agency of individuals involved in an act or event will thus communicate the nuances, intentionality and relational interactions of the crime more precisely. This thesis will deal with language and meaning, how we acquire and share concepts, and how accuracy in the language of description of real world events more precisely communicates accuracy of meaning, intentionality and agency, thus forming our social construction of the meaning of the event. In general, agency, implied consent, meaning, agreed-upon definitions or terminology and thus collectively held social 'truth' are co-created and communicated in language. Adults impart this knowledge to children as children learn language and societal norms. Adults often look to wise authority for guidance and for their frame of reference regarding usage and meaning. In the field of sexualized violence against children, the authority would be the professionals who work within the field. The question then is: when individuals who work within the field of sexualized violence against children are introduced to the discussion of the accurate use of language that is violence-based rather than the use of language that is heavily sex-act based (i.e. language that obscures the agency of the perpetrator thus implicating the child in the act) that is not accurate for what is occurring during the sexualized violation of a child, what is the response from these professionals? This thesis will discuss how meaning is socially constructed and communicated through language and will present a discourse analysis of the narrative elicited from a survey offered to professionals who variously work in the field of sexualized violence against children, asking about accurate language use as introduced by the project "Tell it like it is!".


When online platforms rise and fall, sometimes communities fade away, and sometimes they pack their bags and relocate to a new home. To explore the causes and effects of online community migration, we examine transformative fandom, a longstanding, technology-agnostic community surrounding the creation, sharing, and discussion of creative works based on existing media. For over three decades, community members have left and joined many different online spaces, from Usenet to Tumblr to platforms of their own design. Through analysis of 28 in-depth interviews and 1,886 survey responses from fandom participants, we traced these migrations, the reasons behind them, and their impact on the community. Our findings highlight catalysts for migration that provide insights into factors that contribute to success and failure of platforms, including issues surrounding policy, design, and community. Further insights into the disruptive consequences of migrations (such as social fragmentation and lost content) suggest ways that platforms might both support commitment and better support migration when it occurs.


A phase-locked loop (PLL) with the proposed voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) and a divide-by-2 injection-locked frequency divider (ILFD) is fabricated in 65-nm digital CMOS technology. The proposed VCO and the divide-by-two ILFD operate at the higher and lower poles, respectively, of two fourth-order LC ladders. The frequency ratio between the VCO and its first divide-by-2 ILFD is kept by scaling the inductances and the capacitances. The design considerations of this VCO and the locking range of this ILFD are discussed. The measured locking range of this PLL is 132.1-132.6 GHz. It consumes 120.8 mW from 1.35-V supply, excluding the output buffers. The chip area is 0.96 × 0.92 mm2.


Maulānā Sayyid Abū'l-A'lā Maudūdī (1903-1979) is credited with being the founder of Islamic Economics, and having developed the idea of an Islamic Economic System. This article investigates and finds little support for this claim. Moreover, it suggests that these claims not only strain the evidence available, but they also distort Maulānā Maudūdī's thoughts, and add little either to his formidable stature as one of the most influential Muslim leaders of the twentieth century, or to the dignity of Islam. Instead, it proposes that Maulānā's economic thought should be viewed as a minor if inextricable component of his social and political vision of a modern Islamic state. Or, as arrangements in law and government for the provision of livelihoods, akin to the German tradition of Polizeiwissenschaft in a Staatswissenschaft, but from the Islamic perspective of commanding the right and forbidding the wrong (especially, allowing wages, rents and profits, but not interest).


The piezoelectric effect in ferroelectric single crystals and ceramics is investigated considering intrinsic (lattice), and extrinsic (originating mainly from displacement of domain walls) contributions. The focus of the study of intrinsic properties is on piezoelectric anisotropy, which was examined using the Landau-Ginsburg-Devonshire phenomenological theory. It is shown that the enhanced piezoelectric response along nonpolar directions, observed in many perovskite systems, is a consequence of the flattening of the Gibbs free energy profile. This flattening is common for temperature-, composition-, and external field-induced enhancement of the piezoelectric properties along nonpolar axes. A brief review of recent advances in understanding the origins of the piezoelectric nonlinearity, hysteresis, and frequency dispersion is also given.


Summary. In chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection seroconversion from hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg) to hepatitis B e antibody (HBeAb) may be followed either by remission of the disease with low‐level viraemia, or by continuing inflammation with high‐level viraemia. In both situations the virus may acquire a mutation in the precore sequence which prevents it from encoding HBeAg. We now show that the number of amino acid substitutions in the HBV core is low in viral sequences from patients with HBeAg positive chronic liver disease and HBeAg negative HBeAb positive patients in remission, but the frequency of substitutions is high in HBeAg, negative HBeAb positive patients with active liver disease. Furthermore we show that these substitutions cluster in the promiscuous CD4+ T‐helper‐cell epitope and in HBV core/e antibody binding determinants, but are not found in regions recognized by major histocompatability complex (MHC) restricted cytotoxic T lymphocytes. Sequential viral sequences from patients before and after HBeAg/HbeAb seroconversion shows that core mutations arise either at the same time or after the precore stop mutation which prevents the virus from encoding HBeAg. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that after clearance of HBeAg, mutations in regions of the virus recognized by CD4+ helper T cells and B cells allow persistence of the HBe negative virus in HBeAb positive patients with viraemia and active hepatitis.


Articles included in this issue are &dquo;The U.S. Lodging Industry-Today and Tomorrow,&dquo; &dquo;Comments from Around the Country,&dquo; &dquo;The U.S. Lodging Industry Study,&dquo; &dquo;The Break-Even Point,&dquo; &dquo;The U.S. Lodging Industry Dollar,&dquo; &dquo;Trends in the Lodging Industry,&dquo; &dquo;Bases and Significance of Hotel Statistics,&dquo; &dquo;Explanation of Terms,&dquo; and &dquo;Analyze Your Operation. &dquo;


Google's project program for developing a line of hands-free, head-mounted intelligent devices that can be worn by users as "wearable computing" eyewear. The first product release from Project Glass, Google Glass, was available for beta testers to purchase in 2013, for $1,500 plus tax. It is the first conceptualization of a mainstream augmented reality wearable eye display playing out in a viral marketing campaign. Google Glass will enable us to capture video, let us interact with personal contacts, and navigate maps, amongst other things. The YouTube concept video "One Day..." that announced its coming on April 4, 2012, has been viewed more than 18 million times. Gracing the face of Diane von Furstenberg, who wore it at New York"s fashion week, it is often strategically trotted out for photo opportunities. It has been provocative enough to scare both Apple and Microsoft, who had been issuing patents for augmented reality products of their own. However, most salient of all is the way Google Glass is framed in media as the brainchild of Sergey Brin, the American computer scientist of Russian descent who cofounded Google. Brin is also celebrated in online articles as a real life "Batman," who is developing a secret facility resembling the "Bat cave". This paper argues that Glass"s birth is not only a marketing phenomenon heralding a technical prototype, it also suggests and speculates that Glass"s popularization is an instigator for the adoption of a new paradigm in HumanComputer Interaction (HCI), the wearable eye display. Glass"s process of adoption operates in the context of mainstream and popular culture discourses, a phenomenon that warrants attention.


We used scats from 71 individuals to determine the diet of the endangered Pygmy Bluetongue Lizard, Tiliqua adelaidensis , from South Australia. As predicted both from its previously reported behaviour as an ambush forager, and from its relatively small size, this scincid lizard feeds largely on arthropod prey, and the prey in the diet change opportunistically over the spring and summer. As expected, the species is less herbivorous than larger species in the same or related genera. However plant material is included in the diet to a greater extent as the summer progresses. Conservation of this species may rely on maintaining a high abundance of arthropod prey, and a habitat where efficient prey capture is possible, and on retaining appropriate plants in the species' habitat.


Recently, a panel of monoclonal antibodies (MoAbs) was developed that identified a novel tumour‐cell antigen conserved across species (mouse, rat and man). Fluorescence‐activated cell sorter (FACS) analysis demonstrated that this antigen was expressed at highest levels on human tumour cell lines sensitive to natural killer (NK)‐cell lysis. These MoAbs inhibited NK cell lysis of K562 target cells (by up to 90%), as well as a variety of other NK‐sensitive target cells. Biochemical analyses revealed that the MoAbs reacted with a polypeptide of 42 kDaitons, distinct from other known cell surface antigens [1]. Now the expression of this antigen has been analysed further with a panel of 24 tumour cell lines to determine its role in NK cell function. The expression of target cell major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules in conjunction with sensitivity to NK cell lysis was examined also. For each of the 24 cell lines it was found that the level of expression of the novel target cell antigen determined the sensitivity of the celt line to NK cell lysis. However, the level of MHC antigen expression could modulate target cell sensitivity to NK cell lysis, in that high levels of MHC class‐I molecule expression resulted in a target cell that was insensitive to NK cell lysis regardless of the level of expression of the novel antigen. Thus, for most transformed cell lines, sensitivity to NK cell lysis appeared to be determined by the expression and levels of the novel antigen in association with MHC class‐I molecules.


Clinical trial data and real-world experience have shown the nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) to be an important class of agents for the treatment of HIV. Given their long plasma half-lives, in vitro and in vivo potency against HIV, low pill burdens, and ability to be safely combined with other commonly used medications, the NNRTIs nevirapine and efavirenz are widely used in combination antiretroviral therapies. Observational, retrospective cohort studies among antiretroviral treatment (ART)-naive patients have suggested that efavirenz may be superior to nevirapine in terms of efficacy. Recently, data from the 2NN study, a large, multicenter, multinational, prospective, randomized, head-to-head trial comparing efavirenz and nevirapine, have been reported. The results from this study indicate that ART-naive patients achieved good antiviral response after 48 weeks of treatment with nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) combined with either efavirenz or nevirapine (viral load >50 copies/mL: efavirenz, 70%; nevirapine bid, 65.4%; nevirapine qd, 70%). Even though central nervous system disturbances occurred more frequently among efavirenz-treated patients and nonclinically significant transaminitis occurred more frequently among nevirapine-treated patients, these adverse events were not statistically significant or mutually exclusive. Given the results of the 2NN study, the selection of one agent or the other for use in clinical practice will depend more upon patient-specific factors than expected differences in antiviral responses.


Cross‐shore grading of sediment has been observed on the surface of estuarine beaches but the swash zone processes responsible for this grading have not been measured. This study was conducted to provide an explanation for the cross‐shore grading of sediment on a predominantly sandy estuarine foreshore. Data on wave and swash characteristics and sediment trapped in the uprush and backwash during 25 swash events were gathered from mid‐rising to mid‐falling tide on a small transgressive barrier in Delaware Bay, New Jersey, USA. Sediment is predominantly quartz and feldspar, medium to coarse sands with a gravel fraction of granules and pebbles. Wave energies increased with tidal rise. The percentage of gravel in transport in the uprush and backwash is similar (11% and 13%) during the rising tide when the swash zone is at mid‐foreshore, decreases in the uprush (9%) and increases in the backwash (18%) when the swash zone is on the upper foreshore. When the swash zone is at mid‐foreshore on the falling tide, the quantity of gravel in the backwash (30%) is greater than in the uprush (24%). The low proportion of gravel within the foreshore prior to trapping, and the increase in the percentage of gravel when the waves and swash are on the upper foreshore, suggests that the step is the primary source of gravel high on the foreshore. The size of the step increases as wave heights increase with tidal rise. The rate of delivery of gravel into the swash is enhanced by sediment entrained during wave breaking and interaction of the uprush with the previous backwash. The lag in the rate of step migration relative to breaker migration during the falling tide increases the likelihood of mining gravel from the step and subsequent transport in the uprush and backwash. These findings are important for low energy estuarine beaches sensitive to small changes in tidal range and wave energy that cause sedimentological change across the foreshore.


Samples of air at various depths in firn were collected at Vostok Station, Antarctica, and analyzed for δ15N of N2, O2/N2 ratio, and CO2. The ultimate objective of this work is to constrain the recent rate of the atmospheric [O2] decrease, thereby providing a direct experimental constraint on net CO2 fluxes into the ocean and the land biosphere. δ15N increases with depth, because of gravitational enrichment, at approximately the rate predicted by the barometric equation. Gravitationally corrected CO2 decreases with depth to 308 ppmV at 101.9 m depth, because deeper air is older and less contaminated with anthropogenic CO2. The gravitationally corrected O2/N2 ratio increases with depth mainly because burning fossil fuel consumes O2. Samples in the top 20 m of the firn have anomalously high CO2 concentrations and anomalously low O2/N2 ratios. Samples below 96.2 m depth have anomalously high O2/N2 ratios. Between 30 and 96.2 m depth, the gravitationally corrected increase in the O2/N2 ratio is nearly equal to that computed from the rate of O2 consumption by combustion of fossil fuels. Our results indicate that the rate of anthropogenic O2 consumption can be accurately constrained by future firn air studies.


The covariance matrix of signals is one of the most essential information in multivariate analysis and other signal processing techniques. The estimation accuracy of a covariance matrix is degraded when some eigenvalues of the matrix are almost duplicated. Although the degradation is theoretically analyzed in the asymptotic case of infinite variables and observations, the degradation in finite cases are still open. This paper tackles the problem using the Bayesian approach, where the learning coefficient represents the generalization error. The learning coefficient is derived in a special case, i.e., the covariance matrix is spiked (all eigenvalues take the same value except one) and a shrinkage estimation method is employed. Our theoretical analysis shows a non-monotonic property that the learning coefficient increases as the difference of eigenvalues increases until a critical point and then decreases from the point and converged to the distinct case. The result is validated by numerical experiments.


Abstract. We document the sporophyte of the extinct Frullania varians based on an inclusion in Late Oligocene Bitterfeld amber from Germany. The sporophyte consists of a short, ca. 45 µm thick seta that exceeds the perianth only slightly; the elongate-ovate, acute valves of the opened capsule are about 225 µm long, curved backwards and consist of an epidermal and an internal layer. Cell walls of both layers possess nodulose trigones. Several trumpet-shaped, unispiral elaters are fixed to the upper third of the internal valve layer. They have a length of ca. 150 µm and a diameter of 15–18 µm. A subglobose structure of 19 µm diameter is interpreted as a degraded spore. Fossil elaters and spores as well as capsule wall details of Frullaniaceae are described for the first time. doi: 10.1002/mmng.201200009


PURPOSE
We performed this study as a comprehensive evaluation of variables reported to affect lower pole stone clearance after shock wave lithotripsy using artificial neural network analysis.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
The radiographic images and treatment records of 680 patients with lower pole renal calculi treated with primary shock wave lithotripsy using the Wolf Piezolith 2500 (Wolf, Knittlingen, Germany) lithotriptor were retrospectively evaluated by applying artificial neural network analysis. Successful stone clearance was defined as absent fragments of any size detected on plain x-ray with tomography and/or excretory pyelography performed 6 months after treatment. Prognostic variables included patient characteristics, laboratory values, stone characteristics and the spatial anatomy of the lower pole, as defined by infundibular length, diameter, caliceal pelvic height, 2 measurements of the lower infundibulopelvic and infundibuloureteropelvic angles as well as the pattern of dynamic urinary transport.

RESULTS
Artificial neural network analysis had 92% accuracy for correctly predicting lower pole stone clearance. The pattern of dynamic urinary transport represented the most influential predictor of stone clearance, followed by a measure of the infundibuloureteropelvic angle, body mass index, caliceal pelvic height and stone size. Anatomical measurements of lower pole anatomy and classification of the type of urinary transport were well reproducible with low intra-observer and interobserver variability (correlation coefficient alpha >0.8).

CONCLUSIONS
In a comprehensive analysis of variables reported to influence lower pole stone clearance artificial neural network analysis predicted stone clearance with a high degree of accuracy. The relative importance of dynamic urinary transport in lower pole stones and the usefulness of artificial neural network analysis to predict shock wave lithotripsy outcomes in individuals must be confirmed in a prospective trial.


Hand-held optical imagers are developed by various researchers towards reflectance-based spectroscopic imaging of breast cancer. Recently, a Gen-1 handheld optical imager was developed with capabilities to perform two-dimensional (2-D) spectroscopic as well as three-dimensional (3-D) tomographic imaging studies. However, the imager was bulky with poor surface contact (~30%) along curved tissues, and limited sensitivity to detect targets consistently. Herein, a Gen-2 hand-held optical imager that overcame the above limitations of the Gen-1 imager has been developed and the instrumentation described. The Gen-2 hand-held imager is less bulky, portable, and has improved surface contact (~86%) on curved tissues. Additionally, the forked probe head design is capable of simultaneous bilateral reflectance imaging of both breast tissues, and also transillumination imaging of a single breast tissue. Experimental studies were performed on tissue phantoms to demonstrate the improved sensitivity in detecting targets using the Gen-2 imager. The improved instrumentation of the Gen-2 imager allowed detection of targets independent of their location with respect to the illumination points, unlike in Gen-1 imager. The developed imager has potential for future clinical breast imaging with enhanced sensitivity, via both reflectance and transillumination imaging.


Silica-doped poly(lactic acid) (PLA) composite hollow spheres containing calcium carbonates (Si-CCPC spheres) were prepared using aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) for injectable bone fillers combined with a cell-delivery system. Si-CCPC spheres have a hollow spherical shape of ~1 mm in the external diameter and an open channel in the shell, which is selfformed. The channel size is about 500 *m in diameter. X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis showed incorporation of silicon in Si-CCPC spheres. After soaking Si-CCPC spheres in simulated body fluid (SBF), hydroxycarbonate apatite formed on the Si-CCPC spheres. Inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) showed that the Si4+ ion is released from Si-CCPC spheres in SBF.


Nowadays, many devices are equipped with computer network interfaces. Some systems of area such as security of finance and real-time communication, synchronizing distributed clocks, rapidly, to enable their operations is imperatively required. The implementation of distributed embedded architecture which is based on IEEE 1588 standard to achieve a precise time synchronizing system is investigated. The switching controller which is combined with fuzzy and PI control schemes is proposed to reduce the time offsets from the master clock to slave clocks. The long transient time is improved with minute level via the fuzzy control. The small magnitudes of steady-state errors are reserved, completely, via the PI control.


A large class of embedded systems is distinguished from general-purpose computing systems by the need to satisfy strict requirements on timing, often under constraints on available resources. Predictable system design is concerned with the challenge of building systems for which timing requirements can be guaranteed a priori. Perhaps paradoxically, this problem has become more difficult by the introduction of performance-enhancing architectural elements, such as caches, pipelines, and multithreading, which introduce a large degree of uncertainty and make guarantees harder to provide. The intention of this article is to summarize the current state of the art in research concerning how to build predictable yet performant systems. We suggest precise definitions for the concept of "predictability", and present predictability concerns at different abstraction levels in embedded system design. First, we consider timing predictability of processor instruction sets. Thereafter, we consider how programming languages can be equipped with predictable timing semantics, covering both a language-based approach using the synchronous programming paradigm, as well as an environment that provides timing semantics for a mainstream programming language (in this case C). We present techniques for achieving timing predictability on multicores. Finally, we discuss how to handle predictability at the level of networked embedded systems where randomly occurring errors must be considered.


One way for modern embedded systems to tackle the demand for more complex functionality requiring more computational power is to take advantage of heterogeneous hardware. These hardware platforms are constructed from the combination of different processing units including both traditional CPUs and for example Graphical Processing Units (GPUs). However, there is a lack of efficient approaches supporting software development for such systems. In particular, modern software development approaches, such as component-based development, do not provide sufficient support for heterogeneous hardware platforms. This paper presents a component model extension, which defines specific features for components with GPU capabilities. The benefits of the proposed solution include an increased system performance by accelerating the communication between GPU-aware components and the possibility to control the distribution of GPU computation resources at system level.


The first quarter of 2020 is a hard time for the global community. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemics swept through the world affected many aspects of human  endeavour: from the decline in industrial production to the re-adjustments in the academic calendar of all educational institutions globally. Stakeholders and management of higher educational institutions have no other option but to make use of internet technology, thus online learning for the continuation of academic activities across all schools worldwide.
This paper aims at assessing whether Ghanaian international students in China are satisfied with the '' mass'' online learning in higher educational institutions in Beijing, China.
Therefore, this study employed an online survey to investigate the level of satisfaction of online learning in higher educational institutions and how Ghanaian international students are coping with these ''new initiatives''.
The findings from the study suggest that the implementation of online learning programs was a very great idea as the majority of the sampled students supported the initiative. The study also revealed that students have adequate knowledge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Another finding that came up during the research is the high cost of participating in online learning. However, our results showed that students outside China due to the COVID-19 spend so much money to buy internet data for online learning. Last but not least, the study discovered that internet connectivity was very slow for students leaving within the dormitories of various universities in China.
The findings from this study will be of much benefit to university administrators and management in taking future emergency decisions concerning the implementation of online learning programs for student's different backgrounds.


Background Accurate diagnosis of chlamydia and gonorrhoea infections followed by appropriate treatment are critical steps in preventing transmission and morbidity. Sex workers are a target population for lab-based screening. This study compared the performance of commercially available nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) to detect chlamydia and gonorrhoea infections among FEWs in Cambodia. Methods In 2011, 2564 FEWs were recruited and consented into a national prevalence survey for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Cambodia. Two self-collected vaginal swab specimens were obtained from 2525 FEWs. One swab was placed in m2000 media for testing with m2000, and the other was placed in GeneLock media for testing with AC2 and GeneXpert. Specimens were tested for chlamydia and gonorrhoea with the Abbott m2000 and Aptima AC2 assays. Samples with discrepant results were tested with the Cepheid GeneXpert assay. The reference standard was defined as results from two of three assays being in agreement. Results By reference standard, chlamydia and gonorrhoea were detected in 21.2% and 7.0% of samples respectively. The m2000 and AC2 assays detected chlamydia in 499 specimens, and discordant results were found in 127 specimens. When compared to the reference standard, the m2000 sensitivity and specificity for chlamydia was 99.1% and 95.8% respectively. The sensitivity and specificity of AC2 for chlamydia was 94.4% and 99.6%. Gonorrhea was detected by both assays in 134 specimens while 110 yielded discordant results. The m2000 was 97.7% and 97.3% sensitive and specific for gonorrhoea while sensitivity and specificity of AC2 was 78.0% and 99.9% respectively. Conclusions Chlamydia and gonorrhoea are prevalent STIs among Cambodian FEWs. Both NAATs had high sensitivity and specificity for chlamydia, and high specificity for gonorrhoea, but the AC2 sensitivity for gonorrhoea was low. Given high sensitivity and specificity of the assays, cost and usability will be important factors for ongoing programmatic use.


Actors in the Oil & Gas sector frequently have the experience and foresight to include price adjustment and similar self-regulating clauses in their long-term contracts. It has long been the case in the MENA region that this, coupled with other factors such as the type and size of the companies in the sector and the applicable business and legal cultures, has limited the number of disputes requiring third-party adjudication, notably via international arbitration. However, as the COVID-19 pandemic has entered a second calendar year and continues to roil the world economy and upend established patterns and relationships, it is timely to review the legal landscape in MENA countries in respect of force majeure, hardship and related legal doctrines concerning the potential effects of changed conditions on contracts.This is particularly relevant as a number of these national laws treat the authority of a judge or arbitrator to potentially adjust a contract to maintain or restore its economic equilibrium in the face of unforeseen changed circumstances as a matter of public policy. It is also revealing to see how arbitral tribunals have in fact dealt in the past with other situations of changed conditions affecting Oil & Gas sector contracts in the MENA region and consider the potential implications for emerging and potential disputes, including those which may emerge from disruptions secondary to the COVID-19 pandemic. This review brings into stark relief the vital importance of effective and resilient contractual mechanisms and of careful attention to the choice and significance of the national law to govern such contracts.


INTRODUCTION
Our aim in this study was to investigate spectral power density (PSD) in first-episode mania and subsequent remission period and to evaluate their difference.

METHODS
Sixty-nine consecutive cases referring to our hospital within the previous 1 year, who were evaluated as bipolar disorder manic episode according to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV (DSM-IV) at the first episode and had the informed consent form signed by first degree relatives, were included in this study. Exclusion criteria included having previous depressive episode, using drugs which could influence electroencephalographic activity before electroencephalography (EEG), and having previous neurological disease, particularly epilepsy, head trauma, and/or loss of consciousness. EEG records were obtained using a digital device in 16 channels; 23 surface electrodes were placed according to the International 10-20 system. Spectral power density (dbμV/Hz) of EEG signal provided information on the power carried out by EEG waves in defined frequancy range per unit frequency in the present study.

RESULTS
A peak power value detected on the right with FP2P4 and on the left with F7T3 electrodes were found to be higher in the manic episode than in the remission period (p=0.018 and 0.025). In the remission period, in cases with psychotic symptoms during the manic period, F4C4 peak power value was found to be lower than that in cases with no psychotic findings during the manic period (p=0.027). There was no relation was found between YMRS scores and peak power scores.

CONCLUSION
Electrophysiological corollary of mood episode is present from the onset of the disease, and it differs between the manic and remission periods of bipolar disorder. In the remission period, peak power values of PSD distinguish cases with psychotic findings from cases without psychotic findings when they were manic.


We consider bearing estimation of multiple narrow-band plane waves impinging on an array of sensors. For this problem, bearing estimation algorithms such as minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR), multiple signal classification, and maximum likelihood generally require the array covariance matrix as sufficient statistics. Interestingly, the rank of the array covariance matrix is approximately equal to the number of the sources, which is typically much smaller than the number of sensors in many practical scenarios. In these scenarios, the covariance matrix is low-rank and can be estimated via matrix completion from only a small subset of its entries. We propose a distributed matrix completion framework to drastically reduce the inter-sensor communication in a network while still achieving near-optimal bearing estimation accuracy. Using recent results in noisy matrix completion, we provide sampling bounds and show how the additive noise at the sensor observations affects the reconstruction performance. We demonstrate via simulations that our approach sports desirable tradeoffs between communication costs and bearing estimation accuracy.


Substituted 4-hydroxybutyric (GHB) or trans-4-hydroxycrotonic acids (T-HCA) and structurally related compounds were synthesized and submitted to [3H]GHB binding. Structure-activity relationships studies highlighted for [3H]GHB binding (a) the necessity of a nonlactonic, relatively extended conformation of the gamma-hydroxybutyric chain, (b) the existence of some bulk tolerance in the vicinity of the hydroxyl group, and (c) the high sensitivity toward isosteric replacements of the carboxyl or the hydroxyl groups. T-HCA has been recently identified as a naturally occurring substance in the central nervous system (CNS) and shows a better affinity than GHB. Our findings are in favor of the presence in the CNS of specific GHB binding sites, which are different from the GABA and the picrotoxin binding sites, and for which T-HCA may be an endogenous ligand.


Homologous recombination (HR) is the process by which a double-strand break in DNA is repaired using an identical donor template. Despite rapid progress in identifying the functions of the proteins that mediate HR, little is known about how broken DNA finds its homologous template. This process, coined homology search, has been difficult to monitor experimentally. Therefore, we present here a computational approach to model the effect of subnuclear positioning and chromatin dynamics on homology search. We found that, in our model, homology search occurs more efficiently if both the cut site and its template are at the nuclear periphery, whereas restricting the movement of the template or the break alone to the periphery markedly increases the time of the search. Immobilization of either component at any position slows down the search. Based on these results, we propose a new model for homology search, the facilitated random search model, which predicts that the search is random, but that nuclear organization and dynamics strongly influence its speed and efficiency.


Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) are nanometer-sized cell-derived membrane vesicles that are released by donor cells and play an important role in intercellular communication. In this short communication, we discuss the obstacles currently faced in EV-mediated drug delivery research. The commonly used vehicle for drug delivery in prevalent practice are liposome's which are synthetic vesicles, these vesicles commonly interact with serum proteins, macrophages and other innate immune response molecules and may be destroyed before they can deliver the drug. EVs however have the same membrane compositions and similar cell surface markers as the cells from which they are derived which thus prevents interactions or provocations of an immune response. In addition, EVs have been used to deliver molecules across tight cellular junctions such as the blood brain barrier. This has led to an interest in using EVs as a novel method for drug delivery. We hereby discuss the potential pitfalls and difficulties that need to be addressed before EVs can be used as drug delivery vehicles in pharmacological research.


Periodontists are encountering increasing number of cases in their practices where patients present with cardiovascular diseases. Patients with a history of myocardial infarction, ischaemic stroke, acute coronary syndrome or peripheral vascular disease are prescribed anticoagulant medications by cardiologists, such as aspirin, warfarin, clopidogrel, ticlopidine, prasugrel, dipyridamole, cilostazol or dabigatran- either as monotherapy or dual therapy, for prevention of further thromboembolic events during lifetime. As because these agents act by inhibiting platelet aggregation, they tend to prolong bleeding time. Concerns regarding excessive periprocedural bleeding in patients receiving such drugs have led to some clinicians recommending periprocedural discontinuation of anticoagulant therapy. However, several studies, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses, have proved that there is no significantly increased risk of bleeding associated with continuing anticoagulant therapy when compared with discontinuation or modification of the anticoagulant regimen. In fact, without the anticoagulant medication, these patients have been found to be at increased risk of thromboembolic events with potentially serious consequences. The accepted recommendation, therefore, is that the anticoagulant drug regimens should not be altered or discontinued prior to periodontal treatment procedures, as the risks associated with such discontinuation far outweigh the consequences of prolonged bleeding, which can be well controlled with local measures.


Author(s): Renaud, Terence Ray | Advisor(s): Jay, Martin E | Abstract: This dissertation concerns the problem of renewal on the German Left. How did crises of renewal and moments of generational conflict shape the theory and organization of German socialism during the tumultuous four decades between 1930 and 1970? When and how did socialism cease to be a viable political alternative to democratic capitalism? I treat the history of one small organization, New Beginning, as paradigmatic for the experience of the socialist renewers generation—the generation that renewed socialism through antifascist struggle and remade the German Left after the war.Born between 1905 and 1915, the renewers were too young to have served in the First World War or actively participated in the November Revolution. They matured amid the political and economic turmoil of the Weimar Republic and later pioneered the formation of "socialist splinter groups." Between the fronts of social democracy and communism, these small organizations like New Beginning, the Socialist Workers' Party (SAP), the International Socialist Fighting League (ISK), and the Communist Party-Opposition (KPO) sought to unify and renew the German socialist movement through a curious combination of elite vanguardism and grassroots initiative. They believed that the fight against fascism provided socialists a unique opportunity to finish the democratic revolution that had begun as early as 1848, leapt forward in 1918-19, but stalled during the conservative Weimar Republic. New Beginning distinguished itself from the other splinter groups in the way it explicitly articulated the problem of socialist renewal and linked the fate of socialism to the fate of its own generation.After twelve years of anti-Nazi resistance and war, former members of New Beginning such as Fritz Erler, Waldemar von Knoeringen, Richard Lowenthal, Wolfgang Abendroth, Ossip K. Flechtheim, and Robert Havemann either arose from the rubble or returned from exile to acquire leading posts in German academia and politics. They set about applying the theories and methods they had learned during the 1930s to the new problems of reconstruction, divided Germany, and the developing Cold War. The majority of the renewers generation helped modernize the Social Democratic Party and develop a new kind of socialism that renounced Marxism and embraced a liberal, middle-class ethos. An important minority of renewers, however, stayed true to the promise of radical socialism. These dissident left socialists paved the way toward a New Left, and in the 1960s the original revolutionary elan of the renewers passed on to a new generation of militant young intellectuals: the Sixty-eighters.Political ideologies as well as mass social movements grow old. Their proponents and participants physically age, and their ideas start to rust. Revival and rejuvenation, then, periodically capture the attention and shape the objectives of multi-generational social movements. The former members of New Beginning were keenly aware of how the problem of renewal could cause dysfunction in the established parties of the Left. But they also recognized an opportunity to mobilize the German youth against capitalism and conservative reaction. Instead of restarting socialism, however, the New Left and the Sixty-eighters unwittingly extinguished the original promise of German socialism and the renewers generation. Subsequent movements for social change in Germany and elsewhere in Europe would occur largely outside the socialist tradition.


In my paper 'Elenchos Come Petitio Principii', I argued that Severino's elenctic argument does not work against a dialetheist position such as the one defended by Graham Priest. In the present paper, I will focus on some fundamental aspects of the dialetheist's challenge to the Law of Non Contradiction that have raised many doubts, such as the claim that a true contradiction is at the same time false, or the fact that the dialetheist's metatheory should be as inconsistent as the object theory. Moreover, I shall exploit such clarifications to reexpose some of the key passages of my critique of the elenctic strategy, in particular those regarding the second figure of elenchos. Finally, I shall reply to the objection that accuses both dialetheism and my own view of not providing incontrovertible grounds to theirrespective claims.


Calcium acetate is a potent phosphate binder that causes fewer problems with hypercalcemia and elevated serum aluminum concentrations than other calcium salt or aluminum-binding agents. It exceeds calcium carbonate in its binding ability and is not expensive. These advantages make it an attractive alternative to many of the standard phosphate-binding regimens.


This study aimed to develop Academic Motivation Scale for Learning Information Technology for university students. For this purpose, 120 randomly selected university students studying in different classes and faculties at KSU were invited to the study during the 2016-2017 academic year. To define the scale indicators students were asked to answer the question; "What are your motivations for learning information technologies?". Four different academicians examined the answers in accordance with the self-determination theory and they created the item pool. After expert examinations and pilot studies, the scale was designed in Likert-type with 18 items in 6 categories. To analyze the construct validity of the scale, 824 randomly selected students among the freshmen at KSU were included in the sample of the research. Among those, 276 of the students were included in the exploratory factor analysis in the first step, 269 were involved to repeat the first step with a new sample, and 279 participated in the last step to carry out the confirmatory factor analysis. Although literature suggest three different types of motivation (extrinsic, intrinsic, and amotivation), in this study, it was found that the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation items were gathered together and expressed as a single factor named "Intrinsic-Occupational Motivation". According to the results, the final state of the scale included 15 items in two sub-dimensions. The sub-dimensions were named as "Intrinsic-Occupational Motivation" and "Amotivation". It is understood from the analysis that the results derived from the scale have high reliability.


In this paper, we begin the systematic study of group equations with abelian predicates in the main classes of groups where solving equations is possible. We extend the line of work on word equations with length constraints, and more generally, on extensions of the existential theory of semigroups, to the world of groups. We use interpretability by equations to establish model-theoretic and algebraic conditions, which are sufficient to get undecidability. We apply our results to (non-abelian) right-angled Artin groups and show that the problem of solving equations with abelian predicates is undecidable for these. We obtain the same result for hyperbolic groups whose abelianisation has torsion-free rank at least two. By contrast, we prove that in groups with finite abelianisation, the problem can be reduced to solving equations with recognisable constraints, and so this is decidable in right-angled Coxeter groups, or more generally, graph products of finite groups, as well as hyperbolic groups with finite abelianisation.


In this paper, a polymer-based micro direct methanol fuel cell (µDMFC) has been designed, fabricated and tested. Bipolar plates were manufactured with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by molding method. Stainless steel plates with the thickness of 200μm were chosen to fabricate the current collectors. The 0.49cm2 5-layered MEA was fabricated by the catalyst coated membrane (CCM) method. Experiments revealed that the μDMFC generated a maximum power density of 8.30mW/cm2, when the μDMFC was supplied with 2M methanol solution at 0.1ml/min flow velocity under room temperature (20°C) and normal atmospheric pressure. And the cell behaved very steady operated in constant current mode for 7200 seconds (2 hours).


The objective of this study is to examine the feasibility of the X-ray diffraction method for the fatigue life assessment of high-temperature steel pipes used for main steam pipelines, re-heater pipelines and headers etc. in power plants. In this study, X-ray diffraction tests were performed on the specimens simulated for low cycle fatigue damage, in order to estimate fatigue properties at the various stages of fatigue life. As a result of X-ray diffraction tests, it was confirmed that the full width at the half maximum (FWHM) decreased with an increase in the fatigue life ratio, and that the FWHM and the residual stress due to fatigue damage were algebraically linearly related to the fatigue life ratio. From this relationship, a direct assessment of the remaining fatigue life was feasible.


Uranium-thorium disequilibrium dates and stable isotope analyses of travertine deposits at Soda Dam, New Mexico, have been used to determine the age and to document the evolution of the Valles caldera hydrothermal system. Soda Dam discharges from Paleozoic and Precambrian rocks in San Diego Canyon southwest of the caldera, and the canyon was filled with several hundred metres of Upper Bandelier Tuff during formation of Valles caldera, 1.12 Ma. According to the dates, the Valles hydrothermal system is at least 106 yr old or nearly as old as the caldera. The basic hydrology of the system has thus remained virtually unchanged during this time. Travertine ages indicate pulses in travertine deposition from ∼1.0 to 0.48 Ma, from 0.107 to 0.058 Ma, and from 0.005 Ma to present. The volume of various travertine deposits suggests that the hot-spring system at Soda Dam was once larger than it is today, possibly discharging as much as 5 to 10 times more fluid of Na-HCO3-Cl composition. Stable isotopes of the travertines indicate, however, that the hot-spring system has probably never been more than about 10 °C hotter than the present maximum temperature of 48 °C. Stable isotopes also show that the δ13C of CO2 and δ18O of H2O in hot-spring waters has remained relatively constant for 106 yr. The similar ages between caldera formation and the onset of large-scale hydrothermal circulation and travertine deposition on pre-Bandelier Tuff rocks imply that incision rates by the Jemez River in Bandelier Tuff were relatively rapid. As much as 400 m of tuff were cut by the ancestral Jemez River in 105 yr or less.


This paper explores the implications of an expansion of the EU milk quota. The paper begins by examining the relative competitiveness of dairy farming in the EU. FADN data is used to derive production cost measures and partial productivity indicators for selected Member States. The results show that Irish dairy farmers have relatively low cash costs of production and that output per hectare and per labour unit is low, suggesting that Ireland may be well placed to expand production if the milk quota regime were reformed. The subsequent sections of the paper address the implications of an expansion of the EU milk quota. Results of an analysis conducted using the FAPRI-Ireland partial equilibrium model are summarised while the results and methods of a farm level analysis are discussed in more detail. The FAPRI-Ireland farm level model integrates econometric and linear programming modelling to simulate the farmer behaviour. Results suggest that the majority of Irish farmers would benefit from milk quota expansion, although the extent to which they would benefit largely depends on the availability and price of traded quota in their local quota market.


The vascular system is arguably the most important biological system in many organisms. Although the general principles of its architecture are simple, the growth of blood vessels occurs under extreme physical conditions. Optimization is an important aspect of the development of computational models of the vascular branching structures. This review surveys the approaches used to optimize the topology and estimate different geometrical parameters of the vascular system. The review is focused on optimizations using complex cost functions based on the minimum total energy principle and the relationship between the laws of growth and precise vascular network topology. Experimental studies of vascular networks in different species are also discussed.


A thorough knowledge of the normal changes that occur in the brain with age is critical before abnormal findings are analyzed. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging improves the ability to distinguish normal and abnormal findings in the brain. The major changes that may occur in elderly individuals without neurologic deficits include enlargement of the ventricles, cortical sulci, and vermian subarachnoid spaces; multifocal areas of hyperintensity in the white matter and basal ganglia; a progressive prominence of hypointensity on T2-weighted images of the putamen, almost equal to that of the globus pallidus; an increase in the oxygen extraction ratio with normal or mildly decreased neuron metabolism; arteriosclerosis in large and small arteries and amyloid angiopathy in leptomeningeal cortical vessels; and decreased dopamine receptor binding in the corpus striatum. Since approximately half of the elderly population exhibits only negligible brain alterations, MR imaging may facilitate the distinction between usual (no neurologic dysfunction) and successful (no brain or vascular changes) aging.


This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners match an unexpected accented form to their stored form of a word. The phonetic-to-lexical mapping for L2 as compared to L1 regional varieties was examined with early and late Italian-L2 speakers who were all L1-Australian English speakers. AXB discrimination and lexical decision tasks were conducted in both languages, using unfamiliar regional accents that minimize (near-merge) consonant contrasts maintained in their own L1-L2 accents. Results reveal that in the L2, early bilinguals' recognition of accented variants depended on their discrimination capacity. Late bilinguals, for whom the accented variants were not represented in their L2 lexicon, instead mapped standard and accented exemplars to the same lexical representations (i.e., dual mapping: Samuel & Larraza, 2015 ). By comparison, both groups showed the same broad accommodation to L1 accented variants. Results suggest qualitatively different yet similarly effective phonetic-to-lexical mapping strategies both for L2 versus L1 regional accents.


We examined the short-term response of the bark-foraging bird community to mechanical thinning, prescribed fire, and thinning/prescribed fire combination treatments designed to reduce fuel loads at study sites throughout the continental United States as part of the national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) project. We modeled the effects of study site, treatment, treatment category, and time since treatment on the foraging encounter rate of four individual species (red-breasted nuthatch (Sitta canadensis), mountain chickadee (Poecile gambeli), hairy woodpecker (Picoides villosus), and brown creeper (Certhia americana)) and assessed the relative importance of several tree and snag characteristics in the selection of foraging trees by these same species. The foraging encounter rate of all four species responded inconsistently across both treatment categories and study sites. Substrate diameter was the strongest and most consistent characteristic positively influencing the selection of foraging habitat structures for all species across all treatment categories. Other influential variables included the presence of bark beetles for red-breasted nuthatches, hairy woodpeckers, and brown creepers in control and burn-only treatment areas and tree species for brown creepers in burn-only and thin-only treatment areas. Although this study did not detect any major negative treatment response by any species, our results suggest that there is substantial variability in the reaction of this particular bird community to fuel reduction treatments and that managers may need to evaluate the effects of these treatments on a site-by-site and species-by-species basis. FOR .S CI. 56(1):100-111.


INTRODUCTION. Several scoring-systems have been published to quantify MOF. Aim of the present study was to establish which of 5 currently used MOF-scores (1-5) performed best for our ICU (discrimination between survival and death). METHODS. From September 1998 to April 1999, cumulative MOF scores on day 2, 3 and 4 of ICU treatment were obtained in 1296 patients; 80 patients were treated over 4 days. The cumulative MOF score (as percentage of maximal MOF points in three days) was compared with observed hospital mortality. RESULTS. the following R2 values were obtained: MODS 0.062, SOFA 0.966, LODS 0.014, Goris 0.892, OSF 0.952. CONCLUSION. Mortality correlated with the cumulative SOFA, OSF and Goris scores. No correlation was found with the cumulative MODS and LODS scores.


Longer-tenure fund managers are often thought to provide better returns than shorter-tenure fund managers. An examination using a risk-adjusted performance measure indicates that the longest-tenured managers do show better risk-adjusted performance than shorter-tenured fund managers. These longer-tenured managers also charge lower fees than the others. Lower expense ratios and more time at the helm result in higher mutual fund returns on both a total return and a risk-adjusted return basis. This research extends our knowledge of mutual fund performance covering the entire bull market of the 1990s.


This paper addresses the scope for more integrated general analysis of diversity in science, technology and society. It proposes a framework recognizing three necessary but individually insufficient properties of diversity. Based on 10 quality criteria, it suggests a general quantitative non-parametric diversity heuristic. This allows the systematic exploration of diversity under different perspectives, including divergent conceptions of relevant attributes and contrasting weightings on different diversity properties. It is shown how this heuristic may be used to explore different possible trade-offs between diversity and other aspects of interest, including portfolio interactions. The resulting approach offers a way to be more systematic and transparent in the treatment of scientific and technological diversity in a range of fields, including conservation management, research governance, energy policy and sustainable innovation.


Sir, We wish to document a rare case of a 46,XXY male, whose mother was shown to have a karyotype of 46,XX/ 47,XXX. Very few cases have been reported in the literature. The first two were found in Germany by Rosenkranz (1965), and were the only children with chromosomal abnormality in the 28 offspring of nine trisomy X females (Carr, 1969). To the authors' knowledge, the only other two cases of Klinefelter's syndrome with a trisomy mother were reported by Baikie, Dartnell, and Lickiss (1972) and Geisler, Svejcar, and Degenhardt (1972). Theoretically, half of the children of fertile 47,XXX females should be either 47,XXY males or 47,XXX females. This genetic expectation is not borne out in surveying the available literature on children of 47,XXX females (Bartalos and Baramki, 1967; Court Brown, 1969; Reisman and Matheny, 1969) or on mothers of 47,XXY males (Nielsen, 1969; Nielsen et al, 1969). Most of the speculation concerning this rarely observed condition attempts to explain why the 50% expected rate is not met (Bartalos and Baramki, 1967; Reisman and Matheny, 1969). It has been suggested that an XX ovum is lethal, which seems unlikely. The more likely explanation would seem to involve a preferential segregation in which the secondary oocyte containing XX becomes a polar body during the disjunction process in meiosis I. In the present case, the aetiology of the extra X chromosome is unclear. The extra X chromosome in the male proband (XXY) could have come from an XX bearing egg produced by disjunctional separation of the three Xs or by non-disjunction of two of the synapsized Xs during meiosis or from a XY bearing sperm produced by non-disjunction of the sex chromosomes in spermatogenic meioses. The propositus is a 25-year-old-single white male, a sociopath with drug abuse, whose biological father is deceased. His 26-year-old full sister and 18-year-old stepbrother are normal. There is no outstanding history of illness in the family, other than the mother's 46,XX/47,XXX mosaicism. The available data do not allow the determination of the aetiology of Klinefelter's syndrome in this patient; we merely wish to put this case on record with the few other reported cases in the literature.


Market exchange is subject to an endogenously determined level of predation which impedes specialization and gains from trade. We construct a model in which utility-maximizing agents opt between careers in production and careers in predation. Three types of equilibria may emerge: autarky (with no predation and no defense), insecure exchange equilibria (with predation and defense), and secure exchange equilibria (in which defense completely deters predation). Trading equilibria, two-thirds of them secure, are supported only in a narrow range of security parameter values. Since changes in the technologies of defense and predation have terms of trade effects, some producers may be hurt by enhanced security. We show cases of immiserizing security' in which producers in large poor countries are harmed by increased security.


Background: Both in the most distant history and nowadays, travel is accompanied by danger. Nowadays, insecurity is becoming a basic barrier to tourist travel to high-risk areas. The aim of the study was to make a comparative review related to the subject of travel danger in retrospective terms. Material and methods: In a scholarly review, the authors mainly used the historical method, the method of establishing historical facts, the comparative method. The method of analysis and criticism of literature was also used. Results: Travel safety is not a common topic of historical literature on tourism. Although we have many fragmentary accounts in the diary literature, in Polish historiography there are no scholarly monographic works and articles that put the subject of travel safety in a historical context. Conclusions: Travel has always been accompanied by danger. Nowadays, insecurity is becoming a basic barrier to tourist travel to high-risk areas. Threats on the road are of a difficult nature to predict, from the dangers caused by the forces of nature to the deadly threat resulting from human actions, most often with an intent to rob, but also against a political (terrorism), religious or national background. Despite the ongoing civilizational changes, including the extraordinary dynamics of cultural changes, the dangers of travel still show an analogy to the former days. The end of the nineteenth century was a borderline period, it marked the irretrievable end of primitive road banditry. The development of safe communication, the emergence of strong state bodies in Europe with a developed system of security apparatus effectively limited and then eliminated the epicentres of high-risk areas, which does not mean the complete elimination of road banditry. Also today, information about attacks on tourists is coming from some regions of Europe, the mechanisms and methods are confusingly similar to those known from history.


The research goals were to discover the level of food security and the factors that influenced the level of household food security of coffee farmers in West Lampung Regency.  The research was conducted at Sekincau and Way Tenong Sub district for those sub districts are centers of coffee production and food-prone subdistricts in West Lampung Regency.  By equal consideration, from each district were selected 2 villages: villages of Giham Sukamaju and Sekincau in Sekincau Subdistrict, while for Way tenong Subdistrict was selected villages of Tanjung Raya and Mutar Alam.  The research used household survey in 53 coffee farmers who were chosen by simple random sampling.  Cross-classification between expenditures and the share of household energy adequacy level developed was used to answer the first goal.  Ordinal logistic model was used to answer the second goal.  The results showed that the coffee farmer households who achieved the level of  food security as withstand was 15.09%, as less was 11.32%, as vulnerable was 62.26%, and the level of food insecurity was 11.32%.  Based on the test results obtained by ordinal logistic, the household food security was positively affected by household income and negatively by the price of rice. Key words: coffee, energy sufficiency, food security, household, ordinal logistic


The evaluation of sublethal cellular damage is shown to be important for the performance of experiments and bioproduction with animal cells. Detailed information on the fate of single cells in colony pedigrees from untreated and irradiated mammalian cells was obtained in vitro with cinematography recordings. It can be demonstrated that in generations two, three, and four the cells are more sensitive because of higher death rates and increased generation times induced by the handling of the cells during passaging or by the damaging agent. It is obvious that chemical agents can act in the same way. Also poor medium quality induces similar effects. Growth curves of single colony cell populations render much better information on the proliferation of a cell population than the determination of cells per ml (= particle counting). Examples are given for such growth curves and for colony size distribution curves based on individual cell countings. The advantages of the use of flow-cytofluorometry for the control of cell cycle phases are shown. As an example for the relevance of qualitative and quantitative data on cell substrate and medium conditions for bioproduction the in vitro mass replication of an insect pathogenic virus (baculovirus) is presented. Baculoviruses are potentially important biological pesticides which can replace chemical insecticides partially.