This research provides an understanding of how the weight of Nomex® and Kevlar® fiber blend compositions determine performance of a selected group of single-layer aramid protective fabrics in static and dynamic TPP tests. It demonstrates that material factors controlling fabric barrier and insulative performance are fundamentally different: aramid fabric weight determines the comparative protective performance of these materials in a static TPP test that uses an air gap between the fabric specimen and heat sensor to measure barrier protection. In this test, greater fabric weight slows the rate of fabric heating, prolonging the time required for the fabric to become a significant reradiator of thermal energy. By comparison, heat transfer in a dynamic TPP test used in this study occurs, not only by backside radiation, but by conductive transmission occurring whenever the fabric contacts the instrumented thermal sensor. Thermal transfer can also take place as a result of catastrophic break-open of the test specimen inducted by the mechanical restraints and flexing action of the dynamic tester. In either case, the thermal stability of the aramid fabric material, determined by its strength retention in flames or resistance to heat shrinkage, emerges as a crucial factor determining protective insulation. This research advances a quantitative model for predicting the heat shrinkage of aramid fabrics based on the blend ratio of Kevlar® and Nomex® fibers. This model effectively explains the performance of aramid fabrics in a dynamic TPP test. It explains the role of Kevlar® fibers in stabilizing a Nomex® blend against heat shrinkage and suggests a minimum concentration of Kevlar® to optimize fabric performance in dynamic TPP exposures.


The effect of antioxidant ascorbic acid (vitamin C) pretreatment on chromium(VI)‐induced damage was investigated using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model organism. The objective of this study was to pretreat yeast cells with the antioxidant ascorbic acid in an effort to increase cell tolerance against reactive chromium intermediates and reactive oxygen species formed during chromium(VI) reduction. Intracellular oxidation was estimated using the fluorescence indicators dihidro‐2,7‐dichlorofluorescein, dihydroethidium and dihydrorhodamine 123. The role of ascorbic acid pretreatment on chromium(VI) toxicity was determined by measuring mitotic gene conversion, reverse mutations, 8‐OHdG, hydroxyl radical, superoxide anion and chromium(V) formation. The chromium content in the biomass was determined by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. In the absence of chromium, ascorbic acid effectively protected the cells against endogenous reactive oxygen species formed during normal cellular metabolism. In vitro measurements employing EPR and the results of supercoiled DNA cleavage revealed that the pro‐oxidative action of ascorbic acid during Cr(VI) reduction was concentration‐dependent and that harmful hydroxyl radical and Cr(V) had formed following Cr(VI) reduction. However, the in vivo results highlighted the important role of increased cytosol reduction capacity related to modification of Cr(V) formation, increased chromium accumulation, better scavenging ability of superoxide anions and hydrogen peroxide, and consequently decreased cytotoxicity and genotoxicity in ascorbic acid pretreated cells. Ascorbic acid influenced Cr(VI) toxicity both as a reducing agent, by decreasing Cr(V) persistence, and as an antioxidant, by decreasing intracellular superoxide anion and hydrogen peroxide formation and by quenching free radicals formed during Cr(VI) to Cr(III) reduction. Increased 8‐OHdG and decreased reduced glutathione in ascorbic acid‐treated cells might induce an endogenous antioxidant defense system and thus increase cell tolerance against subsequent Cr‐induced stress. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The correlation between dimensionality and active sites on deciding the catalytic performance of an MOF catalyst in CO2–epoxide cycloaddition reactions has been studied. Seven In(III) based MOFs built from carboxylic and N-donor ligands possessing different dimensionalities and distinct coordination environments were chosen as solid acid catalysts for this study. The origin of the catalytic activity of an In3+/TBAB bifunctional system in a CO2–PO reaction was studied in detail by performing density functional theory (DFT) calculations at the M06/LACVP**++ level. The energy barrier of the propylene oxide ring opening in the presence of In3+/Br− is 11.5 kcal mol−1, which is significantly lower than those of un-catalyzed (55–63 kcal mol−1) and Br−-catalyzed (19.5 kcal mol−1) reactions, which confirms the importance of the In3+/Br− binary catalytic system in the CO2–epoxide cycloaddition reactions. The one-dimensional (1D) MOF with unsaturated metal centers exhibited higher catalytic activity (PO conversion: 91%, temperature: 50 °C, and time: 12 h) than the two- and three-dimensional MOFs. The roles of dimensionality and unsaturated metal centers in cycloaddition reactions were explained on the basis of the results of activity testing and structural investigations. In addition, a plausible reaction mechanism for the catalytic activity of the 1D MOF was proposed with reference to our structure-density functional theory correlations.


In this paper, we use the factor-graph framework to describe the statistical relationships that arise in the equalization of data transmitted over an intersymbol interference channel, and use it to develop several new algorithms for linear and decision feedback approaches. Specifically, we examine both unconstrained and constrained linear equalization and decision feedback equalization of a sequence of nonidentically distributed symbols that are transmitted over a linear, possibly time-varying, finite-length channel and then corrupted by additive white noise. Factor graphs are used to derive algorithms for each of these equalization tasks, including fast implementations. One important application of these algorithms is linear turbo equalization, which requires a linear equalizer that can process observations of nonidentically distributed transmitted symbols. We show how the output of these factor-graph-based algorithms can be used in an efficient implementation of a linear turbo equalizer


Summary of recommendations1. A new Nutrition Committee for the European Union 1.1 A new Nutrition Committee for the European Union, should be created to give independent scientific and policy advice on nutrition, diets and physical activity to the Commission. This should be supported by a strengthened Nutritional Unit within the Commission.2. Policy development 2.1 There needs to be a comprehensive and coherent nutritional policy for the EU 2.2 The development of European dietary goals should continue after the completion of the Eurodiet Project. 2.3 The European Commission should revise its Recommended Daily Allowances for vitamins and minerals using a systematic, evidence-based approach. Recommended Daily Allowances should be set at a level which would prevent deficiencies and lower the risk of disease. 2.4 The European Commission should produce, preferably every four years, a report on the state of nutrition, diet and physical activity in the EU. This report should contain proposals for action3. Components of a nutrition policy Education 3.1 The European Commission should not be involved in the direct delivery of lifestyle advice to the public. 3.2 The European Commission should continue to support networks whose members are involved in educating the public and in training professionals about nutrition, diets and physical activity.Research 3.3 European Community funding of health-related research should better reflect the Community's public health priorities. 3.4 The European Community should ear-mark funds for large, multi-centre studies into nutrition, diet and physical activity with a duration of up to 10 years. Consumer protection Food labelling 3.5 The European Commission should draw up proposals for the regulation of health claims. 3.6 The European Community should agree rules for the use of nutrition claims along the lines agreed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission. 3.7 The European Commission should review the 1990 Nutrition Labelling Directive particularly with a view to making nutrition labelling more comprehensible and it should encourage the development of other ways of providing consumers with information about the nutrient content of foods though, for example, the Internet. Food composition 3.8 The European Commission should review the Novel Food Regulations, particularly with a view to ensuring that the nutritional consequences of consuming novel foods are better assessed and to making approval procedures more efficient. 3.9 European Community rules on food fortification and on food supplements should be harmonised but in such a way that the interests of consumers are paramount. Agriculture policy 3.10 The Common Agriculture Policy should be subject to a regular and systematic health impact assessment. 3.11 Given that there are subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy designed to increase consumption of surplus food, these should be directed towards promoting the consumption of foods for which there is strong evidence of a need for increased consumption in the EU for health reasons. Special issues Fruit and vegetable consumption 3.12 The promotion of increased fruit and vegetable consumption across the EU should be a key aspect of the European Union's proposed nutrition policy. Breast feeding 3.13 The European Union should review its policy on breast feeding including assessing and, if necessary, improving its legislation on breast milk substitutes and maternity leave. Physical Activity 3.14 The European Union should have a policy for promoting physical activity in Europe. This should be part of, or at least closely integrated with, the European Union's proposed nutritional policy.


The contributions presented are reflecting the ongoing efforts to redefine the discipline of urbanism under globally changing conditions. The conditions of urban development are changing rapidly; technological transformations, new transportation and distribution systems, communication technologies, globalisation and environment problems all cause new challenges. The planning of the future no longer can be based on the certainty of programs and conditions. Instead, the planner is confronted with changing conditions and shifting programs. In this framework, more than before, design approaches will be pivotal. Exploratory research, the reflexive exploration of spatial potentials and the integration of design methods in spatial research will become a key issue for the scientific development of the discipline. The Delft University of Technology intensified and enlarged the research in the field of urban transformation and sustainability and new issues and methodological approaches were discussed in order to develop new research collaborations. With this publication, a broader public has the opportunity to deal wit this debate.


From Detroit Red to El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, the man best known as Malcolm X restlessly redefined himself throughout a controversial life. His transformations have appeared repeatedly in books, photographs, paintings, and films, while his murder set in motion a series of tugs-of-war among journalists, biographers, artists, and his ideological champions over the interpretation of his cultural meaning. This book marks the first systematic examination of the images generated by this iconic cultural figure--images readily found on everything from T-shirts and hip-hop album covers to coffee mugs. Graeme Abernethy captures both the multiplicity and global import of a person who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as "the most feared man in American history," and elevated at his death as a heroic emblem of African American identity. As Abernethy shows, the resulting iconography of Malcolm X has shifted as profoundly as the American racial landscape itself. Abernethy explores Malcolm's visual prominence in the eras of civil rights, Black Power, and hip-hop. He analyses this enigmatic figure's representation across a variety of media from 1960s magazines to urban murals, tracking the evolution of Malcolm's iconography from his auto-biography and its radical milieu through the appearance of Spike Lee's 1992 biopic and beyond. Its remarkable gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of iconic photographs by Richard Avedon, Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and John Launois. Abernethy reveals that Malcolm X himself was keenly aware of the power of imagery to redefine identity and worked tirelessly to shape how he was represented to the public. His theoretical grasp of what he termed "the science of imagery" enabled him both to analyse the role of representation in ideological control as well as to exploit his own image in the interests of black empowerment. This provocative work marks a startling shift from the biographical focus that has dominated Malcolm X studies, providing an up-to-date--and comprehensively illustrated--account of Malcolm's cultural afterlife, and addressing his iconography in relation to images of other major African American figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Kanye West, and Barack Obama. Analysing the competing interpretations behind so many images, Abernethy reveals what our lasting obsession with Malcolm X says about American culture over the last five decades.


Inspired by the experience of a river contract in Wallonia (Belgium) since 1990, the implementation of a first river contract has been initiated in a West African country, Burkina Faso. This application is not limited to a simple transposition of the Walloon model. The Burkina context calls for adaptation to the local environmental and socio-economical realities with an adequate partnership management. The importance of the mobilization around this project of institutional partners, as well as local collectivities, agricultural producers and water users in general reveals the great expectations of the actors concerning this new tool of water participative management. But will the latter be equal to the task? A first assessment has been drawn up one year after the launch. During the first year of the project, a participative diagnostic was implemented but the understanding of basic notions of water management such as 'river' (not translatable in the local language), 'watershed', 'contract' were not obvious. After the identification of functions and uses of water in the basin, an environmental survey was started. This approach allows study with the river committees of the priority actions to be developed as a first project of restoration of the gallery forest alongside the stream to fight against desertification. This project of integrated and participative management of water at sub-basin level is a concrete example of solidarity and exchange know-how between North and South in the context of a sustainable development.


In this paper we develop a 2-valued reduction of many-valued logics, into 2-valued multi-modal logics. Such an approach is based on the contextualization of many-valued logics with the introduction of higher-order Herbrand interpretation types, where we explicitly introduce the coexistence of a set of algebraic truth values of original many-valued logic, transformed as parameters (or possible worlds), and the set of classic two logic values. This approach is close to the approach used in annotated logics, but offers the possibility of using the standard semantics based on Herbrand interpretations. Moreover, it uses the properties of the higher-order Herbrand types, as their fundamental nature is based on autoreferential Kripke semantics where the possible worlds are algebraic truth-values of original many-valued logic. This autoreferential Kripke semantics, which has the possibility of flattening higher-order Herbrand interpretations into ordinary 2-valued Herbrand interpretations, gives us a clearer insight into the relationship between many-valued and 2-valued multi-modal logics. This methodology is applied to the class of many-valued Logic Programs, where reduction is done in a structural way, based on the logic structure (logic connectives) of original many-valued logics. Following this, we generalize the reduction to general structural many-valued logics, in an abstract way, based on Suszko's informal non-constructive idea. In all cases, by using developed 2-valued reductions we obtain a kind of non truth-valued modal meta-logics, where two-valued formulae are modal sentences obtained by application of particular modal operators to original many-valued formulae.


NaY1-xTbx(WO4)2 green phosphors have been synthesized by a facile combustion method. The structure, morphology and luminescence properties of as-synthesized phosphors were characterized via X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), photoluminescence spectra, and decay curve. The XRD results indicate that as-synthesized phosphors exhibit sheelite-type structure without any impurity phase. The as-obtained phosphors emit strong green light centered at 546 nm under ultraviolet light excitation. The lifetimes are about 0.57 ms. The excellent luminescence properties make it a new promising green phosphor for fluorescent lamps application.


Conclusions The conclusions at which I have arrived from a personal survey and examination of the country which I have just described, and also from the analyses and microscopical examinations made by Mr. W. H. Hudleston and myself are as follows:— 1st. The country rock, or the general representative rock of the country, is a consolidated volcanic ash associated with augite-andesite. 2nd. The filling of the fissures, now mineral lodes, in the Aguacate Mountains took place in the Tertiary age, and most probably in the Pliocene. 3rd. The augite-andesites of the Aguacate Mountains are probably contemporaneous with, and have thus contributed largely to the mineral deposition and formation of the metalliferous lodes. The veinstone being found more or less mixed up with the decomposed rock, appears to indicate that their ages may be identical. 4th. The quartz-trachytes and sandstone are recent, and most certainly Post-tertiary.


The expression patterns of plasma membrane transporters that specify the epithelial cell type are acquired with ontogeny. To study this process during metanephrogenic mesenchyme-to-epithelium transition, branching ureteric buds with their adjacent mesenchymal blastema (mouse embryonic day E14) were dissected and explanted on a collagen matrix. In culture, induced mesenchymal cells condensed, aggregated, and converted to the comma- and S-shaped body. During in vitro condensation and aggregation, transcription factor Pax-2 protein was downregulated while the epithelial markers E-cadherin and beta-catenin proteins were upregulated. In addition, Wilms' tumor suppressor protein WT-1 was detectable upon condensation and downregulated in the S stage, where expression persisted in the long arm of the S. Patch-clamp, whole cell conductance (G, in nS/10 pF) of pre-epithelial condensed mesenchymal cells (n = 7) was compared with that of tubular proximal S-shaped-body epithelium (n = 6). Both stages expressed E-cadherin and WT-1 mRNA, as demonstrated by single-cell RT-PCR, testifying further to the epithelial as well as the nephrogenic commitment of the recorded cells. Mesenchymal cells exhibited whole cell currents (G = 6.7 +/- 1.3) with reversal potentials (V(rev), in mV) near equilibrium potential for Cl(-) (E(Cl)) (V(rev) = -40 +/- 7) suggestive of a high fractional Cl(-) conductance. Currents of the S-shaped-body cells (G = 4.0 +/- 1.1), in sharp contrast, had a V(rev) at E(K) (V(rev) = -82 +/- 6) indicating a high fractional K(+) conductance. Further, analysis of K(+)-selective whole cell tail currents and single-channel recording revealed a change in K(+) channel expression. Also, Kir6.1 K(+) channel mRNA and protein were downregulated between both stages, whereas K(v)LQT K(+) channel mRNA was abundant throughout. In conclusion, metanephrogenic mesenchyme-to-epithelium transition is accompanied by a profound reorganization of plasma membrane ion channel conductance.


This paper examines the link between a person's narrative and ethical principles, which we can derive from understanding how an individual perceives both their own self and the surrounding world. Myths are often considered to be part of a larger—communal— belief and value system rather than expressing individual phenomenologies. However, in this paper, narratives of personal tragedies from various contexts of natural and humanitarian disasters and crises will be explored for their meanings about a world-view that shifts, fragments, and, ultimately, when the wound balances with a healing. This has implications for our ethical lens, for example, on the normative judgments that settle on coping-methods that are differentiated as aside from dominant discourses on trauma. Narratives, then, lend themselves to forming self-identity and re-framing world-views and in this sense have an ethical value. Finally, the paper concludes with the suggestion for a greater personalisation of ethics in response to situating ethics within a narration discourse.


The bank's transparency of their financial performance has been demanded by the public so that the banks have to demonstrate their products and activities. The banks' health level assessment, currently being enacted by Bank Indonesia is a risk approach that includes Risk Profile, Good Corporate Governance, Earning, and Capital (RGEC). The more Good Corporate Governance (GCG) assessment is geared today for the banks to strengthen their competitive position and increase investor confidence. This study is directed to test the accounting conservatism towards GCG as well as the consequence of GCG on the financial performance, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and information asymmetry. This study used financial data published on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2008-2015 and 152 samples were taken from 19 banks data and tested using simple regression. The results show that Good Corporate Governance has an impact on financial performance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and information asymmetry. The better governance carried out by the banking system will have an impact on their competitiveness in an effort to increase public confidence to invest their funds.


Rabbit antisera against low molecular weight polypeptides from the thymus (thymosin and thymarin), cortex (cortexin) and white matter of the brain of the calves were cross-absorbed with these polypeptides and tested in the complement fixation test with these preparations and in the complement-dependent cytotoxicity test with thymic and bone marrow cells. The results showed that thymosin, thymarin and cortexin are antigenically similar, but differ in antigenic structure from polypeptide from white matter of the brain. Biological effect of polypeptides from the thymus and brain cortex is connected with thymus-depending lymphocytes and does not depend on B-cells. Cross absorbtion revealed that antisera against polypeptides from thymus and cortex of the brain contain antibody both against common antigens and antigens specific for appropriate preparation only. Antigenic set of polypeptide from the thymus (thymarin) corresponds more closely to thymic antigen as compared to polypeptide from the brain cortex (cortexin).


Alan E. Kazdin is recognized for his extensive and influential contributions to psychological science through exemplary research, influential clinical applications, and inspiring professional leadership. His research has brought innovation and rigor to the study of intervention for children's conduct problems. His Yale Parenting Center has put those interventions into action, demonstrating their realworld relevance. His leadership in founding and editing the major journals of clinical science, and his service as president of our major professional organizations, has spread his scientific and humane values throughout our discipline. The legendary Kazdin eloquence and wit, packed into every presentation, have inspired generations of psychologists, underscoring a legacy that is profound and enduring (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).


This Vulnerability Assessment Framework was put together within the project Baltic Challenges and Chances for local and regional development generated by Climate Change financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the Baltic Sea Region Programme 2007-2013. The purpose of the framework is to guide and assist the Target Areas (TA) within the project in mapping and analysing the challenges and chances created by climate change. The Vulnerability exercises have originally been developed and tested within a number of other research projects within the Key Research Area Vulnerability & Adaptation at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research (CSPR). The projects Enhancing Cities' Capacity to Manage Vulnerability to Climate Change (financed by FORMAS), Participatory Modelling for Assessment of Climate Change– impacts on Water Resources in Southern Africa (financed by SIDA/Sarec), and the Swedish Research Programme on Climate, Impacts and Adaptation (financed by MISTRA) are the most important and we acknowledge the sharing of results made possible by those financing agencies. Apart from the authors, the following persons have contributed to the design of individual exercises: Lotta Andersson, Yvonne Andersson-Skold, Karin Andre, Asa Gerger-Swartling, Erik Glaas, Anna Jonsson and Louise Simonsson. These people all have been generous to share their expertise and are gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful for all stakeholders that by their participating in the exercises have helped us in developing them. Please refer to any individual exercise use according to the following example: Andre, K. and A. Gerger-Swartling, 2010. Exercise VI – Identification of Key Actors and Mapping of their Responsibilities. In Hjerpe and Wilk, 2010. Baltic Climate Vulnerability Assessment Framework: Introduction and Guidelines. CSPR Briefing No 5. 2010.At the time of publishing, results based on the methods described in this briefing have still not been published and are still work in progress. The exercises are in a process of modification and adjustment, both within the Baltic Climate project and other initiatives. If you wish to use any of these exercises, please contact Mattias Hjerpe or Julie Wilk at CSPR. The Briefing in an earlier version was primarily intended for use in regional and local applications in the Baltic Sea Region starting December 2009 and forward. Any suggestions for improvement and tests of the VAF pilot version will be of pertinent importance to develop the final version.This Briefing consists of three sections and one appendix.Section 1 "Introducing Vulnerability to Climate Change" describes the main elements in an assessment of vulnerability to climate variation and climate change. It intends to familiarize project participants within the vulnerability assessment process in the TAs.Section 2 "BalticClimate Vulnerability Assessment Framework" presents the VAF and explains the idea of using exercises to systematically discuss the main elements shaping vulnerability to climate change in your TA. It also presents how the WP3 researchers can support the TAs.Section 3 "Exercises for analysis of vulnerability and adaptation" contains the aims, outputs, and description of the eight exercises, and the exercises Identification of Challenges & Chances of Climate Change and Introducing Climate Adaptation undertaken during the Inventory phase. The appendix contains a more elaborated description of adaptation and vulnerability to climate change. Mattias Hjerpe, Assistant Professor, BalticClimate Work Package 3 Leader Email: firstname.lastname@example.com, Phone: +46-11-36 34 38, Fax: +46-11-36 32 92Julie Wilk, Associate Professor, BalticClimate Work Package 3 Co-leader Email: email@example.com, Phone: +46-13-28 44 63, Fax: +46-11-36 32 92


LY127210 (7,8-dimethoxy-1H-3-benzazepin-2-amine, hydrochloride) is a novel peripheral arterial vasodilator that reduces mean arterial blood pressure in anesthetized and conscious spontaneously hypertensive rats by all conventional routes of administration. The antihypertensive activity of LY127210 results predominantly from a decrease in total peripheral vascular resistance, and the degree of reflex tachycardia produced by LY127210 in conscious spontaneously hypertensive rats is significantly less than that produced by hydralazine at equivalent antihypertensive doses. The relative lack of reflex tachycardia produced by LY127210 appears to result from a direct bradycardic effect of the compound that occurs at the level of the myocardium at doses similar to those required to produce peripheral arteriolar vasodilation. It is proposed that the direct bradycardic effect of LY127210 serves to offset, at least in part, the tachycardia resulting from reflex stimulation of sympathetic outflow that occurs upon activation of the baroreflex loop as blood pressure is lowered. The results indicate that LY127210 may provide adequate control of blood pressure and may not require the concomitant administration of a beta-adrenoceptor antagonist to control reflex tachycardia, as is commonly necessary with hydralazine.


Four new complexes with bridged bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane containing 3-methoxy salicylaldehyde 4(N)-substituted thiosemicarbazone were prepared and characterised by various spectral and analytical techniques. The new complexes were subjected to study their DNA binding, DNA cleavage, protein binding, antibacterial, antioxidant and cytotoxicity. Distorted square planar geometries of complexes 1 and 4 were evidenced from their crystal structures. The complexes could act as strong binders to CT-DNA and BSA. Furthermore, they cleaved supercoiled DNA pBR322. Good spectra of antibacterial activity against five pathogenic bacteria, namely B. Subtilis, S. Aureus, E. Coli, S. Typhi and S. Aurogenosa, were exhibited by the complexes. All the complexes exhibited good antioxidant activity, which was found to be greater than the conventional standard vitamin C. The complexes showed significantly higher cytotoxicity against human cervical cancer cells (HeLa) and human breast cancer cells (MCF-7) than the standard cisplatin. Furthermore, their non-toxic nature was confirmed when they were tested against human normal keratinocyte cells (HaCaT). The compounds induced ROS (Reactive Oxygen Species)-mediated apoptosis, as indicated by DCFDA (2',7'-dichlorodihydro-fluorescein diacetate) and FACS (Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorting) analyses. The complexes showed remarkable values of <3.4 mu M in MCF-7 and <8.4 mu M in HeLa as compared with 23 mu M for cisplatin with both cell lines.


Blowout penstemon (Penstemon haydenii S. Wats.) appears to be the rarest flowering plant species endemic to Nebraska. It has received a great deal of attention, for endemism is rare in Great Plains states. This attractive species is confined to a small number of active blowout areas in the Nebraska Sandhills, often in relatively small colonies that are many kilometers apart in a relatively vast grassland. Blowout penstemon, thus, is confined to particular habitats which have distinct boundaries in space. It is also successional in nature, which places individual colonies in distinct and, perhaps, limited boundaries in time. It is apparent after eleven years of study that numbers of individuals in a particular colony may vary widely, with the tendency for catastrophic decline. The authors review the morphology of the species, its potential taxonomic relationships, and the fluctuations in known numbers of this species in the recent past.


It is often said that Abraham Lincoln, "faced with some thorny issue that could be settled by a twist of language," would ask his questioner how many legs a dog would have if you called its tail a leg. "Five," the questioner responds. "No," Lincoln answers. "Calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." In a recent decision, Hauser v. Dayton Police Department, the Ohio Supreme Court effectively "called a tail a leg," and held that an employment discrimination statute that imposes liability on "any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer" did not, in fact, impose individual liability against public-sector supervisors. In doing so, the Court arbitrarily limited the tort remedies available to public-sector employment discrimination plaintiffs, and showed its willingness to engage in intellectual dishonesty to reach these results.


The Mt. Lucas index provides a systematic approach for capturing a portion of the return of trend-following commodity traders. In this article the authors analyze the Mt. Lucas Index across different historical periods, evaluating its performance within a multi-period asset allocation framework. Their results indicate that the index improves the overall return/risk characteristics of the multi-period asset allocation model. They show that the total return consists of: 1) T-bill returns on marginable assets, 2) static returns from trend-following futures markets, and 3) rebalancing gains. The importance of the third element is emphasized.


The present state of university and professional education in Lithuania and major problems of its development are outlined. The possibilities of upgrading university and professional studies are evaluated, taking into account the processes associated with the integration of Lithuania into the European Union. In addition, the prospects of education development are analyzed in the context of transitions characteristic of the states of Central and Eastern Europe.


In this paper, we explore class-incremental learning for intent classification (IC) in a setting with limited old data available. IC is the task of mapping user utterances to their corresponding intents. Even though class-incremental learning without storing the old data yields high potential of reducing human and computational resources in industry NLP model releases, to the best of our knowledge, it hasn't been studied for NLP classification tasks in the literature before. In this work, we compare several contemporary class-incremental learning methods, i.e., BERT warm start, L2, Elastic Weight Consolidation, RecAdam and Knowledge Distillation within two realistic class-incremental learning scenarios: one where only the previous model is assumed to be available, but no data corresponding to old classes, and one in which limited unlabeled data for old classes is assumed to be available. Our results indicate that among the investigated continual learning methods, Knowledge Distillation worked best for our class-incremental learning tasks, and adding limited unlabeled data helps the model in both adaptability and stability.


The energy source characteristics of the gas tungsten arc (GTA) strongly depend on the physical property of the arc plasma. In welding processes, it has been experimentally confirmed that metal vapor evaporated from a high temperature weld pool drastically changes the property of the arc plasma and decreases its temperature. However, the effect of metal vapor on the characteristics of heat flux into a base metal is still not clear due to difficulties in experimental studies of arc plasmas. In this paper, the energy source property of helium GTA mixed with metal vapor was numerically analyzed. It was found that the intense radiation generated from dense metal vapor decreases the heat flux into a base metal and contracts the current density distribution, especially near the arc axis.


The technical and diagnostic possibilities of two-dimensional echoencephalography in newborns and infants are described. The technique is simple, easy to carry out and avoids irradiation. Real-time ultrasound gives a quick general view of the ventricular system while the details are best performed with a compound scan procedure, 310 investigations in 93 patients are analysed and presented. Sonography should now be the first investigation in infants with possible intracranial lesions. The investigation is particularly valuable in the post-operative control and follow-up of treated hydrocephalus. The most important limitation of the technique is the increasing sound deflection as the ossification of the skull proceeds.


This thesis explores the complex fluid interactions between inundating long-period waves and buildings. Several aspects of these are found to be poorly described in the literature, particularly the flow conditions around, and forces applied to, emergent structures. Numerical models capable of reproducing the propagation phase of tsunami waves reliably are insufficiently detailed to capture the complex behaviour near structures. They also have no means of directly determining the force on a building, are agnostic to its presence and often lack reliable validation data. By critically reviewing the literature this thesis shows that experimental modelling to date has been confined to short-wave tests, commonly using paddle type wavemakers, which are not comparable to tsunami waves at scale. These experiments form the basis of many current design guidelines. The loading imposed by long-period wave inundation on buildings is characterised through experimental modelling and development of a simple numerical model capable of predicting the force on a building. Large-scale testing with a novel pneumatic long-wave generator and complementary smaller-scale steady-flow experiments are carried out. The experiments are unique and examine onshore long-wave inundation loading on emergent bodies at wave periods never before tested in a laboratory. Significant differences between the loading regime of long- and short-period waves are observed in the experiments, demonstrating that short-period waves are insuf- ficient models for tsunami inundation. The experiments to date also represent the only known database of long-period wave tests at scale which are representative of actual tsunami periods, so can provide an excellent validation resource for numerical models. The numerical model presented within this thesis is novel because of its inclusion of flow blocking and drag to estimate forces on buildings. It is firstly applied to steady experiments which are used to parameterise the drag inclusion, secondly to externally published unsteady bore/surge experiments and finally to a set of largescale unsteady long-period wave experiments. Results of this very simple model show that it performs very well in all three situations examined in this thesis. Excellent estimations of measured full-body force on a blockage, as well as the flow conditions around it are achieved.


The aim of this article is to identify the key factors that are associated with the adoption of a commercial robot in the home. This article is based on the development of the robot product Cybot by the University of Reading in conjunction with a publisher (Eaglemoss International Ltd.). The robots were distributed through a new part-work magazine series (Ultimate Real Robots) that had long-term customer usage and retention. A part-work is a serial publication that is issued periodically (e.g., every two weeks), usually in magazine format, and builds into a complete collection. This magazine focused on robotics and was accompanied by cover-mounted component parts that could be assembled, with instructions, by the user to build a working robot over the series. In total, the product contributed over half a million operational domestic robots to the world market, selling over 20 million robot part-work magazines across 18 countries, thereby providing a unique breadth of insight. Gaining a better understanding of the overall attitudes that customers of this product had toward robots in the home, their perception of what such devices could deliver and how they would wish to interact with them should provide results applicable to the domestic appliance, assistance/care, entertainment, and educational markets.


The realization of high-$\beta$ lasers is one of the prime applications of cavity-QED promising ultra-low thresholds, integrability and reduced power consumption in the field of \textit{green photonics}. In such nanolasers spontaneous emission can play a central role even above the threshold. By going beyond rate-equation approaches, we revisit the definition of a laser threshold in terms of the input-output characteristics and the degree of coherence of the emission. We demonstrate that there are new regimes of cavity-QED lasing, realized e.g. in high-$Q$ nanolasers with extended gain material, for which the two can differ significantly such that coherence is reached at much higher pump powers than required to observe the thresholdlike intensity jump. Against the common perception, such devices do not benefit from high-$\beta$ factors in terms of power reduction, as a significant amount of stimulated emission is required to quieten the spontaneous emission noise.


At the time of independence, nearly all African countries identified capitalism with neocolonialism and therefore adopted a statist approach to economic development, with government being the major instrument of development. As a result, the size of the public sector grew through the creation of public sector enterprises. On the other hand, over the years there has been a slowdown in economic growth, especially in agricultural output. With deep internal economic crisis, shortage of foreign capital and debt obligations, many African countries adopted in the 1980s certain structural adjustment measures required by international donor organizations and creditors as a condition for economic assistance, with privatization usually being a component of the structural adjustment programs. Thus, many African countries have embarked on the policy of privatization and other market-oriented reforms. Empirical investigations as to whether or not privatization promotes development of the issue have produced mixed results.


Title of Thesis: "LET US SING AS WE GO": THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT Roslyn Leigh Brandes, Master of Arts, 2016 Thesis Directed By: Dr. Patrick Warfield, Musicology Music played a prominent role in the United States women's suffrage movement (1848– 1920). Suffragists left behind hundreds of compositions supporting their cause and historical accounts indicate that musical performances were common at suffrage events. With only a few exceptions, scholars have disregarded the music used in this movement, and have underemphasized its significance. This study examines the use of music in the suffrage movement from three perspectives: music with lyrics, titles, and images that espouse women's enfranchisement; music performed at national suffrage conventions held by the National American Woman Suffrage Association; and music accompanying suffrage parades. Though the music used varies in each case, it is clear that music played an important role in unifying suffragists and underscoring the ideals and goals of the movement. "LET US SING AS WE GO": THE ROLE OF MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT


Electrokinetic experiments were conducted on two type of soil: kaolin and natural clay, to investigate the effects of treatment time and voltage gradient on the electroosmotic flow and contaminants removal. The results show that electroosmotic flow rate increases as the voltage gradient increased both in kaolin and natural clay. The voltage gradient and treatment time have also a pronounced effect on the migration of Cd in kaolin. The extent of Cd migration towards the cathode increases with the increasing of applied gradient or tests time. However, a high concentration of Cd was found near the cathode due to adsorption of Cd in the high pH condition. Electroosmotic flow from the anode toward the cathode promotes the development of a low pH environment in the soil and groundwater and in turn enhances the removal of the contaminants.


Drought is a serious problem, which causes heavy yield losses for rice. Heat-shock factors (HSFs) had been implicated in tolerance to drought and high temperature. However, there has not been much functional characterization and mechanism clarification in rice. Previously, we found an HSF gene, OsHSFA3, was highly related with drought tolerance after screening from 10,000 different samples. Herein, we cloned the OsHSFA3 from rice and overexpressed it in Arabidopsis thaliana to study its regulatory mechanism of drought tolerance. Phenotypic and physiological assays of the transgenic Arabidopsis lines showed that overexpression of OsHSFA3 confers drought tolerance by reducing water loss and reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels, whereas it increases abscisic acid (ABA) levels. However, enzymatic antioxidants such as activity levels of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase and catalase were not significantly different between wild type and transgenic lines. Instead, we observed a significant increase in polyamine content, which was correlated with increased AtADC1, AtADC2, SPDS1 and SPMS expression levels. In silico and in vivo analyses confirmed that OsHSFA3 is a nuclear-localized gene. In addition, OsHSFA3 can bind to the promoter of AtADC1 and OsADC via a yeast one-hybrid assay. Overall, this study reveals that OsHSFA3 improves drought tolerance in Arabidopsis not only by increasing ABA levels, but also by modulating polyamine levels to maintain ROS homeostasis, therefore it could be a strong candidate to develop drought-tolerant rice cultivars.


INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: The Neurogenic Bladder Symptom Score (NBSS) is a 24-item questionnaire that assesses symptom burden in patients with SCI, multiple sclerosis, or spina bifida. It has been validated in multiple data sets, used in several studies, and licensed to >40 investigators in 16 countries. Our objective was to develop a short form. METHODS: We used three previous published datasets. First, we selected the questions within each of the domains (incontinence, storage/voiding, and consequences) with the highest level of responsiveness (measured by the standardized response mean, SRM) and acceptable face validity. Internal validity of the NBSS-SF was assessed using Cronbach's alpha. External validity was assessed by evaluating hypothesized relationships with other questionnaires (AUASS, SCI-QOL, and Qualiveen-SF) and testing correlations with the full NBSS domains. Test-retest reliability of the NBSS-SF domains was determined using an intraclass coefficient (ICC2,1). RESULTS: Using data from a prior responsiveness study, questions with the highest SRM and perceived importance were selected from the incontinence domain (three), storage/voiding domain (three), consequences domain (two) to create the NBSS-SF. We used the original NBSS validation cohort of 220 patients with MS, SCI, or spina bifida to calculate Cronbach's alpha of 0.76; the external validity was high, with correlations between specific NBSS-SF domains/total scores and the Qualiveen-SF, ICIQ, and AUASS, and between the NBSS-SF domains and the full NBSS domains. In the subset of 120 patients who completed the test-retest reliability assessment, the ICC for the NBSS-SF total score was 0.84. These results were then confirmed in a second independent dataset of 1479 SCI patients: Cronbach's alpha for the NBSS-SF total was 0.75 and external validity was again demonstrated with a moderate correlation between the calculated NBSS-SF total and the SCI-QOL Bladder complications score, and strong correlations between the NBSS-SF domains/total score and the full NBSS domains/total. CONCLUSIONS: The total score of the eight question NBSS-SF has appropriate validity and reliability, and could be used in patient care settings. The full NBSS is better suited when researchers want to evaluate individual NBSS domains in addition to the total score. Source of Funding: PCORI grant CER14092138


Compression of multispectal images is of great importance in an environment where resources such as computational power and memory are scarce. To that end, we propose a new extremely low-complexity encoding approach for compression of multispectral images, that shifts the complexity to the decoding. Our method combines principles from compressed sensing and distributed source coding. Specifically, the encoder compressively measures blocks of the band of interest and uses syndrome coding to encode the bitplanes of the measurements. The decoder has access to side information, which is used to predict the bitplanes and to decode them. The side information is also used to guide the reconstruction of the image from the decoded measurements. Our experimental results demonstrate significant improvement in the rate-distortion trade-off when compared to coding schemes with similar complexity.


Summary Two DNA topojsomerases control the level of negative supercoiling in bacterial celts. DNA gyrase introduces supercoils, and DNA topoisomerase I prevents supercoiling from reaching unacceptably high levels. Perturbations of supercoiling are corrected by the substrate preferences of these topoisomerases with respectto DNA topology and by changes in expression of the genes encoding the enzymes. However, supercoiling changes when the growth environment is altered in ways that also affect cellular energetics. The ratio of [ATP] to [ADP], to which gyrase is sensitive, may be involved in the response of supercoiling to growth conditions. Inside cells, supercoiling is partitioned into two components, superhelical tension and restrained supercoils. Shifts in superhelical tension elicited by nicking or by salt shock do not rapidly change the level of restrained supercoiling. However, a steady-state change in supercoiling caused by mutation of topA does alter both tension and restrained supercoils. This communication between the two compartments may play a role in the control of supercoiling.


The behavior of the end-systolic ventricular diameter was examined during control state, atrial pacing, and acute volume loading (VL) followed by methoxamine infusion in conscious dogs instrumented with a left ventricular micromanometer and ultrasonic crystals measuring internal diameter and wall thickness. Heart rate and systolic pressure were markedly increased by maximal VL but for moderate VL were minimally modified. Moderate VL increased end-diastolic diameter by 5% and end-systolic diameter by 2.9% with a significant increase of systolic stress. There was no common final pathway of shortening in the force-velocity-length diagram for different preloads. During methoxamine infusion, the end-systolic pressure-diameter points described a linear regression but points obtained during atrial pacing before VL were significantly shorter. We conclude that VL increases the total loading of the heart producing a lengthening of the end-systolic diameter when end-diastolic diameter is increased. This reduces the expression of the Starling mechanism and suggests caution when interpreting end-systolic pressure-diameter relations and derived indices for significantly different end-diastolic diameters.


Lymphoma is the most common malignancy of the orbit and the eyelids, accounting for 10% of malignant orbital tumors in adults. Orbital lymphomas can arise primarily in the orbit or represent a manifestation of disseminated disease. In this paper we report a case of early stage orbital lymphoma, which was managed successfully with chemotherapy, and a review of the related literature. A Moroccan Muslim woman aged 76 years, who presented a left orbital swelling. Ophthalmological examination complemented by CT has objectified orbital mass, whose biopsy was in favour of a non Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) large cell B. The patient was classified as stage IE after a record expansion. She was managed successfully with 6 courses of Rituximab 375 mg/m², Cyclophosphamide 750 mg/m² d1, Doxorubicine 50 mg/m² d1, Vincristine 1.4 mg/m² d1, and prednisone 50 mg/m² d1-5 (R-CHOP) regimen, with complete response. This case highlights the important role of R-CHOP regimen for achieving successful treatment cure for patients having an early stage orbital lymphoma

 Key words: Orbit, non hodgkin's lymphoma, large cell, chemotherapy


The human face is an attractive biometric identifier and face recognition has certainly improved a lot since its beginnings some three decades ago, but still its application in real world has achieved limited success. In this doctoral dissertation we focus on a local feature of the human face namely the lip and analyse it for its relevance and influence on person recognition. In depth study is carried out with respect to various steps involved, such as detection, evaluation, normalization and the applications of the human lip motion. Initially we present a lip detection algorithm that is based on the fusion of two independent methods. The first method is based on edge detection and the second one on region segmentation, each having distinct characteristics and thus exhibit different strengths and weaknesses. We exploit these strengths by combining the two methods using fusion. Then we present results from extensive testing and evaluation of the detection algorithm on a realistic database. Next we give a comparison of the visual features of lip motion for their relevance to person recognition. For this purpose we extract various geometric and appearance based lip features and compare them using three feature selection measures; Minimal- Redundancy-Maximum-Relevance, Bhattacharya Distance and Mutual Information. Next we extract features which model the behavioural aspect of lip motion during speech and exploit them for person recognition. The behavioural features include static features, such as the normalized length of major/minor axis, coordinates of lip extrema points and dynamic features based on optical flow. These features are used to build client model by Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and finally the classification is achieved using a Bayesian decision rule. Recognition results are then presented on a text independent database specifically designed for testing behavioural features that require comparatively more data. Lastly we propose a temporal normalization method to compensate for variation caused by lip motion during speech. Given a group of videos for a person uttering the same sentence multiple times we study the lip motion in one of the videos and select certain key frames as synchronization frames. We then synchronize these frames from the first video with the remaining videos of the same person. Finally all the videos are normalized temporally by interpolation using lip morphing. For evaluation of our normalization algorithm we have devised a spatio-temporal person recognition algorithm that compares normalized and un-normalized videos.


OBJECTIVE
The use of icons and other graphical components in user interfaces has become nearly ubiquitous. The interpretation of such icons is based on the assumption that different users perceive the shapes similarly. At the most basic level, different users must agree on which shapes are similar and which are different. If this similarity can be measured, it may be usable as the basis to design better icons.

DESIGN
The purpose of this study was to evaluate a novel method for categorizing the visual similarity of graphical primitives, called Presentation Discovery, in the domain of mammography. Six domain experts were given 50 common textual mammography findings and asked to draw how they would represent those findings graphically. Nondomain experts sorted the resulting graphics into groups based on their visual characteristics. The resulting groups were then analyzed using traditional statistics and hypothesis discovery tools. Strength of agreement was evaluated using computational simulations of sorting behavior.

MEASUREMENTS
Sorter agreement was measured at both the individual graphical and concept-group levels using a novel simulation-based method. "Consensus clusters" of graphics were derived using a hierarchical clustering algorithm.

RESULTS
The multiple sorters were able to reliably group graphics into similar groups that strongly correlated with underlying domain concepts. Visual inspection of the resulting consensus clusters indicated that graphical primitives that could be informative in the design of icons were present.

CONCLUSION
The method described provides a rigorous alternative to intuitive design processes frequently employed in the design of icons and other graphical interface components.


When large XML documents are shared, documents compression and encryption become simultaneously important for efficient and secure access. Existing approaches for compressing and encrypting large XML documents provide a non-queriable intermediate document representation, creating a need to decompress and decrypt the whole document before any access, which simply wastes computing resources (such as memory, time, and power) especially in mobile environment. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a new approach for compressing and encrypting large XML documents while maintaining queriability over the intermediate document representation. The proposed approach separates document structure from its contents using a variation of the Ctree XML indexing approach (known as the Ctree+), then applies context-free lossless encryption and compression techniques over the resulting Ctree+ intermediate representations. Experiments results show that the proposed approach dramatically enhances queries response times when compared with existing approaches. However, the proposed approach provides lesser compression ratios when compared with context-based compression techniques.


Wireless ad hoc networks, especially in the hostile environment, are vulnerable to traffic analysis which allows the adversary to trace the routing messages and the sensitive data packets. Anonymity mechanism in ad hoc networks is a critical securing measure method employed to mitigate these problems. In this paper, we propose a novel secure and anonymous source routing protocol, called SADSR, based on Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) for wireless ad hoc networks. In the proposed scheme, we use the pseudonym, pseudonym based cryptography and the bloom filter to establish secure and anonymous routing in wireless ad hoc networks. Compared to other anonymous routing protocol, SADSR is not only anonymous but also the secure in the routing discover process and data transmission process.


The work of Robert Rosen, related to metabolic networks called (MR) systems is reviewed and clarified. We study the algebraic formulation of (M,R) systems particularly the mapping β, which encapsulates Rosen's solution to the problem of metabolic closure and infinite regress. We construct an arithmetical example of an (MR) system and also an (MR) system based on a three-step minimal metabolism.


Memory contention can be a serious performance bottleneck in concurrent programs on shared-memory multicore architectures. Having all threads write to a small set of shared locations, for example, can lead to orders of magnitude loss in performance relative to all threads writing to distinct locations, or even relative to a single thread doing all the writes. Shared write access, however, can be very useful in parallel algorithms, concurrent data structures, and protocols for communicating among threads. We study the \priority update" operation as a useful primitive for limiting write contention in parallel and concurrent programs. A priority update takes as arguments a memory location, a new value, and a comparison function >p that enforces a partial order over values. The operation atomically compares the new value with the current value in the memory location, and writes the new value only if it has higher priority according to >p. On the implementation side, we show that if implemented appropriately, priority updates greatly reduce memory contention over standard writes or other atomic operations when locations have a high degree of sharing. This is shown both experimentally and theoretically. On the application side, we describe several uses of priority updates for implementing parallel algorithms and concurrent data structures, often in a way that is deterministic, guarantees progress, and avoids serial bottlenecks. We present experiments showing that a variety of such algorithms and data structures perform well under high degrees of sharing. Given the results, we believe that the priority update operation serves as a useful parallel primitive and good programming abstraction as (1) the user largely need not worry about the degree of sharing, (2) it can be used to avoid non-determinism since, in the common case when >p is a total order, priority updates commute, and (3) it has many applications to programs using shared data.


Formulating the alternating current optimal power flow (ACOPF) as a polynomial optimization problem makes it possible to solve large instances in practice and to guarantee asymptotic convergence in theory. We formulate the ACOPF as a degree-two polynomial program and study two approaches to solving it via convexifications. In the first approach, we tighten the first-order relaxation of the nonconvex quadratic program by adding valid inequalities. In the second approach, we exploit the structure of the polynomial program by using a sparse variant of Lasserre's hierarchy. This allows us to solve instances of up to 39 buses to global optimality and to provide strong bounds for the Polish network within an hour.


AIM: Study apoptogenic activity of-microbes-associants during Epstein-Barr virus infection (EBVI) on the model of mice peritoneal macrophages in vitro. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Evaluation of apoptosis induced by bacteria isolated from EBVI patients was carried out by characteristic morphological changes of macrophages in smears stained by May-Grunwald with additional staining by Romanowsky-Giemsa. RESULTS: All the EBVI microbes-associants were established to have apoptogenic activity, however, the highest pathogenic potential was noted in Streptococcus pyogenes. CONCLUSION: The presence of apoptogenic activity in bacterial microflora accompanying EBVI against immune system cells could serve as means of their survival and be the pathogenetic basis for prolonged persistence in the organism.


The desirable goal in passenger transportation is moving more people in fewer vehicles. This goal, in respect of road transport, can be attained by encouraging public transport modes like buses by assigning priority. One of the common bus priority measures is provision of reserved bus lanes on major urban roads to facilitate faster movement of buses. This paper is concerned with modification and validation of a recently developed micro simulation model of heterogeneous traffic flow and application of the model to study the impact of provision of reserved bus lanes on urban roads. The impact of introduction of an exclusive bus lane is measured in terms of reduction in speed of other categories of motor vehicles, due to the consequent reduction in road space, over a wide range of traffic volume. The main finding of the simulation experiment is the quantification of the maximum permissible volume to capacity ratio that will ensure a level of service of C for the traffic stream comprising all the motor vehicles, except the buses, on a typical eight lane divided urban road (if an exclusive bus lane is provided under highly heterogeneous traffic conditions, prevailing in Indian cities). Through this study, a framework for justification of providing exclusive bus lane has also been defined. The results of the study indicate that it is possible to introduce exclusive bus lanes on selected urban roads to enhance the level of service of bus, without much of adverse impact on the level of service of other modes of road transport under the stated roadway and traffic conditions. Provision of exclusive road space for buses, will enhance the level of service of buses and this may also result in shift of some of the personal vehicle users to buses. This study is also concerned with estimation of the probable shift of the personal vehicle users to bus due to increase in its level of service after providing exclusive bus lanes. Mode-choice probability curves to depict the probable modal shift of personal vehicle users to bus has been developed, taking the difference in travel times of the two-modes as the basis, to serve as an user friendly, ready-to-refer tool to predict the possible modal shift for a wide range of the values of the involved variables.


Infection of cells by human papillomaviruses (HPVs) associated with malignant genital lesions has not been studied because of the lack of an in vitro system and the unavailability of virions. We have now used virus-like particles (VLPs) of HPV type 33 to analyze the initial events in the interaction of the HPV capsid with cell lines. Binding of VLPs to HeLa cells was observed in biochemical assays and by immunofluorescence. VLP binding was inhibited by antisera raised against VLPs but not by monoclonal antibodies recognizing either L1 or L2 epitopes accessible on VLPs. Under saturating conditions, approximately 2 x 10(4) VLPs were bound per cell, with a dissociation constant of about 100 pM. VLPs composed of L1 alone bound as well as VLPs composed of both capsid proteins, indicating that L2 is not required for initial binding. VLPs dissociated into capsomers did not bind, demonstrating that intercapsomer contacts are required. Neither capsomers nor simian virus 40 virions competed with VLP binding. Uptake of VLPs by small and smooth endocytic vesicles was demonstrated by immunoelectron microscopy. Cellular binding of VLPs was sensitive to trypsin but not to sialidase, N-glycosidase, or octyl-beta-D-glycopyranoside treatment, suggesting that a cell surface protein is involved in the VLP binding. Cell lines originating from a variety of tissues and organisms as distantly related as insects and humans bound VLPs with similar efficiency and specificity. Therefore, the putative receptor mediating VLP attachment should be highly conserved and cannot be responsible for the species and tissue specificity of HPVs.


Coniophora bimacrospora, sp. nov. is described from the Ethiopian highlands. The taxon is mainly characterized by an olive green hymenial surface, bi-spored basidia, and large, averaging 20 x 15 pm, ellipsoid to broadly ovoid, brownish, cyanophilous, and dextrinoid basidiospores. It is compared to some other Coniophora reported from Africa. Coniophora puteana, C. olivacea, Serpida similis, and Gyrodonthun sacchari are also reported from the Ethiopian highlands. The phylogenetic relationships between S. similis, G. sacchari, and other Coniophoraceae are briefly discussed.


LEIGH ANNA HUTCHISON: A Pilot Study of Students' Self-Perceptions of Efficacy and Engagement, in the Writing Process. (Under the direction of Mary Ruth Coleman) This pilot study used a descriptive case-study method, with multiple cases, to examine changes in students' self-perceptions and performance in writing. The study focused on the effects of an intervention, intended to impact components of motivational engagement (interest and writing apprehension) as well as self-efficacy beliefs, for students with cognitive strengths and learning deficits, in order to determine how this relates to levels of effort and persistence on writing tasks. The participants were two adolescent students, who exhibited cognitive strengths, coupled with learning disabilities in writing. The study design used Entry Phase and Exit Phase measures to collect data on the students' levels of self-efficacy, apprehension, and interest in writing, before and after the intervention. Additional measures of effort, persistence, and performance were also taken at Entry and Exit Phases. Findings indicated improvements for both students on levels of effort, persistence, and performance following the intervention.


A ''rational reconstruction'' of the jazz improvisation system implemented in [David Levitt, ''A Melody Description System for Jazz Improvization,'' MIT S.M. thesis (1981)] will be discussed. A rational reconstruction is a reimplementation of a computer program in a way which clearly reveals its basic mechanisms and the fundamental issues it addresses. Levitt's program did melodic improvisation from an initial chord progression, based on a collection of heuristics operating over a simple constraint representation. Its rational reconstruction reveals a number of basic issues in computational aesthetics: The use of constraints to model aesthetic choice; the use of representation to encode stylistic background; and the tension between randomness and structure in creative process.


Abstract. Accurate and automatic building footprint extraction from single UAV images has become essential in many photogrammetry and remote sensing applications such as 3D building modeling, smart city, monitoring, disaster management, and urban planning. In this paper, the capability of U-Net architecture with ResNet as the backbone of the network is investigated to extract the building footprints from UAV-based orthophotos and normalized Digital Surface Models (nDSMs) considering the complementary nature of RGB and height information. The data has been captured from five non-overlapping rural scenes of Yazd province, Iran. After pre-processing, the training and test datasets are prepared to evaluate the performance of U-Net using different hyperparameters and input channels such as RGB (only orthophotos) and RGBD (orthophotos and nDSMs). The experiments highlight the effectiveness of height information to detect and extract the building footprints with significant improvements in precision from 89% to 97% and in recall from 77% to 91%.


: In 14 patients who underwent endoscopic examination after esophageal transection and proximal gastric devascularization, varices disappeared in seven patients, were reduced in diameter or number in six patients, and were unchanged in one patient. No varices were present in any patient within 1 cm of the stapled anastomosis, and Doppler studies showed no flow in residual varices. During a mean follow-up of 20 months (range: 6 to 44 months), varices recurred in three patients and enlarged in five others. This study suggests that variceal obliteration, a reduction in variceal diameter, the removal of the bleeding zone in the esophagus, and undetectable blood flow in residual varices all contribute to the prevention of variceal rebleeding; although these changes are not always permanent, the return to the preoperative state may take many years.


Some Localised Agro-Food Systems (LAFS) are traditionally qualified as success stories (Comte PDO in France, Gruyere PDO in Switzerland, Parmigiano Reggiano PDO in Italy), whilst other PDOs (as for example the Cantal PDO from France) pay the same price for the milk as standard milk. The price difference may reach between 10 and 25% over a long period. To explain this difference, we assume that the agents who make up the LAFS developed a collective action to protect their localized cheese production system against unfair competition and to promote their product outside its region of origin. The aim of this communication is to shed light on levers which the agents activate to assure their uniqueness is irrevocable, and uphold the benefits of their LAFS. We propose to discuss the idea that the search for market power based on the strategy of raising rivals' costs may be used even outside a situation of vertical integration or a situation in which pressure is applied to suppliers to challenge competitors. We assume that some companies within the LAFS have sufficient control on the rules governing the organization of the traditional system to benefit from it. They also succeed in protecting a kind of relationship between business companies. The Raising Rivals' Costs theory helps to analyze the economic consequences of the legal set-up implementation and of its control by some companies. Indeed, we show that the collective control of the rules which are set up in the PDO legal framework explain the difficulties met by rivals to stand out through an alternative and independent production system based on the costs leadership strategy. The collective set up of institutions and rules help the agents to achieve a collective competitive advantage in which every agent benefits individually. This is the strategy developed in Europe and particularly for two PDO Localised Agro-cheese Systems: Comte PDO for France and Gruyere PDO for Switzerland.


In this paper the authors present a model of how passengers navigate through overcrowded public transit networks. The model is then integrated into a transit assignment procedure. Variations of this model can be used to reflect different levels of information. This allows estimating the benefit a portable journey planner might have for passengers who need to navigate through unreliable networks. In many cities public transportation systems have reached their capacity limit. During the peak hours vehicles are crowded and often passengers are left behind on the platform. In some cases subway stations need to be temporarily closed in order to prevent overcrowding on the platforms. Passengers are aware of these facts and take them into account when they choose their route and their departure time. When a public transit network reaches its capacity limit it is no longer reliable from the point of view of the passenger. It no longer suffices to choose a path through the network, since it may contain a ride on a vehicle that might be overcrowded. Instead, a passenger needs to have a strategy to navigate through such an unreliable network. He has to determine what to do, if he fails to board a vehicle. A schedule-based transit assignment model that is based on strategies was presented by Hamdouch and Lawphongpanich. In that model a strategy consists of an ordered set of choices at each station. When the capacity of a vehicle is too small to accommodate all passengers, a passenger who is unable to board the first vehicle of his choice tries to board the second best and so forth. An optimal strategy minimizes the expected generalized cost of travel. The expected cost depends on the cost of the possible outcomes and their probability. As opposed to a single path, a strategy is always reliable. In this paper the authors analyze two use cases for this strategy concept. The first use case is a portable journey planner that guides a passenger through an unreliable network. The input is information about the schedule and the crowding situation inside vehicles and at stations. The authors analyze to what extent additional information improves the resulting strategy compared to a passenger who has less information or other restrictions. Passengers may be unaware of the capacity restrictions or have less knowledge of the schedule and navigate based on headways; or - due to the complexity of the network - they restrict their choices to certain connections that are deemed attractive. The results may be used as an indicator how portable journey planners that access online information about the crowding situation can improve the travel times of the passengers. The second use case is transit assignment. The authors present a transit assignment model that is based on strategies. It seems plausible that in unreliable networks passengers leave earlier than their desired departure time in order to account for the unreliability. The authors show that this effect can be reproduced in their model.


ABSTRACT In this work, silica coated magnetic nanoparticles of modified polyphosphoric acid (NiFe2O4@SiO2–PPA deigned as NFS–PPA) represent as a reusable and green catalyst for one-pot four-component synthesis of β-acetamido ketones at room temperature under solvent-free conditions. This catalyst was synthesized and characterized by X-ray diffractions, transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and vibrating sample magnetometry. The magnetic catalyst can be easily removed by a simple magnet and reused up to five times without any loss of its high catalytic activity. In addition to facility, this protocol enhances product purity and promises economic and also environmental profits.


Business processes especially in the Central Banks are more fully integrated and streamlined than ever before. Also, realistic system landscapes often consist of many systems. Disconnected silos of unstructured information continue to pile up for each organizational function and different interfaces are often implemented using the technology that is considered to be ideal for the respective interface. There appears to be lack of Enterprise Content Management strategy thus leading to significant business challenges such as untrustworthy business information due to inaccurate, outdated, conflicting information, longer financial cycles and generally inefficient processes, system performance degradations and poor data organization, inconsistent, confusing user interface as well as frequent context switching.
There is therefore the need for an effective enterprise content management strategy. Web content management systems are often used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentations. Usability testing of web sites is an essential element of quality assurance and a true test of how people actually use Central Banks' web site. It is a test of whether outsiders can successfully use the Banks' Web site. Although formal usability tests are expensive, time-consuming and often prohibitive, periodic user testing is an important element in developing and maintaining a reader-friendly Website. Usability should emphasise clarity of communication, accessibility, consistency, navigation design, maintenance and good visual presentation.
A solution to corporate intranet/internet chaos are Enterprise Portals. An enterprise portal is the gateway to the end user. It offers a central point of access to information, applications and services in an enterprise. It is a one-stop shopping for knowledge workers; the portal is both a gateway to and a destination on the enterprise network that provides transparent, tailored access to distributed digital resource. An Enterprise Portal provides numerous benefits to users, allowing them to interact with relevant information and application, both internal and external to the company, collaborate with others both inside and outside the Central Banks through self-service publishing customise-and-tailor a Web page with information that is easily found.
This paper discusses the issue of Usability Tests and Web Content Management that enhance user productivity. Drawing from some award winning intranets some areas for best practices for the financial services such as the African Central Banks are high-lightened vis-a-vis the infrastructural problems facing the African Continent


Women in many smallholder communities in developing countries often face various types of cultural restrictions. In recent years, high value cash crop activities (HVCCA) are viewed as opportunities for women to travel to markets, improve household income, exercise more freedom and actively participate in training programs. HVCCA can also enhance women's household decision making and empowerment. However, women's empowerment is complex and multidimensional requiring context specific analysis. Hence, this study characterized factors enabling and inhibiting women's household decision making and empowerment in HVCCA in two mid-hill districts of Nepal's Far Western region. Sixteen couples involved in HVCCA (vegetables) were interviewed in July 2017, along with seventeen government and development officials working in HVCCA. Additionally, six focus group discussions were conducted with women's organizations in participants' communities, at districts and national level. Using NVivo, this study found that almost all wives are trusted for joint decisions. They travel to markets, keep income and make expenditures. Some still have difficulty overcoming traditional belief systems that restrict women's activities. Support from husbands, extended family members, community members, women's groups, government agencies and development organizations are crucial. This study concludes that women's active engagement in HVCCA significantly contributes to their increased decision making and empowerment. However, future research including women not involved in HVCCA and other factors that are not examined in this study is imperative to determine the full role of HVCCA in women's empowerment. Understanding micro-level decision making processes in HVCCA has significance for furthering women's empowerment.


Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) of patients with diabetes allows the effective management of the disease and reduces the risk of hypoglycemic or hyperglycemic episodes. Towards this goal, the development of reliable CGM models is essential for representing the corresponding signals and interpreting them with respect to factors and outcomes of interest. We propose a sparse decomposition model to approximate CGM time-series as a linear combination of a small set of exemplar atoms, appropriately designed through parametric functions to capture the main fluctuations of the CGM signal. Sparse decomposition is performed through the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP). Results indicate that the proposed model provides 0.1 relative reconstruction error with 0.8 compression rate on a publicly available dataset containing 25 patients diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The atoms selected from the OMP procedure can be further interpreted in relation to the clinically meaningful components of the CGM signal (e.g. glucose spikes, hypoglycemic episodes, etc


This paper analyses Ekegusii names and how they relate to gender identity. It shows how the naming system is basically based on the premise that a male is socialized to 'gather wealth', hence the term omosacha ('man/husband'), while a female is socialized to 'take care of (the wealth)', hence the term omokungu ('woman/wife'). The names that are analysed in this study show the different crafts and activities, such as blacksmiths and herbal dispensers, which males engaged in traditionally in an effort to gather wealth. With the arrival of the colonizers and missionaries in the in Gusii land (in Kenya), the Abagusii people devised "modern" ways of wealth gathering and ended up with names relating to education, white collar jobs and money. The study also shows that males bear a number of borrowed names, while women bear only one such name. Some of the names given to the females describe their physical features, characteristics and ornamentation, while others portray them as the carriers of the community's migration history. Both the males and the females bear names derived from different types of crops and clothes, although the former bear more of them than the latter. Finally, there are crossgender names borne by both the males and the females, although not in the same proportions. The paper concludes that the assignment of gender-specific names is not arbitrary, as names socially define maleness and femaleness, besides constraining gender behaviour.


We describe the general structure of the spherically symmetric solutions in the Weyl conformal gravity. The corresponding Bach equations are derived for the special type of metrics, which can be considered as the representative of the general class. The complete set of the pure vacuum solutions, consisting of two classes, is found. The first one contains the solutions with constant two-dimensional curvature scalar, and the representatives are the famous Robertson--Walker metrics. We called one of them the "gravitational bubbles", which is compact and with zero Weyl tensor. These "gravitational bubbles" are the pure vacuum curved space-times (without any material sources, including the cosmological constant), which are absolutely impossible in General Relativity. This phenomenon makes it easier to create the universe from "nothing". The second class consists of the solutions with varying curvature scalar. We found its representative as the one-parameter family, which can be conformally covered by the thee-parameter Mannheim--Kazanas solution. We describe the general structure of the energy-momentum tensor in the spherical conformal gravity and construct the vectorial equation that reveals clearly some features of non-vacuum solutions.


The Amoebozoa represent a clade of unicellular amoeboid organisms that display a wide variety of lifestyles, including free-living and parasitic species. For example, the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum has the ability to aggregate into a multicellular fruiting body upon starvation, while the pathogenic amoeba Entamoeba histolytica is a parasite of humans. Globins are small heme proteins that are present in almost all extant organisms. Although several genomes of amoebozoan species have been sequenced, little is known about the phyletic distribution of globin genes within this phylum. Only two flavohemoglobins (FHbs) of D. discoideum have been reported and characterized previously while the genomes of Entamoeba species are apparently devoid of globin genes. We investigated eleven amoebozoan species for the presence of globin genes by genomic and phylogenetic in silico analyses. Additional FHb genes were identified in the genomes of four social amoebas and the true slime mold Physarum polycephalum. Moreover, a single-domain globin (SDFgb) of Hartmannella vermiformis, as well as two truncated hemoglobins (trHbs) of Acanthamoeba castellanii were identified. Phylogenetic evidence suggests that these globin genes were independently acquired via horizontal gene transfer from some ancestral bacteria. Furthermore, the phylogenetic tree of amoebozoan FHbs indicates that they do not share a common ancestry and that a transfer of FHbs from bacteria to amoeba occurred multiple times.


It is unclear if surveillance for postmenopausal women with medically inoperable stage 1 endometrial cancer (EC) should differ depending on their management strategy. Thus, we investigated the utility of surveillance endometrial sampling among 53 postmenopausal women with medically inoperable, clinical stage I, grade 1 endometrioid EC who received either progestin therapy or radiation between 2009 and 2018, at a single aca-demic institution. Frequency and results of endometrial sampling, as well as recurrence and survival rates were studied. Of 53 patients, 18 (34.0%) received progestin therapy and 35 (66.0%) radiation. Medically managed patients were treated with megestrol acetate (27.7%), a levonorgestrel intrauterine device (27.7%), or both (44.4%). Radiated patients were mostly treated with high-dose rate brachytherapy only (77.1%). Surveillance endometrial sampling (median procedures = 4, range 1 – 10) was strictly adhered to among all patients who received progestin therapy, but infrequently (6/35, 17.1%) performed among radiated patients, yielding no positive results. Three recurrences occurred over the median follow-up of 38 months. Two (11%) women in the progestin therapy group recurred locally and were diagnosed by endometrial sampling. One (3%) patient in the radiation group recurred distally in the lung 25.3 months after completing brachytherapy. We conclude that appropriate surveillance for women with medically inoperable, clinical stage I, grade 1 EC depends on the management strategy. For those treated with progestins, surveillance with endometrial sampling every 3 – 6 months can reveal local recurrence. However, given the excellent local control after radiation, endometrial sampling may not be warranted for women treated with definitive radiation.


The discovery of commercial quantities of oil and gas off the coast of Ghana in June 2008 has given rise to high expectations and optimism for improved prospects for rapid economic development and poverty reduction. However, there have been public concerns for the proper management of the increased foreign exchange inflows and the transparent use and fair distribution of the financial gains. There are also fears of a possible Dutch disease, which could reduce competitiveness in key export and importcompeting sectors and adversely impact the livelihoods of major parts of the population. The challenges of effective fiscal policy relate to the fact that oil revenues constitute a larger part of government revenue and they are volatile, unpredictable, exhaustible and mostly driven by external demand. This paper provides an empirical analysis over the 1970-2011 period using CVAR estimations within a fiscal response framework. The main finding is that oil revenues have the potential to impact positively on macroeconomic performance. This is based on estimated government's fiscal behaviour or response with respect to foreign aid and tax revenue. The paper concludes by noting that the realisation of these benefits is not guaranteed and will depend crucially on whether the implicit assumption that the incentives associated with oil revenues will be similar to that of foreign aid or tax revenue.


Objectives The aim of this manikin study was to compare the efficiency between overlapping (OP) and adjacent thumb positions (AP) for cardiac compressions using the encircling method in infants. Methods The study conducted from December 2010 to August 2011 involved 48 volunteers who were students in the emergency medical technician course. The authors let volunteers practice OP and AP as a crossover design. The authors monitored the simulated mean arterial pressure (MAP) generated during a 5-min chest compression. The fatigue level of the volunteers after the chest compression was evaluated with the Likert scale. Results There were no significant differences in MAP between the dominant hand and the non-dominant hand as the lower thumb of OP. Significant differences were observed in simulated systolic blood pressure, MAP and simulated pulse pressure between OP and AP at 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 min. There were no significant differences among the changes in heart rate, respiratory rate and end-tidal CO2 during a 5-min chest compression by OP and AP. The Likert scale scores (1 no fatigue to 5= extreme fatigue) during the 5-min chest compressions were higher in AP than in OP at 2, 3 and 5 min. Conclusion Higher intrathoracic pressures were achieved by OP in this study. However, further studies are needed to validate these effects of overlapping thumbs technique in infant cardiopulmonary resuscitation, not manikin.


Most successful Entity Linking (EL) methods aim to link mentions to their referent entities in a structured Knowledge Base (KB) by comparing their respective contexts, often using similarity measures. While the KB structure is given, current methods have suffered from impoverished information representations on the mention side. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of Abstract Meaning Representation (AMR) (Banarescu et al., 2013) to select high quality sets of entity "collaborators" to feed a simple similarity measure (Jaccard) to link entity mentions. Experimental results show that AMR captures contextual properties discriminative enough to make linking decisions, without the need for EL training data, and that system with AMR parsing output outperforms hand labeled traditional semantic roles as context representation for EL. Finally, we show promising preliminary results for using AMR to select sets of "coherent" entity mentions for collective entity linking 1 .


Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) has successfully been used in HRI research by including social robots in health-care interventions by virtue of their ability to engage human users both social and emotional dimensions. Research projects on this topic exist all over the globe in the USA, Europe, and Asia. All of these projects have the overall ambitious goal to increase the well-being of a vulnerable population. Typical work in RAT is performed using remote controlled robots; a technique called Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ). The robot is usually controlled, unbeknownst to the patient, by a human operator. However, WoZ has been demonstrated to not be a sustainable technique in the long-term. Providing the robots with autonomy (while remaining under the supervision of the therapist) has the potential to lighten the therapists burden, not only in the therapeutic session itself but also in longer-term diagnostic tasks. Therefore, there is a need for exploring several degrees of autonomy in social robots used in therapy. Increasing the autonomy of robots might also bring about a new set of challenges. In particular, there will be a need to answer new ethical questions regarding the use of robots with a vulnerable population, as well as a need to ensure ethically-compliant robot behaviours. Therefore, in this workshop we want to gather findings and explore which degree of autonomy might help to improve health-care interventions and how we can overcome the ethical challenges inherent to it.


The field of Security Analysis has generally come to embrace the theories of modern economics, seemingly without adequate consideration for how to bridge the gap between theory and practice. The consequences of this, most recently experienced in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, have been significant. To help rectify this we provide practical suggestions for modern security analysts to consider, which center on four key areas. First is obtaining a working knowledge of financial/economic history, which will help put security analyses into context. The collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in the late 1990s is compared to recent events experienced during the financial crisis as an example. We also suggest that a multi-discipline analytical framework, which incorporates a common-sense approach to risk management, be adopted along with contrary thinking, and an understanding of - and appreciation for - market complexity. Cumulatively, these suggestions could lead to more insightful analyses and profitable investments at lower levels of risk over time.


This article is the first in-depth academic discussion of the key aspects of the enhanced collective redress mechanisms introduced recently in relation to competition law infringements in the UK by the Consumer Rights Act. The legislation is a particularly significant development because of the historical and contemporary focus on the 'consumer' at the heart of competition/antitrust law and because the reforms also reflect more recent debates generally in legal practice about 'access to justice'. The article first recounts the pivotal role played by 'class actions' in US antitrust enforcement before outlining the recent debate on encouraging and facilitating private enforcement in the EU, particularly in relation to collective redress, culminating in the (anodyne) Commission Recommendation of June 2013. As the article notes, most of the collective redress mechanisms introduced across the EU Member States to date have been opt-in models, but these have been criticised for their limited impact and effectiveness, and an opt-out representative model has been introduced in some Member States and discussed in others. The article will reflect on the limited provision in the UK on collective redress in relation to competition law infringements prior to the Consumer Rights Act, in particular the limitations in the opt-in follow-on procedure under s47B of the Competition Act 1998, as demonstrated by CA v JJB. The article will then focus on the Act's provisions (and associated Tribunal rules) in relation to opt-in/opt-out collective proceedings and settlements (in both follow-on and stand-alone actions). The article will outline the new statutory provisions in sections 47B and 49A and B of the Competition Act 1998, for Collective Proceedings and Collective Settlements respectively. The Tribunal rules on certification will be considered, noting the potential difficulties in their practical application, before further analysis of two key problematic aspects of the proposed opt-out collective redress scheme, which may limit its effectiveness and uptake. The first concerns the appointment of the class/settlement representative and the second concerns the potential funding arrangements in relation to opt-out collective proceedings. The article questions whether the combination of these two aspects may dis-incentivise and unnecessarily limit the effectiveness of the new opt-out provisions, although it is accepted that this will also greatly depend on the Competition Appeal Tribunal interpretation and application of its new Tribunal Rules in relation to Collective proceedings, in particular regarding certification, appointment of the class/settlement representative and determination of the appropriate costs and expenses incurred in pursuing a collective claim.


Classification of facial expressions has become an essential part of computer systems and human-computer fast interaction. It is employed in various applications such as digital entertainment, customer service, driver monitoring, and emotional robots. Moreover, it has been studied through several aspects related to the face itself when facial expressions change based on the point of view or perspective. Facial curves such as eyebrows, nose, lips, and mouth will automatically change. Most of the proposed methods have limited frontal Face Expressions Recognition (FER), and their performance decrease when handling non-frontal and multi-view FER cases.  This study combined both methods in the classification of facial expressions, namely the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) methods. The results of this study proved to be more accurate than that of previous studies. The combination of PCA and CNN methods in the Static Facial Expressions in The Wild (SFEW) 2.0 dataset obtained an accuracy amounting to 70.4%; the CNN method alone only obtained an accuracy amounting to 60.9%.