Motion Estimation (ME) is the most computationally intensive part of video compression systems. Multiple reference frame (MRF) ME used in H.264 standard increases the video coding efficiency at the expense of increased computational complexity and power consumption. Therefore, in this paper, we present a reconfigurable baseline H.264 video encoder hardware in which the number of reference frames used for MRF ME can be configured based on the application requirements in order to trade-off video coding efficiency and power consumption. The proposed H.264 video encoder hardware is based on an existing low cost H.264 intra frame coder hardware and it includes new reconfigurable MRF ME, mode decision and motion compensation hardware. The proposed H.264 video encoder hardware is capable of processing 55 CIF (352×288) frames per second and its power consumption ranges between 115mW and 235mW depending on the number of reference frames used for MRF ME.


neurological signs persist in about 2% ofpatients. At follow-up 10% die of a stroke in the next ten years. Patients deemed unsuitable for surgery are often treated with anticoagulants. Most trials show some statistically significant benefit over placebo, but how clinically significant this is remains debatable.' 9 Their use in arterial disease has little scientific rationale and is not without hazard. It may be that such simple remedies as aspirin, one dose of which inhibits platelet aggregation for over three days, will prove equally effective. The basis of T.I.A.s surely is to be found in the genesis of the widespread disorders which cause atheroma; improvement in our presently empirical modes of treatment is likely to be based on effective and preventive methods.


In this paper, we describe and utilize polarization contrast techniques of the adaptive polarization difference imaging algorithm and its transient modification for through-wall microwave imaging (TWMI) applications. Originally developed for optical imaging and sensing of polarization information in nature, this algorithm is modified to serve for target detection purposes in a through-wall environment. The proposed techniques exploit the polarization statistics of the observed scene for the detection and identification of changes within the scene and are not only capable of mitigating and substantially removing the wall effects but also useful in detecting motion, when conventional Doppler techniques are not applicable. Applications of the techniques to several TWMI scenarios including both homogeneous and periodic wall cases are presented.


Most existing models of ecological inference are based on the assumption that there is no aggregation bias. Few studies have focused on how to correct/ model aggregation bias. This article takes advantage of a unique opportunity to compare the controversial ecological inference methods by using aggregate as well as individual-level data from an actual election. Furthermore, the true quantities of interest are also available, which guarantees the accuracy of the empirical tests. Our mean squared error analyses show that King's Ecological Inference (EI) basic model does not always outperform the traditional ecological regression and neighborhood methods when aggregation bias does exist. However, using an appropriate covariate in the King's EI extended model to correct the aggregation bias problem can drastically improve the estimation accuracy at both the precinct and district levels. This article also makes suggestions on how to use a covariate in a King's extended model.


Purpose: This study was done to develop a pain management protocol for nursing home patients with dementia and to examine effects of the protocol on pain assessments and interventions by the nurses and on pain relief signs in the patients. Method: The six steps in the protocol development and the examination of effect are outlined. Three rounds using the Delphi technique and one group pretest-posttest design experiment were developed. Design issues, such as sample selection and sample size, are addressed in relation to the study protocol. Results: After implementation of the pain management protocol, there were significant changes nursing actions including frequency of number of physical examinations, utilization of pain assessment tools, and request to doctors for discomfort management and there were significant changes in frequency in the number of verbal and physical expressions of pain, and emotional patterns. Conclusion: This is the first pain management protocol for patients with dementia in Korea. However, more study will be needed to determine the methodological strength and necessary revisions for the protocol.


INTRODUCTION
the functioning of the healthcare industry in any country is impossible without providing enough medicines for patient care. This problem can best be resolved only when the majority of drugs, especially vital, will be made at national plants (industry). In this context, competition from generic drugs is the most optimal strategy to reduce drug's prices.

AIM
the paper should examine how the legal regime of intellectual property affects the availability of medicines for people and identify ways of supporting breakthrough inventions and counter ≪unreal innovations≫.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
for the purpose of study were generalized information from the scientific journals of medical and legal perspective, monographs by using a set of scientific methods. Namely under systematic approach have been analyzed the problems of pharmaceutical market, ways of producing generic and original drugs. Comparative legal method was useful for learning features of flexible mechanisms of the TRIPS Agreement and market regulation of medicines in the world.

RESULTS
based on the research was found that developed countries with strong pharmaceutical industry are interested in maximizing the protection of intellectual property rights, including importing countries. Flexible mechanisms of the TRIPS Agreement can be useful for developing countries.

CONCLUSIONS
thus, successful development of pharmaceutical industry and health care should be accompanied by the following measures: - improvement of public health must be recognized as a main task of government policy; - substantial state support aimed at increasing the availability of drugs in the domestic market and the strengthening of export potential; - decrease patent protection of medicines and stimulate market launch of generic copies.


Hierarchical Bi(3.64)Mo(0.36)O(6.55)/Bi2MoO6 isotype heterostructures were successfully prepared via a one-pot hydrothermal route by using Bi2O3 porous nanospheres as a sacrificial template. By tuning the reaction time, the formation process of the Bi(3.64)Mo(0.36)O(6.55)/Bi2MoO6 heterostructure involving Mo etching, phase transition and anisotropic growth was clearly identified. More importantly, the Bi(3.64)Mo(0.36)O(6.55)/Bi2MoO6 heterostructure displayed remarkably enhanced photocatalytic activity for dye photodegradation than pure phase bismuth molybdate due to the efficient electron-hole separation and the interfacial photogenerated hole migration from inside the Bi(3.64)Mo(0.36)O(6.55) layer to outside the Bi2MoO6 layer. The opposite hole migration from the outer layer to the inner layer was also detected in Bi2O3/Bi2WO6 heterostructures, which resulted in the decrease of photocatalytic activity, further verifying the importance of hole migration direction. This work provides a novel route to fabricate heterostructured photocatalysts, as well as gives a strategy for mediating the charge migration to improve photocatalytic performance.


The telomerase reverse transcriptase can recognize broken chromosome ends and add new telomeres de novo in a reaction termed "chromosome healing". Here we investigate new telomere formation in vitro by telomerases from a variety of flowering plant species. Comparing the electrophoretic mobilities and nucleotide sequences of the products, we uncovered three different modes of new telomere formation. The soybean telomerase, designated a Class I enzyme, only elongated DNA primers ending in telomeric nucleotides. Arabidopsis and maize telomerases, designated Class II enzymes, efficiently extended completely non-telomeric sequences by positioning the 3' terminus at a preferred site on the RNA template. Silene latifolia and sorghum telomerases constituted class III enzymes that elongated non-telomeric DNA primers by annealing them at alternative sites on the RNA template. For all enzymes, errors were prevalent during synthesis of the first two repeats, likely reflecting lateral instability of the primer 3' terminus on the template during the initial rounds of elongation. Class III telomerases, however, were five- to 13-fold more error prone than class II, generating more mistakes in distal repeats added to the primers. This remarkable variability in enzyme-DNA interactions among plant telomerases does not reflect phylogenetic relationships, and therefore implies that the telomerase active site can evolve rapidly.


Abstract. The Thorpe and Mason (TM) model for calculating the mass lost from a
sublimating snow grain is the basis of all existing small- and large-scale
estimates of drifting snow sublimation and the associated snow mass balance
of polar and alpine regions. We revisit this model to test its validity for
calculating sublimation from saltating snow grains. It is shown that
numerical solutions of the unsteady mass and heat balance equations of an
individual snow grain reconcile well with the steady-state solution of the TM
model, albeit after a transient regime. Using large-eddy simulations (LESs),
it is found that the residence time of a typical saltating particle is
shorter than the period of the transient regime, implying that using the
steady-state solution might be erroneous. For scenarios with equal initial
air and particle temperatures of 263.15 K, these errors range from 26 % for
low-wind, low-saturation-rate conditions to 38 % for high-wind, high-saturation-rate conditions. With a small temperature difference of 1 K
between the air and the snow particles, the errors due to the TM model are
already as high as 100 % with errors increasing for larger temperature
differences.


Developing effective, affordable, and sustainable delivery strategies for the isolated low-income populations that stand to gain the most from micronutrient interventions has proven difficult. We discuss our experience with implementation of zinc as treatment for diarrhea in children less than 5 y of age over the course of 3 operational research studies in rural Sikasso Region, Mali, West Africa. The initial formative research study highlighted how malaria affects perceptions of diarrhea and its causes and that malaria and diarrhea are not necessarily viewed as distinct conditions. The second-phase pilot introduction demonstrated that, in introducing zinc treatment in malaria-endemic regions, it is especially important that both community- and facility-level providers be trained to manage sick children presenting with multiple symptoms. The third-phase study on large-scale implementation detected that the experience with implementation of new treatments for malaria is distinct from that of diarrhea. To some extent zinc treatment is the solution to a problem that communities may not recognize at all. Interventions to improve case management of sick children must be integrated across diseases and nutritional problems at both the facility and community levels. Operational research can identify points where integration should occur and how it should be carried out. Programs targeting single diseases or single nutritional problems can have a variety of deleterious effects on health systems, no matter how well they are planned.


The method of basic components and cluster analysis was used to classify 75 units in the visual cortex of alert rabbits, proceeding from the empiric form of distribution of interspike intervals (DII), the mean frequency of impulsation and the relative number of intervals up to 500 msec. They were classified into nine groups containing from two to twelve units. Besides the cues, used as a basis for classification, the groups of units also differed in the structure of burst activity, the correlation of adjacent intervals and the ratio between the short (up to 20 to 60 msec) and long intervals. The latter served to make suggestions on the genetic affinity of bimodal DII to those with a bend on the waning after the maximum, and on the nature of formation of high frequency bursts and intervals exceeding 20 to 60 msec.


The paper offers a comparative study of the syntactic structure of nominal constituents in French Lexifier Creoles (FLC). In spite of the superficial variability observed in the distribution of FLC determiners, the paper argues that FLC have a common functional architecture and presents both conceptual and empirical arguments in support of this view. Variability, the paper proposes, is the result of extensive phrasal movement inside this common architecture that is triggered by the functional heads of FLC. Whether a given FLC determiner is a functional head or not is taken to reflect grammaticalization processes modeled in the Minimalist framework. This novel approach to grammaticalization and particularly to 'semantic bleaching' is shown to have a structuring effect that accounts for the ordering differences manifest across FLC determiners.


Pharmacological levels of inorganic forms of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) are frequently used in diets for pigs to improve performance and control post-weaning colibacillosis. However, the use of such forms and levels causes mineral accumulation in the soil, and is a non-sustainable practice from an environmental perspective. Alternatively, organic complexes of copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) have been proposed to be more available to pigs, and when included at lower levels than inorganic sources of these minerals have significantly reduced mineral excretion in faeces without compromising performance. However the effect of these organic minerals fed simultaneously at low levels of inclusion has not been well studied. The general hypothesis tested in this thesis was that concentrations of Cu and Zn in faecal material would be reduced when fed in an organic (Bioplex) form without compromising performance or mineral homeostasis in growing/finishing pigs, in comparison to Cu and Zn fed in an inorganic (sulphate) form.

Two experiments were performed to test this hypothesis: Experiment 1 was designed as a 2x2 factorial arrangement of treatments, with two mineral forms (Bioplex and Sulphate) and two inclusion levels (High and Low). The 'low' levels aimed at providing 80 mg/kg of dietary Cu and Zn, and the 'high' levels aimed at providing 160 mg/kg of dietary Cu and Zn. Experiment 2 was designed as a 3x2 factorial arrangement of treatments, with two mineral forms (Bioplex and Sulphate) and three inclusion levels (Low, Medium and High). The 'low' levels aimed at providing 25 mg/kg of Cu and 40 mg/kg of Zn, the 'medium' levels aimed at providing 80 mg/kg of both Cu and Zn, and the 'high' levels aimed at providing 160 mg/kg of both Cu and Zn in the diet. Unfortunately the Medium sulphate grower diet was contaminated with excess Zn while manufacturing, which led to the exclusion of this treatment from the study.

In Experiment 1, pigs fed LB (Low Bioplex) or HS (High Sulphate) diets grew faster (P=0.014) and their carcasses were 3.5 kg heavier (P=0.020) than LS (Low Sulphate)- or HB (High Bioplex)-fed pigs. Pigs fed LB or HS diets had lower (P=0.001) levels of Zn in plasma, a higher (P=0.029) concentration of Zn in the pancreas and a lower (P=0.020) concentration of Zn in bone than pigs fed LS or HB diets. The concentration of Cu in liver increased (P=0.017) with the concentration in the diet as did Cu and Zn levels in faeces (P 0.05) in growth rate between experimental diets, but again there was an overall improvement (P=0.012) in FCR when Bioplex were included. Blood and tissue Cu and Zn concentrations were within normal physiological ranges in all treatments, supporting a reduction of Cu and Zn levels in the diet. Only Zn level in plasma during the growing phase and Cu and Zn concentration in tissues increased (P<0.001) with the addition in the diet. None of the biomarkers of Cu or Zn status analysed in the pigs showed any difference between the inorganic and the Bioplex forms. Copper and Zn concentrations in faecal material decreased (P<0.001) with their inclusion in the diet, and only in the finishing collection there was a further decrease of 10% in Zn faecal concentration when Bioplex was included instead of the sulphate at similar low levels. Carcass and meat quality measures were independent of the Cu and Zn form or level, however a higher proportion of carcasses from LB-fed pigs had <14 mm subcutaneous fat depth at the P2 site. The inclusion of Bioplex failed to have a significant effect on Cu excretion and its inclusion had an inconsistent effect on Zn excretion.

The overall findings from this thesis partially supported the hypothesis that the inclusion of Bioplex would reduce the concentration of Cu and Zn in faeces compared to the inclusion of inorganic forms at similar inclusion levels. Nevertheless, total Cu and Zn levels in growing/finishing pig diets could be reduced from 160 mg/kg of both Cu and Zn to 30 mg/kg Cu and 60 mg/kg Zn, in either the sulphate or the Bioplex form, without negatively affecting performance or mineral homeostasis in the pigs and significantly reducing Cu and Zn excretion (between 50 and 80%). The advantage of including Bioplex instead of sulphates was in the improvement in FCR. Carcass and meat quality were independent of the form and level of dietary Cu and Zn.


This paper studies the temporal characteristics of the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-based visible light communication (VLC) channel using radiometric concepts. Throughout this study, we account for the delays experienced by the transmitted power along the continuum of paths originating at the source, passing through the IRS, reaching the detector. Then, we derive the impulse response of multi-element phase-tunable metasurface and orientation-tunable mirror array-based reflector setups for a general setting of source, reflector, and detector dimensions and relative positions. In addition, we derive simpler expressions for the two special cases, namely, the point source and the large-source small-reflector. Moreover, we present the exact expression for the delay spread and derive lower, upper bounds and asymptotic expressions when the number of reflecting elements increases for both reflector types. Finally, we study the impact of several system parameters on the temporal characterization of the two IRS-based VLC systems.


In this letter we introduce a new conceptual framework to investigate into the underlying structure of network bottlenecks in maxmin fair flow control. It is shown that a network has a hierarchical structure with regard to its bottlenecks. The number H of network bottleneck levels is proved to be no greater than the number K of network bottleneck rates. It is also shown that there can be many bottleneck rates on each hierarchical level. So H can be much smaller than K.


Through Margaret Thatcher's private and public performances, the micro-politics of dress translated into the macro-politics of power. Thatcher's changing career can be traced through her dress (see Young 1991: 416-417); analysis of her dress leading up to and during her Premiership reveals both her aspirations and increasing power. Understanding of Thatcher's agency in her embodied, dressed performances can be informed and developed through Butler's (1999) conceptualization of performativity. Through adaptation, repetition and divergent dress, Thatcher constructed different identities, some of which became iconic symbols of her self and her politics. Examination of Thatcher's dress refines the understanding of the relationship between constraints and agency experienced by actors in the public realm. Upon becoming party leader, Margaret Thatcher's gender, class and ideological viewpoints were incongruent with her unprecedented political status and she faced many challenges in attempting to overcome this. Dress became a potentially destabilising focus for her critics and symbolic of her "outsider" status. Yet in the face of these challenges she recognized and learned from the expectations of others, adapting and changing her dress. However, this was not an instantaneous, complete or permanent transformation. What Thatcher achieved, as she crafted her dressed performances, was agency over a further aspect of her life and her politics. There was also an evolving alignment of her dress with her political ideology and domestic and international roles over time.


Objectives: Find out the effect of structured teaching program on knowledge regarding self-care management of diabetes mellitus among the diabetic patients of the selected community area, Khordha, and to determine the association between post-test scores with selected sociodemographic variables. Methods: In this study Quasi-experimental (one group pre and posttest) design was used. Purposive type of sampling technique was used to select fifty no. of diabetic patients of a selected area of Khordha, Odisha as study sample, and Self-structure close-ended multiple-choice questionnaire was used to the collection of information. Result: There were maximum respondents (36%) were within 35-40 years of age. The majority (54%) were males. According to religion, the maximum (96%) were Hindu. According to Educational status, maximum (64%) were graduate. According to previous exposure to STP on self-care management of DM, maximum (84%) were having no previous exposure and analysis is revealed that structured teaching program improved the knowledge of diabetic patients regarding self-care management of diabetes (before intervention 11.66±2.2 & after intervention 23.08±2.31) significantly as calculated "t" value is 34.92 & calculated p-value was ˂0.0001 which is less than 0.05 level of significance. A statistically no significant association was there in between the knowledge score of DM affected people on a structured teaching program of DM with a sociodemographic variable. Conclusion: On the finding of the study, it was found that a structured teaching program is more practical in upgrading the knowledge of patients on self-management of diabetes which ultimately can improve their health status.


Purpose: To develop an algorithm for real‐time volumetric image reconstruction and 3D tumor localization based on a single x‐ray projection image in a non‐invasive, accurate, and efficient way for lungcancerradiotherapy.Method and Materials: Given a 4DCT or 4DCBCT as the training data, we perform deformable image registration between a reference phase and all the other phases. The deformation vector fields (DVF) are parameterized efficiently by principal component analysis (PCA). Then we optimize the DVF applied to the reference image by adapting the PCA coefficients such that the DRR of the deformed image matches the acquired x‐ray projection. The inherent regularization of PCA model allows us to reconstruct the volumetric image and localize the tumor in 3D space with a single projection. A realistic and dynamic mathematical phantom was used to validate the algorithm. Results: We generated a dynamic phantom consisting of 60 phases with a 50% increase in breathing amplitude compared with training data. We simulated cone beam projections at all angles with spacing of 1° resulting in 360 projections. The average relative 3D image reconstruction error is 7.5% ± 2.4%. The average 3D tumor localization error is 0.9 mm ± 0.5 mm. We implemented our algorithm on an NVIDIA C1060 GPU. The computation time for each projection is achieved in less than 0.6 seconds (between 0.32 and 0.55 seconds depending on the extent of deformation). Conclusion: We have shown the feasibility of reconstructing volumetric image and localizing tumor in 3D in near real‐time using a single x‐ray image. Further speedup may be achieved by better parameter initialization (e.g., using the previous frame in fluoroscopy) and GPU code optimization. Validation on patient data is under way. Clinical application can potentially lead to accurate 3D tumor tracking from a single imager.


Experimental animal models need to be developed for studies of composite flaps that have often recently been used for defects of both bone and soft tissues. A consistent anatomy, simple surgical technique, and reliable blood flow are essential for the success of experimental flap studies. Here we propose a gluteus maximus‐tensor fascia lata osteomuscle flap in rats as a model of these qualities. Gluteus maximus and tensor fascia lata muscles and the adjacent iliac bone segment were combined as a lateral circumflex femoral artery‐based flap. To test the reliability of this composite flap, three types of composite tissues were harvested and replaced: osteomusculocutaneous flap, osteomuscle flap, and osteomuscle composite graft. The osteomusculocutaneous flap was elevated by including a skin island over the gluteal region. The osteomuscle graft was formed by deliberately dividing the vascular pedicle of the osteomuscle flap. Direct observation revealed complete necrosis of the skin islands in all osteomusculocutaneous flaps. Microangiography of the flap demonstrated that both muscles and the attached bone were supplied by the pedicle. Dye studies with nitro blue tetrazolium (NBT) and India ink demonstrated dye uptake in both muscle and bone components in osteomuscle flaps. Histological examinations also demonstrated the viability of both tissues only in the flap group. Bone scintigraphy performed in flaps on postoperative day 7 demonstrated radionuclide uptake, confirming perfusion of the bony segment. The gluteus maximus‐tensor fascia lata osteomuscle flap is a reliable and simple model for composite flap studies that offers the following advantages: 1) it is a new composite flap which includes bone, 2) it can be dissected easily with the naked eye, without using the microscope, 3) it has a long pedicle for flap displacement, and 4) it is a small animal model. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc. MICROSURGERY 23:582–588 2003


In the U.S., HIV transmission rates have increased among male-male sexual contacts. Sex education reduces HIV-related risks; yet impacts for adolescent sexual minority males (ASMM) are less known. Data from a sample (n = 556) of ASMM (aged 13-18) in three U.S cities were used to examined associations between HIV education in school and sexual behaviors. Outcomes of interest included: sexually transmitted infection (STI), multiple sex partners, and condomless anal intercourse (CAI) with a male (all past 12 months). Adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated. Of 556 ASMM, 84% reported received HIV education. Among sexually active ASMM (n = 440) who received HIV education, fewer reported an STI (10% vs. 21%, aPR: 0.45, CI [0.26, 0.76]) and CAI (48% vs. 64%, aPR: 0.71, CI [0.58, 0.87]) than ASMM who did not receive HIV education. Protective effects of school HIV education on sexual behaviors are promising and suggest prevention education is vital to reducing HIV- and STI-related risks among ASMM.


Large unaltered samples of the atmosphere covering the past century would complement the history of atmospheric gases obtained from bubbles in ice cores, enabling measurement of geochemically important species such as O2, 14CH4, and 14CO. Sand dunes are a porous media with interstitial air in diffusive contact with the atmosphere, somewhat analogous to the unconsolidated layer of firn atop glaciers. Recent studies have demonstrated the value of firn as an archive of old air [Battle et al., 1996; Bender et al., 1994a]. Unlike firn, sand dunes are incompressible and so remain permeable to greater depths and may extend the firn record into the past century. To evaluate the feasibility of using sand dunes as archives of old air, we drilled 60 m deep test holes in the Algodones Dunes, Imperial Valley, California. The main objective was to see if the air in a sand dune is as old as predicted by a diffusion model, or if the dune is rapidly flushed by advective pumping during windstorms and barometric pressure changes. We dated the air with chlorofluorocarbons and krypton-85, anthropogenic tracers whose atmospheric concentrations are known and have been increasing rapidly in the past half century. These tracer data match the pure diffusion model well, showing that advection in this dune is negligible compared to diffusion as a transport mechanism and that the mean age of the air at 61 m depth is ∼10 years. Dunes therefore do contain old air. However, dunes appear to suffer from two serious drawbacks as archives. Microbial metabolism is evident in elevated CO2 and N2O and depressed CH4 and O2 concentrations in this dune, corrupting the signals of interest in this and probably most dunes. Second, isotopic analyses of N2 and O2 from the dune show that fractionation of the gases occurs due to diffusion of water vapor, complicating the interpretation of the O2 signal beyond the point of viability for an air archive. Sand dunes may be useful for relatively inert gases with large atmospheric concentration changes such as chlorofluorocarbons.


The segmentation method used for the analysis of arbitrarily shaped planar structures is extended to a more general form to account for capacitive loading between parallel plates. In power integrity (PI) analysis of power delivery networks (PDN), the capacitive loading represents decoupling capacitors between power and ground planes. The algorithm is geared to the analysis of PDNs for performance evaluation, selection and placement of decoupling capacitors. For linear circuits, the proposed integrated algorithm eliminates the commonly used two-step approach. In the case of nonlinear loads, the algorithm helps to reduce the size of modified admittance matrix (MNA) and relaxes the burden of following circuit simulation. The proposed method is validated in comparison to a numerical electromagnetic (EM) simulator.


Introduction: The paper reports on an evaluation study of spaces in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHL), Biological Sciences (BSL) and Walter Harrison Law (WHLL) Libraries of the University of Queensland (UQ). The study was part of an evaluation of the quality and patterns of use of spaces in UQ libraries, which aimed to propose recommendations for future improvements and decision-making. This paper presents a study of areas of weakness in existing SSHL spaces, and impacts of the refurbishment of spaces at BSL and WHLL on students' experiences. The findings evidence a link between students' learning experiences and the quality of library spaces. Methods: An online survey, "Students' Experiences and Perceptions of Library Physical Spaces", was designed to collect data from students. The survey questions addressed seven topics: (1) overall satisfaction with spaces in the UQ Libraries; (2) welcoming nature of the library entry; (3) lighting; (4) acoustics; (5) furniture; (6) wayfinding; and (7) preferences for different space types in the library. Results: 1505 students completed the surveys, with 1098 responses recorded to open-ended questions on why students visited the libraries and the physical characteristics of the spaces that influenced their experiences. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data elucidated key design challenges and considerations. In particular, the data suggested that the provision of individual quiet study spaces remains an important role of academic libraries, with Studying Alone identified as the most important reason for student visits. Conclusions: The findings highlight the importance of individual study spaces and propose a number of recommendations in relation to physical space design and management. Relevance: Academic libraries face the challenge to keep pace with change in relation to students' demographics, pedagogy and technology. In doing so, it is important to have an understanding of the evolving patterns of students' learning behaviours, space uses and preferences through ongoing evaluation of library spaces.


In this study, stress and displacement functions of the three-dimensional theory of elasticity for homogeneous isotropic bodies are derived from first principles from the differential equations of equilibrium, the generalized stress – strain laws and the geometric relations of strain and displacement. It is found that the stress and displacement functions must be biharmonic functions. The derived functions are used to solve the elasticity problem of finding stresses and displacement fields in a thick circular plate with clamped edges for the case of uniformly distributed transverse load over the plate domain. Superposition of second to sixth order Legendre polynomials which are biharmonic functions are used in the thick circular plate problem as the stress function with the unknown constants as the parameters to be determined. Use of the stresses and displacement fields derived in terms of the stress and displacement function yielded the stress fields and displacement fields in terms of the unknown constants of the biharmonic stress function. Enforcement of the boundary conditions yielded the unknown constants, leading to a complete determination of the stress and displacement function for the stress fields and the displacement fields. The solutions obtained are comparable to solutions in the technical literature.


Revision with unchanged content. Given the rising importance of the global media and the relative unwillingness of democratic publics to accept casualties in war, decision makers have increasingly relied on the strategic dissemination of rhetoric in order to justify military engagements. They "talk intervention", that is, they justify foreign engagements in terms of an emerging global norm that finds the international community "responsible to protect". Adversaries of interventions, in contrast, emphasize the inherent uncertainties and risks associated with such undertakings, taking advantage of the "body-bag-effect". This book identifies prevalent foreign policy frames and analyzes their impact on individual attitudes towards foreign policy decisions. It argues that framing effects can be best understood as an interaction between message content and personal traits. A case study on Germany bolsters this argument, providing experimental evidence that interventionist talking and its counter-rationale exert some influence on the formation of political preferences. It also shows that the magnitude of this influence is very much contingent on the individuals' political sophistication and prior dispositions.


Linde type A (LTA) aluminophosphate is a promising candidate for an energy storage material used for low-temperature solar and waste-heat management. The mechanism of reversible water adsorption, which is the basis for potential industrial applications, is still not clear. In this paper, we provide mechanistic insight into various aspects of the hydration process using molecular modeling methods. Building on accurate DFT calculations and available experimental data, we first refine the existing empirical force-field used in subsequent classical molecular dynamics simulations that captures the relevant physics of the water binding process. We succeed in fully reproducing the experimentally determined X-ray structure factors and use them to estimate the number of water molecules present in the fully hydrated state of the material. Furthermore, we show that the translational and orientational mobility of the confined water is significantly reduced and resembles the dynamics of glassy systems.


This chapter reports on a project conducted within the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC's) Learning Society Programme in the United Kingdom (UK). The program examined the ways in which lifelong learning can contribute to the development of knowledge and skills for employment and in other areas of adult life. In initiatives aimed at developing a learning society, the concept of multiskilling plays a key role in relation to learning at work and organisational learning. This chapter presents the results of the project that compared the experiences of training for multiskilling in the UK and Germany. The chapter outlines the background to the study, its theoretical conceptualisation, objectives, methodology and findings, and conclusions drawn from the outcomes of the research. The research compared training systems, skill provision and multiskilling in the engineering, construction and care sectors of both countries. The major objectives were to: contribute to the exploration of a learning society; develop an understanding of the processes by which a learning culture develops; examine the contribution of government initiatives to the further development of vocational education and training (VET) in the UK and compare these with German programs to meet changing skill requirements; evaluate the extent to which the VET systems in both countries were able to meet the need for multiskilled personnel in the three industrial sectors investigated. The volume from which this chapter is taken is indexed at TD/TNC 67.145. The second volume of findings from the ESRC Learning Society Programme is indexed at TD/TNC 67.152.


Sluicing – the elliptical construction in which all of a constituent question goes missing except for the interrogative phrase – is commonly analyzed as involving movement of the interrogative phrase to Spec-CP followed by deletion of TP (Ross 1969, Merchant 2001). In this paper, I examine how well the movement-plus-deletion analysis extends to Farsi, a wh-in situ language that, surprisingly, has a sluicing construction nearly identical to its English counterpart. I argue that the interrogative phrase in Farsi sluicing escapes deletion not by wh-movement as in English but by a type of focus movement. This operation, which normally applies very generally and is optional, is restricted in sluicing contexts in two ways: (i) it is obligatory, and (ii) it only applies to interrogative phrases. I propose a formal implementation that integrates these two properties into the licensing requirement on deletion, advancing the current understanding of the syntax of sluicing.


GI cancer is not one cancer but is a term for the group of cancers that affect the digestive system including gastric cancer (GC), colorectal cancer (CRC), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), esophageal cancer (EC), and pancreatic cancer (PC). Overall, the GI cancers are responsible for more cancers and more deaths from cancer than any other organ. 5 year survival of these cancers remains low compared to western world. Unlike the rest of the world where organ based specialities hepatobiliary, pancreatic, colorectal and esophagogastric exist , these cancers are managed in India by either a gastrointestinal surgeons, surgical oncologist, or a general surgeon with varying outcomes.The aim of this review was to collate data on GI cancers in indian continent. In colorectal cancers, data from tertiary care centres identifies the unique problem of mucinous and signet colorectal cancer. Results of rectal cancer resection in terms of technique (intersphincteric resection, extralevator aper, minimal invasive approach ) to be comparable with world literature. However long term outcome and data regarding colon cancers and nationally is needed. Gastric cancer at presentation are advanced and in surgically resected patients, there is need for a trial to compare chemoradiation vs chemotherapy alone to prevent loco regional recurrence. Data on minimal invasive gastric cancer surgery may be sparse for the same reason. Theree is a lot of data on surgical techniques and perioperatve outcomes in pancreatic cancer. There is a high volume of locally advanced gallbladder cancers with efforts on to decide whether neoadjuvant chemotherapy or neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy is better for down staging. Considering GI cancers, a heterogeneous disease with site specific treatment options and variable outcomes, the overall data and outcomes are extremely variable. Young patients with pathology unique to the Indian subcontinent (for example, signet ring rectal cancer, GBCs) need focussed attention. Solution for such pathology needs to come from the Indian continent itself. Joint efforts to improve outcomes for GI cancer can be integrated under the national cancer grid program.


In studies with chicks inoculated with the Sk-1 strain of infectious bursal agent the bursa of Fabricius was found to be the tissue of choke for virus isolation as well as for use in the fluorescent antibody test and the agar gel diffusion test. In separate experiments positive results were obtained until postinoculation days 3 or 4 by the agar gel diffusion test, 5 or 6 by the fluorescent antibody test and 14 by the virus isolation method, respectively. Bursas from chickens involved in seven natural outbreaks of infectious bursal disease were then examined by these three methods. Virus was isolated from six outbreaks and infectious bursal agent antigen was demonstrated in three by the agar gel diffusion test method and seven (three by direct examination and four after one passage in chicks) by the fluorescent antibody test method. Passage in chicks was required when nonspecific fluorescence complicated the interpretation of fluorescent antibody test results.


In this contribution we have briefly analyzed the approach lying at the basis of semi-empirical calculation of the potential barrier for molecule internal rotations. In opposite to it, we have suggested the way how to find this barrier on purely theoretical grounds. For this purpose, we have used the bond-charge model with clamped charges, and in this contribu- tion restricted ourselves by the simplest case of such molecules as ethane. It was found that this approach leads to theoretical results which are in a good agreement with experimental data. It means that the electronic theory of molecule vibrations developed earlier has a large degree of generality and can be used to study not only vibrations but also rotations of mo- lecules and macromolecules on the basis of one and the same approach, excluding a lot of em- pirical parameters which are often do not clarify a subject but immerse it into darkness.


How the same DNA sequences can function in the three-dimensional architecture of interphase nucleus, fold in the very compact structure of metaphase chromosomes and go precisely back to the original interphase architecture in the following cell cycle remains an unresolved question to this day. The strategy used to address this issue was to analyze the correlations between chromosome architecture and the compositional patterns of DNA sequences spanning a size range from a few hundreds to a few thousands Kilobases. This is a critical range that encompasses isochores, interphase chromatin domains and boundaries, and chromosomal bands. The solution rests on the following key points: 1) the transition from the looped domains and sub-domains of interphase chromatin to the 30-nm fiber loops of early prophase chromosomes goes through the unfolding into an extended chromatin structure (probably a 10-nm "beads-on-a-string" structure); 2) the architectural proteins of interphase chromatin, such as CTCF and cohesin sub-units, are retained in mitosis and are part of the discontinuous protein scaffold of mitotic chromosomes; 3) the conservation of the link between architectural proteins and their binding sites on DNA through the cell cycle explains the "mitotic memory" of interphase architecture and the reversibility of the interphase to mitosis process. The results presented here also lead to a general conclusion which concerns the existence of correlations between the isochore organization of the genome and the architecture of chromosomes from interphase to metaphase.


We propose a new screened charge method for calculating partial atomic charges in molecules by electrostatic potential (ESP) fitting. The model, called full density screening (FDS), is used to approximate the screening effect of full charge densities of atoms in molecules. The results are compared to the conventional ESP fitting method based on point charges and to our previously proposed outer density screening (ODS) method, in which the parameters are reoptimized for the present purpose. In ODS, the charge density of an atom is represented by the sum of a point charge and a smeared negative charge distributed in a Slater-type orbital (STO). In FDS, the charge density of an atom is taken to be the sum of the charge density of the neutral atom and a partial atomic charge (of either sign) distributed in an STO. The ζ values of the STOs used in these two models are optimized in the present study to best reproduce the electrostatic potentials. The quality of the fit to the electrostatics is improved in the screened charge methods, especially for the regions that are within one van der Waals radius of the centers of atoms. It is also found that the charges derived by fitting electrostatic potentials with screened charges are less sensitive to the positions of the fitting points than are those derived with conventional electrostatic fitting. Moreover, we found that the electrostatic-potential-fitted (ESP) charges from the screened charge methods are similar to those from the point-charge method except for molecules containing the methyl group, where we have explored the use of restraints on nonpolar H atoms. We recommend the FDS model if the only goal is ESP fitting to obtain partial atomic charges or a fit to the ESP field. However, the ODS model is more accurate for electronic embedding in combined quantum mechanical and molecular mechanical (QM/MM) modeling and is more accurate than point-charge models for ESP fitting, and it is recommended for applications involving QM/MM methods. Since the screened charges describe the electrostatic potentials more accurately than point charges, since they asymptotically act as point charges at long distances, and since the electrostatic potential in terms of the screened charges is still a sum of functions centered at the atoms, the screened-charge representation of the electrostatic potential can be used in the same way as the conventional point-charge representation to model the electrostatic interactions, but it is more realistic. For the H atom and p block elements, the error in the fit to the electrostatic potential is reduced by about a factor of 3, and the sensitivity of the derived partial atomic charges to the choice of fitting points is reduced by about a factor of 2. For s and d block elements, there are also improvements in the inner regions but not necessarily in the outer regions.


Efficiency in the blending of the marketing mix elements all things being equal is higher among firms whose operations are based on market segmentation principles. Given this, the study appraised the level of adoption of the principle of market segmentation in the equipment leasing industry of Nigeria as it assessed this industry in relation to the nation's macro economic development. Data base of the research are questionnaire and oral interviews. Findings are that the volume and value of transactions in the equipment lease industry is small thus lessors are involved in scramble merchandizing rather than in specialized operational fields of equipment leasing, lessors have poor knowledge of the needs and operational environments of the lessees hence adoption rate to changes in the market is poor, among others. This work recommends the recapitalization of the market as a means of strengthening the financial base of lessors for specialized operation as well as introduction of policies that have the capacity of encouraging cross boarder lease transactions in Nigeria.


Abstract. This paper considers the potential of using the documentation approach proposed for the heritage buildings in Historic Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (as a case study) by using the close-range photogrammetry / the Architectural Photogrammetry techniques as a new academic experiment in digital architectural heritage education. Moreover, different than most of engineering educational techniques related to architecture education, this paper will be focusing on the 3-D data acquisition technology as a tool to document and to learn the principals of the digital architectural heritage documentation. The objective of this research is to integrate the 3-D modelling and visualisation knowledge for the purposes of identifying, designing and evaluating an effective engineering educational experiment. Furthermore, the students will learn and understand the characteristics of the historical building while learning more advanced 3-D modelling and visualisation techniques. It can be argued that many of these technologies alone are difficult to improve the education; therefore, it is important to integrate them in an educational framework. This should be in line with the educational ethos of the academic discipline. Recently, a number of these technologies and methods have been effectively used in education sectors and other purposes; such as in the virtual museum. However, these methods are not directly coincided with the traditional education and teaching architecture. This research will be introduced the proposed approach as a new academic experiment in the architecture education sector. The new teaching approach will be based on the Architectural Photogrammetry to provide semantically rich models. The academic experiment will require students to have suitable knowledge in both Photogrammetry applications to engage with the process.


Herein, a polyol method has been explored for producing magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle clusters that are potentially useful as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), as drug carriers in tumor therapy, and for bioseparation. The oriented attachment growth of primary particles is widely accepted as a major driving force for the formation of clusters; on the other hand, the commonly used high-boiling point alcohols are used as high-temperature reaction media and reductants in particular for the formation of primary magnetite nanoparticles. However, the role of alcohols remains far from being understood. Herein, systematic studies were carried out to further reveal the molecular role of the high-boiling point alcohols and that of the commonly used stabilizing agent poly(acrylic acid) (PAA). The impact of the structure of alcohols, e.g., monohydric and dihydric alcohols with different chain lengths, on the morphology of the resulting clusters was investigated in detail. The experimental results reveal that the crosslinking effect of the oxidized dihydric alcohols determines the formation of Fe3O4 particle clusters, whereas PAA helps in the formation of spherical clusters by reducing the surface tension. Based on a combination of magnetic measurements and drug loading tests, the impacts of the structures of dihydric alcohols on the magnetic properties, especially on the magnetic response to external fields and drug loading capacities, have been disclosed; in brief, the current study clearly discloses the role of the high-boiling point alcohols in the formation of magnetite particle clusters for the first time, which is beneficial for fine tuning the overall morphology and internal molecular structure of the resulting particle clusters to improve their magnetic response, drug loading efficiency, and MRI contrast enhancing performance.


Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) offer many potential advantages to clinicians. A number of systems have begun to appear for all types of PDAs that allow for the recording and tracking of patient information. PDAs allow information to be both entered and accessed at the point of care. They also allow information entered away from a central repository to be added or "synced" with data through the use of a wireless or wired connection. Few systems, however, have been designed to work in the client/server environment. Even fewer have been designed as point of care additions to already existing enterprise systems. This paper describes the issues encountered in deploying such a system for use in the University of Washington Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). The lessons learned could be applied to other institutions that will seek to add handheld technology to information systems in the future.


The aging and elderly population are particularly susceptible to cardiovascular disease. Age is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in adults, but these risks are compounded by additional factors, including frailty, obesity, and diabetes. These factors are known to complicate and enhance cardiac risk factors that are associated with the onset of advanced age. Sex is another potential risk factor in aging adults, given that older females are reported to be at a greater risk for CVD than age-matched men. However, in both men and women, the risks associated with CVD increase with age, and these correspond to an overall decline in sex hormones, primarily of estrogen and testosterone. Despite this, hormone replacement therapies are largely shown to not improve outcomes in older patients and may also increase the risks of cardiac events in older adults. This review discusses current findings regarding the impacts of age and gender on heart disease.


Stratification reduces the variance of sample estimates for population parameters by creating homogeneous
strata. Often, surveyors stratify the population using the most convenient variables such
as age, sex, region, etc. Such convenient methods often do not produce internally homogeneous
strata, hence, the precision of the estimates of the variables of interest could be further improved.
This paper introduces an R-package called 'stratifyR' whereby it proposes a method for optimal
stratification of survey populations for a univariate study variable that follows a particular distribution
estimated from a data set that is available to the surveyor. The stratification problem is
formulated as a mathematical programming problem and solved by using a dynamic programming
technique. Methods for several distributions such as uniform, weibull, gamma, normal, lognormal,
exponential, right-triangular, cauchy and pareto are presented. The package is able to construct
optimal stratification boundaries (OSB) and calculate optimal sample sizes (OSS) under Neyman
allocation. Several examples, using simulated data, are presented to illustrate the stratified designs
that can be constructed with the proposed methodology. Results reveal that the proposed method
computes OSB that are precise and comparable to the established methods. All the calculations
presented in this paper were carried out using the stratifyR package that will be made available on
CRAN.


Forensic Urine Drug Testing Laboratories often requires two confirmatory methods for a methamphetamine positive screen. First, methamphetamine is identified and quantitated using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. If the total methamphetamine concentration is above the administrative cutoff level, the isomeric composition must be determined. This eliminates a possible contribution by over-the-counter cold medications that contain l-methamphetamine (Vick's inhalers). Products that contain only the l-isomer of methamphetamine must be distinguishable from prescription or illicitly manufactured methamphetamine, which consists mainly of the d-isomer. Optically impure derivatizing reagents will produce an impure mixture from a pure isomeric compound. Therefore, methods utilizing impure reagents can prove problematic when interpreting results. Use of an optically pure chiral derivatizing reagent, such as R(-)-alpha-methoxy-alpha-trifluoromethylphenylacetic acid chloride, allows for the creation and measurement of chromatographically separable isomeric compounds. The novel method described here utilizes a polymer-based solid-phase column adapted to a positive pressure manifold extraction system and a one-step derivatization process that occurs directly in the elution solvent. This methodology eliminates an elution solvent dry-down step that may adversely affect recovery of volatile amphetamine compounds. Although the method was designed for the quantitative analysis of the isomers of amphetamine and methamphetamine, it can be adapted for use with a wide range of phenethylamines including methylenedioxyamphetamine, N-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, and possibly N-methylenedioxyethylamphetamine. The linear range for quantitation was 25-10,000 ng/mL for d,l-methamphetamine and d,l-amphetamine, and correlation coefficients were 0.997 or better. The coefficient of variation for all four analytes did not exceed 2.8%. Concentrations analyzed ranged from 500 to 4000 ng/mL (n=40). The method allows for a simple and accurate quantitation and isomeric determination of amphetamine and methamphetamine using a process that eliminates extraction and derivatization complications common in current methods.


Protein corona formation on nanoparticles (NPs), affect NP physicochemical properties, cellular uptake and toxicity, and has been reported extensively. To date, studies of the occurrence and potential importance of small molecule (metabolite) coronas are limited. We sought to determine such a corona using high-sensitivity metabolomics combined with a well-established model system for freshwater ecotoxicology (Daphnia magna feeding on Chlorella vulgaris) and amino functionalised polystyrene NPs (NH2-pNPs). Initially, we optimised our method using a targeted LC-MS/MS approach for sodium dodecylsulphate (SDS) as an analogue to signalling molecules that are known to occur in our freshwater model system. Following, we performed an untargeted discovery metabolomics study – using high-sensitivity nanoelectrospray direct infusion mass spectrometry (DIMS) for the unbiased assessment of the metabolite corona of NH2-pNPs in the freshwater model system. Untargeted DIMS metabolomics reproducibly detected 100s of small molecule peaks extracted from the NH2-pNPs when exposed to conditioned media from the D. magna-C. vulgaris model system. Attempts to annotate these extracted metabolites, including through the application of van Krevelen and Kendrick Mass Defect plots, indicate a diverse range of metabolites that were not clustered into any particular class. Overall, we demonstrate the existence of an ecologically relevant metabolite corona on the surface of NPs through application of a high-sensitivity, untargeted mass spectrometry metabolomics workflow.


Summary
Background.The Italian Registry on Severe Asthma (IRSA) is the most recent and largest registry in Italy. Objective. To improve the knowledge on the clinical and biological features of severe asthma (SA), and to monitor its treatments. Methods. To analyze clinical, functional, inflammatory, and treatment characteristics of severe asthmatics from the IRSA registry. Results. 851 subjects were enrolled. 31.8% and 64.5% of patients were submitted to oral corticosteroids (OCS), and monoclonal antibodies (MABs), respectively. At least two comorbidities affected 77.4% patients. Asthma was uncontrolled in 62.2% patients. Uncontrolled patients had a higher frequency of exacerbations, and hospitalization, showing a higher eosinophilic phenotype, a greater use of OCS, and being treated with MAB less frequently. However, uncontrolled patients treated with MAB had a lower use of OCS and a lower rate of hospitalization. Comparing SA patients with atopy and without atopy, the latter showed a greater use of OCS, and more frequent nasal polyposis and osteoporosis. Among SA patients with atopy treated with MAB, 36% were on a treatment targeting the IL-5 pathway. Conclusions and clinical relevance. This study shows the features of the greatest Italian registry of SA patients, revealing at the time of enrollment a poor disease control, and the use of OCS and MABs in about one third and two thirds of patients, respectively. SA is a complex disease that requires a more precise phenotyping and a greater disease control.


In a text (1892) on light, Jules Henri Poincaré introduced a geometrical device for tracking the polarization of state of light interacting with matter. Poincaré first mapped all polarization ellipses onto the surface of sphere and changes of state were represented as rotations from one point to another about prescribed axes depending on linear optical properties of the medium. Here, we consider how Poincaré, the mathematician, invented his sphere. Poincaré's professional activities in the service of geodesy appear at first glance to provide a borrowed geometry for his one-to-one mapping of polarization ellipses to global lines of latitude and longitude. However, this association falls apart in the face of a close reading of Poincaré's biography and his influences, especially the research interests of his teachers from the École Polytechnique and the Écoles de Mines. The work of Tissot and Mallard on distortion ellipses in cartography and the etiology of optical activity in crystals, respectively, together with Poincaré's own study of the qualitative theory of differential equations, provide the iconography of, and motivation for, the sphere. Whether Poincaré's mentors were unwitting partners in the invention of the sphere-it is impossible to be sure-Poincaré's otherworldly geometric sensibilities carried him through isometries (rotations) on hyperbolic planes and beyond. The apparent ingenuity behind Poincaré's sphere is diminished in comparison to his fulsome achievements. Moreover, Poincaré's considerations of the psychology of invention further emphasize that sometimes great ideas arrive to those fortunate to receive them by mechanisms that resist interpretation.


This is a qualitative case study which used interviews and observation to investigate the role of interaction between international and Chinese students with regard to Chinese language learning. It was guided by Long's Interaction Hypothesis and Swain's Comprehensible Output. The findings revealed that English was a dominant language of communication for the students which reduced emphasis on Chinese language learning. However, a few students who used Chinese as a medium of communication had positive results in their learning of oral Chinese but not in the reading and writing of Chinese characters. These findings suggest the importance of an integration of both oral and written conversational interaction in learning and mastery of the four skills of Chinese language. The findings of this study may be applicable to the learning of other languages similar to Chinese, which do not use the Roman alphabet.


Numeral-incorporating roots in the numeral systems of Argentine Sign Language (LSA) and Catalan Sign Language (LSC), as well as the main features of the number systems of both languages, are described and compared. Informants discussed the use of numerals and roots in both languages (in most cases in natural contexts). Ten informants took part in the LSC data collection, and six in the LSA data collection. The data were corroborated by analyzing the videos available at www.youtube.com/confargsordos (for LSA) and by videos and books provided by the ILLESCAT Foundation (for LSC), as well as by previous research. A general inventory of roots in both languages and specifically of roots in both numerals systems was carried out. The role of roots in the formation of ordinals and cardinals and the main features of both number systems are described. The data suggest that numeral-incorporating roots in these number systems are formed only from numerals that do not derive from manual counting. This assumption is discussed, and further research about this point is emphasized.


x, y, z form a non-degenerate right triangle with x the vertex at the right angle, or S(x, y, z), holding if the points x, y, z form a non-degenerate right triangle—may serve as the only primi tive notion of Euclidean geometry in dimension greater than one. The proof is based on Pieri's result that any concept of Euclidean geometry of dimension greater than one may be defined in terms of the relation /(*, y, z) holding if x is equidistant from y and z. The author defines in turn Pieri's relation / in terms of the relation T, and the relation Tin terms of the relation S. 1 2. is E Pieri's relation y, z) if x is equidistant from y and z, which is known to be satisfactory for defining all notions of Euclidean geometry in dimensions greater than one. The negative Padoa's method, i.e., constructing a one-to-one transformation of the Euclidean plane, under the relation E is invariant while Pieri's relation is not.


A magnetic sensor utilizing long-period fiber grating (LPFG) written by high frequency CO2 laser pulses in a D-shaped fiber and the magneto-optical effect of magnetic fluid is proposed. Because of the high evanescent field of the grating structure in D-shaped fiber, by immersing the LPFG with a period of 685 μm into a water-based magnetic fluid within a capillary tube, the redshift as high as 33.5 nm of the resonant wavelength of the grating is observed when the external magnetic-field intensity is 189.7 mT, resulting in a sensitivity of 176.4 pm/mT. The hysteresis effect is observed and explained by the characters of magnetic fluid. Such kind of sensors would find potential applications in magnetic sensing fields.


Excessive systemic exposure to fluoride (F) can lead to disturbances in bone homeostasis and dental enamel development. We have previously shown strain-specific responses to F in the development of dental fluorosis (DF) and in bone formation/mineralization. The current study was undertaken to further investigate F responsive variations in bone metabolism and to determine possible relationships with DF susceptibility. Seven-week-old male mice from FVB/NJ, C57BL/6J, C3H/HeJ, A/J, 129S1/SvImJ, AKR/J, DBA/2J, and BALB/cByJ inbred strains were exposed to NaF (0 or 50 ppm as F–) in drinking water for 60 days. Sera were collected for F, Ca, Mg, PO4, iPTH, sRANKL, and ALP levels. Bone marrow cells were subjected to ex vivo cell culture for osteoclast potential and CFU colony assays (CFU-fibroblast, CFU-osteoblast, CFU-erythrocyte/granulocyte/macrophage/megakaryocyte, CFU-granulocyte/macrophage, CFU-macrophage, and CFU-granulocyte). Femurs and vertebrae were subjected to micro-CT analyses, biomechanical testing, and F, Mg, and Ca content assays. DF was evaluated using quantitative fluorescence and clinical criteria. Strain-specific responses to F were observed for DF, serum studies, ex vivo cell culture studies, and bone quality. Among the strains, there were no patterns or significant correlations between DF severity and the actions of F on bone homeostasis (serum studies, ex vivo assays, or bone quality parameters). The genetic background continues to play a role in the actions of F on tooth enamel development and bone homeostasis. F exposure led to variable phenotypic responses between strains involving dental enamel development and bone metabolism.


In the batch process industry, the available models carry a large amount of uncertainty and can seldom be used to directly optimize real processes. Several measurement-based optimization methods have been proposed to deal with model mismatch and process disturbances. Constraints often play a dominant role in the dynamic optimization of batch processes. In their presence, the optimal input profiles are characterized by a set of arcs, switching times and active path and terminal constraints. This paper presents a novel method tailored to those problems where the potential of optimization arises mainly from the correct set of path and terminal constraints being active. The input profiles are computed between successive runs by dynamic optimization of a fixed nominal model, and the constraints in the optimization problem are adapted using measured information from previous batches. Note that, unlike many existing optimization schemes, the measurements are not used to update the process model. Moreover, the proposed approach has the potential to uncover the optimal input structure. This is demonstrated on a simple semi-batch reactor example.


Advertising in Online Games (AOG) has received much attention in recent reports on the future of advertising. Consulting firms, market research institutes, leading e-marketing magazines, influential bloggers, and mass media assess and comment on the potential of these new models of advertising. The present article looks at AOG from the viewpoint of European audiovisual media law and policy. It suggests a typology of both online games and AOG. Based on that typology, the author introduces AOG as an object of regulation; evaluates motives, technical justifications and objectives in favor of regulating AOG; and analyzes critically the new EC Audiovisual Media Services Directive as a prospective regulatory tool to accomplish these objectives.


The concept of horizontal or lateral gene transfer (the non-genealogical transmission of genetic material between organisms) was introduced in 1990s to explain the observed incongruence in phylogenetic reconstructions using different genes. Today, horizontal gene transfer is accepted as an important force modulating evolution of Bacteria, Archaea and unicellular eukaryotes, and evidence is rising for their role in the evolution of pluricellular eukaryotes (fungi, plants and animals). The realisation that horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in evolution of both, prokaryotes and eukaryotes, put in question the metaphor of the tree of life and the traditional view of evolution as a slow process. A more pluralistic approach to evolution is emerging that encompasses different evolutionary mechanisms operating at different levels of complexity.

Key Concepts

Horizontal gene transfer is the non-genealogical transmission of genetic material between different organisms.
Horizontal gene transfer has become a part of evolutionary thinking over the past 25 years.
Horizontal gene transfer plays an important role in prokaryotic evolution.
Horizontal gene transfer also modulates evolution of unicellular eukaryotes.
Increasing evidence support the role of horizontal gene transfer in evolution of pluricellular eukaryotes.
Horizontal gene transfer challenges the tree of life metaphor.
Horizontal gene transfer challenges the traditional view of evolution as a slow process.
A pluralistic approach to evolution is needed.

Keywords:

horizontal gene transfer;
evolutionary mechanisms;
reticulated evolution;
tree of life


The reactions of atomic sulfur in the first excited metastable 1D state with C2H2, C2H4, and CH4 have been investigated at the most detailed level by means of the crossed molecular beam technique with mass spectrometric detection and ab initio calculations of the relevant potential energy surfaces. The nature of the primary products and their yield have been established and complemented with statistical estimates of product branching ratios. In the case of the reactions between S(1D) and C2H2/C2H4, we have observed the formation of molecular species containing a novel C−S bond, namely HCS, HCCS, CH2CS and CH2CHS. Therefore, these reactions are feasible routes of formation of organosulfur compounds in extraterrestrial environments where both S(1D) molecular precursors and simple hydrocarbons are present. In the S(D)+C2H4 reaction the channel leading to HS+C2H3 is also important, while the HS+CH3 formation channel is the only one open for the reaction with methane. The two reactions are therefore a source of HS and hydrocarbon radicals. The observed reaction schemes can be generalized and extended to other reactions involving larger alkynes, alkenes and alkanes. Finally, the ionization energy of the HCCS radical has been determined to be 8.9±0.3 eV. The present results can help to unravel the complex impact-induced chemistry that occurred during the collision of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter, to account for the inventory of sulfur compounds in comets and to understand sulfur chemistry during the Solar System formation.


xx, 800 p. : music. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number.


Predialysis nephrologist care is associated with morbidity and mortality in incident dialysis patients, but the relationship with access to kidney transplantation (KT) is unclear. From a national study of incident US dialysis patients, we identified 2253 patients with detailed information about predialysis care, sociodemographic characteristics and comorbidities. We used multivariate Cox proportional hazards models to study associations between predialysis nephrology care and two outcomes: time from first dialysis to the first day on the KT wait‐list, and time to first KT. Two‐thirds of patients first encountered a nephrologist >3 months prior to dialysis and one‐third ≤3 months prior to dialysis (early vs. late nephrologist care; ENC vs. LNC). Overall, 515 patients were added to the KT wait‐list and 406 underwent KT during follow‐up (2.3 years). In multivariate analyses, ENC was associated with a 41% (95%CI: 15–72%) greater rate of being wait‐listed compared to LNC and a 54% (95%CI: 22–96%) greater rate of KT. Similar associations existed with number of predialysis nephrology visits. Earlier and more frequent predialysis nephrologist care were associated with greater access to the KT wait‐list as well as a higher rate of KT, indicating that LNC may augment existing inequalities that impair access to KT.


Arguably life threatening and chronic illness is not just an attack on the body, it is an attack on a person s sense of self-identity, shattering the means by which a person experiences the world, and by which they also are experienced, contributing to a person s sense of powerlessness and distress. People living with a life threatening or chronic illness, often describe the impact of their diagnosis, treatment and illness as having changed their sense of self-identity beyond all recognition. Seven participants, purposefully selected from those attending a weekly day-hospice session in Wiltshire, took part in the study. This qualitative, practice-based research project challenges the power dynamics in art therapy and attempts to equalise the relationship between researcher and participant through the development of a collaborative intersubjective relationship, within which the participants are recognised as experts on their lived experience, and in a series of negotiations , co-design their own portraits directing how they wish to be portrayed. Through this process the participants become patient/researchers (PRs) and the artist/therapist/researcher (ATR), by creating the portraits, also becomes a reflexive participant . This project utilises an in-depth multiple case-study design and multiple creative data generation methods as well as a phenomenological approach to data analysis. This project reverses the terms of engagement within art therapy and uses the art therapist s artistic practice or third hand to create portraits for patients. (This is based upon the assumption that most art therapy theories terms of engagement include patients producing art within the therapeutic encounter, however some psychodynamic and psychoanalytic art therapists may use client art generation selectively or not at all). This raises important questions around who makes the artwork in art therapy interventions . The use of portraiture as a third hand intervention enables the art therapist to develop a sense of positive focussed attention and mirroring and attunement through the art object, enabling the addition of coherence through aesthetic resonance and the holding of dualities through metaphor and symbolism. The results of this study demonstrate the power of portraiture as an intersubjective way of knowing, being and relating, enabling the revisioning of identities disrupted by illness, characterised by increases in participants creative capacity to adapt to illness and feelings of home-like-being-in-the-world, developing a stronger, more coherent lived experience of self-identity, effecting closure to difficult life experiences, and improving their overall quality of life.


Two flowlines installed in the Suncor Terra Nova riser replacement programme were found to leak during leak tests performed after site installation. No hydrocarbon loss was suffered nor was there any pollution incident; however the scheduled production start-up for the pipes was delayed. Investigations confirmed that the leaks in both pipes occurred due to a crack in the polymer (PVDF) barrier within the end fitting region of the pipe. It was also concluded that the crack in the barrier in these pipes occurred either during the transportation or installation of the pipes in the field due to thermo-mechanical loading on the pipe during this period. Both failures were found to have initiated from a void in the epoxy which was used to fill small clearances within the end fitting.This paper describes the finite element stress/stain analyses performed to investigate the effects on the PVDF barrier and epoxy within the end fitting due to the thermal and mechanical loading encountered during pipe installation. A multi-scale modelling approach has been used where a full pipe with detailed end fitting components was modelled in a coarse mesh model whilst the stress-strain behaviour near epoxy void was analysed using a macroscopic sub-model. A brief description of the models and the results are presented.The analyses involved predicting the barrier deformation response at the failure location under the anticipated thermo-mechanical loading exerted on the pipe. The results have shown that the failure occurred due to the presence of the void in the epoxy at a critical location; cooling of the pipe during its transportation was considered to have created the thermo-mechanical loading to drive the crack from the epoxy into the PVDF. It was concluded that the failure in the pipes would not have occurred if either the void was not present in that critical region in the epoxy, or if it had not been subjected to the thermo-mechanical loading. A design change removing the filling of epoxy in the end fitting process is being implemented to prevent this failure in the future.Copyright © 2015 by ASME


The article presents the trajectory of a research group upon the development of the project funded by the Health Ministry, through the National HIV/AIDS/DST Program, named "Impact of adhesion to the anti-retroviral among children and adolescents under the perspective of the family, the child and the adolescent in the municipalities of Porto Alegre andSanta Maria, RS". With the objective of presenting the stages of the research, from its planning up to the phase of data collection, the study was carried out in two municipalities simultaneously, counting on 20 participants comprising researchers and scholarship students. The stages developed until the data collection were: inclusion of care and teaching professionals in the research nucleus; selection and training of scholarship students; elaboration of the instrument; elaboration of a manual team habilitation; application of the pilot test.


Socrates said that wisdom begins in wonder. The authors of this particular publication no doubt wondered about aspects of medical negligence cases that make these cases particularly complicated. The introductory paragraph to chapter one sets out to explain that it is universally accepted that a plaintiff bears the onus of proving facts that supports his case. Of all the problematic aspects of medical negligence cases, the application of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur no doubt emerged as an aspect worthy of in-depth research.


Cell instance segmentation in cytology images has significant importance for biology analysis and cancer screening, while remains challenging due to 1) the extensive over-lapping translucent cell clusters that cause the ambigu-ous boundaries, and 2) the confusion of mimics and de-bris as nuclei. In this work, we proposed a De-overlapping Network (DoNet) in a decompose-and-recombined strategy. A Dual-path Region Segmentation Module (DRM) explicitly decomposes the cell clusters into intersection and complement regions, followed by a Semantic Consistency-guided Recombination Module (CRM) for integration. To further introduce the containment relationship of the nu-cleus in the cytoplasm, we design a Mask-guided Region Proposal Strategy (MRP) that integrates the cell attention maps for inner-cell instance prediction. We validate the proposed approach on ISBI2014 and CPS datasets. Ex-periments show that our proposed DoNet significantly outperforms other state-of-the-art (SOTA) cell instance segmentation methods. The code is available at https://github.com/DeepDoNet/DoNet.


Introduction: In recent years many knowledge about integrated health services has been developed. So far research has focused on operational themes and interventions on the one side, which help decision makers in practice. On the other hand, a number of studies about generic elements of person-centered and integrated care have been published, resulting in valuable conceptual models and frameworks [1-9]. A third area of research is how to measure integrated care. However, if we want to further develop the person-centered integrated approach to improve the quality of services for civilians, a better understanding of the essence of integrated care and it's underlying values is necessary. Shared values and principles can help to concretely identify what integrated care really is about and what integrated care thinking stands for [10,11]. Therefore, IFIC and Vilans have initiated a Special Interest Group (SIG) on values and principles of integrated care. The aim of the SIG is to develop a valuable and workable set of values and principles for person-centered integrated care. Within this context, a systematic literature review on value and principles of person-centered integrated care is carried out as a starting point. We propose a session with two objectives: A SIG-meeting with exchange of experiences A presentation and discussion about the first deliverable: the systematic literature review Theory/Methods: A systematic literature review of scientific and grey literature was conducted. Two researchers independently screened the initial results by title and abstract. Differences in interpretation were resolved by consensus. Each full text paper was independently assessed by two researchers on the criteria for inclusion. In each included article, values and principles of person-centered integrated care were identified and coded independently by two researchers. The codes were discussed in the research team. 3) Preliminary results 732 records were identified through the systematic search. After removing duplicates 396 articles remained, of which 48 were assessed for eligibility after the screening of titles and abstracts. 23 articles (48%) contained values and principles of person-centered integrated care and were coded. Currently (Dec 2016) an expert panel, mostly members of IFIC and Vilans' SIG on Values of Integrated Care, is reflecting on the search results. Additional articles suggested by experts, are being  added to the database the coming months (before ICIC2017). The experts have a range of backgrounds, including health and social care, and practice and academia. Conclusion & Discussion: A large amount of literature about integrated care is available, but less about the underlying values and principles. Preliminary results show that in the selected articles values and principles are present, which partly support the set of Ferrer and Goodwin [12]. At this moment the international expert panel is reviewing the search results, more definite results can be discussed in spring nest year. Lessons learned: Only limited literature has a focus on this level of abstraction (values and principles). The perspective appears to be quite new which is interesting a SIG topic. Limitations: Because the limited amount of literature, available conceptual models were analysed to derive values and principles. The quality of this process asks for skilled researchers; to enhance quality, all articles were independently assessed by two researchers. Suggestions for future research: To further develop the set of values and principles, a multi-perspective Delphi Study will be carried out. Multiple (SIG) experts with different backgrounds (clients, caregivers, developers, researchers) will be involved. The results of the Delphi Study will also be shared in the SIG. References: 1- Boshuizen D, Engels J, Versleijen M, Vlek H, Rebel M, Driessen S. White paper: Hoe maak je een succes van persoonsgerichte zorg?Vilans: Utrecht. 2014. 2- Cash-Gibson L, Rosenmoller M. Project INTEGRATE - a common methodological approach to understand integrated health care in Europe. International Journal of Integrated Care. 2014;14(4). DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.1980 3- Kodner D, Spreeuwenberg C. Integrated care: meaning, logic, applications, and implications a dis¬cussion paper. International Journal of Integrated care. 2002;E12:2. 4- McCormack B, McCance T. Person-centred Nursing: Theory and Practice. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. 2002. 5- Minkman M. Developing integrated care. Towards a development model for integrated care. PhD report. Deventer: Kluwer, ISBN 9789013100266801300; 2012. 6- Schlette S, Frohlich A, Marti T. The Bellagio Model - Population-oriented Primary Care: A diagnostic grid to assess, improve and enhance primary care. Vortrag BMJ International Forum, Session B5. 2009;Berlin: 18.03.2009. 7- Valentijn P. Rainbow of Chaos. A study into the the¬ory and practice of integrated primary care. Phd report;2015. 8- Wagner E. Chronic disease management: What will it take to improve care for chronic illness? Effective Clinical Practice. 1998;1(1):2-4. 9- World Health Organization. Innovative care for chronic conditions: building blocks for action: global report. Geneva: World Health Organization Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data; 2002. 10- Minkman M. Values and Principles of Integrated Care. International Journal of Integrated Care. 2016;16(1):2. DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.2458 11- Goodwin N. Taking integrated care forward: the need for shared values. International Journal of Integrated Care. 2013;13(2). DOI: http://doi.org/10.5334/ijic.1180 12- Ferrer L, Goodwin N. What are the principles that underpin integrated care? International Journal of Integrated Care 2014; Oct–Dec; URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-114804. 13-World Health Organization. WHO global strategy on people-centred and integrated health services. Interim report. WHO Press, World Health Organization, 20 Avenue Appia, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland; 2015.


Nigel Barley was a ?new anthropologistOCO, one of the younger generation of academics whose learning and research had been acquired in institutes, research departments, from academic journals and university libraries. But after suffering years of gentle put-downs from leathery old field-workers, their ?teeth permanently gritted from years of dealing with nativesOCO, he was determined to gain his own experience. The two years he spent among the Dowayo people in the Cameroons (1978-80) produced a comic masterpiece of travel writing, The Innocent Anthropologist, which remains as honest, as funny and as compelling a read as when it was first penned ? and a devastating critique of academics attempting to impose their rules and their order on West African life."


We consider the evolution of assets after retirement. We ask whether total assets--including housing equity, personal retirement accounts, and other financial assets--tend to be husbanded for a rainy day and drawn down primarily at the time of precipitating shocks, or whether they are drawn down throughout the retirement period. We focus on the relationships between family status transitions, "latent" health status, and the evolution of assets. Our analysis is based primarily on longitudinal data from the HRS and AHEAD cohorts of the Health and Retirement Study. We find that the evolution of assets is strongly related to family status transitions. For both single individuals and married couples who do not experience a death or divorce, total assets increase well into old age. In contrast, individuals in married couples that experience a family status transition, either a death or a divorce, exhibit much slower asset growth and often experience a large decline in asset values at the time of the transition. In addition, the level and evolution of assets is very strongly related to health, measured by a latent health index. For example, for continuing two-person HRS households between the ages of 56 and 61 in 1992 the ratio of assets of households in the top health quintile to the assets of those in the bottom quintile was 1.7 in 1992. It had increased to 2.2 by the end of 2006.


Generation of subpicosecond solitons in active modelocked fiber lasers is investigated, both analytically and numerically. The laser model takes into account the pulse dispersive spreading, self-phase modulation, finite amplification bandwidth, pump depletion and Raman self-frequency shift. Our analytical theory, which is based on the inverse scattering method perturbation approach, allows us to calculate the steady-state parameters of the soliton pulse. The analytic predictions are confirmed by numerical simulation. It is shown that the minimal pulse duration may be achieved provided that the Raman self-frequency shift is suppressed by the phase modulator. >


PID controllers are most commonly used in the industrial plants because of their good
performance and easiness of use. Due to growth technology, new advanced
techniques have come into existence either to produce new things or to improve
existing ones. Several techniques can be used but having advanced control system, we
are looking forward to design system which behaves in the same way as to what
human do, and this is known as artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence
techniques have been used to convert human experience into a form understandable
by computers. Intelligent systems are usually describes by analogies with biological
systems, for example looking at human beings perform control tasks, recognize
patterns, or make decisions. Notably fuzzy logic emerged as a tool to deal with
uncertain, imprecise or qualitative decision making problem, controllers that combine
intelligent and conventional techniques are commonly used in the intelligent control
of complex dynamic systems. In this work the pilot fuzzy control used to improve
existing traditional control systems by adding and an extra layer of intelligence to
current control method to make it more efficient, the focus of this work is to design,
analysis and implementation of PI-fuzzy control on a gas pilot plant using industrial
PC.


We assess the consequences for consumers in 76 countries of multinational acquisitions in beer and spirits. Outcomes depend on how changes in ownership affect markups versus efficiency. We find that owner fixed effects contribute very little to the performance of brands. On average, foreign ownership tends to raise costs and lower appeal. Using the estimated model, we simulate the consequences of counter-factual national merger regulation. The US beer price index would have been 4-7% higher without divestitures. Up to 30% savings could have been obtained in Latin America by emulating the pro-competition policies of the US and EU.


Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century puts forth a logically consistent explanation for changes in income and wealth inequality patterns. However, while rich in data, the book provides no formal empirical testing for its theoretical causal chain. In this paper, I build a set of Panel SVAR models to check if inequality and capital share in the national income move up as the r-g gap grows. Using a sample of 19 advanced economies spanning over 30 years, I find no empirical evidence that dynamics move in the way Piketty suggests. Results are robust to several alternative estimates of r-g.


PURPOSE
Aurora Health Care (AHC) is the largest health care system in Wisconsin, with 14 acute care hospitals. In early 2010, a group of 18 medical oncologists became affiliated with AHC. This affiliation added 13 medical oncology infusion clinics to our existing 12 sites. In the era of health care reform and declining reimbursement, we need an objective method and criteria to evaluate our 25 outpatient medical oncology sites. We developed financial, clinical, and strategic tools for the evaluation and management of our cancer subservice lines and outpatient sites. The key to our success has been the direct involvement of stakeholders with a vested interest in the services in the selection of the criteria and evaluation process.

METHODS
We developed our objective metrics for evaluation based on strategic, financial, operational, and patient experience criteria. Strategic criteria included: population trends, full-time equivalent (FTE) medical oncologists/primary care physicians, FTE radiation oncologists, FTE oncologic surgeons, new annual cases of patients with cancer, and market share trends. Financial criteria per site included: physician work relative value units, staff FTE by type, staff salaries, and profit and loss. Operational criteria included: facility by type (clinic v hospital based), hours of operation, and facility detail (eg, No. of chairs, No. of procedure and examination rooms, square footage). Patient experience criteria included: nursing model primary/nurse navigators, multidisciplinary support at site, Press Ganey (South Bend, IN; health care performance improvement company) results, and employee engagement score.

RESULTS
The outcome of our data analysis has resulted in the development of recommendations for AHC senior leadership and geographic market leadership to consider the consolidation of four sites (phase one, four sites; phase two, two sites) and priority strategic sites to address capacity issues that limit growth. The recommendations if implemented would result in significant cost savings, currently being quantified as a result of consolidation and improved efficiency. A reinvestment of these cost savings would be required to address facility expansion and program enhancement to maximize patient-centered expert care consistently across all of our remaining sites of service.


Abstract A (Ca0.36Na0.56Mg0.08)(Mg0.73Si0.27)Si2O6 clinopyroxene containing both four- and six-coordinated silicon was synthesized at 15 GPa and 1600 °C and its structure determined with single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Unlike the Na(Mg0.5Si0.5)Si2O6 clinopyroxene that exhibits an ordered P2/n structure with octahedrally coordinated Mg2+ and Si4+ occupying two crystallographically distinct M1 sites (Angel et al. 1988), our sample possesses a C2/c symmetry and shows no detectable ordering between Mg2+ and Si4+ in the M1 site. The measured unit-cell parameters are a = 9.5792(13), b = 8.7588(12), c = 5.2610(6) Å, β = 107.199(3)°, and V = 421.7(2) Å3. The crystal structure of the clinopyroxene reported in this study is comparable to that for omphacites formed under high temperatures and pressures.


Federated learning was proposed with an intriguing vision of achieving collaborative machine learning among numerous clients without uploading their private data to a cloud server. However, the conventional framework requires each client to leverage the full model for learning, which can be prohibitively inefficient for resource-constrained clients and large-scale deep learning tasks. We thus propose a new framework, called federated submodel learning, where clients download only the needed parts of the full model, namely submodels, and then upload the submodel updates. Nevertheless, the "position" of a client's truly required submodel corresponds to her private data, and its disclosure to the cloud server during interactions inevitably breaks the tenet of federated learning. To integrate efficiency and privacy, we have designed a secure federated submodel learning scheme coupled with a private set union protocol as a cornerstone. Our secure scheme features the properties of randomized response, secure aggregation, and Bloom filter, and endows each client with a customized plausible deniability, in terms of local differential privacy, against the position of her desired submodel, thus protecting her private data. We further instantiated our scheme with the e-commerce recommendation scenario in Alibaba, implemented a prototype system, and extensively evaluated its performance over 30-day Taobao user data. The analysis and evaluation results demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of our scheme from model accuracy and convergency, practical communication, computation, and storage overheads, as well as manifest its remarkable advantages over the conventional federated learning framework.


Canada's public-private mix in coverage for pharmaceuticals has long created variation across provinces in access to needed treatments and has contributed to persistent cost growth in both the private and public sectors. Among the recommendations of the 2002 Romanow Commission was a proposed national standard for "last-dollar" pharmacare that would cover any household's drug costs beyond a high annual deductible. Such a program contrasts with the "first-dollar" pharmacare programs currently available for vulnerable populations (e.g., seniors and social assistance recipients) in most provinces. While last-dollar coverage may be a valuable set toward broadening public pharmacare in Canada, there is a risk that provincial governments may interpret the coverage of catastrophic costs as the new pharmacare ideal and therefore reduce or eliminate existing programs that currently offer first-dollar benefits.


In this paper, the Al-Zn-Sn-Ga anode alloy was quenched from 460 °C. The influences of corrosion time and different microstructure of the alloy on its corrosion morphology were investigated to clarify the effect of quenching on the corrosion morphology of the alloy. The inhomogeneous composition in the as-cast alloy directly caused various corrosion potential in the alloy and that the driving force of corrosion was different. Lots of circular corrosion pits and basic uniform composition were observed in the quenching sample. The results reveal that the corrosion morphology of the anode alloy is affected by quenching treatment employed.