The first step in many community ecology studies is to produce a species list from a sample of individuals. Community ecologists now have two viable ways of producing a species list: morphological and barcode identification. In this study, we compared the taxonomic resolution gained by a combined use of both methods and tested whether a change in taxonomic resolution significantly impacted richness estimates for benthic macroinvertebrates sampled from ten lakes in Sequoia National Park, USA. Across all lakes, 77 unique taxa were identified and 42% (32) were reliably identified to species using both barcode and morphological identification. Of the 32 identified to species, 63% (20) were identified solely by comparing the barcode sequence from cytochrome oxidase I to the Barcode of Life reference library. The increased resolution using a combined identification approach compared to identifications based solely on morphology resulted in a significant increase in estimated richness within a lake at the order, family, genus and species levels of taxonomy (P < 0.05). Additionally, young or damaged individuals that could not be identified using morphology were identified using their COI sequences to the genus or species level on average 75% of the time. Our results demonstrate that a combined identification approach improves accuracy of benthic macroinvertebrate species lists in alpine lakes and subsequent estimates of richness. We encourage the use of barcodes for identification purposes and specifically when morphology is insufficient, as in the case of damaged and early life stage specimens of benthic macroinvertebrates.


In Ca-free EGTA-containing solution serotonin induced a transient contraction of rabbit pulmonary artery smooth muscle which decayed to nearly steady-state level accounted for 17.7 +/- 1.6% of original contraction in Krebs solution. Both phasic and tonic components of this contraction were effectively inhibited by verapamil and Cd2+. Caffeine induced no contraction of muscle strips if it was applied after withdrawal of serotonin. But when the sequence of these drugs application was reversed, serotonin still evoked contraction with reduced phasic component. The results obtained in these experiments suggest, that serotonin-induced contraction of pulmonary artery smooth muscle is partly (less than 20%) due to mobilization of bound calcium from at least two stores located on the opposite sides of the cell membrane. Calcium released from external store site enters the cell via receptor-operated calcium channels.


This reference is a comprehensive guide to literature written 500 to 1500 A.D., a period that gave rise to some of the world's most enduring and influential works, such as Dante's Commedia, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, and a large body of Arthurian lore and legend. While its emphasis is upon medieval English texts and society, this reference also covers Islamic, Hispanic, Celtic, Mongolian, Germanic, Italian, and Russian literature and Middle Age culture. Longer entries provide thorough coverage of major English authors such as Chaucer and Sir Thomas Malory, and of genre entries, such as drama, lyric, ballad, debate, saga, chronicle, and hagiography. Shorter entries examine particular literary works; significant kings, artists, explorers, and religious leaders; important themes, such as courtly love and chivalry; and major historical events, such as the Crusades. Each entry concludes with a brief biography. The volume closes with a list of the most valuable general works for further reading.


Carbon dioxide emission is one of the alarming problems that we are facing today and with the help of nanotechnology, the emissions have been reduced to an extent. There are certain methods to reduce the emission in the field of nanotechnology like using carbon nanotubes hollow membrane contractor, hybrid Nano absorbents, transition Nano crystals doped with carbon nanotubes for efficient carbon dioxide absorption, synthesis of graphitic carbon nitride Nano sheets, etc. Nanofluidshave been potential to use as an alternative for carbon capture than conventional fluids like amines. Generally, amines like MEA, DEA and MDEA are used to capture carbon dioxide. However, recent studies showed that nanofluidscangive more absorption efficiency than conventional solvents. In a current study, we reviewed and highlighted recent advances in the application of nanofluids in carbon dioxide capture. Many researchers are working on various approaches to make an efficient nanofluid system for environmental application. Butmany nanoparticles are not fully explored.


Oscillating microbubbles can be used as microscopic agents. Using external acoustic fields they are able to set the surrounding fluid into motion, erode surfaces and even to carry particles attached to their interfaces. Although the acoustic streaming flow that the bubble generates in its vicinity has been often observed, it has never been measured and quantitatively compared with the available theoretical models. The scarcity of quantitative data is partially due to the strong three-dimensional character of bubble-induced streaming flows, which demands advanced velocimetry techniques. In this work, we present quantitative measurements of the flow generated by single and pairs of acoustically excited sessile microbubbles using a three-dimensional particle tracking technique. Using this novel experimental approach we are able to obtain the bubble's resonant oscillating frequency, study the boundaries of the linear oscillation regime, give predictions on the flow strength and the shear in the surrounding surface and study the flow and the stability of a two-bubble system. Our results show that velocimetry techniques are a suitable tool to make diagnostics on the dynamics of acoustically excited microbubbles.


A multifunctional solution-processed composite hole-injection layer (HIL), based on the blends of magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) Fe3O4@G–poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS), Fe3O4@SiO2–PEDOT:PSS and Fe3O4@Au–PEDOT:PSS, was used for application in high performance tris-(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum-based organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs). Compared to the control devices, a significant increase in the current efficiency of OLEDs with a composite HIL was realized, achieving maximum luminous efficiencies of 5.13 cd A−1 (Fe3O4@G–PEDOT:PSS and Fe3O4@Au–PEDOT:PSS HIL), and of 4.83 cd A−1 (Fe3O4@SiO2–PEDOT:PSS HIL), corresponding to a 35% and 38.2% increase in current efficiency, respectively. The increase in the performance of the OLEDs is attributed to the collective effects of light-scattering, localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) and the magnetic effect induced by the magnetic NPs in the HIL.


Seeds of five different locally available food legumes were analyzed for phytic acid content using a spectrophotometric method based on precipitation of phytate as ferric phytate. The phytic acid content of legumes investigated was found to be in the range of 0.21% (in lima beans) to 0.45% (in winged beans). The major portion (88-94%) of phytate phosphorus was found in the cotyledon of navy bean and winged bean seeds while very little was seen in the seed coat. Cooking (boiling) reduced phytate phosphorus content markedly in mungbean (83%) while cooked winged bean seeds had only 53% less phytic acid. This study also shows that the addition of phytate decreases soluble protein in winged beans. The formation of an insoluble phytate-protein complex was more evident at low pH resulting in 30-40% reduction of soluble protein.


Political factions are rarely treated as normatively desirable entities in constitutional or international law. On the contrary, they are either are regarded as forces that thwart the general welfare or as sources of chronic political instability. In response, the conventional wisdom often focuses on how to deploy institutional or legal structures that minimize the influence of faction. By contrast, this Essay argues that the institutions of constitutional and international law that are forged by self-interested factions can create significant side benefits for the rest of the society. At bottom, such institutions are likely to be more durable and energetic than those created by disinterested or high-minded social designers. Thus, rather than focus on trying to curtail the influence of faction in shaping political institutions, it may make more sense to broaden the scope of such influence to be as inclusive as possible.


ABSTRACT Urban land use information plays an important role in urban management, government policy-making, and population activity monitoring. However, the accurate classification of urban functional zones is challenging due to the complexity of urban systems. Many studies have focused on urban land use classification by considering features that are extracted from either high spatial resolution (HSR) remote sensing images or social media data, but few studies consider both features due to the lack of available models. In our study, we propose a novel scene classification framework to identify dominant urban land use type at the level of traffic analysis zone by integrating probabilistic topic models and support vector machine. A land use word dictionary inside the framework was built by fusing natural–physical features from HSR images and socioeconomic semantic features from multisource social media data. In addition to comparing with manual interpretation data, we designed several experiments to test the land use classification accuracy of our proposed model with different combinations of previously acquired semantic features. The classification results (overall accuracy = 0.865, Kappa = 0.828) demonstrate the effectiveness of our strategy that blends features extracted from multisource geospatial data as semantic features to train the classification model. This method can be applied to help urban planners analyze fine urban structures and monitor urban land use changes, and additional data from multiple sources will be blended into this proposed framework in the future.


PURPOSE: The dose values computed with the treatment planning system and the in vivo dose measurements with semiconductor detectors in rectum during the high dose rate brachytherapy treatment fraction of the cervix carcinoma are occasionally significantly different. We've investigated the consistency of the Fletcher-Suit applicator geometry and the in vivo rectal probe's position stability during the high dose rate brachytherapy treatment fraction. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The patient lied in a lithotomic position during a biplane reconstruction images, throughout the treatment planning and dose administration. We obtained post-treatment reconstruction images and prepared a post-treatment plan. The amount of 14 treatment fractions of 10 patients were considered in the study. Two methods were applied: evaluation of the difference of reconstructed pre-treatment and post-treatment applicator points and rectal probe's detectors being relevant to the co-ordinate system fixed to the applicator, and estimation of applicators and rectal probe's reallocation with respect to the pelvic bones with registration of pre- and post-treatment reconstruction images. RESULTS: We've experienced good consistency in the Fletcher-Suit applicator geometry in all treatment fractions. 70% of them presented small variation in the rectal probe's position, while the rest showed significant shift in the applicator or rectal probe's position with regard to the pelvic bones.


Compiling graphical models has recently been under intense investigation, especially for probabilistic modeling and processing. We present here a novel data structure for compiling weighted graphical models (in particular, probabilistic models), called AND/OR Multi-Valued Decision Diagram (AOMDD). This is a generalization of our previous work on constraint networks, to weighted models. The AOMDD is based on the frameworks of AND/OR search spaces for graphical models, and Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDD). The AOMDD is a canonical representation of a graphical model, and its size and compilation time are bounded exponentially by the treewidth of the graph, rather than pathwidth as is known for OBDDs. We discuss a Variable Elimination schedule for compilation, and present the general APPLY algorithm that combines two weighted AOMDDs, and also present a search based method for compilation method. The preliminary experimental evaluation is quite encouraging, showing the potential of the AOMDD data structure.


CONTEXT
Panel management is an innovative approach for population care that is tightly linked with primary care. This approach, which is spreading rapidly across Kaiser Permanente, represents an important shift in population-care structure and emphasis, but its potential and implications have not been previously studied.

OBJECTIVE
To inform the ongoing spread of panel management by providing an early understanding of its impact on patients, physicians, and staff and to identify barriers and facilitators.

DESIGN
Qualitative studies at four sites, including patient focus groups, physician and staff interviews, and direct observation.

FINDINGS
Panel management allows primary care physicians to use dedicated time to direct proactive care for their patients, uses staff support to conduct outreach, and leverages new panel-based information technology tools. Patients reported appreciating the panel management outreach, although some also reported coordination issues. Two of four study sites seemed to provide a more coordinated patient experience of care; factors common to these sites included longer maturation of their panel management programs and a more circumscribed role for outreach staff. Some physicians reported tension in the approach's implementation: All believed that panel management improved care for their patients but many also expressed feeling that the approach added more tasks to their already busy days. Challenges yet to be fully addressed include providing program oversight to monitor for safe and reliable coordination of care and incorporation of self-management support.

CONCLUSION
Subsequent spread of panel management should be informed by these lessons and findings from early adopters and should include continued monitoring of the impact of this rapidly developing approach on quality, patient satisfaction, primary care sustainability, and cost.


OBJECTIVE
Neurological abnormalities found in schizophrenic subjects and their healthy relatives have raised questions concerning etiology. The aim of the present study was to investigate the genetic and environmental antecedents of neurological impairment in monozygotic twins discordant for schizophrenia, with particular focus on the well discordant twins. The etiological factors of interest were history of obstetric complications, family history of psychosis, history of substance abuse, and history of postnatal cerebral trauma.

METHOD
History of obstetric complications, including information from pregnancy through the neonatal period, and data on neurological "hard" and "soft" signs were obtained blindly and separately for each member of 22 monozygotic twin pairs discordant for schizophrenia and seven normal comparison monozygotic twin pairs. Clinical and family interviews provided information about background factors.

RESULTS
Degree of neurological impairment in the well discordant monozygotic twins was significantly positively related to history of both neonatal and total obstetric complications. None of the three other background factors investigated was related to degree of neurological impairment in the ill or well co-twins.

CONCLUSIONS
The contribution of obstetric complications to the current level of neurological impairment in well discordant co-twins suggests that the spectrum of neuroabnormality, ranging from neurological signs to schizophrenia, in monozygotic discordant twins may be the result of subtle gene-environment interaction.


This literary history paper is concerned with the changes of Slovak literary criticism over a certain period of time. It reconstructs the process of the criticism becoming temporarily emancipated, i.e. the autonomous field of literary criticism was established in the mid-1960s, and, subsequenty, it ceased to exist during the social and cultural "normalization" in the early years of the following decade (field – e.g. social, political, cultural or literary – is used here as a concept and a technical term in the sense as defined by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu). The paper consists of three chapters; the first one presents two polemic articles by critic Milana Hamada (the argument with Vladimír Mináč and a polemic over Miroslav Válek ́s collection of poems Milovanie v husej koži /Lovemaking with Goose Pimples on/), which made a significant contribution to forming the autonomous field of literary criticism in the mid1960s. It defined its territory against the contemporary power structures as well as the literary field: criticism stopped serving (both politicians and writers) and became, for the first time after 1948, an autonomous factor of the social context in those times. The second half of the 1960s was thus a short period of time when the relative emancipation of domestic literary criticism influenced by the external limits of the Socialist regime was finalized. The contemporary structure of the literary field, i.e. the genres and other forms of critical discourse, is discussed in the second chapter of the paper. The changes in the social situation after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 had a dramatic impact on culture and the humanities. A number of decisions made in the name of power severely affected the domestic literary criticism. Several of the significant critics were ousted from public life, some of the cultural and literary magazines providing space for reflection on literature were banned while other ones went through significant transformations. It was a gradual process, the outline of which is reconstructed in the final part of the paper. As a result of the interventions, literary criticism lost its autonomy and again came under control of political power just like in the 1940s and 1950s, although the new conditions were different.


Human polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) contain three antimicrobial and cytotoxic peptides which belong to a family of mammalian granulocyte peptides named defensins. To determine their potential availability for extracellular microbicidal or cytotoxic events, we quantified the extracellular release of defensins after stimulation of human PMN with phorbol myristate acetate and opsonized zymosan. As determined by enzyme immunoassay and confirmed by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and densitometry, 10(6) human PMN contained 4 to 5 micrograms of defensins. After stimulation with a high concentration of phorbol myristate acetate (1 microgram/ml), about 8% of PMN defensins were found in the media. Release of defensins correlated best with the release of azurophil granule marker beta-glucuronidase or elastase and poorly with the release of either the specific granule marker lactoferrin or cytoplasmic lactate dehydrogenase. Phagocytosis of opsonized zymosan resulted in the extracellular release of less than 3% of PMN defensins. The factors responsible for less release of defensins into media relative to the release of other azurophil granule proteins may include heterogeneity of azurophil granules and the affinity of defensins for cellular surfaces and opsonized particles. In vivo, defensins are most likely to reach effective microbicidal or cytotoxic concentrations in PMN-rich exudates (pus), in confined environments of the phagolysosomes, or in intercellular clefts between PMN and their targets.


Systematic conservation planning often involves the application of a regionalization scheme, which is assumed to delineate distinct ecological communities of target species. Commonly, such schemes are constructed using environmental surrogates; however, their effectiveness with regard to community delineation has been questioned in previous studies. Here, we aim to assess multiple environmental regionalization schemes' ability to delineate avian communities and to evaluate these schemes against a regionalization scheme built using species data directly.


Activity-based costing (ABC) as well as other cost accounting systems provide accurate costs only under stringent conditions. However, we know little about the nature, level, and bias of costing errors. This paper reports the results of a simulation study of a two-stage costing system that provides the following main insights: 1) partial improvement in the costing system usually increases the overall accuracy of reported product costs except in certain cases identified in this paper where errors have an offsetting effect, most notably when there is aggregation error on the activity cost pools and measurement error on the resource drivers; 2) the impact of Stage II costing errors on overall accuracy is stronger than that of Stage I errors, so any system refinements should focus on Stage II; and 3) the introduction of aggregation and measurement errors usually results in relatively more products being under- than overcosted, with high amounts of overcosting for a few "big-ticket" (large dollar size) products, and small amounts of undercosting for a larger number of less expensive (small dollar size) products.


AIM
To study the effect of environmental hyperthermia on gastrin, somatostatin and motilin in rat ulcerated antral mucosa.

METHODS
Forty-two Wistar rats were equally divided into six groups, according to the room temperature (high and normal) and the treatment (acetic acid, normal saline and no treatment). Levels of gastrin, somatostatin and motilin in rat ulcerated antral mucosa were measured with a radioimmunoassay method.

RESULTS
The average temperature and humidity were 32.5 degrees and 66.7% for the high temperature group, and 21.1 degrees and 49.3% for the normal temperature group, respectively. Gastric ulcer model was successfully induced in rat injected with 0.05 mL acetic acid into the antrum. In rats with gastric ulcers, the levels of gastrin and motilin increased, whereas the somatostatin level declined in antral mucosa, compared with those in rats treated with normal saline and the controls. However, the change extent in the levels of gastrin, motilin and somatostatin in antral mucosa was less in the high temperature group than in the normal temperature group.

CONCLUSION
The levels of gastrin, somatostatin and motilin in rat ulcerated antral mucosal tissue remain relatively stable in a high temperature environment, which may relate to the equilibration of the dynamic system.


This work evaluates the efficacy of the spray-drying technique to prepare poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) microparticles containing an entrapped model antigen (bovine albumin, BSA). The presence of a stabiliser was found to be an important parameter when preparing PCL microparticles containing a hydrophilic antigen. The effect of various technological parameters (concentration of the polymer and protein solutions, organic/aqueous phases ratio, nature of solvents and emulsion parameters such as duration and speed of agitation) on microparticle morphology and size, BSA entrapment and encapsulation efficiency was studied. Microparticles were characterized by a mean size from 9.56+/- 0.25 to 24.31+/- 2.87mum and a BSA entrapment from 0.80+/- 0.02 to 24.21+/- 0.23% (w/w). SDS-PAGE electrophoresis and isoelectric focusing (IEF) confirmed the conservation of the physicochemical characteristics of the BSA entrapped within PCL microparticles produced by spray-drying. Together, these results showed that spray-drying is an efficient technique to overcome the key obstacle that represents the scaling-up of the manufacturing process to produce sufficient quantities of vaccine for clinical trials and, ultimately, commercialization.


In this paper, g-C3N4-WO3 composite materials were prepared by hydrothermal processing. The composites were characterized by means of X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and N2 adsorption-desorption, respectively. The gas sensing properties of the composites were investigated. The results indicated that the addition of appropriate amount of g-C3N4 to WO3 could improve the response and selectivity to acetone. The sensor based on 2 wt% g-C3N4-WO3 composite showed the best gas sensing performances. When operating at optimum temperature of 310°C, the responses to 1000 ppm and 0.5 ppm acetone were 58.2 and 1.6, respectively, and the ratio of the 1000 ppm acetone to 1000 ppm ethanol reached 3.7.


A novel dual-modification strategy, including (1) the cross-linking and construction of a GO framework by ethylenediamine (EDA) and (2) the amine-enrichment modification by hyperbranched polyethylenimine (HPEI), has been proposed to design stable and highly charged GO framework membranes with the GO selective layer thickness of 70 nm for effective heave metal removal via nanofiltration (NF). Results from sonication experiments and positron annihilation spectroscopy confirmed that EDA cross-linking not only enhanced structural stability but also enlarged the nanochannels among the laminated GO nanosheets for higher water permeability. HPEI 60K was found to be the most effective post-treatment agent that resulted in GO framework membranes with a higher surface charge and lower transport resistance. The newly developed membrane exhibited a high pure water permeability of 5.01 L m(-2) h(-1) bar(-1) and comparably high rejections toward Mg(2+), Pb(2+), Ni(2+), Cd(2+), and Zn(2+). These results have demonstrated the great potential of GO framework materials in wastewater treatment and may provide insights for the design and fabrication of the next generation two-dimensional (2D)-based NF membranes.


The recent increase in the need for energy efficient wireless nodes have led to the study of various low power consumption receiver and transmitter architectures. The super-regenerative receiver architecture is one of the possible candidates for such a low power application. In this paper a detailed study on the noise analysis for such a kind of receiver is carried out. A closed form representation of the output signal to noise ratio for both narrow-band and wide-band communication is derived. The result indicates for a narrow-band communication the output signal to noise ratio cannot be better than a normal tuned amplifier. In the wide-band mode the SNR of super-regenerative receiver in linear regime is similar to a tuned amplifier.


'What is evident from this book is how widely Carl Rogers' ideas have spread throughout the humanistic scene - and how valuable they have been.' - Self & Society '...a stimulating, enjoyable book and I recommend it to anyone interested in the person-centred approach.' - Counselling This book is edited by David Brazier and includes his chapter "The Necessary Condition is Love".


This research focuses on the experiential meaning analysis of Barack Obama's speeches about Iraq War and Iran election crisis which are analyzed in a comparison analysis. The objectives of the research are to find out the types of processes employed in the texts, the ways of processes employed in the texts, and the reasons of the processes employed in the texts. The research belongs to the qualitative research and also descriptive method. This research applied purposive sampling to select the source of data and also applied total sampling technique to collect the data. It was done because the data were taken from all major clauses of the texts. The source of the data were taken from the transcript of Barack Obama's speeches about Iraq War given on October 2002 in The Federal Plaza in Chicago and the Iran election crisis given in a news conference on June 23, 2009. The data was analyzed using transitivity system and compared by using componential analysis to find the differences and similarities between text I and text II. Finally, having analyzed and seen the relationship both the texts, the researcher found up the cultural values supported by the secondary data. Having analyzed the texts using transitivity system, the researcher concluded that there are different types of processes and their ways applied in the texts. The findings show that the differences occur in the use of the processes and their functions. The dominant process applied in text I is verbal behavior process. Then it is followed by mental behavior process, material process, mental process, identifying relational process and attributive relational process. Meanwhile, the dominant process applied in text II is attributive relational process. Then it is followed by mental behavior process, mental process, verbal behavior process, identifying relational process, material process and verbal process. The dominant use of verbal behavior process in text I functions to show more attitude of Barack Obama in responding Iraq War. Besides, there are two other processes used by Barack Obama to show his attitude; mental behavior process and mental process. The other processes are used to support verbal behavior process in expressing the experiential meaning of Barack Obama toward Iraq War. On the other hand, the dominant use of attributive relational process in text II functions to give information about the condition and situation related to the crisis in Iran. There is only small attitude that can be seen through the processes applied in text II. Finally, Barack Obama tends to emphasis in showing his attitude of disapproval in text I. Meanwhile, in text II he only focuses on describing about the condition of Iran Crisis. The similarities occur in term of circumstances. The circumstances, location of place and time, applied in both texts. The similar circumstances are influenced by the topic of the speeches. Both the speeches talk about the war and brutality. Consequently, the description about location where the events taken place, and time when the events happened often occur to accompany the processes in both texts.


This article examines and questions a principle in democratic theory which has become particularly fashionable in analyses of globalization and European integration, namely that everyone affected by a decision should be able to participate in making it. It is found that this principle is too strong to fit with the meaning of democracy, leads to tautological arguments, is indeterminate in politically important cases and, if its indeterminacy is rectified, fails to support ideas of political equality and accountability. Removing this principle from the concept of democracy implies, among other things, that empirical analysis becomes more significant, indeed necessary, for assessment of effects of globalization on democracy. Parallel to the development of critical arguments is the defence of a theoretical alternative according to which the delimitation of democratic communities should be decided on the grounds of what effect it produces in terms of autonomy for everyone, those included as well as those excluded.


The stress and the high pressure of modern life is felt nowhere more keenly than in the field of higher professional education. On all sides the demand is heard for a wisely simplified curriculum, for a longer term of study, for methods that will bring the ever-widening field of knowledge to be covered within the range of the personal observation and induction of an ever-multiplying number of students. To meet the difficulties of the case, educational reforms have taken place all along the line. Teaching is becoming always more objective, illustrative, the didactic method more colloquial—socratic. The student is called on to produce, even more than to acquire, to enquire, to debate, and to himself form judgments on the facts of his own observation. The laboratory system, in short, with the symposium, is replacing the lecture room and the thesis. Nowhere are these new


Previous research on this project (in work by Saavedra and Smith) has presented performance evaluation of sequential computers. That work presented (a) measurements of machines at the source language primitive operation level; (b) analysis of standard benchmarks; prediction of run times based on separate measurements of the machines and the programs; (d) analysis of the effectiveness of compiler optimizations; and (e) measurements of the performance and design of cache memories. In this paper, we extend the earlier work to parallel computers. We describe a portable benchmarking suite and performance prediction methodology, which accurately predicts the run times of Fortran 90 programs running upon supercomputers. The benchmarking suite measures the optimization capabilities of a given Fortran 90 compiler, execution rates of abstract Fortran 90 operations, and the processing characteristics of the underlying architecture as exposed by compiler-generated code. To predict the run time of an arbitrary program, we combine our benchmark results with dynamic execution measurements, and augment the resulting prediction with simple factors which account for overhead due to architecture-specific effects, such as remote reference latencies. We measure two supercomputers: a dedicated 128-node TMC CM-5, a distributed memory multiprocessor, and a 4-node partition of a Cray YMP-C90, a tightly-integrated shared memory multiprocessor. Our measurements show that the performance of the YMP-C90 far outstrips that of the CM-5, due to the quality of the compilers available and the architectural characteristics of each machine. To validate our prediction methodology, we predict the run time of five interesting kernels on these machines; nearly all of the predicted run times are within 50-percent of actual run times, much closer than might be expected.


Computer simulation methods, such as Monte Carlo or molecular dynamics, are very powerful theoretical techniques to provide detailed and essentially exact informations on rather complex classical many‐body problems. With the advent of ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), where finite‐temperature dynamical trajectories are generated using interatomic forces which are calculated on the fly using accurate electronic structure calculations, the scope of computational research has been greatly extended. This review is intended to outline the basic principles as well as being a survey of the field. Beginning with the derivation of Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics, the Car–Parrinello method and the recently devised Car–Parrinello‐like approach to Born–Oppenheimer molecular dynamics, which unifies the best of both schemes are discussed. The predictive power of the latter second‐generation Car–Parrinello molecular dynamics approach is demonstrated by several applications ranging from liquid metals to semiconductors and water. This development allows for ab initio simulations on much larger length and timescales than previously thought feasible.


Fibrous components of the extracellular matrix are light-microscopically classified into three types of fibers: collagen, reticular and elastic. The present study reviews the ultrastructure of these fibrous components as based on our previous studies by light, electron, and atomic force microscopy. Collagen fibers present a cord- or tape-shape 1-20 microm wide and run a wavy course in tissues. These fibers consist of closely packed thin collagen fibrils (30-100 nm thick in ordinary tissues of mammals), and exhibit splitting and joining in altering the number of the fibrils to form a three-dimensional network as a whole. Individual collagen fibrils (i.e., unit fibrils) in collagen fibers have a characteristic D-banding pattern whose length is ranges from 64 to 67 nm, depending on tissues and organs. During fibrogenesis, collagen fibrils are considered to be produced by fusing short and thin fibrils with tapered ends. Reticular fibers are usually observed as a delicate meshwork of fine fibrils stained black by the silver impregnation method. They usually underlie the epithelium and cover the surface of such cells of muscle cells, adipose cells and Schwann cells. Electronmicroscopically, reticular fibers are observed as individual collagen fibrils or a small bundle of the fibrils, although the diameter of the fibrils is thin (about 30 nm) and uniform. Reticular fibers are continuous with collagen fibers through the exchange of these collagen fibrils. In silver-impregnated specimens, individual fibrils in reticular fibers are densely coated with coarse metal particles, probably due to the high content of glycoproteins around the fibrils. Elastic fibers and laminae are composed of microfibrils and elastin components. Observations of the extracted elastin have revealed that elastin components are comprised of elastin fibrils about 0.1-0.2 microm thick. Elastic fibers and laminae are continuous with networks and/or bundles of microfibrils (or oxytalan fibers), and form an elastic network specific to individual tissues. The fibrous components of the extracellular matrix are thereby morphologically categorized into two systems: the collagen fibrillar system as a supporting framework of tissues and cells, and the microfibrilelastin system for uniformly distributing stress to maintain the resilience adapted to local tissue requirements.


Eprosartan Mesylate (EM), an angiotensin II receptor blocker used in the treatment of high blood pressure. But poor solubility and bioavailability (13%) of eprosartan mesylate is a major challenging factor for improving its drug release rate. The main objective of the present work to develop and characterize self micro emulsifying drug delivery system of eprosartan mesylate by using compatible oil, surfactant and co-surfactant. For the selection of oil, surfactant and cosurfactant, solubility screening studies has been carried out. The nine formulations are prepared using peppermint oil, tween 80 and PEG 400. A pseudo ternary phase diagram was prepared to determine the self emulsion region. Four optimized formulations were prepared at 1:1 ratio(a mixture of surfactant and cosurfactant). These four formulations were evaluated for self-emulsification time, droplet size measurement, drug content analysis robustness to dilution test, viscosity analysis, f.t.i.r. The study and in-vitro diffusion studies. The ratio of scosmix (a mixture of surfactant and cosurfactant) of optimized formulation (pf5) was varied to pfa1 (2:1), pf2 (3:1), pfa3 (1:2) and compared with pure drug. The formulation having pfa1 (2:1) shown drug release of 93.13 % in 330 minutes where as pure drug showed a drug release of 54.51% in 330 minutes. So the prepared SMEDDS formulations were efficient and better than the pure drug, and it followed Korsmeyer pappes due to highest r2 value followed by Hixon crowel. It was concluded that incorporation of eprosartan mesylate in selfmicroemulsifying system is a great potential for improving the solubility and dissolution rate of eprosartan mesylate.


Automatic preferences can influence a decision maker's choice before any relevant or meaningful information is available. We account for this element of human cognition in a computational model of problem solving that involves active trial and error and show that automatic biases are not just a beneficial or detrimental property: they are a tool that, if properly managed over time, can give rise to superior performance. In particular, automatic preferences are beneficial early on and detrimental at later stages. What is more, additional value can be generated by a timely rebiasing, i.e., a calculated reversal of the initial automatic preference. Remarkably, rebiasing can dominate not only debiasing (i.e., eliminating the bias) but also continuously unbiased decision making. This research contributes to the debate on the adaptiveness of automatic and intuitive biases, which has centered primarily on one-shot controlled laboratory experiments, by simulating outcomes across extended time spans. We also illustrate the value of the novel intervention of adopting the opposite automatic preference—something organizations can readily achieve by changing key decision makers—as opposed to attempting to correct for or simply accepting the ubiquity of such biases.


: Concentrations of triiodothyronine, thyroxine and thyrotropin were determined using the luminescence enhanced enzyme immunoassay method in blood serum of 343 (male = 197, female = 146) euthyroid children. Beyond the newborn age no significant difference was found for the thyrotropin concentration. Compilation of the values resulted in a physiological thyrotropin concentration of 1.73 +/- 0.81 (1s) microU/ml for infants, children and juveniles. In opposition to these results the thyroxine and triiodothyronine concentration showed an age-specific dependence. The thyroxine and triiodothyronine concentrations (means +/- 1s) decreased continuously from the infant age (TT4: 182.1 +/- 37.7 ng/ml, 234.9 +/- 48.6 nmol/l, TT3: 1.77 +/- 0.57 ng/ml, 2.73 +/- 0.88 nmol/l) to the juvenile age (TT4: 77.9 +/- 14.3 ng/ml, 100.5 +/- 18.4 nmol/l, TT3: 1.25 +/- 0.31 ng/ml, 1.93 +/- 0.48 nmol/l). The luminescence enhanced enzyme immunoassay technique is suitable for use in the routine thyroid laboratory.


We established multiple regression models by on-site survey on 3090 famers' family in 139 counties in 4 provinces in the Huang-Huai plain, comprehensively analyzing the factors which affect the utilization of farmer's straw. Research results indicate that, some factors such as family agricultural labor population number, and family income level, and masters' political conditions, and duties in village, and education life, and straw using technology master situation, and straw using cognitive and farming area, and farming system, and straw subsidies, and straw industry development have positive effects on straw comprehensive utilization, while the factors like part-time work degree, and domestic livestock culture situation, and the cost-effective of using straw have negative effects on straw comprehensive utilization. These factors like straw subsidies, the cost-effective of using straw, straw using cognitive, straw utilization technology, family farm income, farm area have significant impact on farmer's straw utilization; masters' political conditions, duties in village, education life, family livestock culture situation, straw industry development make little influences. To increase the level of farmer's straw comprehensive utilization, there are some measures to take: Party members and leaders of the village further play the exemplary role apart from raising the awareness of farmers on crop straw; conscientiously implement the State subsidy policies about straw; implement straw utilization technology innovation, actively promote straw utilization technology; promote the realization of straw resources and commercialization to improve farmers' income.


Reptiles are a fascinating group for the study of sexual development because they exhibit a wide range of sex-determining mechanisms, from strict genetic sex determination (GSD) to strict thermal sex determination (TSD) and intermediate systems of GSD that are to various degrees overridden by environmental effects . This thematic issue presents the latest data on different aspects of sex determination in reptiles. Following an evolutionary perspective on why reptiles might be predisposed to evolve TSD, the papers in this issue explore in detail the different genetic and molecular mechanisms of sex determination and differentiation. They consider recent findings such as the discovery of new genes differentially expressed at male and female sex-determining temperatures, a new model of the role of aromatase, and the contribution of heat-shock proteins to TSD in the American alligator. Further studies examine the role played by sex allocation, the advantage of viviparity, and the effects of anthropogenic climate change on the sex ratio in TSD reptile populations. Providing a valuable overview for both students and researchers, this publication is essential reading for developmental and reproductive biologists, herpetologists, comparative endocrinologists, evolutionary biologists and geneticists.


Background: In patients with early breast cancer, neoadjuvant therapy is widely performed as standard of care. While the molecular targeting strategy makes progress in HER2 positive breast cancer, the optimal regimens for ER+/HER2- breast cancer (BC) and triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) remain undecided. Furthermore, there are few strategies for patients who do not achieve complete pathological response (pCR) who have worse prognosis. To address these unmet clinical needs, there is urgent need to examine the genomic alterations and immune microenvironment of residual tumors after neoadjuvant therapy. Here, we conducted a comprehensive analysis integrating genomic, transcriptomic, and clinical data to investigate the difference between primary breast cancer and residual disease. Materials and Methods: Using the large prospectively ascertained ethnically diverse Chicago Multi-Ethnic (ChiMEC) cohort of 562 participants with integrated genomic data, we identified 176 patients with breast cancer who underwent sequencing with Tempus xT next-generation sequencing panel including DNA- and whole-transcriptome RNA-sequencing. These included 131 primary breast tumors and 45 residual tumors after neoadjuvant therapy. We compared mutation rates between primary tumor and residual tumor in ER+/HER2- BC and TNBC. We also investigated homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) scores, tumor mutational burden (TMB), degree of immune infiltration, and microsatellite instability (MSI), and their association with survival. Results: Out of the 176 patients, there were 72 ER+/HER2- BC, 42 TNBC, and 44 HER2 positive cases. Among patients with HR+/HER2- BC, residual tumors had higher mutation rates in PIK3CA (61% vs 33%), CDH1 (33% vs 17%), CCND1 (39% vs 7%), FGF3 (28% vs 0%), FGF4 (33% vs 2%), FGF19 (33% vs 2%), and GATA3 (44% vs 7%) than primary tumors, but lower rates in TP53 (28% vs 48%), MAP3K1 (6% vs 40%), KMT2D (0% vs 33%), MCL1 (0% vs 30%), SPEN (6% vs 20%), ZFHX3 (0% vs 20%), ARID1A (11% vs 16%), KMT2C (0% vs 19%), LZTR1 (0% vs 19%), BCORL1 (6% vs 17%), NOTCH3 (6% vs 17%), FAT1 (0% vs 17%) and LPR1B (0% vs 17%). Relative to primary TNBC tumors, residual TNBC tumors exhibited higher mutation rates in PTEN (10% vs 3%), CCNE1 (10% vs 3%), CIC (10% vs 0%), and KMT2D (10% vs 3%). Conversely, residual TNBC tumors had relatively lower rates of MCL1 (0% vs 21%), RB1 (0% vs 12%), CDH1 (0% vs 12%), KMT2C (11% vs 18%), and PIK3CA (0% vs 15%), CDKN1B (0% vs 12%) and ETV6 (0% vs 12%). There was a significant trend of higher TMB (>5.0 mutations/megabase, m/MB) associated with improved disease-free survival among the 176 patients (P=0.031). TMB was not significantly different between primary tumors and residual tumors, or across subtypes. Microsatellite instability (MSI) status was high in 3 patients (1.6%) and equivocal in 5 patients (2.7%). TMB in MSI-high or MSI-equivocal tumors was significantly higher than TMB in tumors with microsatellite stability (37.7m/MB vs 5.3m/MB, P Citation Format: Minoru Miyashita, Masaya Hattori, Yonglan Zheng, Toshio Yoshimatsu, Joshua SK Bell, Padma Sheila Rajagopal, Anna Woodard, Jean Baptiste Reynier, Elisabeth Sveen, Galina Khramtsova, Fang Liu, Abiola Ibraheem, Gini Fleming, Nora Jaskowiak, Rita Nanda, Benjamin Leibowitz, Nike Beaubier, Kevin White, Dezheng Huo, Olufunmilayo I Olopade. Unstable mutational profile and heterogeneity of residual breast tumor following neoadjuvant therapy from comprehensive genomic and transcriptomic sequencing [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Virtual Symposium; 2020 Dec 8-11; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2021;81(4 Suppl):Abstract nr PD7-06.


Angiogenesis contributes to a wide range of neoplastic, ischemic, and inflammatory disorders. Definition of the intrinsic molecular controls in angiogenic vessel growth promises novel therapeutic approaches for angiogenesis-related diseases. CD148 (also named DEP-1/PTP eta) is a receptor-like protein tyrosine phosphatase that is abundantly expressed in vascular endothelial cells. To explore a role of CD148 in endothelial vessel formation, we generated a monoclonal antibody, Ab1, against the ectodomain sequence of CD148 and examined its effects on endothelial-cell growth and vessel formation. Here we report that a bivalent, but not a monovalent, form of the Ab1 antibody inhibits endothelial-cell growth and blocks angiogenesis in mouse cornea in vivo. We further demonstrate that (1) bivalent Ab1 arrests cell-cycle progression of CD148-transfected CHO cells at G(0)/G(1) phase, (2) coexpression of catalytically inactive CD148 mutants attenuates the Ab1-cell growth inhibition, and (3) bivalent Ab1 suppresses phosphorylation of ERK1/2 kinases and Met tyrosine kinase as activated CD148 does, with an increase in CD148-associated tyrosine phosphatase activity. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that Ab1-induced ectodomain oligomerization arrests endothelial-cell growth through catalytic activity of the CD148 cytoplasmic domain. The present study defines CD148 as a valuable molecular target for antiangiogenesis therapy.


Analyses of seismic-reflection profiles collected off New Jersey reveal a large buried channel that splits from the topographic Hudson shelf valley beneath the inner shelf and extends southward for at least 80 km. The buried valley has a flat bottom, a width of 2 to 17 km, and a relief of 3 to 15 m, all features similar to those of the Hudson shelf valley. The buried valley apparently is an ancestral pathway of the Hudson River that has been filled with heterogeneous fluvial deposits and capped by an additional 10 to 30 m of sediments. Vibracores from over or near the ancestral valley show that interbedded marine sand and mud layers constitute the upper part of the sedimentary fill. Radiocarbon ages, geotechnical properties, and micro-paleontological analyses of the core sediments indicate that the valley was formed and filled sometime prior to 28,000 yr ago and then was exposed subaerially during at least one sea-level regression. These results are the first clear subbottom evidence that the ancestral Hudson River flowed south of the Hudson shelf valley on the exposed continental shelf during Pleistocene time.


A package(a tool model) for program of predicting atmospheric chemical kinetics with sensitivity analysis is presented. The new direct method of calculating the first order sensitivity coefficients using sparse matrix technology to chemical kinetics is included in the tool model, it is only necessary to triangularize the matrix related to the Jacobian matrix of the model equation. The Gear type procedure is used to integrate a model equation and its coupled auxiliary sensitivity coefficient equations. The FORTRAN subroutines of the model equation, the sensitivity coefficient equations, and their Jacobian analytical expressions are generated automatically from a chemical mechanism. The kinetic representation for the model equation and its sensitivity coefficient equations, and their Jacobian matrix is presented. Various FORTRAN subroutines in packages, such as SLODE, modified MA28, Gear package, with which the program runs in conjunction are recommended. The photo-oxidation of dimethyl disulfide is used for illustration.


Psammoma bodies have been documented in carcinoid tumours of the duodenum, but not in carcinoids at other sites in the gastrointestinal tract. 2 We describe a psammomatous carcinoid tumour in the rectum. A 50 year old woman presented with a two month history of abdominal pain and bleeding from the rectum. On examination, she had pallor, in addition to fullness and tenderness in the left iliac fossa. There was no evidence of mass or free fluid in the abdomen on abdominal examination. Rectal examination revealed a growth approximately 5 cm above the anal verge. Her erythrocyte sedimentation rate was 80 mm at the end of the first hour and she had a neutrophilic leucocytosis. Her liver function tests were largely unremarkable, except for a mild increase in transaminases (less than two times upper limit of normal). Flexible sigmoidoscopy showed a large ulcerated friable growth involving more than 50% of the bowel circumference. Biopsy of the tumour showed a neoplasm composed of glandular structures with individual cells having round, uniform nuclei with a ''salt and pepper'' appearance. Abundant psammoma bodies were seen throughout the biopsy (fig 1). Immunohistochemistry with antibodies to synaptophysin (Dako, Glostrup, Denmark; 1/100 dilution) and chromogranin (Dako; 1/100 dilution) showed cytoplasmic staining. The features were those of a glandular carcinoid, with extensive psammomatous calcification. An abdomino-perineal resection was planned. At surgery, the patient was found to have extensive inoperable disease. A sigmoid colectomy with colostomy (Hartmann's procedure) was performed to relieve her obstruction. The sections through the resected colon showed similar histological features—that is, a glandular carcinoid with psammoma bodies. The tumour infiltrated the full thickness of the bowel wall. Two regional lymph nodes contained metastatic carcinoid tumour. Carcinoid tumours of the gut are classified, based on site of origin, into foregut (stomach and duodenum), midgut (small intestine and proximal colon), and hindgut (terminal intestine and rectum) tumours. Psammoma bodies have been described in about 15–20% of carcinoid tumours of the duodenum and are found almost exclusively at the ampulla of Vater. Most of these are histologically characterised by glandular structures and psammoma bodies. 2 These neoplasms often express somatostatin by immunohistochemistry and are termed somatostatinomas. They rarely result in the somatostatinoma syndrome of diabetes mellitus, cholelithiasis, and steatorrhoea, which is commonly seen with pancreatic somatostatin containing neuroendocrine tumours. An association has also been reported between psammomatous carcinoid of the duodenum and neurofibromatosis. 5 The rectum is not an uncommon site for carcinoids. However, they are conventional carcinoids and display solid sheets, ribbons, and trabeculae or gland-like structures composed of round cells with monotonous nuclei and stippled chromatin. Psammoma bodies have not been documented in rectal carcinoids previously. The reason for this predilection of psammoma bodies for foregut carcinoids is not known.


The "m" in mHealth is often thought of as the ability to receive health information and monitor behaviors on the go. The term "wireless" stands in for smartphones, tablets, etc. that can travel through time and space; while "wired" is the traditional desktop access method. Little is known about how people actually use mobile vs. traditional access methods. This study examines the results of 2 mobile weight loss interventions (Pounds Off Digitally (POD 1 and 2)) where participants were required to own a mobile device (POD1: Mp3 player; POD2: smartphone) for study entry and received weight loss information delivered via podcast. In POD1, participants were randomized to theory-based podcast (TPB) (n=41) or general weight loss podcast (n=37) conditions. In POD2, participants were randomized to either TPB (n=49) or TPB+mobile (a diet/PA app and Twitter app) (n=47). Examining data from both studies in aggregate, despite a mobile delivery method, 75% of participants accessed the podcasts at their home or work, 65% were sitting when listening, and 55% used a non-mobile device to access the podcasts (desktop computers). Examining objective download data for POD2, 49% of downloads (2889/5944) originated from non-mobile delivery methods (e.g., QuickTime) vs. mobile platforms (3055/5944). At 3 months, 46% of posts to Twitter originated from the web site (n=665 posts) vs. an app (n=540; 38%) or dashboard tool (e.g. TweetDeck) (n=233; 16%). Combining POD1 and 2, use of a mobile device for podcasts access was not related to % weight loss or podcasts downloaded at 3 months, but number of podcasts downloaded was related to % weight loss (β=-0.13; P<0.01). In conclusion, providing people with multiple platforms may be more important than providing only mobile options. Future studies should examine why people choose wired over wireless methods and how we can tailor delivery method to optimize use. Brie Turner-‐McGrievy, Deborah Tate Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behaviour, Arnold School of Medicine, University of Southern California


This literature digest of hydrogen-air combustion fundamentals presents data on flame temperature, burning velocity, quenching distance, flammability limits, ignition energy, flame stability, detonation, spontaneous ignition, and explosion limits. The data are assessed, recommended values are given, and relations among various combustion properties are discussed. New material presented includes: theoretical treatment of variation in spontaneous ignition lag with temperature, pressure, and composition, based on reaction kinetics of hydrogen-air composition range for 0.01 to 100 atmospheres and initial temperatures of 0 degrees to 1400 degrees k.


[Note: This article has been amended and republished in issue 2(2). Please refer to humanit.hb.se/article/view/495 for the final version.] The design and implementation of a conceptual model, CAFE (a Categorization Assistant For E-mail), is described. The model supports the organization, searching, and retrieval of information in e-mail. Three modes are available for satisfying the users' needs in various situations: the Busy mode for intermittent use at times of high stress, the Cool mode for continuous use at the computer, and the Curious mode for sporadic use when exploring and (re-)organizing messages when more time is at hand. In the implementation each mode required using a different technique. The Busy mode uses the text-based Naive Bayesian algorithm, the Cool mode uses standard e-mail filtering rules, and the Curious mode uses a combination of clustering techniques known as Scatter/Gather. The design of the model is motivated partly by cognitive science theories (employed partly in a case study of categorization on the computer screen), and partly by a survey of e-mail clients. The model is related to information seeking theories in electronic environments.


The development of innovative methods for the integration of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and polyaniline (PANI) that preserve their exceptional quality, while robustly enriching their gas-sensing features, is still rare and remains challenging for the realization of rapid and sensitive gas detection. Herein, due to the advantages in its structure, tetra-β-carboxyphthalocyanine cobalt(II) (TcPcCo) acts not only as a sensing promoter, but also as an efficient mediator to couple multi-walled CNTs (MCNTs) with PANI, resulting in MCNT@PANI hybrids with a uniform 3D network; the planar 18π-electrons in TcPcCo allow it to closely conjugate on the surface of MCNT by π–π interactions; moreover, the outer –COOH groups in TcPcCo prompt it to link with the aniline monomers based on acid–base interactions. During the subsequent polymerization process, TcPcCo also serves as a protonic acid doped into PANI, increasing the electronic conductivity of PANI. Due to the specific selectivity of TcPcCo, high sensitivity of PANI towards NH3, and good conductivity and stability of the MCNTs, the obtained core–shell MCNT@PANI hybrids demonstrate radically enhanced NH3-sensing performance, especially in terms of response/recovery duration (∼5.0 s/12.0 s to 100 ppm NH3) and selectivity, outperforming the single components and previously reported materials at room temperature. In addition, the firstname.lastname@example.com hybrid shows a superior sensing sensitivity (140.99% to 100 ppm NH3) as well as remarkable stability over 60 days. The proposed strategy, TcPcCo-mediated non-covalent coupling of MCNT with PANI, is of potential importance towards the design and construction of ideal materials for future sensing devices, as well as many other applications.


Resumen— In recent years, large scale distributed virtual environments have become a major trend in distributed applications, mainly due to the enormous popularity of multi-player online games in the entertainment industry. Thus, scalability has become an essential issue for these highly interactive systems. In this paper, we propose a new synchronization technique for those distributed virtual environments that are based on networked-server architectures. Unlike other methods described in the literature, the proposed technique takes into account the updating messages exchanged by avatars, thus releasing the servers from updating the location of such avatars when synchronizing the state of the system. As a result, the communications required for synchronization are greatly reduced, and this method results more scalable. Also, these communications are distributed along the whole synchronization period, in order to reduce workload peaks. Performance evaluation results show that the proposed approach significantly reduces the percentage of CPU utilization in the servers when compared with other existing methods, therefore supporting a higher number of avatars. Additionally, the system response time is reduced accordingly. Palabras clave— Distributed virtual environments, synchronization technique


Given growing interest in optical-frequency magnetic dipole transitions, we use intermediate coupling calculations to identify strong magnetic dipole emission lines that are well suited for experimental study. The energy levels for all trivalent lanthanide ions in the 4f n configuration are calculated using a detailed free ion Hamiltonian, including electrostatic and spin-orbit terms as well as two-body, three-body, spin-spin, spin-other-orbit, and electrostatically correlated spin-orbit interactions. These free ion energy levels and eigenstates are then used to calculate the oscillator strengths for all ground-state magnetic dipole absorption lines and the spontaneous emission rates for all magnetic dipole emission lines including transitions between excited states. A large number of strong magnetic dipole transitions are predicted throughout the visible and near-infrared spectrum, including many at longer wavelengths that would be ideal for experimental investigation of magnetic light-matter interactions with optical metamaterials and plasmonic antennas.


In order to fully understand sugarcane production in Guangxi in 2013, the sample survey combined with data collection and field survey was carried out in sugarcane production areas in Nanning, Hechi, Liuzhou, Chongzuo, Baise and Laibin from May 28 to June 36 in 2013. It was found that the sugarcane growing area in Guangxi in 2013 declined compared with that in 2012; the rate of emergence remained the same as previous year, and as for the plant number of plant crop and ratoon crop per hectare, there was a decline of 4000 and 2000 seedlings respectively compared with the figure in 2012; borer damage rate declined on the whole while the incidence of sugarcane smut increased. Due to the growth in the cost of planting, the growers were less enthusiastic for management. According to the findings, the fertilization and sugarcane field management should be accelerated; borer prevention work was also required, so as to reduce borer damage and dieback rate; the planting structure of varieties had to be adjusted and the cultivated area of "Guitang" as a fine sugarcane variety should also be enlarged; meanwhile other active measures needed to be taken to prevent and control the outburst of pest attack in local areas.


This research study examines the perspectives of African American and Latino/a students from low-income families who are especially successful in an urban, public school to elicit and gain insights into factors that mediate their academic success, conditions and contexts that nurture these factors, and the process through which these factors mediate their academic success. Utilizing a qualitative, phenomenological theoretical framework (Van Manen, 1990), this study bridges critical gaps in the empirical research literature on the academic success of such students by centering and validating the marginalized, yet authentic, voices, perspectives, and lived experiences of the adolescents (Gayles, 2005; Howard, Dryden & Johnson, 1999). It examines extant research literature on resilience, racial/cultural identity and racial socialization to inform the questions put to subjects in the present study. Data for the study were collected through qualitative, semi-structured, open-ended, one-toone interviews of ten students, in grades 11-12, in an urban, public high school. The students are from African-American and Latino/a, low-income families and have a minimum average school grade of B or 3.0. Data analysis was guided by qualitative coding cycles (Saldana, 2013). This study finds five emerging themes or factors with eight sub-themes that the adolescents believed mediated their academic success. The five factors which are found to be external influences emanating from the adolescents' ecological contexts (family, school, community, and social media), are: high expectations, caring and supportive relationships, participation in positions of responsibility, positive racial socialization, and positive belief systems. The eight sub-themes or sub-factors reflect the adolescents' responses to the external factors: value for education, focus on future goals/clear sense of purpose, self-push, internal locus of control, desire to make family or caregivers proud, sense of belonging, clear sense of good versus bad choices and their implications, and positive racial identity. This study also finds several implications that are critical to the academic success of these students: the power of preponderance of the emerging factors, the power of socialization of the factors into the students from their external, ecological contexts, the power of caring and supportive relationships (all the factors were socialized into the students within such relationships), and the criticality and interactivity of the adolescents' agency in responding positively and actively to the external factors or influences. Most critical to this study's findings is the suggestion that all the emerging factors can be cultivated in these adolescents through strategic interventions that can be sustained by a strong partnership between schools, families, and communities that comprise the key ecological contexts of minority children and adolescents from low-income families, attending urban public schools. Pathways to School Success: An Examination of Perspectives of African American and Latino/a Low-income Students by Uzoamaka C. Unobagha B.A., History/Archaeology, University of Nigeria, 1983 LL.B., Law, University of Southampton, U.K., 1985 B.L., Nigeria Law School, 1986 LL.M., Law, University of Southampton, U.K, 1988 Dissertation Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership Syracuse University June 2019 Copyright © Uzoamaka C. Unobagha 2019 All Rights Reserved


Abstract The present paper studies the problems of creation of techniques for the analysis of vibro-impact processes in systems with a large number of impact pairs. The used method of singularisation allows refusing from the ideas of the momentary impact and considering interaction hypotheses, which are more realistic than Newtonian ones. We consider the features of synchronous modes of movements of the clap type in systems with parallel impact elements as well as in tubes colliding with intermediate supports. Such modes are most dangerous in terms of the vibration wear of structural elements. The examples of calculation are given for specific designs.


A major objective of this paper is to uncover ideological assumptions on marriage that are embedded in the defamiliarization techniques that are utilized by Euphrase Kezilahabi and Said Ahmed Mohamed in their works. The controlling question is: Under what circumstances are defamiliarization techniques used and what effect do they achieve? The paper therefore discusses the aspects that defamiliarize marriage in a patriarchal socio-cultural context in the works of the two authors. It therefore explores the relationship between the defamiliarization techniques and the socio-cultural structures. The paper further discusses the meanings, aesthetics and effects of defamiliarization devices on the readers. I argue that one of the fundamental motivations of use of defamiliarization techniques is to ideologically put forward a definite moral value. The analysis of the defamiliarization techniques makes inferences from the works under study while constructing indicators of worldview, values and attitudes, which construct and deconstruct the popular ideological and cultural beliefs and practices. Significantly, the paper directs inquiry into the relationships between power, status and solidarity, which have been ignored in most linguistic models of communication but which are fundamental to the understanding of literary texts. It is my view that normal usage of language has the important role of establishing normative concepts that define social reality, which in turn has a controlling power over individual identity. It is within this understanding that this paper discusses how defamiliarization techniques are instrumental in exposing and questioning some of the popular ideologies, at the levels of cultural beliefs and practices especially in relation to marital confinement, gender roles in marriage and parenthood with a view of establishing their cultural and ideological underpinnings.


We use calibrated extreme-UV (EUV) spectral irradiances obtained from observations with the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) Coronal Diagnostics Spectrometer Normal Incidence Spectrometer (NIS) to estimate the signal measured by the Solar EUV Monitor (SEM) first-order band, 260 to 340 A (SEM 1). The NIS observes the resonance lines He ii 304 A and Sixi 303 A directly in second order. The irradiances of the other lines in the band are estimated with a differential emission measure (DEM) modelling, using updated atomic data. The observations analysed here were obtained during 1998–2011, which means that they span the maximum and minimum of Cycle 23. The current knowledge of the SEM 1 degradation is used to find effective areas during the dates of the NIS observations and to predict the SEM 1 count rates across the band. The total count rates, estimated by folding the NIS-based spectra with the SEM 1 effective areas, agree very well (within 10–20%) with the observed ones during solar minimum conditions, when the He ii 304 A is the dominant contribution to the band. Excellent agreement with the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Extreme ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) observations is also found. On the other hand, the predicted SEM 1 count rates during the Cycle-23 maximum are significantly (by about 30%) lower than the observed ones. The solar spectrum in the SEM 1 band changes significantly during maximum conditions, with the He ii 304 A only contributing about 40%. A significant fraction of the observed count rates comes from coronal emission in an off-band spectral region that has recently been discovered. An explanation for the discrepancy needs further investigation.


The normal total rainfall for the summer rainfall areas in South Africa is 664 mm. Since 1963, the country has recorded 16 seasons below normal and 14 above normal. Since the 1982–83 season, 7 seasons have been below normal and 4 have been above normal. Of these last 11 years, two rainy seasons recorded less than 75% of normal rainfall, which is a coarse estimation of severe drought. These seasons were 1982–83, when an average total of only 408 mm was measured, and 1992–93, when the average total was 484 mm. Although 1991–92 has been called the worst drought this century, for the stations used in this survey, the average total was 510 mm, or about 77% of normal. The 1981–82 and 1982–83 as well as 1991–92 and 1992–93 seasons were close to being only 75% of normal rainfall. These are the only occasions in the last 70 years that two consecutive summer rainy seasons have had such seriously inadequate rainfall. Fortunately, the geographical and temporal distribution of rainfall varies seasonally, and in 1992–93, adequate rain fell on the main summer cropping areas of South Africa to save the country from experiencing two disastrous crop failures. The greatest impacts of these two very dry seasons were the low levels of surface water stored in dams on which most industrial and urban areas depend and low ground water reserves for boreholes, which support most irrigation and many rural communities. In addition, the sugar industry in Natal and Zululand on the normally wet east coast has been seriously damaged and many sugar mills have closed. Farming and rural communities with accumulated capital losses and mounting debt cannot hope to recover as quickly as the grazing grasses did following good rains in October and November 1993.


An immense global plume of CO meanders widely around the world in the Southern Hemisphere. It arises over Southern America and Africa and flows eastward. The first emissions are in tropical Brazil, and the plume circulates around the world to South America again. The plume was largely unexpected until there were aircraft studies made in NASA's Pacific Exploratory Mission Tropics (Part A). This paper describes the meteorology of the Global Plume, as our simulation, with a synoptic model adapted to global transport, reveals it with a tracer-CO simulation. The observations and their simulation require a particular set of conditions of pollutant accumulation, cumulonimbus venting with required strengths at a narrow range of altitude. Additionally, a particular subtropical conduction region. over the Indian Ocean, Australia, and the westernmost South Pacific, relatively free of storms, appears to be a key part of the mechanism. These conclusions are the results of a synoptic reconstruction of the PEMT-A period, September-


John Meurig Thomas is a former Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a former head of the Department of Physical Chemistry and former Master of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. A world-renowned solid-state, materials and surface chemist, he has been an educator, researcher, academic administrator, author of university texts, government advisor, industrial consultant and trustee of national museums in a career spanning over 50 years. Recipient of many international awards, including the Linus Pauling, Willard–Gibbs, Kapitza, Natta, Stokes, Davy and Faraday medals, he is also a fellow of the Royal Society (1977), of the American Philosophical Society (1993) and of ten other national academies. He is best known for his fundamental work in heterogeneous catalysis, chemical electron microscopy and in the popularisation of science, for which, in conjunction with his services to chemistry, he was knighted (1991). He is also founding editor of three scientific journals and editor or co-editor of some 30 monographs. A new mineral, meurigite, was named in his honour (1995). Most recently in 2016, Sir John was awarded the Royal Medal for Physical Sciences by the Royal Society.

Drawn from over 1200 publications, this volume contains a summarised account of Sir John's work, with a selection of the new techniques pioneered and discovered by him and his colleagues. Also included are popular science articles, and various illustrations of techniques which have enhanced our knowledge of many facets of condensed matter science. Contributions from 80 peers, colleagues, former co-workers, students and friends worldwide who have interacted with or been influenced by him are a tribute to the professional and personal life of Sir John, making this book a unique reflective summary of the work of one of the greatest achievers in modern British physical science.


Croton mubango is widely used as traditional medicine in tropical Africa. The potential of C. mubango as traditional medicine, its botany, chemical and pharmacological activities are reviewed. The literature relevant to the study was obtained from scientific databases such as BioMed Central (BMC), Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus, Science Direct, PubMed, Springerlink and Scielo. Other supplementary literature such as books, book chapters, theses, conference papers and other scientific publications were obtained from the University of Fort Hare Library and dissertation search engines such as EThOS, OATD, ProQuest and Open-thesis. Literature search revealed that the bark, fruits, leaves and roots of C. mubango are commonly used as traditional medicines for abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dysentery, fever, hernia, intestinal worms, malaria, rheumatism, toothache, tuberculosis and as purgative. Phytochemical compounds isolated from C. mubango include alkaloids, flavonoids, reducing sugars, saponins, steroids, tannins, terpenes and triterpenes. Pharmacological studies on C. mubango indicate that the species has in vitro and in vivo antiplasmodial activities. Several medicinal applications and therapeutic potentials of C. mubango have been demonstrated in this study although the majority of them still need pharmacological validation.


This study of British press coverage of Boko Haram, a militant group in Nigeria, concentrates on condensational symbols in news reports of one of its major acts of terrorism, the bombing of the United Nations House in Abuja, the country's capital city, in August 2011. The study examines the visibility of Boko Haram in British newspapers before and after the attack. It identifies the condensational symbols that dominated the coverage and how these provided a particular trajectory that could have shaped newspaper readers' understanding of the event. The study argues that the symbolic terms that journalists used in their reports were not only easily identifiable but were specifically chosen to simplify a complex story for audiences that were perhaps uninformed about the group and its activities. The terms also reflect the repertoire of news frames that journalists mine to reconstruct reality for their audiences.


PURPOSE
The movement of modern hospitals and companies towards a higher level of organization and quality control demands access to all information relevant to ones responsibilities. An environment with an ever-increasing work-load requires effective and timely decision making. A tool that keeps the user informed on all of his tasks is absolutely essential.

METHODS
The tool was evaluated based on known tasks, duties and needs of medical-physicists. In particular was this: distinguishing between various needs in a group, monitoring of all QAs, clinics, linacs and measurement devices, using one multiple online platform, being independent of specific measurement-devices, data import (manually, automated), data evaluation comparison (manufacturer vs. tool) and comparison of global qa criteria vs. manufacturer criteria. System-requirements: Available for almost all os and browsers ( after 2003).

RESULTS
We found this tool to improve the overall quality on all items related to monitoring treatment machines, tasks and processes. With various user-rights and views and by controlling and monitoring of duties everywhere and 24-7 tools like this can set a needed standard. The technical method used for this first tool is highly advanced giving prove by being available e.g. for all os. Even complicate processes like importing from data-files and evaluation of the data was successfully tested and demonstrate new available options. The check if a user can truly be independent of specific devices, data formats, data comparison etc. was archived and is promising.

CONCLUSION
Using this online tool enables medical-physicists to establish a central point of data acquisition and to manage their facilities with all the attention and speed the job requires.An online tool as common standard independent of manufacturers who have their own goals enables medical-physicists to fulfill their job as they would want to. Herewith I, Peer Koltermann, disclose to work for P2PMPI Medical Physics Interaction offering the first online application for monitoring in medical physics.


Corneal scarring is the result of a disease, infection or injury. The resulting scars cause significant loss of vision or even blindness. To‐date, the most successful treatment is corneal transplantation, but it does not come without side effects. One of the corneal dystrophies that are correlated with corneal scarring is keratoconus (KC). The onset of the disease is still unknown; however, altered cellular metabolism has been linked to promoting the fibrotic phenotype and therefore scarring. We have previously shown that human keratoconus cells (HKCs) have altered metabolic activity when compared to normal human corneal fibroblasts (HCFs). In our current study, we present evidence that quercetin, a natural flavonoid, is a strong candidate for regulating metabolic activity of both HCFs and HKCs in vitro and therefore a potential therapeutic to target the altered cellular metabolism characteristic of HKCs. Targeted mass spectrometry‐based metabolomics was performed on HCFs and HKCs with and without quercetin treatment in order to identify variations in metabolite flux. Overall, our study reveals a novel therapeutic target OF Quercetin on corneal stromal cell metabolism in both healthy and diseased states. Clearly, further studies are necessary in order to dissect the mechanism of action of quercetin. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


A review of published studies on risk management in developing countries reveals that critical success factors for implementing risk management has remained an under-researched area of investigation. This paper is aimed at investigating the perceptions of construction professionals concerning the critical success factors (CSFs) for implementation of risk management systems (IRMS). Survey data was collected from 87 construction professionals from the Iranian construction industry as a developing country. The results indicate that four factors are regarded as highly critical: 'support from managers', 'inclusion of risk management in construction education and training courses for construction practitioners', 'attempting to deliver projects systematically', and 'awareness and knowledge of the process for implementing risk management'. Assessing the associations among CSFs also highlighted the crucial role of enhancing the effectiveness of knowledge management practices in construction organisations. Study also revealed that parties involved in projects do not agree on the level of importance of CSFs for implementing risk management in developing countries. This study contributes to practice and research in several ways. For practice, it increases understanding of how closely knowledge management is associated with the implementation of risk management systems in developing countries. For research, the findings would encourage construction practitioners to support effective knowledge management as a precursor to higher levels of risk management implementation on construction projects.


In the past five years, triathlon has been identified in the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) annual doping summary as being among the top five sports returning 'adverse analytical findings' or positive doping results. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the sources of knowledge regarding doping practices and anti-doping efforts in Canadian and American professional female triathletes. The secondary purpose of this study was to develop suggestions that may enhance the efficacy of anti-doping education programmes and ultimately the larger global anti-doping movement. The first phase of this WADA-sponsored Social Science initiative project consisted of two six-member focus groups that included younger pro-triathletes at the beginning of their international career from both the USA and Canada. Six Canadian and six US female triathletes participated in separate focus group sessions lasting approximately 1.5 hours in addition to individual semi-structured follow-up interviews. Analysis of the data yielded four interconnected thematic categories, including: (1) meanings of doping to participants; (2) general knowledge of doping and anti-doping practices; (3) suggestions for anti-doping education; and (4) contrasts between American and Canada assessment of anti-doping issues.


Recent studies have witnessed that self-supervised methods based on view synthesis obtain clear progress on multi-view stereo (MVS). However, existing methods rely on the assumption that the corresponding points among different views share the same color, which may not always be true in practice. This may lead to unreliable self-supervised signal and harm the final reconstruction performance. To address the issue, we propose a framework integrated with more reliable supervision guided by semantic co-segmentation and data-augmentation. Specially, we excavate mutual semantic from multi-view images to guide the semantic consistency. And we devise effective data-augmentation mechanism which ensures the transformation robustness by treating the prediction of regular samples as pseudo ground truth to regularize the prediction of augmented samples. Experimental results on DTU dataset show that our proposed methods achieve the state-of-the-art performance among unsupervised methods, and even compete on par with supervised methods. Furthermore, extensive experiments on Tanks&Temples dataset demonstrate the effective generalization ability of the proposed method.


IMPORTANCE
Occupational therapists can foster student veterans' resilience, but targets for intervention must be developed.

OBJECTIVE
To explain factors influencing student veterans' successful adaptation to past combat exposure, we hypothesized that participants with high life meaning would have greater levels of protective factors and lower levels of health conditions than those with low life meaning.

DESIGN
Longitudinal panel study with two measurements. Participants were classified by level of combat exposure (high-low) and life meaning (high-low) at follow-up, yielding four possible classifications (e.g., resilient group: high combat exposure, high life meaning). Linear mixed models were fit to obtain adjusted means of protective factors and health conditions for each classification; independent-samples t tests were used to examine differences between classifications.

SETTING
Community.

PARTICIPANTS
Convenience sample of 153 combat-exposed student veterans.

OUTCOMES AND MEASURES
Psychometrically sound measures of combat exposure, life meaning, protective factors (social and instructor autonomy support, coping ability, academic self-efficacy, social-community participation, and meaningful activity), and health conditions (posttraumatic stress [PTSD], depression, somatic symptoms).

RESULTS
Groups with high life meaning at follow-up in response to both levels of combat exposure reported greater meaningful activity and coping ability and fewer depressive symptoms. Participants with high life meaning in response to low combat exposure had greater social support and fewer somatic symptoms; participants with high life meaning in response to high combat exposure had lower PTSD.

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE
Occupational therapists may foster student veterans' resilience by promoting meaningful activity, social support, and coping ability while managing symptoms of health conditions.

WHAT THIS ARTICLE ADDS
To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to offer empirical support for potential targets of occupational therapy intervention that address student veterans' successful adaptation to combat exposure. Findings suggest that researchers should develop and test interventions that facilitate successful engagement in meaningful and shared activities and that occupational therapists should work within multidisciplinary teams to bolster coping ability and manage symptoms of combat-related health conditions.


Making an informed decision with regards to a suitable business location or site selection for organizations is becoming challenging for business decision makers globally; and even more challenging in business environment that are saddled with uncertainties. The continues raise of multiple criteria variation of site preferences has also necessitated the application of advanced decision making techniques in handling most business operations. In the light of this, TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) approach to decision making in suitable site selection was used in this study to proffer an ideal location for a residential base camp for a multinational oil company (MNOC). A decision matrix of 16 towns was developed and the criteria for selection of suitable location for residential base camp include availability of land, expansion possibilities, logistics cost, and proximity to oil and gas facilities and natural disaster (flooding). The suitable site location selection was achieved by analyzing the weighted matrix criterion and relative closeness coefficient to the positive ideal solution and the distance from the negative ideal solution. The study found that the positive ideal solution for the site location is Erema represented by code (B3), followed by Amah (B2) and Obiozimini (B12) composed of all best values attainable for the criteria used in the study. The study provided an insight into MCDM for residential base camp location selection for companies when considering suitable location for residential or any other business purposes in the OML 58, Niger Delta, Nigeria.


We consider distributed optimization problems where networked nodes cooperatively minimize the sum of their locally known convex costs. A popular class of methods to solve these problems are the distributed gradient methods, which are attractive due to their inexpensive iterations, but have a drawback of slow convergence rates. This motivates the incorporation of second-order information in the distributed methods, but this task is challenging: although the Hessians which arise in the algorithm design respect the sparsity of the network, their inverses are dense, hence rendering distributed implementations difficult. We overcome this challenge and propose a class of distributed Newton-like methods, which we refer to as Distributed Quasi Newton (DQN). The DQN family approximates the Hessian inverse by: 1) splitting the Hessian into its diagonal and off-diagonal part, 2) inverting the diagonal part, and 3) approximating the inverse of the off-diagonal part through a weighted linear function. The approximation is parameterized by the tuning variables which correspond to different splittings of the Hessian and by different weightings of the off-diagonal Hessian part. Specific choices of the tuning variables give rise to different variants of the proposed general DQN method -- dubbed DQN-0, DQN-1 and DQN-2 -- which mutually trade-off communication and computational costs for convergence. Simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DQN methods.


Language independence is commonly presented as one of the advantages of modern, machine-learning approaches to NLP, and it is an important type of scalability. In this position paper, I critically review the widespread approaches to achieving and evaluating language independence in the field of com- putational linguistics and argue that, on the one hand, we are not truly evaluating language independence with any systematicity and on the other hand, that truly language-independent technology requires more linguistic sophistication than is the norm.


Many factors have contributed to the development of sprawling suburbs in the United States over the past few decades, including the fact that suburbs offer features that many households view as advantages. However, a host of problems have also been associated with suburban development, including traffic congestion, high infrastructure costs, lack of social cohesion, and environmental degradation (e.g. Ewing 1997). Citing such problems, the New Urbanism movement has rallied for a return to more traditional-style neighborhoods—those built before World War II, with an orientation to walking and transit rather than private automobiles, and with a mix of residential and commercial land uses (Fulton 1996). While the concept of New Urbanist communities is appealing to many planners, critics argue that Americans like their conventional suburbs and are uninterested in the features that New Urbanism offers. Indeed, assessments of consumer preferences, including their apparent choices in the market place, have shown preference for conventional suburban developments (reviewed in Ewing 1997, Myers and Gearin 2001). However, it is possible that consumers value only certain features of these neighborhoods, and "could do without the rest of the suburban package" (Ewing 1997, p. 111). There is mixed evidence as to the degree of preference for specific amenities that are usually "embedded in larger residential stereotypes," both in surveys and in the built environment (Myers and Gearin 2001, p. 639). It is unclear which aspects of these neighborhoods residents actually notice and value. In particular, which neighborhood features are important for residents' satisfaction with their neighborhoods. To answer this question, Chapter 2 compares how residents experience 2 conventional suburban neighborhoods versus how they experience the type of traditional neighborhood from which new urbanist ideals derive. Based on survey data from residents of suburban and "traditional" neighborhoods in Northern California, we report descriptive statistics on perceptions of neighborhoods, desired neighborhood features, and gaps between the two. In addition, we present modeling results on the determinants of neighborhood satisfaction in each neighborhood type. A second question of interest to the planning community is to what degree residential neighborhoods causally determine travel choices. Many researchers have documented that auto dependence is associated with sprawling development patterns, and have pointed to traditional neighborhood designs as a means of facilitating more transit use and active travel (such as biking and walking), which have been at least ideologically aligned with environmental, health, and social benefits. However, it is unclear to what extent the built environment shapes travel patterns. If we build smart growth, will people give up their cars? In future designs, are there ways to extricate some of the environmentally and socially costly aspects of suburban development, such as those associated with auto dependence, from other, attractive features of the suburbs? To contribute partial answers to these broad questions, Chapter 3 investigates to what degree suburban versus traditional neighborhoods have a homogenizing effect on travel choices, given residents' diverse travel preferences. In particular, given two residents with the same preference for driving, if they locate in opposite neighborhood types, are there differences in their driving levels? To answer this question we draw on the same survey data used in Chapter 2, presenting comparisons of travel behavior among different combinations of travel preferences and residential neighborhood type.


HIV associated TB is not easy to make diagnosis and is linked with extreme disease and death. The spread of MDR-TB, together with increasing harmful of HIV infection and inadequate availability of quick examination instrument have lead to cause disappointment of global TB control. The intention of the study was to evaluate Gene Xpert MTB/RIF technique and smear auramine LED FM technique for detection of pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) in people living with HIV at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital Zanzibar. The study was experimental type of design that involved laboratory analysis of sputum specimens for determination of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as well as rifampicin resistance for HIV patients. The specimens were processed in Gene Xpert MTB/RIF and smear auramine LED FM. The sum of 246 patients sputum specimens were analyzed for the existence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis by means of Gene Xpert MTB/RIF and LED FM techniques. The results showed that 169 (68.7%) spot samples (sample I) and 169 (68.7%) morning samples (sample II) were positive for Gene Xpert MTB/RIF technique. Then 112 (45.5%) spot samples (sample I) and 118 (48.0%) morning samples (sample II) were smear positive (LED FM). The sensitivity of LED FM in spot samples and morning samples were 66.3% and 69.8% respectively. Among 169 positive TB cases 2 patients were found with rifampicin resistance. The outcome of this study indicated that the performance of Gene Xpert MTB/RIF machine is more accuracy than LED FM in diagnosis of PTB in HIV patients suspected with TB. Gene Xpert MTB/RIF may be significant as a single quick method for PTB case finding in HIV patients suspected with active TB.


In the past few years the security issues in the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system have been widely investigated, and many security mechanisms have been proposed from research communities. The international standard organizations also have published several standard documents for secured SCADA systems. In this paper, we overview the SCADA system architecture and consider the constraints due to the system's own characteristics. And then, we explain the technological challenges for the SCADA security and summarize the current results which have been brought out by the efforts from the international bodies as well as research communities.


Pulsed TV holography is an all-electronic version of pulsed holographic interferometry. Such a system was used to study ignition of pre-mixed flammable gases. The object was recorded in its undisturbed and disturbed state followed by an evaluation of the changes in refractive index field between those two states. The essential components of the set-up are an injection seeded, twin cavity double pulsed Nd:YAG laser and a CCD camera. A focused laser pulse from the same laser that was used for the recording of the digital hologram initiated the ignition of the pre-mixed gas. Results from the recordings show the ignition process. From the experimental phase maps the refractive index of the gas mixture could be determined. This method makes it possible to determine the proportion of components in a pre-mixed flammable gas in situ.