The Atlantic margin region of northwest Europe includes, on its inboard side, five basins which have been explored since the 1970s and contain proven, Jurassic-sourced petroleum systems: Halten Terrace, the Northern North Sea, the Faeroe-Shetland Basin, the Slyne-Erris troughs and Porcupine Basin. The hydrocarbons in most of these basins are in Jurassic sandstone reservoirs within late Jurassic fault traps. To the northwest, on the outboard side of the Atlantic margin, lie four frontier areas in which exploration is mostly only just beginning: the Voring, More and Rockall basins and the Faeroes Shelf. The basins often have Cretaceous strata which are many kilometres thick, whilst Tertiary strata are thick in some places but thin (starved) in others. Cretaceous and Tertiary extensional faulting phases created fault traps in some parts of the basins and mid Tertiary compressional domes provide important traps elsewhere. The least known aspect of the petroleum geology of these basins is the presence and maturity history of any source rocks. The outboard basins are bordered to the northwest by a zone of Paleocene-Eocene volcanic rocks, which are over 5 km thick at the Faeroe Islands. The lava sheets were dominantly subaerial and may conceal eroded but prospective Paleocene and Mesozoic strata. The outboard frontier areas may contain extensive petroleum systems. In the Voring Basin two major discoveries prove the existence of petroleum systems there but both their geographical extent and source are unknown. Petroleum systems may be present in the main More Basin, beneath some part of the Faeroes Shelf and along both margins of the Rockall Trough.


Objective:Socioeconomic barriers may limit the adoption of hormone replacement therapy, but little is known about recent trends in their influence. We evaluated trends in the impact of race and insurance status on national rates of hormone replacement therapy. Design:We analyzed 32,608 physician office visits by nonpregnant women 40 years of age and older available from the 1989 through 1996 National Ambulatory Medical Care Surveys. The proportion of visits with new or continuing use of noncontraceptive estrogens reported was the main outcome measured. Multiple logistic regression was used to evaluate the independent effects of year, race, and expected payment source on hormone replacement therapy. Results:Overall, the report of hormone replacement therapy increased from 5.7% of visits in 1989–1990 to 10.9% in 1995–1996. In 1989–1990, hormone replacement therapy was less likely in nonwhite women (3.6% vs. 6.3% for whites) and in women with Medicaid coverage (1.3% vs. 8.4% for privately insured women). These differences diminished over time, particularly for women without menopausal symptoms. In 1989–1990, the adjusted odds ratio of hormone replacement in women without menopausal symptoms was 0.31 (95% confidence interval 0.2–0.5) in nonwhites compared with whites, but increased to 0.57 (0.4–0.8) by 1995–1996. In 1989–1990, the adjusted odds ratio for hormone replacement among women with Medicaid was 0.31 (0.09–1.0) compared with those with private insurance. This ratio increased to 0.86 (0.5–1.4) by 1995–1996. Conclusions:Racial and payment source influences on hormone replacement therapy appeared to have lessened over time. Despite these changes substantial socioeconomic differences in treatment patterns remain to be addressed.


A study was carried out of the mechanisms of biological clogging of sand during prolonged percolation of water containing high levels of organic matter. It was found that polysaccharide-producing microorganisms predominated in clogged layers of sand. A positive correlation was observed between accumulation in the profile of polysaccharides and clogging of columns of sand in permeameters. The level of oxygen in the system appears to determine the equilibrium between production of clogging materials and their decomposition.


The author has no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.


Importance
In the US, states enacted nonpharmaceutical interventions, including school closure, to reduce the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). All 50 states closed schools in March 2020 despite uncertainty if school closure would be effective.

Objective
To determine if school closure and its timing were associated with decreased COVID-19 incidence and mortality.

Design, Setting, and Participants
US population-based observational study conducted between March 9, 2020, and May 7, 2020, using interrupted time series analyses incorporating a lag period to allow for potential policy-associated changes to occur. To isolate the association of school closure with outcomes, state-level nonpharmaceutical interventions and attributes were included in negative binomial regression models. States were examined in quartiles based on state-level COVID-19 cumulative incidence per 100 000 residents at the time of school closure. Models were used to derive the estimated absolute differences between schools that closed and schools that remained open as well as the number of cases and deaths if states had closed schools when the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was in the lowest quartile compared with the highest quartile.

Exposures
Closure of primary and secondary schools.

Main Outcomes and Measures
COVID-19 daily incidence and mortality per 100 000 residents.

Results
COVID-19 cumulative incidence in states at the time of school closure ranged from 0 to 14.75 cases per 100 000 population. School closure was associated with a significant decline in the incidence of COVID-19 (adjusted relative change per week, -62% [95% CI, -71% to -49%]) and mortality (adjusted relative change per week, -58% [95% CI, -68% to -46%]). Both of these associations were largest in states with low cumulative incidence of COVID-19 at the time of school closure. For example, states with the lowest incidence of COVID-19 had a -72% (95% CI, -79% to -62%) relative change in incidence compared with -49% (95% CI, -62% to -33%) for those states with the highest cumulative incidence. In a model derived from this analysis, it was estimated that closing schools when the cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was in the lowest quartile compared with the highest quartile was associated with 128.7 fewer cases per 100 000 population over 26 days and with 1.5 fewer deaths per 100 000 population over 16 days.

Conclusions and Relevance
Between March 9, 2020, and May 7, 2020, school closure in the US was temporally associated with decreased COVID-19 incidence and mortality; states that closed schools earlier, when cumulative incidence of COVID-19 was low, had the largest relative reduction in incidence and mortality. However, it remains possible that some of the reduction may have been related to other concurrent nonpharmaceutical interventions.


Using as a case study a 2003 exhibit created jointly by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) and Historic New England/Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, this article investigates collaborations between contemporary art museums and historical institutions, focusing on the place these organizations occupy in the culture-based "new economies" of many postindustrial places. While cautioning against the ways in which such projects can cast history in a purely aesthetic light while contributing to the socioeconomic inequities that characterize postindustrial economies, the article also argues that arts/history partnerships offer opportunities to create innovative critical statements and to reach new and diverse audiences.


This paper presents an integrated navigation system for underwater vehicles to improve the performance of a conventional inertial acoustic navigation system by introducing range measurement. The integrated navigation system is based on a strapdown inertial navigation system (SDINS) accompanying range sensor, Doppler velocity log (DVL), magnetic compass, and depth sensor. Two measurement models of the range sensor are derived and augmented to the inertial acoustic navigation system, respectively. A multirate extended Kalman filter (EKF) is adopted to propagate the error covariance with the inertial sensors, where the filter updates the measurement errors and the error covariance and corrects the system states when the external measurements are available. This paper demonstrates the improvement on the robustness and convergence of the integrated navigation system with range aiding (RA). This paper used experimental data obtained from a rotating arm test with a fish model to simulate the navigational performance. Strong points of the navigation system are the elimination of initial position errors and the robustness on the dropout of acoustic signals. The convergence speed and conditions of the initial error removal are examined with Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, numerical simulations are conducted with the six-degrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) equations of motion of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) in a boustrophedon survey mode to illustrate the effectiveness of the integrated navigation system.


This paper proposes a method to produce high update, accurate, observable estimates of vehicle sideslip, utilising a two antenna GPS system. Measurements are blended with a kinematic Kalman filter to get high update sideslip estimates, which are used to predict the Dugoff tyre parameters. The parameters are then used in a model-based Kalman filter, which can provide more accurate vehicle state estimates even in the event of a GPS outage. Tyre force estimation is tested with experimental data on high and low friction surfaces, and validated by the performance of the model-based Kalman filter using the identified tyre parameters.


Patterns in the cross-section of returns from stocks bought for vouchers in Mongolia's privatization program mirror those from developed countries. Stocks in companies with high book-to-market ratios subsequently earned returns far bigger than those in companies with low ratios, a result very robust to changes in specification and sample. Features of privatization and of sample generation lead to quick dismissal of certain explanations appearing in previous studies, e.g., data snooping and agency explanations. Risk can explain part of the high returns to value, but much remains unexplained by risk, characteristics, or other standard explanations. The results, which are consistent with many studies of developed stock markets, suggest that prices did not reflect fully publicly available information.


Background Mental health disease is under recognized in medical professionals. Objective To screen medical students (MS), residents and fellows for major depressive disorder (MDD) and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) under the new era of work hour reform with age-matched controls from a large representative cross-sectional survey. Methods We conducted an anonymous online survey at a medical university in 2013–2014. We incorporated the Patient Health Questionnaire 2 (PHQ-2) to screen for MDD and the generalized anxiety disorder scale (GAD-7) to screen for GAD, along with additional questions on life stressors and academic performance. We compared these results to age-matched controls from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) database. Results 126 residents/fellows and 336 medical students participated voluntarily. 15.1% and 15.9% of postgraduates as well as 16.4% and 20.3% of MS screened positive for MDD and GAD, respectively. When compared to national estimates, the prevalence of a positive screen for MDD was over five-fold higher in medical trainees compared to age-matched controls (16% vs. 2.8%, p<0.0001). Similarly, the prevalence of a positive screen for GAD was over eight-fold higher in medical trainees (19% vs. 2.3%, p<0.0001).The prevalence was consistently higher within age strata. 33.3% of postgraduates and 32% of MS believe there is a significant impact of depression or anxiety on their academic performance. For stress relief, one fifth of residents/fellows as well as MS reported alcohol use. Conclusions The stresses of medical education and practice may predispose trainees to psychopathological consequences that can affect their academic performance and patient care. The current study showed a significantly higher rate of MDD and GAD positive screens in medical trainees than the prevalence in an age-matched U.S. population, despite significant work hour reform for medical trainees. Increased awareness and support services are required at all levels of medical training. We propose that the ACGME and the Institute of Medicine may consider these findings when implementing future changes to work hour regulations.


Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) derived from adult BM or fetal liver form several mesenchymal tissues after appropriate stimulation. Reports indicate that MSC have unique immunologic properties, making them ideal for cellular therapy. MSC are not immunogenic, they do not stimulate alloreactivity, and they escape lysis by cytotoxic T-cells and natural killer (NK)-cells. Thus, MSC may be transplantable between HLA-mismatched individuals without the need for host immunosuppression. Furthermore, adult MSC appear to be immunosuppressive as they reduce alloreactivity and the formation of cytotoxic lymphocytes in vitro. In vivo, adult MSC prolong the time to rejection of mis-matched skin grafts in baboons. The immunosuppressive properties of first trimester fetal MSC are less pronounced, but inducible with IFNγ. These findings imply a potential role for MSC, not only in the repair of damaged tissues, but also in the manipulation of immune responses.


Context. Games are becoming larger and the amount of assets required is increasing. Game studios turn toward procedural generation to ease the load of asset creation. After the game is released the studios want to extend the longevity of their creation. One way of doing this is to open up the game for community created add-ons and assets or utilize some procedural content generation. Both community created assets and procedural generation comes with a classification problem to filter out the undesirable content.Objectives. This thesis will attempt to create a method to evaluate community-generated StarCraft maps with the help of machine learning.Methods. Manually extracted metrics from StarCraft maps and ratings from community repositories. This data is used to train neural networks using NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT). The method will be compared with Sequential Minimal Optimization (SMO) and ZeroR.Results and Conclusions. The problem turned out to be more difficult than initially thought. The results using NEAT are marginally better than SMO and ZeroR. The suspected reason for this is insufficient input data and/or bad input parameters. Further experimentation could be conducted with deep learning to try to find a suitable solution for this problem.


There is increased public pressure for governments to be more accountable for their actions. A particular area of concern relates to the trend of many governments to delegate responsibility for certain public services to agencies. This thesis develops a reporting model that can be used by public sector agencies to demonstrate accountability to their stakeholders. The model encompasses three main strands of accountability: financial reporting,· performance outcome reporting and stakeholder consultation. Stakeholders are identified using Clarkson's (1984) primary/secondary typology and are further delineated through Mitchell, Agle and Wood's (1997) salience framework. The prominence of financial reporting in a stakeholder reporting model is examined through a discussion of the application of commercial versus public sector accounting standards. Non-financial performance outcome reporting is a fundamental element of a stakeholder accountability model. Stewart's (1994) Ladder of Accountability is utilized to identify the various aspects of accountability: probity/legality, process, performance, programme and policy. An important element of accountability centers on stakeholder consultation and involvement. The thesis employs Friedman and Miles' (2006) Ladder of Stakeholder Management and Engagement as an approach not only to elicit feedback from stakeholders, but to truly engage them in the accountability process. This research study examines how the conceptual frameworks, convergence of accounting standards, designation of a government orgaruzation as a government business enterprise (GBE) and the introduction of accountability legislation impacts the ability of an agency to adequately demonstrate accountability to its stakeholders. This study uses the case of the workers' compensation agency in the Province of Newfoundland, Canada to develop a stakeholder accountability model which addresses the needs of stakeholders. This is one of the oldest public sector agencies in Newfoundland, and it operates at arm's length from government owing to its legislative right to levy its own revenue to fund programs. Further, as it is a mandatory system for the funders (employers) and beneficiaries (injured workers), arguably it should be held to a higher level of accountability.


We studied patterns of phylogenetic and compositional diversity of fleas parasitic on small mammals and asked whether these patterns are affected by environmental variation or evolutionary/historical processes. We considered environmental variation via both off‐host (air temperature, precipitation, the amount of green vegetation, latitude) and host‐associated (phylogenetic and species composition) environments. The indicators of evolutionary/historical processes were phylogenetic and compositional uniqueness estimated via phylogenetic or compositional, respectively, β‐diversity of either fleas or hosts. We found that phylogenetic uniqueness of flea assemblages was the main predictor of their phylogenetic diversity in all realms. In addition, host phylogenetic diversity and uniqueness played also some role in the Palearctic, whereas the effect of the off‐host environment was either extremely weak or absent. Compositional diversity of fleas was consistently affected by compositional diversity of hosts in all realms except the Neotropics. The effect of the off‐host environment on compositional flea diversity was substantial in all realms except the Palearctic. No effect of latitude on either metric of flea diversity was found. We conclude that phylogenetic diversity of fleas is driven mainly by evolutionary/historical processes, whereas drivers of their compositional diversity are associated with current ecological conditions.


Modulated electro-hyperthermia (mEHT), induced by 13.56 MHz radiofrequency, has been demonstrated both in preclinical and clinical studies to efficiently induce tumor damage and complement other treatment modalities. Here, we used a mouse xenograft model of human melanoma (A2058) to test mEHT (~42°C) both alone and combined with NK-cell immunotherapy. A single 30 min shot of mEHT resulted in significant tumor damage due to induced stress, marked by high hsp70 expression followed by significant upregulation of cleaved/activated caspase-3 and p53. When mEHT was combined with either primary human NK cells or the IL-2 independent NK-92MI cell line injected subcutaneously, the accumulation of NK cells was observed at the mEHT pretreated melanoma nodules but not at the untreated controls. mEHT induced the upregulation of the chemoattractant CXCL11 and increased the expression of the matrix metalloproteinase MMP2 which could account for the NK-cell attraction into the treated melanoma. In conclusion, mEHT monotherapy of melanoma xenograft tumors induced irreversible heat and cell stress leading to caspase dependent apoptosis to be driven by p53. mEHT could support the intratumoral attraction of distantly injected NK-cells, contributed by CXCL11 and MMP2 upregulation, resulting in an additive tumor destruction and growth inhibition. Therefore, mEHT may offer itself as a good partner for immunotherapy.


Introduction Human coronavirus (HCoVs) are a group of viruses with recognized neurotropic and neuroinvasive capabilities. The reports on the neurological and ocular findings are increasing day after day and several central and peripheral neurological manifestations are already described. However, none specifically describes the neuro-ophthalmological manifestation of HCoVs. This is the first article specifically reviewing neuro-ophthalmological manifestations of HCoVs infection. Methods PubMed and Google Scholar databases were searched using the keywords: coronaviridae, coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV-1, MERS, ocular, ophthalmology, ophthalmological, neuro-ophthalmology, neurological, manifestations. A manual search through the reference lists of relevant articles was also performed. There were no restrictions concerning language or study type and publications not yet printed but available online were considered. Results Coronavirus eye involvement is not frequent and includes mostly a typical viral follicular conjunctivitis. Recently, retinal anatomical alterations were described using optic coherence tomography. Neuro-ophthalmological symptoms and signs can appear isolated or associated with neurological syndromes. The manifestations include headache, ocular pain, visual impairment, diplopia, and cranial nerve palsies secondary to Miller Fisher syndrome, Guillain-Barré syndrome, or encephalitis, and nystagmus. Conclusion Neurological and neuro-ophthalmological syndromes, symptoms, and signs should not be neglected and a complete ophthalmological examination of these patients should be performed to fully describe ocular manifestations related to HCoVs. We believe that major ocular and neuro-ophthalmological manifestations reports lack due to safety issues concerning detailed ophthalmological examination; on the other hand, in a large number of cases, the presence of life-threatening coronavirus disease hinders ocular examination and ophthalmologist's visit to the intensive care unit.


Mirror world, a parallel hidden sector with microphysics identical to ordinary particle physics, can have several interesting phenomenological and astrophysical implications and mirror matter can be a natural candidate for dark matter in the universe. In this thesis we analyze in detail some of its implications in cosmology, in particular at the primordial nucleosynthesis epoch. Big Bang Nucleosynthesis limits require that the temperature T' of the mirror world should be at least twice lower than that of the ordinary world T. We present numerical calculations regarding the nucleosynthesis epoch and calculate the light and heavier element abundances in both ordinary and mirror worlds as a function of x=T'/T. While the mirror world should be essentially Helium dominated, we show that the heavier elements primordial abundances in mirror world can be significantly higher than in the ordinary world. We also study the cosmological bounds on the kinetic mixing between the photon and mirror photon which in fact renders the mirror particles "millicharged" with respect to the ordinary photon, with small electric charges proportional to the photon kinetic mixing parameter. These bounds are important regarding the possibility of mirror dark matter detection in the DAMA/Libra experiment. This Diploma Thesis was defended in the University of L'Aquila in October 2007.


Background: QT dispersion (QTd) is the difference between the longest and the shortest QT interval in the standard 12-lead ECG. QTd may be a measure of spatial dispersion of repolarization in the myocardium, and may be influenced by antihypertensive treatment. Objective: To study the effects of losartan in comparison to amlodipine on QTd in mildly to moderately hypertensive patients, and to assess correlations of reduced QTd with echocardiographic left ventricular mass (LVM). Methods: Twenty-eight adult patients with mild to moderate hypertension were randomly assigned to a double-blind treatment either with losartan 50 mg titrated to losartan 50 mg-hydrochlorothiazide 12.5 mg or amlodipine 5 mg titrated to amlodipine 10 mg. Blood pressure and echocardiographic LVM were measured before and after 16 weeks of treatment. QTd was measured by two independent examiners blinded to patient data, study phase and treatment. Results: Systolic and diastolic blood pressure were significantly reduced in the losartan and amlodipine groups. Treatment with losartan significantly reduced LVM (from 311 ± 31 to 252 ± 16 g, mean ± SE; p < 0.01), cardiac mass index and QTd (from 42.3 ± 5.4 to 27.8 ± 2.2 ms, mean ± SE; p < 0.05). Conclusion: Losartan significantly reduced QTd after 16 weeks of treatment in patients with mild to moderate hypertension. This reduction was not significantly correlated with the reduction in LVM.


Securing public participation in environmental actions (EAs) such as recycling as a means
of making progress towards sustainable consumption is a central issue in UK
environmental policy. Participation in EAs has typically been studied from the individual
perspective, thereby ignoring the relevance of the social context of the household. This
thesis advances understanding of the adoption and practice of EAs from the household
perspective. A qualitative -research approach is taken, utilising focus groups with 29
households within a constructivist grounded theory methodology.
In terms of theoretical contributions, the unlinked literatures on participation in EAs and
household decision making are integrated in light of the research findings resulting in a
conceptual framework of the adoption and practice of EAs in households which is grounded
in the data. This framework considers EAs in isolation and patterns across EA repertoires
and is applicable to the variety of commonly-promoted EAs and household types and
different levels of engagement in EAs. Elements of the framework include the multiple
units which drive EA adoption and are responsible for EA practice; the situational,
household and individual characteristics which shape these units; the multiple routes to EA
practice and their tentative differentiation in terms of desirability from a policy perspective;
factors facilitating the maintenance of repetitive EAs; types and means of socialisation
influence from a leader to other individuals; from where and how knowledge for action is
acquired and transmitted through the household; and communication within the household
about EAs. Particular empirical contributions include the recognition of the decoupling of
attitudes towards an EA and behaviour as a result of factors pertaining to the social context
of the household; a new understanding of motivation to engage in EAs relating to how a
leader's motivation is established in the first instance and then transferred to other
household members; and the recognition that specialised roles relating to EA adoption and
practice may be taken up gradually.
In terms of methodological contributions, the literatures on focus groups and qualitative
family research are integrated to coin the term 'household focus group'. To produce the
necessary detail, an original interview activity involving the diagrammatic representation of
EA adoption and practice is developed, which is extended into an original means of data
analysis involving detailed visual representations of the processes within the household.


THE FRONT page of a newspaper or the TV news must seem like a foreign language to a huge percentage of K-12 students. Recent surveys of high school youths by National Geographic-Roper found in 2002 that only 17% could locate Afghanistan on a map; less than one-third could find Great Britain. Perhaps even more disturbing, in the most recent (2006) survey, just 37% could locate Iraq, though U.S. troops had been there since 2003. While the rest of the world expects its students to be bilingual, or even trilingual, less than 40% of our youths consider themselves proficient in another language, despite the influx of immigrant students. It should not be surprising, then, that our young people are ignorant about the rest of the world. One of the primary benefits of studying another language is the knowledge one acquires of geography and different cultures. A very revealing item in the Iraqi Study Commission report was the finding that of the 1,000 employees in the U.S. embassy in that country, only six were fluent in Arabic. Moreover, as our military moved from fighting a war to trying to win friends, it found itself terribly unprepared and inept in communicating with the people. Until this century, the United States could thrive despite being isolated by geography and language. Today, knowing only one language and its culture is a national disgrace. And soon it will prove disastrous for our citizens, for the military, and for business interests. Like so many challenges to our education system, policy makers are aware of the problems and are creating various answers. As with the shock of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 in 1957, the federal response is to frame the issue as one of security. Fifty years ago the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) focused on developing greater foreign language capacities in this country because of national security. Remnants of these efforts in the Higher Education Act have broadened the purposes to area studies and more general language studies. But the K-12 sector has remained largely unaffected, at least by federal action. In marches the military, again. The Department of Defense has launched the National Security Education Program to provide a language pipeline beginning at the K-12 level, awarding its first grant to the University of Oregon and the Portland Public Schools for a program in Chinese. Now, four federal agencies are cooperating under the National Security Language Initiative, and the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Language Assistance Program has awarded $22 million to expand language instruction in Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Korean, and Russian. Dependent on shifting world events, interest in foreign languages in our schools and colleges grows only in spurts--from Japanese, to Chinese, to Arabic. Meanwhile, real bilingualism never takes hold. In fact, K-12 policies today show an almost xenophobic attitude toward different languages--as opposed to taking advantage of the language background of immigrants and building on that capacity to create a future expertise that the military and business leaders say is essential. Policy makers say the right things. Even the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act includes foreign languages as part of a core curriculum. But tell me one district or school that has increased its offerings of foreign languages because of NCLB. If anything, resources and time have been diverted from subjects other than math and reading. …


With the development of the ubiquitous telephone network, speaker recognition-a more direct authentication technology attracts further attention. In this paper, an overview on the primary parts of current speaker recognition technology-modeling technology is presented. Based on the typical system structure we discussed the effective modeling techniques for both speaker and background, and distortion compensation techniques. Some issues on the technical challenges of current speaker recognition applications are also included so that some potential future trend in research, development and applications may be concluded.


The main contribution of this paper is an exact common sub expression elimination algorithm for the optimum sharing of partial terms in multiple constant multiplications (MCMs).Although many efficient high-level algorithms have been proposed for the realization of Multiple Constant Multiplications (MCM) using the fewest number of addition and subtraction operations, they do not consider the low-level implementation issues that directly affect the area, delay, and power dissipation of the MCM design. It is found that the proposed LUT-based multiplier involves comparable area and time complexity for a word size of 8 bits, but for higher word sizes, it involves significantly less area and less multiplication time than the canonical-signed-digit (CSD)-based multipliers we have proposed the anti symmetric product coding (APC) and odd-multiple-storage (OMS) techniques for lookup-table (LUT) design for memory-based multipliers to be used in digital signal processing applications. It was observed that the proposed algorithm obtains better solutions in terms of area than the algorithms designed for the MCM problem and the optimization of area problem in a digit-serial MCM operation at gate-level.


The overall purpose of this Ph.D. thesis is to develop a framework of methods for progressive delamination modeling and simulation of composite laminates in large scale structures under both quasi-static and fatigue loading. The purpose is motivated by a wish to reduce the cost and consumption of materials while ensuring high a quality of wind turbine blades. The first part of the thesis is an introduction to the project and provides a short introduction to selected basic topics of the theoretical background of the presented papers. The in-depth state-of-the-art review is provided in the papers. The second part of the thesis consists of three refereed journal papers. Paper A is concerned with computational efficiency, ability to converge to a solution and accuracy of the solution when large cohesive elements are applied to quasi-static delamination analyses. It is shown that the accuracy and computational efficiency are improved by reducing the integration error introduced by the numerical integration of the element force vector and stiffness matrix. Paper B presents a review of the available experimental observations, the phenomenological models and the computational simulation methods for the three phases of fatigue-driven delamination (initiation, onset and propagation). The review clarifies which capabilities are required from simulation methods and next review these simulation methods in regards to these capabilities. The overall procedure and characteristics of the methods are described. Paper C presents a new method for simulating fatigue-driven delamination under general mixed mode conditions. The method is capable of simulating both quasi-static and fatigue crack propagation and depend only on easily obtainable material parameters. The experimentally obtained crack growth rate can be reproduced in finite element analyses with practically no error for any given structure and load.


Hepatic disease was diagnosed in 11 mynah birds. The most common clinical signs were dyspnea, weight loss, and abdominal swelling, usually accompanied by ascites. Radiography (9 birds) revealed hepatomegaly and ascites in most cases, and laboratory testing (6 birds) revealed hypoproteinemia and high activity of liver enzymes in all cases. Histologic examination (6 birds) revealed variable amounts of iron granule accumulation in hepatocytes, indicating hemochromatosis. Therapy consisted of administration of diuretics and abdominocentesis in dyspneic birds. All birds died, with survival time ranging from 1 day to 1 year.


We present a novel approach to compute a collision-free path for part disassembly simulation and virtual prototyping of part removal. Our algorithm is based on sample-based motion planning that connects collision-free samples in the configuration space using local planning. In order to effectively handle the tight-fitting scenarios, we describe techniques to generate samples in narrow passages and efficient local planning algorithms to connect them with collision-free paths. Our approach is general, makes no assumption about model connectivity or object topology, and can handle polygon soup models that frequently arise in CAD applications. We highlight the performance on many challenging benchmarks including the Alpha puzzle, maintainability of the windscreen wiper motion, and disassembly of a seat from the interior of a car body.


The trend change between central and southern Appalachian structures is sharply defined in southeastern West Virginia. There, N30°-35°E trends coincident with major central Appalachian folds, such as the Browns Mountain anticline, end abruptly at N60°E-trending southern Appalachian structures along the St. Clair fault. Analysis of local and regional folds, cleavage, bedding-perpendicular stylolite seams and bedding, and fault slickenlines reveals that layer-parallel shortening, directed N10°-30°W, occurred in nonfolded Greenbrier Group (Mississippian) carbonates well into the present Appalachian Plateau area. This structural event is early and is associated with the evolution of southern Appalachian folds and faults south of the St. Clair fault. Central Appalachian folds and mesoscopic structures were superimposed on this early layer-parallel shortening fabric. This structural chronology indicates that southern Appalachian folds and faults predated the development of central Appalachian structures in the region.


High-dimensional cytometry is an innovative tool for immune monitoring in health and disease, and it has provided novel insight into the underlying biology as well as biomarkers for a variety of diseases. However, the analysis of large multiparametric datasets usually requires specialist computational knowledge. Here, we describe ImmunoCluster (https://github.com/kordastilab/ImmunoCluster), an R package for immune profiling cellular heterogeneity in high-dimensional liquid and imaging mass cytometry, and flow cytometry data, designed to facilitate computational analysis by a nonspecialist. The analysis framework implemented within ImmunoCluster is readily scalable to millions of cells and provides a variety of visualization and analytical approaches, as well as a rich array of plotting tools that can be tailored to users' needs. The protocol consists of three core computational stages: (1) data import and quality control; (2) dimensionality reduction and unsupervised clustering; and (3) annotation and differential testing, all contained within an R-based open-source framework.


The pulmonary surfactant protein C (SP-C) is a small highly hydrophobic protein that adopts a mainly helical structure while associated with the membrane but misfolds into a β-rich metastable structure upon deacylation, membrane dissociation, and exposure to the neutral pH of the aqueous alveolar subphase, eventually leading to the formation of amyloid aggregates associated with pulmonary alveolar proteinosis. The present constant-pH MD study of the acylated and deacylated isoforms of SP-C in a chloroform/methanol/water mixture, often used to mimic the membrane environment, shows that the loss of the acyl groups has a structural destabilizing effect and that the increase of pH promotes intraprotein contacts which contribute to the loss of helical structure in solution. These contacts result from the poor solvation of charged groups by the solvent mixture, which exhibits a limited membrane-mimetic character. Although a single SP-C molecule was used in the simulations, we propose that analogous intermolecular interactions may play a role in the early stages of the protein misfolding and aggregation in this mixture.


Item response theory models are often applied when a number items are used to measure a unidimensional latent variable. Originally proposed and used within educational research, they are also used when focus is on physical functioning or psychological wellbeing. Modern applications often need more general models, typically models for multidimensional latent variables or longitudinal models for repeated measurements. This paper describes a SAS macro that fits two-dimensional polytomous Rasch models using a specification of the model that is sufficiently flexible to accommodate longitudinal Rasch models. The macro estimates item parameters using marginal maximum likelihood estimation. A graphical presentation of item characteristic curves is included.


Critical illness has many devastating sequelae, including profound neuromuscular weakness and psychological and cognitive disturbances that frequently result in long-term functional impairments. Early rehabilitation begun in the intensive care unit (ICU) is emerging as an important strategy both to prevent and to treat ICU-acquired weakness, in an effort to facilitate and improve long-term recovery. Rehabilitation may begin with range of motion and bed mobility exercise, then may progress when the patient is fully alert and able to participate actively to include sitting and posture-based exercise, bed to chair transfers, strength and endurance exercises, and ambulation. Electrical muscle stimulation and inspiratory muscle training are additional techniques that may be employed. Studies conducted to date suggest that such ICU-based rehabilitation is feasible, safe, and effective for carefully selected patients. Further research is needed to identify the optimal patient candidates and procedures and for providing rehabilitation in the ICU.


Honey is a sweet viscous liquid produced by honey bee, Apis mellifera from the nectar of plants. Honey is a natural product that has been used from ancient times till now as food and for medicinal purpose. This study was carried out to determine the mode of action of Bacillus species and antibiotics residues in branded and unbranded honey samples from Nigeria. Bacilli spp. count was carried out by initially heating diluted honey samples in water bath set at 80°C for 15 min, while total bacterial count was carried out using the pour plate method. Antibacterial activity of identified Bacillus spp on Micrococcus was determined using well-in agar method while the mode of action was carried out by reporter assay method. Detection of tetracycline, gentamycin and streptomycin was analyzed using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) column oven L-2300 and Column intensil ODS-3C18 (250 x 4.6 mm). Honey samples (2 g) were extracted for HPLC by deprotenizing using acetonitrile and methanol with flow rate of 1 mL/min and RID detector was used to detect antibiotic residue. Bacilli from honey were characterized physiologically, morphologically and biochemically, they were tentatively identified as Bacilli licheniformis, Bacilli subtilis, Bacilli coagulans, Bacilli cirulans, Bacilli pumilis and Bacilli badius . The most prevalent Bacillus spp. were B. licheniformis and B. subtilis . Total bacteria count for branded honey ranged from 2.2 x 10 2 to 5.5 x 10 3 cfu/g, while Bacilli count ranged from nil to 6.2 x 10 2 cfu/g. For unbranded honey samples, total bacteria count ranged from 7.0 x 10 3 to 3.5 x 10 2 cfu/g, while Bacilli count ranged from 5 x 101 to 1.6 x 10 3 cfu/g. Four of the isolates representing branded (SF2 and RW2) and unbranded honey samples (EH2 and TC2) exhibited antibacterial activity against Micrococcus; one isolate (SF2) showed cell wall causing antibacterial activity. Tetracycline was detected more in the unbranded honey samples while gentamycin and streptomycin were detected in just two unbranded honey samples, indicating that tetracycline is used frequently for the treatment of bee diseases that is why it is detected as residue in the finished honey product. Key words: Antibiotics, Bacillus , health benefit honey, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), residues.


Behaviour modification is a promising method of therapy for obesity. Helping the patient to gain control over environmental stimuli and positive reinforcement for the acquisition of appropriate eating and exercise habits are the basis of most treatment programs. While behavioural approaches have, on the average, resulted In greater weight loss than traditional measures during active therapy, responses have been highly variable, and the eventual outcome remains to be established by long-term follow-up studies. The best results are probably achieved with a combination of behavioural therapy and other measures such as a formal exercise program. Since primary prevention may be critical to the overall control of obesity, behavioural approaches may also be applied to young children.


SNOW, DORCAS LAVINA (27 July 1902-13 April 1994) was a nationally known piano and music teacher as well as a local historian of the BRECKSVILLE area. Snow was born in Brecksville into a family that was among the first residents of the area. She was the daughter of Harry W. and Alice P. (Noble) Snow. Snow studied piano at the Cleveland School of Music, graduating in 1923. She briefly played piano for radio stations WJAY and WHK before rejecting that career for teaching. In 1923 she began teaching piano, and her students gave their first recital the following year. Over the years she taught piano to a number of Brecksville area residents and was known for her high standards of teaching. In the mid-1970s, she began her writing career. The first of her works came out in 1980. Over the next decade she produced such titles as "To The City of Brecksville" (1980), "Dear Brecksville" (1981), "Prelude" (1990), and "Opus 1" (1992). Her publications, which numbered a dozen in all, featured such topics as the history of Brecksville and neighboring communities as well as music and Christmas. She was cited by Brecksville's mayor, Jerry Hruby, dubbed her the "City Historian" and credited her with instilling an interest in the community's history. Snow presided over her 69th student piano recital in 1993 and continued to teach and write until shortly before her death. She never married. She is buried at Highland Drive (Center) Cemetery, Brecksville.


In developing a global eco-community, communication is a key lever, as people adopt new ideas for different reasons and in different ways. Just like early markets and mainstream markets are different from each other in adopting products, also innovative and visionary actors in the field of sustainable lifestyles are different from the mainstream actors, who should also be involved in change. This difference creates a risk of a chasm in the flow of adoption of new ideas. To build a global eco-community, a more sustainable lifestyle should become mainstream. In striving toward this, it is important to see that most people act as pragmatists in adopting new ideas and that communication between different actors influences how panarchic systems change.


A method to design planar multilayer meander-line polarizers is given. The proposed procedure is based on transmission line circuit theory and on full-wave unit cell analysis in frequency domain. The hybrid combination of those two techniques paves the way for the polarizer design process and avoids heavy full-wave optimizations. This procedure is originally aimed for polarizers acting on lens antennas and is suitable for plane waves impinging with arbitrary angles on the polarizer. To validate the proposed method, two polarizers have been manufactured in Ka-band, one for normal and one for oblique incidence. Designs, prototypes and measurements made on a complete Ka-band lens antenna subsystem are shown in this paper.


What is a comic? The simple answer states that a comic is a drawn story that is picture- rather than text-oriented and told serially. In other words, a comic is a type of illustration. Realism is not its goal; rather a narrative is developed through reduction according to specific stylistic means. I start this article with a definition of the term "comic", and move on to highlight the complexity of the comic and to argue that insight into this complexity is necessary for its correct interpretation. Only then can we recognise that the comic is not only entertaining but also, in its own way, a vehicle for content that might be system confirming and propagandistic but can also be system critical. Doing so allows us to see the potential of the comic that is embedded in its particular affinity with nonlinear interactive audiovisual media.


Alkaline water electrolysis need a catalyst with low overpotential and high current densitiy for oxygen evolution in order to be a commercial viable hydrogen source in the future. Finding and establishing a correlation between electrocatalytic activity and charge carrier density will help towards finding an optimum catalyst for this purpose. Such comparisons have been made using theoretical values for charge carrier density, but the aim of this work is to use charge carrier data from experimental values. Five powders of La1-xSrxCoO3 (with compositions x = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1) were synthesized by solid-state synthesis and sintered to pellets. The pellet surfaces were investigated in alkaline solution (pH = 13) by cyclic voltammetry, polarization and impedance measurements. Polariza- tion curves with Tafel lines and Mott-Schottky plots were established. The powders and pellet surfaces were investigated by XRD, SEM, EDS, AFM and light microscope. The polarization curves revealed a volcanic behavior with an increase in catalytic activity from x = 0 up to x = 0.75 and then decreasing. The charge carrier density increased with increasing strontium doping. The resulting comparison gave figure 34. Surface investigation revealed much porosity. Because of corrosion, the surface area increased with measuring, and finding the real surface area and the roughness proved to be problematic. A volcanic behavior of the charge carrier density and electrocatalytic activity relationship were observed. Finding roughness factor values by measuring double layer capacitance measured by the cyclic voltammetry method and dividing by the nominal capacitance for a flat surface proved to be unsuccessful. Better synthesis and sintering procedures of pellets are needed to increase the density of the samples in order to decrease the roughness and the effect of corrosion.


The field of entrepreneurship is growing rapidly and expanding into new areas. This article presents a new compilation of administrative panel data on the universe of business start-ups in the United States, which will be useful for future research in entrepreneurship. To create the US start-up panel data set, the authors link the universe of non-employer firms to the universe of employer firms in the Longitudinal Business Database (LBD). Start-up cohorts of more than five million new businesses per year, which create roughly three million jobs, can be tracked over time. To illustrate the potential of the new start-up panel data set for future research, the authors provide descriptive statistics for a few examples of research topics using a representative start-up cohort.


Compared with traditional seismic noise attenuation algorithms that depend on signal models and their corresponding prior assumptions, removing noise with a deep neural network is trained based on a large training set in which the inputs are the raw data sets and the corresponding outputs are the desired clean data. After the completion of training, the deep-learning (DL) method achieves adaptive denoising with no requirements of (1) accurate modelings of the signal and noise or (2) optimal parameters tuning. We call this intelligent denoising. We have used a convolutional neural network (CNN) as the basic tool for DL. In random and linear noise attenuation, the training set is generated with artificially added noise. In the multiple attenuation step, the training set is generated with the acoustic wave equation. The stochastic gradient descent is used to solve the optimal parameters for the CNN. The runtime of DL on a graphics processing unit for denoising has the same order as the [Formula: see text]-[Formula: see text] deconvolution method. Synthetic and field results indicate the potential applications of DL in automatic attenuation of random noise (with unknown variance), linear noise, and multiples.


The Swedish Million Homes Programme, which had the construction of one millionaccommodations spread over whole Sweden from the years 1965 to 1975 as scope, is due to itsdeprived state in need of surrounding renovation measures. However, outgoing from complex marketconditions in which three major stakeholders: the housing companies, tenants and society areintegrated; renovation activities are so far carried out to a low extent.This report has the purpose to provide an understanding of the value that can be created by arenovation project of a Million Homes area towards the three different stakeholders and to therebyfacilitate future renovation projects of the Swedish Million Homes Programme. In order to fulfil thispurpose, the report established a value proposition for a renovation project towards the differentproject stakeholders. The research methodology in the study is both qualitative and quantitativebased on a case study at one of Sweden's biggest construction companies and a literature andempirical investigation. Outgoing from the case study, value creation in a renovation project isdivided into the five areas (1) revenue increasing activities, (2) cost decreasing activities, (3) socialdevelopment, (4) tenant satisfaction and (5) partnering as project concept. Each of the areas isinvestigated regarding their value creation potential and the decisive factors that the value creationdepends on, under a literature and empirical study.Two value propositions are formulated in the report's conclusion, which unfolds that the stakeholdersexpect a renovation project to be carried out differently. A discussion arises in the ending of thereport around these different expectations, suggesting that the Million Homes Programme will onlybe renovated in a surrounding fashion, which considers also the solution of environmental and socialchallenges, if a housing company benefits from social value creation. Outgoing from this discussion,future research is suggested, taking up the identified challenge of sharing created value between thestakeholders.


This research is based on real phenomena which can indicate working achievement of employees in Polytechnic State of Padang in conducting daily activities is still low. This low working achievement can be caused by many factors, however, indicated phenomena shows some possible factors, two of them can be seen as low motivation of employees and inappropriate rewarding system applied in this institution. This research aims to figure how much proportional contribution of some variable points of working motivation and perception of employees toward rewarding system for employees' working achievemeni appiieo in Polytechnic State of Padang. The contreibution can be in the form of individuai 'working achievement and collective working achievement.There were three hypothesizes that had beei applied in this research, they were 1) working motivation that provided contribution to employees' working achievement; 2) rewarding system which provided contribution to employees' working achievement; and 3) motivation and rewarding system on collective achievement that had positive correlation with employees' working achievement. This research applied. quantitative by establishing working motivation (X1) and employees' perception toward rewarding system (X2) as free variable and employees'working achievement as fixed variable. Research population of this research could be seen as employees of Polytechnic State of Padang which consisted of 72 staffs and sample of tehe research consisted of 41 people which were chosen from population by appliying stratified proportional random sampling. Data collection was conducted by distribution of Likerr scale modeled questioners on three variables, i. e. working motivation, employees' perception on rewarding system and employees, working achievement. These three instruments whice were used for dita collection had been testified foi their validity and realibility. Data analysis used to testify the hypothesis was conducted by appliying analysis correlation lechnique and simple and d6uble regression methods.Findings ot hypothesis show that these three hypothesizes which had been froposed can be significinly accepted. The biggest contribution to employees' working achievement was found on employees' perception toward rewarding system which indicates 19,9 %. Two other free variables together provided significant contribution toward employees; working achievement with 29,37% proportion. Meanwhile the rest 70,7 % was caused other factors whice were not observed in this research.


On May 27, 1992,JAMApublished detailed and objective recollections of J. T. Boswell, MD, and James J. Humes, MD, the principal pathologists who performed the autopsy on President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and several Dallas physicians who cared for the President.1,2This report by Dennis L. Breo, which generally supported the findings of the Warren Commission, received worldwide media coverage and drew an enormous response. See also pp 1681 and 1748. I am pleased that a great deal of the reaction strongly supported the pathologists' findings and theJAMAreport, which has withstood an onslaught of criticism from numerous conspiracy theorists. Three legitimate questions remain: Why did the third autopsy pathologist (and wound ballistics expert) Pierre Finck, MD, not participate in the interview, and what would have been his response? Was there really a 29-year silence on the part of these physicians that was first broken by JAMA in


The silo-bags are a hermetic type of storage widely adopted. This paper summarizes the results of the effect of silo-bag storage on the commercial quality of corn, soybean, wheat, sunflower, malting barley, canola and beans. The effect of the modified atmosphere on insect population and storage fungi, and recommendations for proper storage conditions in the silo-bags are also presented. Overall, when dry grain is stored in silo-bag, the CO2 ranges from 3 to 10% and the O2 from 18 to 10%. The degree of modification of the interstitial atmosphere increases with the grain m.c. and temperature having typical CO2 concentration of 15-25% and O2 of 25% for wet grain. There are few reports of insect presence in silo-bags. Analysis of data indicates that unfavorable environmental conditions negatively affect insect development. Thus, storage in silo-bags under the analyzed climate conditions help to maintain grain without notable insect populations. When grain is stored in silo-bags at m.c. that would allow for mold development, the mold activity is lower compared with that of normal atmosphere storage conditions. Additionally, grain temperature inside the silo-bag is mainly affected by the ambient temperature. Silo-bags have a high heat exchange rate with the air and soil (double surface/volume ratio than regular bins), so no heat damage is observed, even when wet grain is stored in temperate weathers. The overall results indicate that dry grain (equilibrium relative humidity below 67%) can be stored in silo-bag for more than six months without losing quality (measured as percentage of mold damaged grain, test weight, germination, fat acidity, and nutritional and organoleptic parameters, among others). When grain m.c. increases, commercial quality could be maintained for up to six months in winter time, to less than three months in summer time. In all cases, maintaining the airtightness of the bag is a key factor for successful storage. A monitoring system for silo-bags based on measuring CO2 concentration was also developed.


Winding inductance is an important parameter in determining the performance of electrical machines, particularly those with large inductance variation. This paper investigates the influence of winding inductance variation on the performance of a three-phase three-stack claw pole permanent magnet motor with soft magnetic composite (SMC) stator by using an improved phase variable model. The winding inductances of the machine are computed by using a modified incremental energy method, based on three-dimensional nonlinear time-stepping magnetic field finite element analyses. The inductance computation and performance simulation are verified by the experimental results of an SMC claw pole motor prototype.


Although peer influences are thought to be critically important to adolescent development, there is a paucity of research investigating the emotion socialization practices that take place between adolescents. This longitudinal study evaluated close friends' responses to negative emotion using a newly developed assessment tool of peer emotion socialization, you and your friends. Adolescent participants (N = 205) exhibiting a range of internalizing and externalizing problems between 11 and 17 years of age were assessed and re-evaluated two years later. Participants were asked to rate the frequency with which their friends responded to them by encouraging, distracting, matching, ignoring, overtly victimizing, and/or relationally victimizing their emotions. The results indicated high levels of internal consistency and moderate levels of long-term stability. Close friends most often responded supportively to the participants' emotional displays, but these responses differed by gender. Also, friends' emotion socialization responses were concurrently and predictively associated with participant problem status. This study contributes to a better understanding of the processes by which adolescents' emotions are socialized by their friends and has important implications for future prevention and intervention efforts.


From 1940 to 2000, Islam was involved in a disproportionately high number of civil wars compared with other religions, such as Christianity or Hinduism. To help explain the overrepresentation of Islam in these wars, this article introduces a theory of "religious outbidding." The theory holds that embattled political elites will tender religious bids when they calculate that increasing their religious legitimacy will strengthen their chances of survival. In combination with three overlapping factors—the historical absence of an internecine religious civil war similar to the Thirty Years' War in Europe, proximity of Islam's holiest sites to Israel and large petroleum reserves, and jihad (i.e., defense of Islam as a religious obligation), religious outbidding accounts for Islam's higher representation in religious civil wars. The article includes a statistical analysis of the role of religion in civil wars and tests the logic of the argument of religious outbidding in the case of Sudan's two civil wars.


The Qur'an, the Hadith and the Shari�ah recognise the rights of women to custody of their children when they are no longer with their husband, provided they do not remarry. This right is known as hadanah. The study examines the conditions for the award of hadanah in Nigeria and Malaysia with a view to determining whether its practice is in conformity with the Islamic injunctions. The qualitative approach is used. The qualitative approach includes content, deductive, and inductive analysis as well as comparative method. The references used in this study are the primary and secondary sources. Both materials are analysed accordingly to get the information related to this study. The paper found that women in Nigeria and Malaysia are subjected to ill treatment due to misconceptions about hadanah as an Islamic practice. The study found that women are disadvantaged when securing divorce and custody of their children. The paper concludes that the practice of hadanah in both countries contravenes the constitutional provisions on gender equality. The study recommends that legislative measures be put in place in Nigeria and Malaysia to address the pitfalls of gender-bias.


The 120 GeV Main Ring proton beam collides with the target at the end of the AP-1 line and creates antiprotons and other secondary particles. The AP-2 line transfers the negative particles from the target to the Debuncher. To provide a bigger antiproton stack size in the Accumulator, both the Debuncher as well as the AP-2 line acceptance have to be raised. This is a proposal for the improvement of the AP-2 line acceptance. The first part of the memo presents an acceptance examination of the existing AP-2 line by computer simulation, while the second presents a short proposal for aperture corrections. The computer program TURTLE was used to trace antiprotons through the AP-2 line without taking into account other negative charged particles. Betatron functions were obtained from the output of the SYNCH computer program. The SYNCH program was also used to check the dispersion match between the AP-2 line and the Debuncher. 3 refs., 6 figs., 5 tabs.


Correlates of reading and noticing warnings on consumer products and of consumers' purchasing intentions were examined using ratings of 26 household pest-control products. Seventy college undergraduates were asked to respond to a 19-item questionnaire assessing subjects' perceptions of each product's packaging, labeling, and warning characteristics. Additional data was collected by coding !he products for several packaging and warning characteristics, and product effectiveness. The results showed that the products perceived as more hazardous, potent, likely to cause injury, and difficult to use contained warnings that subjects reported they would more likely notice and read. A different cluster of variables were predictive of purchasing intention and included product familiarity, packaging attractiveness, and confidence in knowing the hazards. The relative independence of subjects' purchasing intentions and the variables predictive of noticing and reading warnings suggests that manufacturers can place appropriate and effective warnings on products without the fear of reduced consumer buying intentions. 2


Echinoderms from Marino Ballena National Park, Pacific, Costa Rica. A total of 25 species of echinoderms (four asteroids, six ophiuroids, five echinoids and ten holothurians) were recorded at Marino Ballena National Park, using 25 m2 quadrants, parallel to the coast, at seven sites. The ophiuroids were the most abundant group with 581 individuals and the asteroids the less abundant (48 individuals). Echinoderms densities were low, with the exception of the ophiuroids. Diversity, density and the number of groups were higher where sedimentation was lower. We suggest that sedimentation is having a negative effect on the diversity of echinoderms and on the development of the coral reefs in this park. Rev. Biol. Trop. 53(Suppl. 3): 275-284. Epub 2006 Jan 30.


Experiments have been conducted to investigate mixing and the geometry of scalar isosurfaces in turbulent jets. Specifically, we have obtained high-resolution, highsignal-to-noise-ratio images of the jet-fluid concentration in the far field of round, liquid-phase, turbulent jets, in the Reynolds number range 4.5 x lo3 < Re < 18 x lo3, using laser-induced-fluorescence imaging techniques. Analysis of these data indicates that this Reynolds-number range spans a mixing transition in the far field of turbulent jets. This is manifested in the probability-density function of the scalar field, as well as in measures of the scalar isosurfaces. Classical as well as fractal measures of these isosurfaces have been computed, from small to large spatial scales, and are found to be functions of both scalar threshold and Reynolds number. The coverage of level sets of jet-fluid concentration in the two-dimensional images is found to possess a scale-dependent-fractal dimension that increases continuously with increasing scale, from near unity, at the smallest scales, to 2, at the largest scales. The geometry of the scalar isosurfaces is, therefore, more complex than power-law fractal, exhibiting an increasing complexity with increasing scale. This behaviour necessitates a scaledependent generalization of power-law-fractal geometry. A connection between scaledependent-fractal geometry and the distribution of scales is established and used to compute the distribution of spatial scales in the flow.


approved: '-' B. Schrecs The behavior and stream habitat utilization of juvenile hatcheryreared coho salmon (Ovicozihynchus kisutch) and wild cutthroat trout (Salmo cZ.ar*i) were examined to assess the nature of interactions between the species potentially resulting from introductions of hatchery coho salmon in streams. Habitat utilization was monitored in Mill Creek, Polk Co., Oregon by manipulating the composition of fish within three study sections to include either ailopatric or sympatric populations of hatchery coho salmon and wild cutthroat trout. In allopatry, coho salmon and cutthroat trout selected feeding microhabitat that was similar in physical characteristics and exhibited extensive dietary overlap. When the two species occurred in sympatry, feeding microhabitat used by coho salmon was altered, however, that of cutthroat trout was comparable to allopatric cutthroat trout. No discernable differences in dietary composition between allopatric and sympatric fish were detected. While allopatric cutthroat trout always gained mass. ailopatric coho salmon Redacted for privacy always lost mass. Stomach fullness indices were higher for allopatric cutthroat trout than allopatric coho salmon. Sympatric cutthroat trout had comparable or greater gains of mass, indices of stomach fullness, and hepatic glycogen reserves relative to aliopatric cutthroat trout. Conversely, sympatric coho salmon had greaterlosses of mass, reduced hepatic glycogen reserves, and apparently lower indices of stomach fullness than allopatric salmon. Behavioral observations made through the use of an in-stream viewing chamber in Berry Creek, Benton Co., Oregon, indicated that in allopatry populations of hatchery coho salmon and wild cutthroat trout were structured as linear dominance hierarchies that were organized by quantitatively and qualitatively similar aggressive interactions. In sympatry, however, cutthroat trout were more aggressive and socially dominant to coho salmon. The shift in use of microhabitat and reduction in habitat utilization effectiveness of hatchery coho salmon in the presence of cutthroat trout can, thus, be interpreted to occur as a result of interference competition mediated through interspecific aggression. Stream Habitat Utilization and Behavior of Sympatric and Allopatric Wild Cutthroat Trout (Sairno clarki) and Hatchery Coho Salmon (&icorhynchus kisutch) Steven Edward Jacobs A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science Completed 11 March 1981 Commencement June 1981


In energy-constrained applications like Body Area Networks (BAN) receiver performance is traded for lower power consumption. The limited receiver performance will deteriorate the output signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) and bit-error-rate (BER) of the receiver. In this paper we present closed-form output SNR and BER models of a non-ideal receiver front-end with limiter-discriminator demodulator for binary FSK. The presented model is very useful in defining the minimally required receiver specifications. Moreover, the models are useful for gaining insight into the influences of the receiver impairments on its performance. In the models, the gain and phase imbalances between the in-phase and quadrature-phase paths as well as the receiver generated noise and the phase noise produced by the local frequency reference are taken into account. This paper shows that the gain and phase imbalances shift the FM threshold to higher carrier-to-noise-ratios (CNR) and only have small influence on the SNR above threshold. On the other hand, receiver generated noise reduces the output SNR both below and above the FM threshold, and phase noise limits the maximum output SNR. Additionally, a trade-off between the FSK frequency deviation and phase noise robustness is derived.


May 2008 marked the three-year anniversary of the tragic Andijon events in Uzbekistan's Fergana Valley. My understanding of these events is informed by discussions with Uzbek colleagues both within and outside of President Islam Karimov's government. These confidants have, at considerable risk to themselves and their families, confirmed that the Karimov government applied disproportionate force in suppressing the largely peaceful protest in Andijon on May 13, 2005. If we are to believe this account, rather than the alternative militant Islamist narrative the Karimov regime offers, the question for us is: can the international community influence the Uzbek government to refrain from future political violence? Four recent developments—all profound structural changes in the geopolitics of Central Asia—offer a political opening through which the international community broadly, and the United States in particular, can encourage the Karimov regime to move toward political liberalization:


As seen during the recent response to Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) in the Philippines, non-governmental organizations (NGO), military actors and academic groups are harnessing technology to improve coordination and collaboration. As new technologies and systems are employed during this response, a discussion of the strategies used to gain situational awareness could offer valuable insight for all responders during disasters. In recent years there has been an increase in research and projects relating to information and communication technologies and humanitarian operations. Part of this research is identifying unique advantages of non-classified data collection and analysis during a disaster. This paper offers an overview of the types of data that have been collected, analyzed and applied to humanitarian operations, while detailing the advantages of incorporating real-time open source data into military planning and action during a response.


Describes a two‐ and, later, a three‐dimensional view of supply chain dynamics within a theoretical framework derived from research carried out in the UK automotive industry. However, the authors believe that the models developed have a far wider applicability than this narrow sectoral and geographic focus. The research has been developed within two research programmes. The first programme, called "LEAP" (lean processing programme), involves Corus (formerly British Steel Strip Products), two steel service centres and six major UK‐based automotive component manufacturers, all linked within a common supply chain. The second programme, called "3DayCar", involves 20 European industrial sponsors including six automotive manufacturers. Both programmes are supported by the UK Government Innovative Manufacturing Initiative (IMI). Conclusions based on the waves analogy will be applied to a real‐life setting in order to suggest appropriate business strategies to achieving a lean value stream.


In recent years a debate about the possibilities of left wing populism in Germany occurred. Based on own empirical findings about how workers deal with different situations of precarious work this contribution argues, that such a populist project is not only possible but necessary. It is a popular diagnosis among scholars of industrial relations, that the precarisation of work is limiting the possibilities for solidarity and collective action among workers. But as empirical data shows also new perceptions of injustice are arising, which could be used as a starting point for union politics. In the following two different frames of interpretation are reconstructed, which workers apply in order to handle their social situation. Although not without contradictions each entails potentials for a progressive left wing populism. In order to engage with these potentials, it is argued, activists of an antagonistic left should start building a political project, whose possible populist elements are outlined in the conclusions.


Studying in detail the topography of the territory, we see that a large surface area is characteristic of the last branches Locvei Mountains, the rest area with a very specific relief. The relief to be characterized more easily have divided it into two areas: the eastern part of Moldova and Moldova New Old West, north-west. This paper represents an economic study of the main types of soil from the perimeter of the village Moldova Noua, Caras-Severin wheat and corn crops. Studying the economic efficiency of land is very important because according to it we can draw conclusions about the effectiveness and profitability of agricultural crops. The main types of soils from the area studied, suitable for agricultural crops are: aluviosol, and eutricambosolul preluvosolul. Land evaluation is a complex operation and characterization naturalstică down the land, that the totality of conditions and environmental factors that occur on a given land area, through a system of indicators and techniques of evaluation and determination of grades production capacity of such land defined for different uses and cultures, if a certain technology in order to characterize its quality and value. To do a proper economic analysis were calculated first notes of evaluation of soil for crops under study. Evaluation marks have been calculated according to the Elaboration soil studies for the two cultures under study. Knowing evaluation notes I could find natural productive potential of these soils for wheat and maize crops by multiplying the score of evaluation of 60 kg / point for wheat and 75 kg / point to the corn crop. Productive potential was then compared with yields obtained by farmers in the area. Economic comparison was obtained by multiplying production by 0.5 lei / kg for wheat crop by 0.7 lei / kg for maize, these sums representing the price per kg charged in the summer of 2010. The study conducted in Moldova Noua village perimeter showed that wheat yields obtained are lower than the natural potential of land and where maize is grown have obtained higher yields than the natural potential of soils.


The digital cameras have been effected from systematical errors which decreased metric quality of image. The digital cameras have been effected from systematical errors that decreases metric quality of image. The aim of this chapter is to explore usability of fuzzy logic on calibration of digital cameras. Therefore, a 145‐pointed planar test field has been prepared in the laboratories of Department of Geodesy and Photogrammetric Engineering at the Gebze Technical University. The test field has been imaged from five points of view with the digital camera Nikon Coolpix‐E8700 within maximum (71.2 mm) and minimum (8.9 mm) focal length. The input‐output data have been determined from 10 calibration images obtained for fuzzy logic process. These data have also been used and formed for the space resection process. Adaptive neuro‐fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) functions have been used for fuzzy process at MATLAB 7.0, and the results of these two distinct methods have been compared. Finally, the most convenient (least squares average error) or the most useful ANFIS "Trimf, trapmf, gbellmf, gaussmf, gauss2mf, pimf, dsigmf and psigmf" functions are determined and compared for space resection method for the conventional bundle adjustment process.


Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining traction in service-oriented businesses in the form of chatbots. A chatbot is a popular type of social AI that uses natural language processing to communicate with users. Past studies have shown discrepancies in terms of whether or not a chatbot should communicate and behave like a human. This article aims to explore these discrepancies in order to provide a theoretical contribution of a list of factors related to perceived humanness in chatbots and how these may consequently lead to a positive user experience. The results suggest that a chatbot should have the following characteristics: avoiding small talk and maintaining a formal tone; identifying itself as a bot and asking how it can help; providing specific information and articulating itself with sophisticated choices of words and well-constructed sentences; asking follow-up questions during decision-making processes and; providing an apology when the context is not comprehensible, followed by a question or a statement to dynamically move a conversation forward. These results may have implications for designers working in the field of AI as well as for the wider debates and the broader discourse around the adoption of AI in society.


Abstract Generalizing dialogue state tracking (DST) to new data is especially challenging due to the strong reliance on abundant and fine-grained supervision during training. Sample sparsity, distributional shift, and the occurrence of new concepts and topics frequently lead to severe performance degradation during inference. In this paper we propose a training strategy to build extractive DST models without the need for fine-grained manual span labels. Two novel input-level dropout methods mitigate the negative impact of sample sparsity. We propose a new model architecture with a unified encoder that supports value as well as slot independence by leveraging the attention mechanism. We combine the strengths of triple copy strategy DST and value matching to benefit from complementary predictions without violating the principle of ontology independence. Our experiments demonstrate that an extractive DST model can be trained without manual span labels. Our architecture and training strategies improve robustness towards sample sparsity, new concepts, and topics, leading to state-of-the-art performance on a range of benchmarks. We further highlight our model's ability to effectively learn from non-dialogue data.


Abstract Checklist and "Pollard Walk" butterfly survey methods were contemporaneously applied to seven public sites in North Dakota during the summer of 1995. Results were compared for effect of method and site on total number of butterflies and total number of species detected per hour. Checklist searching produced significantly more butterfly detections per hour than Pollard Walks at all sites. Number of species detected per hour did not differ significantly either among sites or between methods. Many species were detected by only one method, and at most sites generalist and invader species were more likely to be observed during checklist searches than during Pollard Walks. Results indicate that checklist surveys are a more efficient means for initial determination of a species list for a site, whereas for long-term monitoring the Pollard Walk is more practical and statistically manageable. Pollard Walk transects are thus recommended once a prairie butterfly fauna has been defined for a site by checklist surveys.


Multiple regression analysis was utililised to estimate the relationship between somatic cell counts (SCC) and milk yield using the data of 1687 quarter milk samples collected weekly from 20 cows at the Dairy Unit of A.U. Veterinary Faculty's Research Farm between May and October 1998. The findings of this study supported the results of similar previous studies on that there is a negative relationship between SCC and milk yield, the relationship between milk yield and lnSCC (natural logarithmic form) is not linear. It was found that milk yield loss from SCC vary considerably according to the level of SCC. The milk yield losses were estimated to be 0.6 kg/day/cow (2.1%) where the SCC was 403,000 cells/ml, whereas these losses where the SCC were 1,097,000 and 1,900,000 cells/ml were estimated to be 3.8 kg/day/cow (14.1%) and 6.8 kg/day/cow (23.2%) respectively. The weighted average milk yield loss was estimated to be 1.53 kg/day/cow.


This article analyzes narratives about living with HIV/ AIDS amid stigma, using the notion of "fragile stories" to further detail the linguistic practices through which people narrate experiences in danger of not being told. The article is based on fieldwork in 2008 in Durban, South Africa with a Zulu gospel choir in which all group members are living with HIV/AIDS. Close analysis of recorded narratives demonstrates how institutional story frameworks and the normative performance of gender helped storytellers to breach boundaries drawn by stigma. The article consolidates research on narrative tellability and fragile stories, verbal art, and stigma. The article has implications for research amid stigma, advocating linguistic analysis of narrative to emphasize the relationship between stories told and life events involving stigmatization.


The early plays of Ola Rotimi are literary works in which Rotimi places an emphasis on the position of the gods in man's life. They are plays in which the concept of tragedy is portrayed through the eyes of noble people. They are plays in which Rotimi places an emphasis on the nobility of birth of the protagonists. His later plays, however, put an emphasis on the proletariat. This article examines the Marxist aesthetics and ideology in Ola Rotimi's If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (1983) and Hopes of the Living Dead (1988). It reflects on Rotimi's ideological departure into revolutionary drama in his later plays compared to such earlier plays as The Gods Are Not To Blame (1979), Kurunmi (1971) and Ovonranwem Nogbaisi (1974). The study shows that Rotimi stresses the importance of the proletariat in society as reflected in If: A Tragedy of the Ruled (1983) and Hopes of the Living Dead (1988). The paper argues that Rotimi's acceptance of a new vision of commitment as revealed in the plays is an act of intellectual decolonisation. The paper concludes that Rotimi wrote these particular plays with the conscious aim of not only representing society as it is, but also with the aim of presenting society as it ought to be.


This report describes the aerodynamic design of centrifugal compressors.The design approach is based on Jet and Wake Model with suitable loss correlation in it.The method incorporates a matching inducer and diffuser design for optimum compressor performance.For given input parameters like mass flow rate and pressure ratio the design programme generates a 3-d impeller with optimized aerodynamic parameters. A computer programme was developed based on the above method.Using this computer programme radial and back swept impellers to develop a pressure ratio of 6.0 at 0.96kg/sec were designed.This design method explained in this report is one step improvement on one dimensional design approach used widely.


Cancer is a disease predominantly seen in the older age group. The most frequent forms are in males: lung, prostatic, stomach, colonic and bladder cancer. In females: breast, colonic, stomach cancer, lymphoma, leukaemia and rectal cancer. In view of the expected demographic figures a dramatic increase in the incidence of cancer is expected. The malignancies seen in the elderly respond generally poor to chemotherapy. Most cytotoxic drugs are excreted by the kidneys. Especially the renal clearance of anticancer drugs will therefore be compromised in the elderly, this should be considered when giving cytostatics. Mucositis, bone marrow toxicity, pulmonary and neurotoxicity are quite often enhanced in the older patient group. The indications for chemotherapy are limited. Chemotherapy should not be withheld from patients with advanced breast cancer and certain haematological malignancies. Further clinical research focussed on the elderly is warranted. Drugs with a mild spectrum of side effects deserve priority. Hormonal treatment is an important modality in breast, prostatic and endometrial carcinoma. The burden for the patients is limited and the advantages are well documented.


Supply chain disruptions resulted from various disasters may cause awesome loss; therefore, corresponding operational policies should be designed to mitigate the negative effect. In industrial goods supply chain, customers are segmented and have different contributions and significances to manufacturers, which have to be considered when adopting mitigation policies. From the customer heterogeneity perspective, the models of a three-stage supply chain with a single supplier and two suppliers are established, and sensitivity analysis is carried out to investigate scenario parameters' impact on optimal mitigation policies. The numerical experiments find that safety stocks are suitable for low disruption probability situation. Meanwhile, strategic reserves with lower holding cost are attractive and efficient to handle a fairly highly disruptive situation or high key customer loss. The results also indicate backup supplier should be adopted if there is a low disruption probability or the backup supplier's price is not significantly higher. This paper extends the supply disruption research and leads some managerial implications and insights that might be useful for disruption mitigation in industrial goods supply chain.


Cigarette smoking is a major public health issue. An increase of cigarette tax might be a way for promoting tobacco control. This article reviews the economist's perspective of tobacco control. It shows that a crucial economic criteria for supporting an increase of cigarette tax--the cost of externalities--is not fulfilled, since smokers may well have been paying their own financial externalities. However, the theory of rationale addiction cannot fully explain smoking behavior because of risk perception bias. The nicotine dependence and the onset of nicotine addiction occurring mostly during childhood and adolescence explain why consumption decision cannot be assumed to be the product of informed, rational choice by mature individuals. Children and teenagers fail to appreciate the risks associated with behavior and heavily discount the future. Protecting children and teenagers constitutes the strongest argument favoring increased taxation of cigarettes.


The stoichiometric noncovalent imprinting of pinacolyl methylphosphonate (PMP), a degradation product of a chemical warfare agent, has been investigated. A rational approach consisting of controlling the number of specific sites produced during the polymerization was carried out in order to design the methacrylic acid (MAA)-based imprinted polymers. The objective of the method was to study by NMR spectroscopy the molecular association process between the monomer (MAA) and the template (PMP) in solution. Accurate variations in the chemical shifts of 1H and 13C were determined in a series of samples at various concentrations in the mixture of acetonitrile/toluene (3:1, v/v). By using an elaborated data treatment, we were able to simultaneously determine the stoichiometry, the association constant, and the condensation degree of the resulting complex. On the basis of these results, a stoichiometric noncovalent PMP-imprinted polymer was subsequently synthesized. Adsorption isotherms of the materials were meas...


Schedule instability is a major issue in many manufacturing companies. It results in a low service level to customers, high inventory levels, and high costs associated with production changeovers. Much has been written on schedule instability in the literature, but most studies have used simulation and mathematical modelling to look at the internal operations of manufacturing companies. While schedule instability has always been very much a practical problem, there have been few empirical studies presented in the literature. The aim of this research was to obtain the opinions of practitioners on schedule instability, and to identify factors that affect the perceived level of instability experienced by manufacturing companies. An e-mail/web-based survey was administered to practitioners working in the planning and scheduling area. The results suggest that the majority of the respondents perceive schedule instability to be either an important or a very important issue in their operations. Analysis of the responses also shows that schedule instability is affected mainly by external factors, notably relationships with buyers and relationships with suppliers; internal operations have a lower impact. The research moves the debate about schedule instability beyond the current concentration on simulation and mathematical modelling, and from a focus on internal operations to a supply-chain context.


Abstract By opening with a story, this article mildly subverts the typical conventions adopted by journal article writers. It is a direct response to calls from within management and marketing studies to embrace alternative modes of expression. Blurring fact (distilled from the findings of in-depth qualitative research) and fiction (distilled from our fevered imaginations), our case study–based story presents the twisted tale of a consumer profiled. By connecting dimensions of marketing, consumption, research, and practice, we seek to question whether digitally-equipped marketers can ever understand the true nature of today's inscrutable consumer.


By use of a recently described method, which estimates the rate of gastric acid secretion by measuring the rate of sodium bicarbonate infusion needed to keep intragastric pH constant, gastric acid secretion rates and changes in serum gastrin were measured in five normal subjects while gastric pH was kept at 5.5, 4.0, 3.0, or 2.5. Preliminary experiments revealed that the method did not accurately measure acid secretion at a pH lower than 2.5. Stimulation of acid secretion was produced by gastric instillation of a solution of amino acids and cornstarch. The secretion rate with the amino acid meal was highest at pH 5.5 and was 60% of that produced by a steak meal at the same pH. As the pH of the amino acid meal was decreased, there was a stepwise reduction in acid secretion so that at pH 2.5 the rate was only half as great as at pH 5.5. The amino acid meal produced increases in serum gastrin that were also less marked than those produced by a steak meal. With amino acid stimulation, serum gastrin responses were similar at pH 5.5, 4.0, and 3.0, but no increase in gastrin could be measured when the meal was maintained at pH 2.5. A group of six patients with duodenal ulcers was compared with seven normal subjects at pH 5.5 and 2.5. Ulcer patients released more gastrin and secreted more acid at each time period at both pH values. More important, the degree of inhibition at pH 2.5 was significantly less in ulcer patients. For example, during the 2nd h after stimulation acid secretion was inhibited by only 30% in ulcer patients compared with 70% in normal subjects. These findings suggest a defect in autoregulation of gastrin release and gastric acid secretion at low pH in ulcer patients which may play a role in pathogenesis of this disease.


This article examines whether county opioid prescription rates were associated with county child maltreatment report (CMR) rates in the United States and whether this relationship changed over time. We linked multiple national data sets to assemble retail opioid prescription data, CMR data, rural-urban codes (to control for urbanicity), and census data (to control for other community characteristics, such as poverty rates) covering 2009-2018. Multilevel linear modeling analyzed the linked data. We found that the strength of the county-level relationship between opioid prescription rates and CMR rates increased almost linearly during the study period. The relationship was not significant in 2009-2011; it became significant in 2012 and grew stronger in the next 6 years. In 2012, there was one more CMR per 1,000 children in a county for every 14.3 more opioid prescriptions per 100 people. In 2018, the number of prescriptions related to this effect was 3.6. In other words, the county-level relationship between opioid prescriptions and CMRs was four times as strong in 2018 as it had been in 2012. This trend was also observed within all subgroups of child age and sex. By type, this trend was somewhat more pronounced for neglect, but somewhat less for sexual abuse. Our findings suggest a growing need for greater efforts to prevent child maltreatment in communities with high opioid prescription rates. Further research is warranted to reveal the underlying factors for this concerning trend. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).


Recent advances in development of Wireless Communication in Vehicular Adhoc Network (VANET) has provided emerging platform for industrialists and researchers. Vehicular adhoc networks are multihop networks with no fixed infrastructure. It comprises of moving vehicles communicating with each other. One of the main challenge in VANET is to route the data efficiently from source to destination. Designing an efficient routing protocol for VANET is tedious task. Also because of wireless medium it is vulnerable to several attacks. Since attacks mislead the network operations, security is mandatory for successful deployment of such technology. This survey paper gives brief overview of different routing protocols. Also attempt has been made to identify major security issues and challenges associated with different routing protocols.


The influence of different curing conditions on hydration properties of fluorgypsum products formed by semi-dry pressing was studied. Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the compressive strength development, content of crystal water, and microcosmic crystal structure when four curing methods (nature curing, curing in standard curing chamber, soaked in water 3 min every other day or every day) and five curing temperatures (-20 °C, 0 °C, 10 °C, 20 °C, 35 °C) were used. The results indicated that the hydration properties of fluorgypsum products could be improved under proper curing methods and lower curing temperature.


Introduction The treatment of dentofacial deformities and malocclusions with anterior open bites, was one of the first applications of miniplates for orthodontic anchorage. The use of this treatment system reduces the number of patients referred to orthognathic surgery and simplifies many problems. This approach applies intrusive forces to posterior teeth, and the mandible undergoes counterclockwise rotation, which decreases lower facial height and projects hard and soft tissue pogonions. Objective: This study describes the principles of orthodontic mechanics in the correction of anterior open bite and illustrates these principles with a series of clinical cases.