The stage Irishman has been a stock character in England and Ireland since the 17th century. It is an
exaggerated and caricatured portrayal of Irish people. The origins of the stage Irishman can be
found in Shakespeare's play Henry V. The Irish captain from the play, named MacMorris, is one of
the most important and influential stage Irishmen. This paper explores the change of the stock character
from the 18th century to the early 20th century. The Anglo-Irish relations, which serve as the
context for the plays, are also investigated through the dynamics of the English and Irish characters.
Thomas Sheridan and Richard Brinsley Sheridan tried to entertain the English audience with their
plays The Brave Irishman and The Rivals using the character of the Stage Irishman. However, the
performance of these characters made the English sympathise with the Irish. These two seemingly
typical plays of the 18th century actually contain some elements of the subverted stage Irishman
which is later explored in Shaw's John Bull's Other Island. Unlike the Sheridans, Shaw and Boucicault
wrote their plays for the Irish audience. The Shaughraun by Dion Boucicault was a huge success
in Ireland and in the USA. Ireland was represented as a beautiful country with good and honest
people. Shaw and Boucicault introduced the character of the stage Englishman and additionally explored
the dynamics of the Anglo-Irish relations.
In the early 20th century the Abbey Theatre was established in Dublin and it served as a
platform for the Irish authors to experiment and form a new national identity without compromising
their artistic freedom. The most controversial piece of the theatre was Synge's play The Playboy of
the Western World which provoked the Irish audience to display their outrage over Synge's portrayal
of Irish rural life and values. Synge described his depiction of the Irish as extravagant and real.
However, the Irish audience experienced it as a very offensive piece which was harmful to the Irish
image they had been trying to ameliorate. The paper ends with a one-act play The Rising of the Moon in which the author Lady Gregory reflects the struggle of the Irish for the political independence
and explores Ireland as a divided nation on the matter of British Rule.


A biology textbook contains sentences such as " role of cytoskeleton is support and motility of a cell " and " NADH is an electron carrier that transfers electrons ". The first sentence explicitly uses the word role while in the second sentence the role of electron carrier is implicit. Role concepts have been defined in the context of upper ontologies for some time, but the word role has also been used in linguistics and description logics to denote related but different notions. In this paper, we consider the roles in a biology textbook, adapt a definition of roles based on upper ontologies, and relate it to the corresponding notions in linguistics and description logics. We consider our solutions to several conceptual modeling problems for roles as we have used them in representing the knowledge contained in a biology textbook. The primary contribution of this work is in applying the representation of roles to a complex and challenging domain, in giving definitions that can be applied by biologists, and in collecting several concrete examples that require such representation.


The inf-convolution of risk measures is directly related to risk sharing and general equilibrium, and it has attracted considerable attention in mathematical finance and insurance problems. However, the theory is restricted to finite (or at most countable in rare cases) sets of risk measures. In this study, we extend the inf-convolution of risk measures in its convex-combination form to an arbitrary (not necessarily finite or even countable) set of alternatives. The intuitive principle of this approach is to regard a probability measure as a generalization of convex weights in the finite case. Subsequently, we extensively generalize known properties and results to this framework. Specifically, we investigate the preservation of properties, dual representations, optimal allocations, and self-convolution.


'Imprinting' is a mechanism causing differential expression of the parental alleles of certain genes during embryonic and postnatal development in mammals and during seed development in angiosperm plants. Imprinting evolves due to the reduced genetic relatedness of paternal, relative to maternal, alleles at loci influencing maternal investment in the offspring of polygamous females.

Keywords:

kin selection;
parent–offspring conflict;
placenta;
endosperm;
X-chromosome inactivation


Abstract The effects of cropland slope, distance to surface water, farmers' risk attitudes, and farmers' nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications on potential N delivery to streams and costs of reducing N delivery were evaluated for a representative Virginia peanut-cotton farm. Target MOTAD and generalized stochastic dominance were used to select preferred plans for different levels of risk aversion. Costs of reducing N delivery were lower on farms where fields were located close to surface water, where N was overapplied relative to extension fertilizer recommendations, and where the operator was risk averse. Cropland slope had less effect on cost of reducing N delivery relative to other factors.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the length of the second stage of labor in relation to increasing maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) among nulliparous parturient women, and to determine whether route of delivery differs among obese, overweight, and normal-weight women reaching the second stage of labor. METHODS: We performed a secondary analysis of a multicenter trial of fetal pulse oximetry conducted among 5,341 nulliparous women who were induced or labored spontaneously at 36 weeks or more of gestation. Normal weight was defined as BMI of 18.5–24.9 kg/m,2 overweight was a BMI of 25.0–29.9 kg/m,2 and obese was a BMI of 30 or higher. RESULTS: Of the 5,341 women, 97% had prepregnancy BMI recorded. Of these, 3,739 had BMIs of 18.5 or higher and reached the second stage of labor. Increasing maternal BMI was not associated with second stage duration: normal weight, 1.1 hour; overweight, 1.1 hour; and obese, 1.0 hours (P=.13). Among women who reached the second stage, as BMI increased, so did the likelihood that the woman had undergone induction of labor. Even so, the lack of association between second-stage duration and BMI did not vary by method of labor onset (P=.84). The rate of cesarean delivery in the second stage did not differ by increasing BMI (normal weight 7.1%, overweight 9.6%, obese 6.9%, P=.17). CONCLUSION: Among nulliparous women who reach the second stage of labor, increasing maternal BMI is not associated with a longer second stage or an increased risk of cesarean delivery. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


This paper investigates the effectiveness of multiple external shading devices and identifies the most effective fixed external shading configurations for commercial building types in hot climates. Daylight contribution is also analysed in detail in order to monitor the daylighting factor reduction including uniformity for each shading configuration. Existing dynamic thermal modeling software is used to completing analysis on a theoretical open office plan building. Simulation results indicate that multiple angled external shading is the most effective solution for commercial buildings in hot climates. The calculated diurnal cooling load reduction for East, South and West elevations are 46.20%, 41.16% and 46.53% respectively. Furthermore, daytime cooling load (kW) reduction is reduced by 17.80% using the optimum solution. All dynamic thermal simulations are compared against a base case to clearly show possible cooling energy reduction (MWh) and carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) associated with cooling system for single storey open office building.


Seaports are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change due to their coastal location. With the potential threat of up to 2.5m in sea level rise by 2100, resilient port infrastructure is vital for the continued operation of ports. There are strong economic and social incentives for seaports to provide long-term resilience against climate conditions. For example, service disruptions can cost billions of dollars and impact the livelihoods of those who depend on the port. Engineers play a pivotal role in improving the resilience of ports, as they are responsible for designing port infrastructure that will be adequately prepared for future sea level change (SLC). However, incorporating SLC is a challenging task due to the uncertainty of SLC projections, the long service lives of port infrastructure, and the differing guidelines and recommendations for managing SLC. Through an online survey of 85 U.S. port and marine infrastructure engineers, this research explores the engineering community's attitude and approach to planning for SLC for large-scale maritime infrastructure projects. Survey findings highlight the extent that projects incorporate SLC, the wide range of factors that drive the inclusion of SLC, and the numerous barriers that prevent engineers from incorporating SLC into design. This research emphasizes that traditional engineering practices may no longer be appropriate for dealing with climate change design variables and their associated uncertainties. Furthermore, results call for collaboration among engineers, port authorities, and policy makers to develop design standards and practical design methods for designing resilient port infrastructure.


Vertical profiles of wind, temperature, and moisture are essential to capture the kinematic and thermodynamic structure of the atmospheric boundary layer (ABL). Our goal is to use weather observing unmanned aircraft systems (WxUAS) to perform the vertical profiles by taking measurements while ascending through the ABL and subsequently descending to the Earth's surface. Before establishing routine profiles using a network of WxUAS stations, the climatologies of the flight locations must be studied. This was done using data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR) model. To begin, NARR data accuracy was verified against radiosondes. While the results showed variability in individual profiles, the detailed statistical analyses of the aggregated data suggested that the NARR model is a viable option for the study. Based on these findings, we used NARR data to determine fractions of successful hypothetical flights of vertical profiles across the state of Oklahoma given thresholds of visibility, cloud base level (CBL) height, and wind speed. CBL height is an important parameter because the WxUAS must stay below clouds for the flight restrictions being considered. For the purpose of this study, a hypothetical WxUAS flight is considered successful if the vehicle is able to reach an altitude corresponding to a pressure level of 600 hPa. Our analysis indicated the CBL height parameter hindered the fractions of successful hypothetical flights the most and the wind speed tolerance limited the fractions of successful hypothetical flights most strongly in the winter months. Northwest Oklahoma had the highest fractions of successful hypothetical flights, and the southeastern corner performs the worst in every season except spring, when the northeastern corner performed the worst. Future work will study the potential effect of topology and additional variables, such as amount of rainfall and temperature, on fractions of successful hypothetical flights by region of the state.


This paper proposes a unified hybrid fuzzy model-based control scheme for uncertain nonholonomic systems. Compared with typical hybrid fuzzy control, the stability analysis is performed based on a new concept of constructing a semicommon Lyapunov function and a new definition called as exponential-like model following. This advancement provides a strict stability analysis but results in relaxed gain conditions. In detail, a unified hybrid Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is first introduced for representing well-known nonholonomic systems with a momentum conservation constraint or a no-slip constraint. Then, the hybrid fuzzy controller is derived to ensure robust nonlinear model following control, i.e., an asymptotic convergence with adjustable ultimate bound and arbitrary disturbance attenuation in an -gain sense. Furthermore, an iterative linear matrix inequality technique is proposed to guarantee the stability and avoid the need of a common positive-definite matrix. Finally, the applications are carried out on a hopping robot and a car-like mobile robot. Numerical simulations and experiment results show the expected performances.


Introduction Inflammation in the female reproductive tract (FRT) promotes while Lactobacillus spp. protect women from HIV acquisition. We assessed if lactic acid (LA), a major acid metabolite produced by lactobacilli, decreases inflammatory mediators produced by cervicovaginal epithelium. Methods LA at physiological levels and pH were added apically to human vaginal or cervical epithelial cells and an organotypic tissue model cultured in transwells. Cells were stimulated apically with bacterial or viral mimicking TLR agonists, TNF or genital fluids (data collected in 2017). Cytokines and chemokines were quantified by luminex-based assays. Results LA (pH 3.9) treatment of epithelial cell lines elicited significant increases in the anti-inflammatory cytokine IL-1RA. When added simultaneously to stimulation, LA inhibited the TLR agonist-induced production of inflammatory mediators IL-6, IL-8, TNFα, RANTES and MIP3α. The same LA anti-inflammatory effects were not recapitulated with media acidified to the same pH with HCl, and was mediated by the protonated form of LA present at pH ≤3.9. Both l- and d-isomers of LA elicited similar anti-inflammatory effects. LA pretreatment of cells for 1 hour, followed by cell washing and TLR agonist stimulation, inhibited pro-inflammatory production indicating a direct effect on cells. A similar anti-inflammatory effect of LA was observed in primary cervicovaginal cells and in an organotypic epithelial tissue model, and when FRT epithelial cells were exposed to either cervicovaginal or seminal fluids. Immune mediators were elicited by LA at physiological levels and pH that had little impact on cell viability or monolayer/tissue integrity. Conclusion LA acts on FRT epithelial cells to inhibit inflammation that might explain in part the HIV protective properties of LA producing lactobacilli. This study highlights the potential use of LA-containing agents or LA-producing probiotics as adjuncts to female-initiated HIV prevention strategies


The 2008 LADIS workshop on Large Scale Distributed Systems brought together leaders from the commercial cloud computing community with researchers working on a variety of topics in distributed computing. The dialog yielded some surprises: some hot research topics seem to be of limited near-term importance to the cloud builders, while some of their practical challenges seem to pose new questions to us as systems researchers. This brief note summarizes our impressions. 1 Workshop Background LADIS is an annual workshop focusing on the state of the art in distributed systems. The workshops are by invitation, with the organizing committee setting the agenda. In 2008, the committee included ourselves, Eliezer Dekel, Paul Dantzig, Danny Dolev, and Mike Spreitzer. The workshop website 1 includes the detailed agenda, white papers, and slide sets 2; proceedings are available electronically from the ACM Portal web site [21].


Balai Pembibitan Ternak Unggul is a breeding center established by the Government of Indonesia (GOI) to perform preservation, breeding, breeding stock production and development, and also the distribution of breeding stock of Excellent Bali cattle at national level. In the production of excellent breeding stock through the performance test and progeny test. Pre-weaning growth is one of the important indicators for the population growth. The study was aimed to identify the pre-weaning calf growth rate of Bali cattle in 2010-2011, born from performance-test-passing-dams that were collectively reared with progeny-test-passing sires. Materials used were 84 pre-weaning Bali calves. This was a survey method-based descriptive analysis research. The results showed that in terms of the performance of pre-weaning growth, the birth weights of male and female calves were 18.37±1.65 kg and 18.27±1.29 kg, respectively. The weaning weights of male and female calves were 93.53±21.00 kg and 87.66±12.04 kg, respectively, with weaning time of 205 days. The average of daily weight gain (ADG) were 0.37±0.10 kg/head/day (male) and 0,34±0,06 kg/head/day (female). It was concluded that the pre-weaning calf growth rate of Bali cattle at the BPTU Bali in 2010-2011 were moderately high since they were born from the dams and the sires passing the performance test and progeny test. (Keywords: Pre-weaning growth, Bali cattle)


The problem of recovering information about a generating time-dependent dynamical system from measurement data is investigated as an inverse problem. Fractional Brownian motion is often used for modelling real-world applications that deal with specific properties such as long-range dependence or self-similarity. The self-similarity parameter, also known as Hurst parameter H, is directly related to the distribution of ordinal patterns in fractional Brownian motion. Thus the corresponding information entropy measure, known as permutation entropy, can extract significant information about the generating system. As real-world applications often involve multivariate correlated measurements, multivariate variants of permutation entropy have to be considered. While pooled permutation entropy is able to estimate H, it fails to detect cross-correlations between variables. In this work, we use multivariate permutation entropy based on principal component analysis (MPE-PCA) to investigate self-similarity and cross-correlations. We examine the variation of permutation entropy of principal components with variations of $H$ and cross-correlations and find those principal components behave equally to their origin under certain conditions, i.e., as $H$ increases, the MPE-PCA of the principal components decreases. Furthermore, MPE-PCA discovers cross-correlations in multivariate fractional Brownian motion.


Abstract. The potentialities of ENVISAT ASAR (Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar) multi-angle data for mapping surface soil moisture (SSM) in Sahelian rangelands are investigated at medium scale (30 000 km2). The Wide Swath data are selected to take advantage of their high temporal repetitivity (about 8 days at the considered scale) associated to a moderate spatial resolution (150 m). In the continuity of previous studies conducted at a local scale in the same region, SSM maps are here processed over the whole AMMA Gourma mesoscale site at 1 km resolution scale. Overall, the generated maps are found to be in good agreement with field data, EPSAT-SG (Estimation des Pluies par SATellite – Second Generation) rainfall estimates and ERS (European Remote Sensing) Wind Scatterometer (WSC) SSM products. The present study shows that the spatial pattern of SSM can be realistically estimated at a kilometric scale. The resulting SSM maps are expected to provide valuable information for initialisation of land surface models and the estimation of the spatial distribution of radiative fluxes. Particularly, SSM maps could help to desaggregate low-resolution products such as those derived from WSC data.


Recent research has shown that the original DCF access mode of IEEE 802.11 has low performance in heavy traffic and multi-hop environment [Yong Peng, et al., ICII 2001] [Shugong Xu, et al., IEEE GLOBECOM, 2001]. In this paper, our research focus is placed on the improvement of 802.11 networks in multi-hop environment with heavy contention area. We implement system performance enhancement through the interaction of MAC layer and ad hoc routing mechanism. We have first introduced a MAC parameter to evaluate current wireless media contention state (i.e. load factor). In order to be adaptive to the MAC layer contention, we propose a new DCF based MAC mechanism with the name of random route discovery packet drop (R/sup 2/DPD). This new mechanism drops ad hoc routing packets in the MAC layer according to the on-line measuring of local contention state (i.e. load factor). Stations in heavy contention environment drop route discovery packets with high probability so that the congestion is relieved. Simulation results have shown that our new MAC algorithm can achieve better performance than the original DCF algorithm.


Previous research showed that nursery pigs fed deoxynivalenol (DON) contaminated diets supplemented with spray-dried porcine plasma (SDPP) had similar growth rate and feed intake as those consuming noncontaminated diets. In this study, two blocks of 100 weanling pigs were used to determine the optimal inclusion level of spray-dried bovine plasma(SDBP) required in nursery diets contaminated with DON to maintain growth performance. Growth performance was not statistically diff erent for pigs fed the diets with DON contaminated diets and the diet without DON. Also, adding SDBP to the DON-contaminated diets had no eff ect on nursery pig growth performance. Therefore, we were not able to determine the optimal inclusion level of SDBP in the DON-contaminated nursery diet.


This paper presents a temperature sensing and controlling microfluid chip for cell immobilization using a thermo-sensitive hydrogel (PNIPAAm). The ITO (Indium Tin Oxide) microheaters fabricated by micromachining technology, perform heating of the solution of cell, PNIPAAm and Calcein-AM (fluorescent dye) in microchannels. It is important to note that a thick gel formation cause to block the observation of culturing cells due to the autofluorescence of gel which reduce the S/N ratio. For the present study, we are targeting to fabricate a suspended micro-bridge above a microheater to limit the height of gel to form "thin and transparent gel layer" above the heater. The research was focused on controlling of gel thickness which eliminated unnecessary interferences of autofluorescence of gel in the observation by the inverted microscope, and a better S/N ratio can be obtained than the conventional observation with uncontrolled gel thickness. All the heating and a suspended biocompatible micro-bridge were integrated on a chip, in which yeast cells immobilization can be performed by the gelation of the PNIPAAm solution.


In this paper, we consider the receive power allocation (RPA) problem for multimedia users in a cellular CDMA network. It is shown that the problem can be split into two optimization problems, source-based RPA (SBRPA) and network-based RPA (NBRPA). SBRPA determines the relative receive power levels (RPLs) between different classes of users in each cell irrespective of the intercell interference and it is locally implemented. NBRPA determines the relative RPLs between cells and can be achieved solving an eigenvalue problem with the system-wide class-wise SIR-balancing and it is globally implemented. The need for interference-balancing to increase the capacity with minimum mobile transmit power is emphasized. Finally, numerical results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proper RPA in a cellular multimedia CDMA system.


OBJECTIVE: Although cocaine use is a significant public health problem, there is relative paucity of scientific data on long-term neurocognitive consequences of the exposure to the substance. METHODS: This study examined the association between crack cocaine dependence and neuropsychological performance. An extended battery of neuropsychological tests was administered to 15 abstinent cocaine abusers, inpatients in abstinence for two weeks, and 15 non-drug-using control subjects matched for age, gender, education, socio-economic status, handedness and IQ. RESULTS: The preliminary findings showed statistical significance (p<0,05) on differences of performance in attention, verbal fluency, verbal memory, visual memory, learning ability and executive functions. CONCLUSIONS: These results represent evidences that cocaine abuse is associated with decrements in cognitive functioning, similar to cognitive disorders associated to prefrontal and temporal brain impairments. Knowledge of specific cognitive deficits in cocaine abusers may be useful for designing more effective substance abuse prevention and treatment programs.


From both theoretical and substantiative points of viem, the author examined applicability of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to evaluation process of District Suitability Classification (DSC), which is one of the land classification techniques for rural land-use plan. In this research, I so devised a concrete system of evaluation procedure with AHP and examined the validity of the procedure in those days. But the results was not published yet. In the evaluation process of AHP, such participatory operations as summarization of member's opinions, conversion of indicator values on the common value scale etc. are accompanied. Moreover, "quality" of such operations influences the evaluation results grealy. Therefore we cannot but say that significance of the procedure is quite important from practical point of view. This paper proposes a systematic procedure of DSC with AHP, and considers the availability of the procedure. At first I briefly summarize the development detailsof DSC technique and the theory of AHP. Next, I explain the procedure of DSC with AHP and the results of case study. In consideration of some objective data, simple questionnaire results to the participating members etc., we examine the practicability of the procedure.


Despite the fact that alcohol consumption has been strongly linked to negative health outcomes (Rehm, Gmel, Sempos, & Trevisan, 2003), alcohol consumption, including binge drinking, seems to be prevalent and socially acceptable (Guise and Gill, 2007). Although not the only explanation for drinking behaviors, the common practices of drinking, especially among college students, can be explained using an evolutionary perspective as it relates to mate selection. Male-to-male intense intrasexual competitions such as drinking game participation and bar fights can be explained in terms of sexual selection. In this paper, I also examine male risk taking behaviors and female mating courtship strategies under the influence of alcohol, explaining how drinking behaviors can be associated with certain reproductive outcomes. Testable novel hypotheses and predictions with regard to mating mindsets and behaviors during drinking are also introduced.


Commonly used Head Mounted Displays (HMDs) in Augmented Reality (AR), namely Optical See-Through (OST) displays, suffer from a main drawback: their focal lenses can only provide a fixed focal distance. Such a limitation is suspected to be one of the main factors for distance misperception in AR. In this paper, we studied the use of an emerging new kind of AR display to tackle such perception issues: Retinal Projection Displays (RPDs). With RPDs, virtual images have no focal distance and the AR content is always in focus. We conducted the first reported experiment evaluating egocentric distance perception of observers using Retinal Projection Displays. We compared the precision and accuracy of the depth estimation between real and virtual targets, displayed by either OST HMDs or RPDs. Interestingly, our results show that RPDs provide depth estimates in AR closer to real ones compared to OST HMDs. Indeed, the use of an OST device was found to lead to an overestimation of the perceived distance by 16%, whereas the distance overestimation bias dropped to 4% with RPDs. Besides, the task was reported with the same level of difficulty and no difference in precision. As such, our results shed the first light on retinal projection displays' benefits in terms of user's perception in Augmented Reality, suggesting that RPD is a promising technology for AR applications in which an accurate distance perception is required.


Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), after disease onset, typically progress in two cyclically repeated phases, namely inflammatory flare and remission, with possible nutritional status impairment. Some evidence, either from epidemiological, clinical, and experimental studies indicate that the quantity and the quality of dietary protein consumption and amino acid supplementation may differently influence the IBD course according to the disease phases. For instance, although the dietary protein needs for mucosal healing after an inflammatory episode remain undetermined, there is evidence that amino acids derived from dietary proteins display beneficial effects on this process, serving as building blocks for macromolecule synthesis in the wounded mucosal area, energy substrates, and/or precursors of bioactive metabolites. However, an excessive amount of dietary proteins may result in an increased intestinal production of potentially deleterious bacterial metabolites. This could possibly affect epithelial repair as several of these bacterial metabolites are known to inhibit colonic epithelial cell respiration, cell proliferation, and/or to affect barrier function. In this review, we present the available evidence about the impact of the amount of dietary proteins and supplementary amino acids on IBD onset and progression, with a focus on the effects reported in the colon.


The goal of our research is to investigate the interplay between oculomotor control, visual processing, and limb control in humans and primates by exploring the computational issues of these processes with a biologically inspired artificial oculomotor system on an anthropomorphic robot. In this paper, we investigate the computational mechanisms for visual attention in such a system. Stimuli in the environment excite a dynamical neural network that implements a saliency map, i.e., a winner-take-all competition between stimuli while simultaneously smoothing out noise and suppressing irrelevant inputs. In real-time, this system computes new targets for the shift of gaze, executed by the head-eye system of the robot. The redundant degrees-of-freedom of the head-eye system are resolved through a learned inverse kinematics with optimization criterion. We also address important issues how to ensure that the coordinate system of the saliency map remains correct after movement of the robot. The presented attention system is built on principled modules and generally applicable for any sensory modality.


The effects of gain saturation, gain asymmetry, and pump/probe depletion on the conversion efficiency of four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers are studied analytically and numerically. The power dependence of FWM coupling coefficients and ultrafast relaxation-related gain mechanisms are included in the model. By studying the FWM efficiency in the transition from unsaturated to strongly saturated regions, it is seen that gain asymmetry results in deviation from small-signal models when the pump-probe detuning and pump powers are small. At high pump injection or gain conditions, it is also shown that the small-signal model breaks down even for relatively large detuning frequencies. Probe depletion is also seen to be critical under saturated conditions and an upper bound is derived for ranges of input pump power, pump-probe detuning, and gain for a given amplifier under which the small-signal model is valid.


This paper presents the Contrast Invariant and Affine Optical Flow (CIAO), a dense area-based sub-pixel image matching algorithm. CIAO does not force the estimated disparity field between two images to be smooth and allows for contrast and brightness changes. It is robust to drastic changes in the images' content thanks to an adaptive weighting of the neighboring pixels. In addition, the proposed model considers local affine displacements instead of simpler translations. CIAO proves particularly useful to extract high quality, high accuracy, and high density disparity maps from pairs of stereoscopic images. Comparative results with real and synthetic data are provided.


Enumeration areas are the operational geographic units for the collection, dissemination, and analysis of census data and are often used as a national sampling frame for various types of surveys. Traditionally, enumeration areas are created by manually digitizing small geographic units on high-resolution satellite imagery or physically walking the boundaries of units, both of which are highly time, cost, and labor intensive. In addition, creating enumeration areas requires considering the size of the population and area within each unit. This is an optimization problem that can best be solved by a computer. This paper, for the first time, produces an automatic designation of predefined census enumeration areas based on high-resolution gridded populationand settlement data sets and using publicly available natural and administrative boundaries. This automated approach is compared with manually digitized enumeration areas that were created in urban areas in Mogadishu and Hargeisa for the United Nations Population Estimation Survey for Somalia in 2014. The automatically generated enumeration areas are consistent with standard enumeration areas, including having identifiable boundaries to field teams on the ground, and appropriate sizing and population for coverage by an enumerator. Furthermore, the automated urban enumeration areas have no gaps. The paper extends this work to rural Somalia, for which no records exist of previous enumeration area demarcations. This work shows the time,labor, and cost-saving value of automated enumeration area delineation and points to the potential for broadlyavailable tools that are suitable for low-income and data-poor settings but applicable to potentially wider contexts.


Shin, Joonhwa Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2013. Predictive Duty Cycling of Radios and Cameras using Augmented Sensing in Wireless Camera Networks. Major Professors: Avinash C. Kak and Johnny Park. Energy efficiency dominates practically every aspect of the design of wireless camera networks (WCNs), and duty cycling of radios and cameras is an important tool for achieving high energy efficiencies. However, duty cycling in WCNs is made complex by the camera nodes having to anticipate the arrival of the objects in their field-ofview. What adds to this complexity is the fact that radio duty cycling and camera duty cycling are tightly coupled notions in WCNs. In this dissertation, we present a predictive framework to provide camera nodes with an ability to anticipate the arrival of an object in the field-of-view of their cameras. This allows a predictive adaption of network parameters simultaneously in multiple layers. Such anticipatory approach is made possible by enabling each camera node in the network to track an object beyond its direct sensing range and to adapt network parameters in multiple layers before the arrival of the object in its sensing range. The proposed framework exploits a single spare bit in the MAC header of the 802.15.4 protocol for creating this beyond-the-sensing-rage capability for the camera nodes. In this manner, our proposed approach for notifying the nodes about the current state of the object location entails no additional communication overhead. Our experimental evaluations based on large-scale simulations as well as an Imote2-based wireless camera network demonstrate that the proposed predictive adaptation approach, while providing comparable application-level performance, significantly reduces energy consumption compared to the approaches addressing only a single layer adaptation or those with reactive adaptation.


With only less than 10% recovery, the primary production of hydrocarbon from shale reservoirs has redefined the energy equation in the world. Similar to conventional reservoirs, Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) techniques could be devised to enhance the current recovery factors. However, shale reservoirs possess unique characteristics that significantly affect the fluid properties. Therefore, we are adopting a molecular simulation approach that is well-suited to account for these effects to evaluate the performance of three different gases, methane, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, to recover the hydrocarbons from rough pore surfaces. Our hydrocarbon systems consists of either a single component (decane) or more than one component (decane and pentane). We simulated cases where concurrent and countercurrent displacement is studied. For concurrent displacement (injected fluids displace hydrocarbons towards the production region), we found that nitrogen and methane yielded similar recovery; however nitrogen exhibited a faster breakthrough. On the other hand, carbon dioxide was more effective in extracting the hydrocarbons when sufficient pressure was maintained. For countercurrent displacement (gases are injected and hydrocarbons are produced from the same direction), methane was found to be more effective, followed by carbon dioxide and nitrogen. In all cases, confinement reduced the recovery factor of all gases. This work provides insights to devise strategies to improve the current recovery factors observed in shale reservoirs.


The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the health and lifestyles of both the general population and of vulnerable groups. Individuals with knee pain are recommended to lead an active lifestyle to relieve pain but find it difficult to maintain health and lifestyle compared to the general population due to the cause of chronic pain, impaired physical function, and a diminished quality of life. This study aimed to explore experiences of how health and lifestyle among individuals with knee pain have been influenced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Interviews (n = 19) were conducted in 2021 and analysed with qualitative content analysis. The results showed how individuals with knee pain adjusted their behaviour and revalued their life to maintain health and lifestyle during COVID-19. Adjusted behaviours emerged, such as spending more time at home, becoming digital, and spending more time outdoors, while revaluing life emerged as having a positive outlook on life and sharing responsibility. In conclusion, behaviour was adjusted, and life revalued to manage health and lifestyle during the pandemic. However, the findings are probably similar to the general population, i.e., individuals with knee pain live similar lives as the general population despite knee pain. The results may contribute to alternative ways of maintaining health and lifestyle in various vulnerable groups and may be applied in situations other than the pandemic.


A microcystin detection and Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope investigation were carried out to analyze the microcystin removal effect and the forms of Microcystis aeruginosa cells with different dosage of potassium permanganate loaded zeolite. The results showed that potassium permanganate loaded zeolite had significant microcystin-LR removal effect both in the Microcystis aeruginosa and Nostoc samples. The optimal dosage and the optimal removal rate were 96.0% at 220mg/L and 77% at 110mg/L separately. The cell wall of Microcystis aeruginosa was ruptured by dosing both potassium permanganate and potassium permanganate loaded zeolite, while algae cells were accumulated. Cell groups treated by potassium permanganate loaded zeolite appeared more compact to improve cells settling performance and wrapped exudates to avoid microcystin excessing into water. There were abundant adsorption sites to adsorb intracellular and extracellular microcystin after potassium permanganate released from zeolite.


Fouling affects gas turbine operation and airborne or fuel contaminants, under certain conditions, become very likely to adhere to surfaces if impact takes place. Particle sticking implies the change in shape in terms of roughness of the impinged surface. The consequences of these deposits could be dramatic: these effects can shut an aircraft engine down or derate a land-based power unit. This occurrence may happen due to the reduction of the compressor flow rate and the turbine capacity, caused by a variation in the HPT nozzle throat area (geometric blockage due to the thickness of the deposited layer and the aerodynamic blockage due to the increased roughness, and in turn boundary layer).
 Several methods to quantify particle sticking have been proposed in literature so far, and the experimental data used for their validation vary in a wide range of materials and conditions. The experimental analyses have been supported by (and have given inspiration to) increasingly realistic mathematical models. Experimental tests have been carried out on (i) a full scale gas turbine unit, (ii) wind tunnel testing or hot gas facilities using stationary cascades, able to reproduce the same conditions of gas turbine nozzle operation and finally, (iii) wind tunnel testing or hot gas facilities using a coupon as the target.
 In this review, the whole variety of experimental tests performed is gathered and classified according to composition, size, temperature and particle impact velocity. Using particle viscosity and sticking prediction models, over seventy (70) tests are compared with each other and with the model previsions providing a useful starting point for a comprehensive critical analysis. Due to the variety of test conditions, the related results are difficult to be pieced together due to differences in particle material and properties.
 The historical data of particle deposition obtained over thirty (30) years are classified using particle kinetic energy and the ratio between particle temperature and its softening temperature. Qualitative thresholds for the distinction between particle deposition, surface erosion and particle break-up, based on particle properties and impact conditions, are identified. The outcome of this paper can be used for further development of sticking models or as a starting point for new insight into the problem.


Recently, there has been a broader emphasis on studying the influence of social factors on phonetic realizations. Given that the second language learners' performances of speech acts differ significantly from the native speakers, investigating and acknowledging the social differences which affect the prosodic variations is the first step to make learners aware of the appropriate use of the speech acts in the target language. The current paper examines the differences in English L1 and L2 speakers' "request." The participants for this study were 16 Korean EFL speakers and 9 English native speakers. Twelve English request sentences were elicited by the participants as responses to situation prompts (4 tokens for three power relations: power high, equal, and low). The speech variations (e.g., pitch, intensity, and speech rate) were analyzed with Praat. The findings indicated that L2, but not L1, speakers tended to slow down their pace in a power-high situation. Pitch results revealed that Korean male speakers lowered their pitch to mitigate difficult requesting situations. Moreover, the verbal report showed that all except one Korean EFL speakers felt that requesting to professors was the hardest whereas all but one English natives responded that requesting to strangers was the most difficult.


Periodically, leading scholars in the organization sciences have paused to reflect on the status of organization and management theory (e.g., Perrow, 1973; Hambrick, 1993; Huber, 2010). Their overall conclusions have been strikingly similar: organization and management theories may matter a great deal to the scholars who produce them, but they matter very little to managers. As an applied discipline, the field of organization design offers a true opportunity to bridge the worlds of scholarly research and management practice. Problems of organization design exist at the nexus of theory and practice, demanding rich understanding, robust theorizing, strong empirical analysis, and futuristic thinking. Further, with rapid technological evolution, new forms of organizing, and dynamic economic and social environments within and across countries, problems of organization design in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors are ever more complex and challenging, for both researchers and managers.


The agreement as a universal legal category and a unique means of legal regulation gives rise to a variety of relations, including the right to use someone else's property, called an easement in civil law. Therefore, the issues of form of these agreements are of particular importance, both in the context of the legal consequences of its non-compliance, and in view of the importance of proper fixation of the agreements reached between the parties.The article is devoted to the analysis of the form of an easement agreement under the civil legislation of Ukraine. A special attention is paid to the issue of the institution of the requirement for transaction notarization, in particular, the establishment (cancellation) of the requirement by the owner for notarization of a land easement agreement.It is concluded that as of today, the easement agreement is subject to a conclusion in writing and, under certain conditions defined by the legislation of Ukraine, it should be notarized. Certainly, as far as immovable property is concerned, the notarial form is also due to the fact that in accordance with the Law of Ukraine «On State Registration of Property Rights to Immovable Property and Their Encumbrances», the notaries perform the functions of the state registrar of property rights and can ensure state registration of the right of the easement as a property right. On the other hand, according to the current legislation of Ukraine, it is possible to certify transactions in those areas where there are no notaries, by means of other bodies and officials (for example, officials of local self-government bodies) and this certification will be equal to the notarial one. However, in these cases, the problem of registering property rights under an easement is still unresolved. Therefore, within the framework of the existing legal regulation, in order to balance public and private interests, the broadest introduction of the current system of e-notaries and its further improvement can be a worthy alternative and means of relief.


Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is a software development approach which focuses on the creation of models to represent a domain with the aim of automatically generating software artefact using a set of software tools. This approach enables practitioners to produce a variation of software in by reusing the concepts in the domain model without worrying about the technical intricacies of software development. Therefore, this approach can help to increases productivity and it makes software design easier for the practitioners. The application of this approach into games development domain presents an interesting proposition and could help to simplify production of computer games.Computer games are interactive entertainment software designed and developed to engage users to participate in goal-directed play. Many find computer gaming to be persuasive and engaging, and they believe that through the application of game design and game technology in non-entertainment domains can create a positive impact. Computer games designed primarily for non-entertainment purpose are generally known as serious games. The development of games software, in no relation to the intended purpose of it, is technically complex and it requires specialist skills and knowledge. This is the major barrier that hinders domain experts who intend to apply computer gaming into their respective domains. Much research is already underway to address this challenge, whereby many of which have chosen to use readily available commercial-off-the-shelf games while others have attempted to develop serious games in-house or collaboratively with industry expertise. However, these approaches present issues including appropriateness of the serious game content and its activities, reliability of serious games developed and the financial cost involved. The MDE approach promises new hopes to the domain experts, especially to those with little or no technical knowledge who intend produce their own computer games. Using this approach, the technical aspects of games development can be hidden from the domain experts through the automated generation of software artefact. This simplifies the production of computer games and could provide the necessary support to help non-technical domain experts to realise their vision on serious gaming.This thesis investigates the development of a model-driven approach and technologies to aid non-technical domain experts in computer games production. It presents a novel model-driven games development framework designed to aid non-technical domain experts in producing computer games. A prototype based on the model-driven games development framework has been implemented to demonstrate the applicability of this solution. The framework has been validated through the prototypical implementations and these have been evaluated. A case study has been conducted to present a use-case scenario and to examine if this approach can help non-technical domain experts in producing computer games and also to find out if it would lower the barrier towards adoption of game-based learning as an alternative teaching and learning approach.The work in this thesis contributes to the area of software engineering in games. The contributions made in this research includes (1) a blueprint for model-driven engineering for games development, (2) a reusable formalised approach to document computer game design and (3) a model of game software that is independent of implementation platform.


Objective A number of candidate gene and genome-wide association studies have identified significant associations between single nucleotide polymorphisms, particularly in FTO and MC4R, and body weight. However, the association between copy number variation and body weight is less understood. Anabolic androgenic steroids, such as testosterone, can regulate body weight. In humans, UDP-glucuronosyltransferase 2B17 (UGT2B17) metabolizes testosterone to a metabolite, which is readily excreted in urine. We investigate the association between genetic and phenotypic variation in UGT2B17 and body weight. Materials and methods UGT2B17 deletion was genotyped and in-vivo UGT2B17 enzymatic activity (as measured by the 3-hydroxycotinine glucuronide to free 3-hydroxycotinine ratio) was measured in 400 Alaska Native individuals and 540 African Americans. Results In Alaska Native people, UGT2B17 deletion was strongly associated with lower BMI in male individuals (P<0.001), but not in female individuals, consistent with testosterone being a male dominant steroid. The sex-specific association between UGT2B17 deletion and lower BMI was also observed in African Americans (P=0.01 in male individuals). In both populations, UGT2B17 deletion was significantly associated with lower measured in-vivo UGT2B17 activity. In male individuals, lower in-vivo UGT2B17 activity was associated with lower BMI, as observed in the sex-specific genotypic association. Conclusion These data suggest that UGT2B17 deletion leads to reduced UGT2B17 activity, and lower BMI in male individuals. This is consistent with the hypothesis that reduced UGT2B17-mediated testosterone excretion results in higher testosterone levels. Future studies could confirm this hypothesis by directly measuring serum testosterone levels.


: A massive liver hemorrhage (MLH) recognized in Ontario broiler chickens had a characteristic clinical course and pathological lesions. Affected flocks had a higher death rate than normal, with no obvious clinical signs. Deaths from MLH began at two weeks of age; the mortality rate returned to a normal level by four weeks. The main necropsy finding was massive multiple liver hemorrhage with consequent profuse hemoperitoneum.


Attrition is a critical issue and pretty high in the industry these days. It's the major problem which highlights in all the organizations. Though the term 'Attrition' is common, many would be at a loss to define what actually Attrition is, "Attrition is said to be the gradual reduction in the number of employees through retirement, resignation or death. It can also be said as Employee Turnover or Employee Defection" Whenever a well-trained and well-adapted employee leaves the organization, it creates a vacuum. So, the organization loses key skills, knowledge and business relationships. Modern managers and personnel administrators are greatly interested in reducing Attrition in the organization, in such a way that it will contribute to the maximum effectiveness, growth, and progress of the organization.


Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a prevalent condition that frequently co-occurs with other diagnoses that bring patients into treatment. Narcissistic disturbances are not often the chief complaint, but they complicate the development of an adequate therapeutic alliance. Typical countertransference challenges, combined with stigma related to NPD, result in difficulty for the therapist to relate to these patients empathically. Mentalization-based treatment provides a means for therapists to reach these patients by taking a "not-knowing" stance with interest and curiosity in clarifying and expanding a shared awareness of the patient's emotional experiences. By understanding the attachment functions, mentalizing imbalances, and problems of epistemic disregard among patients with NPD, therapists can break through the self-centered "me-mode" of the therapeutic dyad, where the typical lack of engagement or power struggles prevail, to a "we-mode," where the patient and therapist are joined in attention to what happens in the patient's mind and in interactions with others.


The intelligence failures preceding the September 11 terrorist attacks highlight critical shortcomings with the sharing of information between government organizations. Fixing these problems involves overcoming technological and cultural barriers, fostering openness while not endangering privacy and security. We describe an approach to information sharing using an electronic marketplace, similar in some respects to eBay, that facilitates and incentivizes cooperation while minimizing exposure to abuses of privacy and security. To investigate the properties of this approach, we have devised a game, Find the Ring, that centers on an electronic marketplace for information sharing among the players. We analyze this game theoretically and describe the results of experiments run using software agents as players


Unsolved Problem The development of eyespots on the wing surface of butterflies of the family Nympalidae is one of the most studied examples of biological pattern formation.However, little is known about the mechanism that determines the number and precise locations of eyespots on the wing. Eyespots develop around signaling centers, called foci, that are located equidistant from wing veins along the midline of a wing cell (an area bounded by veins). A fundamental question that remains unsolved is, why a certain wing cell develops an eyespot, while other wing cells do not. Key Idea and Model We illustrate that the key to understanding focus point selection may be in the venation system of the wing disc. Our main hypothesis is that changes in morphogen concentration along the proximal boundary veins of wing cells govern focus point selection. Based on previous studies, we focus on a spatially two-dimensional reaction-diffusion system model posed in the interior of each wing cell that describes the formation of focus points. Using finite element based numerical simulations, we demonstrate that variation in the proximal boundary condition is sufficient to robustly select whether an eyespot focus point forms in otherwise identical wing cells. We also illustrate that this behavior is robust to small perturbations in the parameters and geometry and moderate levels of noise. Hence, we suggest that an anterior-posterior pattern of morphogen concentration along the proximal vein may be the main determinant of the distribution of focus points on the wing surface. In order to complete our model, we propose a two stage reaction-diffusion system model, in which an one-dimensional surface reaction-diffusion system, posed on the proximal vein, generates the morphogen concentrations that act as non-homogeneous Dirichlet (i.e., fixed) boundary conditions for the two-dimensional reaction-diffusion model posed in the wing cells. The two-stage model appears capable of generating focus point distributions observed in nature. Result We therefore conclude that changes in the proximal boundary conditions are sufficient to explain the empirically observed distribution of eyespot focus points on the entire wing surface. The model predicts, subject to experimental verification, that the source strength of the activator at the proximal boundary should be lower in wing cells in which focus points form than in those that lack focus points. The model suggests that the number and locations of eyespot foci on the wing disc could be largely controlled by two kinds of gradients along two different directions, that is, the first one is the gradient in spatially varying parameters such as the reaction rate along the anterior-posterior direction on the proximal boundary of the wing cells, and the second one is the gradient in source values of the activator along the veins in the proximal-distal direction of the wing cell.


This paper is presented after a study of 400 blood transfusions which I have given in the last two years. In the first 150, the citrate method was employed, and in the remainder, the direct method of giving whole blood. A comparison of the two methods is attempted and recent valuable contributions to the literature have been reviewed for the consideration of variations in technic and the explanation of phenomena relative to blood transfusions. The brief discussion of indications and results is an expression of various truths which cannot but be realized in a general way by the one performing the transfusions. HISTORY If we could consider in detail the history of blood transfusions we would be deeply impressed by the extremely interesting sequence of events which have led to present day achievements. At first, there were short periods of success, followed by long intermissions when the procedure was considered


Abstract Clays are the most complicated objects in quantitative mineral analysis of sedimentary rocks. Complex quantitative analysis of clays comprises four major steps: measuring bulk quantities, quantifying the mixed layering, determining the three-dimensional organization, and measuring the particle size. Computerization has resulted in major progress in all four areas during the last decade. X-ray diffraction remains the major tool of the quantitative studies of clays, supported by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (bulk quantities), chemical analysis (bulk quantities) and electron microscopy (particle size). This contribution reviews recent developments in the techniques used for quantifying clays and their properties, and looks at the use of these quantification techniques in K-Ar dating of geological processes.


Although software engineering is a well-documented area of computer science, courses in software engineering frequently do not give students enough practical experience with concepts such as software design, prototyping, programming, debugging, program understanding, software reuse, and so on. As a result, computer science graduates too often acquire a sound theoretical understanding of software engineering concepts, without practical experience using these concepts (a recurrent complaint from industry). We believe that this problem is partly due to a lack of appropriate tools for software engineering education. In this paper we present an overview of the tools we have developed for software engineering education and how they are successfully being used in the instruction of a software engineering course at the University of Toronto.


The Earth's climate is warming. This is the unequivocal conclusion of climate scientists. Despite the complexities of climatology, certain consistent trends emerge with implications for water availability: as the world gets warmer, it will experience increased regional variability in precipitation, with more frequent heavy precipitation events and more susceptibility to drought. These simple facts will have a profound impact on freshwater resources throughout the United States, as the warmer climate will reduce available water supplies and increase water demand. Unfortunately, current water law and policy are not up to the new challenges of climate change and resulting pressures on freshwater resources. To adapt to climate change, water law and policy will need to embrace fundamental reforms that emphasize water conservation and more efficient and environmentally-sound allocation at the local, regional, and national scales.


Limited research has been conducted on the mental health of urban Afro-American men and the context of their traumatic experiencing. In this study, the researcher is interested in discovering if gangsta rap music is an artistic expression of trauma within experiences of a sector within the population of African American men. Utilizing qualitative and ethnographic analysis, this study seeks to explore gangsta rap as a form of connection to and possible expression of the contextual trauma experienced by inner-city African American men in Los Angeles, California between 1983 and 1993. Lyrics of 30 songs from gangsta rap artists associated with this area are examined using qualitative research computer analysis software. A re-conceptualized framework of trauma is introduced and utilized as a lens to examine cultural expression. This study examines gangsta rap music as a window into the qualitative phenomenological experiencing of trauma through the voices of African American rappers. INDEX WORDS: Gangsta Rap, African American Men, Trauma, Continuous Trauma, Historical Trauma, Race, Cultural Trauma, Intersectionality GANGSTA EXPRESSIONS 1983-1993: EXPLORING THE MENTAL HEALTH OF AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN


Silicon is a promising photoelectrochemical (PEC) material owing to its earth abundance, high carrier mobility and narrow bandgap. However, a bare Si photoelectrode is prone to photocorrosion and its photovoltage is affected by surface states on the electrode in PEC measurements. In the present work, a simple and inexpensive method for the construction of a Si/graphene heterojunction is presented. The high barrier at the solid/solid junction results in an open-circuit voltage of 490 mV, making it an excellent heterojunction light absorber to generate a substantial photovoltage for PEC water oxidation. A TiO2 thin layer deposited on the Si/graphene structure is effective to protect the heterojunction from the electrolyte while favoring the interfacial charge transport from the buried junction. The introduction of a FeNiCoOx co-catalyst thin film onto the TiO2 protected heterojunction yields a high photocurrent density of ∼19 mA cm−2 at an applied potential of 1.5 V vs. RHE in 1.0 M NaOH solution under one sun simulated solar illumination. In contrast to the unprotected Si/graphene electrode, the activity of the TiO2 protected photoanode is sustained for several hours in an alkaline electrolyte. This work clearly reveals the important role of graphene in the performance improvement of the Si-based photoanodes and sheds light on the introduction of novel materials onto silicon-based electrodes to achieve higher photovoltages for efficient PEC reactions.


Flexible field emission cathodes, as a member of the class of flexible electronic nanodevices, have potential applications in flexible displays and miniature X-ray tubes. In the present review, we first provide an overview of the research progress made in this field, focusing on the fabrication and field emission properties of flexible field emission cathodes based on low-dimensional inorganic semiconductor nanostructures, which are typically grown on flexible substrates, such as polymers, graphene and carbon fabrics. After this, we provide a brief introduction to the major features of flexible field emission cathodes. Subsequently, we shed some light on their potential applications in field emission displays and X-ray tubes. Finally, we discuss future prospects in the further development of flexible field emission cathodes.


The problem of a nomadic terminal sending information to a remote destination via agents with lossless connections to the destination is investigated. Such a setting suits, e.g., access points of a wireless network where each access point is connected by a wire to a wireline-based network. The Gaussian codebook capacity for the case where the agents do not have any decoding ability is characterized for the Gaussian channel. This restriction is demonstrated to be severe, and allowing the nomadic transmitter to use other signaling improves the rate. For both general and degraded discrete memoryless channels, lower and upper bounds on the capacity are derived. An achievable rate with unrestricted agents, which are capable of decoding, is also given and then used to characterize the capacity for the deterministic channel.


Described herein is research into the production of hydrocarbons suitable for various industrial applications via α-olefin trimerisation. This work has been split into three principal chapters that each describe a different aspect of the research carried out. In addition, a comprehensive review is presented into the development of selective oligomerisation, with an emphasis on the role of metallacyclic intermediates. α-Olefin Trimerisation: Catalyst Synthesis and Optimisation The synthesis and characterisation of eight novel chromium triazacyclohexane catalysts is described, including a series of catalysts containing alternative abstractable anions. All were shown to be active towards trimerisation, with optimisation resulting in exceptional selectivities of over 95 w%, with the remainder consisting of isomerised LAO and dimer. Investigation of the 'halogen' effect indicated the inducement of catalyst decomposition via oxidation. Mechanistic Insights into α-Olefin Trimerisation The proposed metallacyclic mechanism was investigated using a variety of techniques. The regioisomers of the trimer were identified down to an abundance of 0.1% with the use of 13C labelling. All matched those expected, allowing the relative abundance of differently substituted intermediates to be determined. 2H labelling identified competition between elimination pathways, which can only occur for metallacyclic intermediates. Characterisation of the catalyst activation products supported the mechanism, while chain transfer reactions were also identified. Air sensitive mass spectrometry led to observation of peaks matching those expected for proposed intermediates. Ethylene Trimerisation: Process Optimisation and Product Identification Optimisation of experimental procedures and increasing the catalyst bulk led to selectivities of 93 w% and activities beyond 250,000 mol(C2H4) mol(Cr)-1 h-1. Kink kinetics resulted in three distinct periods of differing ethylene consumption for which a mechanism has been proposed. Tetramerisation was detected for these systems for the first time alongside several co-trimerisation products. The C10 species were most abundant and have been fully characterised, supporting the proposed co-trimerisation mechanism.


To enhance secure communications, we deploy the dual-polarized antenna arrays at communication nodes of the multi-input multioutput (MIMO) system, where the base station communicates with multiple legitimate users in the presence of an eavesdropper. We also adopt the dual-structured precoding in which a preprocessing matrix based on the polarized array spatial correlation and a linear precoding based on the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) are concatenated. We design this dual-structured multiuser linear precoding under three cases. In the first case, given perfect global CSI, the secrecy rate optimization problem is formulated and transformed into the weighted minimum mean square error (MSE) problem, which can be effectively solved by the block coordinate decent method. In the second case, where the eavesdropper's CSI is unavailable, an artificial noise is generated to confuse the eavesdropper by minimizing the information transmit power subject to a preset MSE threshold for the recovered confidential signals, which can be solved by an efficient iterative algorithm. In the third case of imperfect global CSI, the robust optimization for secure communications is performed by minimizing the largest received MSE among the users subject to the total transmit power constraint, which can be reformulated into a biconvex semidefinite programming problem and solved by an efficient alternating convex optimization. Simulation results are included to demonstrate the excellent performance of our proposed designs over the conventional single-polarized array-based designs, in terms of achievable secrecy rate, minimum transmit power, and the MSE of recovered confidential signals.


E-consultations are being offered within clinic walls as an option for specialist advice without a face-to-face consultation appointment. In a six month time frame, nearly 100% of primary care internists and family medicine providers in a multispecialty practice had used an e-consultation at least once. Specialists also used e-consultations for advice from other specialists. E-consultations were often questions about interpreting images or laboratory tests, or questions about management of chronic conditions such as osteoporosis, hypertension, or headaches. Although e-consultations were offered as an alternative to face-to-face specialty consultations, 1,111 of 5,334 e-consultations eventually did receive face-to-face appointments in the same specialty. Within 30 days of the e-consultation 11.5% had a specialty face-to-face visit and 17.7% had seen a specialist face-to-face within 90 days of the e-consultation. The conversions of e-consultations to face-to-face consultations depended on the specialty providing the e-consultation (fewer for gastroenterology and infectious disease), patient distance from the clinic (fewer for international patients and those living greater than 800 kilometers from the clinic), and experience of specialist responding to the e-consultation (lower conversions for specialists providing 15 or more e-consultations).


This work is the first to demonstrate that class G immunoglobulins (IgGs) in patients with multiple sclerosis and healthy individuals have the ability to catalyze the dismutation reaction of the superoxide anion radical. Thus, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity is an intrinsic property of antibodies, which is confirmed by a number of stringent criteria. SOD activity of IgGs in patients with multiple sclerosis statistically significantly exceeds such activity in healthy individuals by 2-4 times. Moreover, the maximum activity has been registered in patients with relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis. The kinetic characteristics of the SOD reaction of IgGs are several orders of magnitude lower than those for the SOD enzyme but do not differ between patients with multiple sclerosis and healthy individuals. Consequently, abzymes with SOD activity have a lower catalysis rate than that of the enzymes and form a stronger complex with the substrates. Inhibitory analysis showed that this activity is inhibited by classical metal-dependent SOD inhibitors. The activity of IgGs was inhibited by classical metal-dependent inhibitors EDTA and TETA (triethylenetetramine). Also, high catalase activity of IgGs was detected in these patients. We suggest that these abzymes help protect the body from oxidative stress.


Patientswithstrokefaceanumberofproblemsthatincludephysical,social,emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems. It caused a decrease in the well-being that he felt by stroke patients ,also coupled with a decrease in the ability to perform daily roles and decreased well-being social relationship, especially relations with his family. This study aimed to identify well-being, mastery of roles, and well-being of relationships with families and was associated with demographic characteristics. This research used quantitative descriptive methods. The sample consisted of stroke patients who were outpatient at a hospital in Bandung. A total of 96 respondents were taken based on inclusion and exclusion criteria. The instruments used were personal well-being index, Role-Function Mode Scale, and Brief Family Relationship Scale. Data analysis used descriptive statistics and chi square. The results showed that half (50%) of stroke patients experienced poor well-being. There were still those who said that almost half (39.60%) of stroke patients said that mastery of roles was not good. Likewise with the well-being of relations, there were still those who said almost half (35.40%) of the welfare of their relationships was not good. From the analysis of the relationship between demographic characteristics, it found that there was a significant relationship between the subjective well-being of stroke patients and the relationship between respondents and families (p = 0.001). Conclusions is well-being, mastery of roles, and relationships with families in stroke patients are still not satisfactory.Efforts are needed that can increase family support effectively for stroke patients.


On the basis of a realized 12times10 Gb/s card-to-card optical link demonstrator, the capabilities of a polymer-waveguide-based board-level optical interconnect technology are presented. The conception and realization of the modular building blocks required for this board-level optical interconnect technology are described in detail. In particular, we report on the fabrication and characterization of board-integrated optical low-loss polymer waveguides that are compatible with printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing processes. We also explain our fully passive alignment technique, superseding time-consuming active positioning of components and connectors. To realize optical transceiver modules comprising vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) arrays with laser drivers and photodetector arrays with transimpedance amplifiers (TIAs), a mass-production concept based on wafer-level processing has been elaborated and successfully implemented.


Cofactor 430 of methyl-coenzyme M reductase from Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum was studied in both the extracted form in aqueous solution and protein-bound by using low-temperature magnetic-circular-dichroism spectroscopy. In both forms the nickel was present as high-spin paramagnetic nickel(II), spin S = 1, subject to almost equal zero-field splitting (cofactor F430, D = +9.0 cm-1, E/D = 0; methyl-coenzyme M reductase, D = +8.5 cm-1, [E/D[ = 0.2). This suggests identical axial co-ordination by oxygen ligand(s) both in aqueous cofactor F430 and in the investigated state of the protein.


Background Higher iron concentration in subcortical grey matter structures is documented in Huntington's disease (HD) but the iron content on white matter (WM) is less well documented. We previously investigated the iron level in the WM corpus callosum in HD reporting a lower iron level in posterior callosal subregion. Furthermore we explored the iron content in the callosal fibres, reporting a lower iron content in HD in few tracts, such as occipital (Occ), the superior parietal (PP), the orbital frontal (OF). Aims To examine whether callosal tracts, who were different in iron content correlated with the main clinical scales (the Disease Burden index, the UHDRS I and the UHDRS II). Methods Subjects groups included 25 HD patients, 25 presymptomatic HD (PreHD) subjects, 40 healthy controls. Tractography was performed for each region of the corpus callosum by manually drawing two regions of interest on each individuals fractional anisotropy colour map, then value were extracted from the Iron images coregistrered. To test for correlation among callosal and clinical data a Partial Correlation (covering for gender and age) was performed. Results Results showed significantly correlation among the Occ callosal tract and all the clinical data. The SP correlated with the UHDRSI and UHDRSII. Conclusion We found that the lower is the iron content in the Occ and SP callosal fibres the worse are the symptoms. These results can be explained like a failure of the remyelination processes in the first stage of HD ("demyelination hypothesis").


The purpose of this study was to demonstrate resistance adaptation based on genotypic adaptation and to develop an inbred rat strain with genotypic resistance adaptation to a hot environment. Survival time (ST) at an ambient temperature (Ta) of 42.5 degrees C was determined without appreciable thermal damage. Rats with the longest ST were sibmated over 30 generations and designated FOK. The ST, evaporative water loss, and body water economy increased rapidly during the first 10-15 generations, followed by a more gradual increase. The FOK rat resisted a Ta of 42.5 degrees C for > 5 h; this ability was hereditary. Body size progressively decreased during the early generations. The ST was longer (P < 0.01) and evaporative water loss was significantly higher (P < 0.01) in the FOK rat compared with three other strains. Tail lengths in the FOK rat were slightly shorter than those of three controls (P < 0.01). The heat loss system in the FOK rat may depend on the ability to mobilize and evaporate body fluids efficiently. FOK rats can be used for phenotypic comparisons with other strains, as well as in molecular genetic studies on thermoregulation, osmoregulation, and resistance adaptation to heat using recombinant inbred and recombinant congenic lines.


Because of the rapid diffusion of hydrogen in zinc oxide even at a relatively low temperature, zinc-oxide-based thin-film transistors (TFTs) with hydrogen-doped source/drain regions suffer from degraded thermal stability. The use of boron, which is a heavier and a more slowly diffusing dopant, is systematically investigated as a replacement of hydrogen. Its effectiveness as a dopant has been studied in terms of a range of process conditions, including its implantation dosage and the subsequent heat treatment temperature, time, and ambience. The lowest resistivity of 2 mΩ-cm has been obtained at a boron dose of 1016/cm2. Self-aligned top-gated zinc-oxide TFTs with source/drain regions doped with implanted boron are shown to be more stable than those doped with hydrogen, even when subjected to the relatively high temperature needed for the formation of a good-quality passivation layer.


Abstract The authors discuss an important chapter of iatrogenic pathology – unneccessary medicine, by reviewing epidemiological aspects and financial impact and identifying such elements in no less than 10 areas: surgery, interventional medicine, diagnostic investigation, substitute procedures, preventive medicine, drug therapy, aesthetic shared medical appointments, surgery, unconventional medicine, medicine on political demand. We shall review the causes, motives and mechanisms of unnecessary medicine such as one's hyperprudence to cover oneself with diagnosis arguments or to prevent potential complications through preventive therapies (defensive medicine), weak functionality of the institutionalized inspection bodies, onerous motivation. The respect for the fundamental principles of medical ethics (the primum non-nocere principle doubled by the principle of doing good), the use of practice guidelines, the proper functioning self-control mechanisms in exercising the medical profession, a different management of error and the existence of a consistent protective legislation for both the patient and doctor would be key-elements to avoiding unnecessary medicine.


The extracellular polysaccharide of Morchella esculenta cultivated under submerged fermentation was extracted. A single polysaccharide was purified through DEAE-Cellulose 52 and Sephadex G 100, and named as MEP 2a. The molecular weight of MEP 2a was determined by HPGPC and it is about 1391.5 kDa. MEP 2a is composed of mannose and glucose as the monosaccharide unit with a molar ratio of 8.15 : 1.07. The main polysaccharide chemical structure was analyzed by 1D and 2D NMR. Methylation and NMR analysis revealed that the backbone of MEP 2a consists of 1,3,4-linked-Manp, 1,2-linked-Manp and 1,6-linked-Glcp. 1D and 2D NMR results indicated that the main chain is based on →1)-β-D-Glcp-(6→, →1)-α-D-Manp-(3,4→, →1)-α-D-Manp-(2→) and the branch chain is composed of α-D-Manp-(1→, →1)-β-D-Glcp-(6→ and α-D-Glcp-(1→). MEP 2a promoted the phagocytosis function and secretion of NO, IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α of macrophages. In the present study, the chemical structure and immunomodulatory ability of an extracellular polysaccharide of Morchella esculenta was investigated which guarantees further research studies and promising applications.


Complex situations formed by mixes of versatile environments, various user needs and time-to-market constraints led to the development of highly configurable systems. In line with the emergence of such systems, software development is increasingly moving from the production of a single, yet configurable software to the development of families of software products. Such families of related software are called Software Product Lines (SPLs), and they allow the automation of the configuration, deployment and management of tailored software products through the combination of software features. These features and the constraints defining their legal combinations are usually encoded in a feature model (FM), which is used to represent a SPL. One main challenge with SPLs is testing them, a task which is even more difficult as the number of features proposed is important. Ideally, all the possible products that can be configured from a SPL should be tested. This, however, is unfeasible in practice since only 270 optional features allows configuring more products than the number of atoms in the universe. Considering that realistic SPLs involve thousands of features and that testing capabilities are limited by time and budget constraints, only a subset of all the configurable products can actually be tested, introducing the needs for strategies to test such SPLs. To reduce the testing effort, techniques using combinatorial interaction testing (CIT) have been proposed and proven to be successful. However, they fail at scaling to large and heavily constrained SPLs. In addition, CIT is costly to apply due to the combinatorial explosion induced by calculating the feature combinations. Besides, existing approaches do not consider multiple and potentially conflicting testing objectives such as minimizing the number of configurations and their cost. In this respect, this dissertation introduces scalable techniques for both generating and prioritizing relevant SPL product configurations for CIT by using a similarity heuristic which avoids the combinatorial explosion. In a second step, methods for handling multiple testing objectives are presented. The following part of this thesis focuses on the quality assessment of given product configurations prior to testing. The objective here is to evaluate how good is a given set of configurations according to different testing criteria, whatever the way these configurations have been selected. This situation arises when configurations that have to be tested are already available. Since testing these software products individually is a costly and time consuming task, methodologies to evaluate them prior testing are introduced, thus allowing to discard unnecessary ones and save testing sessions. In particular, an approach based on mutation of the SPL FM which can form viable and cheaper alternative to CIT is presented. The next part of this dissertation investigates the reverse-engineering of a SPL and its FM from existing source code of software product variants. Since SPLs allows us to reduce development costs and quickly derive tailored products for specific market share, automated techniques to migrate similar product variants into a whole SPL are necessary. In particular, the challenge of reverse-engineering a SPL which is concordant with the underlying software products is tackled by a fully automated approach. In addition, since reverse-engineering approaches (whether manually or automatically performed) are inherently error-prone, a methodology for evaluating and fixing reverse-engineered SPL FM is presented. The final part of this dissertation describes the application of the introduced theoretical advances to an industrial case with the CETREL company. In this project, a credit card authorization system is tested by using credit card authorizations. The testing process is optimized by modeling credit card authorizations as a SPL, enabling the application of the above-mentioned generation and evaluation approaches. All the proposed approaches use search-based techniques combined with constraint solvers and have been validated through rigorous experiments performed on moderate to large scale SPLs.


The entire nucleotide sequence of an open reading frame located immediately downstream of the listeriolysin gene from a virulent Listeria monocytogenes serotype 1/2a strain was determined. The product of the open reading frame was 510 amino acids with a predicted molecular weight of 57,400. The deduced amino acid sequence of this open reading frame is highly similar to that of a family of secreted metalloproteases produced by various members of the genus Bacillus, of which thermolysin is the prototype. Immunoblots performed with specific antisera raised against thermolysin from Bacillus stearothermophilus allowed the detection of a 60-kDa polypeptide, corresponding to the pro-form of the protease, in culture supernatants of L. monocytogenes strains. In maxicell experiments, Escherichia coli recombinants harboring this open reading frame also specifically directed production of a 60-kDa protein. Protease activity was low to undetectable in both Listeria strains and E. coli recombinants. This is due to lack of processing of the inactive pro-form of the protease to its mature active form in both species. We have designated this gene mpl for metalloprotease of L. monocytogenes. The gene was present only in pathogenic L. monocytogenes strains, in which it was physically linked to the listeriolysin gene.


Traffic is believed to organize itself by minimizing user's travel cost (travel time is used as cost very often). Almost all the analytical and numerical work in the last 50 years has concentrated on travel cost and the assumption that costs are always an increasing function of demand. With fuel consumption, this is no longer true, since there is typically an optimum speed where fuel consumption and emission production is minimized. This paper explores some of the implications when using fuel consumption as an objective function for achieving an user equilibrium traffic state. It turns out, that this leads to multiple solutions (multiple equilibriums) and sometimes counter-intuitive behavior, which makes it unlikely that such a scheme that minimizes fuel consumption alone will ever be implemented in real systems.


Urban form should reflect collective value for place in communities. Urban squares in particular have the potential to serve as the nucleus of communities, urban artefacts that link place to memory and heritage while serving basic needs for everyday life in the city. Civic squares, those linked to governmental institutions, have further potential to facilitate community gatherings for memorialisation, commemoration, celebration and political action. Despite these important functions and potential, the incremental planning of Brooklyn in the early nineteenth century placed little emphasis on squares of any kind, despite the community's expressed desires. Brooklyn's first civic square, here referred to as City Hall Square, in fact emerged in the city almost as an afterthought. Despite this lack of clear intent, this square evolved as a unique place in the urban culture of the region, simultaneously a crossroads for everyday life in the city, a commercial and cultural centre and the governmental seat and judicial centre of the city and county. The square was a seamlessly woven and connected place in the larger urban structure. While some discussions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, documented in the local newspaper, provide evidence of appreciation and value for this place, others suggest a resistance to the investment of community heritage and memory as it evolved. This urban space and the larger territory around it, confronted by regional pressures for transformation in the early and mid-twentieth century, was disrupted, leaving the place diminished, no longer serving as a meaningful hub of life in the city. An examination of Brooklyn City Hall Square's emergence and diminishment reveals a problematic treatment of this place that undermined its potential as a place for civic life, a repository of memory and heritage, but also a living nucleus of the community. It also provides insights for a conceptual framework for future reconstructions or transformations that may facilitate new civic values of place and reinvigorate this urban artefact, relinking it to both the origin of the city and the city's heritage and memory, but also the square's future potential as an inclusive, connected and meaningful place of community and civic spirit.


A series of Schiff bases including N‐benzylideneaniline (NBA) nuclei were prepared. The chemical products obtained were characterized by mass spectometry (APCI), 1H NMR, and IR spectroscopy in order to seek their cytotoxic and proliferation effects on human small lung (A549) and cervical (HeLa) cancer cell lines with biochemical assays. All of the synthesized compounds showed antiproliferative effects to different extents. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


ABSTRACT Fischer plots of the accumulation of shallow-marine carbonate cycles track the cumulative departure from mean cycle thickness through a vertical sequence of contiguous upward-shallowing units. This is a simple, objective treatment of residuals in a time series, and is applicable to other stratigraphic phenomena. To reflect the noninterpretive construction of Fischer plots, the vertical axis should be labeled "cumulative departure from mean cycle thickness" and the horizontal axis "cycle number". The typical Fischer plot is an erratic bridge that begins and ends at the same elevation but has the form of an irregular train of asymmetric waves, which rise steeply and fall gradually. The asymmetry of the individual waves arises because thinner-than-average cycles typically outnumber thick r cycles two to one. The overall form of the wave train is sensitive to mean cycle thickness, but can guide correlation and may have considerable interpretive potential, provided that enough cycles are included to ensure a robust estimate of mean thickness. Runs tests demonstrate that Fischer bridges for peritidal carbonates are unlikely to be the result of random stacking processes. Since this anticipated result does not emerge unequivocally for Fischer plots of less than 50 cycles, however, we recommend against plotting such short sections.


A new in situ experiment is proposed for observing and understanding well integrity evolution, potentially due to changes that could occur during a well lifetime. The focus is put on temperature and pressure stresses. A small section of a well is reproduced at scale 1:1 in the Opalinus Clay formation, representative of a low permeable caprock formation (in Mont Terri Underground Rock Laboratory, Switzerland). The well‐system behavior is characterized over time both by performing hydro‐tests to quantify the hydraulic properties of the well and their evolution, and sampling the fluids to monitor the chemical composition and its changes. This paper presents the well integrity assessment under different imposed temperature (17–52°C) and pressure (10–28 bar) conditions. The results obtained in this study confirm the ability of the chosen design and observation scale to estimate the evolution of the well integrity over time, the characteristics of the flow along the well‐system and the reasons of the observed evolution. In particular, the estimated effective well permeability is higher than cement or caprock intrinsic permeability, which suggest preferential flow pathways at interfaces especially at the very beginning of the experiment; the significant variations of the effective well permeability observed after setting pressure and temperature stresses indicate that operations could influence well integrity in similar proportions than the cementing process.


As the semiconductor process technology advances into sub-10nm regime, cell pin accessibility, which is a complex joint effect from the pin shape and nearby blockages, becomes a main cause for DRC violations. Therefore, a machine learning model for DRC hotspot prediction needs to consider both very high-resolution pin shape patterns and low-resolution layout information as input features. A new convolutional neural network technique, J-Net, is introduced for the prediction with mixed resolution features. This is a customized architecture that is flexible for handling various input and output resolution requirements. It can be applied at placement stage without using global routing information. This technique is evaluated on 12 industrial designs at 7nm technology node. The results show that it can improve true positive rate by 37%, 40% and 14% respectively, compared to three recent works, with similar false positive rates.


BACKGROUND
There are published examples of how dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) and music therapy are effectively being used as separate therapies in the treatment of individuals with a variety of mental health disorders. However, research examining DBT-informed music therapy is limited.

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to determine whether music therapists working in mental health settings are implementing components of DBT in their work, and if so, how and why; and if not, why not and what is their level of interest in such work.

METHODS
We used a sequential explanatory mixed-methods research design implemented in two phases. Phase 1 was a quantitative survey of board-certified music therapists (n=260). Due to a low survey response rate (18%), and to enhance the validity of the findings, Phase 2, an embedded qualitative procedure in the form of interviews with clinicians experienced in the DBT approach, was added to the study. Both survey and interviews inquired about DBT training, use of DBT-informed music therapy, music therapy experiences used to address DBT skills, and experiences of implementing DBT-informed music therapy.

RESULTS
Respondents indicating they implement DBT-informed music therapy (38.3%) are using components and adaptations of the standard DBT protocol. Advantages of implementing DBT-informed music therapy were identified, and more than half of the respondents who do not implement DBT in their music therapy practice also perceived this work as at least somewhat important. Disadvantages were also identified and support the need for further research.

CONCLUSIONS
Components of DBT are used in music therapy and are valued, but there is a lack of empirical evidence to inform, refine, and guide practice.


The contemporary Internet that we have been using today is based on Best-Effort (BE) service only, where packets are assigned and forwarded with the same priority. The BE service is acceptable only for traditional Internet applications like e-mail, web browsing and file transfer. However, it is not adequate for the applications like video conferencing, voice over IP (VoIP), and Video on Demand (VoD), which require high bandwidth, low delay and delay variation. Obviously, with the emergence of new real-time applications and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, the Best Effort service becomes insufficient. Therefore, the Internet community has developed a number of new technologies to provide QoS in the Internet such as IntServ, DiffServ and MPLS. The differentiated service (DiffServ) is the most important distinct technology due to its simplicity and scalability benefits. It has been endorsed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to satisfy the requirements of new real-time applications. Internet Protocol was not designed taking into account mobility of users and terminals. In few years later, the IETF has developed protocols such as Mobile IPv4 (MIP) and Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) for supporting seamless connectivity to mobile hosts. Mobile IPv6 is considered one of the important host mobility protocols, which was defined more in (RFC 3775 and RFC 6275). Network mobility basic support protocol (RFC 3963) is an extension of Mobile IPv6. It has been endorsed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to allow every single node in the mobile network to be reachable and connectable to the Internet while the network itself is moving around. Ultimately, this paper aims to propose and develop a new scheme to enhance QoS within NEMO environment.
Key words:
Mobile IPv6, NEMO, Quality of Service, DiffServ.


In recent years, a tremendous research effort has been made in the area of generic object recognition. However, the most important thing is not the names but functions for robots to comprehend objects. Object functions refer to "the purpose that something has or the job that someone or something does". Various elements (e.g., the physical information, material, appearance and human interaction) independently or mutually form object functions. There are many researches on object functions using human-object interaction, while there are few using appearance. However, it can be believed that object functions may be formed by appearance. In this paper, we propose a new method to estimate object functions from appearance on images. Our approach is to estimate object functions using DPM by dividing object appearance into parts. There are important parts and less important parts in the appearance for the functions. Therefore, we identify the important parts in the object appearance for the functions. Experimental results show that the important parts about specific functions can be extracted and object functions are related to the appearance.