Coherent structures in wall turbulence transport momentum and provide a means of producing turbulent kinetic energy. Above the viscous wall layer, the hairpin vortex paradigm of Theodorsen coupled with the quasistreamwise vortex paradigm have gained considerable support from multidimensional visualization using particle image velocimetry and direct numerical simulation experiments. Hairpins can autogenerate to form packets that populate a significant fraction of the boundary layer, even at very high Reynolds numbers. The dynamics of packet formation and the ramifications of organization of coherent structures (hairpins or packets) into larger-scale structures are discussed. Evidence for a large-scale mechanism in the outer layer suggests that further organization of packets may occur on scales equal to and larger than the boundary layer thickness.


The research regarding the effect that foreign direct investment (FDI) has on economic growth has morphed into a quagmire that the economics discipline can't seem to find a way out of, and in some ways, is sinking deeper into. In fact, the positive, negative, and dependent impact views many times blatantly contradict one another, leaving someone on the outside to wonder whether there may be 'something else' that is causing the differences in the empirical estimations of this effect. In this study, we employ a rolling window methodology across 60 countries that has been tailored for use with a perfectly balanced panel data set spanning 30 years, to investigate whether some of this variation in the effect FDI has on growth could be caused by shocks to the effect itself. What we find is that conservatively, 25% of our estimates are indeed dynamically sensitive, with this sensitivity continuing across economic sectors as well. In the end, at least some of this heretofore variation in the effect's estimates may simply be due to investigators ignoring significant levels of parameter heterogeneity, and nothing to do with the inherent attributes of the economies being studied.


May Ayim is one of the best-known representatives of both the Black German movement and Black German literature. Her individual and collaborative works helped to shape collective modes of Black German identity, making visible and affirming ties to the Black diaspora. This paper examines the intersections of music—specifically, the blues—and literature in poetry, focusing in particular on blues in schwarz weiss (1995). Here Ayim references the African oral tradition not only through her inclusion of Adinkra symbols, but also through a blues aesthetic that manifests itself in scat-like interjections, rhythmic breaks and patterns, and repetitions. In addition to these formal aspects, her blues aesthetic also relies on the West African tradition of "Nommo"—the naming process. Ayim's poetry follows this tradition by incorporating her personal experiences, addressing pressing socio-political issues, and by constructing and presenting a self-determined Black German subject as member of a larger community, within and beyond Germany. Her essayistic and poetic works stand in dialogical relationship with each other, and serve as a forum to publicly discuss discrimination and marginalization as universal problems. As with the Blues, this essay argues, Ayim's poetry presents socio-political problems as resolvable by formulating a "we" capable of action. (EG; in German)


A vascular system comprising a balloon catheter having an elongated shaft and an expandable balloon. A vascular device is mounted over the expandable balloon and composed of shape memory material and has a collapsed position and a memorized position. The vascular device is expandable to an expanded position, to engage the vessel walls and returnable substantially to the memorized position to bring the walls radially inwardly.


By the year 2017 Cirata reservoir has already operated for more than 30 years with a lifetime plan of 100. The annual sedimentation rate plan of Cirata Reservoir was 5.7 x 106 m3, but as calculated in 2017 the annual sedimentation rate increased to 8.4 x 106 m3, which has increased 77.78%. To predict the remaining lifetime of Cirata Reservoir, empiric method of reservoir lifetime was used alongside a new approach to predict the storage volume of a river in years coming by using a hydrometric and sediment approach. The result of Cirata Reservoir remaining lifetime using empirical method is 65 years, this number then used as reference to predict the remaining volume of Cirata Reservoir dead storage using sediment approach. Reservoir lifetime prediction by hydrometric and sediment approach uses the same principle by understanding that a reservoir lifetime is over by the time the dead storage full. What makes this approach differ from the empirical method is that this approach does not only focus on the when dead storage will be full, but also calculating or predicting the changes of storage volume in each elevation. Using this approach, the result shows that the volume of dead storage will already be full and exceeds its capacity by 41.9 x 106 m3 in the next 65 years. Then by using the same approach and by trials and errors, the time needed to fully fill the dead storage is 60 years, or the reservoir will be defunct in 2077.


This study investigated awareness of geographical information systems services amongst academic librarians in Nigerian Federal Universities of Technology. The surve y technique was adopted for this study since a large number of populations were involved in the study. Descriptive statistical tools were used to analyse the data collected from the respondents. Result showed that librarian are aware of the traditional map library and have prior knowledge of GIS services in the library. They indicated that lack of administrative support is one of the reasons for lack of Geographic Information Systems services in the Nigeria federal universities of technology libraries. Stab ility in electricity supply was identified as the main strategies for the provision of GIS service. Recommendation for the increase of GIS services awareness among librarians was made so that there should be close collaboration between those departments dealing with GIS facilities in the university and the library, to enhance the integration of GIS services into the library. Key Words : GIS, Awareness, Librarian, Library, Information, Technology, University, Nigeria


Visible light-induced reactions are a rapidly developing and powerful technique to promote organic transformations. They provide green and sustainable chemistry and have recently received increasing attention from chemists due to their wide application in organic synthesis. Light energy is eco-friendly, cheap, green, and inexhaustible with potential industrial and pharmaceutical applications. In this review, the most recent advances in visible light-induced reactions (2021-till date) have been highlighted.


Background Neutrophil dysfunction in sepsis has been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiorgan failure; however, the role of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) remains uncertain. We aimed to determine the sequential changes in ex vivo NETosis and its relationship with mortality in patients with sepsis and severe sepsis. Methods This was a prospective observational cohort study enrolling 21 healthy age-matched controls and 39 sepsis and 60 severe sepsis patients from acute admissions to two UK hospitals. Patients had sequential bloods for the ex vivo assessment of NETosis in response to phorbol-myristate acetate (PMA) using a fluorometric technique and chemotaxis using time-lapse video microscopy. Continuous data was tested for normality, with appropriate parametric and nonparametric tests, whilst categorical data was analysed using a chi-squared test. Correlations were performed using Spearman's rho. Results Ex vivo NETosis was reduced in patients with severe sepsis, compared to patients with sepsis and controls (p = 0.002). PMA NETosis from patients with septic shock was reduced further (p < 0.001) compared to controls. The degree of metabolic acidosis correlated with reduced NETosis (p < 0.001), and this was replicated when neutrophils from healthy donors were incubated in acidotic media. Reduced NETosis at baseline was associated with an increased 30-day (p = 0.002) and 90-day mortality (p = 0.014) in sepsis patients. These findings were accompanied by defects in neutrophil migration and delayed apoptosis. Resolution of sepsis was not associated with the return to baseline levels of NETosis or migration. Conclusions Sepsis induces significant changes in neutrophil function with the degree of dysfunction corresponding to the severity of the septic insult which persists beyond physiological recovery from sepsis. The changes induced lead to the failure to effectively contain and eliminate the invading pathogens and contribute to sepsis-induced immunosuppression. For the first time, we demonstrate that reduced ex vivo NETosis is associated with poorer outcomes from sepsis.


: The Serra da Aldeia Suite is composed by circular or oval-shaped plutons, intrusive in meta-sedimentary and meta-volca-nosedimentary rocks in the Riacho do Pontal Fold Belt, NE Brazil. The Serra das Melancias Pluton, belonging to Serra da Aldeia Suite, is located southeastern of Piaui state, near Paulistana city. These plutons represent a major magmatic expression in this area and contain important information about the late magmatic/collisional geologic evolution of the Brasiliano Orogeny. Based on petrographic and geochemical data, three facies were defined in the Serra das Melancias Pluton: granites, syenites and quartz monzonites. The rocks display high-K and alkaline to shoshonitic affinities, are metaluminous and show ferrous character. They are enriched in Light Rare Earth Elements and Large Ion Lithophile Elements, with negative anomalies in Nb, Ta and Ti. Their high Ba, Sr, K/Rb, low Rb, relatively low U, Th, Nb to very low Heavy Rare Earth Elements and Y resemble those of typical high Ba-Sr granitoids. The geochemical data suggest the emplacement of Serra das Melancias Pluton in a transitional, late to post-orogenic setting in the Riacho do Pontal Fold Belt during the late Brasiliano-Pan African Orogeny.


We propose an efficient algorithm for incremental deployment of nodes in a wireless sensor network. By examining the distribution of node density, its energy level, and the sensing cover area, the algorithm indicates which position should have more nodes deployed and how many new nodes are necessary to cover the desired monitoring area. Our approach uses the largest empty circle problem, a well-known computational geometry problem which is Θ(n logn), to incrementally deploy sensors in a stressed wireless sensor network. Experiments show that our algorithm is very close to the upper limit and performance 2.5 times better than the random algorithm.


Advances in our understanding of fundamental biological processes can be made by the analysis of defects manifested in inherited diseases. The genes responsible for these genetic syndromes often encode proteins that act at critical points of the pathways that control biological processes such as cell proliferation, cell-cell communication, cellular differentiation, and cell death. This approach has lead to the discovery of novel gene products and/or biochemical pathways involved in disease, genes that in turn play a fundamental role in normal biological processes. This forward genetic approach, focusing on Mendelian disorders of vascular anomalies, has been particularly fruitful for the study of genetic regulation of angiogenesis. This review summarizes the ongoing saga of two genetic syndromes involving disruption of normal vascular morphogenesis. Each inherited disorder involves the focal development of a distinct vascular anomaly. In hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT), the hallmark vascular lesion is termed an arteriovenous malformation, which involves the direct communication of an artery with a vein (arteriovenous shunt), without an intervening capillary bed. For cerebral cavernous malformations (CCM), the lesions are grossly-dilated, closely-packed, capillary-like sinusoidal chambers. The autosomal dominant mode of inheritance of each of these distinct syndromes suggested that the underlying genes might regulate critical aspects of vascular morphogenesis. Emerging but intriguing tales are being told by the genes (and their protein products) mutated in these disorders.


Understanding the behavioral mechanisms mediating the resolution of parent–offspring conflict is an important challenge given that the resolution of this conflict shapes the transfer of resources from parents to offspring. Three alternative models suggest that offspring begging provides an important behavioral mechanism for conflict resolution: honest signaling, scramble competition, and cost-free signaling models. However, there has so far been little progress in testing between these models because they share the same predictions. Here, we test between these models by focusing on their contrasting assumptions concerning who controls resource allocation and whether begging is costly in 2 experiments conducted on the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the degree to which offspring and parents can control resource allocation by presenting broods with age-based competitive asymmetries with a live or a dead female parent. We found that seniors (i.e., older larvae) gained more access to the parent's mouthparts than juniors only when presented with a live parent. In Experiment 2, we provided parents with broods of 60 newly hatched larvae and found that larvae were more likely to become a target of filial cannibalism when begging than would be expected if parents targeted larvae irrespective of their behavior. These findings suggest that offspring begging increases the parents' influence over food allocation and that begging is costly by increasing the offspring's risk of being a target of filial cannibalism. Our results support the assumptions of honest signaling models for the resolution of parent–offspring conflict.


ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of correlation structure, prevalence and effect size on the risk prediction model by using the change in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (ΔAUC), net reclassification improvement (NRI), and integrated discrimination improvement (IDI). In simulation study, the dataset is generated under different correlation structures, prevalences and effect sizes. We verify the simulation results with the real-data application. In conclusion, the correlation structure between the variables should be taken into account while composing a multivariable model. Negative correlation structure between independent variables is more beneficial while constructing a model.


. Location-based social media provide great opportunities to monitor and map social, natural or health-related events. Due to the vast amount of data, it is appropriate for many researchers to use a judiciously selected sample of data. However, many of the datasets from social media sources do not consist of representative samples of the overall population because they do not take into account the users who generate the social media content. The consequences can be a bias of particular user groups and a misinterpretation of the analysis re-sults. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper develops a taxonomy of user groups in social media based on a thorough literature analysis. The different approaches can be summarized to the five dimensions: character, connectivity, communication, content and coordinates. The expected use of the taxonomy is to support the selection of social media datasets by choosing only those user groups that provide relevant information and to improve the analysis by identifying significant groups. Both application areas are illustrated by using a dataset that includes the members of the German parliament who registered on Twitter.


Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a disorder of the central nervous system that affects approximately 2.5 million people worldwide. Due to the heterogeneous nature of the disease, and the want of an identified cause, treatment of MS remains difficult. Treatments are available, however these are limited in efficacy and are not suitable for all forms of MS. Disease pathology is characterised by the formation of demyelinating lesions in the central nervous system (CNS) which lead to cognitive and motor impairments associated with the disease. These CNS lesions can be classified as those with immune cell involvement or those without immune cell infiltrate, which are more commonly seen in progressive forms of MS, and currently, there are no treatments available for progressive MS.  Due to the limited options available for treating progressive MS, this thesis aims to identify the therapeutic effect provided by the immunomodulatory compounds, MIS416 and clozapine, in a non-immune mediated model of MS, which is believed to more closely resemble progressive disease. Both of these compounds have been shown previously to reduce disease burden in an immune-driven animal model of MS. To investigate the effect of immune-modulating therapies on lesions without immune cell infiltrate, the cuprizone model of non-immune demyelination was used.  In summary, the work presented in this thesis found that treatment with MIS416 and clozapine led to improved performance on behavioural assays, although neither agent inhibited cuprizone-induced demyelination or enhanced remyelination. The cellular mechanism behind the observed behavioural improvement is yet to be confirmed. MIS416 was able to maintain its previously identified immunomodulatory properties when administered in this novel setting. Moreover, novel changes to serum growth factors were identified that could provide unexpected benefit to MS patients administered MIS416. In addition to reversing cuprizone-induced behavioural deficits, clozapine reduced LPS-driven inflammatory cytokine production by microglia, indicating that clozapine has the ability to directly reduce inflammation, which may benefit progressive MS patients.   Protective effects provided by either of these compounds could aid in the development of unique combination therapies to target both the inflammatory immune component and the cellular components seen at different stages of MS. MIS416 induced changes to serum cytokines and growth factors in the periphery could be harnessed to treat not just MS but other auto-immune diseases characterised by a similar cytokine profile.


This research utilizes the levitation effect of electrostatic comb fingers to design vertical-to-the-substrate actuation for optical phase shifting interferometry applications. For typical polysilicon comb drives with 2 /spl mu/m gaps between the stationary and moving fingers, as well as between the microstructures and the substrate, the equilibrium position is nominally 1-2 /spl mu/m above the stationary comb fingers. This distance is ideal for most phase shifting interferometric applications. A parallel plate capacitor between the suspended mass and the substrate provides in situ position sensing to control the vertical movement, providing a total feedback-controlled system. The travel range of the designed vertical microactuator is 1.2 /spl mu/m. Since the levitation force is not linear to the input voltage, a lock-in amplifier capacitive sensing circuit combined with a digital signal processor enables a linearized travel trajectory with 1.5 nm position control accuracy. A completely packaged micro phase shifter is described in this paper. One application for this microactuator is to provide linear phase shifting in the phase shifting diffraction interferometer (PSDI) developed at LLNL which can perform optical metrology down to 2 /spl Aring/ accuracy.


In this paper, we propose a reconfigurable current-steering digital-to-analog converter (DAC). The differential nonlinearity error (DNL) of the DAC is estimated on-chip. This is used to reconfigure the switching sequence to get a lower integral nonlinearity error (INL). We propose a novel technique for estimation of DNL based on a step-size measurement. This greatly reduces the linearity and dynamic range requirements of the measuring circuits. A 10-b segmented DAC, along with the associated circuits for DNL estimation and reconfiguration, was designed using 0.35-/spl mu/m CMOS technology and fabricated through Europractice. The paper includes theoretical analysis, simulation, and experimental results for the proposed technique.


ABSTRACT:Land reform was perhaps the single most galvanizing issue of the Ethiopian Revolution. The changes effected in this regard led to the collapse of a social and political order that had prevailed for centuries. The Ethiopian Revolution broke the chains of serfdom and freed the peasants from feudal bondage. Although the archaic and exploitative land tenure system was brought to an end, the revolutionary slogan "land to the tiller" was not realized. The Land Reform Proclamation of 1975, which abolished the landlord-tenant relationship, at the same time instituted a new form of land tenure. It made the state the new landlord over all rural land in the country. The enshrinement of the state as the landlord over all of the rural land empowered it to intervene at will in the economic and political lives of people. This article aims to revisit the revolution's land reform program and assess some of its legacies. The author's perspective has been informed by his active involvement in the now largely forgotten Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU) project of the 1970s and his efforts to advance land reform legislation just before and after the 1974 revolution.


In this paper, literature about experimental researches on female climacteric syndrome (FCS) treated by traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) published in recent years were reviewed. This paper reviewed not only experimental researches about the effects of nervous system-endocrine and immune regulating net work, the vegetative nervous function and free radical treated by TCM; but also concerned the experimental approaches of animal selected, model established; and objective indexes of FCS. Taking advantages of FCS by integrative medicine is available for enhancing the clinical efficacy.


STUDY OBJECTIVE
To examine whether change in total sleep time during an integrative, behavioral sleep intervention is associated with aggression. Specifically, we tested whether adolescents who reported experiencing aggressive thoughts or actions after treatment had worse treatment trajectories (e.g., less total sleep time across treatment) than adolescents with no aggressive thoughts or actions after treatment.

DESIGN
Nonpharmacologic open trial with 9 weeks of weekly assessment.

SETTING
University of Arizona Sleep Research Laboratory

PATIENTS OR PARTICIPANTS
Twenty-three adolescents recently treated for substance abuse in outpatient community centers.

INTERVENTIONS
Six-week integrative, behavioral sleep intervention.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS
Weekly sleep-summary indexes were calculated from daily sleep diaries and entered as dependent variables in a series of growth-curve analyses. Statistically significant Session x Post-treatment Aggressive Ideation interactions emerged when predicting changes in total sleep time, gamma13 = 9.76 (SE = 4.12), p < .05, and time spent in bed, gamma13 = 10.08, (SE = 4.33), p < .05, even after controlling for aggressive ideation and the frequency of substance use, as assessed at baseline. A similar pattern of results was seen for self-reported aggressive actions occurring during conflicts.

CONCLUSIONS
These pilot data suggest that inadequate sleep in substance-abusing adolescents may contribute to the experiencing of aggressive thoughts and actions. Limitations include a small sample size and a restricted assessment of aggression. Nonetheless, these findings lend preliminary support to the breadth of therapeutic effectiveness of an integrative, behavioral sleep-therapy program for adolescents with a history of substance abuse and related behaviors.


Psychotherapy is often described as the art and science of endeavouring to understand the other. The difficulties inherent in understanding have contributed to psychotherapy being described as "the impossible profession" (Malcolm, 1980). In this article I explore the difficulties of understanding in the psychotherapy relationship, drawing on the hermeneutic phenomenological thinking of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty in particular, as well as the thinking of psychotherapy writers. I note the relationship between the spoken word and silence, whereby words emerge from silence and contemplation. Further, that understanding is enhanced by being willing to place oneself continually in the position of apprentice learner, by remaining open and able to tolerate uncertainty and not knowing and, to closely attend to one's own and to the other's emotional states as they manifest in the work. In describing a clinical case from my practice, I illustrate the complexity and difficulties of doing any or all of these.


This paper argues that the Panopticon is an accurate model for and illustration of policing and security methods in the modern society. Initially, I overview the theoretical concept of the Panopticon as a structure of perceived universal surveillance which facilitates automatic obedience in its subjects as identified by the theorists Jeremy Bentham and Michel Foucault. The paper subsequently moves to identify how the Panopticon, despite being a theoretical construct, is nevertheless instantiated to an extent through the prevalence of security cameras as a means of sovereignly regulating human conduct; speeding is an ordinary example. It could even be contended that increasing surveillance according to the model of the Panopticon would reduce the frequency of offences. However, in the final analysis the paper considers that even if adopting an approach based on the Panopticon is a more effective method of policing, it is not necessarily a more desirable one.


This paper explores a holistic approach to understanding the impacts of on-road factors on continuous driver-automation interaction in naturalistic environments. We processed and synchronized CAN Bus signals, GPS coordinates, and high-definition videos collected from two drivers in 98 trips (~97 hours) involving Tesla Autopilot engagement collected over three years as part of the MIT Advanced Vehicle Technology naturalistic driving study. Bayesian generalized linear models were trained with the synchronized data and revealed that steering wheel rotations and speed changes, even to a small extent, cause Autopilot disengagement. Road types and experience were also associated with drivers' probability of using driver assistance, while speed and surrounding vehicles had little impact (when traveling in stable states). This data-driven approach enables a more comprehensive understanding of driver-automation interaction to enhance safety.


An earthquake of MJMA 6.7 occurred at 19 : 37 on October 18, 1995 at about 50 km southeast of Kikai-jima in the central part of Ryukyu-islands, Japan. About 16 hours after this event, another large earthquake of MJMA 6.6 occurred in the same area. We relocate hypocenters of two large events and their aftershocks using JMA data by considering the station corrections, which are obtained by joint using the temporary observation data of ocean bottom seismometers (OBS) and JMA data. The relocated hypocentral distribution obtained by joint using of OBS and JMA data show the possibility that two large events occurred on the adjacent faults. The events during four days after the MJMA 6.7 event occurred in the region of about 70 km in length in NNE-SSW direction and the epicentral area is divided into two sub-regions, NNE and SSW sub-regions. The aftershock activity of the MJMA 6.7 event is predominant in the SSW sub-region until 7 : 00 a.m. on the next day. After 7 : 00 a.m., the activity increases in the NNE sub-region and the MJMA 6.6 event at 11 : 41 a.m. on October 19 and its aftershocks occurred in this region. On the other hand, the activity in SSW sub-region becomes low in this period. Such the alternative rise and fall activities in two sub-regions are thought to be caused by the interraction of stresses on the different faults. Therefore, the present activity is concluded to be constituted by two foreshockmainshock-aftershock sequences occurred on the adjacent faults in a short time interval.


Immunological memory is one of the lesser understood aspects of adaptive immunity which protects organisms from recurrent and persistent attack by pathogens. The central event in the generation of both humoral and cell mediated immune responses is the activation and clonal expansion of T cells. T cell activation is initiated by interaction of the TCR-CD3 complex with processed antigenic peptide bound to either a class I (CD8+cells) or class II (CD 4+cells) MHC molecule on the surface of antigen presenting cell (APC). On interaction of a naive T cell with the processed antigen initiates a cascade of events which activates the resting T cell to enter the cell cycle, proliferating and developing into a clone of progeny cells, which differentiate into memory or effector T cells. Memory T cells are generated by antigen interaction and remain long but quiescent in nature, however responding with greater reactivity to a subsequent challenge with the same antigen, generating a secondary response. Memory cells, though in the G0 stage of the cell cycle require a lower level of activation than so naive cells. A lot of work in this direction can yield a whole lot of interesting findings which will help us develop better vaccines for chronic animal diseases like Tuberculosis, Johne's disease using suitable animal models. A better understanding of these issues may lead to improvements in the design of vaccines which can be used to generate potent protective T cell memory against pathogens. In the present article various properties of memory T cells along with their implications to vaccine development have been reviewed.


Purpose
This paper aims to identify and quantify the effects of additive manufacturing (AM) process interruption on the tensile strength of material extrusion parts, and to find solutions to mitigate it.

Design/methodology/approach
Statistical analysis was performed to compare the tensile strength of specimens prepared with different process interruption time durations and different embedding methods. Subsequently, specimens were reheated at the paused layer before resuming, and tensile strengths were analyzed to observe any improvements.

Findings
Process interruption significantly reduced the tensile strength of printed parts by 48 per cent compared to non-interrupted specimens. Reheating the paused layer immediately before resuming the print improved part strength significantly by 47 per cent compared to regular process interrupted specimens and by 90 per cent compared to specimens with embeds.

Practical implications
The layer-by-layer deposition of material in AM introduces the capability for in situ embedding of functional components into printed parts. This paper shows that tensile properties are degraded during embedding due to the need for process interruption. These effects can be addressed by reheating the paused layer, providing process guidance for embedding with AM.

Originality/value
This paper provides an understanding of process interruption and embedding effects on mechanical properties of the parts, and how to improve them. The results from this experimental analysis provide crucial information toward design guidelines for multi-functional AM with embedded components.


GLAMAP 2000 presents new reconstructions of the Atlantic's sea surface temperatures (SST) at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), defined at both 21,500–18,000 years B.P. ("Last Isotope Maximum") and 23,000–19,000 years B.P. (maximum glacial sea level low stand and orbital minimum of solar insolation; EPILOG working group; see Mix et al. [2001]). These reconstructions use 275 sediment cores between the North Pole and 60°S with carefully defined chronostratigraphies. Four categories of core quality are distinguished. More than 100 core sections provide a glacial record with subcentennial- to multicentennial-scale resolution. SST estimates are based on a new set of almost 1000 reference samples of modern planktic foraminifera and on improved transfer-function techniques to deduce SST from census counts of microfossils, including radiolarians and diatoms. New proxies also serve to deduce sea ice boundaries. The GLAMAP 2000 SST patterns differ significantly in crucial regions from the CLIMAP [1981] reconstruction and thus are important in providing updated boundary conditions to initiate and validate computational models for climate prediction.


Medium is a way to express idea and convey information. It's the most important tool to spread information and exchange idea as well as conduct interpersonal communication in the human society. With the diversification of social culture and communicative content, the far-reaching development of media renders profound change to the ways of spreading information. Digital medium, as a new platform brought about by information digitalization, shares the same theoretical basis with traditional visual communication design with respect to design philosophy, and design elements. On the other hand digital medium shows distinctive aesthetic and formal feature in terms of modes of transmission and visual expression. This paper aims to discuss the design principle and theoretical basis of digital medium, to explore its relation with traditional visual communication design theory and thus to find out the theoretical evidence for the development of digital medium.


ABSTRACT Swarms of bees, colonies of ants, schools of fish, flocks of birds, and fireflies flashing synchronously are all examples of highly coordinated behaviors that emerge from collective, decentralized intelligence. Local interactions among a multitude of agents or swarmettes lead to a variety of dynamic patterns that may seem like choreographed movements of a meta-organism. This paper describes SwarmArt, a collaborative project between several computer scientists and an artist, which resulted in interactive installations that explore and incorporate basic mechanisms of swarm intelligence. The authors describe the scientific context of the artwork, how user interaction is provided through video surveillance technology, and how the swarm-based simulations were implemented at exhibitions and galleries.


This study was conducted on the right of use and economics of irrigation water for small-scale irrigation schemes in Eastern, Northern and Western parts of Uganda to examine the extent to which irrigation is accessible to farmers and the economic returns from irrigation water. The specific objectives were to examine the profitability of using irrigation water in Uganda, to assess the sustainability of small-scale irrigation schemes in Uganda, to identify the factors influencing productivity of irrigation water in Uganda, to identify the factors influencing farmers" willingness to pay for Irrigation water and to determine the implications of water user rights and costs on adoption of irrigation in Uganda. This study used a cross sectional research design in which data from respondents were collected at a single point at a time whereby both purposive and cross-sectional data collection approaches were adopted. A systematic random sampling procedure was used to select the desired sample size from the study area. Purposive and simple random sampling was employed for key informant personnel who are stakeholders Data were analyzed using both SPSS and STATA software. The results indicated that the net returns per year from two sites namely Bukatabira and Andibo SSISs are 121,306,920 and 34,730,684 shillings for tomato and watermelon respectively at Bukatabira SSIS while at Andibo SSIS the net returns are 50,416,800 and 200,802,000 shillings for tomato and water melon respectively. This means tomato is more profitable in Bukatabira SSIS than watermelon while watermelon is more profitable at Andibo SSIS than tomato. Sprinkler and drip irrigation were found to be more water-saving, cost effective and efficient compared to other methods of irrigation for example surface or furrow irrigation systems. The values of BCR clearly indicate that tomato crop is most suitable at Bukatabira SSIS while watermelon is most suitable at Andibo SSIS with the current production systems. The analysis also revealed that investment in five crops grown at Bumusse SSIS is not economically viable. Out of the eleven explanatory variables, four such as education level, off farm income, credit access and rainfall reliability were statistically and significant at 1% level to influence the farmers" willingness to pay for irrigation water in study area. The results also indicated that the water user rights and costs have positive implications on adoption of irrigation water in Uganda and significantly contributed to different factors such as price of water for irrigation, extension services, access to agricultural information, off farm production, cooperative membership, training opportunities, personal savings, contribution for operation and maintenance and high agricultural productivity. International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 10, Issue 3, March 2020 577 ISSN 2250-3153 http://dx.doi.org/10.29322/IJSRP.10.03.2020.p9975 www.ijsrp.org


Metaphysics, which deals with concepts such as existence, existentialism, space and god in its general content, is a branch of philosophy. It sought answers to questions related to these concepts through methods and perspectives different from science. The reason for all these questions is the effort to define the universe. Metaphysical philosophy has been the search for a solution to helplessness caused by the uncertainties caused throughout the history by life and death. Perspectives developed in parallel with the perception of the period have also shaped the questions and propositions. All these metaphysical approaches do not contain a definition that is independent of time and space. Time and space, as one of the most fundamental problematics of metaphysics, are accepted as the most important elements in placing and making sense of the human into the universe. In this context, metaphysics, which has a transphysical perspective as well as the accepted scientific expansions of real and reality, was mostly visible in the field of art rather than science. The aim of this article is to analyze the role of metaphysical philosophy in the emergence of metaphysical art in the context of the effects of social events, especially the destructions and disappointments caused by the world wars in the 20th century, on the artists and the reflections of the existential inquiries related to this. Furthermore this study includes definitions and processes of metaphysics. The works of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carra have been interpreted in terms of form and content within the scope of metaphysics by considering the concepts of time-space. Keywords: Metaphysics, Space, Time, Metaphysical Art


The advancement of clinical medicine established exceptionally in today's era is used to cure many infectious diseases. Unfortunately, the negative aftermath associated with synthetic drugs has caused many to turn their attention towards an alternative, which is natural plant-extract drugs. Plant-based drugs have a vast number of benefits and applications in the biomedical field and are further formulated with nanocomposite hydrogel, namely sodium alginate. Sodium alginate is a biopolymer that is water-soluble, non-toxic, biocompatible, and biodegradable, therefore having a high demand in the medical field. The objective of this review is to highlight the nanotechnology development that is used in the medical field to enhance the therapeutic effects of naturally occurring drugs. This review will discuss the use of sodium alginate nanocomposite to create a nanohybrid drug loaded with plant extracts.


We introduce a novel loss function, Covariance Loss, which is conceptually equivalent to conditional neural processes and has a form of regularization so that is applicable to many kinds of neural networks. With the proposed loss, mappings from input variables to target variables are highly affected by dependencies of target variables as well as mean activation and mean dependencies of input and target variables. This nature enables the resulting neural networks to become more robust to noisy observations and recapture missing dependencies from prior information. In order to show the validity of the proposed loss, we conduct extensive sets of experiments on real-world datasets with state-of-the-art models and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the proposed Covariance Loss.


The articles in this special section focus on the use of cloud computing in the robotics industry. The Internet and the availability of vast computational resources, ever-growing data and storage capacity have the potential to define a new paradigm for robotics and automation. An intelligent system connected to the Internet can expand its onboard local data, computation and sensors with huge data repositories from similar and very different domains, massive parallel computation from server farms and sensor/actuator streams from other robots and automata. It is the potential and also the research challenges of the field that become the focus on this special section. The goal is to group together and to show the state-of-the-art of this newly emerged field, identify the relevant advances and topics, point out the current lines of research and potential applications, and discuss the main research challenges and future work directions.


Abstract By using dispersion staining methods and pre-constructed conversion tables, it is possible to quickly and accurately determine two principal refractive indices (RI) of the six regulated asbestos minerals, chrysotile, grunerite (amosite), riebeckite (crocidolite), tremolite, actinolite, and anthophyllite, in a single immersion oil mount. This procedure is especially suitable for commercial environmental laboratories specializing in the analysis of asbestos components in bulk building materials. The effectiveness of this practical procedure has been proven through rigorous testing and extensive usage over the last decade by the majority of environmental laboratories in the U.S. The principle of this procedure is also readily applicable to RI determination in other applications: mineralogy, forensics, pharmaceutical research, particle identification, etc.


We describe a new approach to image sequence coding based upon variable-rate entropy- constrained subband coding (ECSBC) and, furthermore, develop the corresponding practical implementation of this ECSBC scheme for fixed-rate channels by extending previously developed adaptive entropy-coded quantization (AEC) techniques. In particular, a buffer- adaptive arithmetic-coded implementation of the ECSBC scheme, denoted ECSBC/AEC, is described which completely eliminates the generally associated encoder buffer overflow/underflow problems, even with a very small encoder buffer. This scheme utilizes hierarchial motion-compensated prediction in a backward-adaptive interframe coding system. Color image sequences are encoded in the YIQ domain. We demonstrate that this ECSBC/AEC scheme operating on real-world image sequences performs very close to the limiting performance achievable only with an encoder buffer of infinite size. Furthermore, we demonstrate that HDTV-quality image sequences can be encoded at bandwidths consistent with existing broadcast television systems. Finally, we show that this scheme delivers extremely robust performance under source mismatch conditions for both video-conferencing and HDTV video material.


This paper proposes a simple method for inherently frequency-adaptive virtual flux (VF) estimation intended for voltage-sensor-less grid synchronization and control of voltage source converters. The frequency-adaptive characteristics are obtained by using a second-order generalized integrator configured as a quadrature signal generator (SOGI-QSG) with the grid frequency as an explicit input variable. It is also shown how the properties of VF estimation based on SOGI-QSGs can be utilized to achieve a simple and effective synchronization technique that integrates frequency-adaptive bandpass filtering, VF estimation, and symmetrical component sequence separation into one operation. This new method avoids cascaded delays of VF estimation and sequence separation and is labeled as dual SOGI-based VF (DSOGI-VF) estimation since it is based on two parallel SOGI-QSGs. The properties and performance of the DSOGI-VF estimation are analyzed in comparison to conventional configurations of VF estimation and sequence separation, demonstrating that it is a simpler structure with improved dynamic response. In fact, similar response time as for grid synchronization based on voltage measurements is achieved. The operation and performance of the proposed DSOGI-VF estimation method have been verified by laboratory experiments in a small-scale converter setup.


Background— Trafficking of transplanted endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) to an ischemic organ is a critical step in neovascularization. This study was performed to elucidate the molecular mechanism of EPC trafficking in terms of adhesion molecules. Methods and Results— Using murine hindlimb ischemia model, we examined expressions of E-selectin, intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1), vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1), and platelet-endothelial cell adhesion molecule-1 (PECAM-1) in ischemic muscle by immunofluorescence. ICAM-1 was overexpressed in ischemic muscle compared with nonischemic muscle, whereas expressions of E-selectin, VCAM-1, and PECAM-1 did not show that much difference. ICAM-1 was also upregulated by hypoxia in murine endothelial cells (ECs) as assessed by immunoblot and flow cytometry. EPCs were attached to ECs specifically through ICAM-1/β-2 integrin interaction in vitro. When EPCs were labeled with fluorescent dye or radioisotope (Tc-99m-HMPAO) and systemically administrate...


The envelope glycoprotein G of rabies virus in vaccines induces the production of neutralizing antibodies important in the protection against the disease. The measurement of anti-envelope glycoprotein antibodies is a good predictor of the degree of humoral immunity in people during anti-rabies treatment or after vaccination. Several assays exist for the serological determination of antibody protection against rabies virus infection. Antibody neutralization by the rapid fluorescent focus inhibition test (RFFIT) or the fluorescent antibody virus neutralization (FAVN) test is currently the gold standard. Performance of the highly complex RFFIT and FAVN tests, however, requires specialized reference laboratories with expertise with this assay. Although not widely used, ELISA test kits are available and may be an additional option for testing that is more accessible. The aim of the present study was to evaluate available ELISA assays for the determination of anti-rabies antibodies. We compared the Bio-Rad Platelia Rabies II ELISA, DRG Rabies Virus IgG Ab ELISA and Focus Diagnostics Rabies Antibody Detection by ELISA to RFFIT. Bland-Altman plots comparing the Bio-Rad Platelia assay and the Focus Diagnostics assay to RFFIT showed a low degree of variability between the ELISA assays and RFFIT results except in samples with high RFFIT values. The agreement, sensitivity and specificity of Bio-Rad Platelia Rabies II ELISA when compared to RFFIT were 95.1 %, 94.1 % and 95.8 %, respectively. The DRG Rabies assay compared to RFFIT had an agreement of 77.7 %, a sensitivity of 86.7 % and a specificity of 69.4 %. The agreement, sensitivity and specificity of Focus Diagnostics Rabies Detection by ELISA when compared to RFFIT were 82.2 %, 91.7 % and 73.0 %, respectively. Overall, the Bio-Rad Platelia assay showed higher accuracy and specificity than either the DRG or Focus assays. All of these ELISAs, however, measure all antibody types and do not discriminate the neutralizing antibodies as measured by functional assays (RFFIT and FAVN) and cannot be relied upon to predict the neutralizing activity of the sera. The results of this study offer insight into the availability of alternative, less-complex methods to monitor rabies antibody titres in at-risk individuals following vaccination.


Kinetic plasma theory is used to generate synthetic spacecraft data to analyze and interpret the compressible fluctuations in the inertial range of solar wind turbulence. The kinetic counterparts of the three familiar linear MHD wave modes—the fast, Alfvén, and slow waves—are identified, and the properties of the density–parallel magnetic field correlation for these kinetic wave modes are presented. The construction of synthetic spacecraft data, based on the quasi-linear premise—that some characteristics of magnetized plasma turbulence can be usefully modeled as a collection of randomly phased, linear wave modes—is described in detail. Theoretical predictions of the density–parallel magnetic field correlation based on MHD and Vlasov–Maxwell linear eigenfunctions are presented and compared to the observational determination of this correlation based on 10 years of Wind spacecraft data. It is demonstrated that MHD theory is inadequate to describe the compressible turbulent fluctuations and that the observed density–parallel magnetic field correlation is consistent with a statistically negligible kinetic fast wave energy contribution for the large sample used in this study. A model of the solar wind inertial range fluctuations is proposed composed of a mixture of a critically balanced distribution of incompressible Alfvénic fluctuations and a critically balanced or more anisotropic than critical balance distribution of compressible slow wave fluctuations. These results imply that there is little or no transfer of large-scale turbulent energy through the inertial range down to whistler waves at small scales.


Abstract Recent research has found low levels of general self-efficacy (GSE: beliefs about the ability to appropriately handle a wide range of stressors) and high levels of anxiety sensitivity (AS: fear of the negative consequences of experiencing anxiety) to be relevant predictors of pathological worry. This study examined the role of psychological inflexibility (PI: the dominance of private experiences over chosen values and contingencies in guiding action), the central component of the acceptance and commitment therapy model of psychopathology, in the effect of GSE and AS on worry. A total of 132 nonclinical participants completed questionnaires assessing the constructs of interest. Partial correlations and regression analyses showed that both GSE and AS were independent predictors of pathological worry after controlling for each other. However, mediation analyses revealed that psychological inflexibility completely mediated the independent effects of both GSE and AS on pathological worry. Theoretical and treatment implications of the results are discussed.


Background Adolescence is a vulnerable period for paediatric renal transplant recipients (RTR), with many losing their allografts within years of transferring to adult care. A transition programme was developed to better equip RTR for adulthood. It features a five-year education framework with a phased-handover to the adult team over two years via joint-clinics. Aims To evaluate the impact of the transition programme on post-transfer renal allograft survival and to evaluate the patient education arm of the transition programme. Methods A retrospective cohort study of RTR who transferred from a paediatric centre before the transition programme was introduced (non-transition cohort) and RTR who transferred via the transition programme (transition cohort). RTR who transferred to one of four adult centres between January 1999 and January 2014 were followed up to their first four years in adult care. Data on renal allograft survival and therapeutic drug monitoring of immunosuppressive medications were collected. Additionally, RTR currently on the programme approaching transfer completed a questionnaire to indicate self-care competencies they possessed and post-transfer RTR were asked if the transition programme helped them develop said competencies. Results 106 (69 non-transition, 37 transition) RTR were followed-up. Non-transition RTR were 2.76 times more likely to lose their allografts during their first four years in adult care; when controlling for donor type (live/deceased), prior number of renal transplants and the time (days) post–transplant prior transferring (95% CI = 0.808 – 9.51; p = 0.1). The transition cohort also had on average 21% (65% vs. 44%) more of their trough levels within their therapeutic target levels (95% CI = 2.5–38.4%; p = 0.03). 41 RTR at the paediatric centre and 7 post-transfer RTR completed the questionnaire. Responses indicated patients possessed most competencies, except for managing administrative tasks relating to their care. Over 50% of post-transfer RTR reported the programme helped them develop all, but one, competencies they possessed. Conclusion We report the largest follow-up to-date of RTR from a single centre evaluating a novel, multicomponent transition programme. Our data indicates a longitudinal transition programme with a phased-handover via joint–clinics is positively associated with post-transfer renal allograft survival.


Speech technologies have become of paramount importance in our everyday life thanks to technological improvements and years of research. The available resources and tools for speech processing have made it possible to automatically process audio contents, task that was manually performed in the past but the huge amount of multimedia information available nowadays makes this manual processing prohibitive. Moreover, interdisciplinary research have been boosted in fields that can take advantage of speech technologies, such as medicine and psychology"; speech technologies have a great potential for the study and treatment of different pathologies such as mental health disorders or speech related impairments. This Thesis contributes to the improvement of emotional state detection techniques; specifically, we focused on the emotion recognition and depression detection tasks. The extraction of speaker's emotional state implies several steps: first, the speech parts of an audio stream must be detected, in order to discard those non-speech parts that provide no information about the speaker's emotional state; after this, speaker segmentation must be performed, because before extracting information about a speaker we must detect the boundaries between different speakers; on some occasions, it might be interesting to perform speaker diarization in order to know which parts of an audio stream are spoken by the same speaker; and finally, information about the emotional state can be extracted. This Thesis presents contributions at these four stages: audio segmentation, speaker segmentation, speaker diarization and emotional state detection; on this latter stage we focused on continuous emotion recognition and depression detection. Audio segmentation systems usually achieve acceptable results when performing simple tasks such as speech detection, but state-of-art systems still find it difficult to segment audio contents when music and noise are present. We propose a framework for the fusion of audio segmentation systems, in order to enhance their strengths and dim their weaknesses. This decision-level fusion strategy consists on the estimation of the reliability of the different audio segmentation systems when classifying audio into the different classes; this reliability is estimated by extracting class-conditional probabilities from a confusion matrix, which is obtained by analysing system performance on some training data. The information extracted from these class-conditional probabilities was used to propose different reliability estimates. Speaker segmentation systems have two types of error: false alarms, which consist on detecting speaker change-points that are not actual change-points; and mis-detections, which consist on missing actual change-points. Audio contents are more likely to suffer one type of error or another depending on their nature: recordings with long speaker turns are prone to false alarms, while recordings with short speaker turns, such as dialogues, are prone to mis-detections. We present different rejection strategies that aim at reducing the false alarm rate in Bayesian information criterion (BIC) based speaker segmentation systems; this rejection strategies can take into account the confidence on the candidate change-points as well as the statistical properties of the change-points process. Moreover, a strategy to reduce the mis-detection rate is also presented, which is specially focused on improving segmentation performance on TV programmes, where the presence of dialogues and dynamic discourse is very common. Selecting the number of clusters is an unresolved issue related to speaker diarization, as there are no satisfactory solutions to this problem in the literature. In this Thesis, we propose a criterion to select the number of clusters which aims at maximizing the extra-cluster similarity while minimizing the intra-cluster similarity. An analysis of different speech segment representations was also performed, showing that the application of linear discriminant analysis (LDA) increased the separability of the classes, enhancing the performance of the proposed criterion to select the number of clusters. Continuous emotion recognition from speech is a challenging task, specially when an emotional level must be predicted at every instant of time, as the information contained in a frame of speech do not give enough information to do such estimation. Also, classification techniques cannot be straightforwardly applied to this task because there is not a finite number of classes. In this Thesis, we propose two subspace projection techniques for continuous emotion recognition; the iVector paradigm was applied to this task, aiming at reducing the influence of speaker and channel variabilities; the eigen-space approach, widely used in tasks such as speaker recognition, was also applied to continuous emotion recognition. To finish, we presented a study on the influence of different feature sets in the depression detection task;" this was motivated by the fact that there are many studies in the literature about similar topics, but the use of different databases, features, performance measures and depression detection approaches makes it very difficult to extract any remarkable conclusions about which features are better at representing depressive speech. This study was complemented with an analysis of the type of discourse for depression detection, in which either read or spontaneous speech was used to estimate the level of depression severity of the speakers, and we also assessed some feature-level fusion techniques for this task.


In most papers dealing with tension and/or compression tests, the conventional yield stress is determined either by an offset method (usually 0.2% strain) or by back extrapolation from the stress-strain curve. In our experiments on ECAP'ed Aluminium a transient hardening saturation (THS) is always observed during the compression tests, but not during the tensile tests. This THS occurs at a significantly lower stress than the conventional yield stress. The aim of the present paper is to determine which the "real" start of yielding is. Two different experimental approaches have been adopted, confirming that the THS stage is exactly the yielding stage. This is not unimportant because it increases the tension-compression asymmetry and hence the back-stress and kinematic hardening. The reason for this different behaviour between tension and compression can be ascribed to a different change in strain path with respect to the ECAP deformation.


Aim To quantitatively analyze actocardiography as a method to differentiate between active and resting fetal states. Methods We established five new quantitative parameters for actocardiogram; they include duration, occupancy, and frequency of movement bursts, and fetal heart rate acceleration to movement ratio (A/B ratio) in duration and number. These parameters were analyzed and compared in 14 normal late pregnancies and in non-hypoxic sinus bradycardia due to fetal cardiac sick sinus syndrome (n=1), hypoxic non-reactive non-stress test (n=3), hypoxic fetal distress (n=1), and that ensuing in death (n=1). Results Fetal hypoxic disorders differed from non-hypoxic states in the significant reductions of burst frequency (normal pregnancy mean was 0.65±0.22 cpm and fetal distress 0.24 cpm), occupancy (32.67% and 10.00%, respectively), and the ratio of durations of acceleration to movement burst (1.03 and 0, respectively). Conclusion Our study of quantitative actocardiogram parameters in normal pregnancy and various hypoxic fetal disorders demonstrated new characteristics of fetal movement and its relation to fetal heart rate. The results are promising for further analysis of fetal behavior and abnormalities.


Abstract In this study, a novel alternative method based on parameterization for solving Integer Linear Programming (ILP) problems having three variables is developed. This method, which is better than the cutting plane and branch boundary method, can be applied to pure integer linear programming problems with m linear inequality constraints, a linear objective function with three variables. Both easy to understand and to apply, the method provides an effective tool for solving three variable integer linear programming problems. The method proposed here is not only easy to understand and apply, it is also highly reliable, and there are no computational difficulties faced by other methods used to solve the three-variable pure integer linear programming problem. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the ease, effectiveness and reliability of the proposed algorithm.


The context of the COVID-19 pandemic produced new immediate needs in the field of university teaching related to distance learning and forces the universities to transform their "traditional" face-to-face teaching methods, particularly with the implementation of online education. This situation represented a challenge not only for the universities but also for the teachers because they need to transform their teaching work in the classroom to online strategies for online learning environments. To meet these needs for effective online education an online pilot training course in Engineering Education based on the IGIP Curriculum of the TU Dresden was designed and implemented. The course "Introduction to online teaching and learning in engineering" (in Spanish: "Introducción a la Enseñanza-Aprendizaje Online en Ingeniería") consisted of 4 modules implemented on a mix of online communication strategy of synchronous activities carried out on the Zoom platform, together with asynchronous work on a Moodle-based LMS platform. The course was offered between May and June 2020 for a group of academics of the Faculty of Engineering of a public Chilean University. This paper describes the designed online pilot training course in Engineering Pedagogy and presents the results of the evaluation of its implementation. For this a survey was applied and filled by the participants to evaluate the course and to know their per-ceptions about their competencies development to improve online learning in engineering.


Endoscopic balloon dilatation (EBD) is a conservative alternative for the treatment of post-surgical anastomotic strictures in Crohn's disease (CD) that improves obstructive symptoms and could delay or avoid further surgeries. However, the usefulness of this technique and predictors of efficacy have been poorly evaluated in a homogeneous cohort.

 to evaluate the efficacy of EBD in CD patients with anastomotic strictures as well as to analyze therapeutic success factors and the rate of adverse events.

 Observational study in a tertiary hospital of a cohort of patients with diagnosis of CD who underwent EBD for anastomotic stricture after previous surgery and with obstructive symptoms. Clinical, demographic and disease characteristics, treatment used, surgery data, inflammatory parameters at time of dilatation, number of dilatations, complications and needed for subsequent surgery were analyzed. Technical success was defined when the endoscope was passed through the stricture after procedure. Therapeutic success per patient was considered when patient did not need surgery at the end of the follow-up.

 63 EBD were performed in 32 patients. Figure 1 shows the clinical and demographic characteristics of the patients. The diameters of the balloons used were 12-15 mm and 15-18 mm. Of the 63 examinations performed, 63.5% (n=40) showed technical success. The therapeutic success per patient was 62.5% (n=20) at 6 years of mean follow-up. Twelve patients required new surgery. The visualized neoileon after EBD had no significant recurrence (Rutgeerts i0-i2a) in 80% of dilatations. The adverse event rate was 3.1% (n=2) a microperforation and a major bleeding, both patients with Rutgeerts i4. The stricture length was the only predictor of technical and therapeutic success. Strictures with more than 40 mm of length were associated with poor efficacy. Neither the type of surgical anastomosis, current treatment, inflammatory parameters levels or balloon diameter were predictors of therapeutic success.

 EBD appears to be a safe and effective technique that could avoid further surgery in up to two thirds of anastomotic strictures in CD in long-term recurrent CD. Longer stricture length and the presence of severe recurrence were associated with poor response and complications.


Hydrogen as a fuel source is acclaimed as a new energy carrier of the future. It is one of the potential solutions to the current energy and environmental pollution crises due to its carbon-free and environmentally friendly characteristics. Hydrogen is primarily used in the chemical industry, but in the future, hydrogen will become a significant fuel for a fuel cell system and combustion cycles that produce fewer greenhouse gases than competing fossil systems. The Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Electrolyser (PEME) is essentially inverted Polymer Electrolyte Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFC), where, instead of generating electricity by harnessing the reaction potential of hydrogen and oxygen to form water, it instead consumes energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. One of the benefits of the PEME over many other forms of hydrogen generation is that it is simpler and generates no harmful by-products other than pure oxygen. In addition, it is also capable of producing hydrogen gas at high pressure, thus facilitating storage. In the PEME, gases and water permeate the membrane, leading to the presence of hydrogen on the oxygen side and vice versa, referred to as gas cross-over. Extensive mixing of the product gases could produce explosive conditions. The research presented in this thesis contributes to the modelling and understanding of the steady state and dynamic behaviour of the PEME. The focus of this research is to provide a numerical model of a single cell PEME that can assist in improving the current level of understanding of this system. Parametric analysis of a PEME cell was performed to understand the effect of the operating parameters of this system on its performance. This study includes the development of numerical models of electrochemical and mass transport phenomenon of gas cross-over on the PEME…


Abstract Background: Seasonal variations of Stanford Type A dissections (STADs) have been previously described in the Northern Hemisphere (NH). This study sought to determine if these variation are mirrored in the Southern Hemisphere (SH). Methods: Data from patients treated surgically for STADs were retrospectively obtained from existing administrative and clinical databases from NH and SH sites. Data points of interest included age, sex, date of dissection, and 30-day mortality. The dates of dissections (independent of year) were then organized by season. Results: A total of 1418 patients were identified (729 NH and 689 SH) with complete data available for 1415; 896 patients were male with a mean age was 61 ± 14 years, and the overall 30-day mortality was 17.3%. Comparison of NH and SH on a month-to-month basis demonstrated a 6-month phase shift and a significant difference by season, with STADs occurring predominantly in the winter and least in the summer. Decomposition of the monthly incidence using Fourier analysis revealed the phase shift of the primary harmonic to be –21.9 and 169.8 degrees (days), respectively, for NH and SH. The resultant 191.7 day difference did not exactly correspond to the anticipated 6-month difference but was compatible with the original hypothesis. Conclusion: Chronobiology plays a role in the occurrence of STADs with the highest occurrence in the winter months independent of the hemisphere. Season is not the predominant reason why aortas dissect, but for patients at risk, the increase in systemic vascular resistance during the winter months may account for the seasonal variations seen.


In the last decade refactoring research has seen exponential growth. I will attempt to map this vast landscape and the advances that the community has made by answering questions such as who does what, when, where, why, and how. I will muse on some of the factors contributing to the growth of the field, the adoption of research into industry, and the lessons that we learned along this journey. This will inspire and equip you so that you can make a difference, with people who make a difference, at a time when it makes a difference.


It has long been suggested by various scholars that there was a war between the Roman Empire and the German tribes on the Pannonian frontier in the years around 140 A.D. This thesis is based on the following. From the Historia Augusta we learn that Aelius Caesar, Hadrian's designated heir to the throne, successfully led campaigns in 137 A.D. as the governor of the two Pannoniae, but these must only have been of a minor scale, and had only propagandistic reasons, i.e. to prove the suitability of the heir to the throne. Despite the fact that the rex datus coins all signify the same thing, the inauguration of a foreign king by Rome's approval, there are major differences not only in their depictions but also in their meaning. The ones of Trajan and Lucius Verus are almost identical, since they bear the same message: a military victory. Antoninus Pius had to create a new reverse design, because he managed to appoint kings through diplomatic negotiations. These are, however, regarded as minor successes, compared to the military ones, so these are not mentioned by the literary sources. In what way did the inauguration of the Quad king contribute to the Marcomannic wars is still unknown.


This study examines the education effect on Guinea's economic growth and empirically estimates the contribution of human capital accumulation on technological progress in Guinea's economy from 1980 to 2010. During this period, Guinea experienced a profound mutation in its political, economic and educational system which led to the implementation of various reforms, especially targeting the economy and the education sector. The educational system as a whole went through three sets of reform programs, occasioning however a significant increase in primary school gross enrolment rate. Following a time-series approach, the study applies the Mankiw, Romer and Weil model and the Solow's growth accounting framework by using the flow measure of education as proxy. The empirical findings reveal that education had an insignificant effect on Guinea's economic growth. However, the growth accounting estimations show that education effect on technological progress measured by total factor productivity is proven to be significant and positive.


The Ahmadiyya Muslim community emphasizes the nonviolent aspects of jihad or religious "effort." Hadhrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835––1908), the South Asian Muslim scholar who founded the movement, argued that the Quran only authorized jihad as defensive military action in certain contexts and otherwise encouraged peaceful initiatives in support of Islam. Ghulam Ahmad also claimed, as the spiritual manifestation of the Messiah and Mahdi, to usher in a new era in which nonviolent activities alone defined jihad. These arguments have not persuaded most Muslims, but the Ahmadiyya Muslim community continues to stress jihad of the pen, that is, efforts to promote and defend Islam in various media.
Many take up the pen, but few are granted the spirit to conduct the jihad in the most acceptable manner . . . It is the Jamaat Ahmadiyya only which has not stopped this great struggle . . . It has become the only vehicle to usher in the revival of Islam through its peaceful, yet determined intellectual process which was initiated a century ago by Hazrat Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the Promised Messiah and Mahdi in Islam.¹¹


A dynamic electrochemical transduction mechanism for interdigitated array microelectrodes using an electrical charge pumping method is presented in this paper. In this dynamic transduction mechanism, a charged external capacitor is used as the charge supplier for the electrochemical reaction of the reversible redox species at the interdigitated array electrodes. The charges stored in the capacitor are consumed as the electrochemical reaction current, which causes the capacitor potential decay. The theoretical analysis has shown that the species concentration has a decisive effect on the capacitor potential decay, and therefore the characteristics of the capacitor potential decay are recorded and analyzed to evaluate the concentration of redox species. The new transduction mechanism has the advantages of achieving high sensitivity with small sensor area and simplifying the measurement instrumentation. As a demonstration device, interdigitated array microelectrodes (approximately 0.2 mm(2) electrode surface area) have been fabricated and successfully characterized using p-aminophenol as the redox species under this dynamic mechanism. The detection limit of p-aminophenol was calculated to be approximately 4 x 10(-7) M for the sensor with the new dynamic transduction mechanism.


Judicial decision-making has been long studied, particularly sentencing, from a number of perspectives. Many researches have focused on the factors affecting the decision-making process, analysing from judges' personal characteristics to court context. This article addresses lay theories of crime as viewed by judges. Forty-nine judges participated in this study, answering a questionnaire about causes of criminality and justifications for crime. Results show a large variety of answer with judges positioned in both sides of the scale. Drug abuse is especially relevant when judges assess causes of criminality and justifications for crime. Regarding causes of criminality, the results suggest that judges' rationale is based on a complex set of social environment characteristics, opposing the dichotomy internal characteristics versus external situational causes, identified in previous studies. Justifications for crime were organized into three major groups: drugs, uncontrolled behaviour and survival. Age and political orientation affected these assessments, but gender was found irrelevant.


One hundred sixteen healthy black children ages 13 to 59 months, representing high and low socioeconomic deciles, were studied for lactose malabsorption. A fasting lactose tolerance test using 2 g of lactose/kg of body weight was carried out. Glucose was determined at 0, 15, 30, and 60 mm. Of the 116 preschcolers 34 (29%) evidenced lactose malabsorption as determined by a blood glucose rise of less than 26 mg/100 ml. Clinical signs of diarrhea, gas, and cramps were noted singly or in combination in 18% of the 34 lactose-malabsorbing children. Of the 82 lactose absorbers, 12% demonstrated similar signs. The nature and length of the initial infant milk feeding failed to show any relationship to the onset of malabsorption. Current milk drinking patterns were reported as being similar. Eight-seven percent of the malabsorbers and 92% of the absorbers report drinking 240 ml or more of milk/day. Socioeconomic status, education, marital status, and medical assistance of the parent is similarly distributed between lactose absorbers and malabsorbers. Am. J. Clin. Nut,'. 30: 1018-1022, 1977.


The neighbor discovery paradigm finds wide application in Internet of Things networks, where the number of active devices is orders of magnitude smaller than the total device population. Designing low-complexity schemes for asynchronous neighbor discovery has recently gained significant attention from the research community. Concurrently, a divide-and-conquer framework, referred to as coupled compressive sensing, has been introduced for the synchronous massive random access channel. This work adapts this novel algorithm to the problem of asynchronous neighbor discovery with unknown transmission delays. Simulation results suggest that the proposed scheme requires much fewer transmissions to achieve a performance level akin to that of state-of-the-art techniques.


This beautifully illustrated book shows examples of Russian dress and accessories from the 15th to the early 20th century. Derived from the collection of the State Historical Museum and covering both dress worn in the countryside and in the city, this book is a fabulous feast of splendid patterns and fine detail. From exuberantly colourful and embellished dresses to elegantly sumptuous brocades and silks, the garments and accessories included in this book are an inspiration. In the first part of the book we look at traditional Russian dress, which was worn by all Russian peasants, by the urban petit bourgeoisie and by merchants. This type of clothing became accepted as national dress. In the towns and cities, dress was influenced by the Parisian styles but interpreted by Russian seamstresses reflecting the love of bright colours, multi-coloured patterns and decorative features in evidence in traditional dress. With authoritative essays written by experts L. Yefimova and T. Aleshina, Russian Elegance is an invaluable resource for fashion designers, artists, fashion historians, set and costume designers, or anyone interested in these beautiful designs.


Pondok Itikaf Jama'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang is one of the containers to learn and understand Islam, the background of santri like people who have a black background, such as ex-thugs, gamblers, drunkards, people who have problems of life and people who want to learn religion But have limitations in Arabic. The way santri learn religion, that is by trying to understand the holy verses of the Qur'an and hadith, one of his understanding that is belief in performing the congregational prayer accompanied by the language translation of his people, this is contrary to the prevailing Islamic law. The purpose of the research is to find out 1) why the subject is interested to join the Pondok Itikaf Jama'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang, 2) the psychological factors that cause the students of Pondok Itikaf Jama'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang change beliefs bergama, 3) how the process of belief change students santri Itikaf Jama'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang, and 4) how the understanding of Islamic values of Santri Pondok Itikaf Jam'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang. The research method used is single case study method. Data collection is done through interview, observation, and documentation. Data analysis is done by using descriptive analysis, that is using words to describe what the purpose of this research. The results showed that 1) subjects interested in joining and believing to implement the teachings received in the cottage because the subject is acceptable as it is by the manager of the cottage, the manager also patient and painstaking provide guidance on the subject, the subjects at least get the peace of mind and can change the attitude of the subject, At least get the peace of mind and can change the attitude of the subject to a better direction, there is a common background between students who are with each other. 2) psychological factors causing the subject to change beliefs, subjects experiencing symptoms of inner pressure caused by the emotional attitudes of the subject, it encourages subjects to seek inner calm by way of learning and reciting to understand the purposes of the holy verses of the Qur'an and hadith and try Implement it. 3) the process of changing the subject's beliefs. In the quiet period, subjects are apriori towards religion. The period of unrest, the subject felt the religion that he believed could not be the handle of life. The conversion period occurs after the subject's conflict subsides and the subject can define a new belief. Calm and serene period, subjects gained the composure of the new doctrine. The period of conversion expression, subjects are subject and harden their behavior with new teachings. 4) overall awareness of religion students of Pondok Itikaf Jama'ah Ngaji Lelaku, Lawang not yet mature


Abstract: India is mainly an agricultural country. Agriculture is the most important occupation for the most of the Indian families. It plays vital role in the development of agricultural country. In India, agriculture contributes about16% of total GDP and 10% of total exports. Water is main resource for Agriculture. Irrigation is one method to supply water but in some cases there will be lot of water wastage. So, in this regard to save water and time we have proposed project titled smart irrigation system using IoT. In this proposed system we are using various sensors like temperature, humidity, soil moisture sensors which senses the various parameters of the soil and based on soil moisture value land gets automatically irrigated by ON/OFF of the motor. These sensed parameters and motor status will be displayed on user android application. Keywords: Agriculture, IOT, Soil sensor


Efficient visual object detection is of central interest in computer vision and pattern recognition due to its wide ranges of applications. Viola and Jones' detector has become a de facto framework [1]. In this work, we propose a new method to design a cascade of boosted classifiers for fast object detection, which combines linear asymmetric classification (LAC) into the recent multi-exit cascade structure. Therefore, the proposed method takes advantages of both LAC and the multi-exit cascade. Namely, (1) the multi-exit cascade structure collects all the scores of prior nodes for decision making at the current node, which reduces the loss of decision information; (2) LAC considers the asymmetric nature of the node training. We also show that the multi-exit cascade better meets the assumption of LAC learning than the standard Viola-Jones' cascade, both theoretically and empirically. Experiments confirm that our method outperforms existing methods such as Viola and Jones [1] and Wu et al. [2] on the MIT+CMU test data set.


Endoglin (ENG) is a transmembrane glycoprotein expressed on endothelial cells that functions as a co-receptor for several ligands of the transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) family. ENG is also a recognized marker of angiogenesis and mutations in the endoglin gene are responsible for Hereditary Hemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT) type 1, a vascular disease characterized by defective angiogenesis, arteriovenous malformations, telangiectasia, and epistaxis. In addition to its involvement in the TGF-β family signaling pathways, several lines of evidence suggest that the extracellular domain of ENG has a role in integrin-mediated cell adhesion via its RGD motif. Indeed, we have described a role for endothelial ENG in leukocyte trafficking and extravasation via its binding to leukocyte integrins. We have also found that ENG is involved in vasculogenic properties of endothelial progenitor cells known as endothelial colony forming cells (ECFCs). Moreover, the binding of endothelial ENG to platelet integrins regulate the resistance to shear during platelet-endothelium interactions under inflammatory conditions. Because of the need for more effective treatments in HHT and the involvement of ENG in angiogenesis, current studies are aimed at identifying novel biological functions of ENG which could serve as a therapeutic target. This review focuses on the interaction between ENG and integrins with the aim to better understand the role of this protein in blood vessel formation driven by progenitor and mature endothelial cells.


Hox transcription factors are extensively investigated in diverse fields of molecular and evolutionary biology. Hox genes belong to the family of homeobox transcription factors characterised by a 60 amino acids region called homeodomain. These genes are evolutionary conserved and play crucial roles in the development of animals. In particular, they are involved in the specification of segmental identity, and in the tetrapod limb differentiation. In vertebrates, this family of genes can be divided into 14 groups of homology. Common methods to classify Hox proteins focus on the homeodomain. Classification is however hampered by the high conservation of this short domain. Since phylogenetic tree reconstruction is time-consuming, it is not suitable to classify the growing number of Hox sequences. The first goal of this thesis is therefore to design an automated approach to classify vertebrate Hox proteins in their groups of homology. This approach classifies Hox proteins on the basis of their scores for a combination of protein generalised profiles. The resulting program, HoxPred, combines predictive accuracy and time efficiency. We used this program to detect and classify Hox genes in several teleost fish genomes. In particular, it allowed us to clarify the evolutionary history of the HoxC1a genes in teleosts. Overall, HoxPred could efficiently contribute to the bioinformatics toolbox commonly used to annotate vertebrate Hox sequences. This program was then evaluated in non-vertebrate species. Although not intended for the classification of Hox proteins in distantly related species, HoxPred showed a high accuracy in bilaterians. It has also given insights into the evolutionary relationships between bilaterian posterior Hox genes, which are notoriously difficult to classify with phylogenetic trees.As transcription factors, Hox proteins regulate target genes by specifically binding DNA on cis-regulatory elements. Only a few of these target genes have been identified so far. The second goal of this work was to evaluate whether it is possible to apply computational approaches to detect Hox cis-regulatory elements in genomic sequences. Regulatory Sequence Analysis Tools (RSAT) is a suite of bioinformatics tools dedicated to the detection of cis-regulatory elements in genomes. We participated to the development of matrix-based pattern matching approaches in RSAT. After having performed a statistical validation of the pattern-matching scores, we focused on a study case based on the vertebrate HoxB1 protein, which binds DNA with its cofactors Pbx and Meis. This study aimed at predicting combinations of cis-regulatory elements for these three transcription factors.


Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is an aggressive histotype of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. The disease has no known cure, which prompts the urgent need for novel therapeutic agents. Chromosomal region maintenance 1 (CRM1) may play a role in human neoplasia and serve as a novel target of cancer treatment. This study summarizes MCL pathogenesis and determines the involvement of CRM1 in the regulation of several vital signaling pathways contributing to MCL pathogenesis, including the pathways of cell cycle progression, DNA damage response, phosphoinositide kinase-3, nuclear factor-κB activation, and chromosomal stability. A preclinical study is also presented to compare the CRM1 status in MCL cell lines and primary MCL cells with normal B cells, as well as the therapeutic efficiency of CRM1 inhibition in MCL in vitro and in vivo, which make these agents potential targets of novel MCL treatments.


Portals appeared in the late 1990s as a new type of Internet website architecture specifically designed to provide personalized online services. The success of Web portals depends on their ability to provide accurate content and useful services specifically tailored to individual users according to their requirements. Data Quality is a critical issue in today's interconnected society. From the software point of view there is a widely accepted standard proposed by ISO/IEC (the ISO/IEC 9126) which proposes a quality model for software products. However, until now a similar proposal for data quality of web portals has not existed. In order to assess the success of a website, a quality model highlighting relevant properties of the website and specifying how to measure them is needed.In this paper a brief overview of some proposals of web portal quality is presented.


We examine the influence of Quantitative Easing (QE) on hedging effectiveness and performance (E&P) of international bond portfolios. During the QE period, the bond portfolios have significantly lower excess returns and variances, and their excess return and variance sensitivities are positive and negative with the Fed's MBS holdings and are less positive and less negative with the Fed's Treasury holdings. E&P are higher for optimal versus full hedging during the QE versus pre-QE period and differ for portfolios from developed and emerging countries. Results are robust using other hedging E&P measures and excluding countries with their own QEs.


This paper presents our design and development of a context-driven content adaptation planner, which dynamically transforms requested Web content into a proper format conforming to receiving contexts (e.g., access condition, network connection, and receiving device). Aiming to establish a semantic foundation for content adaptation, we apply description logics (DLs) to formally define context profiles and requirements and automate content adaptation decision. In addition, the computational overhead caused by content adaptation can be moderately decreased through the reduction of the size of adapted content.


Still circa 25% to 30% of patients with epilepsy cannot be efficiently controlled with available antiepileptic drugs so newer pharmacological treatment options have been continuously searched for. In this context, a group of endogenous or exogenous neurosteroids allosterically positively modulating GABA-A receptors may offer a promising approach. Among endogenous neurosteroids synthesized in the brain, allopregnanolone or allotetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone have been documented to exert anticonvulsant activity in a number of experimental models of seizures—pentylenetetrazol-, bicuculline- pilocarpine-, or 6 Hz-induced convulsions in rodents. Neurosteroids can also inhibit fully kindled seizures and some of them have been reported to counteract maximal electroshock-induced convulsions. An exogenous neurosteroid, alphaxalone, significantly elevated the threshold for maximal electroconvulsions in mice but it did not potentiate the anticonvulsive action of a number of conventional antiepileptic drugs against maximal electroshock-induced seizures. Androsterone not only elevated the threshold but significantly enhanced the protective action of carbamazepine, gabapentin and phenobarbital against maximal electroshock in mice, as well. Ganaxolone (a 3beta-methylated analog of allopregnanolone) needs special consideration for two reasons. First, it performed better than conventional antiepileptic drugs, diazepam or valproate, in suppressing convulsive and lethal effects of pentylenetetrazol in pentylenetetrazol-kindled mice. Second, ganaxolone has been evaluated in the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial in patients with intractable partial seizures, taking maximally 3 antiepileptic drugs. The initial results indicate that add-on therapy with ganaxolone resulted in reduced seizure frequency with adverse effect being mainly mild to moderate. Possibly, ganaxolone may be also considered against catamenial seizures. Some positive effects of ganaxolone as an adjuvant were also observed in children with refractory seizures and its use may also prove efficient for the management of neonatal seizures associated with hypoxic injury. Neurosteroids positively modulating GABA-A receptor complex exert anticonvulsive activity in many experimental models of seizures. Their interactions with antiepileptic drugs seem ambiguous in mice. Initial clinical data indicate that ganaxolone may provide a better seizure control in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy.


Cyanobacteria and actinomycetes are well known for their capability to produce taste and odour (T and O) causing compounds in water as their secondary metabolites. Geosmin (trans-1, 10-dimethyl-trans-9-decalol)) is one of the major T and O causing compounds producing earthy T and O and has become a major issue in worldwide water sector. Despite of not detecting as a human health hazard, presence of this odorant directly causes drinking water aesthetically unacceptable and leads to consumer rejection of treated drinking water due to conventional treatment processes do not remove Geosmin. Geosmin is prevailing in some Sri Lankan raw water bodies where water is taken for treatment purposes by National Water Supply and Drainage Board. The objective of the present study was to find the seasonal variation of Geosmin in Sri Lankan water bodies with respect to some physico-chemical aspects aiming to manage the T and O issue in Sri Lanka. Sampling was carried out from June 2016 to June 2018 covering both dry and wet seasons. Geosmin contamination level in 20 water bodies in Sri Lanka were analysed by Solid Phase Micro Extraction (SPME) coupled with Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (GC/MS). The physico-chemical parameters of the water body were measured using standard spectrometric and titrimetric methods. Quantification and enumeration of phytoplankton were carried out with standard method using Acidified Lugol's solution at final concentration of 1% following natural sedimentation. Geosmin concentration of the analysed samples varied between 7.8±3.27 to 34.6±1.32 ng/L throughout the dry season and from 0 to 18.3±1.22 ng/L during the wet season. Among the selected raw water bodies; the highest level of Geosmin was recorded in Sagama tank (34.6±1.32 ng/L) while the lowest was detected in Nallachchiya tank (7.8±3.27) during the dry season. During the wet season, the highest level of Geosmin was recorded in Sagama tank (18.3±1.22 ng/L) where not detected levels were recorded in Kondawatuwana tank, Jayanthi tank, Kanthale tank and Unnichchi tanks. Anabaena sp., Microcystis sp., Cylindrospermopsis sp., Oscillatoria sp., Cyclotella sp. Volvox sp., Gloeocystis sp., and Uroglenopsis sp. are the major taste and odour forming cyanobacteria recorded from the reservoirs during the study. Total cyanobacteria cell density varied between 102,560±2.28 cells/ml (Thuruwila tank) to 3,649±0.34 cells/ml (Ridiyagama tank) in dry season whereas from 98,235±4.73 (Beire lake) cells/ml to 135±3.11 cells/ml (Kanthale tank) during wet season. Detected Geosmin level in dry season was greater than the wet season. The Pearson's correlation coefficient analysis revealed a significantly strong positive correlation between Geosmin level and the total phosphorus concentration (r=0.850, (p<0.05), water pH (r=0.788 (p<0.05)) and the Electrical Conductivity level (r=0.612, (p<0.05). Further, it was found that cyanobacteria cell density (r=0.691, (p<0.05)) had a significant positive correlation with Geosmin level in water bodies. These findings are crucial in understanding and managing natural reservoirs to eliminate T and O issue to provide a better quality drinking water to Sri Lankan general public. Keywords: Geosmin, SPME, GC/MS, Physico-chemical parameters, Seasonal variation


This letter is in response to the Point:Counterpoint series "Flow-mediated dilation does/does not reflect nitric oxide-mediated endothelial function" that appeared in the September issue (vol. 99: ...


A calculation of the circular dichroism (CD) spectra of carbonmonoxy- and deoxy-myoglobin is carried out in relation to a time-resolved CD experiment. This calculation allows us to assign a dominant role to the proximal histidine in the definition of the electronic normal modes and to interpret the transient CD structure observed in a strain of the proximal histidine. This strain builds up in 10 ps and relaxes in 50 ps as the protein evolves towards its deoxy form.


We introduce and analyze a class of generalized trust region sequential quadratic programming (GTRSQP) algorithms for equality constrained optimization. Unlike in standard trust region SQP (TRSQP) algorithms, the optimization subproblems arising in our GTRSQP algorithm can be generated from models of the objective and constraint functions that are not necessarily based on Taylor approximations. The need for such generalizations is motivated by optimal control problems for which model problems can be generated using, e.g., different discretizations.
Several existing TRSQP algorithms are special cases of our GTRSQP algorithm. Our first order global convergence result for the GTRSQP algorithm applied to TRSQP allows one to relax the condition that the so-called tangential step lies in the null-space of the linearized constraints.
The application of the GTRSQP algorithm to an optimal control problem governed by Burgers equation is discussed.