Two raised marine sequences from Prins Karls Forland, western Svalbard, interpreted to have been deposited during part of isotope substage 5e (Eemian) and substage 5a, were studied for foraminifera content. Time constraints are given by 14C ages, infrared stimulated luminescence age estimates and amino acid ratios in subfossil marine molluscs. A diamicton (unit B) separates the two marine sequences and reflects an advancement of local glaciers sometime late in isotope stage 5. The two marine sequences contain diverse benthic foraminiferal faunas, indicating periods of a relatively warm and seasonally ice-free marine shelf environment. Compared to the lowermost sequence (unit A), the upper marine sequence (unit C) seems to reflect a more shallow environment that could have resulted from the global lowering of the sea level towards the end of isotope stage 5. Our results further emphasise the problem of biostratigraphic distinction between interglacial and interstadial deposits at high latitudes, with temperature conditions for substage 5a close to those of substage 5e and present conditions.


Machine learning is shifting towards general-purpose pretrained generative models, trained in a self-supervised manner on large amounts of data, which can then be applied to solve a large number of tasks. However, due to their generic training methodology, these models often fail to meet some of the downstream requirements (e.g., hallucinations in abstractive summarization or style violations in code generation). This raises the important question of how to adapt pre-trained generative models to meet all requirements without destroying their general capabilities ("catastrophic forgetting"). Recent work has proposed to solve this problem by representing task-specific requirements through energy-based models (EBMs) and approximating these EBMs using distributional policy gradients (DPG). Despite its effectiveness, this approach is however limited to unconditional distributions. In this paper, we extend DPG to conditional tasks by proposing Conditional DPG (CDPG). We evaluate CDPG on four different control objectives across three tasks (translation, summarization and code generation) and two pretrained models (T5 and GPT-Neo). Our results show that fine-tuning using CDPG robustly moves these pretrained models closer towards meeting control objectives and -- in contrast with baseline approaches -- does not result in catastrophic forgetting.


Revolutionary capabilities for robust control of inflatable Lunar and Martian transit vehicles and planetary habitats can be developed using advanced wireless network technology and modular avionics coupled with facile human to system interfaces. Fully wireless modular avionics would eliminate any cabling associated with power and data transmission, allowing easy deployment of flexible control systems and human interfaces. Furthermore, wearable human interface systems hosting virtual reality interaction methods can provide significant improvement in human situational awareness and control of dynamic space systems. The crew can interact with intelligent software agents providing human-like interaction using speech. These advanced information management systems would incorporate intelligent software agents to assist the crew in performing vehicle and mission operations. Advances in robust wireless data communications and wireless power transmission are the key technologies that enable this new spacecraft architecture. This paper will cover the proposed architecture for wireless spacecraft avionics including innovative human interaction techniques with spacecraft systems. The team believes these two aspects are intimately related and that mobile virtual human interfaces can solve many problems associated with operating spacecraft based on inflatable structures. Conventional architectures allocate much space to a cockpit from which the spacecraft is piloted and monitored. For the transit to Mars, which in most scenarios takes approximately 6 months, the cockpit becomes a major consumer of available space while being used only briefly during the journey for earth departure and planetary approach. Wireless control of the spacecraft would allow the piloting and monitoring function to be carried out from any location within the crew space. Identifying key technology developments required to support this architecture will involve evaluating current and next generation wireless networks, computational modules and wireless power transmission for avionics. Complementary methods for virtual human interfaces will be evaluated, with the rapid development of this technology enabling significant advances to be realized in the next decade." have to be provided by remote presence technology, which ties the virtual reality visual system with cameras on the outside of the craft. Spoken commanding and interaction with ship systems is also an important part of this concept. As ship systems become more complex, it will become impossible for the crew to remember exact details of all aspects of the operating environment. In this case the ability to ask questions about spacecraft status and have the agents issue audible spoken advisories and warnings becomes an important part of safely operating a very complex system. The shipboard agent systems can become in effect a much larger crew for the mission. With the round trip communication times approaching 40 minutes for the Mars transit, all of the mission operations knowledge will have to be built into the spacecraft, lessening dependence upon earth-based support. The operational authority has to be given to the astronauts augmented by virtual mission support provided by the knowledge agents on the spacecraft. A distributed wireless avionics system would provide the computational capacity for sophisticated support systems that inform the correct crew member of a problem needing their attention, and to assist them in performing a complex task.


Kaposi's sarcoma is the most frequent malignancy associated with AIDS. The occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma in the parotid region is extremely rare. In this publication we present a case of a 47-year-old male patient who developed a swelling of the left parotid tail that proved to be Kaposi's sarcoma of an intra parotid lymph node. A discussion of the etiological factors, clinical staging and management of KS, as well as the differential diagnosis of the parotid enlargement in AIDS patients, is presented.


Honeynet intruders often use Internet Relay Chat (IRC) to communicate with their peers. When they do, honeynet operators can observe social interactions among black hats, which could disclose their attack and intrusion tactics, describe their motives, or otherwise shed light on their underground activities. In one recent case, honeynet intruders exposed the existence of automated tools that support and facilitate identity theft and credit-card fraud. Members of a community who call themselves carders use these tools to defraud Internet merchants and consumers of potentially large financial sums.


We present a new algorithm for functional test generation of VLSI systems. This algorithm for functional test generation for each testable register-transfer (RT) level fault defined in our established fault model. The technique developed is appropriate for test generation in top-down Computer-Aided Design process. The development of the algorithm is based on two foundations: the RT-level fault model and symbolic execution technique. A well-defined RT-language for the functional representation of a digital system is described. Based on this language, the RT-level fault modeling and fault collapsing analysis are performed. The fault model is established to lay an analytical foundation for the investigation of faulty behavior among RT-level fault types. The RT-level symbolic execution technique is used to derive test patterns during test generation. Major problem areas are defined and appropriate solutions are presented. The whole test generation process is divided into three stages: preprocess, the S-algorithm, and post-process. "Divide and conquer" principle is used throughout the test generation process for systematic problem solving. The S-algorithm is the heart of the overall algorithm. It performs test pattern generation based on the reduced fault model using machine symbolic execution. This test generation algorithm has been implemented in PASCAL on IBM 370/168.


The spin-dependent nature of the nuclear tensor force is studied in detail within the relativistic Hartree-Fock approach. The relativistic formalism for the tensor force is supplemented with an additional Lorentz-invariant tensor formalism in the σ-scalar channel, so as to take into account almost fully the nature of the tensor force brought about by the Fock diagrams in realistic nuclei. Specifically, the tensor sum rules are tested for the spin and pseudo-spin partners with and without nodes, to further understand the nature of the tensor force within the relativistic model. It is shown that the interference between the two components of nucleon spinors causes distinct violations of the tensor sum rules in realistic nuclei, mainly due to the opposite signs on the κ quantities of the upper and lower components, as well as the nodal difference. However, the sum rules can be precisely reproduced if the same radial wave functions are taken for the spin/pseudo-spin partners in addition to neglecting the lower/upper components, revealing clearly the nature of the tensor force.


In a single-blind controlled clinical trial patients with optic neuritis caused by demyelination were given a single retrobulbar injection of triamcinolone. Though the treated group showed a trend towards more rapid recovery of vision than the controls, there was no significant difference in visual acuity, colour vision, or visual fields during the first six months after treatment. We conclude that routine use of corticosteroids is not justified in unilateral optic neuritis when vision in the other eye is good. Shortening the period of visual disability in bilateral disease or unilateral disease when vision in the other eye is poor, however, may be justifiable.


The segmentation of the moving and non-moving parts in an image within the crowd analysis studies is a crucial result in terms of understanding the behaviour. However, in many studies carried out, moving areas are assessed as making a set of movement that are similar in terms of location and of acceleration. In this study, what kind of interaction there exists among the people in a high-density crowd movement was studied. Initially, the motion data is represented as trajectories by using the optical flow and particle advection methods. The image is divided into equal hexagons and each area's topological entropy value is determined through Finite Time Braid Entropy (FTBE). This value depends on the complexity of the spiral structure that the trajectories generate throughout the movement and this value shows how much effective it is in the area. Eventually, through the complexity map that was generated, the behaviour of the crowd could be better understood and assessed. Also, in this way, possible abnormal conditions in the area can be predicted by monitoring each region and by setting off from the changes in the values of Braid entropy in time. The method was tested using the high-density crowd movements in the UCF database and results were presented.


In the present research packed bed column with activated carbon which is derived from the natural available dates seed used for exclusion of perchlorate from aqueous sample. The effect of several variables on adsorption performance has been studied, including inlet ion concentration, flow rate, bed height, and temperature.The adsorbent was prepared in two different temperature 400℃ and 800℃ and the depth of column was 5cm and 8cm. The findings showed that the activated column at 400℃ in the depth of 5cm was saturated at 320 min and for 8cm column it is saturated at 300 min. Likewise for 800℃ columns in the depth of 5cm the treatment efficiency attained at 220 min and for 8cm column it was 180 min. It is showed that the optimal flow rate and bed height increase adsorption effectiveness. Gas chromatography (GC) was used to determine the perchlorate concentration in liquid sample after treatment process. The Thomas and Thomson mathematical models were utilized to determine the column's adsorption efficacy, with the maximum R2value of 0.985 for 800°C in an 8 cm column with a removal efficiency of 98.1%. The surface morphology was examined with SEM, FTIR and XRD which proves that the pore changes in the morphology of the adsorbent created homogeneous to heterogeneous formation structure. This comprehensive study shown that activated carbon generated from dates seed is a successful adsorbent for the removal of perchlorate at optimal temperature and bed depth


Grinding characteristics brought by the grinding speed reduction and geometrical model differences between micro-grinding and conventional grinding have been mainly researched. Influences which micro-grinding parameter and micro-grinding tool dimension parameter giving to grinding surface quality have been analyzed. The comparison experiment between micro-grinding and micro-milling has been carried out on the micro-machining test-bed developed by Northeast University. Wear of the grinding pin obtained from experiment is considered to provide the basis for the micro-machining system and fabricating of grinding pins.


There is no technical reason and no quality inherent to the medium of computer games that would require corrosion, dust, and ruins. Pixels do not corrode and 3D geometry is not affected by physical decay. Yet if we look at contemporary computer games we find an abundance of ruined buildings, of mould and of all forms of decay of organic matter and inorganic materials. It would be too easy to explain this fact by an attempt to increase realism, because some of these games clearly feature more decay than reality could ever produce. There must be a longing by designers and players to immerse themselves within an environment of disintegrating, decaying objects. The author investigates the longing for decay along four threads that are informed by computer games history, art history, psychoanalytic reasoning and the concept of transmedia megatext.


Objectives The capability and capacity of the primary and community care (PCC) sector for dementia in Singapore may be enhanced through better integration. Through a partnership involving a tertiary hospital and PCC providers, an integrated dementia care network (CARITAS: comprehensive, accessible, responsive, individualised, transdisciplinary, accountable and seamless) was implemented. The study evaluated the process and extent of integration within CARITAS. Design Triangulation mixed-methods design and analyses were employed to understand factors underpinning network mechanisms. Setting The study was conducted at a tertiary hospital in the northern region of Singapore. Participants We recruited participants who were involved in the conceptualisation, design, development and implementation of the CARITAS Programme from a tertiary hospital and PCC providers. Intervention We used the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care-Measurement Tool (RMIC-MT) to assess integration from managerial perspectives. RMIC-MT comprises eight dimensions that play interconnected roles on a macro-level, meso-level and micro-level. We administered RMIC-MT to healthcare providers and conducted in-depth interviews with key CARITAS stakeholders. Primary and secondary outcome measures We assessed integration scores across eight dimensions of the RMIC-MT and factors underpinning network mechanisms. Results Compared with other dimensions, functional integration (mechanisms by which information and management modalities are linked) achieved the lowest mean score of 55. Other dimensions (eg, clinical, professional and organisational integration) scored about 70. Presence of inspiring clinical leaders and tacit interdependencies among partners strengthened the network. However, the lack of structured documentation and a shared information-technology platform hindered functional integration. Conclusion CARITAS has reached maturity in micro-levels and meso-levels of integration, while macro-integration needs further development. Integration can be enhanced by assessing service gaps, increasing engagement with stakeholders and providing a shared communication system.


This is an excellent and timely addition to the literature on Gender and Women's Studies. Each chapter explores contemporary questions and dilemmas in feminist theory and research, assessing the impacts of past research and feminist actions. Leading scholars discuss such topics as the state of women's and gender studies, feminist epistemology, cultural representations, globalization and the state, families, and work. This book is sure to be an essential resource for gender scholars and students' -Joan Acker, University of Oregon`This breathtakingly broad, interdisciplinary reader demonstrates how widely feminist thinking has spread, how deeply it has shaken settled assumptions in the disciplines and how much new light it throws on contemporary controversies.This volume offers not only a reference manual to what we now know about gender relations as social forces but also gives impetus to future thinking in imaginative and utopian ways about questions of gender, power and knowledge' - Myra Marx Ferree, University of Wisconsin-Madison `This is a timely intervention and highly engaged, thoughtful and scholarly analysis of the state of gender and wmoen's studies in the west by three eminent feminist scholars who have been centrally involved in feminist struggles and scholarship for some time. They have an acute understanding of what matters to feminism and bring together a wide range of essential new readings on gender works and gender troubles. Highly cognisant of the central issues that have fractured, blocked and enhanced western feminism they provide a contextual and political understanding of change and sustained normativity in gender relations. The Handbook ends with a call for gendered trouble making. Following the achievemnent of this handbook, it seems to be the least we as readers can do' - Professor Bev Skeggs, Goldsmiths College`The Handbook gives a pedagogically well structured and thoroughly updated overview over discussions of central issues in contemporary women's and gender studies, including critical studies of men and masculinities. The comprehensiveness and the interdisciplinary range of themes are impressive, and they make the Handbook into a wonderful tool for teachers and students of women's and gender studies. It fulfills an obvious and pressing need for easy accessible overview of the literature. The Handbook strikes a good balance between overview and critically situated analysis, relevant for courses in Women's and Gender Studies on many levels' - Nina Lykke, Director of Nordic Research School in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, Linkoeping University Gender and women's studies is one of the most challenging fields within the social sciences- the dynamics of gender relations and the social and cultural implications of gender constructions offer a lively forum of debate.The Handbook of Gender and Women's Studies presents a comprehensive and engaging review of the most recent developments within the field, including the study of masculinity, the feminist implications of postmodernism, the `cultural turn' and globalization. The authors review current research and offer critical analyses of women's and gender studies in work, the welfare state, family, education, religion, violence and war and feminist global politics.Edited by three leading academics from Europe and the United States, and with 25 chapters written by scholars based throughout the world, the Handbook situates the most important debates in the field within a uniquely international and interdisciplinary context. The Handbook is a useful introduction to gender theory and an exciting starting-point for fresh debates.··see Sample Chapters & Resources for pdf copies of the Introduction and Chapter Two··


The verbal weak inflection, one of the defining innovations of Proto-Germanic, currently holds a dominant position in the verbal inventory of most remaining Germanic languages. This has not always been the case, though. This paper investigates how the weak inflection could have grown to overthrow its competitor, the strong inflection, even if (i) the strong inflection was still more regular and (ii) the weak inflection had to start from a position vastly inferior in frequency to any strong ablaut class. As opposed to earlier work, which focused on language acquisition in models of iterated learning, our focus lies on language usage, which is why we have composed an agent-based model. This enabled us to test a number of minimal assumptions needed to explain an ascent of the weak inflection, of which several have been proposed in the literature. It was found that the weak inflection's functional advantage of general applicability is sufficient by itself already. That is, the weak dental suffix is in principle applicable to all verbs, while each separate strong ablaut class is not. This is shown to put the strong inflection at a crucial disadvantage, even if (i) the strong system as a whole is applicable to all verbs, and (ii) each separate ablaut class starts out as dominant in both type and token frequency over the weak dental suffix. There is no need to assume that the strong system has irregularized for the weak inflection to get airborne; this irregularization may rather be the result and subsequent catalyst of the rise of the weak inflection.


Branch campuses can thrive in the extremely competitive environment of higher education, because of their commitment to access and their relatively low cost of operation. Success, however, depends on understanding the preferences of adult learners and other place bound students. With targeted programs, focused services, carefal financial management, and a solid-marketing plan, branches can be an integral part of enrollment management, as well as an important contributor to the institutional bottom line.


Strength and slip behaviors of subduction megathrusts are controlled by the physical properties and stress state not only of the fault zones themselves but also the adjacent wall rocks in overriding and subducting plates. In the Nankai Trough, a 3 km deep riser borehole at Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Site C0002 was drilled into the Kumano fore‐arc basin and the underlying accretionary prism. We quantify the full in situ stress tensor and pore pressure at Site C0002 by integrating drilling data, geophysical logging, and downhole measurements using empirical relations that describe sediment compaction behavior as a function of loading path. The Kumano Basin is loaded in uniaxial vertical strain conditions, whereas the prism below is loaded with greater differential stress, has a modestly elevated pore pressure, and lies in a strike‐slip faulting regime. This can be reconciled with slip on the megathrust fault if the horizontal stresses vary with time or depth and/or if shear stress along the megathrust is low.


This report presents some of our results of the prolonged use of large amounts of urea in cases of cardiac dropsy. We shall emphasize, among other matters, chiefly three points; first, that the diuretic properties of this drug do not weaken during months and several years of practically uninterrupted use; second, that there follow no demonstrable deleterious effects on the patient; more specifically, the renal structures remain unaltered and their function unimpaired, and third, that urea acts, alone or in combination with other agents, in selected cases, as an excellent prophylactic in preventing the reaccumulation of edema. Of the many patients in our wards who were subjected to treatment with urea, we are reporting at this time the cases of five in full. These cases will illustrate the methods and results. METHODS Nearly all the patients in this study have been at the Montefiore Hospital for many months or several


Domain language model (LM) adaptation consists in re-estimating probabilities of a baseline LM to better match the peculiarities of a given broad topic of interest. To do so, a yet common strategy consists in retrieving adaptation texts from the Web based on a given domain representative seed text. In this report, we extensively study this process by analyzing the impact of numerous parameters. The domain adaptation is carried on a set of videos dealing with business and management. The achieved results mainly show which Web querying strategies perform the best and how significantly the supervision level of the adaptation process impacts the overall performances.


We address two central notions of fairness in the literature of nondeterministic fully observable domains. The first, which we call stochastic fairness, is classical, and assumes an environment which operates probabilistically using possibly unknown probabilities. The second, which is language-theoretic, assumes that if an action is taken from a given state infinitely often then all its possible outcomes should appear infinitely often; we call this state-action fairness. While the two notions coincide for standard reachability goals, they differ for temporally extended goals. This important difference has been overlooked in the planning literature and has led to the use of a product-based reduction in a number of published algorithms which were stated for state-action fairness, for which they are incorrect, while being correct for stochastic fairness. We remedy this and provide a correct optimal algorithm for solving state-action fair planning for ltl/ltlf goals, as well as a correct proof of the lower bound of the goal-complexity. Our proof is general enough that it also provides, for the no-fairness and stochastic-fairness cases, multiple missing lower bounds and new proofs of known lower bounds. Overall, we show that stochastic fairness is better behaved than state-action fairness.


The job guarantee (JG) is a public option for jobs. It is a permanent, federally funded, and locally administered program that supplies voluntary employment opportunities on demand for all who are ready and willing to work at a living wage. While it is first and foremost a jobs program, it has the potential to be transformative by advancing the public purpose and improving working conditions, people's everyday lives, and the economy as a whole. This working paper provides a blueprint for operationalizing the proposal. It addresses frequently asked questions and common concerns. It begins by outlining some of the core propositions in the existing literature that have motivated the JG proposal. These propositions suggest specific design and implementation features. (Some questions are answered in greater detail in appendix III). The paper presents the core objectives and expected benefits of the program, and suggests an institutional structure, funding mechanism, and project design and administration.


In an article published in Cancer ahead of print on June 30, 2011, Wong et al report the distinct presence of several viral microRNAs encoded by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) genome in the serum from patients bearing EBVassociated nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPCs). These findings open exciting perspectives for use of viral microRNAs as new tools for early NPC diagnosis, prognosis assessment, and treatment monitoring. The report by Wong et al is in part convergent with our previously published data about the detection of the EBVmicroRNA BART7 in plasma samples from patients with NPC. However, there are differences. In contrast to Wong et al, we have observed a low but significant level of BART7 amplification from nonNPC donor samples. The primers used for reverse transcription and polymerase chain reaction were identical in both studies, but 1 obvious difference in our protocol was that RNA was extracted from plasma instead of from serum samples. We are curious to know whether, according to the authors, RNA extraction from serum samples is a better option to increase specific detection of circulating microRNA-BARTs among patients with NPC. Another potential factor of inconsistency is the use of a preamplification step after retrotranscription of RNAs. Wong et al refer to a protocol described by Kroh et al that mentions this preamplification procedure as optional. In our own study, we have skipped this step; however, it would be interesting to know explicitly whether or not it has been performed byWong et al.


Stochastic versions of the unit commitment problem have been advocated for addressing the uncertainty presented by high levels of wind power penetration. However, little work has been done to study trade-offs between computational complexity and the quality of solutions obtained as the number of probabilistic scenarios is varied. Here, we describe extensive experiments using real publicly available wind power data from the Bonneville Power Administration. Solution quality is measured by re-enacting day-ahead reliability unit commitment (which selects the thermal units that will be used each hour of the next day) and real-time economic dispatch (which determines generation levels) for an enhanced WECC-240 test system in the context of a production cost model simulator; outputs from the simulation, including cost, reliability, and computational performance metrics, are then analyzed. Unsurprisingly, we find that both solution quality and computational difficulty increase with the number of probabilistic scenarios considered. However, we find unexpected transitions in computational difficulty at a specific threshold in the number of scenarios, and report on key trends in solution performance characteristics. Our findings are novel in that we examine these tradeoffs using real-world wind power data in the context of an out-of-sample production cost model simulation, and are relevant for both practitioners interested in deploying and researchers interested in developing scalable solvers for stochastic unit commitment.


This paper discusses generating document structure from annotated media repositories in a domain-independent manner. This approaches the vision of a universal RDF browser. We start by applying the search-and-browse paradigm established for the WWW to RDF presentation. Furthermore, this paper adds to this paradigm the clustering-based derivation of document structure from search returns, providing simple but domain-independent hypermedia generation from RDF stores. While such generated presentations hardly meet the standards of those written by humans, they provide quick access to media repositories when the required document has not yet been written. The resulting system allows a user to specify a topic for which it generates a hypermedia document providing guided navigation through virtually any RDF repository. The impact for content providers is that as soon as one adds new media items and their annotations to a repository, they become immediately available for automatic integration into subsequently requested presentations.


Community Clouds, usually built upon community networks, operate in a more disperse environment compared to a data center Cloud, with lower capacity and less reliable servers separated by a more heterogeneous and less predictable network interconnection. These differences raise challenges when deploying Cloud applications in a community Cloud. Open Stack Swift is an open source distributed storage system, which provides stand alone highly available and scalable storage from Open Stack Cloud computing components. Swift is initially designed as a backend storage system operating in a data center Cloud environment. In this work, we illustrate the performance and sensitivity of Open Stack Swift in a typical community Cloud setup. The evaluation of Swift is conducted in a simulated environment, using the most essential environment parameters that distinguish a community Cloud environment from a data center Cloud environment.


Abstract. Probably by dint of seductive appearances and overflowing passion for cartography, by dint of instant accessibility to all kind of maps and any graphic representations commonly called 'maps' and finally by dint of confusions between what is an IMAGE and what is a DATA, everyone forgets that, at the dawn of a cartographic project, 'THE MAP STILL DOESN'T EXIST'. For it to exist, a scope of collective work and essential skills are necessary. First of all, the aim of a mapping project must be identified. Its specifications, statement of requirements, its schedule of conditions must be sealed by a contract between an orderer and a cartographer.The objective of this presentation is to recall how a keyboard is neither a magic thought nor a magic wand. Clicking on it will never finalize our work without us, cartographers, but engages us to follow series of timeless execution process over the entire duration of the cartographic production, in anticipating each action.Our work consists in making every effort, by all the necessary technical and human means, to gather the knowledge of a subject (or several) to 'Map-draw' with the ultimate goal of returning this acquired knowledge to the readers. Their eye has to find at first glance the information sought. Indeed, the more beautiful and easier to grasp the map is, the more it will be consulted with pleasure.Through a range of cartographic memories, the following characteristic examples of out-of-standard cartographic productions will detail the pertinence of this meticulous cartographical articulation.


The immediate control of bleeding from oesophageal varices relies heavily on the vasoconstrictor arginine vasopressin (argipressin, Pitressin), which stops haemorrhage in 40–60% of cases and reduces transfusion requirements. However, without further treatment, such as injection sclerotherapy, rebleeding is very common and treatment with vasopressin alone does not decrease mortality.1,2 Furthermore the vasoconstrictor effect of vasopressin is associated with serious complications such as myocardial ischaemia and gangrene. Less serious but distressing side effects such as abdominal cramps and vomiting seldom necessitate cessation of therapy and show that the vasopressin is active. This article assesses a related drug, terlipressin (Glypressin - Ferring), for which the manufacturer claims important advantages.


One important innovation in information and communication technology developed over the past decade was organizational rather than merely technological. Open source production is remarkable because it converts a private commodity (typically software) into a public good. A number of studies examine the factors motivating contributions to open source production goods, but we argue it is important to understand the causes of high quality contributions to such goods. In this paper, we analyze quality in the open source online encyclopedia Wikipedia. We find that, for users who create an online persona through a registered user name, the quality of contributions increases as the number of contributions increase, consistent with the idea of experts motivated by reputation and committed to the Wikipedia community. Unexpectedly, however, we find the highest quality contributions come from the vast numbers of anonymous " Good Samaritans " who contribute infrequently. Our findings that Good Samaritans as well as committed " Zealots " contribute high quality content to Wikipedia suggest that open source production is remarkable as much for its organizational as its technological innovation that enables vast numbers of anonymous one-time contributors to create high quality, essentially public goods.


This paper presents analysis and synthesis procedures for a class of sequential programs. These procedures aid in the design of programs for parallel computer systems. In particular, the interactions of a given program with other programs or circuits in a system can be described precisely. The basis for this work is a model for parallel computer systems in which the operation of each component is described by a flow table and the components interact by changing values on interconnecting lines. The details of this model are discussed in another paper [Stanford University Department of Computer Science report STAN-CS-70-160]. The analysis procedure produces a flow table description of a program. In program synthesis, a flow table description is converted to a sequential program. Using flow table design procedures, a control program for the two-program mutual exclusion problem is produced.


By the effects of globalization, countries become more and more integrated into each other, which in turn offer big opportunities to international corporations to make business across the borders. Game Outlet Europe AB, based in Karlstad, is one of them, which also operate internationally. It is the leading distributor in Europe for PC and console games in the low and mid price segments. This thesis is based on the issue of investigating whether or not Game Outlet's current business concept called the "pallet concept", would be feasible to apply in Poland. In order to answer that main question, we designed a problem statement with its underlying sub questions. In order to make good conclusions, we started to theoretically investigate the cultural differences and the consumer behaviour within Poland compared to Sweden.Poland is a country in change and has just recently joined the EU and has been targeted as an emerging market by western corporations. But before launching one's business operations in a developing country, which has for example no tradition of learning the English language until recently and possessing a different history, one must consider the cultural differences and the difference of consumer behaviour.Our theoretical research shows that the Polish society in general has lower purchase power and weaker financial situation than Swedish society. Poland as an emerging market is considered by international companies to be a potential market, but those who seek potential will need to compare and contrast the prices so that they match the Polish people's purchase power. However, an interesting observation that is in the interest of Game Outlet, are the Polish consumers' willingness to pay for a classical and new released games. When compared to Swedish respondents, they are almost equally willing to pay for classical games. As we see it, Game Outlet has all the potential to achieve successful expansion. We also suggest a business model which should act as a recommendation for Game Outlet to consider. Most of the conclusions verify the strength and pros about Game Outlets business model, but some suggestions are new and created by ourselves.


Introduction: Lymphatic filariasis (LF) and intestinal parasite infections are most prevalent neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in Oceania. Since 1999, Pacific Programme to Eliminate Lymphatic Filariasis (PacELF) has successfully addressed critical issues and countries are able to stop mass drug administration (MDA) after a decade of the implementation. Transmission assessment surveys (TAS) is a standard methodology to assess whether MDA has reduced the LF prevalence to levels equal to or below the critical cut-off threshold. The aim of this thesis is to present the successful examples of expanding TAS as a pragmatic platform in providing insights into the epidemiology of the key communicable diseases in Oceania. Method: In Wallis Futuna (WAF), grade 2-5 students for the TAS and grade 4-5 for the hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection prevalence assessment were enrolled. The timeliness of vaccination was defined as being vaccinated no later than 4 weeks in comparison to the recommended immunization schedules. In Fiji, all class 1 and 2 students were targeted in 77, 82, and 50 selected schools for the Western TAS 2, Central TAS 1 and Northern Division TAS 2, where same students of 30, 20, and 20 schools were subsampled for stool sample collection. For the diagnosis of intestinal parasite infections, stool samples were examined by coproscopy. In the Eastern, stool samples of class 1-8 students in 24 schools were additionally collected. For the selected stool samples of the Western Division, the Baermann-concentration technique (BC) was added to diagnose strongyloidiasis. All positive samples for intestinal parasites and a systematic sub-sample (every 10th) from the Western Division were transferred to the reference laboratory for real-time PCR. Results: In Wallis Futuna (WAF), TAS 1 had a passing result. The overall HBsAg prevalence was close to 2%. The HBV vaccine coverage for 3 doses was 96%, and the proportion of timeliness was 65%. In the Western Division of Fiji, 7 children in an island out of 3,242 were circulating filariasis antigen (CFA) positive. In the Central and Northern Divisions, the results were all passing, with 2 and no CFA positives, respectively. As for the assessment of intestinal parasite infections in Fiji, 12.4% of children in 3 Divisions were found positive either with Ascaris or hookworm eggs. The overall any intestinal protozoan infection prevalence was 4.8%, and the Giardia infection prevalence was 1.6%. The spatial analysis confirmed that there are still areas with high endemicity at school levels, where Ascaris infection was more clustered in the Central, and Eastern Division and hookworm in the Northern, and hotspots of Giardia infections were clustered around in the urban centres of the Western Division. As for associated factors with STH infections, shoes wearing and main water supply at home from Fiji Water Authority had protective effects. For strongyloidiasis, BC found 1 positive and the overall S. stercoralis infection prevalence via real-time PCR was 3.5 %, from which also higher levels of polyparasitism were reported as well as per species specificity. Discussion and conclusion: The study shows that LF programmes in WAF and in Fiji are on track towards achieving the global goal of LF elimination as a public health problem. For WAF, the HBV infection prevalence is close to meet the regional goal of elimination, but timely vaccination should be more actively encouraged. As for STH infections in Fiji, a low-level of endemicity was observed, but the infections at schools were clustered. Overall any intestinal protozoan infection prevalence was not high, but there were hotspots of Giardia infection clustered, possibly due to contaminated water or foods following the floods caused by a cyclone. An analysis of factors associated STH infections in Fiji suggesting that there is a need to urgently resume preventive chemotherapy for the population at risk as well as to deliver integrated WASH interventions. Given that the estimated prevalence of S. stercoralis infections is endemic (>1 %) in Fiji, some 1.5K children are likely to have strongyloidiasis, implying the needs for curative measures, which was further assessed by molecular technique. In conclusion, LF TAS is a practical platform for assessing epidemiological features of the key communicable diseases in Oceania and should be actively utilized in accessing school-aged children in monitoring and evaluating public health interventions


Affective polarization is a rising threat to political discourse and democracy. Public figures have expressed that "conservatives think liberals are stupid, and liberals think conservatives are evil." However, four studies (N = 1,660)—including a representative sample—reveal evidence that both sides view political opponents as more unintelligent than immoral. Perceiving the other side as "more stupid than evil" occurs both in general judgments (Studies 1, 3, and 4) and regarding specific issues (Study 2). Study 4 also examines "meta-perceptions" of how Democrats and Republicans disparage one another, revealing that people correctly perceive that both Democrats and Republicans see each other as more unintelligent than immoral, although they exaggerate the extent of this negativity. These studies clarify the way everyday partisans view each other, an important step in designing effective interventions to reduce political animosity.


This paper attempts to show why it is highly unlikely that a disaster can become a catastrophe. We first put forward an economic concept of disaster localization. This shows that a localized disaster is unlikely to affect the macro economy in any significant way and that economic development itself tends to make most disasters localized as an incidental consequence of its endogenous processes. We then show that the effect of current globalization on vulnerability seems to be double-edged. It may increase local vulnerability by disenfranchising communities and adding new sources of economic instability. But it may also speed up the downgrading of vulnerability at the national level by contributing to upgrade localization, further reducing the possibility of a catastrophe. It is therefore, difficult to imagine a realistic scenario in which a disaster could become catastrophic, even less so in developed countries.


Liver cancer is the fifth most common neoplastic disease and the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death. Identification of the key molecular targets involved in hepatocarcinogenesis has significant therapeutic implications. In this study, by conducting immunohistochemistry, we show that the neuronal protein, synuclein-gamma (SNCG), is abnormally expressed in a high percentage of liver cancer (46/70, 65.7%). The expression of SNCG in liver cancer exhibits a clear stage-specific pattern of low expression in stage I (1/19, 5.3%) and high expression in stages III to IV (44/50, 88%). Importantly, all patients with metastatic diseases expressed SNCG in their primary tumors (15/15, 100%). Consistent with the IHC results, RT-PCR assays demonstrate that SNCG mRNA is highly expressed in the tumor tissue of advanced hepatocellular carcinomas. Analyses of the methylation status of the CpG island of the SNCG gene by methylation-specific PCR confirmed that all tumor samples contained the demethylated gene. To determine whether demethylation of SNCG is an early event of genetic abnormality in the process of hepatocarcinogenesis, we examined the methylation status of SNCG in 70 non-malignant cirrhotic liver samples and showed that 64.3% cirrhotic liver samples contained the partially or completely demethylated gene. We further show that SNCG expression in liver cancer is not restricted to HBV- and HCV-infected tumors, implying the involvement of other hepatocarcinogenic risk factors in SNCG gene reactivation. Utilizing human hepatoma-derived cell line HepG2 as an in vitro model, we demonstrate that hepatic carcinogens aflatoxin B1 and N-nitrosodimethylamine (DMN) are strong inducers of SNCG expression. Collectively, these new findings suggest that SNCG protein expression in primary tumors is a strong indicator of distant metastasis and demethylation of SNCG CpG island is an early sign of genetic abnormality in liver cirrhosis preceding hepatocarcinogenesis. Our studies also suggest that inducing demethylation of SNCG by hepatocarcinogens may represent one underlying mechanism for the aberrant expression of SNCG in HCC.


The nanometer carbon black (CB) N220 of different content was employed to prepare carbon black N220/epoxy resin (CB N220/EP) composites by filling-mixing method. The structure of CB N220 and its dispersion in epoxy resin were analyzed by TEM and tensile fracture surface of the composites was analyzed by SEM. Experimental results showed that CB N220 was dispersed in epoxy resin homogenously in the form of CB particles and it formed a good interface with epoxy resin in the presence of coupling agent (KH-550). Using of CB N220 enhanced the mechanical and thermal properties of the composites, for tensile strength, elongation at break, impact strength and flexural strength of the composites filled with 2 wt% CB N220 reached a maximum values( 82Mpa、3%、20 KJ•m-2、107Mpa), a rise of 32.3%、39.6%、88.7%、10.3%, respectively, compared to pristine epoxy resin.


Introduction: Tissue filler injections are among the most commonly performed procedures in Facial Plastic Surgery. No single animal model has emerged as an accepted standard to evaluate tissue filler longevity. To validate a rat model three hyaluronic acid fillers with different known residence times in humans were tested. Experimental Design: In vivo animal study to compare residence time of three hyaluronic acid fillers to published residence times in humans. Methods: Two hundred microliters of Restylane (n=20), Captique (n=19), and Juvederm (n=19) were injected into the dermis of Sprague-Dawley rats. The three-dimensions of the blebs were measured at Day 0, Day 1, and a weekly basis for 7 weeks. Volume, volume ratio, and filler thickness were analyzed. Histological and statistical analyses were also performed. Results: Histology demonstrated injections in the thin rat dermis with migration into the subcutaneous space. Captique's average residence time was 2 weeks, while Restylane and Juvederm had measurable volumes through 6 weeks. Both Restylane and Juvederm maintained significantly greater volumes and volume ratios than Captique through the duration of the study. Conclusion: Captique's residence time was significantly shorter than that of Restylane and Juvederm, which had comparable residence times. While the longevities of the three fillers were not of the same duration in the rat as human residence times, the relative duration of the fillers was comparable therefore establishing the rat as a valid animal model to compare various tissue filler materials. The shorter residence time in the rat dermis/subcutaneous space allows for accurate rapid preclinical testing of tissue filler materials. A Novel Animal Model for Hyaluronic Acid Filler Longevity AT Hillel1, Z Nahas1, J Petsche2, S Unterman2, JH Elisseeff2 1Department of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery, 2 Department of Biomedical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine


The Onsite and Decentralised Sewerage and Recycling (ODSR) Conference was held in Benalla, Victoria in October and was very well attended by 220+ delegates from all states in Australia, as well as from the USA, Canada and New Zealand. The conference continues the strong link that has developed with professionals from these countries, which I first observed at the International Water Association (IWA)'s 6th International Specialized Conference on Small Water & Wastewater Systems in Fremantle in February 2004. The then AWA National Onsite Interest Group (NOSSIG), Onsite New Zealand and the US's National Onsite Wastewater Recycling Association (NOWRA) participated in a joint effort with the conference.


We deploy algebraic complexity theoretic techniques for constructing symmetric determinantal representations of weakly-skew circuits, which include formulas. Our representations produce matrices of much smaller dimensions than those given in the convex geometry literature when applied to polynomials having a concise representation (as a sum of monomials, or more generally as an arithmetic formula or a weakly-skew circuit). These representations are valid in any field of characteristic different from 2. In characteristic 2 we are led to an almost complete solution to a question of Buergisser on the VNP-completeness of the partial permanent. In particular, we show that the partial permanent cannot be VNP-complete in a finite field of characteristic 2 unless the polynomial hierarchy collapses.


The International Germ Cell Consensus Classification (IGCCC) of testicular germ cell tumors (TGCT) in 1997 included three serum tumor markers, serum lactate dehydrogenase catalytic concentration (S-LD), serum alpha fetoprotein concentration (S-AFP), and serum human chorionic gonadotropin concentration (S-hCG). The recommendation should be implemented for all patients with TGCT and is also useful for patients with ovarian and extragonadal germ cell tumors. A fourth serum tumor marker for TGCT, S-LD isoenzyme 1 (S-LD-1), is also relevant for TGCT. Patients with seminoma have a raised S-LD-1 more often than a raised S-AFP and S-hCG, whereas patients with nonseminoma have a raised S-AFP more often than a raised S-LD-1 and S-hCG. A new model combining IGCCC and S-LD-1 predicts survival better than previous staging systems. LD-1 is related to a characteristic chromosomal abnormality in all types of TGCT, a high copy number of chromosome 12p. In contrast, AFP and hCG are found mainly in nonseminomatous germ cell tumors and they related to the histologic differentiation of the tumors. The different biologic background for the serum tumor markers may contribute to the difference in their clinical behavior.


Aircraft emissions impact the atmosphere in a variety of ways, including enhancing greenhouse gases, especially water vapor and carbon dioxide, in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere, forming persistent contrails, and altering the distributions of reactive chemical species, which change the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere. This paper summarizes some recent findings related to the impacts of aircraft exhaust on the chemistry of the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere (UTLS). Of particular note are the improvements in our understanding of production of nitrogen oxides (NOx ~ NO + NO2) by lightning and of the influence of long-range transport on background abundances of reactive species. Studies have also identified gaps in our knowledge, including the behavior of HOx (OH and HO2) species at high NOx and discrepancies in measurements of water vapor in the relatively dry UTLS. Lack of detailed observations of species, such as the halogens chlorine and bromine, limits our ability to assess t...


The occurrence of epizoic ciliates on the juvenile flounder, Platichthys flesus L., 1758, collected monthly by fishing net in Sinop's Sarikum Lagoon Lake during the period from May 2003 to April 2004, was investigated. Five epizoic ciliate species, Trichodina jadranica (Raabe, 1958) Haider, 1964; Trichodina domerguei Wallengren, 1897; Riboscyphidia sp.; Ambiphrya sp.; and Vorticella sp., were found after examination of 296 juvenile flounder. Among these, T. jadranica was the dominant species. The prevalence and mean intensity values of the 5 epizoic ciliates were given as pooled data for 2 groups, namely mobiline ciliates and sessiline ciliates. Mobiline ciliates were commonly found on the gills of juvenile flounders, whereas sessiline ciliates were found only on fins. The highest prevalence and mean intensity levels of mobiline ciliates were recorded in the winter and spring seasons. Sessiline ciliates were absent in winter. The largest-sized juvenile flounder among the established 6 length classes had a higher intensity of mobiline ciliates. This study is the first on the epizoic ciliate fauna present on the juvenile flounder in Turkey. While T. jadranica is a new parasite record, the juvenile flounder is a new host record for T. domerguei in Turkey.


This 15th Annual SC conference brings together a worldwide community to celebrate its achievements and envision the future of high performance computing, networking, and data technologies. Our theme, "From Terabytes to Insights," emphasizes the opportunity to use technology to transform an ever-increasing flow of data into the knowledge that will impact education, science, business, government, and every aspect of society.The technical program features an outstanding set of speakers - in plenary, masterworks, and papers -- who address key technical, policy, and real-world application issues of HPC. Tutorials and the Education program provide unparalleled opportunities for learning at and beyond the conference. Panel discussions and Birds of a Feather sessions are opportunities for community interaction and discussion. The Awards program recognizes the highest achievements in our field and at the conference.We feature a record number of exhibits from the world's top technology companies, cutting-edge start-ups, research centers, government labs, and top universities, providing an incomparable view of our country's accomplishments. Posters are integrated into the new 'Academic Village' section of the exhibition. And SCinet 2002, in place for the duration of the conference, is one of the most powerful networks on earth.The IntelliBadge™ demonstration project will link 'smart' sensor technology to on-the-floor computing and visualization resources as a service to attendees. Technical program attendees who participate in IntelliBadge will be able to pinpoint events that meet their needs and interests, locate people with similar interests, and even find restaurants to suit their tastes.We invite you to enjoy colorful, historic Baltimore, a city of great writers (Edgar Allen Poe, H. L. Mencken), great musicians (Eubie Blake, Billie Holiday), and the home of Fort McHenry, where Francis Scott Key penned "The Star Spangled Banner." The city's Inner Harbor is a perfect example of a rejuvenated inner city neighborhood. Conference hotels, restaurants, and entertainment facilities such as Harborplace, the National Aquarium, and the Maryland Science Center are an easy walk from the convention center.So, whether you want to build the world's most powerful supercomputer, develop lasting scientific collaborations, or simply glimpse the future technologies that will shape our world, you have come to the right place - SC2002 in Baltimore!


A cellular automaton (CA) recently developed by D.H. Rothman and J.M. Keller (1988) simulates the flow of two incompressible, immiscible, viscous fluids in two dimensions. This automaton has been simulated on the CM-2 Connection Machine using a sequence of logical operations and table lookups to determine the state of a CA site from its old state and those of its neighbors. The logical operations are performed in parallel by each of the Connection Machine processors, while the table lookups use the indirect addressing capabilities among groups of 32 processors. A description is given of CA fluids, including the issue of isotropy, the choice of a rule set, and the averaging procedure used to obtain hydrodynamical quantities. The CM-2 Connection Machine is then described, with emphasis on the indirect addressing capabilities of the machine. A complete description is also given of the Rothman-Keller model for two-phase flow. It is shown how the indirect addressing is used in the simulation algorithm, and how a symmetry in the dynamics is used to reduce the size of the lookup tables by a factor of six. A time sequence of results showing the separation of two immiscible phases from an initially homogenized state is presented.<<ETX>>


Background: Despite technical and scientific improvements in neonatal medicine, there is still no efficient treatment for or prevention of neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the protective effect of surfactant on intestinal cells in hypoxia-induced experimental NEC in rats. Methods: The study was performed on Sprague Dawley rat pups divided into three groups. Group 1 served as nonhypoxic controls (n = 15). Group 2 rats (untreated; n = 15) were subjected to hypoxia and reoxygenation (H/O). Group 3 rats (surfactant treated; n = 15) were treated with surfactant (Curosurf; 400 mg/kg enterally) for 5 days and then subjected to H/O. All animals were killed on day 5, and histological and biochemical examinations were performed on intestinal samples. Results: There were no histopathological changes in the control group. The histological findings in untreated rats were similar to those seen in neonatal NEC, with destruction of villi and crypts and extension to the muscularis layer. The mean histological grade of group 1 was 0.2 (range 0–1), and in group 2, it was 2.1 (range 1–3). There was no statistical difference between the histological grades of groups 2 and 3 (p > 0.05). However, there was a difference between the groups that did and did not receive surfactant with regard to superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GSH) and malondialdehyde (MDA). Conclusion: Although surfactant did not have a protective effect on histological changes in hypoxic neonatal rat intestine, it improves biochemical markers such as SOD and GSH and reduces MDA levels.


In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems, the receiver must extract each transmitted signal from received signals. Iterative signal detection with belief propagation (BP) can improve the error rate performance, by increasing the number of detection and decoding iterations in MIMO systems. This number of iterations is, however, limited in actual systems because each additional iteration increases latency, receiver size, and so on. This paper proposes a convergence acceleration technique that can achieve better error rate performance with fewer iterations than the conventional iterative signal detection. Since the Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR) of one bit propagates to all other bits with BP, improving some LLRs improves overall decoder performance. In our proposal, all the coded bits are divided into groups and only one group is detected in each iterative signal detection whereas in the conventional approach, each iterative signal detection run processes all coded bits, simultaneously. Our proposal increases the frequency of initial LLR update by increasing the number of iterative signal detections and decreasing the number of coded bits that the receiver detects in one iterative signal detection. Computer simulations show that our proposal achieves better error rate performance with fewer detection and decoding iterations than the conventional approach.


Postrevolutionary Paris witnessed a brief flowering of commercial gardens, precursors
to the modern-day amusement park, which cultivated nature, exercise, and health
in an urbanizing context. Bridging the eighteenth-century jardin-spectacle and the Second
Empire network of public parks, pleasure grounds such as the Grand Tivoli and the Beaujon
garden offered a range of activities including gymnastic games, bicycling, and, most
strikingly of all, exhilarating rides on early roller coasters known as montagnes russes. Situated
on the periphery of a rapidly densifying city and abstracting natural forms for urban
consumption, these rides integrated discourses of hygiene and recreation. Analyzing these
short-lived curiosities from the vantage points of medical, cultural, and urban history, this
article argues that the montagnes russes helped disseminate modern conceptions of health
and gender in popular culture.


The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity touched down at Meridiani Planum in January 2004 and since then has been conducting observations with the Athena science payload. The rover has traversed more than 5 km, carrying out the first outcrop-scale investigation of sedimentary rocks on Mars. The rocks of Meridiani Planum are sandstones formed by eolian and aqueous reworking of sand grains that are composed of mixed fine-grained siliciclastics and sulfates. The siliciclastic fraction was produced by chemical alteration of a precursor basalt. The sulfates are dominantly Mg-sulfates and also include Ca-sulfates and jarosite. The stratigraphic section observed to date is dominated by eolian bedforms, with subaqueous current ripples exposed near the top of the section. After deposition, interaction with groundwater produced a range of diagenetic features, notably the hematite-rich concretions known as "blueberries." The bedrock at Meridiani is highly friable and has undergone substantial erosion by wind-transported basaltic sand. This sand, along with concretions and concretion fragments eroded from the rock, makes up a soil cover that thinly and discontinuously buries the bedrock. The soil surface exhibits both ancient and active wind ripples that record past and present wind directions. Loose rocks on the soil surface are rare and include both impact ejecta and meteorites. While Opportunity's results show that liquid water was once present at Meridiani Planum below and occasionally at the surface, the environmental conditions recorded were dominantly arid, acidic, and oxidizing and would have posed some significant challenges to the origin of life. Copyright 2006 by the American Geophysical Union.


Behavioural difficulties are seen as hallmarks of many neurodevelopmental conditions. Differences in functional brain organisation have been observed in these conditions, but little is known about how they are related to a child's profile of behavioural difficulties. We investigated whether behavioural difficulties are associated with how the brain is functionally organised in an intentionally heterogeneous and transdiagnostic sample of 957 neurodevelopmentally at-risk children aged 5-15. We used consensus community detection to derive data-driven profiles of behavioural difficulties and constructed functional connectomes from a subset of 238 children with resting-state functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data. We identified three distinct profiles of behaviour that were characterised by principal difficulties with hot executive function, cool executive function, and learning. Global organisation of the functional connectome did not differ between the groups, but multivariate patterns of connectivity at the level of Intrinsic Connectivity Networks (ICNs), nodes, and hubs significantly predicted group membership in held-out data. Fronto-parietal connector hubs were under-connected in all groups relative to a comparison sample, and children with hot vs cool executive function difficulties were distinguished by connectivity in ICNs associated with cognitive control, emotion processing, and social cognition. This demonstrates both general and specific neurodevelopmental risk factors in the functional connectome.


In this work, we designed a self-assembly peptide hydrogel encapsulated paclitaxel (PTX) and suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) for cancer co-delivery (Nap–PTX–SAHA). The hydrogels exhibited uniform nanofibers that entangle to form stable networks and pore microstructures (about 140–180 nm) resulting in absorption and storage of hydrophobic drugs. The circular dichroism (CD) spectra of hydrogels exhibit β-turn-like features. Nap–PTX–SAHA hydrogels achieved control over different types of drugs loading and released by diffusion and relaxation processes. Hydrogels exhibited better therapeutic effect and greater synergetic effect compared to the free drugs in vitro and in vivo. Injection of the hydrogels appears to achieve long-term drug release with higher efficacy and better biocompatibility than free drugs. As for the drug biodistribution studies in tumor-bearing mice, the PTX and SAHA from Nap–PTX–SAHA gels uptake in liver, lung and tumor were more than that of free PTX and SAHA. In comparison with free PTX or SAHA, the Nap–PTX–SAHA gels lower the uptake of released drug significantly in the heart, spleen, and kidney to reduce the cardiotoxicity and renaltoxicity. In conclusion, the Nap–PTX–SAHA gels certainly reduce the side effects of PTX and SAHA, enhance synergistic anticancer effects and suppress the drug resistance of PTX. This strategy can be a basis for designing appropriate clinical trials and will hold promise in nanomedicine for different drug combinations.


Adults are able to use visual prosodic cues in the speaker's face to segment speech. Furthermore, eye-tracking data suggest that learners will shift their gaze to the mouth during visual speech segmentation. Although these findings suggest that the mouth may be viewed more than the eyes or nose during visual speech segmentation, no study has examined the direct functional importance of individual features; thus, it is unclear which visual prosodic cues are important for word segmentation. In this study, we examined the impact of first removing (Experiment 1) and then isolating (Experiment 2) individual facial features on visual speech segmentation. Segmentation performance was above chance in all conditions except for when the visual display was restricted to the eye region (eyes only condition in Experiment 2). This suggests that participants were able to segment speech when they could visually access the mouth but not when the mouth was completely removed from the visual display, providing evidence that visual prosodic cues conveyed by the mouth are sufficient and likely necessary for visual speech segmentation.


Biodiesel was synthesized using waste chicken oil and ethyl alcohol as reactives as well as denatonium benzoate and tin particles as catalysts in 500 mL three neck flask. The reaction mixtures were mechanically stirred at 200 rpm during 15 minutes at 30, 40, 50, y 60 o C, after that the products were filtered trough a 400 m mesh an then casted in a separating funnel in order to obtain two layers corresponding to glycerol and Biodiesel. The tin catalyst particles were observed by optical microscopy. The biodiesel and glycerol were characterized using refractive index, pH, Fourier transformer infrared spectrometry (FTIR), while the viscosity was determined in a Brookfield viscosimeter and density using a picnometer. The results suggest that at a low concentration of denatonuim benzoate (7 ppm) the reaction will occur only if tin is present at all test temperatures. The pH of biodiesel obtained was 6, similar to petrodiesel used commonly in diesel motors.


This paper studies the co-movement of intra-Asian business cycles. Based on the regional bilateral trade statistics and using three de-trending techniques to examine several macroeconomic fundamentals, the negative trade effects prevailing in the cases of economic activity such as real GDP and industrial production indicate that tighter intraAsian trade may most likely lead to more idiosyncratic business cycles and hence lower correlations of economic activity between Asian nations. Given this result, it is believed that for the foreseeable future, the creation of an Asian-Pacific monetary union and the corresponding currency area may be unsuitable and will not be recommended.


Abstract Not Available – First paragraph follows:
THE USE OF ALFALFA VARIETIES resistant to the alfalfa weevil (Hypera brunneipennis (Boh.)) offers a sure, inexpensive means of controlling this pest. Results of work conducted at the University of California and elsewhere show that development of varieties resistant to the alfalfa weevil is possible. However, unlike resistance to the spotted alfalfa aphid, where wide differences in reactions were found among plants tested, only relatively small differences in the levels of resistance have been found among plants tested for the alfalfa weevil. These small increments in the levels of resistance will probably have to be combined into a higher level through generations of cross breeding and selection. The number of generations necessary is not known, but a lower number may be possible if use of such varieties is combined with an adequate level of biological control and good crop management.


Thermal variation is a common urban phenomenon, from small to large cities, both due to anthropic origin and natural causes. Due to the influence of COVID 19, there was a reduction in social activities, mainly economic, which impacted both industrial production and the decrease in vehicle circulation. Such changes in habits affect urban thermal dynamics. Thus, the objective of the study is to identify whether the reduction of socioeconomic activities has affected the patterns of thermal variation in Curitiba, Brazil. For this analysis, Landsat 8 images from the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 were used to verify the temperature variation in the region, and the NDVI index was applied to verify the variation in permeable area in the capital. Thus, it was possible to observe that the average total surface temperature of Curitiba decreased by 1.6° C. It was also seen that in some areas the reduction was greater than others, and the variation between minimum and maximum temperature was 13.3° C. It is noteworthy that due to the reduction in green areas in the region, an increase in temperature was expected. The areas with the greatest change in temperature in degrees were those with large roads in Curitiba, places whose population has a low salary compared to more central neighbourhoods in the city. Although the virus raises great concern about the health of the population, a significant decrease in temperature can be observed, mainly caused by the circulation of vehicles.


Comorbid diagnosis of panic disorder and alcoholism is common in clinical practice. There are several theories that explained the comorbidity but no one of them has been completely proved. Sequence of disease manifestation in patients with comorbid pathologies remains unclear but different combinations may exist. Many studies suggest that anxiety disorders precede the development of alcoholism. Moreover, the prospective research has revealed that panic disorder is a highly significant predictor of alcoholism. The effectiveness of therapy was shown to be several times lower in the presence of comorbid anxiety disorders. At the same time, the problems of adequate therapy of patients with comorbid pathology remain unsolved.


Brazil contributes 55% and 60% of the world's production of fresh oranges and orange juice, respectively. In recent years, increasing production costs and low orange prices reduced the citrus producers' profitability. In this paper we investigate the potential for irrigation to improve the profitability of orange production, using data from a sample of 98 citrus producers in the state of Sao Paulo, 34 of whom had adopted irrigation. Based on a translog production function, we use 3SLS to estimate a system of equations comprising the production function and the inverse derived demands for inputs, to obtain the impact of irrigation adoption on productivity. Results show that adopting irrigation increases citrus production by 19%. We estimate production elasticities of capital (.16), labor (.21), land (.26) and fertilizers (.20). We found that by considering yield increases versus both fixed and variable costs of implementation, farmers could expect to break even by the fifth year of irrigation use


As the first approved epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-targeted therapy for nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the clinical development of gefitinib was complex. Advances in scientific understanding of the target biology during its clinical development enabled the identification of a biomarker to define patients most likely to derive benefit from gefitinib. Initial phase II trials showed clinically meaningful anti-tumour activity in 12–18% of unselected pretreated patients with advanced NSCLC at the optimum biological dose (250 mg). Subgroup analyses of these and subsequent phase III trials in unselected patients suggested that EGFR mutation and some clinical characteristics associated with a higher incidence of EGFR mutation (Asian ethnicity, adenocarcinoma histology, never-smoking and female sex) were linked with increased response to gefitinib. Consequently, the IRESSA Pan-Asia Study (IPASS) was conducted in never-smokers or former light-smokers in East Asia who had adenocarcinoma of the lung. IPASS showed that EGFR mutation was the strongest predictor of improved progression-free survival (mutation-positive subgroup hazard ratio (HR) 0.48, 95% CI 0.36–0.64 (p<0.001, n = 261); mutation-negative subgroup HR 2.85, 95% CI 2.05–3.98 (p<0.001, n = 176); interaction test p<0.001) with gefitinib versus carboplatin/paclitaxel as first-line therapy for advanced NSCLC. Important lessons for the development of future personalised medicines are discussed.


We consider tunneling in a hybrid system consisting of a superconductor with two or more probe electrodes which can be either normal metals or polarized ferromagnets. In particular we study transport at subgap voltages and temperatures. Besides Andreev pair tunneling at each contact, in multi-probe structures subgap transport involves additional channels, which are due to coherent propagation of two particles (electrons or holes), each originating from a different probe electrode. The relevant processes are electron cotunneling through the superconductor and conversion into a Cooper pair of two electrons stemming from different probes. These processes are non-local and decay when the distance between the pair of involved contacts is larger than the superconducting coherence length. The conductance matrix of a three-terminal hybrid structure is calculated. The multi-probe processes enhance the conductance of each contact. If the contacts are magnetically polarized the contribution of the various conduction channels can be separately detected.


In 1940, E.E. Green's collection of scale insects, consisting of 6505 microscope slides and 2172 boxes of dry material, was donated to the The Natural History Museum, London, U.K. (then the British Museum (Natural History)). Green was a tea and coffee planter in Sri Lanka, and later became Government Agricultural Entomologist there before retiring to England in 1913. He continued to work on scale insects and became one of the foremost scale insect specialists at the time. His collection includes most of the species he described as new, but is also important because it contains authentic material sent to Green by other contemporary workers on scale insects. The collection is listed as it was when originally donated, firstly giving the names of species that Green recognised at the time, followed by the number of microscope slides, followed by numbers of developmental stages in the material; lastly is provided the current name of each species. The list is divided into the 31 extant families represented in Green's collection.


Food requirement is increasing day by day whereas production of food is not sufficient or decreasing due to various factors. In Nepal, wheat is third major cereal crop after rice and maize both in area and production, and can be grown all over the country successfully during winter season. A study was conducted during 2011/12 to determine the performance of System of Wheat Intensification (SWI) at farmers' field of Bhimasthan, Sindhuli, Nepal. Germinated seed of wheat variety Bhirkuti was shown on 6 th Dec 2011 in the spacing 20x20 cm. Average tiller number and number of effective tillers were 25 and 21 respectively. Average plant height was 61.5 cm. at 65 Days after Sowing. The results of this study showed that plant height, numbers of tillers/ hill, number of productive tillers, panicle length, and production were found higher in SWI method. Yield of wheat variety (Bhirkuti) was found 2.6, 2.4 and 2.3 kg/4 m2 in SWI, Line sown and broadcast practices, respectively. Agronomy Journal of Nepal (Agron JN) Vol. 3. 2013, Page 168-171 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/ajn.v3i0.9019


In this paper the author exploits a natural experiment to study the effects of granting formal property rights on health for households in Uruguay. Titling could improve health outcomes through various channels: housing investment, income or family cohesion. The author found that titling diminishes the probability of suffering several chronic diseases (hypertension, diabetes, sinusitis and rheumatism) but could not find supporting evidence for the housing channel.


Antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis (TB) strains pose a major challenge to TB eradication. Existing US epidemiological models have not fully incorporated the impact of antibiotic-resistance. To develop a more realistic model of US TB dynamics, we formulated a compartmental model integrating single- and multi-drug resistance. We fit twenty-seven parameters to twenty-two years of historical data using a genetic algorithm to minimize a non-differentiable error function. Since counts for several compartments are not available, many parameter combinations achieve very low error. We demonstrate that a crowd of near-best fits can provide compelling new evidence about the ranges of key parameters. While available data is sparse and insufficient to produce point estimates, our crowd of near-best fits computes remarkably consistent predictions about TB prevalence. We believe that our crowd-based approach is applicable to a common problem in mathematical biological research, namely situations where data are sparse and reliable point estimates cannot be directly obtained.


Pricing research suggests incentive compatible evaluations of separate products in so-called monadic designs when consumers' situation-specific WTP is to be elicited in a monopolistic purchase setting. In our study, the lottery-based BDM-mechanism is applied for measuring subjects' WTP for a fast moving consumer good in binding one-on-one interviews at the point of purchase. In previous studies, the validity of elicited WTP measures is commonly checked within subjects with respect to indicators of face and criterion validity (such as interest in buying, preference ratings, compliance rates). In addition, we observed real purchases of a separate validation sample at the point of purchase, thus checking external validity between subjects. As a result, the BDM-based WTPs reveal a sufficient degree of internal face validity. However, the external validity in terms of a goodness of fit between WTP-based predictions and purchases of the validation sample is significantly reduced. Specifically, we observed a substantial underestimation of shares of non-buyers. Hence, a potential bias is indicated, leading to an overrating of consumers' true WTP in the lottery-based BDM-mechanism in the setting of our survey.


Neural circuits within the frontal cortex support the flexible selection of goal-directed behaviors by integrating input from brain regions associated with sensory, emotional, episodic, and semantic memory functions. From a connectomics perspective, determining how these disparate afferent inputs target their synapses to specific cell types in the frontal cortex may prove crucial in understanding circuit-level information processing. Here, we used monosynaptic retrograde rabies mapping to examine the distribution of afferent neurons targeting four distinct classes of local inhibitory interneurons and four distinct classes of excitatory projection neurons in mouse infralimbic cortex. Interneurons expressing parvalbumin, somatostatin, or vasoactive intestinal peptide received a large proportion of inputs from hippocampal regions, while interneurons expressing neuron-derived neurotrophic factor received a large proportion of inputs from thalamic regions. A more moderate hippocampal-thalamic dichotomy was found among the inputs targeting excitatory neurons that project to the basolateral amygdala, lateral entorhinal cortex, nucleus reuniens of the thalamus, and the periaqueductal gray. Together, these results show a prominent bias among hippocampal and thalamic afferent systems in their targeting to genetically or anatomically defined sets of frontal cortical neurons. Moreover, they suggest the presence of two distinct local microcircuits that control how different inputs govern frontal cortical information processing.


Osmotic compounds, such as polyethylene glycol 8000 (PEG-8000), reduce plant elongation by imposing controlled drought. However, the effects of PEG-8000 on nutrient uptake are unknown. Impatiens 'Dazzler Pink' (Impatiens walleriana Hook. F.) were grown hydroponically in modifi ed Hoagland solutions containing 0, 10, 17.5, 25, 32.5, 40, 47.5, 55, or 62.5 g·L -1 PEG-8000. Impatiens were up to 68% shorter than control plants when grown with PEG-8000 in the nutrient solution. Plants treated with PEG-8000 rates above 25 g·L -1 were either damaged or similar in size to seedlings treated with 25 g·L -1 of PEG-8000. Impatiens leaf water potentials (Ψ w ) were positively correlated with plant height. PEG-8000 reduced the electrical conductivity of Hoagland solutions as much as 40% compared to nontreated Hoagland solutions, suggesting that PEG-8000 may bind some of the nutrient ions in solu- tion. Foliar tissue of PEG-treated impatiens contained signifi cantly less nitrogen, calcium, zinc, and copper, but signifi cantly more phosphorus and nickel than tissue from nontreated


The awareness of Web sources in reference service has risen in recent years as many reference librarians have become more Internet-minded. During the reference process, we often ask ourselves: can this question be answered by using the Web? The use of Web sources is expanding the amount of available reference information, enhancing individual libraries' collections, and, hence, providing better user service. There are many benefits in using the Web sources in reference service. There are also some drawbacks. Some useful Web sources are reviewed. The Web, when used properly, provides reference librarians with a valuable resource option to help improve their services in an effective manner.


We consider the problem of throughput-optimal scheduling in wireless networks subject to interference constraints. We model the interference using a family of -hop interference models, under which no two links within a -hop distance can successfully transmit at the same time. For a given , we can obtain a throughput-optimal scheduling policy by solving the well-known maximum weighted matching problem. We show that for , the resulting problems are NP-Hard that cannot be approximated within a factor that grows polynomially with the number of nodes. Interestingly, for geometric unit-disk graphs that can be used to describe a wide range of wireless networks, the problems admit polynomial time approximation schemes within a factor arbitrarily close to 1. In these network settings, we also show that a simple greedy algorithm can provide a 49-approximation, and the maximal matching scheduling policy, which can be easily implemented in a distributed fashion, achieves a guaranteed fraction of the capacity region for "all ." The geometric constraints are crucial to obtain these throughput guarantees. These results are encouraging as they suggest that one can develop low-complexity distributed algorithms to achieve near-optimal throughput for a wide range of wireless networks.


A recent development in the literature has proposed a cosine modulated filter bank - based multicarrier modulation technique with blind equalization capability. However, convergence studies of the proposed blind equalizer has been carried out through computer simulations only. In this paper, we present a thorough study of the blind equalizer by analyzing its associated cost function in detail. We show that the blind equalizer cost function is characterized by two global minima and two local minima. The analysis shows that although there is a chance that the blind equalizer converges to near one of the local minima, the stochastic nature of the adaptation algorithm will eventually result in a drift of the algorithm and convergence towards one of the global minimum points.


Toe tumor is a relatively common, aggressive and locally invasive in camels. The study was planned to investigate some aspects of toe tumor epidemiology. A total of 150 cases of toe tumor in Arabian camel has been reported to Al-Tiba Veterinary Hospital during the period of 20122014. Outpatient cases from different camel breeds (Hazmi, Local, Omani and Sudani). Were diagnosed after planing work-up for clinical and pathological investigations. A total of 37493 camles (6249 camel herds) were examined for the presence of toe tumor lesions. The overall prevalence rate of toe tumor in the present study was 0.4%. The prevalence of tumors in the Sudani, Local, Omani and Hazmi breed was 1.87%, 0.51%, 0.34% and 0.3%, respectively. Three different types of toe tumors squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), fibroma and spiny keratoderma were recorded in the present study. SCC showed a higher percentage of toe tumor (76.0 %), followed by Fibroma (21.33 %) and spiny keratoderma (2.67 %). The percentage of SCC was (15.79%, 29.82%, 45.61% and 8.78%) in Hazmi, Local, Omani and Sudani, respectively. Also, 15.62%, 29.82%, 45.61 and 6.25% of Fibroma were diagnosed in Hazmi, Local, Omani and Sudani, respectively, while Sping keratoderma was found only inLocal (75.00%) and Sudani breed (25.00%). The prevalence rate of toe tumor in female and male camels was 0.42% and 0.27%, respectively. The incidence of toe tumor was 101 (67.33%) in forelimb and 49 (32.67%) in the hind limb. The percentage of tumors in the right and left limbs was 88 (58.67%) and 60 (40.00%), respectively, while only 2 (1.33%) of the tumors were found in both limbs at the same time. The incidence of different types of tumors in relation to the position of the toes was (96.67%) in medial and (3.33%) in lateral, respectively. The percentage of toe tumors in left limb was 40.0% and in right limb was 58.67%. The prevalence rate of different types of tumor, according to the age of camel involved was 34 (0.23%), 43 (0.38%), 40 (0.53%) and 33 (0.88%) in the age group 6-9, 10-11, 12-13 and 14-25 years, respectively. The tumors are particularly deleterious in that they can interfere with the normal physiological function of the musculoskeletal system that is essential for life.


In recent years there has been increased interest in the adoption of a consumption tax as a replacement for the income tax. Typically it is suggested that this result be achieved by (1) taxing only wage income, (2) providing a deduction for all investments in material capital, (3) providing an exemption for all investment income, or (4) providing an excise tax on consumption purchases. One of the leading theoretical justifications for making such a radical change in our tax laws has been an embrace of John Stuart Mill's observation that whereas income from capital is taxed twice, once as earned and again as the income from capital is taxed, income from labor is taxed only once, as it is earned. In this article the author conducts an examination of the relative taxation of labor (human capital) and material capital under the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to determine which of these two forms of capital is taxed more advantageously. Measured against the Haig-Simons definition of income and the ideal taxation of income from material and human capital that would be dictated by Haig-Simons, the author demonstrates that, under the Code, the income from neither form of capital is advantaged over the other. The article demonstrates why it is important for analysts to measure their theoretical conclusions regarding laws against the actual laws themselves and not against an artificial construct of the theoretician.


ABSTRACT Places have started to adapt commercial branding tactics. But how do stakeholders perceive such practices? Drawing on survey data from French residents, we analyse the advertising legitimacy of a place brand and its influence on the effectiveness of marketing communications in the context of region branding. The results confirm that advertising legitimacy mediates the relationship between exposure to an advertisement and its efficiency. The place brand is more legitimate when advertisements target firms, residents or tourists than when they promote local products through co-branding. We highlight a new expression of democratic legitimacy: a process adapted to hybrid (public–private) organizations.


The first deep reflection seismic profile was acquired across the Teisseyre‐Tornquist Zone (TTZ), a major European suture zone, southeast of the Avalonia‐Baltica collision zone, portraying different tectonic deformation styles (thick‐ versus thin‐skinned) and Phanerozoic crustal accretion episodes over a relatively short distance (240 km). The overall crustal structure preserves image of the Neoproterozoic passive margin setting but with a significant overprint of the repetitive tectonic convergence (Cadomian to Alpine) acting at the Baltica margin. In contrast to the Avalonia‐Baltica collision zone, here the polygenetic crustal accretion occurring at the cratonic margin was ultimately shaped by significant strike‐slip faulting. TTZ is imaged as a narrow (10–15 km) transform zone separating the thinned East European cratonic crust from the Małopolska Block.


When a high-mass star (& 4M ) explodes at the end of its life, a supernova occurs, leaving its degenerate core and a fast-moving shell of matter, known as a supernova remnant (SNR). The SNR shell lasts for many thousands of years, generating emissions from low-frequency radio (∼ 10−7 eV) up to γ-ray regime (∼ 10 eV). It is also believed that SNRs are the predominant source of galactic cosmic rays, accelerating a population of thermal ions, primarily protons, up to relativistic energies by means of the diffusive shock acceleration (DSA) mechanism. The small population of thermal (Boltzmann) particles, p ∼ 10−3 eV, that are accelerated to relativistic energies, p ∼ 10 eV, extract a significant amount of energy from the SNR shell. The existence of a small but highly energetic population of non-thermal particles feeds back into the dynamic evolution of the SNR, which, in turn, affects the production of new particles and the continued acceleration of particles already swept up in the shock. Much research has been done in investigating the case of particles accelerated in spherically symmetric SNRs; we present here the first simulations of supernova remnant evolution with nonlinear cosmic ray feedback in multiple dimensions. The research here presents a new approach to an old problem, allowing for a deeper investigation into the role of cosmic ray production in supernova remnant environments. The findings here show that, at the early stages of SNR evolution, the presence of cosmic rays in the shocks modifies the growth of hydrodynamic instabilities; severely damping the RayleighTaylor instabilities in particular. We also find that the young remnant produces a strong TeV population of CRs that can generate TeV emissions that could be observed with or without the SNR interacting with an adjacent molecular cloud. However, the GeV emissions that could distinguish between the hadronic and leptonic population of CRs could not be observed by Fermi-LAT without the interacting molecular cloud.


Based on virtual instrument technology the detection device of solar photovoltaic lighting system charge-discharge performance is designed, which can test eight parameters of solar cells power amp hours, battery charging amp hours, battery discharge amp hours, instantaneous power of solar cells power generation, instantaneous power of battery charge and discharge etc. The LabVIEW program controls data acquisition card, which realizes real-time data acquisition, display and storage etc. The parameters of the solar cells terminal voltage, the solar cells output current, the battery terminal voltage, the battery charge current and battery discharge current are tested. It contributes to the research of best match for solar cells and LED electrical properties, and provides technical parameters for battery reasonable using and battery life extended, and maximizes the performance of solar photovoltaic lighting system.


THE electrical examination of the nerve and muscle has long been an important part of the neurologist's work. Since the days of Erb the determination of the reaction of muscle to faradic and galvanic stimulation has been the common practice. This gave qualitative results of value to the clinician, but the importance of changes of polarity was overemphasized, and the "R.D." (reaction of degeneration) was at best a rough test of function. Since this, "chronaxie" has had its day and failed to satisfy the needs of a useful clinical test. It is now replaced by two methods: ( a ) the determination of strength-duration curves, i. e., the relation of voltage to duration in time of the stimulus, 1 and ( b ) the measurement of the accommodation constants of muscles during regeneration by progressively modulated currents. 2 It now seems possible that the improved technics of electromyography may supplant these other electrical methods


this study, we report several events of periodic flux modulation of protons and O + ions observed by Van Allen Probes in 2012-2016. We find periodic flux modulation of O + ions and Pc5 waves on November 4, 2015 (event A) and November 30, 2015 (event B). In event A, the flux modulation is recognized at 1-50 keV and dispersed in energy. In event B, however, the flux modulation is limited at ~10 keV. We will examine dependence of the flux variations on pitch angles and energies, and discuss if the variations are due to drift-bounce resonance.


FACTS use Power Electronic devices and methods to control the high-voltage side of the network for improving the power flow. Custom Power is for low-voltage distribution, and improving the poor power quality and reliability of supply affecting factories, offices and homes. Power quality and Reliability are becoming important issues for critical and sensitive loads after introducing the term of Custom Power by Hingorani in early 1980s. Custom Power Devices is classified into three categories by their structures such as Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), Distribution STATCOM (D-STATC0M) and Unified Power Quality Compensator (UPQC). This paper presents the improvement of Voltage Sags, Harmonics Distortions and poor powers factors using Distributions Static Compensator (D-STATCOM) with LCL Passive Filters in distribution system. The model is based on then Voltage Source Converter (VSC) principles and PWM Technique. The D-STATCOM injects a current into the system to mitigate the voltages sags. LCL Passive Filter was then added to D-STATCOM to improve harmonics distortions and poor power factor. The simulations were performed using MATLAB SIMULINK versions R2009b.


Rapidly growing mycobacteria of clinical significance were identified by mycolic acids detected with high-performance liquid chromatography. Mycolic acids from whole cells were extracted, derivatized, and detected by a modified high-performance liquid chromatography procedure in less than 3 h. Use of an internal standard allowed differentiation of Mycobacterium chelonae and Mycobacterium fortuitum by comparison of relative retention times. Peak height ratios were used for subidentification of M. chelonae strains; however, M. fortuitum and Mycobacterium smegmatis could not be separated by this system.