Attempts to implement dedicated evidence-based sports science research in Gaelic Football are challenging. Current structures within Gaelic Football render the sport less conducive to research analysis. The tenet that all Gaelic Footballers "are born not made" still has its adherents in today's management circles. Atavistic attitudes to sport scientific experimentation persist. This doctorate dissertation seeks to address important issues that have the potential to maximise performance in Gaelic Football. The underlying theme of this thesis is to understand the prevalence and aetiology of injury, and the provision of researched suggestions designed to enhance performance.

The first study is a detailed prospective epidemiological study of injuries sustained by Gaelic Football players during a single competitive season (Newell et al., 2006). The design of the study was based on Van Mechelen's (1992) model of 'sequence of prevention of sports injuries'. To date there has been no prospective epidemiological study of injuries in Gaelic Football. Two of the main findings arising from the injury surveillance study were the high incidence of hamstrings injury and the frequency of injuring occurring in the final quarter of training and games (Newell et al., 2006).

As a follow-up to the initial injury surveillance study (Newell et al., 2006), the next phase of study focussed on the aetiology of hamstrings injuries and in particular to investigate if hamstrings muscle strength or functional hamstrings/quadriceps ratio (H:Q ratio) is a predictor of hamstrings injury in Gaelic Football.The linear regression model fitted to the functional H:Q data identified two players as potential hamstrings injury candidates, one of whom sustained a hamstrings injury during the playing season. A subsequent intervention programme aimed at reducing the incidence of hamstrings injury was devised but team managers were generally unwilling to embrace an intervention as they did not wish, as they saw it, to interfere with components which were essential for player preparation.

Dehydration is a recognised risk factor for injury, although the direct evidence linking dehydration and injury has not been established. The goal of the next phase of research was to investigate the fluid and electrolyte balance of individual elite (Newell et al., 2008) and club Gaelic Football players and devise personal hydration strategies, as a means of controlling the potential impact of dehydration while prospectively recording injuries.

The two hydration studies (conducted in warm and cool conditions) have shown that changes to pre and post training body mass (using weigh scales), assessing pre-training hydration status (using a refractrometer, and reagent strips), and monitoring of the amount of fluids consumed during training (individualised drinks bottles) can help determine individual hydration requirements. The results of both studies indicated: a wide variation in sweat rates and fluid and electrolyte balance, evidence of pre and post dehydration, and that a single hydration strategy, based on published guidelines, is unlikely to be suitable for an entire team. Conducting regular testing during varying environmental conditions will help to establish a routine for fluid intake for all situations. Both studies provide support for an enlarged dedicated epidemiological research study to provide direct evidence linking dehydration to injury. However a study of this magnitude would require the full support of the Gaelic Football Association.


We investigate the nonequilibrium behaviour of the d-dimensional Ising model with purely dissipative dynamics during its critical relaxation from a magnetized initial configuration. The universal scaling forms of the two-time response and correlation functions of the magnetization are derived within the field-theoretical approach and the associated scaling functions are computed up to first order in the ϵ-expansion (ϵ = 4 − d). Ageing behaviour is clearly displayed and the associated universal fluctuation–dissipation ratio tends to for long times. These results are confirmed by Monte Carlo simulations of the two-dimensional Ising model with Glauber dynamics, from which we find . The crossover to the case of relaxation from a disordered state is discussed and the crossover function for the fluctuation–dissipation ratio is computed within the Gaussian approximation.


The actions of the polychlorocycloalkane insecticide heptachlor, and its epoxide metabolite, were examined on GABA receptors in insects and vertebrates. Electrophysiological experiments on the cell body of the cockroach (Periplaneta americana) fast coxal depressor motor neuron (Df), and GABA-activated 36Cl- uptake experiments on microsacs prepared from cockroach ventral nerve cords showed that both heptachlor and heptachlor epoxide blocked functional GABA receptors. The block appeared to be non-competitive and was voltage-independent over the membrane potential range —75 mV to —110 mV. There was no significant difference between the potencies of heptachlor and heptachlor epoxide in the functional assays for insect GABA receptors. Both compounds inhibited [35S]-t-butylbicyclophosphorothionate ([35S]TBPS) binding in insects and vertebrates. The findings provide further evidence for block of an insect GABA receptor/Cl- channel by the cyclodiene class of polychlorocycloalkanes, and reveal differences in the insecticide-[35S]TBPS binding site interactions of insects and vertebrates.


Breaking the centrosymmetry of [n]cycloparaphenylenes ([n]CPPs) by one meta connection, leads to bright emission in the typically non-fluorescent smaller derivatives, conserving their size dependent emissive properties. Using the building block strategy for [n]CPPs, different nitrile substituted meta[n]CPPs (n = 6, 8, 10) have been prepared. The nitrile substituent offers a convenient handle for functional group conversions (e.g., carboxylic acid, amide, aldehyde, as well as 1H-tetrazole). Besides the synthetic work, the photophysical properties of these novel m[n]CPP derivatives have been characterized. Additionally, the host-guest ability of cyano-m[10]CPP has been explored by studying its complexation with fullerene C60. These insights open new applications of meta[n]CPPs as fluorophore in synthetic organic chemistry, material sciences as well as biomedical research.


We describe mutations in the hepatitis B virus (HBV) polymerase gene in viruses which reactivated in two patients during therapy with ‐2′‐deoxy‐ 3′‐thiacytidine, or lamivudine (3TC), and following orthotopic liver transplantation for chronic hepatitis B. Virus resistance to 3TC is associated with mutations which lead to amino acid substitutions in the highly conserved tyr‐met‐asp‐asp (YMDD) motif, part of the active site of the polymerase, and which parallel those seen in resistant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Substitutions of valine and isoleucine for methionine were found in the two cases. The significance of single secondary mutations, which differ between viruses from the two patients, remains to be determined. Thus, viral resistance to lamivudine of hepatitis B virus mimics that of HIV and can occur in the setting of immunosuppression after liver transplantations.


We performed a randomized clinical trial to assess the usefulness and toxicity of combined therapy compared with chemotherapy and radiotherapy in the treatment of early stage Hodgkin's disease with bulky disease as an adverse prognostic factor. Three-hundred and seven patients were enrolled into the study. They were randomized to receive either radiotherapy (extended field, generally mantle, 3500 cGy), or chemotherapy (adriamycin, bleomicin, vinblastine and dacarbazine: ABVD, 6 monthly) cycles or combined therapy (three cycles of ABVD, followed by irradiation therapy and three more cycles of chemotherapy). The median follow-up duration from start of treatment was 11.4 years. Complete response rates were similar in the three arms: 83% for radiotherapy (95% confidence interval [CI] 67-92%), 80% for chemotherapy (CI 69-88%) and 87% for combined therapy (CI 74-94%). However, disease-free survival and overall survival were better in the patients treated with combined therapy. At 12 years 76% (CI 51-93%) of the patients treated with combined therapy remained alive in the first complete remission compared with 42% (CI 26-61%) in patients treated with radiotherapy and 48% (CI 31-57%) in patients who had received chemotherapy alone (P < 0.01). Improvement in overall survival was also evident at 12 years: 88% (CI 59-93%) in those who had received combined therapy, compared with 53% (CI 36-67%) in the radiotherapy arm and 59% (CI 35-67%) in the chemotherapy group. Acute toxicity was more frequent in patients treated with combined therapy, but no death related treatment was observed in the three groups. Late toxicity was similar in the three treatment groups. Combined therapy with extended field radiotherapy and six cycles of chemotherapy is an effective treatment of patients with early stage bulky Hodgkin's disease compared with chemotherapy or radiotherapy alone.


In the late 1930s, an architect and two researchers created a version of hygrothermal building science for the United States that focused on moisture conditions in exterior materials during cold weather. The version they created was partial, and it was biased: It highlighted the importance of vapor transport, while it obscured the importance of temperature impact. They based their argument on the prevention of "condensation," yet they failed to provide a definition of condensation sufficient for use as a performance measure or criterion. They produced prescriptive recommendations that later became code requirements, and these prescriptions embodied the incomplete and biased nature of their analysis. They supported their argument with a flawed and misleading analogy. They and their followers left a legacy of consumer fear of ill-defined moisture effects in buildings and of designers assigning excessive importance to prescriptive measures. Their version provides inadequate preparation for the anticipated re-insulation of millions of U.S. buildings in the years to come. This paper will provide a short description of the hygrothermal issues involved. It will trace the development of the condensation version by Rogers, Teesdale, and Rowley and the efforts that followed up to 1952. It will explain the legacy and impact of this approach related to existing building re-insulation and professional practice in design and architecture. It will propose a framework for reviewing the link between moisture control prescriptive requirements and performance outcomes.


Background: Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a cell metabolic disease with high metastasis rate and poor prognosis. Our previous studies demonstrate that glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD), the first and rate-limiting enzyme of the pentose phosphate pathway, is highly expressed in ccRCC and predicts poor outcomes of ccRCC patients. The aims of this study were to confirm the oncogenic role of G6PD in ccRCC and unravels novel mechanisms involving Cyclin E1 and MMP9 in G6PD-mediated ccRCC progression. Methods: Real-time RT-PCR, Western blot and immunohistochemistry were used to determine the expression patterns of G6PD, Cyclin E1 and MMP9 in ccRCC. TCGA dataset mining was used to identify Cyclin E1 and MMP9 correlations with G6PD expression, relationships between clinicopathological characteristics of ccRCC and the genes of interest, as well as the prognosis of ccRCC patients. The role of G6PD in ccRCC progression and the regulatory effect of G6PD on Cyclin E1 and MMP9 expression were investigated by using a series of cytological function assays in vitro. To verify this mechanism in vivo, xenografted mice models were established. Results: G6PD, Cyclin E1 and MMP9 were overexpressed and positively correlated in ccRCC, and they were associated with poor prognosis of ccRCC patients. Moreover, G6PD changed cell cycle dynamics, facilitated cells proliferation, promoted migration in vitro, and enhanced ccRCC development in vivo, more likely through enhancing Cyclin E1 and MMP9 expression. Conclusion: These findings present G6PD, Cyclin E1 and MMP9, which contribute to ccRCC progression, as novel biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for ccRCC treatment.


The work in the thesis entitled "New Approaches for Ontology
Mapping to Improve Accuracy" mainly focuses on the
development of automatic systems for the purpose of
Ontology Mapping to improve accuracy with the applications, such as, Information Integration, Semantic Web, Query answering on the Web, Autonomous computing, Web Service Composition, and Ontology Engineering
Ontology Mapping is a promising solution to the semantic
heterogeneity problem. It finds correspondences between
semantically related entities of ontologies. These correspondences can be used for various applications. Thus mapping helps in interoperation. This dissertation focuses on the discovery of correspondences between the given ontology entities. Many Ontology mapping systems have been proposed so far. This work sees mapping problem as a data mining problem and applies classification techniques. The reason being the development of ontology follows a pattern based approach. The systems proposed and developed in the thesis consider both instance and schema or metadata information present in the ontologies for finding
correspondences. The thesis also gives a comprehensive overview of the state of the art systems for ontology mapping as well The dissertation studies Ontology mapping: the problem of finding semantic correspondences between similar elements of different ontologies. Here elements denote classes, properties, attributes etc of ontologies. The correspondences may be 1:1, 1:n, m:n, m:1. The goal is to make heterogeneous information more accessible. The thesis applies three main classification techniques of data mining to solve the problem of ontology mapping. They are artificial neural network, Bayesian belief network and fuzzy decision tree methods. The neural network method uses eighteen matchers grouped into six inputs and one output to decide mapping. Basically network learns how much weightage must be given for these matchers from the training set and this is used to extract unknown mappings. The
second approach uses the concept of Bayesian belief network to extract mapping for the given ontologies. In this, from the training set data Bayesian belief network and conditional probability table for Bayesian belief network are learnt. Later this network is used to predict mapping for unknown entities using evidence extraction.
In the third approach we convert the output of eighteen matchers into fuzzy values and then construct a decision tree for these values. Based on this tree the unknown entity pair resemblance is extracted thereafterThe thesis also compares these methods with the state of the art.
The dissertation also proposes an instance and metadata based method for ontology mapping. This method presents an harmony approach to aggregate various output of six matchers. These matchers take both instance and metadata information for deciding similarity. Evaluation of the approaches have been done on the benchmark test cases and real world data sets with encouraging results, thus proving empirically its benefits from the accuracy point of view. The dissertation also proposes four similarity measures for ontology. Out of these, three measures are helpful when ontology is in the form of graph. One of them is the modified semantic measure called distance based measure. The Dissertation also presents two applications. One of the applications is XML data integration and the other is Semantic search engine. The approaches proposed are used in these applications to arrive at the remarkable results. In order to extract different types of mapping
we use what is known as formal context analysis. While mapping entities using instance and metadata based information we also build a formal context table for matched instances. Using this table we extract the other relation-ship between the entities such as super and sub concept, equivalent concepts.


Background The number of people with dementia in multicultural Australia is rapidly increasing. Despite its culturally diverse population, there is limited research about how people from ethnic minority groups understand and approach help-seeking and support for dementia. The aim of this study is to understand the perceptions of dementia symptoms, help-seeking and support in the Australian Arabic-speaking community. Methods This study used a cross-sectional qualitative research design. Individual, semi-structured interviews using projective stimulus techniques were used. Participants were three Arabic-speaking people aged over 70 who were experiencing cognitive changes or dementia symptoms, six carers, and five health or social care practitioners experienced in working with Arab-Australians. Phone or video chat interviews were conducted in either Arabic or English. Interviews were audiotaped, translated when needed, transcribed verbatim and inductive thematic analysis was undertaken. Findings Seven themes were identified. Participants described dementia as relating to symptoms of confusion and memory loss. Carers and older people believe that when older people are experiencing these cognitive symptoms, they must be cared for primarily by ensuring their happiness and comfort. Barriers to help-seeking and support included a lack of help-seeking due to cultural norms of family orientated care, families are unsure of where to seek help and fear of community judgement. Two ways to facilitate help-seeking and support were to build trust through culturally appropriate support and to educate the community. Conclusion Family, trust and community were identified as central pillars of the Australian-Arabic-speaking community. There is a need to increase dementia literacy in this community particularly around help-seeking and decreasing stigma. Education should be promoted by trusted community members and religious leaders. As the first point of professional contact, general practitioners need to be upskilled to support Arabic-speaking Australians around dementia.


In ascites secondary to vascular cirrhosis of the liver, epiplopexy is indicated as soon as the internist makes the diagnosis. Itis conceded that many of these patients will demand repeated tapping before they will consent to surgical intervention. Sinclair White 1 contends that operation is contra-indicated in cases of Bright's disease and should not be performed on patients over 55 or 60 years of age, or on patients in whom the total amount of urea is greatly reduced. Organic disease of the heart or lungs also contra-indicates operation. When marked jaundice, emaciation and hebetude appear, practically all surgeons agree that operation is contra-indicated. Recently, however, Dr. Crandall, visiting physician to the City Hospital, referred a patient suffering with ascites secondary to vascular cirrhosis of the liver, and although he was jaundiced, emaciated and in a very poor condition, epiplopexy was performed under local anesthesia with very good results. Occasionally such


Membrane channel proteins play crucial roles in governing the transport of material and energy across every cellular membrane. Accordingly, they are the subjects of interest for science and medicine as well as major targets of drug discovery efforts. Recent work has also shown their potential as highly rapid and sensitive single molecule sensors. However, techniques conventionally used to measure the electrical transport through these proteins can be problematic to form and are extremely fragile, limiting the range and scope of possible studies. We have developed two new technologies which alleviate these shortcomings: in situ encapsulation of lipid membranes in hydrogels and automated microfluidic formation. The hydrogel encapsulated membranes are mechanically robust and long-lived as a result of the intimate contact between the hydrogel and the membrane, enabling measurements of single channel currents for a week or longer. The automated microfluidic formation apparatus enables the creation and manipulation of lipid membranes and the incorporation and measurement of channel proteins in these membranes through an entirely computer controlled process. We are working to apply these technologies toward DNA sequencing, drug discovery, and single molecule biophysics.


Abstract This paper investigates optionality in grammar and language use, and argues that there is optionality and optionality, and thus that it is essential that we be much more careful than hitherto in categorizing linguistic entities as optional. Equipped with a suitably constrained construal of the term, it is possible to formulate testable generalizations about optionality. Specifically, it is always meaningful in the sense that the contrast between use and non-use of a given linguistic element conveys meaning; use and non-use are never in absolutely free variation. Furthermore, there are restrictions on the type of meaning associated with the two contrasting paradigmatic "forms". It is always a type of interpersonal meaning, concerning the domain of joint attention. It is further suggested that the connection between form and meaning is motivated, and thus this represents another domain in which the linguistic sign emerges as non-arbitrary. Evidence for the proposed meaning is presented from case studies of five diverse domains of grammar: complementizers, case markers, definiteness markers, person and number markers, and NP ellipsis. While these case studies only scratch the surface of the range of optional phenomena in the world's languages, they provide sufficient circumstantial evidence to make an initial case for the proposals; they also raise numerous questions for future investigation.


Electrophoretic measurements were carried out as a function of pH for various fractions of an acidic crude oil dispersed in pure water and low salinity solutions of NaCl and CaCl2. The acidic and basic components were selectively extracted from the crude oil in order to elucidate their importance for the interfacial charges and implicitly the zeta potentials. Ionization of basic and acidic components at low and high pH, respectively, could not fully account for the obtained zeta potentials. The results could, however, be explained by additional consideration of interfacial hydroxide ions, coming from the water phase.


This edited volume adds to the literature on language contact. It specifically deals with the borrowing of morphology, and addresses the methodological issue of how to distinguish resemblances that represent borrowing (here called copying) from those that reflect cognation within genealogically related languages. Several studies offer empirical data on the scales of borrowability (or copiability in the terminology of this volume) that have been discovered—comparing morphological to lexical borrowing, inflectional to derivational, and distinguishing the likelihood of various kinds of inflectional borrowing. A number of papers attempt explanations for the scales in terms of semantic, structural or frequency factors. Proposals are also made regarding factors other than borrowing or cognation that may result in the sharing of morphological forms between languages. The findings concerning morphological borrowing are applied to several difficult and unresolved issues of genealogical relationship in languages of Eurasia and the Americas.


SEKI, H., KIMURA, I., OHNUMA, A., SASO, S. and KOGURE, K. The Auditory Evoked Middle-Latency Responses (MLRs): Their Normative Variation and Generators. Tohoku J. Exp. Med., 1993, 170(3), 157-167 Auditory evoked middlelatency responses (MLRs) to clicks were recorded in 68 normal adults (ages from 21 to 59 year-old) at 16 scalp locations, all referred to a balanced non-cephalic reference. Both Na and Pa components were clearly demonstrated in all the subjects studied through the digital high-pass filtering. Both Na and Pa components were distributed dominantly over the frontal area in all subjects. The amplitudes of Na and Pa were significantly higher with binaural stimulation than with a monaural stimulation, and the existence of binaural interaction was also suggested. Binaural effect was more prominent in Pa than in Na component. When the data recorded from F3 and F4 electrodes were compared, most of F3/F4 amplitude ratios of Na and Pa were included between 0.7 and 1.5. The F3/F4 ratio should be useful indices for the diagnosis of excessive laterality. We also demonstrated gradual phase shifts of Na and Pa between the frontal and temporooccipital area in about one-third of the records. This phenomenon strongly suggests that both Na and Pa components are derived from complex generators. evoked potentials; auditory evoked potentials; middle latency; normal adults


Metaheuristics are a wide class of solution methods that have been successfully applied to many optimization problems. The assessment of these methods is commonly based on experimental analysis but the lack of a methodology in these analyses limits the scientific value of their results. In this paper we formalize different scenarios for the analysis and comparison of metaheuristics by experimentation. For each scenario we give pointers to the existing statistical methodology for carrying out a sound analysis. Finally, we provide a set of open issues and further research directions.


Recent advances in our understanding of the sophistication of the cellular microenvironment and the dynamics of tissue remodeling during development, disease, and regeneration have increased our appreciation of the current challenges facing tissue engineering. As this appreciation advances, we are better equipped to approach problems in the biology and therapeutics of even more complex fields, such as stem cells and cancer. To aid in these studies, as well as the established areas of tissue engineering, including cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neural applications, biomaterials scientists have developed an extensive array of materials with specifically designed chemical, mechanical, and biological properties. Herein, we highlight an important topic within this area of biomaterials research, protein-hydrogel interactions. Due to inherent advantages of hydrated scaffolds for soft tissue engineering as well as specialized bioactivity of proteins and peptides, this field is well-posed to tackle major needs within emerging areas of tissue engineering. We provide an overview of the major modes of interactions between hydrogels and proteins (e.g., weak forces, covalent binding, affinity binding), examples of applications within growth factor delivery and three-dimensional scaffolds, and finally future directions within the area of hydrogel-protein interactions that will advance our ability to control the cell-biomaterial interface.


This paper presents a new method for identifying scholars who have a Twitter account from bibliometric data from Web of Science (WoS) and Twitter data from Altmetric.com. The method reliably identifies matches between Twitter accounts and scholarly authors. It consists of a matching of elements such as author names, usernames, handles, and URLs, followed by a rule-based scoring system that weights the common occurrence of these elements related to the activities of Twitter users and scholars. The method proceeds by matching the Twitter accounts against a database of millions of disambiguated bibliographic profiles from WoS. This paper describes the implementation and validation of the matching method, and performs verification through precision-recall analysis. We also explore the geographical, disciplinary, and demographic variations in the distribution of scholars matched to a Twitter account. This approach represents a step forward in the development of more advanced forms of social media studies of science by opening up an important door for studying the interactions between science and social media in general, and for studying the activities of scholars on Twitter in particular.


Introduction: Critical appraisal skills are presumed to perform a principal part in evidence-based health education and practice methods. This study aimed to design an educational intervention around critical appraisal in this context, evaluate the efficacy of the teaching methods, and investigate critical appraisal skills training to undergraduate medical students. Methods: In this prospective Randomized Control Trial (RCT), 256 sixth-year undergraduate medical students from Shiraz University of Medical Science, Shiraz, Iran, participated. 124 of the students were not taught critical thinking methods as a control group, and 132 participants were taught critical thinking methods by multi-media and attended an online Critical Appraisal Skills (CAS) training workshop as an intervention group. We used the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) questionnaire to evaluate students' knowledge, attitude, confidence, and appraisal skills. This questionnaire was translated into Persian for the first time in Iran by Shokooh Varai, et al. They investigated its validity and reliability, the reliability of the questionnaire being obtained by the Richardson Index (0.75), and the validity being confirmed by some faculty members of Tehran Nursing and Midwifery School. To compare both control and intervention groups, we used an independent t-test and a Chi-Square test at a significance level of 5%, and to analyze the demographic information, we applied some descriptive statistics: frequency, frequency percentage, mean and standard deviation. All of the statistical approaches were analyzed, using SPSS 22. Results: In all dimensions of the critical appraisal skills, medical students who completed the critical appraisal multi-media training and workshop performed better than those who did not (control group), and this difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). Moreover, the Chi-Square test results showed no statistical relationship between the groups regarding the demographic variables (p>0.05). Also, the Cohen's D effect size values in the knowledge and confidence dimensions were greater than 0.5; this meant a large effect. Regarding the attitude and appraises Skill dimensions, the effect size was between 0.2 and 0.5, which meant a medium effect. Conclusions: Teaching critical appraisal skills through multi-media and CAS online workshops to medical students effectively improves the students' knowledge and confidence in appraising articles. This teaching also indicated a medium effect on students' attitudes and behavior. Our findings can justify implementing critical appraisal skills teaching modules in the undergraduate medical education curriculum.


The emission spectra of C2 Swan bands transition were observed in 430-600 rim region by Q-switched laser ablation target of Al reacting with CF4, CCl4, and CH2Br2 beams. Five vibration band sequences (△υ=2,1,0,-1 and -2) of d 3Ⅱ(subscript g)=a 3Ⅱ(subscript g) were identified and the largest vibration number of excited state d is 6. Using a local thermal equilibrium model, the vibrational temperature of d state was determined to be about 6 000 K. Meanwhile, some bumps, separated by about 0.3 nm, were observed between vibrational bands of △υ=0 and -1 sequences, which were due to accidental and periodical accumulations of rotational lines belonging to several vibrational bands. The formation mechanism of excited C2 d 3Ⅱ(subscript g) state is considered as when laser induced Al plasma expansion in the background reaction gas sample, the collisions between metal particles and gas sample molecules cause the dissociation of precursors, so atomic C is produced. Meanwhile, the shock wave induced by plasma expansion might cause molecules dissociation as well. Then C atoms combine to form C2 in the ground state X^1∑(superscript + subscript g) (T(subscript e)= 0 cm^(-1)) or first excited state a 3Ⅱ(subscript u) (T(subscript e)=716 cm^(-1)). The electronic energy transfer between excited state Al(2S(subscript 1/2)) (T(subscript e)=25 348 cm^(-1)) and C2 a 3Ⅱ(subscript u) state produces the excited state d 3Ⅱ(subscript g) (T(subscript e)=20 022 cm^(-1)). Another mechanism that may be possible is that b^3∑(superscript – subscript g) state of C2 is produced first, then undergoes a radiation- less transition into d 3Ⅱ(subscript g) state through crossing with the d 3Ⅱ(subscript g), υ'=6 level. But the vibrational population of υ'<6 levels is formed by collision relaxation.


Most frame languages either are glaringly deficient in their treatment of default information or do not represent it at all. This paper presents a formal description of a frame language that provides semantically sound facilities for representing default information and an efficient serial algorithm for inheriting default information down class-subclass and class-member hierarchies constructed in that language. We present the inheritance algorithm in two forms. In the first form, the algorithm provides justifications to a TMS, which then manages the inherited information. In the second form, the algorithm performs its own, specialpurpose truth maintenance and therefore is useable in a system that does not, include a general-purpose TMS.l


In Ethiopia, new policy actors and new policy arenas have emerged as a result of major changes that took place in the political and economic system in the early 1990's: the separation of state powers between the legislature and the executive, and the decision to move towards a market-oriented economic system. These are important changes that clear ground for better policymaking processes. However, the mere separation of power and emergency of new actors do not necessarily guarantee effectiveness of the established system, and thus need analysis. Considering policymaking as a process involving multiple actors, arenas and interactions between policy actors, this article sheds a new light on policymaking processes in Ethiopia. Focusing on the four years of discussions on developing seed law, we question whether and how the emergence of new actors and new policy arenas have influenced the process and outcome of policymaking in the Ethiopian seed sector. Our analysis reveals that the new policy arenas provided opportunities for actors to place their preferred policy options on the agenda and to get them incorporated into the draft seed law. However, decision-making ultimately remains firmly in the hands of the executive, mainly because of a blurred separation of power between the executive and the legislature. Keywords : public policy, arena, actor, legislative, executive, seed policy


Objective To describe the features of large-vessel vasculitis (LVV) as it affects the aorta and its branches in patients with relapsing polychondritis (RP). Methods Retrospective data and systematic literature review. Results Twenty-one patients were identified. LVV diagnosis was subsequent to RP and associated with extrachondral involvement in the majority of patients. Supraaortic vessels were more frequently involved (82%). Fourteen patients (67%) were treated with a conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (csDMARD) and 7 (33%) with a biological DMARD (bDMARD). Vascular interventional procedures were performed in 10 patients (48%). Premature death due to cardiovascular complications was reported in 3 cases (14%). Conclusion Extraaortic LVV is a serious and overlooked RP manifestation. All patients with RP should be investigated for LVV.


The literature proposes several stock return-based measures of systemic risk but does not include a classical hypothesis tests for detecting systemic risk. Using a joint null hypothesis of Gaussian returns and the absence of systemic risk, we develop a hypothesis test statistic to detect systemic risk in stock returns data. We apply our tests on conditional value-at-risk (CoVaR) and marginal expected shortfall (MES) estimates of the 50 largest US financial institutions using daily stock return data between 2006 and 2007. The CoVaR test identifies only one institution as systemically important while the MES test identifies 27 firms including some of the financial institutions that experienced distress in the past financial crisis. We perform a simulation analysis to assess the reliability of our proposed test statistics and find that our hypothesis tests have weak power, especially tests using CoVaR. We trace the power issue to the inherent variability of the nonparametric CoVaR and MES estimators that have been proposed in the literature. These estimators have large standard errors that increase as the tail dependence in stock returns strengthens.


The new normal of environmental law will likely feature reduced enforcement of existing federal environmental statutes, elimination of federal regulations deemed anti-business, slashed funding for climate change response programs, and state preemption of local sustainability initiatives. Attorneys representing environmental interests will be "bringing a knife to a gunfight" should they continue to attack such stalwart principles of conservative jurisprudence as federalism, textualism, and originalism, or to seek the reversal of strong precedents that narrow standing, limit the reach of the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses, and expand the scope of the Takings Clause to include allegedly confiscatory environmental and land use regulations. What is needed is a litigation strategy that goes beyond accommodating, adjusting, or massaging conservative jurisprudence. Counsel should advance arguments that will most effectively result in victories for the side identified with environmental protection and sustainability. This article provides the framework for the adoption and advancement of conservative constitutional principles (a set of doctrines that I call "right environmentalism"), presents six illustrative scenarios, and discusses two examples from the early twentieth century of counsel successfully appealing to conservatives on the Court (Muller v. Oregon and Buchanan v. Warley), examples that can serve as models for today's very serious challenges.


Gardner (1983) in his theory of Multiple Intelligences challenges intelligence as a unitary fixed capacity measurable by IQ tests and highlights the need for the education system to be inclusive of all intelligences. By matching learners' minds to congenial approaches to teaching, it is argued that prospects for educational success are greatly enhanced. Gardner (1995) argues that learners should be provided with different 'entry points' to learning, enabling explicit educational goals to be reached by multiple means. This paper focuses on research led teaching and learning in the context of a unit on the History of Irish Education through which the focus is on learning through evidence. The central question in this paper asks: how can historical research be harnessed visually to provide 'entry points' for students' active engagement so that learning through evidence takes place? The use of visual material in teaching provides us with a means to promote student learning by engaging in meaningful dialogue and discussion. Thus, enabling students to learn from each other, which, as Boyer points out in relation to the scholarship of teaching 'teaching at its best, means not only transmitting knowledge, but transforming and extending it as well' (Boyer, 1990). This paper will discuss how a culture of thinking was developed and how a diversity of learning experiences was provided. It will show the use of visual material in enhancing learners' abilities to question, explore, collaborate, and extend their ideas, and the ideas of peers, which are central to the disciplinary thinking in education and history. In developing the curriculum of this unit the question 'what should learners know and be able to do?' is key to make content meaningful to students. Visual material harnessed as an entry point allows learning to take place through evidence, and within a constructivist approach starts where the student is at. As Bligh puts it 'what the lecturer says only has meaning for the student if they can relate it to ideas they already possess' (2000).


The utilization of an array of scientific techniques and technologies is now considered customary within criminal justice, with technological developments and scientific advancements regularly added to the crime investigator's arsenal. However, the scientific basis, reliability, and fallibility of the application of such "forensic science" (and the resulting scientific evidence) continues to come under intense scrutiny. In response to apparently irremediable problems with the quality of scientific evidence in the UK, the government created the role of "Forensic Science Regulator" in 2007. The introduction of a Regulator was intended to establish quality standards for all forensic science providers in the UK, create a level playing field in the forensic services market, and grant assurances that all providers were producing reliable and robust scientific evidence. A decade on, there remain questions over the effectiveness of this model of forensic regulation. While there has been significant progress with initial aims and objectives and broad stakeholder engagement, the Regulator still lacks meaningful powers, and significant gaps in regulation remain. Accreditation is not only inconsistent but may be superficial. The Regulator faces serious resource restrictions with debilitating limitations on the Regulator's capacities, while wider austerity measures throughout the criminal justice system hamper efforts to raise standards in forensic science. This Article will detail the first ten years of the Forensic Science Regulator, outlining successes and ongoing challenges. It will demonstrate that the UK model of forensic regulation has proven only partially effective at minimizing the risks associated with forensic science, while ensuring that the criminal justice system can continue to secure high quality forensic scientific evidence that is robust, reliable, and sustainable.


Intumescence is a nonpathogenic physiological disorder characterized by leaf blistering. This disorder can affect growth and development in glasshouses and growth chambers and may be confused with pathogenic diseases. We used quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis to examine the genetic basis of variation in intumescence severity in Eucalyptus globulus, and test for colocation with previously detected QTLs for pathogen susceptibility. QTL analysis used the phenotype means of open-pollinated (OP) families of an outcrossed F2 mapping family (OP F3; n = 300) of E. globulus and the linkage map constructed in the F2. We validate this phenotyping approach for QTL analysis by assessing a trait previously used for QTL discovery in the F2 and showing the same major QTL was detected with the OP F3. For intumescence severity, five putative QTLs were detected across four linkage groups. Four of these did not colocate with previously reported QTLs for fungal pathogen susceptibility in Eucalyptus, suggesting the mechanisms underlying susceptibility to intumescence and to the two fungal pathogens are largely independent. This study demonstrates there is a genetic basis for variation in intumescence severity, reports the first QTL for intumescence severity in plants, and provides a robust framework for investigating the potential mechanisms involved.


INTRODUCTION
Gypsies form an ethnic minority settled in Spain in the 15th century. At present, this collective presents certain social, economic, and health inequalities in comparison with the remaining population. The need for health interventions among the gypsy population is well known.

OBJECTIVE
To determine which health-related matters among the Spanish gypsy community had received attention in the literature, and whether their ethnic differences and social inequalities in health had been studied.

METHODS
We reviewed the literature published in the last 20 years. An international Medline search was performed. We also searched national and local papers through the IME-CSIC (Spanish Medical Index) database and the Internet.

RESULTS
There were 96 valid articles on health among Spanish gypsies, of which 62 were published in Spanish journals and 47 had been published within the previous 6 years. Fifty-seven studies were performed in hospitals, 20 in public health centers and 13 in primary care centers. Eighty-eight percent were observational studies. The most frequent topics were genetics or congenital anomalies (30%), transmissible diseases (21%), child health (11%) and health sociology (11%). Fifty-seven percent of the studies reported some social inequalities in health.

DISCUSSION
The Spanish gypsy community constitutes a health risk group due to ethnic and genetic factors. Moreover, they also have strong social inequalities in health related to mortality and morbidity in transmissible, chronic and environmental diseases due to socioeconomic and cultural factors, as well as to insufficient access to and use of health services.


Results of the study of structure, state of stress and hardness of TiN coatings deposited with PIII&D by using rectilinear filtered vacuum arc plasma system are present. Study the effect of argon addition into the nitrogen environment in the range from 0 to 45 % on characteristics of coatings deposited with application of a high pulse bias potential with amplitude of 1 kV have been performed. It was found that the coatings have a structure of TiN (structural type NaCl) with the [110] axial texture regardless of the concentration of argon in the gas mixture. With increasing the content of argon the level of residual stress is increased from 7 GPa to 10 GPa, the grain size in the coatings is reduced from 8-9 nm to 7 nm, and the coating hardness remains at a high level 27-32 GPa.


Background: COVID-19 is a severe respiratory disease, started in China. For diagnosis, we need swabs from different regions of respiratory tract. Nasopharyngeal swab is the preferred method. Rt-PCR for Corona virus is the gold standard lab test for diagnosis. Objective: To determine frequency of positive PCR tests and complications in total number of nasopharyngeal samples taken at ENT department of Allied Hospital, Faisalabad Pakistan. Study Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study. Settings: ENT department, Allied Hospital, Faisalabad Pakistan. Duration: 1st May 2020 to 31st August 2020. Methodology: Nasopharyngeal swabs of suspected cases, their contacts, and healthcare workers were taken at ENT department of Allied Hospital. All samples were sent to BSL-LAB. The complication related to procedure were also noted. The result was labelled as detected and non-detected. Results: Total sample taken were 2909 out of which 627 (22%) cases were positive for Corona virus while 2282 (78%) were negative. Pain was most frequent complication (68%) followed by blood staining of swab (31%) and epistaxis (1%). Conclusion: Frequency of positive corona virus case presenting to allied Hospital is 22%. Nasopharyngeal swabs are a safe and effective method of sampling in suspected Corona Virus cases. Pain during the procedure is the most frequent complication.


Deuterated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been employed as surrogate internal standards for the quantitative analysis of PAHs by laser postionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. Experiments were performed on intimate mixtures of chrysene and chrysene-d12 which were desorbed from thin films at 266 nm using a tightly focused (1−2 μm) Nd−YAG laser beam. The neutral molecules within the laser-desorbed plume were ionized by a frequency-doubled dye laser at 260 nm. Under soft ionization conditions, the mass spectrum comprised peaks associated with the parent ion envelope with negligible amounts of fragment ions at lower masses. The ratio of the peak areas of the parent ions of chrysene and chrysene-d12 was proportional to their relative molar concentrations in the standard solutions. With the use of chrysene-d12 as an internal standard, the determined concentration of chrysene in an NIST standard was in good agreement with the certified value.


The technique of underwater acoustic localization (UAL) is widely used to track submerged targets. In the present study, we consider UAL in the specific application of locating the Mediterranean slipper lobster, Scyllarides latus (S. latus), for the aim of continuous and long-term investigation of its movement patterns. Since visual inspections only offer a snapshot to the life of these nocturnal crustaceans, we used underwater acoustic tags and deployed the first testbed to track a community of S. latus through UAL. The testbed included 19 acoustically tagged S. latus, as well as a sensor network of four receivers that record the time-of-arrival of detected tag's emissions. The testbed operated for six months, and the data collected were analyzed offline. In this paper, we describe the design details of our testbed. We discuss the considerations in choosing both the type of acoustic tags and the structure of the testbed. We also present our algorithm to time synchronize the receivers, and the localization procedure. Our preliminary results show that, for this long-term deployment, the widely used model of clock offset for the receivers is too simplified, and that time synchronization must consider also the clock's skew. We also show that the tagged lobsters are mostly detected by fewer than three receivers, thereby making localization using traditional trilateration methods highly challenging. Finally, preliminary results for the localization of the tagged lobsters in the deployment area are presented.


The Anglican poet and philosophical theologian Samuel Taylor Coleridge privately wrote notebooks that develop vital aspects of his mature public theology, especially his understanding of the doctrine of redemption. While Aids to Reflection (1825) is Coleridge's central public explanation of the doctrine of redemption, the late notebooks reveal the careful exegetical work that grounds his theological system. Through a close analysis of Paul and John, Coleridge questions traditional theological assumptions about the meaning of redemption. Coleridge's analysis of theological language, sacramental imagery, and the role of symbols allows him to distinguish between the work of Christ and the consequences of its effects in individual Christians. Coleridge's mature theology influenced the mid-nineteenth-century Broad Church Movement as well as a variety of North American theologies. One of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's (1772-1834) most significant contributions to nineteenth-century Anglican theology was his critical study of the Bible. Even as a young Unitarian preacher speaking throughout the Bristol region, Scripture formed Coleridge's burgeoning philosophical theology. As Coleridge explained in the Biographia Literaria, his earliest religious difficulties came in the attempt to reconcile personality with infinity: but though his "head" was with Spinoza, the biblical wisdom of Paul and John ruled his "heart."1 Late in life, Coleridge penned thousands of private notebook entries on the Bible that he intended to contribute to his long-planned magnum opus - -a philosophical and encyclopedic defense of religion. Coleridge hoped, according to one lengthy outline of the opus in May 1828, to devote a whole volume of his work to a study of die Bible: "It will be, I trust, a complete Substitute for the German Introductions to the Old & New Testaments ... a real History of the Bible - not a flat newwording of the Bible History - the great object to restore the Bible to its [sic] due place in the Love & Veneration of Christians by at once establishing its Homopneumaty yet asserting it's [sic] Humanities."2 Though these critical notebook commentaries remained unpublished during his lifetime, they are pivotal for a fuller recovery of Coleridge's theology. I argue that Coleridge's late notebooks, especially bis commentaries on Scripture, enhance our understanding of his mature theological system by providing the exegetical groundwork of bis adherence to the Christian doctrine of redemption· Redemption ranks high among the central themes of Coleridgean theology. In Aids to Reflection (1825)- - widely regarded as the "central statement" of the doctrine in his writings - Coleridge goes so far as to claim that "Christianity and Redemption are equivalent terms."3 Placing the idea of redemption in Aids to Reflection wthin the fuller context of the notebook commentaries reveals Coleridge's unique place as "Theologian of the Word." His full account of redemption is far more than a corrective to early nineteenth-century Protestant theology, as it appears in Aids to Reflection. Rather, Coleridge's theology provides a thoroughgoing, constructive analysis of the person of Christ that relies heavuy on a critical exegesis of Paul and John. The notebooks, in my view, should be regarded as an essential part of the Coleridgean corpus: rather than the scattered, fragmentary remains of unfinished labor, the notebooks actually strengthen die case that Coleridge developed a broadly unified system of theology.4 Attending to the full scheme of redemption in these works also sheds further fight on several prominent themes in Coleridge's thought, including his understanding of theological language, use of sacramental imagery, and the role of symbols in his system - themes that were later taken up by Broad Church Anglican theologians such as Julius Hare and Charles Kingsley. The Language of Redemption The chief object of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection - a volume devoted to "the formation of a manly character on the several grounds of prudence, morality, and religion" - is "the value of the Science of Words, their use and abuse" (AR, 6-7). …


This paper considers the economic and environmental implications of regulating water and air nitrogen emissions under single and multi-environmental media policies in the U.S. hog industry. We examine tradeoffs from policies designed to correct an externality in one medium, when there are multiple environmental externalities. We separately and jointly analyze: (a) nitrogen land application restrictions consistent with recently adopted EPA requirements under the Clean Water Act, and (b) hypothetical air quality restrictions under the Clean Air Act, both with and without EQIP payments available to mitigate the costs of complying with nutrient application regulations.


This article examines the controversial question of the clean hands doctrine in investment arbitration and how tribunals have analyzed this concept. Many tribunals have concluded that they lacked jurisdiction over a claim (or that it was inadmissible) because an investor had made its investment in violation of the host State's laws. This article argues that this legality requirement is a manifestation of the clean hands doctrine. The main focus of the article is a critical review of the recent Yukos award. It assesses the Tribunal's conclusion that the doctrine should not be considered as a general principle of law and its rejection of the application of the doctrine to violations committed by an investor during the post-establishment phase of its investment. The article argues that a number of investment tribunals have in fact already applied the clean hands doctrine in their awards to bar the admissibility of claims.


A unique project led by livestock producers, called the Cicerone Project, was undertaken on the Northern Tablelands region of New South Wales, Australia, following acknowledgement by those producers of a widening gap between them and research and extension information. The overall aim of the project was to co-learn, through a partnership between livestock producers, research, extension and other specialists, how to improve the profitability and sustainability of grazing enterprises in that region. It was hypothesised that closer engagement would help to guide relevant research efforts and also enhance the adoption of research findings. With the support of industry funding and the collaboration of key research, education and extension partners, the inaugural steering committee of the Cicerone Project commissioned a survey of over 300 land managers in the region to explore their research and adoption needs. The survey identified the most important issues and found a high level of commitment to the formation of this producer-led project. Negotiations between all collaborators led to the creation of a Business Plan prepared as the basis for an initial funding period of 5 years. Subsequent reviews of the project allowed for extensions with associated activities over an additional 4 years. In order to study the key farm management alternatives identified from the producer survey, the Cicerone Project Board decided to adopt an agricultural ecosystem approach which conducted studies using three whole-farmlet systems. The farmlet experiment compared three contiguous farmlets by measuring as many aspects of the farm systems as possible using an approach summarised in the motto adopted by the Cicerone Project of 'compare–measure–learn–adopt'. A wide range of field days and seminars were held over the duration of the project to deliver the results to the producer members. This paper provides an introduction to a Special Issue containing 24 papers which report on the entirety of the project from planning, to execution, results, and reflections on the value obtained from the many research and extension activities, with particular emphasis on the farming systems trial conducted between 2000 and 2006.


The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of case segmentation schemes in problem-based learning (PBL) on the development of problem-solving skill, self-directedness and technical knowledge. Seventy-four dental education students were randomly assigned to 12 PBL groups. Six groups experienced PBL cases that were formatted in short segments and six groups experienced PBL cases that were formatted in long segments. Pretest measures of problem-solving skill, self-directedness and technical knowledge were administered at the beginning of the Fall 1998 semester. Students studied three PBL cases in their assigned groups in the ensuing semester. Posttest measures were administered at the conclusion of the semester. Analysis of the data found that students who experienced PBL with a short case segmentation scheme were better able to solve problems highly similar to the problems in the teaching cases than students who experienced PBL with a long case segmentation scheme. No significant differences were found for self-directedness, technical knowledge, or ability to solve problems distinctly different from the teaching cases. Explanations of these findings and their implications for research and practice in PBL are discussed.


Industrial plant-wide control performance assessment challenges are discussed, illustrating the need to extend the Harris Index control performance technique. This paper proposes two paradigms, the first being designed to increase the accuracy of the Harris Index by extracting the process dead time from closed loop operating data and eliminating the need for generalized prediction horizon constants. The second paradigm is aimed at extending the Harris Index assessment technique to a plant-wide system, without the requirement for process or control system knowledge.


The aim of this scoping review was to investigate the impact of footwear on worker physical task performance and injury risk. The review was guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews protocol and registered in the Open Science Framework. Key search terms were entered into five academic databases. Following a dedicated screening process and critical appraisal, data from the final articles informing this review were extracted, tabulated, and synthesised. Of 19,614 identified articles, 50 articles informed this review. Representing 16 countries, the most common populations investigated were military and firefighter populations, but a wide range of general occupations (e.g., shipping, mining, hairdressing, and healthcare workers) were represented. Footwear types included work safety boots/shoes (e.g., industrial, gumboots, steel capped, etc.), military and firefighter boots, sports shoes (trainers, tennis, basketball, etc.) and various other types (e.g., sandals, etc.). Occupational footwear was found to impact gait and angular velocities, joint ranges of motion, posture and balance, physiological measures (like aerobic capacity, heart rates, temperatures, etc.), muscle activity, and selected occupational tasks. Occupational footwear associated with injuries included boots, conventional running shoes, shoes with inserts, harder/stiffer outsoles or thin soles, and shoes with low comfort scores—although the findings were mixed. Occupational footwear was also linked to potentially causing injuries directly (e.g., musculoskeletal injuries) as well as leading to mechanisms associated with causing injuries (like tripping and slipping).


PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of telemedicine amid the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in patients with cancer and assess barriers to its implementation. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Telehealth video visits, using the Houston Methodist MyChart platform, were offered to patients with cancer as an alternative to in-person visits. Reasons given by patients who declined to use video visits were documented, and demographic information was collected from all patients. Surveys were used to assess the levels of satisfaction of treating physicians and patients who agreed to video visits. RESULTS: Of 1,762 patients with cancer who were offered telehealth video visits, 1,477 (83.8%) participated. The patients who declined participation were older (67.7 v 60.2 years; P < .0001), lived in significantly lower-income areas (P = .0021), and were less likely to have commercial insurance (P < .0001) than patients who participated. Most participating patients (92.6%) were satisfied with telehealth video visits. A majority of physicians (65.2%) were also satisfied with its use, and 74% indicated that they would likely use telemedicine in the future. Primary concerns that physicians had in using this technology were inadequate patient interactions and acquisition of medical data, increased potential for missing significant clinical findings, decreased quality of care, and potential medical liability. CONCLUSION: Oncology/hematology patients and their physicians expressed high levels of satisfaction with the use of telehealth video visits. Despite recent advances in technology, there are still opportunities to improve the equal implementation of telemedicine for the medical care of vulnerable older, low-income, and underinsured patient populations.


Family, a major institution located at the center of the society, has a primary role in the socialization and socialization of individuals. However, loss of healthy functions of the family causes many social problems that are subject of the science of social work. One of these social problems is addiction. Research shows that whereas some factors of family are protective of addiction, some could be risk factors as well. In this study, familial factors that push the individual to addiction have been focused and tried to be examined according to ecosystem theory. According to the ecosystem theory, any change in the individuals' lives who make up the family system affects the system and therefore, the other individuals who make up the system mutually. This effect may lead to the deterioration of existing balance in the family structure and a search for new balance due to tension. Addiction can be one of the problems that family faces in seeking balance. As a result, the system theory suggests: a protective-preventive work with familiesin a micro dimension that includes the individual; multi-agency co-operating in a mezzo dimension; and continuing awareness increasing research to prevent addiction in a macro dimension.


To take three points specifically: (1) Curriculum Certainly most diseases in tropical countries are "non-tropical," but this should not imply that the spectrum there resembles that in Britain. The diseases are predominantly those of poverty, for whose management a community approach is essential. Is this inculcated in the usual British-oriented school? To take an example: faced with a child suffering from malnutrition the British-trained doctor's response is to admit to hospital and commence milk supplements and vitamins, then discharge the child when improved. The more appropriate response, for which a differently directed training is needed, is to treat mother and child outside hospital in a nutrition rehabilitation centre and, together with agricultural workers, teachers, and others, to attempt to improve the nutritional standards of the area. (2) Preventive medicine A sharp distinction is drawn between this and curative medicine, the former to be the preserve of public health personnel, the latter that of doctors. Is such a distinction not more likely to lead to the lowering of standards that is suggested, since it will appear that the prestigious doctors are not interested in prevention? Is not an integrated approach more desirable-with auxiliaries at rural level concerned with both prevention and cure, and doctors at district level supervising both? In this capacity the value of the teaching of management in the medical course will be appreciated (and this does not mean the same as administration). (3) Medical auxiliaries The fear that they will eventually replace doctors will be obviated if co-operation is encouraged by joint activities during training and if the team approach is always promoted. Medical students in a rich country are being prepared for a situation in which the consultation with a single patient is the ideal. This may happen in developing countries for the few in the cities, and maybe for the majority in the far future; but at present the doctor's main concern in these countries must be for the community, where the needs are the greatest. Education for this approach will not be inferior but may well be different. TONY WATERSTON


The aim of the present study was to elucidate the effect of Body Mass (BM) and smoking on the development of stroke in a representative retrospective design among men and women in Gaza strip (GS). Methods: We analyzed a data base of 200 men and women aged between 35-70 years and selected by convenience sample. Those patients have been diagnosed with stroke and history of hypertension only and the diagnosis of stroke has been confirmed with physician and computed tomography scan. Self report structure interview was used to collect data by trained interviewers in Arabic language for ease of comprehension by the patient and family. Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) was used to analyze the obtained data. Results: There was a significant difference of BM (overweight and obesity) on the development of stroke as evidence by (Chi-square test 40.6 and P value 0.000) while there was no significant difference of smoking on development of stroke as evidence by (Chi-square test .98 and P value 0.322). On the other hand, our finding revealed a significant difference of smoking on development of stroke only among male smokers after adjustment of female gender (Chisquare test 39.1 and P value 0.000). Conclusions: BM was associated with the development of stroke in general among men and women but smoking was associated with development of stroke among smokers' men only. Further study is recommended to identify the effect of BM in different subtypes of stroke (ischemic, thrombus and hemorrhagic). Therefore, smoking cessation and reducing body weight programs should be an important strategy for reducing the burden of stroke in GS.


The keynote address examines the race-gendering of Indian indentured workers in the colonial imaginary through which Jamaica was remade as a tourist destination during the late nineteenth century. It specifically examines the visual portfolio created by photographers of tropical fecundity and idyllic rural life that would dispel the perception of Jamaican plantations being ruined by the emancipation of slaves. While scholars are critical of the Oriental picturesque projected by these photographs, Professor Sharpe makes a case for a "coolie picturesque"depicting Asian Indians as an uprooted people who do not belong in the New World. This colonial imaginary continues to haunt the perception of Indo-Caribbeans as outsiders to the region even until today


The services industries --which include jobs ranging from flipping hamburgers to providing investment advice --can no longer be characterized, as they have in the past, as a stagnant sector marked by low productivity growth. They have emerged as one of the most dynamic and innovative segments of the U.S. economy, now accounting for more than three-quarters of gross domestic product. During the 1990s, 19 million additional jobs were created in this sector, while growth was stagnant in the goods-producing sector. Here, Jack Triplett and Barry Bosworth analyze services sector productivity, demonstrating that fundamental changes have taken place in this sector of the U.S. economy. They show that growth in the services industries fueled the post-1995 expansion in the U.S. productivity and assess the role of information technology in transforming and accelerating services productivity. In addition to their findings for the services sector as a whole, they include separate chapters for a diverse range of industries within the sector, including transportation and communications, wholesale and retail trade, and finance and insurance. The authors also examine productivity measurement issues, chiefly statistical methods for measuring services industry output. They highlight the importance of making improvements within the U.S. statistical system to provide the more accurate and relevant measures essential for analyzing productivity and economic growth.


New congestion control algorithms are rapidly improving datacenters by reducing latency, overcoming incast, increasing throughput and improving fairness. Ideally, the operating system in every server and virtual machine is updated to support new congestion control algorithms. However, legacy applications often cannot be upgraded to a new operating system version, which means the advances are off-limits to them. Worse, as we show, legacy applications can be squeezed out, which in the worst case prevents the entire network from adopting new algorithms. Our goal is to make it easy to deploy new and improved congestion control algorithms into multitenant datacenters, without having to worry about TCP-friendliness with non-participating virtual machines. This paper presents a solution we call virtualized congestion control. The datacenter owner may introduce a new congestion control algorithm in the hypervisors. Internally, the hypervisors translate between the new congestion control algorithm and the old legacy congestion control, allowing legacy applications to enjoy the benefits of the new algorithm. We have implemented proofof-concept systems for virtualized congestion control in the Linux kernel and in VMware's ESXi hypervisor, achieving improved fairness, performance, and control over guest bandwidth allocations.


BACKGROUND: Observational studies report that lower driving pressure (ie, the difference between plateau pressure and PEEP) is associated with improved survival in patients with ARDS and may be a key mediator of lung-protective ventilation strategies. The primary objective of this study was to characterize reductions in driving pressure that could be achieved through changes in PEEP. METHODS: In this prospective physiological pilot study, 10 subjects with ARDS were placed on PEEP according to the ARDS Network Lower PEEP/FIO2 Table. PEEP was adjusted in small increments and decrements above and below this initial PEEP, and driving pressure was measured at each PEEP level. Subsequently, PEEP was set at the level resulting in the lowest driving pressure, and driving pressure was measured after 1, 5, 15, and 30 min to assess stability over time at constant PEEP. RESULTS: All subjects had ARDS with a median (interquartile range [IQR]) PaO2/FIO2 of 116 (98–132) at enrollment. Median (IQR) driving pressure at baseline was 14 (13–17) cm H2O. After PEEP titration, median driving pressure decreased to 13 (12–14) cm H2O. The largest reduction in driving pressure was 4 cm H2O. Two subjects had no change in driving pressure at multiple PEEP levels. To achieve the lowest driving pressure, final PEEP was increased in 6 subjects and decreased in 4 subjects from the baseline PEEP prescribed by the ARDS Network Lower PEEP/FIO2 Table. Driving pressure reached equilibrium within 1–5 min and remained stable for 30 min following PEEP titration. CONCLUSIONS: PEEP titration had a variable effect in changing driving pressure across this small sample of ARDS subjects. In some subjects, PEEP was decreased from values given in the ARDS Network Lower PEEP/FIO2 Table to minimize driving pressure. Changes in driving pressure stabilized within a few minutes of PEEP titration.


This research examined the association between parenting style and life satisfaction in adulthood (N=112). Participants responded to an online survey, called the Parenting Style and Life Satisfaction Survey, which included questions pertaining to parenting style experienced in childhood, parenting style used in adulthood, and levels of life satisfaction. A chi-square test was conducted to determine if there was a relationship between parenting style experienced in childhood and the adult's own parenting style. Analysis of variance tests were conducted to determine how parenting style experienced in childhood was connected to life satisfaction in adulthood and how the adult's parenting style was related to their life satisfaction. Correlations revealed that there were no statistically significant relationships between parenting style and life satisfaction. Results were interpreted and implications were discussed.


Abstract We are developing a new vertical seismometer, motivated by a desire to have an instrument whose performance is similar to that of observatory sensors yet can operate within a borehole without electronics. This has led us to an all-optical seismometer consisting of a spring-suspended mass whose position is monitored interferometrically. We use a Michelson interferometer illuminated with a 1 mW laser that can be linked to the seismometer with optical fibers only. A digital signal processor samples the interference fringe signal and produces a 400 samples/sec record of the seismometer mass displacement with a root mean square noise per octave band that varies from about 4×10 -12 m at 0.001 Hz to 4×10 -13 m at 1 Hz. The maximum displacement is limited by mechanical issues to a few millimeters at present, providing a dynamic range of at least 10 9 , equivalent to 30 bits (180 dB). Experiments to test this idea have been performed on a modified STS1 vertical seismometer whose electronics have been replaced with an optical system. Comparisons with other seismometers show that, in terms of both noise and signal fidelity, the optical approach is quite viable.


In Gut , Longerich et al describe the identification of a new gene, RSPO2 , involved in the pathogenesis of hepatocellular adenomas (HCA) and of a small fraction of hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC), through the activation of the Wnt/beta-catenin pathway, already known to be involved in the pathogenesis of a significant proportion of liver tumours.1 These results reduce the percentage of so-called 'unclassified' HCA, underline the tight relationship of some HCA with HCC and add another piece to the puzzle of the extraordinary clinical and biological diversity of HCA. This prompts several comments, mainly about the 'HCA story', but also about general tumour biology.

The 'HCA story' is a paradigm of how the better knowledge of a tumour group might form the basis of a better tumour classification and how a better tumour classification might result in an improved management of the patients. At the end of the previous century, HCA were viewed as rare benign liver tumours, occurring mainly in young females in the context of oral contraception.2 Their management was simple: when feasible, surgical resection was performed in all cases in order to prevent sometimes severe complications, such as rupture or bleeding. The risk of malignant transformation was a matter of debate. With the new millennium, started a series of in-depth molecular investigations which definitively changed our understanding of this tumour group, with major consequences on their clinical management and their understanding.3 From what was previously seen as a homogeneous entity, rapidly emerged a much …


Coupled intragrain diffusional mass transfer and nonlinear surface complexation processes play an important role in the transport behavior of U(VI) in contaminated aquifers. Two alternative model approaches for simulating these coupled processes were analyzed and compared: (1) the physical nonequilibrium approach that explicitly accounts for aqueous speciation and instantaneous surface complexation reactions in the intragrain regions and approximates the diffusive mass exchange between the immobile intragrain pore water and the advective pore water as multirate first‐order mass transfer and (2) the chemical nonequilibrium approach that approximates the diffusion‐limited intragrain surface complexation reactions by a set of multiple first‐order surface complexation reaction kinetics, thereby eliminating the explicit treatment of aqueous speciation in the intragrain pore water. A model comparison has been carried out for column and field scale scenarios, representing the highly transient hydrological and geochemical conditions in the U(VI)‐contaminated aquifer at the Hanford 300A site, Washington, USA. It was found that the response of U(VI) mass transfer behavior to hydrogeochemically induced changes in U(VI) adsorption strength was more pronounced in the physical than in the chemical nonequilibrium model. The magnitude of the differences in model behavior depended particularly on the degree of disequilibrium between the advective and immobile phase U(VI) concentrations. While a clear difference in U(VI) transport behavior between the two models was noticeable for the column‐scale scenarios, only minor differences were found for the Hanford 300A field scale scenarios, where the model‐generated disequilibrium conditions were less pronounced as a result of frequent groundwater flow reversals.


Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to diabetes but a causal relationship is not clear. We previously published hypothalamic vitamin D action is critical for glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in obese animals. We hypothesized vitamin D also enhanced insulin sensitivity within the brain. Indeed, 48 hours of 1,25D3 (aka calcitriol) increased phosphorylation of Akt in hypothalamic cells (GT1-7). This effect was not observed in the absence of insulin, indicating that vitamin D was enhancing insulin action rather than mediating phosphorylation independently. Phosphorylation of Akt is often mediated by phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K). Wortmannin, a PI3K inhibitor, blocked the effects of vitamin D to enhance pAkt. This supports a PI3K-dependent mechanism of vitamin D action. Vitamin D increased mRNA concentrations of key components of the PI3K/Akt pathway, namely IRS2 and p85. p55 expression, a negative regulator of PI3K, was decreased. Vitamin D did not affect transcription of the insulin receptor, IRS1, Akt, or the vitamin D receptor. Together, these support vitamin D as a regulator of the PI3K pathway in hypothalamic neurons. Additionally, the PI3K pathway has previously been shown to be important in rapid effects of other nuclear hormones. Since we previously published vitamin D depolarizes hypothalamic neurons, we investigated whether the PI3K pathway was also necessary in rapid vitamin D actions. Indeed, vitamin D was unable to depolarize hypothalamic neurons in the presence of the PI3K inhibitor wortmannin. Together, these data support that the action of vitamin D in the brain to influence glucose homeostasis may be through altered insulin signaling in the brain and requires the PI3K pathway for effects. These results are important in light of the known association between vitamin D and insulin resistance. They suggest that although vitamin D enhances insulin sensitivity, its actions are dependent upon a functional PI3K pathway, which is likely altered in an obese, insulin-resistant individual. Disclosure S. Teixeira: None. Y. He: None. Y. Xu: None. S. Sisley: Consultant; Self; Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc..


We investigate the acceleration of charged particles (both electrons and protons) at collisionless shocks predicted to exist in the vicinity of solar flares. The existence of standing termination shocks has been examined by flare models and numerical simulations. We study electron energization by numerically integrating the equations of motion of a large number of test-particle electrons in the time-dependent two-dimensional electric and magnetic fields generated from hybrid simulations (kinetic ions and fluid electron) using parameters typical of the solar flare plasma environment. The shock is produced by injecting plasma flow toward a rigid piston. Large-scale magnetic fluctuations—known to exist in plasmas and known to have important effects on the nonthermal electron acceleration at shocks—are also included in our simulations. For the parameters characteristic of the flaring region, our calculations suggest that the termination shock formed in the reconnection outflow region (above post-flare loops) could accelerate electrons to a kinetic energy of a few MeV within 100 ion cyclotron periods, which is of the order of a millisecond. Given a sufficient turbulence amplitude level (δB2/B20 ∼ 0.3), about 10% of thermal test-particle electrons are accelerated to more than 15 keV. We find that protons are also accelerated, but not to as high energy in the available time and the energy spectra are considerably steeper than that of the electrons for the parameters used in our simulations. Our results are qualitatively consistent with the observed hard X-ray emissions in solar flares.


Plant STRUBBELIG (SUB)-RECEPTOR FAMILY (SRF) genes encode putative leucine-rich repeat transmembrane receptor-like kinases. SRFs have been reported to play essential roles in tissue morphogenesis in many plant organs. Here, we show that a potato SRF family gene, StLRPK1, is involved in plant immunity. StLRPK1 is located at the cell plasma membrane and is strongly induced by culture filtrate from in vitro growth of the late blight pathogen Phytophthora infestans. Overexpression of StLRPK1 in stable transgenic potato or ectopic expression in Nicotiana benthamiana plants enhances P. infestans disease resistance, whereas RNA interference (RNAi) of StLRPK1 in potato decreases disease resistance. We found that StLRPK1 constitutively interacts with a pivotal co-receptor, SERK3A/ BAK1, which plays a central role in plant immunity. Virus-induced gene silencing of SERK3A/BAK1 in N. benthamiana lines expressing StLRPK1 attenuated P. infestans resistance, indicating that SERK3A/BAK1 is required for StLRPK1mediated immunity. Finally, we show that StLRPK1-triggered late blight resistance depends on the mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase MEK2 and mitogen-activated protein kinase WIPK. We propose a model in which StLRPK1 associates with SERK3A/BAK1 to positively regulate plant immunity to P. infestans through a MAPK cascade. These data provide new insights into our understanding of SRF function in plant immunity.


Mertikas, Georgios 2010. Protein levels of Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor in the hippocampus of Low/High aerobic capacity rats. Department of Biology of Physical Activity, University of Jyvaskyla. Master's Thesis in Exercise Physiology. 75 pp. Hippocrates and Plato have first documented the connection between a healthy mind and body, during a period which launched analytical thinking and philosophy in Ancient Greece. Modern research has also indicated the contribution of an active lifestyle to enhanced brain performance and decreased incidence of neurodegenerative diseases and mood disorders such as Alzheimer's disease and depression respectively. This has been hypothesized to emerge through mechanisms which are enhanced by exercise and contribute on brain plasticity and health. The Neurotrophins hypothesis implicates several molecules in brain plasticity and healthy aging. Among them, Brain-derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF) has been shown to increase its expression levels in the most plastic regions of the brain in an activity-dependent manner both in development and adulthood, proposing its significance throughout lifespan. We used Immunohistochemistry (IHC) to investigate the expression of BDNF protein levels in the hippocampi of Low/High aerobic capacity rats which have proposed a model of sedentary and active lifestyle. Rats were also subjected to Rotarod motor learning test were the high capacity group showed increased baseline performance and faster learning than the low capacity one. IHC in the hippocampi of the animals didn't detect any significant differences of BDNF protein levels in CA1 and CA3 areas. The failure to detect differences is believed to emerge due to the sedentary lifestyle in both groups, suggesting that genetic background may not determine the levels of the protein in sedentary conditions.


Purpose
This paper aims to analyse the differential impact of foreign and domestic remittances on household expenditure shares.

Design/methodology/approach
This study uses micro-data from a very large and detailed income-expenditure survey in Mexico and runs consumption-share Engel equations to estimate income (expenditure) elasticities for different consumption goods groups. Trying to account for the standard problems of endogeneity, this paper considers only nuclear households with migrant fathers and compare households that receive remittances from abroad, from within Mexico and those not receiving remittances.

Findings
This study finds that international remittances have a larger impact on the expenditure shares of women's clothes, insurances and durable goods, while domestic remittances have a larger impact on the share of income dedicated to food, health and education.

Originality/value
Based on the results, differences in consumption shares between families receiving foreign and domestic remittances might depend not only on the relative size of the income transfer but also on the nature of the transfer and the sender's capacity to monitor in person the use of those remittances. The results indicate that households that receive remittances from abroad present higher shares of consumption of some goods the literature commonly associates with the mothers' preferences.


ABSTRACT Li, X.; Ren, Y.X.; Shi, W.H., Ji, J., and Yin, W.D., 2020. Urban development and natural system evolution in coastal areas. In: Qiu, Y.; Zhu, H., and Fang, X. (eds.), Current Advancements in Marine and Coastal Research for Technological and Sociological Applications. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 107, pp. 449-453. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. The southeast coastal area, where several major urban agglomerations are concentrated in, is the main engine of national economic growth. Studying the natural development context of coastal cities will help to improve the urban scale structure, strengthen the relationship between urban space and surrounding areas as well as bring enlightenment for the coordinated development of regional economic belt. Taking Huzhou as an example, this paper studies the evolution of the natural system of coastal cities in the Taihu Lake River Basin. This research focuses on the formation of urban natural spatial pattern based on the city's natural development mechanism and try to sum up the traditional urban development mode through combining the evolution data of urban natural system in historical period, in order to put forward scientific theory and practical basis for the protection, construction and inheritance of traditional urban natural base in China. Through the field survey and graphic analysis, this article makes an in-depth analysis of the urban development and the evolution of natural system in Huzhou from three aspects: (1) the Urban Development of Ancient Huzhou; (2) the natural urban system of Ancient Huzhou; (3) the exploration of the natural urban development model of Huzhou, and the conclusion is that the relationship between the city and the natural system of Huzhou shows a spiral rise in the process of evolution.


Autoencoders (AE) aim to reproduce the output from the input. They may hence tend to overfit towards learning the identity-function between the input and output, i.e., they may predict each feature in the output from itself in the input. This is not useful, however, when AEs are used for prediction tasks in the presence of noise in the data. It may seem intuitively evident that this kind of overfitting is prevented by training a denoising AE [36], as the dropped-out features have to be predicted from the other features. In this paper, we consider linear autoencoders, as they facilitate analytic solutions, and first show that denoising / dropout actually prevents the overfitting towards the identity-function only to the degree that it is penalized by the induced L2-norm regularization. In the main theorem of this paper, we show that the emphasized denoising AE [37] is indeed capable of completely eliminating the overfitting towards the identity-function. Our derivations reveal several new insights, including the closed-form solution of the full-rank model, as well as a new (near-)orthogonality constraint in the low-rank model. While this constraint is conceptually very different from the regularizers recently proposed in [11, 42, 14], their resulting effects on the learned embeddings are empirically similar. Our experiments on three well-known data-sets corroborate the various theoretical insights derived in this paper.


The traditional image matching algorithms adopt more complex strategies when dealing with mismatch caused by a lot of noise. In this paper, a simple, intuitive and effective noise processing algorithm is proposed based on Delaunay triangulation in computational geometry. The algorithm extracts feature points using SIFT method, respectively establishes Delaunay triangulation in multi-spectral and panchromatic images, and removes the feature points that three points are collinear and four points are on circle by Delaunay triangulation, obtains the registration images through the correspondence between the Delaunay triangulations. The effect of image registration is evaluated by objective method. In the image matching, Delaunay triangulation is introduced. The establishment of Delaunay triangulation is independent of the selection of initial values. In general, a unique Delaunay triangulation can be got when a feature point set is given, and it can provide the accuracy of the algorithm. The algorithm is simple and clear for converting a lot of mismatch noise to the operation of Delaunay triangulation. Experiment results show the algorithm can keep the good rotation feature and translation invariance in SIFT method, the number of extraction feature points has been significantly reduced in the algorithm compared with SIFT method, registration speed and accuracy are better than the registration algorithm based on conventional SIFT method. DOI:  http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/telkomnika.v11i2.2004


A new paleomagnetic study in the South Sichuan basin (South China Block) has been carried out on sediments of Early Triassic to Middle Jurassic age. Detailed stepwise thermal and alternating field demagnetizations allowed us to isolate two to three components. A low-temperature component (component A) falls close to the local present Earth field direction. A middle-temperature component (component B) is found both in limestone and red beds of Early Triassic age, in limestones of Middle Triassic age, and finally in red beds of Jurassic age. The component B directions failed the fold test but show a significant increase of the ks/kg ratio at 60% when a progressive stepwise unfolding is applied. The directions obtained at 60% unfolding are grouped best and yield a pole position at 76.5°N, 174.1°E, A95 = 3.7° that is close to the Late Cretaceous pole of the South China Block (SCB) or the Early Tertiary pole of the Eurasian plate. Characteristic directions are finally obtained (component C) for Early Triassic and Early to Middle Jurassic sediments only, both with reversal and fold tests. They yield pole positions at 44.1°N and 217.2°E (A95 = 4.9°) and 79°N and 227°E (A95 = 4.5°), respectively. The Early Triassic result well fits other data of the same age from the SCB. The revised Late Permian to Cretaceous paleopole data provide a new Mesozoic apparent polar wander path for south China. The successive pole positions from Late Permian to Early Triassic indicate motion of the South China Block as a whole rather than local rotations linked to important strain within the block. The Early to Middle Jurassic pole is statistically indistinguishable from the compiled North China Block (NCB) poles and indicates that final suturation between the two blocks occurred by the end of the Triassic, which is coherent with the age of ultra high-pressure metamorphism in the Dabie-Sulu areas of eastern China. The Asian plate including the Mongol-Central Asian Block, NCB, and SCB, however, was probably separated from Siberia by the Mongol-Okhotsk ocean during Jurassic time.


Polymer films of rice starch/Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) were prepared by casting method. Different blends were made varying the concentration of rice starch and PVA. Tensile strength (TS) and elongation at break (Eb) of the prepared films were studied. Films made up of rice starch and PVA with a ratio of 2:8 showed highest TS. 10% sugar was added with highest TS giving four composition of Starch/PVA blend in order to increase TS and Eb. Films made up of rice starch and PVA and sugar with a ratio of 1:8:1 showed highest TS and Eb and the recorded value was 14.96MPa and 637% respectively. The physico-mechanical properties of the prepared sugar incorporated films were improved by grafting with acrylic monomer with the aid of UV radiation. A formulation was prepared with monomer, methylmethacrylat in methanol, and a photo initiator. The highest TS of the grafted films were recorded and the value was 16.38 MPa. The water uptake and weight loss in both soil and water of the grafted films are lower than the non-grafted films. The prepared films were further characterized with stereo micrograph and XRD. Finally, the produced film can be used as biodegradable packaging materials for shopping and garbage bags that are very popular and environment friendly.


Maximum Entropy data processing techniques have been widely available for use by NMR spectroscopisis and mass spectrometrisls since they were first reported as a tool for enhancing damaged images. However, the techniques have been met with a certain amount of scepticism amongst the spectroscopic community; not least their apparent ability to get something for nothing. The aim of the work presented in this thesis is to demonstrate that if these techniques are used carefully and in appropriate situations a great deal of information can be extracted from both NMR and mass spectra. This has been achieved by using the Memsys5 and Massive Inference algorithms to process a range of NMR and mass spectra which suffer from some of the problems which are commonly encountered in spectroscopy, i.e. poor resolution, poor sensitivity, how to process spectra with a wide range of peak widths. The theory underlying the two algorithms is described simply and the techniques for selecting appropriate point spread functions are outlined. Experimental rather than simulated spectra are processed throughout. Throughout this work the Maximum Entropy results are freated with scepticism. A pragmatic approach is employed to demonstrate that the results are valid. It is concluded that the Maximum Entropy methods do have their place amongst the many other data processing strategies used by spectroscopists. If used correctly and in appropriate situations the results can be worth the investment in time needed to obtain a satisfactory result.


In order to combine the properties of phosphate surfactants and silicone surfactants, the polyether-modified polysiloxane phosphate (PPSP) was prepared. Firstly, the intermediate was synthesized through the hydrosilylation of hydricpolysiloxane and alkyl polyether. Then the polyether-modified polysiloxane phosphate was prepared through the phosphorylation reaction of intermediate and P2O5. The optimum condition of the phosphorylation reaction was the reaction temperature was 80°C, reaction time was 3.5h and molar ratio of -OH: P2O5 was 3.0:1.0. The molecular structure of phosphate was characterized by FTIR and 31P-NMR. The components and their capabilities were also studied. The CMC of PPSP was 0.58g/L and the surface tension related was 25.78mN/m, but the foaming power of PPSP is relatively low.


Practical mechanical systems often contain several flexible components and uncertain parameters which makes it hard to predict the system behavior and performance exactly. This research presents the uncertainty analysis of flexible multibody systems with random variables. Absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF), which is different from the traditional finite element method, is employed to model the flexibility here. Monte Carlo method is successfully used to simulate flexible multibody systems of index-3. The method proposed is demonstrated by an example of flexible slider-crank mechanism.