Use of alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana continues to be a serious problem among Latino adolescents. These behaviors contribute to increased short-term risk (e.g., accidents) and long-term health problems (e.g., lung cancer). Health behavior constructs may be significant correlates of substance use. The purpose of these studies was to identify theoretical constructs prominent in the Behavioral Ecological Model and test their association with substance use. Data for these studies come from a sample of Latino adolescents living along the US/Mexico border that tested positive for latent tuberculosis infection. Chapter 2 presents a study separately testing a multivariate model and its association with alcohol and tobacco use. Peer modeling emerged as significant for both alcohol and tobacco use, but parental consistency was only associated with alcohol use. This finding indicates a potential difference in the uptake of these two substances, and suggests a potential point of intervention for future studies. The independent variable for chapter 3 was gateway drug use (alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana). Chapter 3 includes a comparison between parent-adolescent dyad perceptions of parents' parenting practices. Only variables reported by adolescents were significantly related to gateway drug use. The discrepancies in predictive value between parent and adolescent reports represent a new finding among Latinos and imply a need for higher quality measures of parenting practices. Chapter 4 includes an exploratory study of the built environment and its association with gateway drug use, while controlling for potential confounding variables. This study involved the use of geocoded participant addresses and their proximity to alcohol and tobacco retailers. Results from this study suggest possible gender differences related to use of gateway drugs in neighborhoods determined as high- risk. Female rates of gateway drug use were lowest in areas closest to retailers. Such areas demonstrated less favorable demographic characteristics. Future studies should explore the possibility of differential gender- related influences (e.g., parents are more controlling of girls vs. boys in high risk areas) that may impact use of alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana. Together these studies extend our current understanding of risk factors and correlates of substance use among Latino adolescents living along the US/Mexico border


This study discusses how the image of Muslim women who are commodified in television shows, namely Dua Hijab program on Trans 7. Dua Hijab are a show that provides information about fashion hijab references for Muslim women. This research is motivated by the media not only as a medium of communication and information, but also as a medium for ideological battles and also used as a power to regulate society. The community will tend to ignore the true meaning, the substantial meaning, and finally get caught up in the commodity fethism that makes people become consumptive. The problem in this study is how TRANS 7 forms commodification in the content of Dua Hijab television shows and How TRANS 7 shapes the image of women in the content of Dua Hijab television shows. In this study, researchers analyzed the Country Style episode of Dua Hijab shows using Roland Barthes' semiotics analysis. The results of this study indicate that Dua Hijab provides some fashion hijab references for Muslim women. Dua Hijab gives reference to fashion hijab in various fashion themes that are adapted to wearing the hijab and the smell of Islam. In this case, Dua Hijab portrayes Muslim women as being fashion sensitive and appearing stylish and fashionable. This is what Vincent Moscow has described as a commodification of content. Commodification prioritizes visible physical form, rather than substantially meaning. This causes the community to only be trapped in the apparent meaning of existence. The community will tend to ignore the true meaning, the substantial meaning, and finally get caught up in the commodity fethism that makes the society become consumptive


This paper assumes that formative processes are not limited to the school context or model but that other life contexts and experiences, even if not intentionally, have educational effects. These informal formative contexts and experiences can play a key role individual´s development, resulting not only in superficial changes, but also in deep changes in terms of subjectivity and identity. Our research involves clandestine militants of the Portuguese Communist Party during the dictatorship, and explores the type of knowledge acquired during their hiding experience (1940-1974) that allowed them to resist and survive over long periods. As our focus is the experience of women, based on narrative discourses of women (or about them) we will consider the role and status of women in hiding. The discourses were collected through several published autobiographical narratives and mainly interviews where we tried to identify the learning processes, the people seen as significant for knowledge acquisition, and also how knowing, knowing how to do and knowing how to be were constructed during living in hiding.


Background: Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) incidence continues to rise with increasing morbidity and mortality, with limited treatment options for advanced disease. Future improvements in targeted therapy will rely on advances in genomic/transcriptomic understanding and the use of model systems for basic research. We describe here the panel of 16 primary and metastatic cSCC cell lines developed and characterised over the past three decades in our laboratory in order to provide such a resource for future preclinical research and drug screening. Methods: Primary keratinocytes were isolated from cSCC tumours and metastases, and cell lines were established. These were characterised using short tandem repeat (STR) profiling and genotyped by whole exome sequencing. Multiple in vitro assays were performed to document their morphology, growth characteristics, migration and invasion characteristics, and in vivo xenograft growth. Results: STR profiles of the cSCC lines allow the confirmation of their unique identity. Phylogenetic trees derived from exome sequence analysis of the matched primary and metastatic lines provide insight into the genetic basis of disease progression. The results of in vivo and in vitro analyses allow researchers to select suitable cell lines for specific experimentation. Conclusions: There are few well-characterised cSCC lines available for widespread preclinical experimentation and drug screening. The described cSCC cell line panel provides a critical tool for in vitro and in vivo experimentation.


Objective: Respiratory complications are frequently observed in chronic neurological diseases because of loss of the airway protective reflexes and respiratory muscle weakness. In this study, we investigated the survival of this patient group in the intensive care unit (ICU) and after discharge. Method: A retrospective cohort study was conducted in a level III respiratory ICU of a tertiary hospital for chest diseases between January 1st, 2010 and June 15th, 2015. Patiens that have acute respiratory failure due to neurological dysfunction were included into the study. Results were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Kaplan-Meier survival analyses were performed. Results: 220 patients (65.5% male) whose median (interquartile ratio, IQR) age was 76 (16-93) were included into the study. The most frequent neurological diagnosis were dementia (37.3%), cerebrovascular disease (22.7%), motor neuron disease (14.1%) and myopathy (6.8%). 45% of patients had hypoxemic respiratory failure while 45.9% had both hypoxemia and hypercapnia. 86.8% of patients were diagnosed with pneumonia, while 34.5% had septic shock within 24 hours of admission. ICU mortality rate was 33.6% (n=74). Four years follow-up, the patients who use longterm noninvazive mechanical ventilation survived significantly longer (kaplan meier p: 0.004). According to cox regression hazard analysis, it was found that male gender, hypoxemy, septic shock and requirement of nasogastric tube feeding increased risk for mortality. Conclusion: Long-term mechanical ventilation support may contribute to better survival of patients who suffer from respiratory complications of progressive neurological diseases.


All-solid-state electrochemical power cells have been fabricated and tested in a continuing effort to develop batteries for instruments for use in environments as hot as 500 C. Batteries of this type are needed for exploration of Venus, and could be used on Earth for such applications as measuring physical and chemical conditions in geothermal and oil wells, processing furnaces, and combustion engines. In the state-of-the-art predecessors of the present solid-state power cells, fully packaged molten eutectic salts are used as electrolytes. The molten-salt-based cells can be susceptible to significant amounts of self-discharge and corrosion when used for extended times at elevated temperatures. In contrast, all-solid-state cells such as the present ones are expected to be capable of operating for many days at temperatures up to 500 C, without significant self-discharge. The solid-state cell described here includes a cathode made of FeS2, an electrolyte consisting of a crystalline solid solution of equimolar amounts of Li3PO4 and Li4SiO4, and an anode made of an alloy of Li and Si (see figure). The starting material for making the solid electrolyte is a stoichiometric mixture of Li3PO4, SiO2, and Li3CO2. This mixture is ball-milled, then calcined for two hours at a temperature of 1,100 C, then placed in a die atop the cathode material. Next, the layers in the die are squeezed together at a pressure between 60 and 120 MPa for one hour at a temperature of 600 C to form a unitary structure comprising the solid electrolyte and cathode bonded together. Finally, the lithium-alloy anode is pressure-bonded to the solid electrolyte layer, using an intermediate layer of pure lithium. In one test of a cell of this type, a discharge rate of about 1 mA per gram of cathode material was sustained for 72 hours at a temperature of about 460 C. This is about three times the discharge rate required to support some of the longer duration Venus-exploration mission scenarios.


The Supreme Court has articulated three theoretically different standards of review for determining whether government action has denied any person equal protection of the laws: rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, and strict scrutiny. One area of this tri-level jurisprudence that continues to be troublesome in practice is the application of intermediate scrutiny to gender classifications. Nguyen v. INS is significant because it is the first case in which all nine Justices unequivocally applied that standard in such a case. Nonetheless, the application of the standard remains problematic since the Court split five to four on its application to the facts. This article analyzes the gender cases and concludes, perhaps not surprisingly, that the verbalization of the standard intermediate scrutiny has had little effect on the decisions in the gender cases. In reality, the outcomes of the cases turn on how the individual Justices view the underlying facts. Those who view the classification as being based on legitimate differences between the genders generally vote to uphold it; those who view the classification as being based on stereotypical "overbroad generalizations about the talents, capacities, or preferences of males and females" generally vote to strike it down. In this regard the application of intermediate scrutiny in gender cases is in reality a form of rational basis review.


Symmetric and asymmetric GARCH models-GARCH (1,1), PARCH (1,1), EGARCH (1,1), TARCH (1,1) and IGARCH (1,1) were used to examine stylized facts of daily USD/UGX return series from September 01, 2005 to August 30, 2018. Modeling and forecasting were performed based on Gaussian, Student's t and GED distribution densities to identify the best distribution for examining stylized facts about the volatility of returns. Initial tests of heteroscedasticity (ARCH-LM), autocorrelation and stationarity were carried out to establish specific data requirements before modeling. Results for conditional variance indicated the presence of significant asymmetries, volatility clustering, leptokurtic distribution, and leverage effects. Effectively, PARCH (1,1) under GED distribution provided highly significant results free from serial correlation and ARCH effects, thus revealing the asymmetric responsiveness and persistence to shocks. Forecasting was performed across distributions and assessed based on symmetric lost functions (RMSE, MAE, MAPE and Thiel's U) and information criteria (AIC, SBC and Loglikelihood). Information criteria offered preference for EGARCH (1,1) under GED distribution while symmetric lost functions provided very competitive choices with very slight precedence for GARCH (1,1) and EGARCH (1,1) under GED distribution. Following these results, we recommend PARCH (1,1) and EGARCH (1,1) for modeling and forecasting volatility with preference to GED distribution. Given the asymmetric responsiveness and persistence of conditional variance, macroeconomic fiscal adjustments in addition to stabilization of the internal political environment are advised for Uganda.


This new historical atlas - richly illustrated with photographs, artwork recreations and full-colour maps - explores the world's earliest civilisations from the first farming settlements of Mesopotamia, via Egypt, Greece and Rome, to the civilisations of the Far East, Europe and America. Informatively written, and ideal for both students and the general reader, it plots the rise and fall of empires, the nature of different societies and the evolution of technology.


Introduction Ageing and disability represent two policy fields which need to be jointly re-thought in the context of an increasingly ageing society with a growing number of persons with disabilities. So far, policy-makers and other political actors have not adequately reacted to these changing demographics. Description of policy and practice The two policy fields are based upon different presuppositions. Also, disability and ageing interest groups set different objectives and agendas. As several political actor groups with diverse interests and goals operate in the political space, efforts to bridge policies and practices in ageing and disability are confronted with several challenges. Conclusion To be able to create a policy framework for disability and ageing, it is necessary that interest groups formulate shared political priorities. These interest groups have to convince other political actors that new policies (not only focusing on 'active/healthy/normal ageing' vs. 'non-healthy/not normal ageing') are necessary for being able to cope with changing demographics. Discussion It is necessary to re-think current disability and ageing policies and also the objectives formulated by diverse interest groups in both fields. Overlap of contents exist which mutually informs the other field and can help to influence policy-making and policy practices with regard to an ageing population with a growing number of persons with disabilities.


Electronic medical records (EMRs) are changing the way physicians work and how medical staff care for patients. While their widespread adoption promise many benefits and computationally powerful features for end users, they may also carry with them other unintended and troubling consequences. As part of a larger ongoing research study, we deployed an unobtrusive eye tracker in outpatient clinics to observe how physicians use their EMRs. We report on our experiences and we derive a methodology for successful eye tracking data collection in the clinic. Our results highlight multiple applications for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of EMR interfaces from eye tracking data collected in situ. We describe one of these applications, the association of eye movements with the specific task that physicians engage with in the EMR, and we discuss both next steps and future application of these results.


Abstract:A recently discovered collection of epitaphs (muzhi 墓誌) reveals copious references to Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian 陶潛, 365–427), a writer of pervasive influence on Chinese culture. In recent decades, both English and Chinese scholarship has focused on Tao's literary and historical reception, with little attention paid to his representation in epitaph writing. This article, through an examination of these newly unearthed documents, presents forty-seven epitaph fragments with direct mention of Tao's name. Most were written in the Tang dynasty, when Tao was ardently appreciated as a poet, and his literary vocabulary was widely borrowed and imitated. However, a close reading of epitaphs illustrates that Tao's image as a moral exemplar was perhaps even more prominent than his role as esteemed poet. He was invoked to suggest the comparable personal traits of the tomb owner (muzhu 墓主), his name frequently juxtaposed with various historical figures renowned for their virtue. His name is also used as an adjective to modify carefully selected images to further characterize him as a moral exemplar. InTang epitaphs, moral concerns together with philosophical contemplation on the motives of reclusion play a significant role, laying the foundation for the complexity of Tao's image in the Song period. Current research seeks to increase our understanding of the process behind the construction of Tao as a cultural icon.


Implementation of the electronic health record (EHR) among hospitals has increased substantially within the recent years, but concerns still remain regarding the unique challenges that hospitals face in adopting and achieving meaningful use (MU) of EHRs. EHR implementation initiatives tend to be driven by the promise of enhanced integration and availability of patient information, which can improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness, through changing the physician-patient relationship into a shared care team approach to deal with the rapidly changing environment. The challenges in implementing a system wide EHR system mainly include a range of factors from the organizational and technological standpoint such as organizational structure, human skills, culture, technical infrastructure, financial restraints and synchronization. This essay is a case study analysis of a real time EHR implementation to identify the challenges and increase understanding of the technical and behavioral management difficulties faced. The public health relevance is that successful EHR implementation is a moving target and so having strong individual and organizational commitment, end-user engagement, desire to improve, resources and knowledge will help provide excellent quality of care to patients and in turn improve the community's overall health status.


Abstract Radiocarbon calibration is necessary to correct for variations in atmospheric radiocarbon over time. The IntCal working group has developed an updated and extended radiocarbon calibration curve, IntCal20, for Northern Hemisphere terrestrial samples from 0 to 55,000 cal yr BP. This paper summarizes the new datasets, changes to existing datasets, and the statistical method used for constructing the new curve. Examples of the effect of the new calibration curve compared to IntCal13 for hypothetical radiocarbon ages are given. For the recent Holocene the effect is minimal, but for older radiocarbon ages the shift in calibrated ages can be up to several hundred years with the potential for multiple calibrated age ranges in periods with higher-resolution data. In addition, the IntCal20 curve is used to recalibrate the radiocarbon ages for the glaciation of the Puget Lowland and to recalculate the advance rate. The ice may have reached its maximum position a few hundred years earlier using the new calibration curve; the calculated advance rate is virtually unchanged from the prior estimate.


INTRODUCTION THE BACK SURFACE ANATOMY SKELETON OF THE BACK SKIN AND SUPERFICIAL FASCIA SUPERFICIAL MUSCLES OF THE BACK INTERMEDIATE MUSCLES OF THE BACK DEEP MUSCLES OF THE BACK SUBOCCIPITAL REGION VERTEBRAL CANAL, SPINAL CORD, AND MENINGES THE UPPER LIMB SURFACE ANATOMY SUPERFICIAL VEINS AND CUTANEOUS NERVES SUPERFICIAL GROUP OF BACK MUSCLES SCAPULAR REGION PECTORAL REGION MUSCLES OF THE PECTORAL REGION AXILLA ARM AND CUBITAL FOSSA FLEXOR REGION OF THE FOREARM PALM OF THE HAND EXTENSOR REGION OF THE FOREARM AND DORSUM OF THE HAND JOINTS OF THE UPPER LIMB THE THORAX SURFACE ANATOMY SKELETON OF THE THORAX PECTORAL REGION INTERCOSTAL SPACE AND INTERCOSTAL MUSCLES REMOVAL OF THE ANTERIOR THORACIC WALL PLEURAL CAVITIES LUNGS THE ABDOMEN SURFACE ANATOMY SUPERFICIAL FASCIA OF THE ANTEROLATERAL ABDOMINAL WALL MUSCLES OF THE ANTEROLATERAL ABDOMINAL WALL REFLECTION OF THE ABDOMINAL WALL PERITONEUM AND PERITONEAL CAVITY CELIAC TRUNK, STOMACH, SPLEEN, LIVER, AND GALLBLADDER SUPERIOR MESENTERIC ARTERY AND SMALL INTESTINE INFERIOR MESENTERIC ARTERY AND LARGE INTESTINE DUODENUM, PANCREAS, AND HEPATIC PORTAL VEIN REMOVAL OF THE GASTROINTESTINAL TRACT POSTERIOR ABDOMINAL VISCERA POSTERIOR ABDOMINAL WALL THE PELVIS AND PERINEUM SKELETON OF THE PELVIS ANAL TRIANGLE MALE EXTERNAL GENITALIA AND PERINEUM MALE UROGENITAL TRIANGLE MALE PELVIC CAVITY URINARY BLADDER, RECTUM, AND ANAL CANA INTERNAL ILIAC ARTERY AND SACRAL PLEXUSL FEMALE EXTERNAL GENITALIA AND PERINEUM FEMALE UROGENITAL TRIANGLE FEMALE PELVIC CAVITY URINARY BLADDER, RECTUM, AND ANAL CANAL INTERNAL ILIAC ARTERY AND SACRAL PLEXUS THE LOWER LIMB SURFACE ANATOMY SUPERFICIAL VEINS AND CUTANEOUS NERVES ANTERIOR COMPARTMENT OF THE THIGH MEDIAL COMPARTMENT OF THE THIGH GLUTEAL REGION POSTERIOR COMPARTMENT OF THE THIGH LEG AND DORSUM OF THE FOOT POSTERIOR COMPARTMENT OF THE LEG LATERAL COMPARTMENT OF THE LEG ANTERIOR COMPARTMENT OF THE LEG AND DORSUM OF THE FOOT SOLE OF THE FOOT JOINTS OF THE LOWER LIMB THE HEAD AND NECK NECK POSTERIOR TRIANGLE OF THE NECK ANTERIOR TRIANGLE OF THE NECK THYROID AND PARATHYROID GLANDS ROOT OF THE NECK HEAD Skull FACE PAROTID REGION SCALP TEMPORAL REGION INTERIOR OF THE SKULL REMOVAL OF THE BRAIN DURAL INFOLDINGS AND DURAL VENOUS SINUSES GROSS ANATOMY OF THE BRAIN CRANIAL FOSSAE ORBIT CRANIOVERTEBRAL JOINTS AND DISARTICULATION OF THE HEAD PHARYNX NOSE AND NASAL CAVITY HARD PALATE AND SOFT PALATE ORAL REGION LARYNX EAR Index


We report a case of a thirteen year old female diagnosed as aHUS, complicated by malignant hypertension and central nervous system involvement. The patient was treated with plasmapheresis(plasma exchange) and corticosteroids along with supportive care. The patient showed remission immediately and recovered after four weeks of hospital stay and three months later is well on antihypertensives.


Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is becoming a relatively matured technology as many telecommunication service providers offer this technology to customers. The actual throughput of ADSL is highly dependent on the number of simultaneous users within a cable grouping. In order to guarantee throughput to any user at any time, one must be able to predict the circumstances under which throughput cannot be guaranteed any more. To guarantee high reliability of these predictions, a reliable theoretical model of the system is required. In this paper a comparison is made between the theoretical model and the practical scenario to determine the accuracy of the theoretical model. It was found that the theoretical model closely resembles the practical scenario, which makes QoS estimation possible using a theoretical model, rather than a trial-and-error method.


A major objective of biogeochemical studies of coral reefs is to quantify fluxes of particulate and dissolved matter between the reef and overlying waters. However, direct measurements of these fluxes are hard to obtain due to the typically small concentration changes as the water flows over the bottom and due to shear, turbulent mixing and con- centration gradients characterizing benthic boundary layers. Using state-of-the-art underwater technology, we were able to apply the "Control Volume" approach to measure in situ phytoplankton grazing on a scale of a whole coral- reef community. The results indicate that the import of carbon and nutrients via this grazing is a major, previously underestimated, trophic pathway in coral reefs. The amount of phytoplankton grazed by 1 m 2 of reef is similar to the total phytoplankton produced in the entire water column of the surrounding sea under I m 2 of sea-surface. The import of allochthonous nutrients into the reef via this grazing balances the downstream leak of dissolved nutrients. Physically, the flow over the rough topography of the reef produces enhanced turbulence, enabling high grazing rates to be sustained, while on larger scales, the exchange between the offshore ocean and the reef is supported by buoyan- cy-driven flows. With the advent of underwater technology, the control volume technique is no longer limited to unique situations (e.g. closed lagoons, shallow flats), but should be generally applicable for measurements of benthic- pelagic fluxes in oceans and lakes.


"The Big House after Slavery" examines the economic, social, and political challenges that Virginia planter families faced following Confederate defeat and emancipation. Amy Feely Morsman addresses how men and women of the planter class responded to postwar problems and how their adaptations to life without slavery altered their marital relationships and their conceptions of gender roles. Unable to afford many servants in the new free labor economy, many of Virginia's former masters put themselves to work on their plantations, and their wives had to expand their responsibilities as well, taking on the tasks of cooking and cleaning in addition to working in the garden, the henhouse, and the dairy. Laboring in these ways and struggling to maintain their standing as elites contributed to an identity crisis among Virginia planters. It also led them to practice mutuality within their own marriages and to reconsider what proper Southern womanhood and manhood meant in the new postwar order. Using newspapers, periodicals, organization records, and numerous letters from Virginia plantation families, Morsman captures how these frustrated elites made sense of embarrassing postwar changes, in the private but also in the public spheres they inhabited. Morsman suggests that the planters' adaptations may have been carried forward by their adult children away from the crumbling plantations and into the urban households of the New South.


Free word order languages have relatively unrestricted local word group or phrase structures that make the problem of chunking quite challenging. On the other hand, a robust chunker can drastically reduce the complexity of a parser that follows. We present here a computational framework for chunking of free word order languages based on a generalization of the valency theory. Every word has certain valency constraints that allow it to form local word groups with the adjacent words. The groups so formed have their own valency constraints and thus can recursively participate in the grouping process. This is implemented through feature structure unification. Sentence level constraints on the groups help the chunker reject invalid groupings and detect errors in POS tags provided by a POS-tagger that precedes the chunker. Based on this approach, a Bengali chunker has been implemented with a reasonably good accuracy. The paper also describes how this method can be generalized to develop a complete parser for free word order languages by incorporating semantic information as well as probabilistic models.


Part of the Medical Microbiology Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Jefferson Digital Commons. The Jefferson Digital Commons is a service of Thomas Jefferson University's Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL). The Commons is a showcase for Jefferson books and journals, peer-reviewed scholarly publications, unique historical collections from the University archives, and teaching tools. The Jefferson Digital Commons allows researchers and interested readers anywhere in the world to learn about and keep up to date with Jefferson scholarship. IDO2 is a relative of IDO1 implicated in tryptophan catabolism and immune modulation but its specific contributions to normal physiology and pathophysiology are not known. Evolutionary genetic studies suggest that IDO2 has a unique function ancestral to IDO1. In mice, IDO2 gene deletion does not appreciably affect embryonic development or hematopoiesis, but it leads to defects in allergic or autoimmune responses and in the ability of IDO1 to influence the generation of T regulatory cells. Gene expression studies indicate that IDO2 is a basally and more narrowly expressed gene than IDO1 and that IDO2 is uniquely regulated by AhR, which serves as a physiological receptor for the tryptophan catabolite kynurenine. In the established KRN transgenic mouse model of rheumatoid arthritis, where IDO1 gene deletion has no effect, IDO2 deletion selectively blunts responses to autoantigen but has no effect on responses to neoantigen challenge. In human populations, natural variations in IDO2 gene sequence that attenuate enzymatic activity have been reported to influence brain cancer control and adaptive immune responses to the IDO2 protein itself, consistent with the concept that IDO2 is involved in shaping immune tolerance in human beings. Biochemical and pharmacological studies provide further evidence of differences in IDO2 enzymology and function relative to IDO1. We suggest that IDO2 may act in a distinct manner from IDO1 as a set-point for tolerance to " altered-self " antigens along the self-non-self continuum where immune challenges from cancer and autoimmunity may arise.


: Eight to ten-day-old mice when inoculated i.p. with Concanavalin A yielded a large number of cells in the peritoneal exudate (PE), the majority of which belonged to the macrophage series. Con A-treated and untreated (control) mice were infected i.p. with Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus. The PE cells of Con A-treated mice showed a higher percentage and greater intensity of virus specific immunofluorescent cells as compared with the cells from control mice. No live virus was detected in the Con A-induced cells. However, traces of live virus were found in the cells of control mice, 3-6 hr after infection. In vitro, peritoneal macrophages from Con A-treated mice showed a higher uptake of the virus (83.3%) within 18 hr as compared to the cells from paraffin-treated mice (34%). The protection of Con A-induced mice to JE virus challenge by i.p. route could be due to increased uptake and subsequent inactivation of the JE virus in the peritoneal exudate cells.


There is a need within networked learning to understand and conceptualise the interplay between digital and physical spaces or what we could term hybrid or mixed spaces. Therefore, we discuss a recent study of students from two different programs who are engaged in long-term, group-based problem and project based learning. Based on interviews, workshops and observations of students' actual group practices in open, shared and flexible spaces in Aalborg University (AAU), we identify and discuss how students incorporate networked and digital technologies into their group work and into the study places they create for themselves. We describe how in one of the programmes 'nomadic' groups of students set about and used different technologies and spaces for 'placemaking'. We then show how their experience and approach to collaborative work differs to that of the more static or 'artisan' groups of students in the other programme. In both cases the ways of utilising space, places, tools and activities was an extremely complex interweaving of the digital and physical and of different places and artefacts over time. Thus, we argue 'placemaking' is an important practice or literacy in relation to students' 'doings of networked learning' and one that impacts on the kind and nature of collaboration that takes place.


Sports participation can confer a range of physical and psychosocial benefits and, for refugee and migrant youth, may even act as a critical mediator for achieving positive settlement and engaging meaningfully in Australian society. This group has low participation rates however, with identified barriers including costs; discrimination and a lack of cultural sensitivity in sporting environments; lack of knowledge of mainstream sports services on the part of refugee-background settlers; inadequate access to transport; culturally determined gender norms; and family attitudes. Organisations in various sectors have devised programs and strategies for addressing these participation barriers. In many cases however, these responses appear to be ad hoc and under-theorised. This article reports findings from a qualitative exploratory study conducted in a range of settings to examine the benefits, challenges and shortcomings associated with different participation models. Interview participants were drawn from non-government organisations, local governments, schools, and sports clubs. Three distinct models of participation were identified, including short term programs for refugee-background children; ongoing programs for refugee-background children and youth; and integration into mainstream clubs. These models are discussed in terms of their relative challenges and benefits and their capacity to promote sustainable engagement and social inclusion for this population group.


"Stone walls: Personal Boundaries": The last protege of Ansel Adams, Mariana Cook is best known for her intimate character studies of people both in and out of the public eye, published in her much-acclaimed collections: "Fathers and Daughters", "Mothers and Sons", "Generations of Women", "Couples", "Faces of Science", and "Mathematicians". Cook departs from her portrait work with "Stone Walls: Personal Boundaries", a project conceived at her home on Martha's Vineyard when fifty-six cows strayed through a crumbling section of the stone wall she shares with her neighbor. With that inspiration, Cook embarked on an eight-year journey, travelling from New England to Kentucky, Britain, Ireland, the Mediterranean, and Peru in pursuit of dry stone walls. Far from being a travelogue, these beautiful black-and-white photographs portray the wall in landscape, the wall as abstract form, and the return of rocks to nature. Cook is fascinated with the juxtaposition of stones and geometric composition, as well as with the resonance between walls of different cultures. With a tribute from Wendell Berry and essays providing a context for the walls of each region, the resulting collection captures something fundamental about the relationship of human beings to the land.


This paper deals with the design of a new system where Rayleigh fading channel is subjected to a more generalized scenario by considering L-Independent block fading, where L= 2, 3, ... Each block undergoes different fading characteristics for a particular time interval such that the channel coefficient is fixed during a fading block, and statistically independent from one block to another. The main focus of this work is to derive performance measures, such as outage probability and average signal power. Once mathematical expressions are derived, attention is given to obtain numerical results by plotting analytical graphs for the obtained expressions, and is observed with the proposed system parameters like Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR), average channel power and data transmission rate. Hence, the proposed system can be evaluated and the amount of degradation can be measured.


The identity of an urban environment is important because it contributes to self-identity, a sense of community, and a sense of place. However, under present-day conditions, the identities of expanding cities are rapidly deteriorating and vanishing, especially in the case of Asian cities. Therefore, cities need to build their urban identity, which includes the past and points to the future. At the same time, cities need to add new features to improve their livability, sustainability, and resilience. In this paper, using data mining technologies for various types of geo-referenced big data and combine them with the space syntax analysis for observing and learning about the socioeconomic behavior and the quality of space. The observed and learned features are identified as the urban identity. The numeric features obtained from data mining are transformed into catalogued levels for designers to understand, which will allow them to propose proper designs that will complement or improve the local traditional features. A workshop in Taiwan, which focuses on a traditional area, demonstrates the result of the proposed methodology and how to transform a traditional area into a livable area. At the same time, we introduce a website platform, Quick Urban Analysis Kit (qua-kit), as a tool for citizens to participate in designs. After the workshop, citizens can view, comment, and vote on different design proposals to provide city authorities and stakeholders with their ideas in a more convenient and responsive way. Therefore, the citizens may deliver their opinions, knowledge, and suggestions for improvements to the investigated neighborhood from their own design perspective.


Biodiversity is a term that describes the variety of living beings on earth. It encompasses microorganisms, plants, animals and ecosystems such as coral reefs, forests, deserts, valleys, hills, water bodies, indigenous cultural activities and festivals of a people including mode of worship. Biodiversity loss, which is a result of environmental degradation, is a situation in which a part of the natural environment is damaged. It could be damage to the land, water, or air. The major Industrial activities that are threats to biodiversity in Delta State are oil spillage and gas flaring. These activities lead to serious biodiversity loss, forest depletion, mangrove degradation, environmental pollution, fisheries depletion, flooding, unhealthy environment, poverty and even death and these leaves no room for tourism development. Delta state is well endowed with biodiversity, and this could be harnessed for ecotourism purpose, thus generating revenue for the state and project the cultural identity of the state while empowering the local people. However, the biodiversity and ecotourism development of the state is been threatened. Biodiversity destruction has serious and complex adverse effects on tourist visitation, and the economies of both Delta State and individual households in the state. This study is therefore aimed at identifying some of the ecotourism attractions of Delta State, various threats to these attractive biodiversities and to explore the potential effects of these destructions on ecotourism development in the State.


Land-use legacies, the effects of past land use changes (LUCs) on current social and biophysical processes, can persist for hundreds to thousands of years. Although spatial and temporal data are currently available at a continental scale, they are limited for investigating LUC legacies. The limitations of historical data include a lack of temporal coverage, inaccessibility at coarse resolution, availability only for few land use classes and accessibility for only specific regions. Despite the limitation in data availability, there is an urgent need to develop a data-intensive model that can back-cast multiple historic LUCs at regional scales. We developed a back-cast model for generating historic land use maps with multiple land use classes at a regional scale using a high performance computing (HPC) platform. We trained and tested the model using Retrofit Land Cover Change data between 2001-1992 in a backward manner at 1km resolution for three land use categories (urban, forest and agriculture) in the Ohio River Basin (ORB) of United States. We also developed a calibration metric to assess quantity and locational errors for multiple LUCs simultaneously. Results showed that the range that the model underestimated and overestimated the quantity of LUCs was -0.05% to +0.11%. The persistence (over 95%) and location (over 80%) accuracies of multiple LUCs were quantified. We then simulated multiple LUCs annually between 2001-1980 using 2001 as the base year across the ORB. We describe how the output of our back-cast model can be coupled with other environmental models to assess the impact of land use change on ecosystem services.


We investigate the properties of the hot gas in four fossil galaxy systems detected at high significance in the Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) survey. XMM-Newton observations reveal overall temperatures of kT ∼ 5−6 keV and yield hydrostatic masses M500,HE & 3.5 × 1014 M , confirming their nature as bona fide massive clusters. We measure the thermodynamic properties of the hot gas in X-rays (out to beyond R500 in three cases) and derive their individual pressure profiles out to R ∼ 2.5 R500 with the SZ data. We combine the X-ray and SZ data to measure hydrostatic mass profiles and to examine the hot gas content and its radial distribution. The average Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) concentration parameter, 〈c500〉 = 3.2 ± 0.4, is the same as that of relaxed "normal" clusters. The gas mass fraction profiles exhibit striking variation in the inner regions, but converge to approximately the cosmic baryon fraction (corrected for depletion) at R500. Beyond R500 the gas mass fraction profiles again diverge, which we interpret as being due to a difference in gas clumping and/or a breakdown of hydrostatic equilibrium in the external regions. Our observations point to considerable radial variation in the hot gas content and in the gas clumping and/or hydrostatic equilibrium properties in these fossil clusters, at odds with the interpretation of their being old, evolved, and undisturbed. At least some fossil objects appear to be dynamically young.


adds further complexity to the semantics of separating bias from the random component of error. In this paper, • We attempt to clarify the meaning of uncertainty, precision, accuracy and error for different location methodologies using the scientific literature, and discuss the issues of precision bias and other logical fallacies • We describe a set of monitoring scenarios, then compare event accuracy obtained using (i) an imaging method based on a surface network geometry and (ii) an inversion method based on a down-hole wireline tool geometry . We show for each scenario which method offers the better solution. By doing so we provide some general guidelines on which monitoring scenarios are best suited to which monitoring objectives In conclusion we recommend that all parties are vigilant in using appropriate terminology and consider the objectives of any monitoring project, prior to deciding upon the network geometry. We advise that any decision to carry out a monitoring project is considered in the light of the nature of the sub-surface velocity field and the extent of our knowledge of this velocity field. With such consideration in mind one can decide whether this knowledge is likely to be sufficient to answer the project objectives in a constrained and meaningful fashion.


ABSTRACT The benthic seabeds and seagrass ecosystems, in particular the vulnerable Posidonia oceanica (PO), are increasingly threatened by climate change and other anthropogenic pressures. Along the 8000 km coastline of Italy, they are often poorly mapped and monitored to properly evaluate their health status. Thus to support these monitoring needs, the improved capabilities of the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) Earth Observation (EO) satellite system were tested for PO mapping by coupling its atmospherically corrected multispectral data with near-synchronous sea truth information. Two different approaches for the necessary atmospheric correction were exploited focusing on the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and adjacency noise effects, which typically occur at land–sea interfaces. The general achievements demonstrated the effectiveness of High Resolution (HR) spectral responses captured by OLI sensor, for monitoring seagrass and sea beds in the optically complex Tyrrhenian shallow waters, with performance level dependent on the type of applied atmospheric pre-processing. The distribution of the PO leaf area index (LAI) on different substrates has been most effectively modelled using on purpose developed spectral indices. They were based on the coastal and blue-green OLI bands, atmospherically corrected using a recently introduced method for AOD retrieval, based on the Short Wave Infrared (SWIR) reflectance. The alternative correction method including a less effective AOD assessment but the removal of adjacency effects has proven its efficacy for improving the thematic discriminability of the seabed types characterized by different PO cover–substrate combinations.


Mean streets represent those connected subsets of a spatial network whose attribute values are significantly higher than expected. Discovering and quantifying mean streets is an important problem with many applications such as detecting high-crime-density streets and high crash roads (or areas) for public safety, detecting urban cancer disease clusters for public health, detecting human activity patterns in asymmetric warfare scenarios, and detecting urban activity centers for consumer applications. However, discovering and quantifying mean streets in large spatial networks is computationally very expensive due to the difficulty of characterizing and enumerating the population of streets to define a norm or expected activity level. Previous work either focuses on statistical rigor at the cost of computational exorbitance, or concentrates on computational efficiency without addressing any statistical interpretation of algorithms. In contrast, this paper explores computationally efficient algorithms for use on statistically interpretable results. We describe alternative ways of defining and efficiently enumerating instances of subgraph families such as paths. We also use statistical models such as the Poisson distribution and the sum of independent Poisson distributions to provide interpretations for results. We define the problem of discovering and quantifying mean streets and propose a novel mean streets mining algorithm. Experimental evaluations using synthetic and real-world datasets show that the proposed method is computationally more efficient than näıve alternatives.


The study was designed to examine the impact of sustainable soil management techniques on land productivity of arable crop farmers in Imo State, Nigeria. Despite various efforts to produce basic foods for the increasing population in Nigeria, the track record of performance over the years has proved abortive. This stems from the use of variant unsustainable soil management techniques which are concomitant to soil erosion, nutrient depletion and decline in food production. Multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 209 arable crop farmers. Objectives of this study were elicited from the sampled respondents through a well structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistical tools, average treatment effect (ATE) and local average treatment effect (LATE) models. Results showed that farmers in the area have varied knowledge of sustainable soil management techniques (SSMT). The PSM and IPSW estimates were N141.14 and N97.06 respectively while the LATE by WALD and IV were N152.26 and N158.17. This implies that the use of SSMT has an impact on the productivity of land per unit increase in rent. Hence, farmers at all level should be encouraged to practice efficient soil management techniques in order to improve the productivity of the land.


In late December 1946 Joseph Stalin convened a meeting of high-level Communist Party personnel at his office in the Kremlin. The opening salvos of the Cold War had already been launched. Disagreements about the political future of Germany, disputes over the presence of Soviet troops in Iran, and conflicts over proposals to control atomic weapons had all contributed to growing tensions between the USA and USSR. Inside the Soviet Union, the devastating effects of the Second World War were painfully obvious: cities remained bombed out and unreconstructed; famine had laid waste to the countryside, with millions dying of starvation and many millions more malnourished. All this makes the agenda for the Kremlin meeting surprising: Stalin wanted to discuss a book on the history of Western European philosophy. It is certainly rare for the leader of a powerful country to take the time amidst international and domestic crises to discuss something so decidedly academic as a philosophy book. But for Stalin, no subject was beyond politics. Or, to put it another way, Marxism-Leninism did not merely define a political system or an economic interpretation of history, it constituted an all-encompassing worldview. Stalin's attention to scholarship was remarkable during his last years, when the Soviet press added the 'coryphaeus of science' to his growing list of epithets.


Standardized assessment instruments developed in one society are often used in other societies. However, it is important to determine empirically how assessment instruments developed in one society function in others. The present study tested the fit of the Teacher's Report Form syndrome structures in 20 diverse societies using data for 30,030 6- to 15-year-old students from Asia; Australia; the Caribbean; eastern, western, southern, and northern Europe; and the Middle East. A correlated seven-syndrome model and a hierarchical Attention Problems model were tested separately in each of the 20 societies via confirmatory factor analyses. The results supported the fit of the models in the tested societies.


Author(s): Rowe, Justin B. | Advisor(s): Reinkensmeyer, David J | Abstract: In their daily lives, stroke survivors must often choose between attempting upper-extremity activities using their impaired limb, or compensating with their less impaired limb. Choosing their impaired limb can be difficult and discouraging, but might elicit beneficial neuroplasticity that further reduces motor impairments, a phenomenon referred to as "the virtuous cycle". In contrast, compensation is often quicker, easier, and more effective, but can reinforce maladaptive changes that limit motor recovery, a phenomenon referred to as "learned non-use". This dissertation evaluated the role of robotic assistance in, and designed a wearable sensing system for, promoting the virtuous cycle.In the first half of the dissertation, we use the FINGER robot to test the hypothesis that robotic assistance during clinical movement training triggers the virtual cycle. FINGER consists of two singly-actuated mechanisms that assist individuated movement of the index and middle fingers. 30 chronic stroke participants trained in FINGER using a GuitarHero-like game for nine sessions. Half were guided by an adaptive impedance controller towards a success rate of 85%, while the other half were guided towards 50%. Increasing assistance to enable successful practice decreased effort, but primarily for less-impaired participants. Overall, however, high success practice was as effective (or more) as low success practice and even more effective for highly impaired individuals. Participants who received high assistance training were more motivated and reported using their impaired hand more at home. These results support the hypothesis that high assistance clinical movement training motivates impaired hand use, leading to greater use of the hand in daily life, resulting in a self-training effect that reduces motor impairment.The second half of the dissertation describes the development of the manumeter - a non-obtrusive wearable device for monitoring and incentivizing impaired hand use. Contrasted against wrist accelerometry (the most comparable technology), the manumeter uses a magnetic ring and a wristband with mangetometers to detect wrist and finger movement rather than gross arm movement. We describe 1) the inference of wrist and finger movement from differential magnetometer readings using a radial basis function network, 2) initial testing in which distance traveled estimates were within 94.7%±19.3 of their goniometricly measured values, 3) experiments with non-impaired participants in which the manumeter detected some functional activities better than wrist accelerometry, and 4) improvements to the hardware and data processing that allow both subject-independent tracking of the position of the finger relative to the wrist (RMS errors l 1cm) and highly reliable detection of whether the hand is open or closed. Its performance and non-obtrusive design make the manumeter well suited for measuring and reinforcing impaired hand use in daily life after stroke. The contributions of this dissertation are experimental confirmation that high assistance movement training promotes the virtuous cycle, and development of a wearable sensor for monitoring hand movement in daily life. Training with robotic assistance and hand use feedback may ultimately help individuals with stroke recover to their full potential.


Cross-dressing, sexual identity, and the performance of gender are among the most hotly discussed topics in contemporary cultural studies. A vital addition to the growing body of literature, this book is the most in-depth and historically contextual study to date of Shakespeare's uses of the heroine in male disguise--man-playing-woman-playing-man--in all its theatrical and social complexity.Shapiro's study centers on the five plays in which Shakespeare employed the figure of the "female page": "The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, "and "Cymbeline. "Combining theater and social history, Shapiro locates Shakespeare's work in relation to controversies over gender roles and cross-dressing in Elizabethan England.The popularity of the "female page" is examined as a playful literary and theatrical way of confronting, avoiding, or merely exploiting issues such as the place of women in a patriarchal culture and the representation of women on stage. Looking beyond and behind the stage for the cultural anxieties that found their way into Shakespearean drama, Shapiro considers such cases as cross-dressing women in London being punished as prostitutes and the alleged homoerotic practices of the apprentices who played female roles in adult companies. Shapiro also traces other Elizabethan dramatists' varied uses of the cross-dressing motif, especially as they were influenced by Shakespeare's innovations."Shapiro's engaging study is distinguished by the scope of interrelated topics it draws together and the balance of critical perspectives it brings to bear on them." --ChoiceMichael Shapiro is Professor of English, University of Illinois, Urbana.


Ferritic steels usually show significant embrittlement with increasing loading rates in the lower shelf and transition region, i.e. the fracture toughness versus temperature curve K Jc(T) is shifted to higher temperatures. However, this embrittlement is limited and the ASME-reference curve K IR is commonly accepted as a lower bound curve. It was one aim of this project, to verify this lower bound curve for the German reactor pressure vessel steel 22 NiMoCr 3 7 ( ≈ A 508 Cl.2) in particular for elevated loading rates. The investigations with high speed fracture mechanics tests were performed within a joint project of Fraunhofer IWM and MPA. Details are reported in Böhme et al. (2012). The results of compact tension and three point bend specimens were evaluated according to ASTM E1921 (2011) following the Master Curve approach. All determined dynamic K Jc-values were above the ASME reference curve K IR. The applied Master Curve evaluation with an assumed Weibull distribution according to ASTM E1921 (2011), results for some test series in 5%-fractile lower bound curves, which are below the K IR-curve. However, a lognormal-distribution, recently proposed for crack arrest in ASTM E1221 (2010), leads to a more meaningful agreement of the calculated 5%-fractile curves with the K IR-curve. Statistical analysis of the data confirmed, that the lognormal-distribution is a best fit of the experimental high rate data. Finally, the data distribution tends to show a second peak, thus giving a hint, that two mixed collectives of data may exist, a more brittle and a more ductile one. At the highest loading rates the more brittle one seems to dominate, resulting in comparable T 0,x-values, independent of specimen type, size and loading rate, and thus possibly determining a physically caused lower limit of embrittlement, which confirms the engineering lower bound K IR-curve. This final conclusion would be subject to further investigations.


In applications of deep reinforcement learning to robotics, it is often the case that we want to learn pose invariant policies: policies that are invariant to changes in the position and orientation of objects in the world. For example, consider a pegin-hole insertion task. If the agent learns to insert a peg into one hole, we would like that policy to generalize to holes presented in different poses. Unfortunately, this is a challenge using conventional methods. This paper proposes a novel state and action abstraction that is invariant to pose shifts called deictic image maps that can be used with deep reinforcement learning. We provide broad conditions under which optimal abstract policies are optimal for the underlying system. Finally, we show that the method can help solve challenging robotic manipulation problems.


In this work, a marching-on-time solver for time-domain simulation of partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) models of electromagnetic systems is presented. The PEEC method is based on the electric field integral equation and the continuity equation. It describes separate magnetic and electric field couplings in terms of partial inductances and coefficients of potential. When the propagation delay is taken into account, the enforcement of Kirchhoff current and voltage laws results in a set of delayed differential equations. Typically, in the PEEC method, currents and charges are expanded with rectangular basis functions in both time and space. In this work, higher order basis functions are used to expand currents and charges in time. The resulting TD-PEEC solver is tested by comparison with other solvers that operate in both the time- and the frequency-domain and exhibits a satisfactory accuracy and better stability properties.


Scordatura is a tuning of a string instrument, which is different than the standard one. It has been used for both plucked and string instruments since the 16th century and it was quite popular in the Baroque era, especially in the case of violins. Because of their specific tuning—based on the same intervals—it is possible to distinguish two types of violin scordatura. The first one relates to the situation when all strings are tuned up or down in the same interval relations. Such tuning is still based on fifths, but the pitches are different than using standard tuning, so it is called transpose scordatura. In the second one, each string is tuned up or down in different interval relation, in another direction or even only some of them are tuned in the unusual way. In this case, violin tuning is based on different intervals Kwartalnik Młodych Muzykologów UJ, No. 37 (2/2018) 6 than fifths, usually on thirds and/or fourths, although sometimes there are three dissimilar intervals (thirds, fourths and fifths). The second type of scordatura was a very popular technique in the Baroque era and its functions were variable. The main of them were allowing to perform figures, which are impossible in standard tuning, especially double-notes and chords (technical aspect), and changing sound qualities of the instrument (sound aspect). It does not mean that scordatura was used only to achieve these goals. For example, it was sometimes used to imitate other instrument. There are certain examples of such a usage of this playing technique in the oldest (1679–1686) part of the collection of manuscripts connected with activity of Canonesses Regular of St Augustine in Wrocław (provenance St Anna in Arena). The scordatura can be found there in seven manuscripts, and in four of them it is possible that composers (or composer?) tried to assimilate the violin sound and/or technique with other instruments, such as viola, lute or trumpet.


The literature on the problem of stress-inducing effect of weightlessness is reviewed. On the basis of scrupulous analysis of the data accumulated in the rat flight experiments aboard the Cosmos biosatellites and the US Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLS-2) it is concluded that although the ever-acting factor of space mission, microgravity does not cause any intensive chronic stress to animals. Nonetheless, it contributes to the development of deconditioning of a number of vitally important systems and the body as a whole. On return to Earth, the usual terrestrial loads due to the gravity effects are perceived by the deconditioned animals as extraordinary and they respond by severe gravitational stress.


Phytoreduced nanoparticles have multi-functionalities due to their sustainable origin and biocompatible nature. Herein, we report the synthesis and characterization of silver and gold nanoparticles using leaf extract from the herb Naregamia alata. Microwave radiation from a domestic microwave oven, a non-classical source of energy, is used to perform the reduction of the metal ion precursors. The spherical silver nanoparticles have an average diameter of 18.05 ± 4.73 nm, and the poly-shaped gold nanoparticles exhibit an average size of 27.92 ± 9.19 nm. The X-ray powder diffraction patterns indicate different crystal planes, namely the (111), (200), (220) and (311) planes of fcc nanosilver and nanogold. The actions of six major mastitis pathogens are inhibited by the antimicrobial power of the silver and gold nanoparticles. Colored pollutants from the paper, printing and textile industries such as eosin Y and methyl red are degraded without light irradiation using the catalytic power of the synthesized noble metal nanoparticles. Furthermore, the reduction of the organic compound 4-nitrophenol by NaBH4 in the presence of the nanocatalysts increases the laboratory value of the present study.


This letter explores the potential benefits of cooperative multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) signaling from three coherent base stations to a single four-antenna mobile station using channel measurements in an urban macrocellular environment at 2.66 GHz. The analysis compares the performance when the cooperative base stations have no information about the channels to that achieved when they can cooperatively apply transmit beamforming. In the latter case, the transmit power is constrained such that either the total power or the power on each base-station antenna is limited. The results demonstrate that significant improvement is possible using the cooperative MIMO signaling, with the performance depending on the capabilities of the system.


Our LED R 40 light bulbs reduce the amount of energy used by 80%. We use the latest LED technology producing high quality light.


This article summarizes the background of empirical journalism studies in Argentina. In recent publications, researchers have consistently underscored the lack of data on the profession and the scarce development of theoretical frameworks related to journalism studies. The local investigations have prioritized approaches and methods that do not give the whole picture of the population of journalists. Most of the research tends to equate media analysis and media messages with journalism study and keeps on failing to provide data that allows for learning about the working conditions and the professional profile of the Argentinean journalists.


A series of biobased poly(2,5-furandimethylene succinate)-b-poly(butylene succinate) (PFS-PBS) multiblock copolyesters containing furan in the polymer main chains was synthesized, in which the thermo-reversible network structures are established via the furan/maleimide Diels–Alder (DA) reaction using bismaleimide (BMI) as a cross-linker. First, the DA reaction kinetics of PFS/BMI was investigated by in situ Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The corresponding reaction rate coefficients at variable temperatures and the activation energy of the DA reaction were calculated. Furthermore, the interplay between crystallization and the DA reaction was studied combining differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and in situ FTIR. The crystallization is suppressed by the DA reaction due to confinement of the formed DA network structure. On the other hand, the crystallization effect on the DA reaction is related to the FS sequence length of the copolyesters. The restriction effect of crystallization on the DA reaction is clearer in PFBS random copolyesters with a shorter FS sequence length than that in PFS-PBS multiblock copolyesters with a longer FS sequence length. Finally, the mechanical properties of PFS-PBS/BMIs were studied. The formation of a DA network structure significantly increases the modulus and tensile strength of PFS-PBS/BMIs despite the reduction in crystallinity. PFS-PBS/BMIs can be adjusted from soft to rigid and brittle materials by simply controlling the PFS and BMI content.


Mirroring is a central element in psychodrama but the term is used in variable ways in different contexts. In this article, Tim Mapel investigates these various meanings. He focuses first on the historical development of the mirror concept in the writings of J.L. and Zerka Moreno, both as a therapeutic technique and as a stage of human development. Later writings, particularly contributions by Dr. Max Clayton, are then considered followed by a discussion of the contemporary uses of mirroring in psychodramatic production. What emerges is greater clarity regarding the concept and technique of mirroring.


The development of screen printed cloth at the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Shiyane in KwaZulu enterprise that was intended to improve the lot of rural African women by developing their creative capacities. One aspect of the venture included the development of printed cloth. The intention was to produce a product that was marketable both nationally and internationally. In the process the cloth both absorbed the Swedish predilections of the Konstfack trained tutors, as well as embracing indigenous propensities and taste. The product of this cultural interface interaction resulted in a remarkable product that indigenised both exoticism in the Nordic regions as much as it implanted Nordic taste in South Africa. This paper scrutinises the product, its history, its inter-cultural roots and its reception.


Background Carers of patients with psychiatric disorders show high levels of anxiety and depression, possibly mediated through disruption of the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis. Among carers of patients with treatment-resistant depression (TRD), we set out to determine the psychological and physiological (HPA axis) consequences of caring, and the association of these consequences with long-term outcome in patients. Method Thirty-five informal carers of patients with severe TRD requiring in-patient treatment were recruited and compared with 23 controls. HPA-axis activity was assessed by measuring post-awaking salivary cortisol. The Involvement Evaluation Questionnaire (IEQ) and the General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12) were administered to measure carer burden and psychiatric caseness respectively. Independent t tests were used to compare differences between carers and controls and a linear regression model was used to determine the association of post-awakening cortisol with carer status while controlling for confounding variables. Data on long-term patient outcome (12 to 83 months), measured using the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAMD), were also obtained and linear regression was used to determine the association between cortisol output in carers and remission status in patients. Results Carers experienced high carer burden and high psychiatric caseness. Carers showed reduced cortisol output after awakening, calculated as the area under the curve with respect to ground (AUCg), which remained significant after controlling for potential confounders. In a linear regression model, non-remission in patients was associated with reduced cortisol output in carers. Conclusions Caring for patients with TRD is associated with adverse psychological and physiological changes suggesting hypocortisolism post-awakening. These changes are associated with poor patient outcome.


Antitrust economics is a discipline developed by academic economists in concert with the refinement of per se rules and the rule of reason by the Supreme Court. Distinct bodies of antitrust thought — such as the Chicago school, the post-Chicago school, and behavioral antitrust economics — have emerged. These competing schools of thought fall short of capturing the full complexity of economic conduct. Antitrust law cannot and should not seek to replicate often conflicting insights devised by economists. Rather, what antitrust economics can accomplish is at once more modest and more helpful. The laudable resort to economic theory in any of its guises, behavioral or otherwise, should never become detached from economic fundamentals.
Antitrust economics and cognate branches of the behavioral sciences should strive to speak of human conduct exactly as it is observed — neither a special magic and accursed, nor preternaturally blessed, but merely here.


Filament winding is a composite material fabrication technique that is used to manufacture concentric hollow components. In this study Carbon/Epoxy composite drive shafts were fabricated using filament winding process with a fiber orientation of [85 2 /±45 2 /25 2 ] s . Carbon in the form of multifilament fibers of Tairyfil TC-33 having 3000 filaments/strand was used as reinforcement with low viscosity epoxy resin as the matrix material. The driveshaft is designed to be used in SAE Baja All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) that makes use of a fully floating axle in its rear wheel drive system. The torsional strength of the shaft was tested and compared to that of an OEM steel shaft that was previously used in the ATV. Results show that the composite shaft had 8.5% higher torsional strength in comparison to the OEM steel shaft and was also lighter by 60%. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) micrographs were studied to investigate the probable failure mechanism. Delamination, matrix agglomeration, fiber pull-out and matrix cracking were the prominent failure mechanisms identified.


Machine learning models are vulnerable to simple model stealing attacks if the adversary can obtain output labels for chosen inputs. To protect against these attacks, it has been proposed to limit the information provided to the adversary by omitting probability scores, significantly impacting the utility of the provided service. In this work, we illustrate how a service provider can still provide useful, albeit misleading, class probability information, while significantly limiting the success of the attack. Our defense forces the adversary to discard the class probabilities, requiring significantly more queries before they can train a model with comparable performance. We evaluate several attack strategies, model architectures, and hyperparameters under varying adversarial models, and evaluate the efficacy of our defense against the strongest adversary. Finally, we quantify the amount of noise injected into the class probabilities to mesure the loss in utility, e.g., adding 1.26 nats per query on CIFAR-10 and 3.27 on MNIST. Our evaluation shows our defense can degrade the accuracy of the stolen model at least 20%, or require up to 64 times more queries while keeping the accuracy of the protected model almost intact.


Metaheuristics under the swarm intelligence (SI) class have proven to be efficient and have become popular methods for solving different optimization problems. Based on the usage of memory, metaheuristics can be classified into algorithms with memory and without memory (memory-less). The absence of memory in some metaheuristics will lead to the loss of the information gained in previous iterations. The metaheuristics tend to divert from promising areas of solutions search spaces which will lead to non-optimal solutions. This paper aims to review memory usage and its effect on the performance of the main SI-based metaheuristics. Investigation has been performed on SI metaheuristics, memory usage and memory-less metaheuristics, memory characteristics and memory in SI-based metaheuristics. The latest information and references have been further analyzed to extract key information and mapped into respective subsections. A total of 50 references related to memory usage studies from 2003 to 2018 have been investigated and show that the usage of memory is extremely necessary to increase effectiveness of metaheuristics by taking the advantages from their previous successful experiences. Therefore, in advanced metaheuristics, memory is considered as one of the fundamental elements of an efficient metaheuristic. Issues in memory usage have also been highlighted. The results of this review are beneficial to the researchers in developing efficient metaheuristics, by taking into consideration the usage of memory.


Non-native plants pose a substantial threat to island ecosystems in Australia and worldwide. A better understanding of weed distributions is necessary to more effectively manage natural resources on islands. To address this need for Western Australian islands, we created a database of all available records of non-native plants on these islands. Here we report on records from all islands located along the coast of the Pilbara and Kimberley regions in the northern half of Western Australia as well as territorial islands including Christmas Island, the Cocos Islands and the islands of Ashmore Reef. From 2936 individual records, a total of 403 nonnative plant species were recorded on 100 Pilbara islands, 51 Kimberley islands and 21 territorial islands. Some of the species are known to be serious environmental weeds. We provide some information on the invasive characteristics and management of 14 environmental weeds for oceanic islands and 12 environmental weeds for continental islands. Developing management plans to address these species, as well as surveying islands adjacent to known infestations, should be a conservation priority for north coast islands. Improved biosecurity procedures and enforcement could prevent the establishment of new island weed populations and reduce future costs associated with the management of active infestations.


The wine sector has experienced a deep transformation of its technological processes and its commercial strategy that emphasizes the wine sale in the international markets. It is for this reason that it is important to evaluate the competitiveness of the industry in relation to the behavior of its average costs and the export levels, since they constitute the structural base of the commercial strategy. The objective of this investigation is to characterize the type of yields of scale that the exporting wine industry presents. For it, the cost to exports elasticity was estimated through an econometric model, elaborated from the translogarithmic cost function, and under the assumption of maximization of the benefit for the firms of the industry, for period 1981 - 2005. A cost-exports elasticity of 5,5 was determined, together with an exportfactors (capital and labour) elasticity of 0,18, with which it is concluded that the sector presents diseconomies of scale.


This paper investigates the achievable yield and extent of oil palm yield decline over time in four large oil palm plantations in Nigeria and Cameroon. In Nigeria the highest achieved palm oil yield was 2.64 tonnes per hectare for 9-year-old palms in one of the plantations studied. By the eighteenth year, the yield had declined to 1.38 tonnes of palm oil per hectare. The Cameroon Development Corporation has achieved a yield of 20 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches (equivalent to 4.20 tonnes of palm oil) per hectare in Ndian. This yield level has, under proper management, been recently achieved in a Nigerian oil palm plantation. It is hoped that this yield level will be sustained over a long period of time. Drastic falling off in yield is due to declining soil fertility and improper management of plantations and oil mills. The need for increased investment in oil palm research and adoption of improved oil palm management practices is emphasized.
[Niger Agric. J. 33 (2002): 32-39]


: Good function of full dentures is closely related to an accurate fit of the denture bases. The shape of these bases depend again on the polymerization technique applied. Methods of biotechnical analysis were employed to determine the effects of the alveolar ridge, defined as an angle with the vertical plane, on the accuracy of fit. Both the expansion of castings and the curing contraction of acrylics were taken into consideration in this analysis. The relationships between an increase or reduction of the full denture base and the mechanism of adhesion to the denture-bearing area were computed and their practical implications are discussed.


The utilization of coconut fibers as reinforcement in polymer composites has been increase significantly due to their low cost and high specification of mechanical properties. Whereas kevlar fibers has widely used as the core material in flexible body armors due to its great mechanical properties, such as high strength, light weight, good chemical resistance and thermal stability. The research work is concerned with the evaluation of high speed impact and flexural test of hybrid textile reinforced epoxy composites. Samples were prepared from coir yarn, kevlar yarn, interlaced of coir and kevlar yarn with different warp/weft orientation and pure epoxy as control specimen. The woven samples were produced using handloom and the composites specimens were prepared using hand lay-up technique. From the results obtained, it was found that woven kevlar composites samples displayed the highest impact properties while it exhibits the lowest flexural properties. Results also showed that the composite plate for woven coir yarn (warp) and kevlar yarn (weft) has the flexural strength and impact strength of 17 MPa and 67 kJ/m², which presented as the nearest properties to woven Kevlar composite respectively. These results indicate that coir as a natural fiber can be used as a potential reinforcing material for high impact resistance such as body armors in order to reduce the usage of synthetic materials whilst utilizing the natural resources.


The cystic fibrosis airway is susceptible to Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection, which stimulates an intense inflammatory response leading to airway obstruction and bronchiectasis. Neutrophils migrate into the airway, and once there, release high concentrations of neutral serine proteases during phagocytosis and in death. In particular, neutrophil elastase is central to progression of bronchiectasis by interfering with bacterial clearance and directly perpetuating the inflammatory response in the airway. Using a murine model of endobronchial inflammation, we found that a different neutrophil-derived serine protease, cathepsin G, inhibited the host's ability to clear Pseudomonas from the lung, based on a 1-log reduction in bacteria recovered from cathepsin G-deficient mice. Higher antibody concentrations were found in respiratory epithelial lining fluid from mice lacking cathepsin G, but there was no difference in other opsonins, such as surfactant proteins A and D. Chemokine levels measured in the lung correlated with bacterial burden and not the animal's genotype, indicating that airway inflammation was not affected by the presence (or absence) of specific serine proteases. These findings suggest that cathepsin G interferes with airway defenses, showing that proteases other than neutrophil elastase have roles in the pathogenesis of suppurative airway diseases.


Autonomous close proximity operations (including hovering and landing) in the lowgravity environment exhibited by asteroids are particularly challenging. Current approaches to this problem require knowledge of the environmental dynamics in the asteroid's vicinity. This knowledge is costly, both in terms of time and money, to acquire. This paper uses reinforcement learning (RL) to develop a novel non-linear hovering controller with sufficient robustness to allow precision hovering in unknown environments, limited only by the maximum thrust requirements imposed by the environment. We demonstrate the robustness of the controller by simulating precision hovering in multiple environments that were unknown during the policy optimization. The environments are modeled using non-uniform rotation and a non-uniform gravity field. Simulations were also run using a shape model of the asteroid Itokawa. Performance is compared to that of an RL derived optimal linear PD controller and an LQR controller. Since the hovering controller requires an estimate of the spacecraft's state relative to a landmark on the asteroid's surface, we also introduce an optical seeker based navigation approach that accurately estimates the spacecraft's current state using only a single camera and laser range finder.


A variety of phenomena are best described using dynamical models which operate on a discrete state space and in continuous time. Examples include Markov (and semi-Markov) jump processes, continuous-time Bayesian networks, renewal processes and other point processes. These continuous-time, discrete-state models are ideal building blocks for Bayesian models in fields such as systems biology, genetics, chemistry, computing networks, human-computer interactions etc. However, a challenge towards their more widespread use is the computational burden of posterior inference; this typically involves approximations like time discretization and can be computationally intensive. In this thesis, we describe a new class of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods that allow efficient computation while still being exact. The core idea is an auxiliary variable Gibbs sampler that alternately resamples a random discretization of time given the state-trajectory of the system, and then samples a new trajectory given this discretization. We introduce this idea by relating it to a classical idea called uniformization, and use it to develop algorithms that outperform the state-of-the-art for models based on the Markov jump process. We then extend the scope of these samplers to a wider class of models such as nonstationary renewal processes, and semi-Markov jump processes. By developing a more general framework beyond uniformization, we remedy various limitations of the original algorithms, allowing us to develop MCMC samplers for systems with infinite state spaces, unbounded rates, as well as systems indexed by more general continuous spaces than time.


Adília Lopes' gender-conscious and other-orientated poetry expresses ethical concerns. The "inclined" and non-erect perspective of her lyric "I" (which accords with the concept of "inclination" coined by Italian feminist philosopher Adriana Cavarero), together with her experimentation with an "aesthetics of care" (akin to that proposed by eco-feminist scholar Josephine Donovan), engender texts which are sites of ethical encounters between author and reader. Meanwhile, her models of authorship and lyric subjectivity are imbued with transformative ethical implications, through their revelation (and redemption of) culturally suppressed and philosophically disparaged vulnerabilities that are common to both the human and the non-human conditions.


MCrAlY coatings (where M = Co, Ni or Co/Ni) are widely used on turbine blades and vanes as oxidation and corrosion resistant overlays or as a bond-coating in thermal barrier coatings systems. MCrAlY are usually fabricated by Plasma Spraying, Physical Vapour Deposition, High Velocity Oxy-Fuel spraying or electrolytic techniques. The use of emergent Spark Plasma Sintering technique as a preparation method for NiCoCrAlYTa coatings has been presented previously [1]. SPS technique allows fast development of new coatings with a one-step fabrication of multilayered coatings. This work presents first results of the long term isothermal oxidation behaviour of Pt-Ni aluminide/NiCoCrAlYTa multi layered coatings. The obtained coating is dense and homogeneous. Isothermal oxidation up to 500 h at 1100°C leads to the formation of an adherent alumina scale with Y-rich precipitates and deep intergranular oxidation.


Osteonecrosis of the jaws (ONJ) is an adverse side event of bisphosphonates and denosumab, antiresorptive agents that effectively reduce the incidence of skeletal-related events in patients with metastatic bone cancer and multiple myeloma. Available data suggest that 0-27.5% of individuals exposed to antiresorptive agents can develop ONJ. There is increasing evidence that avoidance of surgical trauma and infection to the jawbones can minimize the risk of ONJ, but there are still a significant number of individuals who develop ONJ in the absence of these risk factors. Bone necrosis is almost irreversible and there is no definitive cure for ONJ with the exclusion, in certain cases, of surgical resection. However, most ONJ individuals are affected by advanced incurable cancer and are often managed with minimally invasive nonsurgical interventions in order to control jawbone infections and painful symptoms. This article summarizes current knowledge of ONJ epidemiology, manifestations, risk-reduction and therapeutic strategies. Further research is needed in order to determine individual predisposition to ONJ and clarify the effectiveness of available treatments.


The interaction between ligands and receptors is often described in terms of 50% inhibitory concentrations (IC50). However, IC50 values do not accurately reflect the dissociation constants (Kd), and the domain of application and precision of proposed approximations for Kd estimation are unclear. The effect of affinity and of experimental conditions on the differences between IC50 and Kd has been assessed from exact mass action law calculations and from computer simulations. Competitions between [111In]DTPA‐indium and a few metal‐DTPA complexes for binding to a specific antibody are discussed as a practical example. Exact calculations of competition assays have been implemented in Microsoft Excel and performed for a variety of concentrations of receptor, tracer, and competitor. The results are identical to those of software packages. IC50 is found larger than Kd by less than 20% only when tracer concentration is small compared with Kd and to the receptor concentration and when this receptor concentration is small compared with Kd. Otherwise, Kd and IC50 may be very different and approximations proposed in the literature to obtain Kd values from graphically derived IC50 are not acceptable as soon as the concentrations of tracer or of receptor approach Kd. Under most experimental conditions, IC50 values do not reflect Kd values. Using available software packages to determine and report Kd values would allow for more meaningful comparisons of results obtained under different experimental conditions.


In this paper we investigate distributed computation in dynamic networks in which the network topology changes from round to round. We consider a worst-case model in which the communication links for each round are chosen by an adversary, and nodes do not know who their neighbors for the current round are before they broadcast their messages. The model captures mobile networks and wireless networks, in which mobility and interference render communication unpredictable. In contrast to much of the existing work on dynamic networks, we do not assume that the network eventually stops changing; we require correctness and termination even in networks that change continually. We introduce a stability property called T -interval connectivity (for T ≥ 1 ), which stipulates that for every T consecutive rounds there exists a stable connected spanning subgraph. For T = 1 this means that the graph is connected in every round, but changes arbitrarily between rounds. We show that in 1-interval connected graphs it is possible for nodes to determine the size of the network and compute any computable function of their initial inputs in O ( n 2 ) rounds using messages of size O (log n + d ) , where d is the size of the input to a single node. Further, if the graph is T -interval connected for T > 1 , the computation can be sped up by a factor of T , and any function can be computed in O ( n + n 2 /T ) rounds using messages of size O (log n + d ) . We also give two lower bounds on the token dissemination problem, which requires the nodes to disseminate k pieces of information to all the nodes in the network.


In this paper, we present the main features of a text mining based search engine for the UK Educational Evidence Portal available at the UK National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM), together with a user-centred framework for the evaluation of the search engine. The framework is adapted from an existing proposal by the ISLE (EAGLES) Evaluation Working group. We introduce the metrics employed for the evaluation, and explain how these relate to the text mining based search engine. Following this, we describe how we applied the framework to the evaluation of a number of key text mining features of the search engine, namely the automatic clustering of search results, classification of search results according to a taxonomy, and identification of topics and other documents that are related to a chosen document. Finally, we present the results of the evaluation in terms of the strengths, weaknesses and improvements identified for each of these features.


Abstract : This report is a research byproduct that documents the front-end analysis for development of the Battalion Battle Staff Training System (BN-BSTS). BN-BSTS, a set of functional area training packages for battalion-level staff officers, is a combination of text and computer-based instruction (CBI). Sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the BN-BSTS was developed for use by the U.S. Army National Guard (ARNG). The prototype BSTS comprised 13 courses for training brigade staff officers in individual functional areas and those tasks required to prepare staffs for collective battle staff tasks. The BSTS program, sponsored under the DARPA program umbrella of simulation in Training for Advanced Readiness (SIMITAR), is coordinated with three other programs: Simulation-Based Mounted Brigade Training Program (SIMBART). Simulation-Based Multiechelon Training for Armor Units (SIMUTA), and Combat Service Support (CSS) Training System Development for the National Guard.


We present an analysis of combined efficiencies in a coupled photovoltaic/thermal concentrating solar collector. The calculations take into account the drop in efficiency that accompanies the operation of photovoltaic cells at elevated temperatures along with a detailed analysis of the thermal system including all losses. An iterative numerical scheme is described that involves a coupled electro-thermal simulation of the solar energy conversion process. In the proposed configuration losses in the photovoltaic cell due to reduced efficiencies at elevated temperatures and the incident solar energy below the PV bandgap are both harnessed as heat. This thermal energy is then used to run a thermodynamic power cycle. The simulations show that it is possible to optimize the overall efficiency of the system by variation of key factors such as the solar concentration factor, band gap of the photovoltaic material, and the system thermal design configuration.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Existing theories of regime transitions suggest that new democracies are more prone to political violence than consolidated democracies. We contend that this risk varies based on the political legacy of the new regime. Specifically, we argue that the prior authoritarian regime influences the risk of conflict in new democracies by shaping the nature of the post-transition political environment. In democracies following military rule, the former autocratic leadership often remains an active political force in the new regime. The continued presence of a materially powerful opposition creates a division in the new regime, increasing the risk of conflict by: (i) complicating efforts to consolidate democratic rule and (ii) signaling potential political opportunity to would-be rebels. In line with our argument, we find that only those new democracies emerging from military rule are more likely to experience civil conflict compared with consolidated democracies. These findings have implications for democracy promotion and conflict prevention efforts, suggesting that democratization is not always associated with an increased short-term risk of conflict as is currently assumed.


Italian harbours assume a decisive role in order to develop a Euro-Mediterranean web for maritime transportation. The geostrategic position of the Italian peninsula can be seen as a logistic platform at the centre of the maritime trades in the Mediterranean area, giving to its port cities the role of gateway of economic flows. The port poles, meant as hubs, are able to attract investments and create economic growth and territorial development through new operative models of urban usage and management. The management policies have to consider the environmental characteristics and distinctive features, respecting the identity of the places as concrete evidence of history, a source of intellectual development and therefore, cultural richness. In this sense, the current strategic plan "Palermo capital of the Euro-Mediterranean area" imagines the whole city, and not just its harbour, as a "gate city", a sustainable and cosmopolitan city in the view of a recentralization of the Mediterranean area. The research tests an evaluation method in support of urban planning, which increases the active role of stakeholders in terms of participation and access to the decision-making process of urban renewal strategies for Palermo to the Euro-Mediterranean.


New results of the NA49 Collaboration on strange particle production are presented. Rapidity and transverse mass spectra as well as total multiplicities are discussed. The study of their evolution from AGS over SPS to the highest RHIC energy reveals a couple of interesting features. These include a sudden change in the energy dependence of the mt-spectra and of the yields of strange hadrons around 30 A GeV. Both are found to be difficult to be reproduced in a hadronic scenario, but might be an indication for a phase transition to a quark–gluon plasma.


With the rapid development of Internet technology in recent years, Electronic Commerce has been an inevitable product of the economy, the science and the technology. This paper takes an online bookstore platform as a background, introduces the definition, functions, process and common analytical techniques of data mining. In the end, the experiment on association rules mining from the order data of online bookstore is completed by Improved Apriori algorithm.


Purpose: Establishing the relationship between the decrease in air traffic and the volume of aviation fuel supplies in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. Design/Methodology/Approach: To establish the relationship between the number of flight operations and the volume of fuel delivered to an airport, the best method is to determine the Pearson coefficient. The use of this coefficient is the most appropriate choice, as the correlation (interdependence of features) concerns the mutual relations between the number of air operations and the volume of aviation fuel deliveries to the airport [l]. Moreover, by analyzing the relationship between these variables by the correlation method, we obtain data in relation to the direction (trend) and the strength of the linear relationship, the impact of air traffic on fuel supplies to aircraft performing air operations. Findings: The analysis of the data presented in the paper shows an increase in the strength of the relationship between the number of air operations performed and the volume of fuel deliveries in the pandemic period, compared to the period before the pandemic. Practical Implications: The presented solutions may contribute to the optimization of fuel supply chain management in the aviation sector. Originality/Value: The originality of the text is related to the innovative application of correlation analysis to optimize the management of fuel supply chains.


This study investigates the urban heating system (UHS) by taking a look at the heat transportation flexibility of the system. We propose the heating system flexibility (HSF) concept to represent UHS's capability of meeting the heating demand under different operation conditions during the heating season and give out the corresponding evaluation method. Based on the evaluation method, we investigate the impact of heating network enhancement measures upon HSF by taking a real UHS in Beijing as a demo site. We pick network-wise topological change (extra pipe) and booster pump installation as two representative renovation measures. When an extra pipe close to end-user is introduced to the network, the average flexibility increases but the median flexibility drops. The results show that the introduction of the extra pipe does not reduce the hydraulic imbalance among different substations. A booster pump is more suitable for improving local substation HSF, although such a measure is only effective to a portion of the substations. Overall, the concept of HSF has the potential of being used as an important criterion in the design, operation, and control of UHS and other energy systems.


In this paper, for the generating the Skew normal random variables, we propose a new method based on the combination of minimum and maximum of two independent normal random variables. The estimation of parameters using the maximum likelihood estimation and the methods of moments estimation method. A real data set has been considered to illustrate the practical utility of the paper. keyword: Skew normal distribution, maximum likelihood estimation, methods of moments estimation.