This paper describes the development of an educational resource to help the community identify and understand the native flora of the Royal National Park. The resource, titled 'Coastal Plants of the Royal National Park', is an electronic identification tool available on CD-Rom. The resource features an interactive identification tool with multi-entry keys, a look-up glossary and over 1,200 photographs to support identification of 300 plant species, representing about one-quarter of the Royal National Park's total native flora. It was initiated and developed as a volunteer project by the Australian Plants Society, Sutherland Group to produce a user-friendly resource specially designed for non-botanists. It demonstrates community engagement in environmental education. Over 1,400 CDs have been distributed since the launch in 2006, indicating considerable success in achieving the project aims.


INTRODUCTION
Action is urgently needed to curb the rising rates of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and reduce the resulting social and economic burdens. There is global evidence about the most cost-effective interventions for addressing the main NCD risk factors such as tobacco use, unhealthy diets, physical inactivity, and alcohol misuse. However, it is unknown how much research is focused on informing the local adoption and implementation of these interventions.

OBJECTIVE
To assess the degree of research activity on NCD priority interventions in LMICs by using bibliometric analysis to quantify the number of relevant peer-reviewed scientific publications.

METHODS
A multidisciplinary, multi-lingual journal database was searched for articles on NCD priority interventions. The interventions examined emphasise population-wide, policy, regulation, and legislation approaches. The publication timeframe searched was the year 2000-2011. Of the 11,211 articles yielded, 525 met the inclusion criteria.

RESULTS
Over the 12-year period, the number of articles published increased overall but differed substantially between regions: Latin America & Caribbean had the highest (127) and Middle East & North Africa had the lowest (11). Of the risk factor groups, 'tobacco control' led in publications, with 'healthy diets and physical activity' and 'reducing harmful alcohol use' in second and third place. Though half the publications had a first author from a high-income country institutional affiliation, developing country authorship had increased in recent years.

CONCLUSIONS
While rising global attention to NCDs has likely produced an increase in peer-reviewed publications on NCDs in LMICs, publication rates directly related to cost-effective interventions are still very low, suggesting either limited local research activity or limited opportunities for LMIC researchers to publish on these issues. More research is needed on high-priority interventions and research funders should re-examine if intervention research is enough of a funding priority.


One of the priority European Union objectives are activities to reduce the climate change. Its implementation requires the creation of a low carbon economy. The main instrument for this purpose is the climate and energy policy, which is based on reducing greenhouse gas emissions while ensuring energy security. In practice, the measures aimed at reducing the amount of these substances entering the air also apply to other sectors, including agriculture. The current international obligations cause that in Polish agriculture, climate change is almost imperceptible. However, the first information on the direction and scale of the activities undertaken after 2020 bid to revise this approach. The purpose of this article is to identify the main problems related to the topic of climate and energy policy of the EU, in particular regarding the Polish agriculture. The analysis was carried out on the basis of Community documents and literature.


Effects of the mold rotating speeds on the gradient microstructure and properties of heavy cross-sectional WCP/Fe-C composites made in a self-made centrifugal machine have been investigated with SEM, EDS etc. The results show the ring sample of WCP/Fe-C composites made in a centrifugal machine was free of any defects. And the transition layer between the working layer of WCP/Fe-C composites and matrix Fe-C alloy core was also perfect. The experimental results also show that the WCP-radius-directional distribution in the composites was a continuous component gradient one, which was changed with the various mold rotating speeds. At 1000 rpm the volume fractions of the WC particle from outer layer to inner layer were about 70 vol% to 50 vol% and, at 1400 rpm the volume fractions were about 80 vol% to 65 vol% respectively. The hardness and impact toughness of the working layer of WCP/Fe-C composites were changed with increasing of the mold rotating speeds respectively. Finally, the mechanism of the effects of the mold rotating speeds was discussed in the paper.


In the RBDO applications which include a reliability analysis and an optimization algorithm, Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP) is frequently used for the optimization. In this work, in addition to SQP, some heuristic algorithms such as Simulating Annealing (SA), Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Harmony Search (HS) are employed as optimization methods to demonstrate the performance, accuracy and efficiency of the corresponding methods in the RBDO process. The probabilistic constraints are evaluated by using Reliability Index Approach (RIA). The optimum design of a monopod offshore tower is presented as a numerical example to show the applicability of the proposed algorithm. Graphical and tabular forms are proposed to compare the efficiency of the optimization methods used in the Reliability Based Design Optimization (RBDO) process. As a result, heuristic algorithms exhibit good performance although they call many function evaluations including constraints and objective functions.


1. Cytochrome c oxidase-containing vesicles were prepared by cholate dialysis using bovine heart cytochrome c oxidase with egg and dioleoylphosphatidylcholine/dioleoylphosphatidylethanolamines (1:1, w/w) at two ratios of phospholipid to protein (25 mg/mg and 10 mg/mg). With each mixture, one or two (FII, FIII) fractions with mostly outward-facing cytochrome aa3 were separated from a fraction (FI) containing mostly inward-facing enzyme and protein-free liposomes by DEAE-Sephacel chromatography. 2. FII and FIII fractions from egg phospholipid mixtures had 60-80% outward-facing enzyme; FII and FIII fractions from dioleoyl phospholipids showed 50-70% outward-facing enzyme. Egg and dioleoyl phospholipid mixtures maintained good respiratory control ratios (8-13) only at the higher lipid/protein ratios. 3. Platinum/carbon replicas of freeze-fractured vesicle surfaces were subjected to image analysis. The results showed two types of membrane projection with average heights of 7.5 nm and 3.5 nm from the fracture plane. The former were more numerous on the convex faces. Calculated areas of the projections indicated the probable presence of both enzyme dimers and higher aggregates. Oxidase dimers may have membrane areas of 70-80 nm2 at the high (7.5 nm) side and 40-50 nm2 on the low (3.5 nm) side. 4. Proteoliposomes prepared with enzyme depleted of subunit III contained predominantly much smaller projecting areas. These probably represent monomers with high side areas of 35-40 nm2 and low side areas of 20-25 nm2. Electron microscopy thus directly confirms the predicted change of aggregation state resulting from subunit depletion. 5. The results are compared with those from two-dimensional crystals. Assuming that the high and low projections are two sides of one family of transmembrane molecules, a total length of 11 nm matches 11-12 nm lengths obtained by crystallography. Our membrane areas match the areas obtained in earlier 'crystal' studies better than the small areas obtained recently by electron cryomicroscopy.


A new regime of relativistic high-order harmonic generation has been discovered (Pirozhkov 2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108 135004). Multi-terawatt relativistic-irradiance (>1018 W cm−2) femtosecond (∼30–50 fs) lasers focused to underdense (few × 1019 cm−3) plasma formed in gas jet targets produce comb-like spectra with hundreds of even and odd harmonic orders reaching the photon energy of 360 eV, including the 'water window' spectral range. Harmonics are generated either by linearly or circularly polarized pulses from the J-KAREN (KPSI, JAEA) and Astra Gemini (CLF, RAL, UK) lasers. The photon number scalability has been demonstrated with a 120 TW laser, producing 40 μJ sr−1 per harmonic at 120 eV. The experimental results are explained using particle-in-cell simulations and catastrophe theory. A new mechanism of harmonic generation by sharp, structurally stable, oscillating electron spikes at the joint of the boundaries of the wake and bow waves excited by a laser pulse is introduced. In this paper, detailed descriptions of the experiments, simulations and model are provided and new features are shown, including data obtained with a two-channel spectrograph, harmonic generation by circularly polarized laser pulses and angular distribution.


Concerns about the competitiveness of Japan's high-technology industries has prompted a number of recent reforms seeking to strengthen the ability of Japanese firms to utilize scientific discoveries, often originating in universities, in their R&D activities. Using an original panel data set comprised of over 300 leading Japanese R&D-performing firms, we seek to measure changes in the connection between science and Japanese industrial technology by using data on the citations to scientific articles appearing in the U.S. patents of these firms. Econometric analysis suggests that this connection is substantial, that it has grown over time, and that it contributes significantly to the research productivity of Japanese firms. Our data suggest that scientific research originating outside Japan, particularly in the United States, generates a particularly important component of these knowledge spillovers, and that measured knowledge flows are systematically related to firms' efforts to forge research alliances with American firms and universities. We integrate our econometric findings with data on the scientific publications of Japanese firms as well as a series of semi-structured interviews with Japanese R&D managers, academic scientists, and other experts. These various sources reveal that the interaction between Japanese firms and universities, domestic and foreign, is complex and takes a number of forms, only some of which are well captured by our data. The implications of this for public policy and for future research on this topic are discussed at length.


Development of software is an iterative process. Graphical tools to represent the relevant entities and processes can be helpful. In particular, automata capture well the intended execution flow of applications, and are thus behind many formal approaches, namely behavioral types.
Typestate-oriented programming allow us to model and validate the intended protocol of applications, not only providing a top-down approach to the development of software, but also coping well with compositional development. Moreover, it provides important static guarantees like protocol fidelity and some forms of progress.
Mungo is a front-end tool for Java that associates a typestate describing the valid orders of method calls to each class, and statically checks that the code of all classes follows the prescribed order of method calls.
To assist programming with Mungo, as typestates are textual descriptions that are terms of an elaborate grammar, we developed a tool that bidirectionally converts typestates into an adequate form of automata, providing on one direction a visualization of the underlying protocol specified by the typestate, and on the reverse direction a way to get a syntactically correct typestate from the more intuitive automata representation.


Evidence on the impacts of many teacher policies remains insufficient and scattered, and the impact of many reforms depends on specific design features. In addition, teacher policies can have very different impacts, depending on the context and other education policies in place. A new tool, systems approach for better education results (SABER) - teachers, aims to help fill the gap by collecting, analyzing, synthesizing, and disseminating comprehensive information on teacher policies in primary- and secondary-education systems around the world. SABER - teachers collects data on 10 core teacher policy areas to offer a comprehensive, descriptive overview of the teacher policies that are in place in each participating education system. To offer informed policy guidance, SABER - teachers analyzes the information collected to assess the extent to which the teacher policies of an education system are aligned with policies shown by research evidence to have a positive effect on student achievement. This report presents results of the application of SABER - teachers in Mozambique. It describes Mozambique's performance for each of the eight teacher policy goals, alongside comparative information from education systems that have consistently scored high results in international student achievement tests and have participated in SABER - teachers.


TiAlN, and TiAlN/CrN nanolayered coatings were synthesized by cathodic-arc evaporation with plasma enhanced duct equipment. Chromium and TiAl (50/50 at %) alloy cathodes were used for the deposition of TiAlN/CrN coatings. The effects of bilayer thickness and chromium content on the microstructure and mechanical properties of TiAlN/CrN nanolayered coatings were studied. The preferred orientation was changed from (200) in TiAlN monolayered coatings to (111) plane in the multilayered TiAlN/CrN coatings. The multilayered TiAlN/CrN coating with periodic thickness of 20 nm and the smallest crystallite size of 28 nm exhibited the highest hardness of 39 GPa. The multilayered TiAlN/CrN coatings also showed the best adhesion strength using scratch tests. It has been found that the structural and mechanical properties of the films were correlated with the addition of chromium and nanolayer thickness.


This article provides evidence that refreshing, a hypothetical attention‐based process operating in working memory (WM), improves the accessibility of visual representations for recall. "Thinking of", one of several concurrently active representations, is assumed to refresh its trace in WM, protecting the representation from being forgotten. The link between refreshing and WM performance, however, has only been tenuously supported by empirical evidence. Here, we controlled which and how often individual items were refreshed in a color reconstruction task by presenting cues prompting participants to think of specific WM items during the retention interval. We show that the frequency with which an item is refreshed improves recall of this item from visual WM. Our study establishes a role of refreshing in recall from visual WM and provides a new method for studying the impact of refreshing on the amount of information we can keep accessible for ongoing cognition.


This study was carried out to determine the heavy metal contents of hollyhock (Alcea rosea L.) in roadside soils of Van Lake Basin. The leaf samples of the hollyhock were taken from the roadside areas affected by heavy metal pollution due to intensive motorized traffic and from areas 30 m from the roadside by taking into account prevailing wind direction in 10 different locations. There were only significant differences for Mn, Cu, and Zn contents of leaves according to the sampling locations. The mean Fe (383.3 mg kg-1), Mn (50.2 mg kg-1), Cu (19.2 mg kg-1), Zn (23.9 mg kg-1), Cd (17.9 mg kg-1), Cr (5.1 mg kg-1), Ni (3.2 mg kg-1), and Pb (3.2 mg kg-1) contents of leaves sampled from roadside areas were significantly higher than mean heavy metal contents of leaves sampled from the areas 30 m from the roadside. The increasing ratios in mean heavy metal contents of leaves were ordered as Cd (309.3%) > Cr (248.9%) > Ni (130.6%) > Fe (75.9%) > Pb (64.3%) > Mn (40.6%) > Cu (26.1%) > Zn (22.7%). High heavy metal uptake by the plants grown near the roadside occurred due to pollution by intensive motorized


ABSTRACT This paper addresses families' perceptions of corporate influence in career and technical education (CTE) through market-driven policies that enable data extraction for student profiling and seek to align K-12 education with business-driven needs. Aligning education with business needs can offer early employment, however, accelerating technological developments risk subjecting hyper-specialised individuals to highly unpredictable labour markets and ultimately job insecurity. Using grounded theory, we conducted in-depth interviews with families across the United States, to obtain their views on the hyper-specialisation in CTE. The emerging discourse is that powerful corporations offer makeshift hyper-specialisation curricula that fit their business needs and do not necessarily reflect, or indeed, consider children's best interests. This research contributes to scholarship by elucidating the views of families affected by the corporate influence in CTE. The collected stakeholder accounts suggest the need for more in-depth research on individuals who rely on CTE for future employment.


Theories of the "knowledge economy" view knowledge, and particularly new knowledge, as a critical resource to enhance a nation's economic growth. Governments around the world have invested in doctoral education expansion. Reforms in doctoral education are being shaped by the changing needs of society, of research modes, and of a changed labor markets for PhD holders. The reform elements strive for excellence, expansion, quality assurance, accountability, and international and inter-sector network building. The expansion in doctoral studies has gone hand in hand with an increased flow of international doctoral students, the wish to become a world-class university, and the adoption of more standardized structures and practices of doctoral education. This paper ends with a number of promising reform practices that may be useful for South Africa's expanding doctoral systems, such as the introduction of postgraduate schools that help implement and initiate innovations in doctoral education on a campus with an eye to high quality.


This paper asks what the regulatory assessment of the novel processed meat analogue products reveals about the nature of food regulation in Australia. We analyse Food Standards Australia and New Zealand's ('FSANZ') assessment of the recent application by Californian technology company Impossible Foods Inc to sell its proprietary burger products which contain a genetically modified protein that is said to make their burger 'bleed'. We show that FSANZ's assessment process has little capacity to engage with broader and longer term, social, ecological and public health implications of novel foods and changing food markets. FSANZ's regulatory pre-approval process focuses almost exclusively on the safety of individual ingredients rather than the impact of novel foods on the food supply as whole and leaves broader issues to the market and consumer choice with limited support from laws addressing misleading labelling and marketing of foods. Extending the capacity of Australia's regulatory regime for food to deal with more than the safety of individual ingredients will become more urgent as other novel foods, such as cell-based meats, enter the marketplace.


This paper deals with a multiobjective hybrid flowshop scheduling problem with sequence dependent setup times. Two different objectives are considered to be optimized at once. Our first contribution is to propose a special encoding for the studied problem. Then, our second contribution is that a new metaheuristic based on the Lorenz dominance relationship (L-NSGA) is developed here to solve the studied problem. The goal is to improve the search ability of the original metaheuristic which is based on the Pareto dominance relationship (NSGA-II). The experimental result shows the efficiency of L-NSGA to solve this problem.


There are many ways to facilitate the creation of large-scale projects. One of the most commonly used methods is to create virtual machines that contain the program environment. However, software has recently been created to make this process even easier. One example is Docker, a software for automating the deployment and management of applications in an operating system-level virtualization environment. This paper discusses the Docker software, its features and benefits, which allows you to create images that contain the program and all the necessary components for its operation. The purpose of this work is to study the capabilities of Docker. And also, the creation of a container containing a software implementation of the neural network for recognition of various handwritten characters. Training and test data is a database of handwritten numbers and letters "MNIST" and "EMNIST". To teach the neural network to recognize numbers, a training set containing 60 thousand copies was used, and the test set includes 10 thousand copies. For letters – the training set contains 88800 copies, and the test set includes 14800 copies. The project was created on the basis of the image tensorflow downloaded from public Docker-registry Docker Hub. The program is written in Python3, using the service for interactive computing Jupyter Notebook. 38


The management of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive (ErbB2+) breast cancer is challenging; patients with ErbB2+ breast tumors have more aggressive disease and a poor prognosis. The increasing incidence of breast cancer in Asia and the limitations of existing treatments pose additional challenges. In this review, we summarize the preclinical and clinical evidence that indicates how lapatinib, a novel inhibitor that targets the human epidermal growth factor receptor (ErbB1) and ErbB2 may help clinicians address four particularly challenging issues in the management of ErbB2+ breast cancer. These issues are: (i) trastuzumab therapy failure, (ii) development of central nervous system metastases, (iii) minimizing toxicity and (iv) selecting the most appropriate partners (chemotherapy and non-chemotherapy) for combination therapy with lapatinib. Lapatinib, in combination with chemotherapeutic agents, such as capecitabine, provides clinical benefits to patients with ErbB2+ breast cancer, including patients who develop progressive disease on trastuzumab. Lapatinib, in combination with non-chemotherapeutic agents, such as letrozole, may also provide a chemotherapy-free treatment option for postmenopausal patients with estrogen receptor-positive/ErbB2+ metastatic breast cancer. Encouraging results have also emerged regarding the synergistic effects of lapatinib in combination with other agents for the treatment of ErbB2+ breast cancer. Promising findings have also been reported for the use of lapatinib to prevent and treat central nervous system metastases. Collectively, these results indicate that the judicious use of lapatinib, an effective oral therapy with a manageable toxicity profile, can enhance the management of patients with ErbB2+ breast cancer.


Abstract Sustainable use of wildlife is crucial to ensuring persistence of natural resources. We used age-specific survival and breeding data to parameterize a demographic model for a harvested Kazakh saker falcon (Falco cherrug) population by radiotagging juveniles and estimating adult turnover with DNA-fingerprinting during 1993–1997. We gathered similar data during 1990–1998 to model populations of British buzzards (Buteo buteo), and during 1980–1998 to model populations of Swedish goshawks (Accipiter gentilis). Leg-bands and implanted microtransponders provided ways to test for bias and to estimate the harvest of sakers for falconry. Despite an estimated minimum first-year survival of only 23%, the observed productivity of 3.14 young per clutch would sustain a saker population (i.e., λ = 1) with a breeding rate (at laying) of only 0.63 for adults or with a residual juvenile yield of 37% if all adults breed. Higher first-year survival rates for goshawks and buzzards correlated with juvenile yields of up to 71%, but no more than half as many individuals if adults also were harvested. An annual population decline of 40% for sakers in southern Kazakhstan could be explained by observed productivity of only 0.71 young per clutch if there was also an estimated harvest of 55% of adults. This study shows that demographic models such as these can now be built rapidly if nestlings are fitted with reliable and safe radiotags and adult turnover is estimated from genetic analyses or other techniques.


This research was about developing a web based ordering system that focuses on problem in order to make sure that the problem stated is the actual one needed to be solved. The SFK Aneka Enterprise problem is low in security because company keeps the ordering data using manual system, lack of data management, difficulty in determining company sales and customer difficult to know product availability and prices. It is a challenge to accurately define requirements as it involves the subject matter expert and to meet the needs of business audiences. Hence, Cause and Effect Analysis (Ishikawa diagram) and Force Field Analysis technique was applied in analysis phase in order to determine the accuracy and correctness of the identified requirement. The project required a web-based system for an administrator to manage the customer account, manage order list, manage product, and manage the company and brand. There are two actors involved in this system which is customer who use the system to make order and admin who operates all in the system. This project used evolutionary prototyping as a method that consist of seven phased which are requirement gathering phase, analysis phase, prototype development phase, client evaluation phase, suggested improved phase, design phase and development phase where each of the phases has its own activities and deliverables. The findings of this project are to develop the ordering system for SFK Aneka Enterprise based on features resulted from Cause and Effect Analysis (Ishikawa diagram) and Force Field Analysis technique.


The paper reconstructs the teaching and research activities of scholars in statistics and related subjects at the University of Padua from the Restoration to the Second World War. The history of statistics in Padua is an interesting case study, as it sheds light on the evolution of the discipline at the national level as well as on its relationships with the international development of statistical methods. Some fascinating antecedents go back to the 16th century, with contributions by Gerolamo Cardano and Galileo Galilei. The 150 years from the Restoration to the 1960s are marked by a sequence of phases of renewal and conservatism. At the beginning, the old Statistik took the place of political arithmetic. Statistics experienced telling improvements only with Angelo Messedaglia, who drew from Quetelet and outlined a new political role for the discipline. This led his pupils to view statistics as a social science supporting State intervention, without any methodological peculiarity. A new phase of dramatic innovation was led by Corrado Gini from 1913 to 1925. Again, his pupils and successors exacerbated the neo-descriptive approach of the «Italian school of Statistics», the confrontation with modern statistical inference, and the support to the corporatist programme of the Fascism. This stand largely motivated the post-War decline of the discipline. A new revival had to await the mid-1950s, when Albino Ugge and then Bernardo Colombo started assembling a group of young scholars and planned the establishment of a Faculty of Statistics, achieved in 1968.


OBJECTIVE: To estimate completion rate and acceptability of home screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) compared with clinic-based screening in a prospective cohort study. METHODS: The first 462 women enrolled in the Contraceptive Choice Project were screened at the 12-month follow-up for Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhoeae using strand displacement analysis of self-collected vaginal swabs. In a telephone interview, participants were given a choice of no-cost screening with swabs mailed to the participant's home (home-based) or screening that was available at area family planning clinics without an appointment (clinic-based). The clinic-based group also included women who elected to screen with their regular provider according to the clinician's normal practice. We analyzed the rates of screening, including patient preference and the proportion of completed tests by testing method. RESULTS: Women were more likely to choose to screen for STIs at home than at a clinic or with their own medical provider (75.7% compared with 16.1% compared with 8.2%, P<.001). Women choosing clinic testing were more likely to be African American than those choosing home testing. African-American women constituted 42% of the clinic group compared with 28% of the home group (relative risk [RR] 1.63, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.14–2.31). The groups did not differ in other demographic characteristics, STI risk factors, or access to health care. Overall, 228 women (56.6%) completed screening. Women who chose home-based testing were more likely to complete a test compared with all clinic-based testers (64.6% compared with 31.6%, RR 2.04, 95% CI 1.51–2.76). CONCLUSION: Women overwhelmingly preferred to screen for STIs at home. Future interventions to increase screening rates in young women should consider alternative screening strategies such as home-based or patient-controlled testing. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


Daily communication today is predominantly digital, but contemporary novels continue to be interested in paper letters. Why? What do letters, written on paper, offer to the novel in the twenty-first century? This essay explores the material letter's contemporary value as metaphor, reading as a case study Ian McEwan's The Children Act. McEwan's novel dramatizes a conflict between religion and the secular law, which is an example of the type of dispute that Jean-François Lyotard identifies in The Differend: a dispute that is unresolvable because the process for regulating it is unable to register the wrong that one side suffers. In their different modes, these two texts consider intractable conflict and the ethics of its regulation, the workings of which are analyzed here through the suggestive correspondences between the dynamics of Lyotard's differend and those of letters. These correspondences derive, this essay argues, from the letter's material properties, which underlie its ability to function as metaphor. The letter's temporal structure of delay and the silences and instability that delay produces, in particular, have productive affinities with the workings of the differend. These correspondences help to delineate the conflicts of The Children Act and to reveal the value of the letter as metaphor more generally. This case study presents an example of the letter as a metaphorical resource, whose possibilities are distinct from those of digital communications and whose flexibility and nuance help to account for contemporary novels' continued interest in the letter.


As storage systems get larger to meet the demands of petascale systems, careful planning must be applied to avoid congestion points and extract the maximum performance. In addition, the large data sets generated by such systems makes it desirable for all compute resources to have common access to this data without needing to copy it to each machine. This paper describes a method of placing I/O close to the storage nodes to minimize contention on Cray's SeaStar2+ network, and extends it to a routed Lustre configuration to gain the same benefits when running against a center-wide file system. Our experiments using half of the resources of Spider — the center-wide file system at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility — show that I/O write bandwidth can be improved by up to 45% (from 71.9 to 104 GB/s) for a direct-attached configuration and by 137% (47.6 GB/s to 115 GB/s) for a routed configuration. We demonstrated up to 20.7% reduction in run-time for production scientific applications. With the full Spider system, we demonstrated over 240 GB/s of aggregate bandwidth using our techniques.


ABSTRACT This study examines domestic media's coverage of foreign wildfires from a climate change perspective. It explores Swedish newspapers' coverage of wildfires in Australia, the Mediterranean region, and the USA during a three-year period (February 2013–March 2016), focusing on how and to what extent climate change is viewed as an underlying cause. A central result is that climate change is mentioned far more often in the case of Australian wildfires than of fires in the other two regions. Another finding is that the climate change issue became more prominent after a severe domestic wildfire in 2014. These observations are also examined qualitatively through a combined frame and discourse study where the importance of foreign news values, the use of foreign sources, cultural proximity/distance, and domestication procedures are analysed. In conclusion, foreign, domestic, and cultural factors in climate change reporting in relation to extreme events are further discussed.


Charts and approximate formulas are presented for the estimation of static aeroelastic effects on the spanwise lift distribution, rolling-moment coefficient, and rate of roll due to the deflection of ailerons on swept and unswept wings at subsonic and supersonic speeds. Some design considerations brought out by the results of this report are discussed. This report treats the lateral-control case in a manner similar to that employed in NACA Report 1140 for the symmetric-flight case, and is intended to be used in conjunction with NACA Report 1140 and the charts and formulas presented therein.


Diabetes mellitus needs to be managed early to prevent the onset and progression of complications. Diet and exercise may not be sufficient to achieve and maintain good glycemic control. Currently, no pharmacologic agent addresses all of the fundamental abnormalities in the pathogenesis of type II diabetes mellitus. However, the newer agents do not exacerbate the hyperinsulinemia that often occurs with type II diabetes, and they may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease that is associated with high insulin levels. Two of these agents, metformin and acarbose, have recently become available in the United States for the treatment of type II diabetes. With the availability of agents that differ in their mechanisms of action and side effect profiles, regimens can be individualized to address the variety of pathophysiologic abnormalities in type II diabetes. For this purpose, agents can be used alone or in combination.


In 1926, tennis champion Suzanne Lenglen (1899-1938) signed a contract with a manager to play exhibition matches, sparking heated debates about the question of professionalism, both within the press and in the Fédération française de tennis, which decided to exclude her. An analysis of her career before and after she turned professional shows that in her case, despite the tennis federation's message of firmness, the conditions for playing under either status (professional or amateur) were not very different. In addition, Lenglen's decision to go professional led the tennis federation to redefine what it meant to be a professional, distinguishing between instructors and 'exhibition professionals', in order to sideline the latter. Through this example, the definition of amateur or professional athletes appears to be more a power play in the hands of the federation than a category that corresponds to actual practices.


Objectives: Lower general cognitive function is frequently reported in older adults with elevated pure-tone thresholds. Here, we examined reason(s) for this association, including whether this relationship is dependent on the frequency range or extent of hearing loss and cognitive screening performance. Design: Linear regression was used to examine associations between better-ear pure-tone thresholds and Mini-Mental Status Exam (MMSE) performance in a cross-sectional sample of relatively healthy older adults (N = 508; 68% women, 60–89+ years; M age = 72). Quantile regression was also used to identify the ranges of 0.5 and 4.0 kHz thresholds and MMSE scores where these variables exhibited significant associations. Results: MMSE scores and pure-tone thresholds exhibited small but significant associations, particularly for better-ear 0.5 kHz thresholds. This hearing threshold and cognitive screening association was present among participants with better hearing, including the oldest older adults. There was limited evidence for mediating health condition effects on this association. An item analysis of the MMSE revealed that the MMSE and pure-tone threshold associations were largely due to the delayed recall item of the MMSE. Conclusions: Together, the small effect results are consistent with the extant literature and suggest that there are multiple reasons for modest pure-tone threshold and cognitive screening performance associations.


Introduction: In Egypt, few epidemiologic reports have highlighted the national and regional epidemiologic data regarding primary CNS tumors. In this study we aim to identify the frequency of various primary CNS tumors and to demonstrate the age group distribution, gender, topographic data and the different histopathologic types among our patients. Materials and Methods: Data on all cases of primary CNS neoplasms received at Pathology department of Ain Shams University Specialized hospital in addition to a referral neuropathology lab during the period from 2010 to 2015 were collected with a total number of 996 cases. The patients were divided according to their age into two main groups, pediatric group including children and adolescents (from 0-18 years), and adult group (> 18 years). Patients' demographic data and histopathologic tumor types were analyzed. Result: Frequency of primary CNS tumors among males was higher than females (51.7% vs. 49.3% respectively). Regarding patient age, frequency among adults was (89.4%) compared to pediatric age group (10.6%). Gliomas were the most common primary CNS tumors in adults (35%) followed by meningiomas (33.3%) then pituitary adenomas (15.6%); while in pediatric group embryonal tumors (17%) were the second most common following gliomas (59.4%). Conclusion: This study highlighted the frequency, spectrum and prominent features of primary CNS tumors among Egyptian patients, in comparison to many worldwide reports. This study recommends the establishment of specialized national center for CNS tumors in Egypt; this will provide efficient registry system and accurate data analysis for these tumors.


A high percentage of serious accidents occur on sharp horizontal curves, especially on two-lane rural roads. A growing body of literature has examined driving behaviour on horizontal curves, with most research relating the effect of curve radius on driver's speed and steering behaviour. There is an agreement that increasing degrees of road curvature result in less safe curve negotiation performance and consequently more accidents. Few studies, however, have further explored the effect of limited visibility on curve negotiation. This paper reports the results of a driving simulator study aimed at examining drivers' behaviour on horizontal curves, in terms of speed and lateral position, in relation to varying levels of visibility of the curve's arc. A two-lane rural road was designed and implemented in a desktop driving simulator and ten curve scenarios were examined with five different levels of visibility (20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%), and of two curve radii (150m and 250m). Thirty drivers participated in the experiment; statistical analysis showed there to be a clear effect of radius on driver speed, as would be expected. However, when visibility decreased, reductions in driver speed were only found at the lowest level (20% preview). This speed reduction, however, was not sufficient enough for drivers to be able to negotiate the curve without detriment to their lateral positioning. Drivers tended to decelerate later and more sharply in the poor visibility curve and then have to compensate by moving towards the centre-line in order to flatten out the curve. It is concluded that whilst drivers can adapt sufficiently on curves that have moderate pre-view, when visibility deteriorates below a threshold (in this case 20% preview) drivers are unable (or willing) to reduce their speed appropriately and thus risk lane excursion.


The long-standing studies into the problem of heterosis on the silkworm and other objects are reviewed. Silkworms are divided by sex for hybridization using the genetic marking of the eggs by sex, an improved method of ameiotic parthenogenesis providing all-female progeny, or the method of obtaining all-male progeny as a result of the death of eggs with female embryos under the influence of two non-allele embryonic lethals balances in the Z-chromosome. The experimental data suggest that heterosis is determined by the heterozygosity of lethals and semilethals, rather than depending on the heterozygosity of all gene types. The number of modifier genes that control viability plays a big role in the vigor of heterosis. An effective method is proposed to enhance the vigor of heterosis through the selection of one or two parents of a hybrid for viability, both of which received a strong semilethal. In hybrids, this semilethal is suppressed by the normal allele, and then a more unbalanced complex of modifier genes initiates a heterosis two to three times more vigorous than in standard hybrids. A method is developed to fix heterosis through the backcrosses of females of the high-heterosis hybrids to the absolutely homozygous males of androgenetic origin obtained from these females. These crosses preserve the main genotype of the hybrid and eliminate lethals and semilethals, and, as a result, heterosis is not damped during standard intrahybrid reproduction.


Objective—Atherosclerosis is a chronic disease triggered by endothelial injury and sustained by inflammation. Dendritic cells (DCs) are critical for the cell-mediated arm of an immune response and are known to influence inflammatory immunity. A fundamental aspect of DC function is their capacity to adhere and migrate through vascular endothelial cells (ECs). We investigated the role of endothelial activation and dysregulation of the NO pathway on DC adhesion and migration. Methods and Results—We discovered that DC adhesion and migration are modulated by changes in endothelial function. DC adhesion and transmigration were markedly increased after exposing ECs to hypoxia, oxidized low density lipoprotein, or tumor necrosis factor-&agr;. Specifically, inhibition of endothelial NO synthase increased DC binding and transmigration. l-Arginine or 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase inhibition partially decreased DC-EC interaction. Conclusions—The results of this study suggest that the adhesion and migration of DCs are increased by stimuli known to accelerate atherogenesis. Vice versa, augmentation of endothelial NO synthase activity prevents DC adhesion. These findings may provide insight into the inflammatory processes occurring in atherosclerosis. Because DCs control immunity, regulating DC-EC interaction may be relevant to inflammation and atherogenesis.


A field-oxide structure for radiation-hard CMOS VLSI is described. It is a three-layer structure consisting of a thin thermal oxide, a doped polysilicon sheet deposited on the thin oxide, and a thick CVD oxide layer deposited on the polysilicon. The polysilicon sheet is maintained at the substrate potential by, e.g. using n-type poly-Si over the n-tub and p-type poly-Si over the p-tub or p-substrate and allowing contacts to be made through the thin oxide. The small effective electrical thickness of the thin oxide combined with the ground potential of the polysilicon enhances the radiation hardness and maintains good isolation even at radiation levels as high as 10/sup 8/ rads and above. This structure is self-aligned to the active regions and directly insertable into a submicrometer CMOS VLSI without any changes in the circuit design. The circuits made with this technology can operate at 2.5-3 GHz even after a total dose of 50-100 Mrad.<<ETX>>


EQUIPPING MEMBERS AT FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN LEADVILLE, COLORADO TO UNDERSTAND AND PRACTICE BIBLICAL SANCTIFICATION Andrew Munroe Scott, D.Min The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2018 Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Wesley L. Feltner This project was designed to equip members of First Baptist Church in Leadville, Colorado to understand and practice biblical sanctification. Chapter 1 presents the ministry context of FBCL, as well as the rationale, purpose, goals, research methodologies, definitions, and delimitations for this project. Chapter 2 provides the biblical basis for sanctification with an exegesis of the following foundational passages: Ephesians 1:3-14, Colossians 2:6-10, and Romans 8:5-17. These passages compel the reader to find a biblical foundation for sanctification in a secure spiritual identity, a commitment to consistent spiritual growth, and a call to a continual spiritual battle. Chapter 3 continues the discussion into the theological realm and argues for a theological model that promotes consistent spiritual growth. Chapter 4 details the process of the project itself. Chapter 5 conclusively evaluates the efficiency of the project. Ultimately, this project seeks to glorify God by equipping saints to understand and practice biblical sanctification in order to enjoy unified fellowship, cohesive worship, fruitful growth, and effective evangelism.


We present a cloud-based multimodal dialogue platform for the remote assessment and monitoring of speech, facial and fine motor function in Parkinson's Disease (PD) at scale, along with a preliminary investigation of the efficacy of the various metrics automatically extracted by the platform. 22 healthy controls and 38 people with Parkinson's Disease (pPD) were instructed to complete four interactive sessions, spaced a week apart, on the platform. Each session involved a battery of tasks designed to elicit speech, facial movements and finger movements. We find that speech, facial kinematic and finger movement dexterity metrics show statistically significant differences between controls and pPD. We further investigate the sensitivity, specificity, reliability and generalisability of these metrics. Our results offer encouraging evidence for the utility of automatically-extracted audiovisual analytics in remote mon-itoring of PD and other movement disorders.


The innovative method based on prefabricated fiber laminate composites bonded to lightweight precast panel was applied for quality control of RC strengthening members. The experimental investigations for this method were presented for flexural member. Three different groups such as control group without strengthening, conventional fiber bonding group and innovated PFLC group bonded to precast panel. Tested results showed good or better capacities comparing to conventional strengthening method for flexural members. This investigation indicate that good enhancement with respect to quality control and reliability can be possible by the installation and epoxy injection with prefabricated panel using fiber laminate composites.


Drug-eluting stents substantially reduce restenosis compared with bare-metal stents and represent a significant advance in percutaneous coronary interventions. Accordingly, drug-eluting stents have been rapidly adopted into practice and are currently used in the vast majority of complex percutaneous coronary procedures. However, in the last 2 years, concerns have been raised regarding their long-term safety, especially regarding the risk of late and very-late stent thrombosis. Delayed endothelial coverage after drug-eluting stent implantation is thought to prolong the window of vulnerability to stent thrombosis, which requires a prolonged dual antiplatelet therapy. Recent registry studies and meta-analyses seem to have provided reassuring results regarding the long-term rates of death and myocardial infarction associated with the use of drug-eluting stents compared with bare-metal stents. However, data are not consistent and concerns remain.


In the context of feminist and postmodern thought, traditional conceptions of masculinity and what it means to be a "Real Man" have been critiqued. In Genevieve Lloyd's The Man of Reason, this critique takes the form of exposing the effect that the distinctive masculinity of the "man of reason" has had on the history of philosophy. One major feature of the masculine‐feminine dichotomy will emerge as a key notion for understanding the rest of the paper: the dichotomy of reason‐feeling, a parallel and a foundational aspect to the dichotomy of masculinity and femininity. In exploring the history of symbolic conceptions of masculinity in ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and the present, one finds that the oppression of women is integrally linked to the traditional tie between masculinity and reason. There have been many efforts in recent feminist philosophy to rewrite or redefine "Woman" in such a way as to alleviate the oppression of women. I argue that the effectiveness of rewriting Woman for this purpose is problematic, primarily because any rewriting of this type must occur in the current historical context of hierarchical dualisms, like Man‐Woman, masculine‐feminine, male‐female. These binary oppositions arguably find their roots in Pythagorean philosophy and can be traced through the Renaissance to our current historical context. It is these dualisms that have traditionally valued the masculine side of the Man‐Woman dichotomy more than the feminine. Further, it will be argued that the hierarchical dualism of Man and Woman is so pervasive that if we rewrite or redefine the inferior, deprivileged side of that dualism, we cannot correct its devalued status. Instead, we redefine that which is undervalued but retain its devalued status. This particular aspect of attempts to critique hierarchical dualisms like reason and feeling has been reflected in the writings of many feminists, male and female. This paper will show that in cases where women attempt to redefine the dichotomy by revaluing the traditionally feminine (like feelings and emotions) over the traditionally masculine (like reason) their work is often mistakenly criticized for being purely political; conversely, when men attempt to redefine the same dichotomy in an attempt to allow men to "get back in touch with their feelings," to be nurturers, their work is described in terms of providing a better epistemology. The current literature on masculinity explores alternatives to rewriting or redefining Woman that try to avoid the problem of status remaining with redefinition. This alternative is rewriting or redefining Man. Through redefining Man, one may be able to reconceptualize the privileged side of the hierarchical dualism in such a way that it is no longer privileged. Deprivileging, as well as redefining Man, is argued by theorists of masculinity to be possible because while the devalued status of the inferior side of a hierarchical dualism tends to keep the same status when redefined, it may be possible to redefine the privileged side of the dualism in such a way that it loses its privileged status. Unfortunately, many of these attempts to rewrite or redefine masculinity have detrimental faults of their own. Finally, this paper will discuss more promising possibilities for new definitions of Man, as well as a vision for better interaction between the work of women and men in general.


Here is presented a unified approach to modelling multi‐block regression data. The starting point is a partition of the data X into L data blocks, X = (X1, X2,…,XL), and the data Y into M data‐blocks, Y = (Y1, Y2,…,YM). The methods of linear regression, X→Y, are extended to the case of a linear relationship between each Xi and Yj, Xi→Yj. A modelling strategy is used to decide if the residual Xi should take part in the modelling of one or more Yjs. At each step the procedure of finding score vectors is based on well‐defined optimisation procedures. The principle of optimisation is based on that the score vectors should give the sizes of the resulting Yjs loading vectors as large as possible. The partition of X and Y are independent of each other. The choice of Yj can be Xj, Yi = Xi, thus including the possibility of modelling X→Xi, i = 1,…,L. It is shown how these methods can be extended to a network of data blocks. Examples of the optimisation procedures in a network are shown. The examples chosen are the ones that are useful to work within industrial production environments. The methods are illustrated by simulated data and data from cement production. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The geometric structure of steel deck plates is complex. So it is difficult to get precise results in the mechanics calculation of deck pavement with traditional methods. This paper adopts the finite element method for the mechanics analysis of the composite guss asphalt surfacing layer of curved steel box girder bridges. By taking the orthotropic steel deck and the pavement as a whole, a reasonable finite element model is established and optimized for the mechanical study of steel deck pavement. This model can be used to study the stress and deformation features of the surfacing layer. According to the common diseases in steel deck pavements and the effect of the overload and the horizontal load in braking to the pavement, this paper puts forward the comprehensive control indicators for pavement failures.


The author seeks to develop a model to alter the bid–offer spread, currently quoted by market makers, that varies with the market and trading conditions. The dynamic nature of financial markets and trading—as with the rest of social sciences, where changes can be observed and decisions can be made by participants to influence the system—means that this model has to be adaptive and include a feedback loop that alters the bid–offer adjustment based on the modifications observed in the market and trading conditions, without a significant time delay. The factors used to adjust the spread are price volatility, which is publicly observable, and trade count and volume, which are generally known only to the market maker, in various instruments over different historical durations in time. The contributions of each factor to the bid–offer adjustment are computed separately and then consolidated to produce a very adaptive bid–offer quotation. The author uses the currency markets to build the sample model because they are extremely liquid and trading in them is not as transparent as other financial instruments, such as equities. Simulating the number of trades and the average size of trades from a lognormal distribution, the parameters of the lognormal distributions are chosen such that the total volume in a certain interval matches the volume publicly mentioned by currency trading firms. This methodology can easily be extended to other financial instruments and possibly to any product with the ability to make electronic price quotations, or can even be used to periodically perform manual price updates on products that are traded non-electronically.


We propose a technique to integrate core selection in the SOC (system-on-chip) test solution design-flow. It can, in contrast to previous approaches, be used in the early design-space exploration phase (the core selection process) to evaluate the impact on the system's final test solution imposed by different design decisions, i.e. the core selection and the cores' test characteristics. The proposed technique includes the interdependent problems: test scheduling, TAM (test access mechanism) design, test set selection and test resource floor-planning, and it minimizes a weighted cost-function based on test time and TAM routing cost while considering test conflicts and test power limitations. An advantage with the technique is the novel three-level power model: system, power-grid, and core. We have implemented and compared the proposed technique, a fast estimation technique and a computational extensive pseudo-exhaustive method, and the results demonstrate that our technique produces high quality solutions at reasonable computational cost.


: What is this highly publicized but somewhat mysterious information superhighway, and what are its implications for health care? This article will spell out how the concept of the information superhighway will dramatically change the flow of information, and how it could effect virtually every household, every business, and every hospital in the United States.


We examined the long-term effects of dietary diacylglycerol (DG) and triacylglycerol (TG) with similar fatty acid compositions on the development of obesity in C57BL/6J mice. We also analyzed the expression of genes involved in lipid metabolism at an early stage of obesity development in these mice. Compared with mice fed the high-TG diet, mice fed the high-DG diet accumulated significantly less body fat during the 8-month study period. Within the first 10 days, dietary DG stimulated beta-oxidation and lipid metabolism-related gene expression, including acyl-CoA oxidase, medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase, and uncoupling protein-2 in the small intestine but not in the liver, skeletal muscle, or brown adipose tissue, suggesting the predominant contribution of intestinal lipid metabolism to the effects of DG. Furthermore, analysis of digestion products of [(14)C]DG and those of [(14)C]TG revealed that the radioactivity levels detected in fatty acid, 1-monoacylglycerol, and 1,3-DG in intestinal mucosa were significantly higher after intrajejunal injection of DG rather than TG. Thus, dietary DG reduces body weight gain that accompanies the stimulation of intestinal lipid metabolism, and these effects may be related to the characteristic metabolism of DG in the small intestine.


The immune system is frequently described in the context of its protective function against infections and its role in the development of autoimmunity. For more than a decade, the interactions between the immune system and metabolic processes have been reported, in effect creating a new research field, termed immunometabolism. Accumulating evidence supports the hypothesis that the development of metabolic diseases may be linked to inflammation, and reflects, in some cases, the activation of immune responses. As such, immunometabolism is defined by 1) inflammation as a driver of disease development and/or 2) metabolic processes stimulating cellular differentiation of the immune components. In this review, the main factors capable of altering the immuno-metabolic communication leading to the development and establishment of obesity and diabetes are comprehensively presented. Tissue-specific immune responses suggested to impair metabolic processes are described, with an emphasis on the adipose tissue, gut, muscle, liver, and pancreas.


In this work, nanocrystalline hexagonal tungsten oxide was prepared by acidic precipitation from sodium tungstate solution. TEM studies of nanopowders showed that the average size of the hexagonal nanoparticles is 30-50 nm. Novel nanocomposites were prepared by embedding a low amount of gold decorated carbon nanotubes into the hex-WO3 matrix. The addition of MWCNTs lowered the temperature range of sensitivity of hex-WO3 nanocomposites to NO2 hazardous gas. The sensitivity of hex - WO3 with Au-decorated MWCNTs to NO2 is at the temperature range between 25°C and 250°C.


We are living in a period where new social structures arise in the communicative space and wake of digital media. This means that we must try to adapt to a changing social world within all social arenas like economy, work-life, love relations and last but not least education . The question of this paper is what Bildung should be or could be within this new medium environment. It draws on Luhmann (2006), Biesta (2006), Klafki (2014) and Kant (1784) describing what Bildung is seen from the view of the enlightenment tradition and try to discuss and analyze how ideas of Bildung could be used in education today and tomorrow. The paper draws on empirical findings from the Socio Media Education experiment, a Danish action research project in an upper secondary school from 2011-214 (XXXX 2013a, 2015a, 2016a, 2016b).


The bony pelvis and lower limbs receive vascular supply from the distal continuations of right and left common iliac arteries. The primary blood supply to the bony pelvis is from the divisions of iliac arteries while the lower limbs receive supply via obturator artery and divisions of the common femoral artery. Blood supply to the lower limbs and pelvis have several significant medical, musculoskeletal, and surgical considerations that make a thorough understanding of the anatomy vital to patient care. The goal of this activity is to provide a review of the arterial supply of the bony pelvis and lower limb, to improve practitioner knowledge and medical care.


In France, due to the small quantity of social history research about professional athletes, the social properties and working conditions of professional athletes are not well known. By focusing on French professional boxers before 1914, this article describes their social profile as well as their working conditions. Thus, it establishes the fact that most French professional boxers had working class origins, but they belonged to the category of skilled workers/craftsmen, i.e. the most stable segments of the working class. This research also shows the importance of foreign boxers in France and especially in Paris, in both numerical and symbolic terms. This situation led to native French boxers being sidelined. Lastly, an analysis of the boxing profession reveals its low level of professionalisation, as reflected in the fact that a large majority of boxers also held another occupation at the same time. The study of the social and athletic properties of French boxers thus reveals that they were under two kinds of domination : social and athletic.


Many people are trying to be smarter every day. How's about you? There are many ways to evoke this case you can find knowledge and lesson everywhere you want. However, it will involve you to get what call as the preferred thing. When you need this kind of sources, the following book can be a great choice. information technology outsourcing advances in management information systems is the PDF of the book.


Here I report work done to develop an integrated amplitude and phase shaped optical frequency comb as a source for RF photonic signal processing. The first published section of work pushed towards integrated comb generation; in this work, InP devices were provided by Infinera corp., and SiN devices fabricated by professor Minghao Qi's group. In this work a monolithic InP-based photonic integrated circuit (PIC) consisting of a widely tunable laser master oscillator feeding an array of integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers that are interferometrically combined on-chip in a single-mode waveguide is shown. We demonstrate a stable and efficient on-chip coherent beam combination and obtain up to 240 mW average power from the monolithic PIC, with 30–50 kHz Schawlow-Townes linewidths and >180 mW average power across the extended C-band. We also explored hybrid integration of the InP-based laser and amplifier array PIC with a high quality factor silicon nitride microring resonator. We observe lasing based on gain from the interferometrically combined amplifier array in an external cavity formed via feedback from the silicon nitride microresonator chip; this configuration results in narrowing of the Schawlow-Townes linewidth to 􀀀3 kHz with 37.9 mW average power at the SiN output facet. The pulse shaping was achieved using an InP ultrafast optical pulse shaper fabricated by Infinera corporation. In this work we report characterization of a 48 channel InP shaper at 50 GHz channel spacing, provisioned with both channel-by-channel phase adjusters and SOA gain elements. To our knowledge this constitutes the first demonstration of an operable integrated InP pulse shaper with independent intensity and phase control.


This report describes and develops methods by which the aerodynamic characteristics of an airfoil may be calculated with sufficient accuracy for use in airplane design. These methods for prediction are based on the present aerodynamic theory and on empirical formulas derived from data obtained in the N. A. C. A. variable density wind tunnel at a Reynolds number corresponding approximately to full scale. (author).


Summary: Today's model of healthcare has persistent challenges with cultural competency, and racial, gender, and ethnic disparities. Health is determined by many factors outside the traditional healthcare setting. These social determinants of health (SDH) include, but are not limited to, education, housing quality, and access to healthy foods. It has been proposed that racial and ethnic minorities have unfavorable SDH that contributes to their lack of access to healthcare. Additionally, African American, Hispanic, and Asian women have been shown to be less likely to proceed with breast reconstructive surgery post-mastectomy compared to Caucasian women. At the healthcare level, there is underrepresentation of cultural, gender, and ethnic diversity during training and in leadership. To serve the needs of a diverse population, it is imperative that the healthcare system take measures to improve cultural competence, as well as racial and ethnic diversity. Cultural competence is the ability to collaborate effectively with individuals from different cultures; and such competence improves health care experiences and outcomes. Measures to improve cultural competence and ethnic diversity will help alleviate healthcare disparities and improve health care outcomes in these patient populations. Efforts must begin early in the pipeline to attract qualified minorities and women to the field. The authors are not advocating for diversity for its own sake at the cost of merit or qualification, but rather, these efforts must evolve not only to attract, but also to retain and promote highly motivated and skilled women and minorities. At the trainee level, measures to educate residents and students through national conferences and their own institutions will help promote culturally appropriate health education to improve cultural competency. Various opportunities exist to improve cultural competency and healthcare diversity at the medical student, resident, attending, management, and leadership levels. In this article, the authors explore and discuss various measures to improve cultural competency as well as ethnic, racial, and gender diversity in healthcare.


An optimization method is introduced to design the aerodynamic parameters of a dual-spin two-dimensional guided projectile with the canards for trajectory correction. The nose guidance kit contains two pairs of canards which can provide lift and despinning with a projectile for stability. An optimal design algorithm is developed to decide the profiles of the steering and spinning canards, and their deflection angles are also simulated to meet the needs of trajectory correction capabilities. Finally, the aerodynamic efficiency of the specific canards is discussed according to the CFD simulations. The simulation and analysis results can be further applied to the exterior ballistics design.


The advances in wireless technology and popularity of smart phones, coupled with their potential for various applications, haveled to an increase in telemedicine research and development. This study examines one such application in telemedicine by developing a compact wireless electrocardiogram device that utilizes software to visually display the waveform locally on a computer and also facilitates remote visibility of the waveform via webpage and Android phone application. The purpose of the system is to serve as a means for a doctor or physician to remotely view information of a patient away from a hospital setting.This system allows for a patient tobe at comfortin their home environment while providing health vital information, such as the electrocardiogram, to medical personnel.


The possibility of making the Internet accessible via mobile telephones has generated an important opportunity for electronic commerce. The WAP was intended to become a general standard for business. Nevertheless, some deficiencies hinder its mass acceptance in e-commerce applications. End-to-end security and speed of information delivery are absolutely necessary conditions. The authors present a solution, or at least a partial solution, for this situation. Wireless is typically a more constrained environment than the Internet. The theory of constraints and mobile agent technology can contribute to a strategic improvement of the overall performance of the system.


Abstract Tissue factor (TF)-positive microvesicles from various sources can promote cellular proliferation or alternatively induce apoptosis, but the determining factors are unknown. In this study the hypothesis that the ratio of fVIIa:TF within microvesicles determines this outcome was examined. Microvesicles were isolated from HepG2, BxPC-3, 786-O, MDA-MB-231, and MCF-7 cell lines and microvesicle-associated fVIIa and TF antigen and activity levels were measured. Human coronary artery endothelial cells (HCAECs) were incubated with these purified microvesicles, or with combinations of fVIIa-recombinant TF, and cell proliferation/apoptosis was measured. Additionally, by expressing mCherry-PAR2 on HCAEC surface, PAR2 activation was quantified. Finally, the activation of PAR2 on HCAEC or the activities of TF and fVIIa in microvesicles were blocked prior to addition of microvesicles to cells. The purified microvesicles exhibited a range of fVIIa:TF ratios with HepG2 and 786-O cells having the highest (54:1) and lowest (10:1) ratios, respectively. The reversal from proapoptotic to proliferative was estimated to occur at a fVIIa:TF molar ratio of 15:1, but HCAEC could not be rescued at higher TF concentrations. The purified microvesicles induced HCAEC proliferation or apoptosis according to this ruling. Blocking PAR2 activation on HCAEC, or inhibiting fVIIa or TF-procoagulant function on microvesicles prevented the influence on HCAEC. Finally, incubation of HCAEC with recombinant TF resulted in increased surface exposure of fVII. The induction of cell proliferation or apoptosis by TF-positive microvesicles is dependent on the ratio of fVIIa:TF and involves the activation of PAR2. At lower TF concentrations, fVIIa can counteract the proapoptotic stimulus and induce proliferation.


Among state-of-the-art guiding structures, the Ridge Gap Waveguide (RGW) is a promising technology, as it minimizes the losses in high-frequency applications and supports wide operating bandwidth. There is another form of the guiding structures that utilize the idea of the Artificial Magnetic Conductor (AMC) surfaces such as Groove Gap Waveguide (GGWG). It has the same advantages as the RGW in terms of losses, and immunity to leakages without the need for electrical contacts, but with different dispersion characteristics. The RGW supports a quasi-TEM mode while the GGWG supports TE modes as it's a different form of the rectangular waveguide. Therefore, GGWG has high power capability comparable to the standard waveguides. As currently, interest is increasing of millimeter wave and microwave applications, the RGW and GGWG are excellent candidates for these applications due to their low loss. It is quite essential to develop microwave components with superior electrical characteristics for such applications.

The anisotropic materials have useful physical properties that can benefit the microwave devices, due to their enormous advantages such as high stability and wide bandwidth in the millimeter wave band. Ferrite is an example of such anisotropic materials. Their properties can be deployed to improve the performance of the millimeter microwave devices in terms of higher stability, wider band, and high power handling.

Taking advantages of the above characteristics, the research work in this thesis is focusing on their use for microwave and millimeter wave frequencies. The presented devices are responsible for the feeding of the antenna systems. Moreover, they can be deployed in different applications such as antenna beamforming. In this thesis, the differential phase shifters and the orthomode transducers (OMTs) are realized by different technologies that are suitable for both of the microwave and the millimeter wave bands that serve different applications of the wireless communication systems.

The research work done can also be summarized in two parts. The first part starts with the study and investigation of the ferrite material properties and their role in the microwave devices. Then, later providing a new accurate model with mathematical formulas for the differential ferrite phase shifter. Moreover, a new design methodology for those phase shifters is presented. Later, the ferrite is applied in the conventional waveguide, Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW), and RGW technologies.

In the second part, study, design, and analysis of different types of the orthomode transducers are presented. They are devices responsible for combining and separation of two orthogonal polarizations. The presented OMTs has a compact size with excellent performance. Several OMT types are considered such as the one-fold symmetry, asymmetric, and two-fold symmetry. The first mentioned two OMTs are realized by deploying the waveguide technology, while the two-fold symmetry OMT is based on the GGWG technology. It has the ability to design a feeding network for an array of antennas based on the GGWG technology. Moreover, this OMT is fabricated using 3D printed technology that uses the carbonated plastic material, in which two copper layers are covering all the structure surfaces by electroplating. This fabrication is a new promising technology that is not expensive, lightweight and less complex than traditional machining. However, there are some concerns about power handling and high temperature withstanding. Such problems might have a solution in the future with a more accurate 3D metallic printers.


In 3 patients over 75 years of age with a malignancy, limb salvage was achieved through the application of isolated limb perfusion with melphalan with or without tumour necrosis factor alpha: an 82-year-old woman with extensive locoregional melanoma metastases on her lower leg, a 78-year-old woman with a large, ulcerating recurrence of melanoma on her lower leg and an 83-year-old woman with recurrent sarcoma of the lower arm. There were no complications and the women recovered well. Isolated limb perfusion can be effectively and safely used in older patients with irresectable tumours of the extremities, offering them limb salvage for the remainder of their lives.


By using the data of two spacecraft, TC-1 and ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), a statistical study on the correlations between plasma sheet and solar wind has been carried out. The results obtained show that the plasma sheet at geocentric distances of about 9~13.4 Re has an apparent driving relationship with the solar wind. It is found that (1) there is a positive correlation between the duskward component of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) and the duskward component of the geomagnetic field in the plasma sheet, with a proportionality constant of about 1.09. It indicates that the duskward component of the IMF can effectively penetrate into the near-Earth plasma sheet, and can be amplified by sunward convection in the corresponding region at geocentric distances of about 9~13.4 Re; (2) the increase in the density or the dynamic pressure of the solar wind will generally lead to the increase in the density of the plasma sheet; (3) the ion thermal pressure in the near-Earth plasma sheet is significantly controlled by the dynamic pressure of solar wind; (4) under the northward IMF condition, the ion temperature and ion thermal pressure in the plasma sheet decrease as the solar wind speed increases. This feature indicates that plasmas in the near-Earth plasma sheet can come from the magnetosheath through the LLBL. Northward IMF is one important condition for the transport of the cold plasmas of the magnetosheath into the plasma sheet through the LLBL, and fast solar wind will enhance such a transport process.


The paper addresses the call for methods that can assist designers to consider anthropometric diversity when designing products or workstations, and hence formulate more sustainable design solutions. A basic method for the definition of boundary manikins for bivariate design problems and combined populations is described, exemplified and evaluated. The method can be used for defining virtual test groups when using digital human modelling tools for evaluating anthropometry related aspects of human-product interfaces at early design phases. It can also be used to indentify persons with certain anthropometry to build up test groups for performing physical tests.


Huntington's disease is a disorder that results in motor, cognitive, and psychiatric problems. The symptoms often take different forms and the presence of disturbances of the psychic sphere reduces patients' autonomy and quality of life, also impacting patients' social life. It is estimated that a prevalence between 33% and 76% of the main psychiatric syndromes may arise in different phases of the disease, often in atypical form, even 20 years before the onset of chorea and dementia. We present a narrative review of the literature describing the main psychopathological patterns that may be found in Huntington's disease, searching for a related article in the main database sources (Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge, Scopus, and Medscape). Psychiatric conditions were classified into two main categories: affective and nonaffective disorders/symptoms; and anxiety and neuropsychiatric features such as apathy and irritability. Though the literature is extensive, it is not always convergent, probably due to the high heterogeneity of methods used. We summarize main papers for pathology and sample size, in order to present a synoptic vision of the argument. Since the association between Huntington's disease and psychiatric symptoms was demonstrated, we argue that the prevalent and more invalidating psychiatric components should be recognized as early as possible during the disease course in order to best address psychopharmacological therapy, improve quality of life, and also reduce burden on caregivers.


Some economists employ averages of net discount rates over historical periods as proxies for future net discount rates. This raises the question of the time period, or duration, over which to calculate the average net discount rate. Two testing procedures are used to examine this question. The first uses moving average net discount rates over a number of years. A more refined procedure tests the impacts of duration by disaggregating the moving averages. Although the study does offer some insight, results are not conclusive and suggest a need for further research.


In this paper, bootstrapped Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and quadratic Response Surface (RS) empirical regression models are used as fast-running surrogates of a thermal-hydraulic (T-H) system code to reduce the computational burden associated with the estimation of the functional failure probability of a T-H passive system. The ANN and quadratic RS models are built on few data representative of the input/output nonlinear relationships underlying the T-H code. Once built, these models are used for performing, in reasonable computational time, the numerous system response calculations required for failure probability estimation. A bootstrap of the regression models is implemented for quantifying, in terms of confidence intervals, the uncertainties associated with the estimates provided by ANNs and RSs. The alternative empirical models are compared on a case


Document clustering is text processing that groups documents with similar concepts. It's usually considered an unsupervised learning approach because there's no teacher to guide the training process, and topical information is often assumed to be unavailable. A guided approach to document clustering that integrates linguistic top-down knowledge from WordNet into text vector representations based on the extended significance vector weighting technique improves both classification accuracy and average quantization error. In our guided self-organization approach we integrate topical and semantic information from WordNet. Because a document-training set with preclassified information implies relationships between a word and its preference class, we propose a novel document vector representation approach to extract these relationships for document clustering. Furthermore, merging statistical methods, competitive neural models, and semantic relationships from symbolic Word-Net, our hybrid learning approach is robust and scales up to a real-world task of clustering 100,000 news documents.


Abstract Cowpea, Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp., serves as a major source of dietary protein in many tropical and subtropical regions around the world. To identify loci associated with agronomically desirable traits, eight elite cowpea cultivars were systematically inter-crossed for eight generations to yield 305 recombinant inbred lines. Here, we investigated whether these founder parents also possess resistance to the seed beetle Callosobruchus maculatus (F.), a highly destructive post-harvest pest. We estimated larval survival in seeds, egg-to-adult development time, adult mass at emergence, and seed acceptance for oviposition. Survival varied significantly among cowpea cultivars, but the pattern was complicated by an unexpected source of mortality; on three cultivars, mature larvae in a substantial fraction of seeds (20–36%) exited seeds prematurely, and consequently failed to molt into viable adults. Even if such seeds were eliminated from the analysis, survival in the remaining seeds varied from 49 to 92% across the eight parents. Development time and body mass also differed among hosts, with particularly slow larval development on three closely related cultivars. Egg-laying females readily accepted all cultivars except one with a moderately rugose seed coat. Overall, suitability ranks of the eight cultivars depended on beetle trait; a cultivar that received the most eggs (IT82E-18) also conferred low survival. However, one cultivar (IT93K-503-1) was a relatively poor host for all traits. Given the magnitude of variation among parental cultivars, future assays of genotyped recombinant progeny can identify genomic regions and candidate genes associated with resistance to seed beetles.


Parametric distributions applied to dichotomous choice contingent valuation data invoke assumptions about the distribution of willingness to pay that may contravene economic theory. This article develops and applies distributions that allow the shape of bid distributions to vary. Alternative distributions provide little, if any, improvement in statistical fit from commonly used distributions. While median willingness to pay is largely invariant to distribution, estimates of mean consumer surplus diverge widely. Sensitivity analysis to determine benefit measure response to distributional assumptions is essential to prevent erroneous policy advice from applied dichotomous choice research.


Hydroponic experiments were carried out to study the effects of cell division inhibitor (Maleic hydrazide MH) and protein synthesis inhibitor(Cycloheximide CHI)on Cd accumulation in Tagetes erecta L and their possible mechanisms. Seedlings were exposed to 4 mmol L-1 MH or 3 µmol L-1 CHI in 0.1 mg L-1 Cd-containing solution for 3 days. After treatment, the Cd content in leaves was significantly (P<0.05) reduced under MH or CHI treatment, which was consistent with the decreased soluble protein contents in leaves, suggesting that protein synthesis plays a role in Cd accumulation in leaves of Tagetes erecta L. Both of the plant growth inhibitors led to increased Cd contents in roots compared with the control, corresponding with increased GSH, Cys or γEC content under MH or CHI treatment, indicating that those S-containing compounds may be related to the increased Cd content in roots under the plant growth inhibitor treatments. On the other hand, the two inhibitors increased the citric acid content in all the tissues of Tagetes erecta L except for that in leaves under CHI treatment. All the results suggest that protein synthesis may be responsible for Cd accumulation in leaves of Tagetes erecta L, while the S-containing compounds and organic acids are associated with Cd absorption in roots of Tagetes erecta L.


To identify platelet surface structures involved in adhesion to collagen, the effect of 16 murine antiplatelet membrane hybridoma antibodies were tested in a defined, in vitro assay. Four of these antibodies inhibited platelet-collagen adhesion and reacted with a polypeptide with Mr approximately 125,000, as determined by immunoblots after gel electrophoresis under reducing conditions. Through detailed studies with one of these antibodies, the monoclonal antibody PMI-1, the relevant antigen was identified as platelet glycoprotein IIb alpha, based upon (a) co-migration with this glycoprotein in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis and (b) co-purification by immunoaffinity chromatography with a protein with apparent Mr identical to that of glycoprotein III, under conditions in which glycoproteins IIb and III form a complex. Univalent antibody fragments prepared from monoclonal antibody PMI-1 inhibited greater than 80% of platelet-collagen adhesion, and inhibition was completely blocked by the immunopurified antigen. These results indicate that glycoprotein IIb participates in some aspect of platelet-collagen adhesion. In contrast, the purified antigen only partially neutralized a polyclonal antiserum that blocked platelet-collagen adhesion, to a maximum of approximately 25%, at saturating antigen concentrations. Thus, by these immunological criteria, glycoprotein IIb is not the only molecule involved in this process.


Case study research was undertaken as an initial step towards studying the critical factors that influenced the adoption of agritourism as an additional enterprise by small farmers in North Carolina. The unit of analysis in this study was the principal operator of the farm that provided agritourism services. Human factors such as age, gender, household income before taxes, and ethnicity and educational background of principal operator were perceived to be the most common elements. Production variables such as total acreage deemed unsuitable for crop production, the farm organization, economic situation of the farm and the geographic location of the farm and access to internet were also deemed to be common features. The need to generate additional income was often cited among the goals of operators in adding agritourism to their farm operations. Most operators charged activity-based fees and cited weather and liability issues as the principal challenges to their agritourism enterprises. They had a more positive outlook for their individual agritourism business than they had for the industry as a whole in the state.


Neural Network (NN) is one of the most important branches of AI that has been applied to an increasing number of real-world problems of considerable complexity from the financial markets to real estate, medicine and education.The most commonly used is multilayer perceptron with back propagation that is capable of representing non-linear functional mapping between inputs and outputs.In this paper, such a net is used to forecast the information technology competency among teacher trainees in the teaching institutes. The system has been developed as a web-based self-assessment information system that can be used to obtain a model for predicting the information technology competency.The system functions as an instrument that generates questionnaires as well as performing rubric assessment online.The data will be entered online using the web as a medium.This data will be fed into the NNsimulator to obtain a suitable model.Once the model is obtained, it will then be used to predict the information technology competency among the teacher trainees.The data was collected from various teachers' training institutions in Malaysia. The findings indicate that the most suitable forecasting model comprises of eleven input nodes, five hidden nodes and one output node. The performance of the selected model obtained with an accuracy of 99. 77%.Hence the results show that the developed system can be used as a tool to assist decision-making in education.


To the best of our knowledge, this letter demonstrates the first hybrid analog-digital design fiber-optic variable optical attenuator (VOA) that can simultaneously provide high dynamic range as well as super resolution attenuation controls. The demonstrated VOA shows an 81-dB controlled dynamic range, a <0.1-dB resolution, a 2.25-dB optical loss, a <0.05-dB polarization-dependant loss, and C-band operations. The VOA is suited for optical test and instrument applications.


The market for repurchase agreements (repos) is an important source of short-term funding for financial institutions operating in China. This article outlines the key features of Chinese repo markets, focusing on the interbank market, before discussing recent developments and their impact on the bond market. Repo rates have fallen and become less volatile over the past couple of years, encouraging greater risk-taking in financial markets. Policy settings in China have both shaped and responded to these developments.


The benefits of nature-based tourism to biodiversity conservation are often presumed but rarely quantified. The relative value placed on attributes of nature parks is unknown, as is the contribution of biodiversity to tourists' willingness to visit a particular protected area. We surveyed tourists and foreign residents in Uganda to determine how preferences for particular protected areas are formed. We evaluated tourists' demand for elevated biodiversity levels (increased numbers of bird species seen), relative to other protected areas attributes. As the number of bird species increased, tourists demonstrated increased willingness to visit a protected area, independently of all other factors. We used these results to evaluate a revenue-maximising park management strategy, and consider how revenues from nature-based tourism compare to those from local agricultural land-uses.


ABSTRACT Direct current tast polarography and differential pulse polarography at a dropping mercury electrode and direct current voltammetry, differential pulse voltammetry, and differential pulse adsorptive stripping voltammetry at a hanging mercury drop electrode were employed for the electrochemical characterization and determination of methyl violet 2B in buffered aqueous media and model water samples. The optimum medium for all techniques was 0.04 mole per liter Britton-Robinson buffer at pH 4.0. The limits of quantification for methyl violet 2B were 1.7 micromole per liter (direct current tast polarography at the dropping mercury electrode), 0.16 micromole per liter (differential pulse polarography at the dropping mercury electrode), 65 nanomoles per liter (direct current voltammetry at the hanging mercury drop electrode), and 45 nanomoles per liter (differential pulse voltammetry at the hanging mercury drop electrode). The lowest limit of quantification of 13 nanomoles per liter was obtained using differential pulse adsorptive stripping voltammetry at the hanging mercury drop electrode with an accumulation potential of −500 millivolts and an accumulation time of 600 seconds. The optimized conditions were employed for the determination in drinking (limit of quantification of 40 nanomoles per liter) and river (limit of quantification of 20 nanomoles per liter) water.


A number of options have been presented to treat patients with congenitally absent (or malformed) MLI's and second bicuspids. Overall the treatment of choice was shown to be essentially dependent on diagnostic parameters, length of treatment time, facial esthetics and age of patient. Orthodontic space closure is the treatment of choice since it should result in a lasting natural healthy dentition. In prosthetic cases, implant-supported or otherwise, the skill of the practitioner and the quality of the prosthesis, plus the general health and the oral hygiene of the patient, would be important considerations to ensure longevity of the prostheses. TMJ dysfunction occurring during orthodontic treatment is a possibility. Procedures that may precipitate a dormant predisposition to these kind of difficulties should be carefully evaluated and/or compensated.


Keuper (Upper Triassic) fluvial sandstones and nonmarine carbonate rocks form a major oil reservoir in the western Paris Basin at burial depths of nearly equal 2 km. Early-diagenetic processes comprise red-bed-type diagenesis (mechanical clay infiltration, iron-oxide precipitation) and extensive dolocrete formation both in fluvial channels and in fine-grained overbank sediments. Locally significant paleokarst created vuggy dissolution porosity in the carbonate units and probably also caused leaching of detrital alkali feldspar grains. Oxygen, carbon, and strontium isotope analyses of various eogenetic cements indicate a nonmarine pore-water composition. Ferroan carbonates, authigenic albite and potassium feldspar, quartz, sulfates, sulfides, and clay minerals formed subsequent to major mechanical compaction. Their isotopic compositions record significant changes in the chemistry of the parent pore water. Cl-Br relationships of the present-day pore water reveal that fluids saturated with respect to halite flushed the reservoir during burial. This is documented by the oxygen-isotope composition of the burial cements. Based on radiogenic dating of illite cements, influx of warm brines into the reservoir most likely occurred during the earliest Cretaceous. At this time the margins of the basin were uplifted by late Cimmerian tectonism, resulting in an unconformity at the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary. We suggest that uplift of the Vosges crustal block created a hydraulic head in the eastern part of the basin and established a gravity-driven fluid flow system, displacing interstitial brines from the Keuper evaporites from the eastern part towards the western part of the basin. Fluid-inclusion studies indicate that brine-influenced cementation occurred at progressively higher temperatures, reaching peak temperatures of <= 140 degrees C. These high subsurface temperatures could not have been caused by advective heat transport, but most likely resulted from a combination of maximum burial depth, high surface temperatures, and thermal blanketing during the Late Cretaceous. A second gravity-driven fluid flow system was established during the Oligocene by major uplift, and freshwater flushed the Keuper reservoir (mainly from the south), causing brine dilution. The present-day pore water in the study area is still saline (50-100 g/l TDS), and mass-balance calculations indicate that the ratio of basinal brines to Tertiary meteoric water is about 1:2.


PURPOSE Camrelizumab is an antibody against programmed death protein 1. We assessed the activity and safety of camrelizumab plus apatinib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2, in patients with advanced cervical cancer. METHODS This multicenter, open-label, single-arm, phase II study enrolled patients with advanced cervical cancer who progressed after at least one line of systemic therapy. Patients received camrelizumab 200 mg every 2 weeks and apatinib 250 mg once per day. The primary end point was objective response rate (ORR) assessed by investigators per RECIST version 1.1. Key secondary end points were progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), duration of response, and safety. RESULTS Forty-five patients were enrolled and received treatment. Median age was 51.0 years (range, 33-67 years), and 57.8% of patients had previously received two or more lines of chemotherapy for recurrent or metastatic disease. Ten patients (22.2%) had received bevacizumab. Median follow-up was 11.3 months (range, 1.0-15.5 months). ORR was 55.6% (95% CI, 40.0% to 70.4%), with two complete and 23 partial responses. Median PFS was 8.8 months (95% CI, 5.6 months to not estimable). Median duration of response and median OS were not reached. Treatment-related grade 3 or 4 adverse events (AEs) occurred in 71.1% of patients, and the most common AEs were hypertension (24.4%), anemia (20.0%), and fatigue (15.6%). The most common potential immune-related AEs included grade 1-2 hypothyroidism (22.2%) and reactive cutaneous capillary endothelial proliferation (8.9%). CONCLUSION Camrelizumab plus apatinib had promising antitumor activity and manageable toxicities in patients with advanced cervical cancer. Larger randomized controlled trials are warranted to validate our findings.


During the 1994 Coastal Benthic Boundary Layer Special Research Program's (CBBLSRP) experiment in Eckernfoerde Bay, multichannel digital seismic and electrical resistivity data were collected using surface and bottom towed arrays. Profiling with a bottom towed sledge yielded shear wave velocity and electrical resistivity data indicative of the structural strength of the sediment and of the properties of the sediment's pore space. Shear wave velocities for the gassy mud were, as expected, extremely low, ranging from <10 at the surface to around 16 m/s at 2 m. Variations in electrical properties were correlatable with lithological change. It is anticipated that analysis of reflection responses will provide significant additional geotechnical ground‐truthing.