Performance Evaluation has become a favoured topic in recent years. Particularly, there has been a remarkable augmentation of organizations using this kind of management agent for two decades. Although the private sector accepted the advantages of this management tool, there have been uncertainties in the public sector. Forests are managed by state in Turkey. As a public sector, performance evaluation approach requires a criteria set for the appraisal of the success of this system in the forest sector. In this context, this study has been carried out at twenty-three Forest District Directorates, which are located in Denizli, Izmir and Mugla Regional Forest Directorates that take part in the Aegean region of Turkey. Firstly, the performance criterion that has been developed occurred from fifty-two criteria in five different groups that can be used in the evaluation of forest engineers. After that, the forest engineers have grated the criteria that can be used in performance evaluation along with the 9-degree likert scale" should be used. In this way, ideal criteria set has been reached that will be used in evaluation of technique personnel in Directorate of Forest District. However, the group that has been considered important by forest engineers is the personal criteria in assigning promotion and performance evaluation. Technique, behavioral and functional criteria have followed this group orderly.

 Key words: Performance evaluation, performance evaluation criteria, forest district.


Objectives Methylglyoxal is a major precursor in the formation of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), which are known to contribute to vascular complications such as hypertension and arterial stiffness. Methylglyoxal can be detoxified by glyoxalase 1 (GLO1). Because genetic variation in the GLO1 gene may alter the expression and/or the activity of GLO1, we investigated whether single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the GLO1 gene are associated with vascular complications. Methods The study entailed cross-sectional data analyses of the Cohort study of Diabetes and Atherosclerosis Maastricht (CoDAM) study and the Hoorn study, comprising a total of 1289 participants, aged 64.5 ± 8.58 years, of whom 43.5% had normal glucose metabolism, 23.2% had impaired glucose metabolism and 33.3% had type 2 diabetes mellitus. Nine tag SNPs that cover the common GLO1 gene variation were genotyped. Levels of blood pressure and markers of atherosclerosis, arterial stiffness, renal function and AGEs were compared across genotypes. Results All genotyped SNPs were in Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium. Prevalence of hypertension and markers of atherosclerosis, arterial stiffness, renal function and AGEs did not differ across genotypes of the nine SNPs. In additive models, SNP18 (rs2736654) was associated with pulse pressure [−1.20 mmHg (95% confidence interval: −2.26;−0.14)] and SNP40 (rs10484854) was associated with systolic blood pressure [−1.77 mmHg (−3.40;−0.14)]. Conclusion Polymorphisms in the GLO1 gene are not associated with the prevalence of hypertension, markers of atherosclerosis, renal function and AGEs and are weakly associated with pulse pressure and systolic blood pressure (possibly due to chance) in two Dutch cohorts of patients with normal glucose metabolism, impaired glucose metabolism and type 2 diabetes mellitus.


Abstract Since Hyman Minsky's death in 1996, much has been written about financialization. This article — by means of the synthesis, interpretation, and assessment of an extensive literature — explores the issues that Minsky examined in the last decade of his life and considers their relationship to the financialization literature. At the heart of those issues is what Minsky called money manager capitalism, which he viewed through the lens of a theory of capitalist development inherited from Joseph Schumpeter. Advancing our understanding of the history of financial economics, the article shows how Minsky contributed to — indeed, anticipated much of — the study of financialization. The article also identifies two sources of Minsky's insightfulness: his treatment of economics as a grand adventure, and his willingness to step beyond the world of theory and interact with the world of practice. Today, scholars with a Minsky perspective face formidable challenges, but, the author concludes, within Minsky's writings is also a glimmer of hope: Economic systems are not natural systems; we can reshape them to achieve a more humane world.


ERPs (event-related potentials) correlates are largely used in cognitive psychology and specifically for analysis of semantic information processing. Previous research has underlined a strong correlation between a negative-ongoing wave (N400), more frontally distributed, and semantic linguistic or extra-linguistic anomalies. With reference to the extra-linguistic domain, our experiment analyzed ERP variation in a semantic task of comprehension of emotional facial expressions. The experiment explored the effect of expectancy violation when subjects observed congruous or incongruous emotional facial patterns. Four prototypical (anger, sadness, happiness and surprise) and four morphed faces were presented. Moreover, two distinct cognitive tasks (an implicit vs an explicit elaboration) were analyzed in order to evaluate the influence of spontaneous decoding in N400-like effects. An automatic, high-order cognitive process was found, elicited by a negative ERP variation similar to the linguistic N400 effect, which allows us to explain the congruous/incongruous decoding in semantic extra-linguistic comprehension.


Abstract Techniques that have evolved during the hundred years that scientific severe thunderstorm forecasts have been prepared are reviewed. The early empirical rules developed by Finley, Showalter and Fulks, Fawbush, Miller and Starrett, and others have been corroborated by more recent theoretical work. While significant efforts have been devoted to defining the severe thunderstorm environment, it is now obvious that these storms can occur under a variety of synoptic conditions. Severe thunderstorm forecasting consists in not only identifying the time and place that an environment compatible with such storms will exist but also in identifying suitable triggering mechanisms in that environment.


: Case report of a recurrent histiocytic tumor with wide local spreading. Clinical findings and the course of the disease corresponded with the diagnosis of dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans. The histological findings did not correlate with this diagnosis. Signs of a typical histiocytoma with accumulation of hemosiderin and lipids were dominating. It will be discussed whether the clinical disorder of a dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans may be marked by distinctive histological criteria.


Positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) has been used to prevent and treat venous air embolism in patients in the seated position undergoing neurosurgical operations. However, the safety of PEEP has recently been questioned, because of concern that PEEP might increase right atrial pressure (RAP) more than left atrial pressure, thereby predisposing patients with a probe-patent foramen ovale to paradoxical air embolism. In a prior study in dogs, the authors found that to up 10 cm H2O PEEP did not affect the interatrial pressure difference. In the present study, the authors examined the effects of 0,5, and 10 cm H2O PEEP in 12 anesthetized neurosurgical patients positioned both supine and seated prior to operation. Measurements were made of systemic arterial pressure, RAP, mean pulmonary artery pressure (PAP), pulmonary artery wedge pressure (PAWP), and cardiac output. PAWP was higher (average 2 mmHg) than RAP in all patients. PEEP increased RAP and PAWP in patients, both seated and supine (mean 3 mmHg at 10 cm H2O), but did not affect the PAWP-RAP difference. In an additional eight patients in the seated position, the authors examined the effects of 0, 10, and 20 cm H2O PEEP during operation. PEEP again increased PAWP and RAP, but did not significantly affect the PAWP-RAP difference. The PAWP-RAP difference became negative (-1 mmHg) in one patient with 20 cm H2O PEEP. The authors conclude that levels of PEEP up to 10 cm H2O do not alter the interatrial pressure difference in seated neurosurgical patients, and, therefore, would not predispose these patients to paradoxical air embolism.


The advent of LTE into the unlicensed spectrum has necessitated the understanding of its operational efficiency when sharing spectrum with different radio access technologies. Our study reveals that LTE, owing to its inherent transmission characteristics, suffers significant performance degradation in the presence of interference caused by hidden terminals. This motivates the need for interference-awareness in LTE's channel access in unlicensed spectrum. To address this problem, we propose ELI. ELI's three-pronged solution equips the LTE base station with novel techniques to: (a) accurately detect and measure interference caused by hidden terminals, (b) collect interference statistics from clients across different channels with affordable overhead, and (c) leverage interference-awareness to improve its channel access performance. Our evaluations show that ELI can achieve 1.5-2x throughput gains over baseline schemes. Finally, ELI is LTE-LAA/MulteFire-standard compliant and can be deployed over the existing LTE-LAA implementation without any modifications.


During the last two decades most laboratories used Sanger's "shotgun" method in many significant large-scale sequencing projects, being this method considered the 'gold standard' in terms of both read length and sequencing accuracy. Recently, several next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies have emerged, including the GS FLX (454) Genome Analyzer, the Illumina's Solexa 1G Sequencer, the SOLiDTM and the Ion Torrent Systems, which are able to generate three to four orders of magnitude more sequences and are considerably less expensive than the Sanger method. However, the read lengths of NGS technologies create important algorithmic challenges. While the 454 platform (using Titanium technology) is able to obtain reads in the 400-600 base pairs (bp), the Illumina's Solexa 1G Sequencer and the Ion Torrent Systems present reads with an average length of 100 bp and the SOLiD platform is currently limited to 25-50 bp. Several assembly tools have recently been developed for generating assemblies from short, unpaired sequencing reads. However, the sheer volume of data generated by these technologies (0.4 Gbp/run for the 454 and 16 Gbp/run for the SOLiD), and the need to align reads to increasing large reference genomes limits the applicability of standard methods. One way to speed up the read alignment task is to resort to software based on approximate indexing technologies. This means that the whole reference genome is scanned while applying a dynamic programming algorithm. Indexed alignment algorithms, which preprocess the reference genome into an index data structure that can then be searched, correspond to more efficient approaches. On one hand it can discard irrelevant portions of the reference genome much more efficiently. On the other hand the computation on relevant regions can be factored out. However, building indexes is time and space consuming. State of the art algorithms are using techniques from a new class of indexes, compressed indexes, which have smaller space requirements by using data compression techniques to eliminate regularities in the indexes. In this work we present TAPyR (http://www.tapyr.net) a new method for the alignment of NGS reads that uses compressed indexing build an index of the reference genome sequence to accelerate the alignment. Being firstly proposed to handle the 454 GS FLX data, it can also be used with Illumina and Ion Torrent data. Like other algorithms, TAPyR uses in a second stage a multiple seed heuristic to anchor the best candidate alignments. This heuristics has the advantage that it dispenses the need of determining the number and length of the seeds beforehand, relying on the assumption that the optimal alignments are mostly composed of relatively large chunks of exact matches interspersed by small, possibly gapped, divergent regions. At the ultimate stage banded dynamic programming is used to finish up the candidate multiple seed alignments considering user-specified error constraints. TAPyR was evaluated against other mainstream mapping tools namely BWA-SW, SSAHA2, Segemehl, GASSST, and Newbler. The analyses were performed with real and simulated data sets, with the objective of assessing the efficiency and accuracy of the aforementioned tools in the context of re-sequencing projects. As the results show the new method manages to achieve convincing performance in terms of speed and in terms of the number and precision of aligned reads. In fact, TAPyR has displayed class-leading CPU-time performance and excellent use of input reads in comparison to other mainstream tools.


Five cases of alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma with atypical clinical features are reported. Three patients showed lymphadenopathy as the first clinical manifestation, mimicking a lymphoma or a non identified primary tumor with lymph node metastases. One patient presented systemic neoplastic disease and two had the primary tumor in atypical locations, such as the mediastinum and retroperitoneum. All patients died and in four of them an autopsy was performed. The histological diagnosis was confirmed by immunohistochemical studies on four cases. The alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma has a poor prognosis and can have a variable clinical presentation and morphology, simulating lymphomas, leukemias and systemic metastatic disease with an unknown primary neoplasm, such as in the cases here in reported.


AIM
The clinical relevance of thyroidal autonomy, i.e. the risk of a patient to become hyperthyroid after exposure to iodine, can be estimated by measurement of the thyroidal (99m)Tc uptake under suppression of TSH (TcTUs). The upper tolerable limit has been set to 2% some 25 years ago. Considering the increase in nutritional iodine uptake over the last 15 years, we wanted to find out if the TcTUs per ml of autonomous volume may have changed.

PATIENTS, METHODS
We performed a pilot study in 1166 randomly chosen patients from 1980-2003 with different kinds of benign thyroid disorders to determine changes in TcTU or TcTUs over time. A second analysis was performed in 1063 patients from 1987-2004 with unifocal autonomy (UFA). In these patients, the volume of the autonomous tissue can be determined precisely thus allowing for exact determination of TcTUs per ml of autonomous volume.

RESULTS
The pilot study demonstrated that the TcTUs or the TcTU has been falling over the last 25 years in all benign thyroid disorders (p < 0.01). The total thyroid volume has also been decreasing in all disorders. In the second analysis of UFA only, 500 from the 1063 patients fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In these patients, the TcTUs per ml of autonomous volume has fallen from an average of 0.48% to an average of 0.28%. These results are statistically significant as determined by ANOVA testing (p = 0.032).

CONCLUSION
As the TcTUs in relation to autonomous volume has dropped by approximately 40% over the last 25 years, the upper limit for a normal TcTUs should be reduced to 1-1.4%, dependent on regional factors.


From its origins in the mid 90s, the application of the concept of virality to commercial communication has represented an opportunity for brands to cross the traditional barriers of the audience concerning advertising and turn it into active communicator of brand messages. Viral marketing is based, since then, on two basic principles: offer free and engaging content that mask its commercial purpose to the individual and using a peer-to-peer dissemination system. The transformation of the passive spectator into an active user who broadcasts advertising messages promoted by sponsors, responds to needs and motivations of individuals and content features which have been described by previous research in this field, mainly through quantitative methods based on user perceptions. This paper focusses on those elements detected in its previous research as promoters of the sharing action in the 25 most shared viral video ads between 2006 and 2013 using content analysis. The results obtained show the most common features in these videos and the prominent presence of surprise and joy as dominant emotions in the most successful viral videos.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
Antiplatelet agents are often included in plasma exchange-based regimens for thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) patients; however, the opportuneness of their use in TTP is still controversial. The italian Cooperative Group for TTP carried out a randomized trial to investigate their actual effectiveness, both in acute TTP and as maintenance treatment.

METHODS
Seventy-two TTP patients were randomized to receive plasma exchange and steroids with (group B) or without (group A) aspirin and dipyridamole. Treatment efficacy was evaluated after 15 days and salvage treatments were also considered for non-responders. Upon disease remission, the patients already treated with antiplatelet agents received ticlopidine for one year.

RESULTS
Regarding the treatment of acute phase TTP, similar overall response rates were observed in the two groups (91.4% in group B vs. 75.6% in group A), but lower mortality rates were observed at 15 days in the patients treated with antiplatelet agents; as a matter of fact, 5 patients from arm A died in the first 15 days (13.5%) versus only one in arm B (2.8%). These figures, while not statistically significant, seem to suggest that antiplatelet agents might be useful in preventing deaths in acute TTP; moreover, bleeding did not worsen in antiplatelet agent-treated patients. As for the role of maintenance treatment, our results support the efficacy and safety of one-year ticlopidine therapy since the current relapse rate is significantly higher in non-treated patients; as a matter of fact, 6 patients (21.4%) in the non-ticlopidine group and only 2 (6.25%) in the ticlopidine group relapsed (P = .0182 in favor of maintenance treatment).

INTERPRETATION AND CONCLUSIONS
Our results suggest the usefulness of antiplatelet agents in the treatment of acute phase TTP patients. Moreover, one-year ticlopidine maintenance therapy appears to be beneficial in preventing TTP relapses; however, only the completion of an adequate follow-up for all patients will definitively confirm this observation.


Systematic recordings were made at regular intervals (6, 9, 12, and 15 months) and utterances were transcribed and analyzed from speech samples of children at risk and not at risk to stutter. Children were audio and video recorded interacting with their own mother for 10‐min play periods. The purpose of the study was to gather quantitative information on fluency development prior to the diagnosis of a stuttering disorder to determine whether or not children can be differentiated based on vocal development. Wideband spectrograms and formant tracking displays were used to analyze oral development (plotting first and second formant frequencies of the steady‐state part of the vowel) and the other measurement pertained to laryngeal‐oral coordination (analyzing voice onset time in stop consonants). Acoustic analyses were performed using the Kay Elemetrics CSL workstation. Control subjects had more elaborated vowel systems than children who end up stuttering in their vocalizations. Pre‐stuttering children also d...


: Automated fast (5-20 min) synovial membrane volume determination by MRI, based on pre-set post-gadolinium-DTPA enhancement thresholds, was evaluated as a substitute for a time-consuming (45-120 min), previously validated, manual segmentation method. Twenty-nine knees [rheumatoid arthritis (RA) 13, osteoarthritis (OA) 16] and 17 RA wrists were examined. At enhancement thresholds between 30 and 60%, the automated volumes (Syn(x%)) were highly significantly correlated to manual volumes (SynMan) (knees: rho = 0.78-0.91, P < 10(-5) to < 10(-9); wrists: rho = 0.87-0.95, P < 10(-4) to < 10(-6)). The absolute values of the automated estimates were extremely dependent on the threshold chosen. At the optimal threshold of 45%, the median numerical difference from SynMan was 7 ml (17%) in knees and 2 ml (25%) in wrists. At this threshold, the difference was not related to diagnosis, clinical inflammation or synovial membrane volume, e.g. no systematic errors were found. The inter-MRI variation, evaluated in three knees and three wrists, was higher than by manual segmentation, particularly due to sensitivity to malalignment artefacts. Examination of test objects proved the high accuracy of the general methodology for volume determinations (maximal error 6.3%). Preceded by the determination of reproducibility and the optimal threshold at the available MR unit, automated 'threshold' segmentation appears to be acceptable when changes rather than absolute values of synovial membrane volumes are most important, e.g. in clinical trials.


Swedish sports, with their unified/uniform organisation and democratically evolved structure,represent in many ways the archetype of a popular movement. However, the sports movement has also since the beginning of the 1900s received regular – and over time substantial –state support.In addition, the main sports organisation, Sveriges riksidrottsforbund, (RF) has developed a close co-operative relationship with government powers.This intimate sport-and-state relationship highlights a question regarding organisational autonomy: has it been possible for the sports movement to retain its autonomy while at the same time accepting public funds? Or, put another way: how are we to comprehend government politics vis-a-vis sport? As a strategy to control the voluntary movement,or an attempt to encourage its independence?As shown by these questions,the aim of this thesis is to produce a characterisation of the state 's relationship with the sports movement.More tangibly: to analyse how the relationship between the autonomy of sports clubs and associations, and government control, was resolved in Swedish sports politics between 1913 and 1970. Theoretically, the investigation takes it 's starting point in a politico-philosophical discussion on "what the state should be doing ". Three idealtype-constructed positions on how the state can act towards the sports movement are presented: passive neutrality,active neutrality and perfectionism. In regard to an adjacent question, "what the state can do ",a perspective of legitimacy is applied,signifying that the state 's possibilities of political control are limited by the sports movement 's propensity for autonomy.The subsequent empirical study is divided into three themes:government economic support for the sports movement,the role of RF as an authority,and the taxation of sport. The investigation shows that active neutrality was a dominating principle in the state 's relation to the sports movement. The primary aim of economic support for sport was not in order to govern,but to strengthen the movement 's character of a voluntary and independent mass movement.But the state 's neutrality was not unconditional. The government demanded extensive measures designed to control the use of public funds. Moreover, the principle that economic support was not a gift was clearly emphasised. Attached to the grant was thus the condition that the movement itself took on the responsibility of ensuring sport 's development as wholesome, voluntary and idealistic. This policy can be most easily understood as an implicit contract between the state and RF. Its main function was ensuring the sports movement 's right to both state support and a relatively high degree of autonomy,conditional upon it reciprocating by voluntarily bearing a public welfare responsibility.


Cartilage remodeling is currently among the most popular topics in osteoarthritis research. Remodeling includes removal of the existing cartilage and replacement by neo-cartilage. As a loss of balance between removal and replacement of articular cartilage develops (particularly, the rate of removal surpasses the rate of replacement), joints will begin to degrade. In the last few years, significant progress in molecular understanding of the cartilage remodeling process has been made. In this brief review, we focus on the discussion of some current "controversial" observations in articular cartilage degeneration: (1) the biological effect of transforming growth factorbeta 1 on developing and mature articular cartilages, (2) the question of whether aggrecanase 1 (ADAMTS4) and aggrecanase 2 (ADAMTS5) are key enzymes in articular cartilage destruction, and (3) chondrocytes versus chondron in the development of osteoarthritis. It is hoped that continued discussion and investigation will follow to better clarify these topics. Clarification will be critical for those in search of novel therapeutic targets for the treatment of osteoarthritis.


Multiphase systems including multiphase generators or motors, especially five-phase, offer improved performance compared to three-phase counterpart. Five-phase generators could generate power in applications such as, but not limited to, wind power generation, electric vehicles, aerospace, and oil and gas. The five-phase generator output requires converter system such as AC-DC converters. This chapter introduces the basic construction and performance analysis for uncontrolled/con-trolled five-phase line commutated rectifier guided by numerical examples. This rectifier is suitable for wind energy applications to be the intermediate stage between five-phase generator and DC load or inverter stage. The filtration for AC side and effects of source inductances are detailed in other references. Here, this chapter gives the reader a quick idea about the analysis and performance of multiphase line commutated rectifiers and specifically five phase.


Maintenance operations have a direct influence on production performance in manufacturing systems. Maintenance task prioritization is crucial and important, especially when availability of maintenance resources is limited. The decision on task assignment is often made through heuristic methods or experience, which could cause more downtime and the production losses. In this paper, a new maintenance task prioritization policy based on data driven bottleneck detection and reliability-based maintenance opportunity window calculation is introduced. An experiment in simulation of a real production line shows the proposed policy is able to improve the system reliability, increase the throughput and minimize the total cost of system operation.Copyright © 2007 by ASME


Abstract : The current approach for CCTT(Close Combat Tactical Trainer) scheduling considers only one resource constraint semi-automated computer generated forces (SAF). Use of this approach can result in an infeasible schedule being produced because it only considers total SAF and to the resulting schedule exceeds the capacity for manned simulator modules as well as other limited resources. In selecting scenarios for training units may choose from several alternatives, all of which may support a desired set of training objectives. It is assumed that the objective of the schedule maximizing resource utilization, would be highly desired by military leaders and managers of the CCTT system. Therefore, a 'greedy' heuristic approach is used to solve the multi-stage scheduling decision process. The problem was formulated using a zero-one integer program where the algorithm minimizes slack resources at each stage of the scheduling process subject to local and temporal constraints. Stage times are defined as scenario completion times. By minimizing slack resources, resource utilization is maximized. Results generated by the algorithm developed in this thesis were both feasible and efficient, in all cases. resource constraints and all precedence relationships were satisfied. Key resources (simulators, and SAF work stations) had utilization percentages ranging from 69% to 92%.


Abstract In this study, the effects of particle addition on the microstructure, mechanical properties and fracture behaviors of Al/B4C particle reinforced composite produced by hot pressing method were investigated. After the production of 5, 10 and 15 wt.-% of B4C reinforced composites, T6 heat treatment was applied. It was specified that a strong interface bond occurred between the matrix and particles, and during the fracturing of composites, this effect increased the particle fracture. It was observed that particles were fractured parallel to the fracture surface and to each other fracture surface of MMCp. In general, cavity of particle separated from the matrix was not seen. In the production of MMCp, it was also observed that hot pressing provided a density higher than 99 %. After the heat treatment the maximum hardness value of 173 HB was reached with 15 wt.-% B4C reinforced sample. The transverse rupture strength (TRS) decreased with the increase of reinforcement ratio. The highest TRS was 510 MPa with the 5 wt.-% reinforced material, whereas the lowest value was obtained to be 387 MPa with the 15 wt.-% B4C reinforced material.


Summary Foot and mouth disease (FMD) in adult sheep and goats is frequently mild or unapparent, but can cause high mortality in young animals. The recent outbreak of FMD in the United Kingdom has highlighted the importance of sheep in the epidemiology of the disease, although there have been numerous examples in the past where small ruminants have been responsible for the introduction of FMD into previously disease-free countries. The difficulty in making a clinical diagnosis should encourage the development of more rapid screening tests to assist in future control programmes.


This dissertation investigates the importance of diffusional and convective fluxes for salts in reverse osmosis (RO) and nanofiltration (NF) membranes. Moreover, the physical and thermodynamic factors controlling the salt permeability are analyzed. The study utilizes direct osmosis (DO) experiments and RO experiments, the later using both flat sheet and spiral wound membrane configurations. The salts considered are chlorides and acetates of alkali metals and alkaline earth metals. The equation governing the salt transport in DO experiments is derived and a phenomenon inverse to concentration polarization in RO is observed. The salt permeability in DO is equal to the salt permeability calculated for the valid cases of the used RO models. DO is suggested as an alternative method in characterizing the salt transport in membranes. The method can be more advantageous than RO due to the lower costs and simplicity of the apparatus. The models used to calculate the salt transport parameters in RO experiments are Spiegler-Kedem model, which considers both diffusion and convection of salt, and KimuraSourirajan model, which considers only diffusion of salt. It is found that diffusion is the dominant mechanism of transport in both RO and NF membranes. The percentage of the salt diffusional flux of the total flux is highest for seawater membranes and it is approximately equal for brackish water and nanofiltration membranes. The salt diffusive flux contribute more to the total flux for the 1:2 salts than for 1:1 salts. The two RO models are found equivalent in determining the salt permeability for only the seawater membranes. The xvii Kimura-Sourirajan model overestimates the salt permeability coefficient for salts with rejection coefficient lower than 86%. The permeation rates for studied salts follow the lyotropic series regardless the membrane type (RO or NF), the membrane configuration (flat sheet or spiral wound), the process (DO or RO), or the models used for the calculations. This order of salt permeability is explained by the hydration of the cations, which is quantified by the enthalpy and entropy of hydration. The relative free energy theory can also be used to predict the salt permeability in a membrane based on preliminary data.


Agri-food collective brands are the outcome of long institutional and normative certification paths and aim to guarantee the preservation of tradition and to assert the unicity of products, depending on the area where they are produced or on the origin of their components. Because of their nature, they can be considered as institutional guarantee of goods' quality standard or of country/region of origin and, more important, they can be considered as instruments to reinforce and better communicate local and traditional products. Because of their potential ability to enhance product uniqueness perception, collective brands could be a powerful tool to preserve and reinforce firm market positioning: indeed, strong positive associations between products and places can highly support marketing success. This paper aims to test how awareness about collective brands impact on consumer intention to buy. More specifically, an empirical study has been carried out on 198 Italian wine consumers, that has been asked to describe their knowledge about wine, their wine consumption patterns, their attitude towards wine consumption, their commitment with the product and their intention to buy collective branded or generic branded wine. Respondents have also been distinguished on the basis of weak, medium or strong associations they were able to elicit about collective brands. Preliminary results show collective brands are preferred in social consumption contexts, as they probably guarantee good product performance and therefore social approval. Moreover, buying intention of consumers with strong associations are mainly driven by emotional judgment, whereas cognitive judgment prevail when consumers show weak collective brands associations.


An accurate Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Flight Dynamics Model (FDM) allows us to
 design its efficient controller in early development phases and to increase
 safety while reducing costs. Flight tests are normally conducted for a
 pre-established number of flight conditions, and then mathematical methods are
 used to obtain the FDM for the entire flight envelope. For our UAS-S4 Ehecatl,
 216 local FDMs corresponding to different flight conditions were utilized to
 create its Local Linear Scheduled Flight Dynamics Model (LLS-FDM). The initial
 flight envelope data containing 216 local FDMs was further augmented using
 interpolation and extrapolation methodologies, thus increasing the number of
 trimmed local FDMs of up to 3,642. Relying on this augmented dataset, the
 Support Vector Machine (SVM) methodology was used as a benchmarking regression
 algorithm due to its excellent performance when training samples could not be
 separated linearly. The trained Support Vector Regression (SVR) predicted the
 FDM for the entire flight envelope. Although the SVR-FDM showed excellent
 performance, it remained vulnerable to adversarial attacks. Hence, we modified
 it using an adversarial retraining defense algorithm by transforming it into a
 Robust SVR-FDM. For validation studies, the quality of predicted UAS-S4 FDM was
 evaluated based on the Root Locus diagram. The closeness of predicted
 eigenvalues to the original eigenvalues confirmed the high accuracy of the
 UAS-S4 SVR-FDM. The SVR prediction accuracy was evaluated at 216 flight
 conditions, for different numbers of neighbors, and a variety of kernel
 functions were also considered. In addition, the regression performance was
 analyzed based on the step response of state variables in the closed-loop
 control architecture. The SVR-FDM provided the shortest rise time and settling
 time, but it failed when adversarial attacks were imposed on the SVR. The
 Robust-SVR-FDM step response properties showed that it could provide more
 accurate results than the LLS-FDM approach while protecting the controller from
 adversarial attacks.


Urban stormwater contains substantial loads of Cu, Pb and Zn, which are considered as key stormwater contaminants. Stormwater biofiltration is a promising option to treat these contaminants. Biofilters are exposed to an alternate cycle of drying and wetting, and the influence of this on pollutant removal performance is as-yet unknown. To investigate the effect of drying and subsequent rewetting on the retention of heavy metals by stormwater biofilters, a laboratory study has been conducted using three groups of biofilter columns, which were dosed with semi-synthetic stormwater according to three different drying and wetting regimes. Some biofilters were fitted with a submerged zone combined with a carbon source, at the bottom of the filter. Overall, the biofilters were very effective in heavy metal removal, provided that they received regular stormwater input. However, after drying extending to three or four weeks, removal of heavy metals decreased significantly. A statistically significant correlation between antecedent dry days and metal removal was shown. Furthermore, a clear effect of the submerged zone was found: after extended dry periods, biofilters with this feature performed significantly better than those without it. In particular, the removal of Cu was clearly increased both during wet and dry periods; for Pb the negative effect of drying was completely eliminated by introducing a submerged zone.


In recent decades 'responsibility' has become a prominent idea in international political discourse. Against this backdrop, international policy and scholarly communities contemplating China's rise regularly as "whether, when, and how" China will become a "responsible" great power. This article reviews, unpacks and questions understandings of responsibility in the debates about China. One strand of these debates argue that China can become responsible by adopting and promoting the existing status quo; the other argues that China acts responsibly when it challenges the unfair hegemony of the status quo. This article argues that both of these debates operate with a remarkably similar understanding of responsibility. Whether China adopts existing rules and norms, or whether it establishes rules and norms of its own, responsibility is understood to be rule and norm compliance. The article explores the possibility of an alternative understanding of responsibility suggested by Derrida. It is argued that a Derridian approach does not dispense with rules and norms, but is conscious of the irresolvable dilemma when faced with the demands of multiple others. Such an understanding is helpful insofar as it reminds those who would call for responsibility that such responsibility, and politics itself, is more than simply following rules and maintenance of norms.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE
the purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) birefringence increases following surgical reduction of intraocular pressure (IOP).

PATIENTS AND METHODS
twenty-six glaucomatous eyes requiring trabeculectomy or drainage implant were enrolled. Optical coherence tomography (OCT), scanning laser polarimetry (SLP), and IOP measurements were performed preoperatively and 3 months postoperatively. The OCT and SLP images were aligned using a new algorithm that aligns the vessels in an OCT image to those in the corresponding SLP reflectance image. The SLP retardance values at the location of the OCT scan circle were then extracted using the OCT scan circle position inferred by the algorithm. Sixty-four corresponding RNFL segments were extracted from SLP and OCT to calculate RNFL birefringence. A significant birefringence change was defined as 1.96 times the weighted test-retest standard deviation in four contiguous segments.

RESULTS
preoperative IOP (19.3 ± 6.1 mm Hg) was significantly (P < .001) lower than postoperative IOP (10.4 ± 3.7 mm Hg). Average birefringence magnitude did not change (P = .19) postoperatively. Localized birefringence magnitude increased significantly in 6 (23%) eyes and decreased significantly in 7 (27%) eyes.

CONCLUSION
in this cohort, variable changes in localized birefringence were observed following surgical reduction of IOP.


Abstract Superchilling entails lowering the fish temperature to between the initial freezing point of the fish and about 1–2°C lower. The temperature of superchilled fresh fishery products (SFFP) in boxes without ice was compared to that of products subject to the currently authorised practice in boxes with ice (CFFP) under the same conditions of on‐land storage and/or transport. A heat transfer model was developed and made available as a tool to identify under which initial configurations of SFFP the fish temperature, at any time of storage/transport, is lower or equal to CFFP. A minimum degree of superchilling, corresponding to an ice fraction in the fish matrix of SFFP equal or higher than the proportion of ice added per mass of fish in CFFP, will ensure with 99–100% certainty (almost certain) that the fish temperature of SFFP and the consequent increase of relevant hazards will be lower or equal to that of CFFP. In practice, the degree of superchilling can be estimated using the fish temperature after superchilling and its initial freezing point, which are subject to uncertainties. The tool can be used as part of 'safety‐by‐design' approach, with the reliability of its outcome being dependent on the accuracy of the input data. An evaluation of methods capable of detecting whether a previously frozen fish is commercially presented as 'superchilled' was carried out based on, amongst others, their applicability for different fish species, ability to differentiate fresh fish from fish frozen at different temperatures, use as a stand‐alone method, ease of use and classification performance. The methods that were considered 'fit for purpose' are Hydroxyacyl‐coenzyme A dehydrogenase (HADH) test, α‐glucosidase test, histology, ultraviolet–visible–near–infrared (UV‐VIS/NIR) spectroscopy and hyperspectral imaging. These methods would benefit from standardisation, including the establishment of threshold values or classification algorithms to provide a practical routine test.


: A sensitive and reliable technique for in situ hybridization of DNA-DNA with biotin labelled probe on routine paraffin sections was developed. Using BamH I-W fragment of EBV as probe, a variety of biopsies from nasopharynx and its neighboring regions were examined for EBV distribution. It was discovered that the existence of EBV was related to the histological type and degree of differentiation of carcinomas, but not limited to the nasopharynx region. The EBV DNA positive ratios in (1) poorly, (2) moderately and (3) well differentiated nasopharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas, (4) poorly differentiated nasopharyngeal adenocarcinoma, (5) poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinomas derived from palate and (6) tonsil were 39/41, 1/7, 0/3, 2/8, 3/4 and 2/9 respectively. No EBV DNA was detected in other moderately and well differentiated squamous cell carcinomas or benign tumors of the head and neck. EBV DNA was detected in nearly all malignant cell nuclei of positive sections, whereas all morphologically normal and hyperplastic epithelial cells, stroma cells, infiltrating lymphocytes and epithelium in chronic nasopharyngitis were negative.


Old World bluestems (Bothriochloa spp.) have been seeded on over a million hectares of marginal farmland in Oklahoma and Texas, yet we know little about their regrowth yield and quality. The objective was to determine seasonal pattern of forage regrowth yield and quality of leaves and stems of WW-Iron Master (B. ischaemum [L.] Keng) and Caucasian (B. caucasica [Trin.] C.E. Hubb.) bluestem when 4-week regrowth was harvested at weekly intervals from early May through mid-September. Four plots of each bluestem were established in each of the 4 blocks (32 plots total). Harvesting was rotated so that 4-week regrowth of each bluestem was harvested weekly from 1 of the 4 plots in each block during 1988 and 1989 to determine regrowth yield, in vitro dry matter digestibility (IVDMD), and crude protein (CP) of leaves and stems. Forage regrowth of both species peaked in June both years. Regrowth during August averaged 10 and 35% of June regrowth in 1988 and 1989. WW-Iron Master produced 80 and 45 % greater 4-week regrowth than Caucasian in 1988 and 1989. WW-Iron Master produced 75 and 28% greater leaf regrowth than Caucasian in 1988 and 1989 and twice as many stems both years. Leaf and stem IVDMD of WW-Iron Master averaged 2 to 6 percentage units higher than Caucasian. Leaf CP of WW-Iron Master averaged 2 percentage units higher than Caucasian during May and June. However, stem CP of WW-Iron Master averaged 1 percentage unit lower than Caucasian. Grazing management plans need to consider that the majority of bluestem forage production was restricted to a 1 month period in June. This technique of sampling 4-week regrowth every week during the growing season was an effective method for determining the seasonal regrowth pattern.


In line with the improvement of traditional teaching methods, the new ones are intensively introduced at all levels of education. Usually, these are the methods tied with e-learning. Essentially, teachers must be able and ready to create an innovation-driven learning environment contributing to the effective individualization of the learning process. At the same time, each student should achieve the highest possible outcomes standing behind the personality development. This paper introduces the refresher courses designed for the physics teachers. These courses are based on the blended learning technology combining traditional full-time education with the elements of distance learning supported by LMS Moodle. The courses were tested at the Elabuga Institute of Kazan Federal University in 2016-2018. This paper describes the module-based course structure and methods for applying the e-learning modules. The distinctive feature of the course is that the content of the learning modules was designed to deliver different methods for teaching physics and to improve the general cultural competence of a teacher. The analysis of polling results (poll included 89 physics teachers) allowed assessing the efficiency of designed courses in the context of teacher's professional development, his/her readiness to work in modern learning environment. The research outcomes will be also useful for foreign educational establishments implementing the teacher professional development programs.


The exposure of rock blocks to monitor environmental controls on rock weathering and erosion processes and rates has become an established technique in geomorphology. Such exposure trials using rock blocks, ranging in size from discs of diameter 20 mm and 5 mm thickness to large blocks of dimensions 200 mm x 200 mm x 200 mm, are used to examine weathering and erosion rates over a variety of different spatial and temporal scales. This paper discusses the original design and purpose of rock block exposures and the range of environments in which they have been used. Subsequent modifications of the original technique have been used to measure not just erosion rates, but also rates of accumulation of travertine, rates of solute uptake and to monitor rock surface temperature changes. Two examples are given of field trials in which weathering gradients have been determined using a range of rock block exposure types. Little research has been carried out to correlate weathering and erosion rates determined from rock tablet exposure and other techniques, though one study suggests that there is an order of magnitude difference between solution rates measured using this technique and water hardness methods. Rock blocks, however, are often used to give a more detailed picture of spatial and temporal variations in weathering and erosion rates that would otherwise be masked by such indirect mass balance approaches.


A new algorithm to determine Voronoi partitions of space using periodic boundary conditions has been implemented in GAMGI free software package. This algorithm was used to study the topological and geometric properties of Voronoi polyhedra obtained for Poisson and Laguerre seeding distributions. The Random Sequential Adsorption (RSA) method was used to generate a Laguerre seeding distribution with a volume fraction of spheres φ ≈ 0.36. The resulting normalised cell volume distributions were compared with the gamma and lognormal density functions using χ2 goodness of fit testing, and in both cases the gamma function provides a better description. The Lewis and Aboav empirical relations approximately apply to both partitions, with least square correlation factors R2 equal to 0.98 for the Lewis law and 0.95 for the Aboav law.


Deciduous tooth formation begins before birth and ends after birth. This makes
it more difficult to construct a continuous developmental chronology for
deciduous teeth than for permanent teeth. The discovery of the neonatal line in
enamel and confirmation that it marks birth, allowed the expansion of deciduous
dental chronologies, which until this time had been largely based on qualitative
descriptions. The aim of this study was to use the daily incremental record in
deciduous enamel to document rates of enamel formation and to use these data
to produce regression equations that describe the average rates of deciduous
enamel formation for each tooth type. These formulae can then be applied to all
deciduous teeth even when daily increments are not visible, in order to estimate
crown formation times and other events during crown development, as well as
to determine the age at death where enamel formation has ceased prior to
completion.
In permanent teeth, rates of enamel formation vary between 2.5μm per day at
the EDJ to 6.5μm per day at the enamel surface. Seventy deciduous ground
sections were examined and it was established that the daily rates in deciduous
enamel varied less, with regional weighted means for all tooth types ranging
from 2.85μm per day at the EDJ to 3.40μm per day at the enamel surface with
extreme outliers of 2.07 to 4.97μm per day. The average daily incremental
growth rate of enamel in deciduous teeth was calculated for each tooth type, the
weighted mean of the apposition rate over both aspects (labial/buccal and
lingual) and over all three regions (cervical, lateral and occlusal) for all tooth
types was 3.23μm per day.
A key finding of this study was that there is a marked reduction in the enamel
formation rate in the zone immediately following the neonatal line or following
other accentuated striae assumed to be associated with stressful events. A
catch-up phase usually followed these events, during which the previous rates
recovered. These data provide clear evidence of enamel hypoplasia associated
with both the birth process and other events that cause stress in perinatal life.


12 San Francisco had its own Haymarket Affair, the Preparedness Day 13 bombing and trials of 1916-17, to compare with Chicago's notorious events of 14 thirty years earlier. But the circumstances leading up to and following after the 15 convictions of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings were markedly different from 16 those in Chicago in the 1880s and 90s. San Francisco's working class fought 17 pitched battles with employers several times, holding the bourgeoisie at bay again 18 and again. Unions succeeded in creating a Closed Shop town in the years before 19 the First World War and again in the aftermath of the General Strike of 1934. They 20 also gained a measure of political power through the Union Labor Party between 21 1900 and 1910, and forced their way back to a place at the table in city government 22 in the 1930s and beyond. All in all, the Preparedness Day bombings did not lead to 23 the same class lynching as it did in Chicago, nor the same degree of bourgeois 24 revanchism. 25


Summary: Mutants, designated gdhA, deficient in NADP-glutamate dehydrogenase activity grow poorly using inorganic nitrogen but normally using amino acids as nitrogen sources. The gdhA mutants are not repressed by ammonia for a number of enzyme and uptake systems. The nine gdhA mutations are allelic and located in linkage group III; gdhAi is recessive in the heterozygous diploid with respect to both NADP glutamate dehydrogenase activity and ammonium regulation.
Mutants, designated gdhB, deficient in NAD-glutamate dehydrogenase activity are unable to utilize l-glutamate as a carbon source, but can utilize inorganic and organic nitrogen as nitrogen sources. The four gdhB mutations are allelic, located in linkage group IV, and gdhBI is recessive in the heterozygous diploid. The gdhB mutants are repressed for the ammonium regulated systems which are not repressed in gdhA mutants.


Many cities around the world are facing immense pressure due to the expediting growth rates in urban population levels. The notion of 'smart cities' has been proposed as a solution to enhance the sustainability of cities through effective urban management of governance, energy and transportation. The research presented herein examines the applicability of a mathematical framework to enhance the sustainability of decisions involved in zoning, land-use allocation and facility location within smart cities. In particular, a mathematical optimisation framework is proposed, which links through with other platforms in city settings, for optimising the zoning, land-use allocation, location of new buildings and the investment decisions made regarding infrastructure works in smart cities. Multiple objective functions are formulated to optimise social, economic and environmental considerations in the urban space. The impact on underlying traffic of location choices made for the newly introduced buildings is accounted for through optimised assignment of traffic to the underlying network. A case example on urban planning and infrastructure development within a smart city is used to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method.


The English country house has flourished over the centuries because of its ability to adapt to the changes in English society. This book is an account of the ways in which the upper-class life style were reflected in the houses in which the wealthy and powerful lived. First published in 1978, this is a history of the English country house from the point of view of its owners and users. Ranging from the Middle Ages to the world of Evelyn Waugh, the author also discusses and illustrates how the life of the upper classes shaped their country hosues, how they entertained and were served, how they ran the country and their estates and how they reconciled personal privacy and public display.


According to free configuration space, the skeleton graph of working environment of mobile robots was constructed. The length of link of skeleton graph was quantified according the actual length of pathway and presented with quantitative length matrix. The width of link of skeleton graph was quantified by the width rate of pathway and robot body, and presented with quantitative width matrix. For a pathway with width changing, the width was quantified according to the minimum width of the pathway. For multiply pathways between two vertexes, the pathways were merged into one pathway. In dynamic environment, the matrix value of link was set to -1 for a pathway with obstacles. In Dijkstra algorithm, the coordination path planning of multiply robots was implemented by comparing the remaining capacity of pathway width and the robot body.


Attempts to reduce the number of delivered faults in software are estimated to consume 50% to 80% of the development and maintenance effort according to J.S. Collofello ans S.N. Woodfield (1989). Among the tasks required to reduce the number of delivered faults, debugging is one of the most time-consuming according to T. Ball and S.G. Eick and Telcordia Technologies, and locating the errors is the most difficult component of this debugging task according to I. Vessey (1985). Clearly, techniques that can reduce the time required to locate faults can have a significant impact on the cost and quality of software development and maintenance.


For the past 150 years, Western intellectuals have trumpeted contempt for capitalism and capitalists. They have written novels, plays, and manifestos to demonstrate the evils of the economic system in which they live. Dislike and contempt for the bourgeoisie, the middle classes, industry, and commerce have been a prominent trait of leading Western writers and artists. "Mind vs. Money" is an analytical history of how and why so many intellectuals have opposed capitalism. It is also an argument for how this opposition can be tempered. Historically, intellectuals have expressed their rejection of capitalism through many different movements, including nationalism, anti-Semitism, socialism, fascism, communism, and the 1960s counterculture. Hostility to capitalism takes new forms today. The anti-globalization, Green, communitarian, and New Age movements are all examples. Intellectuals give such movements the legitimacy and leadership they would otherwise lack. What unites radical intellectuals of the nineteenth century, communists and fascists of the twentieth, and anti-globalization protestors of the twenty-first, along with many other intellectuals not associated with these movements, is their rejection of capitalism. Kahan argues that intellectuals are a permanently alienated elite in capitalist societies. In myriad forms, and on many fronts, the battle between Mind and Money continues today. Anti-Americanism is one of them. Americans like to see their country as a beacon of freedom and prosperity. But in the eyes of many European and American intellectuals, when America is identified with capitalism, it is transformed from moral beacon into the 'Great Satan'. This is just one of the issues "Mind vs. Money" explores. The conflict between Mind and Money is the great, unresolved conflict of modern society. To end it, we must first understand it.


Sketch is an important media for human to communicate ideas, which reflects the superiority of human intelligence. Studies on sketch can be roughly summarized into recognition and generation. Existing models on image recognition failed to obtain satisfying performance on sketch classification. But for sketch generation, a recent study proposed a sequence-to-sequence variational-auto-encoder (VAE) model called sketch-rnn which was able to generate sketches based on human inputs. The model achieved amazing results when asked to learn one category of object, such as an animal or a vehicle. However, the performance dropped when multiple categories were fed into the model. Here, we proposed a model called sketch-pix2seq which could learn and draw multiple categories of sketches. Two modifications were made to improve the sketch-rnn model: one is to replace the bidirectional recurrent neural network (BRNN) encoder with a convolutional neural network(CNN); the other is to remove the Kullback-Leibler divergence from the objective function of VAE. Experimental results showed that models with CNN encoders outperformed those with RNN encoders in generating human-style sketches. Visualization of the latent space illustrated that the removal of KL-divergence made the encoder learn a posterior of latent space that reflected the features of different categories. Moreover, the combination of CNN encoder and removal of KL-divergence, i.e., the sketch-pix2seq model, had better performance in learning and generating sketches of multiple categories and showed promising results in creativity tasks.


Tall building structures are susceptible to large sway motions when subjected to earthquake excitations. They are particularly affected by long period earthquake ground motions. These low frequency seismic waves resonate with the fundamental mode of the building structure which in turn causes resonance interactions with long slender continua deployed in modular non-structural installations, such as lifts. Damage due to large resonance motions of suspension/compensating ropes and cables during earthquake are one of the most common modes of failure in high-rise lift installations. In this paper an analytical model to predict the dynamic responses of a suspension rope system installed in a tall host structure under seismic conditions is presented. The model is then used to predict the dynamic performance of the system under earthquake excitations. The predictions can then be used to develop suitable mitigating strategies and protective measures to minimize the earthquake damage.


Summary Introduction: The pressing need to obtain organs for transplan- tation demands an optimal usage of donors. Surgical techniques based on rapid multiorganic retrieval gain vital importance especially when hemodynamically unstable donors are involved. Objective: To highlight the advantages of this technique and evaluate our experience after 2 years of implementation. Material and methods: A longitudinal, prospective non-controlled study was performed, including 34 multiorganic retrievals using the Total Abdominal Evisceration (TAE) technique. Information on demographic characteristics, surgical times, anatomical variations and final fate of organs is gathered. Results: Thirty four organ retrievals were performed using TAE techniques. Included donors had a mean age of 47 years and a mean weight of 66 kg. Dissection time range was 35 ± 10 min, bloc retrieval was performed in 20 ± 8 min and dissection at backbench range was 100 ± 30 min. All anatomic variations were detected and were present in 46.9 % of cases. Over 70 % of livers retrieved by TAE resulted in minimal preservation injury. Only one presented primary non-function after transplantation, directly related to hemodynamic instability. Conclusions: The TAE technique for multiorgan retrieval allows adequate harvesting of organs for transplantation with favorable preservation. It is a valid alternative for transplant groups in our country, especially when dealing with unstable donors.


This paper presents a discrete time deadbeat-direct torque and flux controller (DB-DTFC) for interior permanent magnet synchronous machines (IPMSMs). A Gopinath-style discrete time flux linkage observer is developed which contains two different flux estimation methods based on current and voltage models for flux linkage. This observer produces correctly estimated flux linkages needed for accurate DB-DTFC implementation. In order to eliminate the sampling delay due to a characteristic of digital control computation, a complex vector model-based rotor reference frame current observer is also developed. Combining the discrete time current and flux linkage observers, the correct single time step (deadbeat) air-gap torque and stator flux linkage control at the (constant) switching frequency is achieved and experimentally evaluated.


High concentrations of lower atmospheric ozone can adversely affect the health of humans, plants, and animals. Over the past decade, unhealthy levels of ozone across the Phoenix, Ari- zona (USA) urban area have been a focus of attention for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and local government agencies. As ozone concentrations exceeding the standard set forth by the EPA occur in a preferred location within the Phoenix metropolitan area (eastern suburb of Mesa), it has become important to gain an understanding of the mechanisms that transport ozone within Phoenix and its suburbs. The objective of the study that is presented here was to examine the climatic factors that contributed to the spatial distribution of lower atmospheric ozone across the east- ern portion of the Phoenix metropolitan area in mid-to-late summer 1998. Microclimatic and synoptic- scale atmospheric contributors were linked to the mesoscale transport of ozone. Forty-three study days were stratified into 3 categories: high ozone days (exceeded the EPA standard), moderate ozone days (approached the EPA standard), and low ozone days. Eleven days of high ozone were differentiated from the days of the remaining 2 categories by an atmosphere containing less water vapor, and there- fore a greater surface receipt of insolation. This is not surprising given the fact that ozone production is a photochemical process. However, the movement of the lower atmospheric ozone is also an important issue. The results of the study suggest that the drier atmosphere and resultant high insolation at the sur- face were associated with a proximal area of high pressure aloft. Taken together, the result was warmer ground surface and overlying air temperatures, light winds, an apparent lack of turbulent lower atmos- pheric mixing, and light southwesterly winds at 850 mb that advected little moisture into the area. Associated with the light synoptic flow and warm surface condition on days of high ozone was a wind regime that appears to be the product of a mesoscale thermodynamic circulation. The daytime flow on high ozone days became directed upslope toward the higher elevations of the eastern Phoenix Valley. Embedded within the flow was a plume of high ozone concentrations that extended from an urban area of high ground traffic eastward into the eastern suburb of Mesa. Conversely, moderate and low ozone days were associated with an eastward displacement of high pressure aloft, greater advection of low- level moisture from the south and southeast, smaller insolation receipt, less surface heating, and a much less organized movement of lower atmospheric ozone than on high ozone days.


The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) maintains the national database and hosts the national collections of the archaeological and built heritage of Scotland, including its maritime waters.  In the last twenty five years the database has evolved from a paper-based system to an Oracle database and ArcGis GIS with well-established online search facilities through Canmore ( www.rcahms.gov.uk ).  As RCAHMS approached its centenary in 2008, the need to develop new strategies to manage increasing volumes of information from professional organisations and amateur groups and to engage the wider public not only through the presentation of information already held in the database, but also by encouraging their active participation, was recognised.  This paper outlines projects that are developing new routes into the database whilst preserving existing work procedures and retaining the structure and integrity of the data model. After an approach by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS) RCAHMS agreed to allow direct access to the internal (staff) database behind Canmore. Through the Specialist User Recording Environment (SURE), the NTS archaeologists may add new records or update information for existing sites on their estates scattered throughout Scotland. Information is held alongside the existing records and is accessible immediately on Canmore for the benefit of all users.  The SURE model has been extended to provide the Orkney Islands archaeologist with a similar solution and several other organisations have expressed interest in joining the partnership. A moderated approach to adding information to Canmore, pioneered by the Scotland's Rural Past project, enables community groups, working in partnership with RCAHMS field staff, to report their project results via a mediated form. Information is validated by the project co-ordinator and transferred seamlessly to Canmore. The Trusted User environment has since been opened up to allow National Trust for Scotland (NTS) Rangers to report information from field visits in a consistent manner with the role of validator is undertaken by the relevant NTS archaeologist.  The most open and inclusive development has been 'MyCanmore' through which members of the public may add information to existing records on Canmore and share digital images via a Flickr photo-stream.  With the Archaeology Data Service, RCAHMS has taken the lead role in introducing their OASIS application to Scotland to standardise and ease the information flow from development-funded fieldwork to curators at both local and national level.  The solutions described above rely on a collaborative and flexible approach to recording the archaeological and built heritage of Scotland and providing a seamless public experience and appreciation of that heritage.  The single distributed system provides a common platform managing technological refreshes, data security including rights and roles and Intellectual Property Rights, whilst ensuring that anyone from professional users, community groups to interested members of the public can contribute their observations directly and efficiently to Canmore.


From the essential characteristics of user needs and user knowledge's inspiration and guidance to product innovation and in accordance to the thinking features of human experts on the concept innovation stage, this paper raises and constructs a innovative thinking generator which is based on Internet and orients to product concept innovation. An analogue of innovative thinking emerging process on the stage of product concept innovation is achieved. This establishes the foundation for the realization of computer-aided thinking on the product concept innovation stage, and provides referential thoughts and methods for product innovation.


The animated cartoon has traditionally been excluded from photographic theories of cinema on the grounds that the animation camera is only incidental to the cartoon's production, an assumption this article challenges. Taking as its basic premise that all works of celluloid animation were photographic in origin, this article demonstrates the ways in which the physical reality of our world, and particularly the world of the animation studio, leaves its mark on the cartoon image. Through the frame-by-frame analysis of cartoons by Warner Bros and other major American studios of the mid-20th century, the author catalogues the various visual imperfections that testify to cel animation's photographic origins. These include improperly placed cels, reflections of the camera apparatus, dust and dirt particles, and even the fingerprints left by anonymous labourers. Although these mistakes may only appear on the screen for a fraction of a second, each has been preserved for posterity as a still photograph. In effect, an animated cartoon is a photographic record of its own production. A model for this method is the work of the artist Andrew Norman Wilson, whose ScanOps (2012) consists of a series of photographs culled from Google Books. Ultimately, this method of analysis serves as an inquiry into both the politics and the aesthetics of the labour process.


The study examined variables affecting plantain (Musa sp) mono cropping system of production by small – scale farmers in Central Cross River State, Nigeria. Data were obtained from a random sample of 120 respondents in the study area by means of structured and semi- structured questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple regression analysis. The result revealed that doublelog (Cobb-Douglas) production function is the lead equation because it had the highest R2 value of 0.38. The regression analysis revealed that farm size, fertilizer, visits by extension agents, labour, and credit has positive influence on output of plantain produced in Central Cross River State at a 5 percent level of significance. The F-value of 15.24 for the function is significant at 5 percent, indicating a significant linear relationship between the independent variables taken together and the yield of plantain produced in Central Cross River State. The study also revealed that plantain farmers are faced with several problems. These constraints affect the efficiency of plantain production in the study area. Notable among them are the constraint of inadequate land, low fertility of land, land fragmentation, wrong application of fertilizer, high cost of fertilizers, lack of education and training, high cost of improved suckers and lack of extension contact occupied 43.33%, 37.5%, 42.5%, 79.17%, 81.67%, 99.17%, 96.67% and 100% respectively on respondents constraints profile. The constraints associated with plantain production in the study area, if tackled, could pave a way to increase production and farm income of stakeholders.Hence, for efficient production of plantain in the study area, these constraints must be reduced to the barest minimum. This can be done through good policy formulation and implementation, proper supervision of plantain production programmes, effective extension services and proper agricultural financing. Key words : Econometric analysis, constraints, plantain production, Farm  income


Electrical characterization and magnetic nanocomposite resin seeds Pterodon emarginatus (PE) doped with nanoparticles of maghemite and treated by different chemical processes is reported in this paper. The pure PE resin showed semiconducting characteristics probably the presence of natural iron oxide in its molecular structure. The analysis of Mossbauer spectra pure resin showed two magnetic sites presented on measurements made at temperature of 300 K. Six "LEDs" to have been doped maghemite nanoparticles forming concentrations of 2.6 x 10(15) to 1.56 x 10(16) particles/cm2 forming the LED-PEMN. In the presence of the applied current versus voltage (0 to 0.9 V) LED-PEMN shown semiconducting properties. In the presence of frequency versus voltage sample of pure resin and LED features small decrease. While samples of LED-PEMN suffers loss frequency linearly with concentration and voltage. The pure PE resin shows high resistance to the applied voltage while the LED-PEMN is observed linear increase with the strength and concentration of nanoparticles of maghemite.


Lahar facies of the Mount Dutton Formation (Oligocene-Miocene; Marysvale Volcanic Field, Utah) differ in clast-size gradation, presence or absence of a self- supporting clast framework, and, to a lesser extent, thickness. The two most common of these fades (matrix supported and either inversely graded [facies 1A] or nongraded [1B]) are absent from the closest modem analog, Mount St. Helens (MSH), Washington, as are three others (matrix supported normally graded [3], clast supported, inversely graded [5], and clast supported, nongraded [7A]). One common Mount Dutton fades (matrix supported, inversely to normally graded [4]) is the peak-flow overbank and transition lahar fades at MSH. One less common Mount Dutton lahar fades (clast supported, inversely to normally graded [6]) is the sole facies or channel facies at MSH. Mount Dutton facies 2 (thin, matrix supported, nongraded) is present at MSH as the lahar runout facies. Plots of maximum particle size (MPS) versus bed thickness (BTh) show significant positive correlations for seven fades, as expected of debris-flow deposits. Analogy with MSH lahars suggests that Mount Dutton lahars were cohesionless debris flows (grainflows) that formed when turbulent floods or pyroclastic surges "bulked" by eroding material from their bed. Dispersive pressure produced inverse grading where shearing occurred; inverse grading throughout beds is inherited from transient shearing episodes. Normal grading may be inherited from graded suspensions developed during bulking of turbulent flows or may reflect progressive deposition, rather than frictional or cohesive freezing, of a laterally graded flow. Slopes and intercepts of correlation lines for individual facies on an MPS-BTh plot form natural groups. Three groups, comprising facies 5 and 7A, 1A and 1B, and 3 and 4, differ chiefly in the intercept of the correlation line with the MPS axis. This intercept indicates thickness-independent strength, the result of cohesion and possibly other factors. All three groups are stronger in this respect, by a factor of 2 to 100, than a sampling of ancient nonvolcanic debris flows. These three groups correspond to diamictite subfacies of nonvolcanic debris flows from the Permian of Colorado. Facies 6 is unlike other fades of the Mount Dutton Formation but similar to ancient nonvolcanic debris flows in its strength properties. It resembles whaleback bars that formed during nonuniform flow in the North Fork lahars at MSH. Two Mount Dutton fades (2 and 7B [clast supported, normally graded]) do not have a significant positive correlation of MPS and BTh. They are probably deposits of hyper-concentrated fluids, not lahars in the strict sense.


Canadian Sikhs have seen great changes in the lives of their communities, which are primarily concentrated in larger urban centres, especially Vancouver and the British Columbia lower mainland. In The Sikh Diaspora in Vancouver, Kamala Elizabeth Nayar illustrates the complex and multifaceted transition of Sikh social culture as it moves from small Punjab villages to a Canadian metropolis. The result of an exhaustive analysis of the beliefs and attitudes among three generations of the Sikh community - and having conducted over 100 interviews - Nayar highlights differences and tensions with regards to the role of familial relations, child rearing, and religion. In exploring these tensions, she focuses particularly on the younger generation, and underlines the role of Sikh youth as a catalyst for change within the community. Nayar also examines the Sikh community as it functions and interacts with mainstream Canadian society in the light of modernity and multiculturalism, exploring the change, or lack thereof, in attitudes about the functioning of the community, the role of multicultural organizations and the media, continuity in traditional customs, modifications in behaviour patterns, and changes in values within the larger Canadian social environment of diversity.


Motivation and Objectives Understanding the real developmental stage of reprogrammed stem cells is still a demanding task for researchers in regenerative medicine. In fact, developmental biology is in need of methods that would accurately predict the developmental stage reached by cells cultured in non standard conditions, such as the induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSCs). Bioinformatics approaches would be extremely useful for assessing the pluripotency status of the cells, and thus, their potential use in the clinics for repairing malfunctioning tissues and organs. To this aim, several works have recently demonstrated the utility of applying dimensionality reduction techniques to genome wide expression data (Aiba et al, 2009). As we have shown (Zagar et al, 2011), these methods can be successfully used to predict the developmental stage of cells by mapping their transcriptional profile to a one-dimensional ruler, that we named differentiation scale. The proposed approach was also useful for identifying reduced subsets of genes that drive each developmental stage (Mulas et al, 2012). A crucial issue in this field is the integration of the findings extracted from the data with the available knowledge coming from biological databases. For instance, genes that are surrounded by a high number of selected genes in the protein-protein interaction networks should be included in the analysis (Nitsch et al, 2010). In this work, we developed a network-based pipeline for analyzing temporal gene expression data coming from embryonic stem cells differentiation. The results highlighted the transcriptional changes occurring during development and allowed identifying known markers as well as novel gene candidates potentially involved in the regulation of stem cell differentiation. Methods Stem cell differentiation is characterized by an intense transcription activity where a number of transcription factors regulates the gene expression of specific targets (Zagar et al., 2011). These transcriptional changes can be observed by analyzing the genome-wide expression profiles of m genes at n different samples along differentiation. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) may be used to assign a real number p(s) to a sample s based on its expression profile. The result of this inference is a set of real numbers that can be placed in a 1D ruler, the differentiation scale. To construct a more robust predictive model, we combined the expression values from six data sets on embryonic stem cells differentiation provided by Gene Expression Omnibus with a meta-analysis method named Merging. Thanks to this approach, we obtained an integrated scale where a new uncharacterized sample can be projected to uncover its real stage of development with respect to the normal dynamics. Reduced subsets of genes specifically activated in different stages of differentiation were identified by means of a novel gene selection procedure that assigns to each gene a score proportional to its PCA-inferred weight in the stage s and its expression value. In order to obtain a complete picture of the gene transcription in each stage, we exploited the biological knowledge available through the STRING database (Szklarczyk et al., 2011). STRING imports and combines data gathered from heterogeneous sources to provide information about known and predicted protein-protein associations. A confidence score is also assigned to each predicted association. In this work, we developed and analyzed a set of STRING-based networks, one for each stage of development, by applying the following procedure: 1. Network building. For each stage-specific list of genes, we mapped the gene symbols to their corresponding protein ids provided by the UNIPROT database. This step allowed retrieving the protein associations predicted by STRING, that we used to build a set of gene networks. A pair of genes in each network was connected if the confidence score of their proteins association in STRING exceeded a selected global threshold. 2. Topological analysis. The developmental stages measured in the considered experiments were grouped into three phases according to the clusters of projections that we observed in the differentiation scale. We analyzed the similarity of the networks obtained for each phase in terms of their topological properties. First, in order to take into account the number of common gene links in the networks, we computed the median jaccard index between networks of different phases. Moreover, to quantitatively characterize the importance of the nodes in our networks, we considered a topological index known as betweenness centrality. This measure is defined as the number of shortest paths that go through a considered node, and represents the influence of that node in the flow of information within the network. Nodes with a high betweenness typically make possible the communications in the network among clusters of nodes characterized by high internal connectivity. The betweenness values of the genes present in each phase were used to compare the different developmental phases and to identify the most relevant genes in each network. 3. Biological analysis. The expanded lists of genes obtained with STRING were further analyzed in light of the knowledge on developmental processes reported in the literature. Different works have recently pointed out the existence of a set of specific genes that are responsible for a particular pluripotency status of the cell (Zuccotti et al., 2011). First, in order to evaluate the effect of the network-based procedure on the gene selection, we compared the list of genes retrieved with our approach with the known markers. The analysis then focused on identifying the most biologically significant genes for each differentiation phase. The importance of a gene in a developmental stage is represented by its role in the transcriptional regulatory circuitry of the process and is best quantified by its betweenness centrality value. We therefore looked for sets of significant genes among the bottlenecks of the developed networks. Phase-specific important genes were identified applying a selection procedure based on a global threshold value. For each phase, we determined a list of characterizing genes by extracting those that were contained in more than the 60% of the total number of networks present in the phase. All genes included in at least one phase-specific list were assigned the median of all their betweenness centrality values. We then considered the distribution of such median values and computed the 95th percentile, which was assumed as the threshold. Finally, from each phase-specific gene list all genes whose betweenness centrality value exceeded the threshold were extracted. Results and Discussion TThe results of the presented procedure confirmed that a transcriptional wave is active during differentiation and influences the topological properties of the networks. While the analysis of the Jaccard index showed no significant phase characterization in terms of common edges, a phase comparison based on betweenness similarity highlighted instead a distance between the first phase and the last stages (Table1). The biological analysis, i.e. the study of the expanded lists of genes in light of knowledge on developmental processes reported in the literature, identified 53 known markers included in at least one network. In particular, a number of known key genes retrieved with this method, such as Pou5f1, Nanog, Klf4, Sox2, were not previously selected by the data-driven procedure based on their expression profiles. This result confirmed how network-based approaches can integrate experimental findings contributing to the identification of significant genes, whose importance is due to the crucial role they play in the regulation of the global network. Gene characterization based on betweenness centrality selected a higher number of genes (24) in the first phase if compared to the others (11 and 9 genes for the second and the last phase, respectively), confirming a distinction of the early stages, where the majority of transcriptional changes are known to occur. Known markers as well as novel yet uncharacterized genes were identified. Starting from these results, future experiments will be focused on the application of network-based prioritization procedures, that would help to automatically retrieve the most significant genes in the networks. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Fondazione Cariplo grant (2008–2006) "Bioinformatics for Tissue Engineering: Creation of an International Research Group" and by EU FP7 project "CARE-MI" and grants from Slovenian Research Agency (P2-0209, J2-9699, L2-1112). Camilla Colombo is gratefully acknowledged for her help in software development. References Aiba K et al (2009) Defining developmental potency and cell lineage trajectories by expression profiling of differentiating mouse embryonic stem cells, DNA Res 16:73-80. doi:10.1093/dnares/dsn035 Mulas F et al (2012) Supporting Regenerative Medicine by Integrative Dimensionality Reduction, Methods Inf Med. 51(4). doi: 10.3414/ME11-02-0045 Nitsch D et al (2010) Candidate gene prioritization by network analysis of differential expression using machine learning approaches. BMC Bioinformatics 11:460. doi: 10.1186/1471-2105-11-460 Szklarczyk D et al (2011) The STRING database in 2011: functional interaction networks of proteins, globally integrated and scored. Nucleic Acids Res 39: D561-8. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkq973 Zagar L et al (2011) Stage prediction of embryonic stem cell differentiation from genome-wide expression data. Bioinformatics 27(18):2546-53. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr422 Zuccotti M et al (2011) Gatekeeper of pluripotency: a common Oct4 transcriptional network operates in mouse eggs and embryonic stem cells. BMC Genomics 12:1-13. doi: 10.1186/1471-2164-12-345 Note: Figures and tables are available in PDF version only.


Nitridation technique of the gate-oxide top surface has been much studied to suppress the boron penetration from the doped gate poly-silicon and proved to be efficient against NBTI degradation. However there is another path for boron to penetrate to gate-oxide from the substrate, where this technique is helpless. We found that boron penetration from the S/D-extension becomes crucial issue on gate leakage and gate-oxide integrity especially for deep sub-micron pMOS, where stress from the sidewall and interlayer dielectrics accelerates to deteriorate those gate-oxide characteristics. We demonstrate that nitridation after gate etching is very efficient to control this new degradation mode. We also propose the totally-optimized transistor structure for nMOS and pMOS, which shows sufficient electrical property and reliability for low operational power (LOP) and low standby power (LSTP) of 65-nm node and beyond.


The purpose of this study is to determine the extent of Jordanian external auditors' commitment in the application of the ISA ′′240′′ and its effect in reducing fraud in financial statement. As such, the report focuses on application of ISA 240 provision in carrying out external auditing, the frequency of deployment of ISA 240 principles among the Jordanian external auditors and the number of financial fraud cases in Jordan that have been detected using ISA 240 tool for external auditing. The study has deployed cross-sectional survey to collect data among 21 sampled auditors in Jordan using a semi-structured questionnaire. The findings has indicated that 80.3% of the sampled auditors complies with ISA 240 regulation, 58.3% of the sampled auditors have faced various challenges with ISA 240provisions, 52.38% of the sampled auditors have been able to identify financial statement frauds using the ISA 240 provision, 80.3% cases of financial fraud cases identified have been reported as per ISA 240regulations and finally 70.4% of the sampled auditors have rated ISA 240 legislation as the best tool to guide auditors in identifying and reporting financial frauds .


The Road Transport Department of Malaysia has endorsed a specification for car plates that includes the font and size of characters that must be followed by car owners. However, there are cases where this specification is not followed. This paper proposes a new methodology to segment and recognize Malaysian car license plates automatically. The proposed methodology solves the problem of segmenting different length licenses such as license with different number of character and number. There are two main objectives for this paper: first is to develop fuzzy rules to recognize the segmented characters and numbers from the same input-sets, which is the same size without overlapping between the characters and numbers sets. Secondly, this paper proposes a method to recognize non-standard plates by Template Matching theorem. Finally, the hybrid method of Fuzzy and Template matching is tested on 300 samples of car images captured in outdoor environment. The results yield 90.4% recognition accuracy, the Fuzzy based required 1.7 seconds and Template matching based took 0.75 seconds to perform the recognition. The adaptability factor of the hybrid method is also discussed.


Nkpuma – Akpatakpa clay was analysed for its ceramics suitability. Chemical, mechanical and spectral characterization of the clay was carried out to obtain more information from this clay found in commercial quantity at Ebonyi State Nigeria. The XRD analysis showed that the principal minerals in the clay are quartz, qandilite, aragonite, Muscovite and anatase. FTIR showed the stretching vibrations for Si – O at 685.8cm –1 showing the presence of Quartz. The frequency at 1431cm -1 is due to (CO 3 ) 2- stretching mode vibration or C – O stretching of Aragonite and the band at 2467.6 is due to OH- stretching. Bands observed at 984.7 and 987.7cm –1 correspond to Al – O bending vibrations which suggest the presence of muscovite in the clay and SEM studies were also carried out and reported. Porosity of the clay was 0.88% considered too small for refractory, thermal insulation and other high porosity desired ceramics applications. Value obtained for Fe 2 O 3 was > 1.7% which accounted for why the clay did not fire white. The values for M.O.R was >40KgF/cm 2 . The refractoriness was <1340 0 C. Chemical characterization showed the presence of fluxing oxides at elevated levels which are responsible for the poor refractoriness and limits the utilization of the clay to low or mid-temperature ceramics products. Keywords: Nkpuma-Akpatakpa clay, Ceramics, Characterization, Qandilite, FTIR, Bulk density


Human languages are full of metaphorical expressions. Metaphors help people understand the world by connecting new concepts and domains to more familiar ones. Large pre-trained language models (PLMs) are therefore assumed to encode metaphorical knowledge useful for NLP systems. In this paper, we investigate this hypothesis for PLMs, by probing metaphoricity information in their encodings, and by measuring the cross-lingual and cross-dataset generalization of this information. We present studies in multiple metaphor detection datasets and in four languages (i.e., English, Spanish, Russian, and Farsi). Our extensive experiments suggest that contextual representations in PLMs do encode metaphorical knowledge, and mostly in their middle layers. The knowledge is transferable between languages and datasets, especially when the annotation is consistent across training and testing sets. Our findings give helpful insights for both cognitive and NLP scientists.


ABSTRACT DNA/RNA helicases, which are enzymes for eliminating hydrogen bonds between bases of DNA/DNA, DNA/RNA, and RNA/RNA using the energy of ATP hydrolysis, contribute to various biological activities. In the present study, the Euryarchaeota-specific helicase EshA (TK0566) from the hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis (Tk-EshA) was obtained as a recombinant form, and its enzymatic properties were examined. Tk-EshA exhibited maximal ATPase activity in the presence of RNA at 80°C. Unwinding activity was evaluated with various double-stranded DNAs (forked, 5′ overhung, 3′ overhung, and blunt end) at 50°C. Tk-EshA unwound forked and 3′ overhung DNAs. These activities were expected to unwind the structured template and to peel off misannealed primers when Tk-EshA was added to a PCR mixture. To examine the effect of Tk-EshA on PCR, various target DNAs were selected, and DNA synthesis was investigated. When 16S rRNA genes were used as a template, several misamplified products (noise DNAs) were detected in the absence of Tk-EshA. In contrast, noise DNAs were eliminated in the presence of Tk-EshA. Noise reduction by Tk-EshA was also confirmed when Taq DNA polymerase (a family A DNA polymerase, PolI type) and KOD DNA polymerase (a family B DNA polymerase, α type) were used for PCR. Misamplified bands were also eliminated during toxA gene amplification from Pseudomonas aeruginosa DNA, which possesses a high GC content (69%). Tk-EshA addition was more effective than increasing the annealing temperature to reduce misamplified DNAs during toxA amplification. Tk-EshA is a useful tool to reduce noise DNAs for accurate PCR. IMPORTANCE PCR is a technique that is useful for genetic diagnosis, genetic engineering, and detection of pathogenic microorganisms. However, troubles with nonspecific DNA amplification often occur from primer misannealing. In order to achieve a specific DNA amplification by eliminating noise DNAs derived from primer misannealing, a thermostable Euryarchaeota-specific helicase (Tk-EshA) was included in the PCR mixture. The addition of Tk-EshA has reduced noise DNAs in PCR.


Arguing for an understanding of the capitalist world-system as the interpretative horizon of world-literature, this essay considers how the formal and stylistic mannerisms of Edgar Mittelholzer's My Bones and My Flute (1955) register the contradictory inflection of capitalist modernity in Guyana. Specifically, it uses Mittelholzer's narrative as a means to approach these issues in environmental terms. The novel's amalgamation of Euro-American gothic tropes and Guyanese folklore, the author argues, registers the "bewitching" impact of the sugar industry on the socioecological development of Guyana. The analysis is framed by geographer Jason W. Moore's concept of "world-ecology," which designates the epochal reorganization of the worldwide production of nature that was integral to the rise of the capitalist world-economy.


Crimson Sweet' watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai) plants were grown with various mulches and rowcovers and analyzed for relative growth rate (RGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), specific leaf area (SLA), leaf area index (LAI), and crop growth rate (CGR). Spunbonded polyester fabric (SB-PF) and perforated polyethylene film (PCP) rowcovers generally showed greater mean RGR, SLA and CGR than spunbonded polypropylene polyamide net (SB-PP), black plus clear combination plastic mulch and black plastic mulch alone. Plants on mulches and under rowcovers showed significant increases in RGR, NAR, and SLA over plants grown in bare soil. Carbon dioxide concentration inside the transplanting mulch holes was nearly twice the ambient CO, concentration. Growth analysis of sampled watermelon plants during early stages of development under various treatments was predictive of crop yield. Plants under SB-PF and PCP rowcovers produced the earliest fruit and the greatest total yield. An asymmetrical curvilinear model for watermelon growth and development based on cardinal temperatures was developed. The model uses hourly averaged temperatures to predict growth and phenological development of 'Crimson Sweet' watermelon plants grown with and without rowcovers. Early vegetative growth correlated well with accumulated heat units. Results indicate a consistent heat unit requirement for the 'Crimson Sweet' watermelon plants to reach first male flower, first female flower and first harvest in uncovered plants and plants under rowcovers. Greater variability was observed in predicting date of first harvest than first bloom. In cool regions of the world, watermelon growth is limited by short growing seasons and low air and soil temperatures, particu- larly early in the growing season. Low air and soil temperatures, which occur in the spring and early summer, especially during the nights, often delay harvest dates and reduce yield. Rowcovers enhance plant growth and development by modifying air tempera- ture, soil temperature, humidity and light around the covered plants (Mansour, 1989).