Background: Exhaled carbon monoxide has been reported to increase in inflammatory pulmonary diseases and to be correlated with blood carboxyhaemoglobin (Hb-CO) concentration. A study was undertaken to determine whether arterial blood Hb-CO increases in patients with inflammatory pulmonary diseases. Methods: The Hb-CO concentration in arterial blood was measured with a spectrophotometer in 34 normal control subjects, 24 patients with bronchial asthma, 52 patients with pneumonia, and 21 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Results: The mean (SE) Hb-CO concentrations in patients with bronchial asthma during exacerbations (n=24, 1.05 (0.05)%), with pneumonia at the onset of illness (n=52, 1.08 (0.06)%), and with IPF (n=21, 1.03 (0.09)%) were significantly higher than those in control subjects (n=34, 0.60 (0.07)%) (mean difference 0.45% (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.23 to 0.67), p<0.01 in patients with bronchial asthma, mean difference 0.48% (95% CI 0.35 to 0.60), p<0.0001 in patients with pneumonia, and mean difference 0.43% (95% CI 0.26 to 0.61) p<0.001 in patients with IPF). In 20 patients with bronchial asthma the Hb-CO concentration decreased after 3 weeks of treatment with oral glucocorticoids (p<0.001). In 20 patients with pneumonia the Hb-CO concentration had decreased after 3 weeks when patients showed evidence of clinical improvement (p<0.001). The values of C-reactive protein (CRP), an acute phase protein, correlated with Hb-CO concentrations in patients with pneumonia (r=0.74, p<0.0001) and in those with IPF (r=0.46, p<0.01). In patients with bronchial asthma changes in Hb-CO concentrations were significantly correlated with those in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) after 3 weeks (r=0.67, p<0.01). Exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations were correlated with Hb-CO concentrations (n=33, r=0.80, p<0.0001). Conclusions: Hb-CO concentrations are increased in inflammatory pulmonary diseases including bronchial asthma, pneumonia, and IPF. Measurement of arterial Hb-CO may be a useful means of monitoring pulmonary inflammation.


This paper presents the results of an investigation aimed at correlating the gradient of microstructures with the mechanisms of fracture and with J-toughness in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) of submerged arc welds on a high strength structural steel. The microstructure of the weld metal is composed of refined acicular ferrite while the microstructure of the coarse grained heataffected zone (CGHAZ) is basically formed by coarse bainite with a small proportion of martensite and primary ferrite in the grain boundary of the large prior austenite grains. A significant decrease in toughness is observed with an increasing incursion of the fatigue crack front into the CGHAZ. The degradation in toughness is definitely brought about by the CGHAZs of the welds, the size and distribution of these zones being relevant factors in the weld performance.


Free sampling, which has been widely applied and studied in marketing, has recently been adopted by entrepreneurs on crowdfunding platforms. Using a dataset from a unique crowdfunding platform, we study whether opting to provide free samples to potential backers increases the likelihood of a campaign meeting its goal. We also investigate how free sampling influences the fundraising dynamics. Using a matched sample of crowdfunding campaigns, we demonstrate that providing free samples significantly improves crowdfunding performance. And among those projects which opt for free sampling, persuasion effect during the report period contributes to the positive effect. The higher the score from the evaluator, the more successful the campaign will be. We also find that the longer the investors are exposed to the evaluation report, the more money is raised.


Background—Skateboarding injuries have increased with the rise in popularity of the sport, and the injury pattern can be expected to have changed with the development of both skateboard tricks and the materials used for skateboard construction. Objective—To describe the injury pattern of today. Methods—The pattern of injuries, circumstances, and severity were investigated in a study of all 139 people injured in skateboarding accidents during the period 1995–1998 inclusive and admitted to the University Hospital of Umeå. This is the only hospital in the area, serving a population of 135 000. Results—Three of the 139 injured were pedestrians hit by a skateboard rider; the rest were riders. The age range was 7–47 years (mean 16). The severity of the injuries was minor (AIS 1) to moderate (AIS 2); fractures were classified as moderate. The annual number of injuries increased during the study period. Fractures were found in 29% of the casualties, and four children had concussion. The most common fractures were of the ankle and wrist. Older patients had less severe injuries, mainly sprains and soft tissue injuries. Most children were injured while skateboarding on ramps and at arenas; only 12 (9%) were injured while skateboarding on roads. Some 37% of the injuries occurred because of a loss of balance, and 26% because of a failed trick attempt. Falls caused by surface irregularities resulted in the highest proportion of the moderate injuries. Conclusions—Skateboarding should be restricted to supervised skateboard parks, and skateboarders should be required to wear protective gear. These measures would reduce the number of skateboarders injured in motor vehicle collisions, reduce the personal injuries among skateboarders, and reduce the number of pedestrians injured in collisions with skateboarders.


Video streaming generates a substantial fraction of the traffic on the Internet. The demands of video streaming also increase the workload on the video server, which in turn leads to substantial slowdowns. In order to resolve the slowdown problem, and to provide a scalable and robust infrastructure to support on-demand streaming, helper-assisted video-on-demand (VoD) systems have been introduced. In this architecture, helper nodes, which are micro-servers with limited storage and bandwidth resources, download and store the user-requested videos from a central server to decrease the load on the central server. Multi-layer videos, in which a video is divided into different layers, can also be used to improve the scalability of the system. In this paper, we study the problem of utilizing the helper nodes to minimize the pressure on the central servers. We formulate the problem as a linear programming using joint inter- and intra-layer network coding. Our solution can also be implemented in a distributed manner. We show how our method can be extended to the case of wireless live streaming, in which a set of videos is broadcasted. Moreover, we extend the proposed method to the case of unreliable connections. We carefully study the convergence and the gain of our distributed approach.


Pre-university enabling programs provide an important pathway to university for underprepared and disadvantaged students. In order to adequately prepare students for their university journey, enabling educators need to understand and respond to the evolving needs of their learners; not only their academic disparity, but also their past learning experiences and perceptions towards particular subjects. In the current study, students entering an Australian enabling program, 'OnTrack', were surveyed on their attitudes, emotions and aspirations towards the study of science and mathematics. Responses were associated with student perceptions of their past science and maths learning experiences. There was incongruity between student expectations of what future study would entail and the realities of their degree choices and career aspirations. This study suggests the need for social and emotional learning and teacher training. Greater attention should be given to both student's affective needs and their understanding of future course content during their enabling education experience to redress negative emotional learning experiences and safeguard student expectations, satisfaction, and retention in the future.


Storage of anticoagulated whole blood leads to the activation of platelets and granulocytes, formation of aggregates, lysis of cells, various thrombogenic substances, including proteolytic enzymes. Transfusion of the blood may cause capillary occlusion, intravascular coagulation, renal and hepatic dysfunction. Gel-silicagel affinity+ chromatography of the anticoagulated whole blood was shown to result in selective sorption of plasma fibrin. Preactivated platelets and granulocytes were also removed by interaction of cell fibronectin receptors with immobilized fibronectin. The residual platelets and granulocytes lost their ability to storage-induced activation and remained viable for at least 48 hours at 4 degrees C.


Introduction: Parenteral administration of nutrients to sustain newborns' growth represents an important therapeutic challenge.
Objective: To describe parenteral nutrition (PN) practices in a tertiary hospital and evaluate postnatal growth in preterm infants.
Material and methods: Observational retrospective study over 3 months. Data on infants born or admitted to the Neonatal Department and starting PN were collected. Demographics, anthropometric data, daily caloric, protein intake data and PN components used were collected. Growth velocity was characterized by the average daily weight gain and compared to intrauterine growth.
Results: 68 preterm infants started PN during the study period. Most infants (65%) were born by caesarean and mean gestational age was 33 weeks. Twenty five percent of newborns did not regain birth weight. The remaining 75% regained birth weight on the 3rd day of PN and average daily weight gain was 16 g/kg/d, ranging between 12 and 22 g/kg/d. Although weight gain approximated intrauterine rate, most infants born <30 weeks gestation did not achieve median birth weight of the reference population. Early aggressive PN was administered with an average of 3, 11 and 3 g/Kg/d of proteins, carbohydrates and lipids respectively, reaching a maximum on the 4th day of 4, 18, 4 g/kg/d, respectively.
Discussion: Aggressive PN is used in the hospital setting. The preterm infants reached birth weight earlier and had a greater velocity of growth than in other clinical trials and similar to intrauterine.


Congenital hypothyroidism is mostly asymptomatic at birth. It is usually detected by targeted neonatal screening for CH that is performed after birth. Nonetheless, there are reports of rare and vague presentations of CH, as protracted icterus, abdominal distension, skin mottling, hypoactivity, poor feeding, muscle hypotonia, huge posterior fontanel, difficulty in breathing, hypothermia, peripheral cyanosis, abdominal distension, vomiting, and edema [1]. We report a preterm neonate that presented with abdominal distension with feeding intolerance, secondary to gastrointestinal hypomotility caused by congenital hypothyroidism.


The objective of this article is to approach the concepts of growth and economic development in order to highlight the essential aspects that differentiate them. These are fundamental concepts that define the economy of a nation and contribute for a better life for it. Economic growth does not lead to a high quality of education or technology, but contributes to increasing the added value of goods and services obtained within the sectors of a country's economy. The economic development aims at the economy of a country and implies the growth in both forms, qualitative and quantitative, including aspects related to the wealth of the people, includes aspects related to the wealth of people, their health, their education and good quality living conditions. Also, economic development can create opportunities in the field of employment and environmental conservation, in improving the literacy rate, eradicating poverty. The method is revising the specialized literature.


Global solar radiation prediction is highly desirable for multiple energy applications, such as energy production and sustainability, solar energy systems management, and lighting tasks for home use and recreational purposes. This research work designs a new approach and investigates the capability of novel data intelligent models based on the self-adaptive evolutionary extreme learning machine (SaE-ELM) algorithm to predict daily solar radiation in the Burkina Faso region. Four different meteorological stations are tested in the modeling process: Boromo, Dori, Gaoua and Po, located in West Africa. Various climate variables associated with the changes in solar radiation are utilized as the exploratory predictor variables through different input combinations used in the intelligent model (maximum and minimum air temperatures and humidity, wind speed, evaporation and vapor pressure deficits). The input combinations are then constructed based on the magnitude of the Pearson correlation coefficient computed between the predictors and the predictand, as a baseline method to determine the similarity between the predictors and the target variable. The results of the four tested meteorological stations show consistent findings, where the incorporation of all climate variables seemed to generate data intelligent models that performs with best prediction accuracy. A closer examination showed that the tested sites, Boromo, Dori, Gaoua and Po, attained the best performance result in the testing phase, with a root mean square error and a mean absolute error (RMSE-MAE [MJ/m2]) equating to about (0.72-0.54), (2.57-1.99), (0.88-0.65) and (1.17-0.86), respectively. In general, the proposed data intelligent models provide an excellent modeling strategy for solar radiation prediction, particularly over the Burkina Faso region in Western Africa. This study offers implications for solar energy exploration and energy management in data sparse regions.


The commonly used SAB, SABC and run-of-mine (ROM) ball mill circuits can achieve high throughputs with good operating stability. However, these circuits consume a substantial amount of grinding media, which can have a substantial impact on the OPEX and the 'carbon footprint', specifi cally when viewed as an 'embodied' energy input. On the other hand, fully autogenous (AG) circuits can operate at much lower operating costs, but with limited throughput. The control of AG mills, fed by ores with hard and soft components, can also be challenging, due to the sensitivity of the mill to the ratio of hard to soft components. In this paper, a multi-component modelling approach was used to demonstrate that the harder component should be used as grinding media, and its use should be kept to a minimum to avoid reduction in the mill throughput. There is an optimal blend of hard to soft, and any optimal blending condition is both ore-dependent and mill-specifi c. Establishing this blend is challenging, and consequently discourages the use of autogenous mills. The new modelling approach addresses this challenge by providing a quantitative prediction of the infl uence of blending soft and hard components in a mill. This prediction can then be used to establish the required blend for maintaining a stable and effi cient operation in autogenous grinding mode.


This paper outlines a method to dynamically replace portals with textures in a cell-partitioned model. The rendering complexity is reduced to the geometry of the current cell thus increasing interactive performance. A portal is a generalization of windows and doors. It connects two adjacent cells (or rooms). Each portal of the current cell that is some distance away from the viewpoint is rendered as a texture. The portal texture (smoothly) returns to geometry when the viewpoint gets close to the portal. This way all portal sequences (not too close to the viewpoint) have a depth complexity of one. The size of each texture and distance at which the transition occurs is configurable for each portal.


This third article provides two case studies that enable laboratory managers to see how the cross-cultural model postulated by Dr. Geert Hofstede can be practically applied to two important issues--staff training and conflict resolution between employees. In addition, the opinions of several managers from a variety of industries are presented to add realism and perspective. This encourages laboratory managers to step outside the laboratory environment and learn from other managers who have years of experience supervising culturally diverse groups of employees. Part I of this series explained what is meant by "culture" and featured the research-based model set forth by Dutch social psychologist and management consultant, Dr. Geert Hofstede. His four dimensions of culture (Power Distance, Masculinity/Femininity, Individualism/Collectivism, and Uncertainty Avoidance) provide a useful framework for understanding the different values, attitudes, and behaviors exhibited by those of different cultural backgrounds. Part II presented advice in the form of 13 anecdotes from experienced cross-cultural managers. Issues of performance management, interpersonal skills, and language and safety were explored in light of the four dimensions. In this third article, abbreviated reference tables adapted from Hofstede's research are presented that make these cross-cultural data more useful for management decision making. Laboratory managers will receive practical, "real world" advice that will help them to positively resolve conflicts and to take full advantage of staff training opportunities.


This study examined how interleukin-6 (IL-6) and soluble IL-6 receptor (sIL-6r) influence osteoclastic differentiation through the function of chondrocytes. Chondrocytes were cultured with or without IL-6 and/or sIL-6r in the presence or absence of NS398, a specific inhibitor of cyclooxygenase (COX)- 2, for up to 28 days. Chondrocytes were also cultured with or without IL-6 and sIL-6r for 28 days, and the conditioned medium from cells cultured without IL-6 and sIL-6r was used to induce differentiation of RAW264.7 cells into osteoclast precursors. Osteoclastic differentiation was assessed by tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) staining. Expression of osteoprotegerin (OPG), receptor activator of NF-κB ligand (RANKL), COX-2, and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) increased in cells exposed to IL-6 and sIL-6r, whereas expression of macrophage colony-stimulating factor (M- CSF) and bone resorption-related enzymes decreased. NS398 blocked the stimulatory/suppressive effects of IL-6 and sIL-6r on the expression of OPG, RANKL, and M-CSF. Fewer TRAP-positive multinucleated cells were detected after treatment with conditioned medium from IL-6- and sIL-6r-treated chondrocytes than after treatment with conditioned medium from untreated chondrocytes. These results suggest that IL-6 and sIL- 6r interfere with osteoclast function through the involvement of chondrocytes. Specifically, they appear to suppress the differentiation of osteoclast precursors into osteoclasts by inducing chondrocytic PGE2 production, which, in turn, increases OPG secretion and decreases M-CSF secretion by chondrocytes. (J Oral Sci 53, 87-96, 2011)


A fractional-order model consisting of a system of four equations in a Caputo–Fabrizio sense is constructed. This paper investigates the role of negative and positive attitudes towards vaccination in relation to infectious disease proliferation. Two equilibrium points, i.e., disease-free and endemic, are computed. Basic reproduction ratio is also deducted. The existence and uniqueness properties of the model are established. Stability analysis of the solutions of the model is carried out. Numerical simulations are carried out and the effects of negative and positive attitudes towards vaccination areclearly shown; the significance of the fractional-order from the biological point of view is also established. The positive effect of increasing awareness, which in turn increases positive attitudes towards vaccination, is also shown numerically.The results show that negative attitudes towards vaccination increase infectious disease proliferation and this can only be limited by mounting awareness campaigns in the population. It is also clear from our findings that the high vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemicisan important problem, and further efforts should be madeto support people and give them correct information about vaccines.


This study uses data of about 9,000 apartment sales in Stockholm, Sweden, to assess the impact of crime on property prices. The study employs hedonic pricing modelling to estimate the impact of crime controlling for other factors (property and neighbourhood characteristics). Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to combine apartment sales by coordinates with of- fences, land use characteristics and demographic data of the popu- lation. The novelty of this research is threefold. First, it explores a set of land use attributes created by spatial techniques in GIS in combination with detailed geographical data in hedonic pricing modelling. Second, the effect of crime in neighbouring zones at one place can be measured by incorporating spatial lagged vari- ables of offence rates into the model. Third, the study provides evidence of the impact of crime on housing prices in a capital city of a traditional welfare state, information otherwise lacking in the international literature. Our results indicate that apartment prices in a specific area are strongly affected by crime in its neighbour - ing zones, regardless of crime type. When offences were broken down by types, residential burglary, theft, vandalism, assault and robbery individually had a significant negative effect on property values. However, for residential burglary such an effect is not ho- mogenous across space, and apartment prices in central areas are often less discounted by being exposed to crime than those in the city's outskirts.


The Discussion of Emotions in the Study of Medieval Literature Work on the theory and history of emotions is one of several new approaches to medieval studies that are currently the topic of considerable discussion. Research on emotions carried out by medievalists working in the field of literary studies shows certain points of contact with earlier approaches such as historical anthropology, historical psychology, and the history of mentalities; but it differs from them in its methods and in the insights it pursues. The most important difference lies in the fact that it does not see textual analysis as a methodological tool that can be used to arrive at all-encompassing conclusions about the psychological dispositions of historical individuals. This article attempts to set out some basic features of work on emotions by scholars of medieval literature. A controversial issue is raised in the process, namely the problem of what insights such work sets out to achieve. At times, the impression has arisen that it attempts to derive a phenomenology of historical emotions. To provide clarification on this point, some differences between the approaches of historiography and literary studies are first explained. Then, several methodological premises and areas of interest in a particular kind of work on emotions in medieval studies are considered in more detail and explained with the help of selected textual examples. The line of enquiry chosen here links the study of emotions to that of performativity; Austin's approach in particular has proved to be relevant to work on emotions from the perspectives of performativity and constructivism. For a long time, the relationship between literary characters and their emotions in the hands of medieval poets was understood in the tradition of Elias as one of passivity. The expression of emotions was described using terms such as ›release‹ and ›overwhelming‹. Work on emotions by medievalists, however, has revealed that emotions can be staged, shown, and brought to the surface. From the perspective of literary studies, furthermore, the insights pursued by medievalists in their work on emotions concern the cultural semantics and (special) logic of emotions, above all in fictional literature. This includes the study of how emotion and body and emotion and language are related, and of the social dynamics associated with emotions. With the help of the latter issue – which involves the social functioning, or performativity of emotions – it is possible to understand conflict scenarios and contexts of action in medieval texts in an entirely new way. Modern approaches to the theory of emotions can contribute to and complement such work. Relevant here is a concept of emotion based on social constructivism, according to which emotions are brought into being on a neurophysiological basis, as reactions to social situations that they evaluate at the same time, as well as being given expression in culturally governed ways. The assumption that there are cultural – and thus historical – conventions and styles for the expression of emotions is of crucial significance for work on emotions in medieval studies. It does not, however, provide a self-sufficient theoretical foundation that could be employed in the analysis of literature. Methodological reflection on what is meant by a particular emotion from the perspective of emotion theory should be included in analytical practice. In many cases, such as religious and secular drama and meditative tracts, as well as where courtly literature is concerned, investigating the presentation of emotions in literature also requires reflection on the cultural practices in which it is embedded. Moreover, although narrative texts have been at the forefront of attention to date, all genres and text types of medieval literature are potentially relevant – even those anchored in performance situations. Work on emotions in literary studies refers to emotions as having the nature of signs and codes. This is a way of saying that emotions and their functions in literary texts have the status of signifiers. It does not mean that the signs are being studied as representing emotions located outside them. Literary expressions of emotion can also be understood as signs in pragmatic and functional respects. This is particularly true of medieval texts that focus on modes of symbolic and non-verbal communication. Medieval literary texts contain established ways of expressing emotions and interacting by means of emotions; they are subject to rules that are not immediately obvious but can be reconstructed and described by means of analysis and interpretation. Applying the term ›code‹ in such cases does justice to this fact. The study of literature can also provide, for example, knowledge of the cultural encoding of emotions in samples of period-and genre-specific material. An analysis of emotions based on functional pragmatics can show the extent to which expressions of feeling do more than make the inner state of a character externally visible. Expressions of feeling carry out a social function and have an effect in time and space; this can be understood as the role they have as actions and their performative dimension. The concept of performativity has the fundamental conceptual advantage of allowing the pragmatic functions of emotions to be treated on different levels. An expression of feeling, for example, is illocutionary and carries out an action in that it makes an appeal, and perlocutionary and followed by an action in that it affects someone. The performativity of literature thus includes the extra-literary performativity of effect. The hypothesis that emotions are not only represented but also produced by literature provides a foundation for describing an intradiegetic level of composition. The emotional affects of characters can be described on this level, which can be analytically distinguished from an extradiegetic level on which those affects have the potential to extend to the recipient. As a level of literature, it is relevant to the analysis of the performativity of literary texts, and also offers a way to conceptualize the long-established assumption in medieval studies that discourses and mentalities are interdependent. These questions do not amount to treating the literary text as a document of real emotions that exist independently of it and are able to provide evidence of that existence. It is often believed that medieval texts contain only ›simple‹ emotions, or affects; in opposing this view, it is possible to cite the variety of emotional experience that in courtly literature, for example, takes many different forms. The transitoriness of emotional processes, their lack of ambiguity, and not least the connection of rational and emotional factors all form another important area of analysis where medieval texts are concerned. Poetic language would seem to prove itself at precisely those points where it is necessary to make present emotional states and processes that are not transparent, or not fully transparent, as such.


This paper deals with port competition and port selection for cargo to/from Austria. Austria is located centrally in Europe and seaports in at least five countries are used for imports and exports. Changes of market shares over time of different ports serving Austria are analysed. Switching of cargo between ports does take place, but friction prevents instantaneous switching. Consequently, it took a decade for the new potential of inland shipping to Austria, resulting from the opening of the Rhine-Main-Donau canal, was fully realised. A survey was held to analyse port choice decisions of two types of decision makers: shippers and forwarders. These results show shippers and forwarders have similar views on port selection, but shippers have a less price-elastic demand.


Conventional hierarchical key assignment schemes have not been concerned with a practical situation: Users might be assigned to a class for only a period of time. When a user leaves a class, the keys of that class and all the descendent classes must be renewed. For applications where the privileges of users change frequently or where there are many users, the communication load for key redistributions is very large. Recently, Tzeng (2002) proposed a time-bound hierarchical key assignment scheme to address this issue. However, Tzeng's scheme was very complex and suffered from a collusion attack. In this paper, we propose an efficient time-bound scheme based on a technique called merging. The idea behind merging is to consider primitive keys instead of hierarchies. It is conceptually like the compression used in source coding. Through this technique, it is feasible to combine multiple keys into an aggregate key. Thus, communication and storage requirements are greatly reduced. This technique can also be used for an alternative implementation of Akl-Taylor's scheme. Moreover, it can be used to construct a systematic approach for adjusting hierarchies in Akl-Taylor's scheme as well. Through the insights gained from these exercises, we may see that some problems that are usually addressed by the conventional key assignment schemes can be solved directly via merging, with better performance. Furthermore, if other suitable merging functions are found in the future, new secure hierarchical key assignment schemes and time-bound schemes is obtained accordingly.


Binary Decision Diagram (BDD)-based solution approaches and Markov chain based approaches are commonly used for the reliability analysis of multi-phase systems. These approaches either assume that every phase is static, and thus can be solved with combinatorial methods, or assume that every phase must be modeled via Markov methods. If every phase is indeed static, then the combinatorial approach is much more efficient than the Markov chain approach. But in a multi-phased system, using currently available techniques, if the failure criteria in even one phase is dynamic, then a Markov approach must be used for every phase. The problem with Markov chain based approaches is that the size of the Markov model can expand exponentially with an increase in the size of the system, and therefore becomes computationally intensive to solve. Two new concepts, phase module and module joint probability, are introduced in this paper to deal with the s-dependency among phases. We also present a new modular solution to nonrepairable dynamic multi-phase systems, which provides a combination of BDD solution techniques for static modules, and Markov chain solution techniques for dynamic modules. Our modular approach divides the multi-phase system into its static and dynamic subsystems, and solves them independently; and then combines the results for the solution of the entire system using the module joint probability method. A hypothetical example multi-phase system is given to demonstrate the modular approach.


In this paper, the problem of determining the quality level, lead time for order delivery and price of a product produced by a manufacturer is considered. In this problem the demand for the product is influenced by all three decision variables: price, lead time and quality level. To formulate the demand function, a fuzzy rule base that estimates the demand value based on the three decision variables is developed. To doso, the linguistic knowledge of experts in the form of if-then rules is used to establish the fuzzy system. Moreover, in order to solve the problem, a genetic algorithm integrating the fuzzy rule base is proposed. Finally, to support the validity of the proposed solution, a numerical study is provided.


ABSTRACT Elango, N. and Arul, C., 2023. Ecosystem-based disaster management planning for the eastern coast of India. Journal of Coastal Research, 39(1), 83–89. Charlotte (North Carolina), ISSN 0749-0208. The coastal zone of India is endowed with abundant coastal and marine ecosystems. India is also highly prone to natural calamities, especially floods, droughts, cyclones, and landslides. This study aims to highlight the importance of the ecosystem services along the east coast of India and incorporate the value of these resources at the planning stage of disaster management at all levels. A survey was conducted with experts at the national level who have an understanding of the existing disaster management plans along the coast of Tamil Nadu state. To understand the importance of ecosystem-based disaster risk reduction at the decision-making and planning level, further analysis was carried out in monetization of ecosystem services. The total value of ecosystem services was obtained as the product of landuse area and the value of ecosystem services. From the overall critical analysis and the initial online survey, it was inferred that ecosystem-based approaches to disaster risk reduction and managing climate change hold much promise and that investing in healthy ecosystems provides a viable route for sustainable development. There needs to be a shift from relying on structural engineering solutions to increased acceptance of social engineering approaches through consensus-building with disaster-affected communities. Despite the structural and nonstructural measures being implemented in lieu of disaster management, there is still a lacuna in effective implementation, as inferred from the study. Robust actions are needed at the planning stage, for which the adoption of ecosystem-based approaches with localised resources and knowledge would be an inclusive approach.


During the 1990s, the working class has become the core clientele of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe. This article empirically examines the motives of workers for supporting a right-wing populist party. Based on data from the European Social Survey for Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, and Switzerland, three different sets of explanations are tested: (1) hypotheses stressing economic determinants, that is, the fear of wage pressure and competition over welfare benefits; (2) hypotheses emphasizing cultural determinants, that is, the perception of immigration as a threat to national identity; and (3) hypotheses focusing on social alienation, that is, dissatisfaction with the way the country's democracy works and the nonintegration into intermediary networks (trade unions). We find questions of community and identity to be clearly more important than economic grievances. Hence, in Austria and Switzerland, the electoral success of right-wing populist parties among workers seems primarily due to cultural protectionism: the defense of national identity against outsiders. In Belgium, France, and Norway, cultural protectionism is complemented by deep-seated discontent with the way the countries' democracies work.


ABSTRACT Investigation of whether, how, and why inequality influences the dynamics of violent conflict has a long intellectual history. Inequality between individuals and households (vertical inequality) has dominated the literature, but recently attention has shifted to the role of group-based inequalities in triggering violence. Our review of research on the relationship between conflict mobilisation and violence, and "horizontal inequality" (inequalities based on group identities such as ethnicity, region, and religion) reveals solid support for the argument that high levels of horizontal economic and political inequalities among the relatively deprived make violent conflict more likely.


The propagation of an input field through tilted and curved surfaces is presented and applied for a field tracing routine. This routine employs a ray tracing method for optimal coordinate customization, which is done due to the strong linear phase terms that arise because of tilted coordinates on one hand and the possibility of an application of fast numerical routines on the other. Several methods are proposed on how to optimize the field sampling during the propagation process, as for the astigmatic phase front problem and the curvature of the surface itself. Two solution methods are given to propagate from the curved surface through the homogeneous space to another two-dimensional submanifold. The approach is fully vectorial, Maxwell exact excluding only surface curvature terms for the Fresnel coefficients. A simple numerical propagation example is given.


The deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) base composition and DNA homologies of more than 40 strains of oxidase-negative Moraxella species were determined. These bacteria have also been identified as belonging to the Mima-Herellea-Acinetobacter group and the Bacterium anitratum group, as well as to several other genera including Achromobacter and Alcaligenes. The DNA base content of these strains ranged from 40 to 46% guanine plus cytosine. DNA-DNA competition experiments distinguished five groups whose members were determined by showing 50% or more homology to one of the reference strains: B. anitratum type B5W, Achromobacter haemolyticus var. haemolyticus, Alcaligenes haemolysans, Achromobacter metalcaligenes, and Moraxella lwoffi. A sixth group comprised those strains showing less than 50% homology to any of the reference strains. Negligible homology was found between strains of oxidase-negative and oxidase-positive Moraxella species in DNADNA competition experiments. However, evidence of a distant relationship between the two groups was obtained in competition experiments by using ribosomal ribonucleic acid.


Introduction: Paediatric lupus is an autoimmune disorder most commonly affecting adolescent females. Various studies regarding paediatric lupus have been reported across the world. Objective: To study the clinical and immunological features of SLE along with treatment modalities and the response at the end of one year follow up. Relationship between the types of autoantibodies and probability of systemic involvement is also assessed. Method: A prospective and retrospective observational study was carried out in the Paediatric Department of a tertiary care hospital from January 2010 to July 2016.  Subjects included children from 1 month to 18 years of age fulfilling the 1997 American College of Rheumatology criteria for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Results: Study population included 44 children fulfilling the criteria. Among them 10 were in the prospective group and 34 in the retrospective group. Female: male ratio was 4.5:1. Median age at diagnosis was 13.2 years (interquartile range 11.2-14.6). Presenting features were constitutional in 86.4%, musculoskeletal in 72.7%, renal in 65.9%, haematological in 63.6%, muco-cutaneous in 61.3%, central nervous system in 36.3% and serositis in 25% children. Anaemia was the commonest haematological abnormality and was found in 75% of children. Hypocomplementaemia was seen in 100% of children. All subjects were positive for antinuclear antibodies. Anti-double stranded DNA (77.2%) was the most commonly observed autoantibody profile followed by anti-ribosomal P protein (47.7%) and anti-ribonucleoprotein (43.1%). During follow up of 36 children, 19 (52.7%) children attained complete remission, 8 (22.3%) went into partial remission and 9 (25%) had persisting active disease. During the study period 13 of 44 children (29.5%) succumbed either to the active disease process or to complication of SLE. Conclusions: The clinical presentation and course of progression of the disease varies depending on the age of onset and the organ system involved. Low complement levels indicate activation of the disease especially lupus nephritis. Sri Lanka Journal of Child of Child Health, 2019; 48(3): 201-207


A joke's a very serious thing - Charles Churchill, "The Ghost", 1762/3. "The Cock Lane Ghost" is the true story of a series of events that took place in London in the 1760s. Businessman, William Kent fell foul of a powerful Norfolk family when he eloped with their daughter, Frances Lynes. The couple fled to London and took lodging in Cock Lane. When Frances died, a mysterious ghostly conspiracy against Kent began, gathering so much momentum that it almost led to him being hung for murder. At the heart of the affair was a story of sexual infatuation, conspiracy, accusations of murder and rape and the alleged return of the victim from beyond the grave to point out her killer. The case aroused huge popular curiosity, was subject to the insatiable spinning of London's early newspaper industry and ultimately involved figures such as Dr Samuel Johnson. Paul Chambers brings to life the story of the Cock Lane ghost - a scandal whose effect on society was such that the term Cock Lane was still synonymous with folly, superstition and corruption 150 years later.


Objective: Road traffic injury (RTI) has become one of the leading causes of deaths in China, yet numbers on road traffic deaths are often inconsistent. This study sought to systematically review 4 national-level data sources that can be used to estimate burdens of RTI, including mortality, injury, and crashes in China. Methods: We conducted structured literature reviews in PubMed, using combined key words of injury or fatality or injury surveillance and traffic and China in order to identify relevant studies (in both English and Chinese) and data sources. We also conducted interviews and hosted seminars with key researchers from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) to identify potential useful data sources for injury surveillance. We then extracted key information from publicly available reports of each data source. Results: Four national-level data sources were reviewed and compared: Ministry of Health-Vital Registration (MOH-VR) System, Chinese CDC-Disease Surveillance Points (DSP), Chinese CDC-National Injury Surveillance System (NISS), and police reports. Together they provide a complementary yet somewhat contradictory epidemiological profile of RTIs in China. Estimates on road traffic fatalities obtained from MOH-VR and police reports are often used by researchers and policymakers, whereas DSP and NISS, both with great merits, have virtually not been used for RTI research. Despite the well-documented problems of underreported deaths with both MOH-VR and DSP, estimated road traffic deaths from both systems were 3 times those reported by the police. Conclusions: As the foundation of injury prevention, national-level data sources and surveillance systems were reviewed in the study. Existing data infrastructures present the Chinese government a great opportunity to strengthen and integrate existing surveillance systems to better track road traffic injury and fatality and identify the population at risk.


We numerically investigate the evolution of compact high-velocity clouds (CHVCs) passing through a hot, tenuous gas representing the highly ionized circumgalactic medium (CGM) by applying the adaptive-mesh refinement code flash. The model clouds start from both hydrostatic and thermal equilibrium and are in pressure balance with the CGM. Here, we present 14 models, divided into two mass categories and two metallicities each and different velocities. We allow for self-gravity and thermal conduction or not. All models experience mass diffusion, radiative cooling, and external heating leading to dissociation and ionization. Our main findings are (1) self-gravity stabilizes clouds against Rayleigh–Taylor instability, which is disrupted within 10 sound-crossing times without; (2) clouds can develop Jeans-instable regions internally even though they are initially below Jeans mass; (3) all clouds lose mass by ram pressure and Kelvin–Helmholtz instability; (4) thermal conduction substantially lowers mass-loss rates, by this, extending the clouds' lifetimes, particularly, more than doubling the lifetime of low-mass clouds; (5) thermal conduction leads to continuous, filamentary stripping, while the removed gas is heated up quickly and mixes efficiently with the ambient CGM; (6) without thermal conduction the removed gas consists of dense, cool, clumpy fragments; (7) thermal conduction might prevent CHVCs from forming stars; and (8) clouds decelerated by means of drag from the ambient CGM form head-tail shapes and collapse after they reach velocities characteristic for intermediate-velocity clouds. Conclusively, only sophisticated modelling of CHVCs as non-homogeneous and non-isothermal clouds with thermal conduction and self-gravity explains observed morphologies and naturally leads to the suppression of star formation.


The possible differences between organic and conventional plant products are examined from the view of possible effects on human health. It is concluded that nutritionally important differences relating to contents of minerals, vitamins, protein and carbohydrates are not likely, primarily since neither of these are deficient in typical first world diets, nor are present levels of pesticide residues in conventional products cause for concern. However, there is reason to believe that contents of many defence related secondary metabolites in the diet are lower than optimal for human health, even for those where too high levels are known to be harmful. High biological activity resulting in adverse effects on growth of animals and children may be directly linked with promotion of longevity. There is ample, but circumstantial, evidence than on average organic vegetables and fruit most likely contain more of these compounds than conventional ones, allowing for the possibility that organic plant foods may in fact benefit human health more than corresponding conventional ones. The authors define testable scientific hypotheses, which should be further investigated to provide more definitive answers to the question.


This paper presents the findings of a convergent parallel mixed methods research that was carried out to explore the views of student-teachers on how geometry was taught and the confidence of those student-teachers in teaching geometry to secondary school learners when they will become professionally qualified. Respondents were randomly selected from two Colleges of Education in Burundi. Although the study was predominantly quantitative, some qualitative data were also collected to gain deeper insights into the prevailing situation. Ninety-seven pre-service teachers of Mathematics from the said institutions completed the questionnaire whose items were closed-ended except for one that was open-ended. Results show that the teacher-centered approach had dominated geometry classes in their respective secondary schools. Nevertheless, student-teachers exhibited higher confidence in teaching geometry. These findings provide evidence on the need for teacher education programs to consider embedding instructional and assessment approaches designed for specific branches of mathematics.


Using captopril (C), an angiotensin (ANG) I converting-enzyme inhibitor, to increase endogenous prostaglandins (PGs) and to decrease endogenous ANG II synthesis, we studied the relationship between endogenous ANG II, PG, and antidiuretic hormone (ADH) release in seven normal volunteers before (control study) and after inhibition of PG synthesis by a single dose of aspirin (ASA study). In the control study, following the administration of 100 mg of C, there was a significant increase of plasma PGE2, plasma-renin activity (PRA), and urinary PGE2 and 6-keto-PGF1 alpha and a decrease of plasma ADH. Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and renal plasma flow (RPF) were unaffected by C; urine output, fractional sodium excretion (FENa), and osmolal clearance (Cosmol) increased; and urinary osmolality (Uosmol) decreased significantly after C. In the ASA study PG were undetectable in plasma and significantly reduced in urine 1 h after aspirin and did not increase when C was added. Plasma ADH decreased and PRA increased, as in the control study, after C, whereas GFR, RPF, urine output, FENa, Cosmol, and Uosmol were unchanged. These results suggest that the effect of C on ADH release may be mediated, to a large extent, by a fall in endogenous circulating ANG II, since ADH decreased in the presence of both high or undetectable levels of PGE2. The results also suggest that the increase in PGE2 induced by C may precipitate the diuretic and natriuretic effects of acute C administration.


The role of the maternal environment in the development of hypertension in spontaneously hypertensive (SHR) rats was evaluated using the technique of reciprocal cross fostering. Litters of SHR and Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) normotensive pups were either reared by their natural mothers, in fostered to mothers of the same strain, or cross fostered to mothers of the opposite strain shortly after birth. Litters were weaned at 21 days of age, at which time all pups were weighed. At 18-20 wk of age, resting mean arterial blood pressures (MAP) and heart rates were determined for male subjects from the six groups (2 strains X 3 rearing conditions) via an indwelling tail artery catheter. At weaning, SHR animals weighed less than WKY animals. SHRs fostered to WKY mothers were significantly heavier than control SHRs, and WKYs fostered to SHR mothers were significantly lighter than WKY controls at weaning. These body weight differences were also evident in adulthood. Cross fostering SHR pups to normotensive WKY mothers resulted in a dramatic reduction in resting MAP measured in adulthood. Conversely, cross fostering WKY pups to SHR mothers had no measurable effect on adult resting MAP. We propose that an interaction between characteristics of the SHR maternal environment and a genetic susceptibility in SHR pups is essential in triggering the full expression of the hypertensive phenotype in this animal model of human essential hypertension.


A proverb goes that education is the backbone of a nation. No nation can step up without educating the nation. Quality education is achieved by the better academic performance of the students. Indeed, the university is the tertiary education where the undergraduate students are enrolled to appropriate academic excellence that can be transformed to better the nation. There are a variety of positive and negative factors that affect the academic performance of undergraduate students. Here, this study endeavors to identify the success and failure factors influencing the academic performance of Rabindra University, Bangladesh. In doing so, this study is conducted based on primary data. Convenient and cluster random sampling method has been used. Two different questionnaires and opinionnaire are developed for both students and faculties as the instruments of data collection and the 4-point Likert scale of measurement is used to analyze the responses. The findings show that regular attendance, regular study, hard work, dedication & self-Confidence and Support by family members and others have a high impact on the academic performance of undergraduate students. On the other hand, insufficient effort in studying, lack of interest in the subject, the noisy and unfriendly environment in the institution influence inversely. This result will surely help the students, faculties and administration to design policies convenient for the education system of the university and the nation as a whole.


Mining Software Repositories (MSR) has opened up new pathways and rich sources of data for research and practical purposes. This research discipline facilitates mining data from open source repositories and analyzing software defects, development activities, processes, patterns, and more. Contemporary mining tools are geared towards data extraction, analysis primarily from textual artifacts and have limitations in representation, ranking and availability. This paper presents ModelMine, a novel mining tool focuses on mining model-based artifacts and designs from open source repositories. ModelMine is designed particularly to mine software repositories, artifacts and commit history to uncover information about software designs and practices in open-source communities. ModelMine supports features that include identification and ranking of open source repositories based on the extent of presence of model-based artifacts and querying repositories to extract models and design artifacts based on customizable criteria. It supports phase-by-phase caching of intermediate results to speed up the processing to enable efficient mining of data. We compare ModelMine against a state-of-the-art tool named PyDriller in terms of performance and usability. The results show that ModelMine has the potential to become instrumental for cross-disciplinary research that combines modeling and design with repository mining and artifacts extraction. URL: https://www.smreza.com/projects/modelmine/


Recent advances in fractal theory may be applicable to the characterization of soil structure. This study explored two such applications. Aggregates were assumed to be approximated by cubes of constant dry density. Under this condition, the fractal dimension, D, provides a measure of fragmentation. The value of D increases with increasing fragmentation. The influence of energy input (wet sieving) on the D of aggregates from a Conestogo silt loam soil (finesilty, mixed, mesic Aquic Eutrocrept) was investigated. Aggregates were obtained from five cropping treatments, ranging from 15 yr of continuous corn (Zea mays L.) to 15 yr of continuous bromegrass (Bromus inermis Leyss.). The value of D was estimated from cumulative size-frequency distribution data plotted on a log-log scale. Computed values of D ranged from 2.51 to 3.52. Energy input, cropping history, and their interaction all had a significant effect on D. Fragmentation increased with energy input and time under corn production. Relations between D and the breakdown of individual aggregates were investigated. A scale-invariant breakdown model was developed and tested. The model permits calculation of apparent probabilities of failure, P, as a function of aggregate size, x. Stepwise multiple regression analysis selected the rate of change in P with x as the best predictor of D following energy input. Fractal theory offers potential for modeling aggregate breakdown, as well as characterizing the degree of fragmentation.


We extend earlier work on minimum phase attenuation models in discrete-time signal processing to the continuous time setting, where real physical processes occur. This includes the propagation of seismic energy through the earth and allows for the modelling of attenuation processes. Minimum phase signals are characterized by an energy condition, equivalent to an outer function identification in the complex half-plane. Certain physical processes preserve the minimum phase property, and as such, the operators must arise mathematically as productconvolution operators of a very restrictive form. The basic mathematical model shows Q-attenuation arises as a simple consequence of the minimum phase preservation property for seismic signal propagation. In contrast to stationary filter processes, in Q-attenuation, not one but two data measurements are necessary for a complete determination of the attenuation characteristics. But only two.


The genomes of B. pertussis bacteriophages 134 and 41405 and B. bronchiseptica bacteriophage 214 have been studied. As revealed by the methods of heteroduplex and restriction analyses, the populations of these bacteriophages are heterogeneous and their DNAs differ in size and location of inserts. The study carried out with the use of blot hybridization techniques has shown that in lysogenic cells the genome is not integrated into the chromosome, but exists as an autonomous plasmid replicon. Only partial incorporation of the phage genome into the recipient chromosome takes place in the process of conversion, the phage genome continuing its existence as an autonomous replicon.


Postmodern is a breeding effort, epistemological innovation, so anthropology becomes more adaptive and productive. This can be demonstrated through the application of his theory in practice and philanthropy models. This paper aims to describe the history of philanthropy in terms of the perspective of postmodern theory. The results of the literature review indicate that at first the emergence of the philanthropy movement was the way of the rulers of the time to maintain the stability of public security by providing assistance to the community, but in the postmodern period turned into non-profit social institutions or institutions that serve as mediators of donors to the needy. Philanthropy, initially only in the form of goods aimed at relieving and meeting the needs of a deficient society, in the postmodern era can develop into donor body parts, smiles and even empathy can be referred to as philanthropy. Alms that were originally human goods, the postmodern expanded that spread the science, moving the masses can also be called philanthropy.


To provide fundamental insights into the response of laminar flames to alternating current (AC) electric fields, a simplified one-dimensional model using an ionised layer model is formulated with the conservation equations for the ion species with ionisation, recombination, and transport due to molecular diffusion and electric mobility. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the response of the ion layer at different voltages and oscillation frequencies, and the results are examined mainly in terms of the net current–voltage (I–V) characteristics. As the oscillation frequency is increased, a nonmonotonic response in the I–V curve is seen such that the current may exceed the saturation condition corresponding to the steady DC condition. In general the current reaches a peak as the unsteady time scale becomes comparable to the ion transport time scale, which is dictated by the mobility, and eventually becomes attenuated at higher frequencies to behave like a low-pass filter. The extent of the peak current rise and the cut-off frequency are found to depend on the characteristic time scales of the ion chemistry and mobility-induced transport. The simplified model serves as a framework to characterise the behaviour of complex flames in terms of the dominant ionisation and transport processes. The current overshoot behaviour may also imply that the overall effect of the electric field may be further magnified under the AC conditions, motivating further studies of multi-dimensional flames for the ionic wind effects.


This dissertation used multiple historical case studies to examine the emergence of contemporary art within Kenya's problematic post-independence context of imagining a nation. It fills an important gap by ethnographically unveiling how local artists culturally constructed their agency by contesting President's Mzee Jomo Kenyatta's Harambee era (1963-1978) and Daniel arap Moi's Nyayo era (1978-2002). In particular, it unveiled the State's populist reconstruction of KANU nationalism and its history by specific art and heritage objects.
Local artists responded to such political conditions ushered by Mzee Kenyatta's KANU government's indigenization of political power hence, re-invention of Kenyan modernity and national heritage by forging relations between populist politics and Nairobi's popular culture. Moi's KANU regime and its acquisition of Kenya's second Vice President, Joseph Murumbi's huge African art collection and private archives in 1978, redefined such power relations by transforming its preservation and representation at the KNA as national heritage. This followed what his predecessor silenced as Kenyans' emerging private and popular archives within rural and urban public spheres. Specifically, the popular visual signage shaping Kenyan matatus or paratransit public service vehicles as well as their imaginary depiction in popular songs, contributed to a thickening of oppositional political discourses nationally circulating as collective public images or taswira within emerging national public spaces impacting Kenyan art.
Local rural artists such as John Diang'a unveilled a cultural metaphor in Western Kenya interpreting and mediating contested cultural boundaries and border between Luo and Luhyia ethnic communities at Maseno. Other self-taught artists such as former Mau Mau, Edward Njenga and Samwel Wanjau circulated urban imaginaries related to the growth of informal Nairobi city thereby conveying their everday critical observation of urban poverty and past memories respectively in what was unknown as their views about Kenyans' past in the present. Younger artists such as Richard Onyango and sign-painter, Joseph Ngatia as well as Sisi kwa Sisi artists, however, radically transformed their own versions of a people's art, by metaphorically altering public perceptions about Kenyans' everyday social and political inequalities within Kenyan modernity. Such registered everyday historical consciousness survived within President Moi's punitive KANU era from the late 1970's to the early 1990's. Upon this backdrop, Ruth Schaffner's patronage and international promortion of village-based artists at Gallery Watatu enabled their transformation of such popular historical consciousness. This led to a re-birthing of self-taught artists politically conscious of their generation of postcolonial identities within varied peri-urban and rural societal democratization struggles. Gallery Watatu thus produced such artists as Sane Wadu in Ngecha village, Limuru and Joel Oswaggo representing a rural migrant signpainter from Kisumu. They culturally inverted and bridged the divides between the political and the popular, rural and urban, as well as local gallery based art practices and internationally promoted forms of Kenyan contemporary art in the early 1990's.


Worldwide trend towards the use of natural plant remedies has created an enormous need for information about the properties and uses of medicinal plant as antitumor, antianalgesic, insecticides. Besides medicines, plants provides thousands of novel compounds, such as fragrance, flavorings, dyes, fibers, food, beverages, etc. Rose flowers are beautiful having exquisite shape, size, diverse colours with delightful fragrance. Rose is the best cut flowers and as such is in great demand in both domestic as well as in international markets. It is reported to possess anticancer, anti-aging, laxative/purgative, hypolipidemic, antidiabetic, antibacterial and antimicrobial activities. The present study was undertaken to analyse the nutrient composition, Phytonutrient constituents and antioxidant activity of the dried Rose petals. The Nutrients namely Carbohydrate, Protein, Fat, Moisture, Ash, Crude Fiber, Calcium, Iron and Vitamin C was estimated in the dried Rose petals powder by standard procedures. Preliminary qualitative phytochemical analysis was carried out by standard procedures to identify the secondary metabolites like alkaloids, flavonoids, saponins, phenols, glycosides, carbohydrates, tannins, steroids and terpenoids present in the different solvent extracts of dried Rose petals powder. Tests were done in triplicates and interpretation was made. DPPH method was used to find the antioxidant activity. Nutrient composition of the dried rose petals powder 84.5% of moisture, 0.4g of ash, 70.4g of carbohydrate, 0.5 g of protein, 0.2g of fat,1.2g of crude fibre, 0.2mg of Vitamin C, 3.7mg of Iron and 120mg of Calcium. Rose petals powder had high quality of phytochemicals and antioxidant activity.


"Peer-to-peer" systems like Napster and Gnutella have recently become popular for sharing information. In this paper, we study the relevant issues and tradeoffs in designing a scalable P2P system. We focus on a subset of P2P systems, known as "hybrid" P2P, where some functionality is still centralized. (In Napster, for example, indexing is centralized, and file exchange is distributed.) We model a file-sharing application, developing a probabilistic model to describe query behavior and expected query result sizes. We also develop an analytic model to describe system performance. Using experimental data collected from a running, publicly available hybrid P2P system, we validate both models. We then present several hybrid P2P system architectures and evaluate them using our model. We discuss the tradeoffs between the architectures and highlight the effects of key parameter values on system performance.


Instructional leadership is a concept in which a principal's management emphases on academic or instructional improvement. It is the principal leadership siding with academic affairs. Conventionally, school principals play the role as managers or administrators. Whereas the role of instructional leadership is delegated to other parties such as vice principal for curriculum affairs. Most educators and scholars agree that instructional leadership needs to be practiced if effective schools are to be realized. To be an instructional leader, it is necessary for a principal to have expertise in curriculum, instruction and assessment. Since most principals lack of skills on instructional leadership practices, instructional leadership training for principals is badly needed.


The overall purpose of the study among 122 UK working individuals was to examine whether challenge and hindrance demands impact overall work engagement levels and if different personality traits increase or decrease the levels of work engagement when faced with these demands. This study aims to re-validate that past research by examining if challenge demands will have a positive relationship with work engagement and hindrance demands will be negative relationship with work engagement. Furthermore, it extends the understanding of the framework by adding a new line of research which aims to examine if extraversion and conscientiousness personality traits will increase overall work engagement levels when faced with challenge demands and neuroticism will decrease overall work engagement levels when faced with hindrance demands. Moderated multiple regression was carried out to test the hypotheses. Results showed that challenge demands were indeed positively related to overall work engagement, however while hindrance demands were negatively related, the findings were not significant. Moreover the interaction of demands and personality traits did not impact overall work engagement levels as hypothesised. Taken together, the findings only partially supported the two dimensional framework of challenge and hindrance demands. The interaction of challenge and hindrance demands and personality did not influence work engagement levels. Considering past research has not explored personality as a moderator in the relationship between challenge and hindrance demands and work engagement, this study has contributed a new line of research in this field. Future studies should consider narrower facets of personality and homogeneous occupational settings to understand the relevance of demands in those particular settings, considering demands may not be the same for all occupations and individuals.


Abstract. Studies of surface water–groundwater interactions using fiber optic distributed temperature sensing (FO-DTS) has increased in recent years. However, only a few studies to date have explored the limitations of FO-DTS in detecting groundwater discharge to streams. A FO_DTS system was therefore tested in a flume under controlled laboratory conditions for its ability to accurately measure the discharge of hot or cold groundwater into a simulated surface water flow. In the experiment the surface water (SW) and groundwater (GW) velocities, expressed as ratios (vgw/vsw), were varied from 0.21% to 61.7%; temperature difference between SW-GW were varied from 2 to 10 °C; the direction of temperature gradient were varied with both cold and-hot water injection; and two different bed materials were used to investigate their effects on FO_DTS's detection limit of groundwater discharge. The ability of the FO_DTS system to detect the discharge of groundwater of a different temperature in the laboratory environment was found to be mainly dependent upon the surface and groundwater flow velocities and their temperature difference. A correlation was proposed to estimate the groundwater discharge from temperature. The correlation is valid when the ratio of the apparent temperature response to the source temperature difference is above 0.02.


BACKGROUND
Research conducted during the COVID-19 Pandemic has identified two co-occurring public health concerns: loneliness and substance use. Findings from research conducted prior to the pandemic are inconclusive as to the links between loneliness and substance use. This study aimed to measure associations of loneliness with three different types of substance use during COVID-19: daily number of alcoholic drinks, cannabis use, and non-cannabis drug use.

METHOD
Data were obtained between October 2020 and May 2021 from 2,648 US adults (Mage  = 38.76, 65.4% women) diverse with respect to race and ethnicity using online recruitment. Participants completed baseline surveys and daily assessments for 30 days. A daily loneliness measure was recoded into separate within- and between-person predictor variables. Daily outcome measures included the number of alcoholic drinks consumed and dichotomous cannabis and non-cannabis drug use variables. Generalized linear multilevel models (GLMLM) were used to examine within- and between-person associations between loneliness and substance use.

RESULTS
The unconditional means model indicated that 59.0% of the variance in the daily number of alcoholic drinks was due to within-person variability. GLMLM analyses revealed that, overall, people drank more on days when they felt a particularly high or particularly low degree of loneliness (positive quadratic effect). There was a negative and significant within-person association between daily loneliness and the likelihood of cannabis use. There was also a positive and significant within-person association between daily loneliness and the likelihood of non-cannabis drug use.

CONCLUSIONS
Associations between loneliness and substance use vary with substance type and whether within- or between-person differences are assessed. These findings are relevant to the persistence of substance use disorders and thus of potential clinical importance. Individuals who do not experience severe loneliness at intake but who show daily increases in loneliness above baseline levels are at heightened risk of alcohol and non-cannabis drug use. Future research could profitably examine just-in-time adaptive interventions that assess fluctuations in loneliness to prevent the development or exacerbation of substance use disorders.


The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the ways in which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Ottoman authorities, on the one hand, and Jewish community leaders (secular leaders) and Jewish legal authorities (dayanim), on the other, handled cases of adultery and fornication among Jews. Ottoman society between 1700-1900 was a religious society, and therefore all members of the Jewish communities were subject to the Jewish communal organization and committed to the observance of Jewish law. Jewish communities in the Ottoman Empire had ways to force their members to obey Jewish sexual morality laws. Jewish communities had to address in the Jewish courts, most of the problems of Jewish society, including moral issues, both serious and minor. They used for this purpose all means available to them, including turning to the Ottoman authorities. Jewish law, in contrast to Islamic law, differentiates between the concepts of "adultery" and "fornication". For this and other reasons, the Jewish authorities preferred to resolve such cases on their own, and only when there was no alternative would they turn over those accused to the Ottoman authorities -- Muslim courts and governors. Most Jewish women in the Ottoman Empire suspected of adultery during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not denounced by the Jewish courts ( as adulterers. In cases in which adultery by the wife was certain, Jewish dayanim and community leaders insisted that the husband divorce his wife, without submitting the woman to any other form of punishment. In extreme cases when the husband insisted on staying with his adulterous wife, the dayanim and the community leaders turned him over to Muslim courts or to Ottoman authorities. In such cases the Jewish courts did not keep the matter secret. The handing over of adulterers to Ottoman authorities took place also when the accused couple refused to comply with the orders of the Jewish court, or when a report from the Jewish community came to the attention of the non-Jews. In some cases, individuals appealed directly to the Ottoman authorities with the request that Jewish adulterers be punished.When they were turned over, Jewish adulterers, men and women, were frequently punished by a Muslim court or by Ottoman governors and their subordinates according to Islamic law. The regular punishments were brutal lashes, exile and fine. The overall incidence of sexual offenses as a basis for divorce was quite low in Jewish communities throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It appears that among the reasons adduced for divorce, adultery, prostitution and ill repute accounted for only 2-5% of the cases. It appears that sexual relations between unmarried men and women was more common than adultery. The Jewish authorities were asked to intervene only in problematic cases, such as those involving a man's refusal to marry the mother of his future child, or instances in which someone complained in the Jewish court or before the commissioners of offences that the woman was a fornicator.Extant sources inform us that problems of low-level sexual immorality came up even in the most conservative communities, such as Aleppo. Under these circumstances, some communities enacted modesty rules and regulations. Jewish legal authorities -- dayanim and Jewish law deciders (posekim) were called upon to address the issue of the status of children born as a result of extramarital relations.In general, children begotten by unmarried couples did not pose a Halakhic problem because they were considered legal according to Jewish law and were not considered bastards (Mamzer) Very few cases are attested in which the father's name was not available. Once born, the child in such a case would be referred to as "shtoki" among the Jews and was only permitted to marry a convert or a slave who had been freed from bondage. Extramarital pregnancy did not necessarily lead to punishment for unmarried women in Jewish society. Cases of this type were typically not turned over to the Ottoman authorities; rarely were children born of adulterous unions declared bastards in Jewish society.


The following article deals with the quality control program proposed since 1988 to the French laboratories performing the measurement of cyclosporine concentration in whole blood or in plasma. First, we describe how the program was organized and its evolution over time. Second, we discuss the main results generated. Those results enable us to state positively that the methods in use at present in the laboratories are precise and give highly reproducible results.


Suspensions consisting of polymer-shelled microspheres are finding increasing use in a diverse range of technologies or applications, e.g. in the medical field, such as diagnostic imaging, drug and gene delivery and tissue engineering. In this work, a solution of water-insoluble polymethylsilsesquioxane was perfused through the outer needle of a co-axial needle arrangement while air was passed simultaneously through the inner needle, with both needles placed in an electric field. The liquid and air flow rates were varied but at 5 µl s−1 for each material stable microbubble formation was achieved at 5.7 kV. The microbubbles were collected in a vial of distilled water and they rapidly converted into polymer-shelled microspheres containing ∼60 wt% liquid. Microscopic examination of the spheres within 300 s of preparation showed a large population of near-spherical polymer-shelled microspheres with a mean size of 6 ± 2 μm diameter near the water surface. After 48 h, the microspheres had collected at the bottom of the vial. The fact that the microspheres absorbed and encapsulated the liquid in which they were collected and the fact that their size (< 10 μm) is suitable for vascular administration make this a new one-step preparation technology for microspheres used in biomedical applications.


The dependence receptor notion was based on the observation that the effects of a number of receptors that function in both nervous system development and tumorigenesis (especially metastasis) cannot be explained simply by a positive effect of signal transduction induced by ligand binding. Receptors such as the common neurotrophin receptor p75NTR, the androgen receptor (AR), DCC (deleted in colorectal cancer), and RET (rearranged during transfection) demonstrate effects that are more adequately explained when these are considered to be dependence receptors. These receptors show two distinct forms of signal transduction depending on their respective ligand availability: in the presence of their ligands, they transduce a signal for either proliferation or differentiation; however, they are not inactive in the absence of their ligands, but rather induce an active signal for cell death. Such receptors thus create a cellular state of dependence on their ligands, the loss of ligand availability inducing cell suicide or enhancing the likelihood of cellular suicide. This new concept is reviewed here enlightening the molecular mechanisms of these receptors and their potential relevance in vivo in the development of the nervous system and in the control of tumorigenesis.


Chatbots are software agents that interact with the user in a conversation. The main goal of their creation was to resemble a human being in the way they perform said interaction, trying to make the user think he/she is writing to another human being. This has been implemented with varying degrees of success. One of the most popular languages for the definition of a chatbot knowledge base is AIML.This thesis focuses on the implementation of an AIML interpreter written in Javascript to allow for a web-based client-side specific usage of AIML chatbots. The interpreter must guarantee the compliance of properly formed AIML documents, perform all the necessary pre-processing duties for the correct usage of the chatbot and ensure the correctness of both pattern matching of user input and chatbot response.The interpreter fully exploits the DOM tree manipulation functions of the jQuery library to achieve said goals, treating AIML files as if they were normal XML files. The result is a well performing, fully functional AIML interpreter tailored around AIML 1.0 specification.


International law has not acquitted itself well when invoked to assist in the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Imprecisely-articulated claims and interests framed in terms of charges and counter-charges of terrorism, respective rights to self-determination, sovereignty and illegal uses of force fail to capture the complexity of reality. Juxtaposing international law's stencil-like approach to this very complex reality illuminates the law's limitations. The law is inhibited by a restricted recognition of sources of legitimacy, rooted in the ethnocentric secularism of the American and Western European powers controlling its development. This article argues that despite its apparent shortcomings, international law is of some utility in relation to the Jerusalem problem. In this context, the word "utility" is used in the sense of both functional and conceptual utility. Functional utility informs the understanding that international law is not an Austinian system of "order backed by threats", but a mechanism that seeks to induce state compliance with international norms. "Compliance" does not denote blind obeisance by Israelis and Palestinians to a pre-existing set of black-letter rules labelled "international law". Certain international norms do apply to this conflict, with the primary ones discussed in this article. However, it is argued that international law is a tool for interest accommodation, as opposed to conflict resolution. Resolution connotes a final answer to the Jerusalem problem. This is impossible, since claims to the city are based not merely on legal arguments, but are closely associated with religious assertions that cannot be conclusively adjudicated in a pluralistic world. Accommodation, on the other hand, connotes the simultaneous recognition of disparate claims, with the aim of constructing a framework for peaceful co-existence.


4D modeling has been an applied research area for around two decades since the first seminal works. In the last years, a number of case studies have been published both for demonstrating the various applications of 4D and for assessing technological propositions. However, in most papers only little place is given to the particular content of 4D models. In parallel, following the growing implementation of Building Information Modelling, 4D is usually recognized as a "BIM use". In BIM protocols, the Level Of Development of datasets is a fundamental issue. This paper describes two distinct 4D uses conducted on a single pilot project. They aim to assess the levels of graphical and temporal details required for the implemented uses. The authors finally discuss the diversity of 4D uses with 4D models, both planned or ad-hoc, as well as the logical understanding related to 4D LOD.


In this paper we compare the effects of applying various state-of-the-art word representation strategies in the task of multi-word expression (MWE) identification. In particular, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the usage of `1-regularized sparse word embeddings for identifying MWEs. Our earlier study demonstrated the effectiveness of regularized word embeddings in other sequence labeling tasks, i.e. part-of-speech tagging and named entity recognition, but it has not yet been rigorously evaluated for the identification of MWEs yet.


In this paper, the extensively-reported "size effect" phenomena in fracture mechanics tests are explained using the boundary effect concept. It is pointed out that the widely-observed size effect in fracture, including the dependence of the fracture energy on ligament, strength and fracture toughness on crack and/or ligament and the strength of geometrically similar specimens on characteristic size, is in fact, due to the boundary influence on the crack tip damage zone. Furthermore, the recently-developed asymptotic model is used to demonstrate that the dependence of strength on crack and ligament lengths as well as on the characteristic size of geometrically similar specimens is a result of the dominance of the distance of the crack tip to specimen boundaries on the specimen failure mode. To verify further the boundary effect concept, the asymptotic model is also applied to two sets of selected experimental data available in the literature, and the implications are discussed.


In this paper, inkjet-printed UHF and microwave circuits fabricated on paper substrates are investigated for the first time as an approach that aims for a system-level solution for fast and ultra-low-cost mass production. First, the RF characteristics of the paper substrate are studied by using the microstrip ring resonator in order to characterize the relative permittivity (epsivr) and loss tangent (tan delta) of the substrate at the UHF band for the first time reported. A UHF RFID tag module is then developed with the inkjet-printing technology, proving this approach could function as an enabling technology for much simpler and faster fabrication on/in paper. Simulation and well-agreed measurement results, which show very good agreement, verify a good performance of the tag module. In addition, the possibility of multilayer RF structures on a paper substrate is explored, and a multilayer patch resonator bandpass filter demonstrates the feasibility of ultra-low-cost 3-D paper-on-paper RF/wireless structures.


The automotive industry is conservative and doesn't take enough responsibility in emerging markets. Thus, countries such asChina and India have experienced huge problems with pollution as they have increased their living standards and enteredthe western consumption society. In these booming economies there are still people who live their lives according to oldcustoms, in small sustainable societies. It is also they who suffer most from the ongoing urbanization. Hence the automotiveindustry should rather adapt to their cultures than let these people adjust to the consumption society.Now, imagine a third industrial revolution where sustainable energy and manufacturing set the standards for production.Africa is then in the forefront when it comes to alternative and sustainable solutions. Maasaica is a concept from BMW whichis locally built in Serengeti using 3D printing technology, degradable materials and traditional handcraft.


The stroboscopic phase shifting ESPI (SPS-ESPI), one of the optical vibration amplitude measurement techniques, is presented. Although the general PS-ESPI can be used for quantitative deformation measurement of the object, this technique cannot measure the vibration amplitude with itself only. The phase change due to the vibration of the object cannot be calculated with general PS-ESPI correctly. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, the stroboscopic illumination must be introduced to the general PS-ESPI. This can be done by using a device called as AOM (Acousto-Optic Modulator). In this paper, SPS-ESPI is applied to measure the vibration amplitude of the square plate whose all edges were fixed. The natural frequencies and mode shapes are analyzed by using ANSYS. And the results obtained by using SPS-ESPI technique are compared with that of the ANSYS analysis. The vibration amplitude is measured by using SPS-ESPI quantitatively.


Nanoscale Ferric Oxide was prepared from natural hematite and characterized. Using it as catalyst, methylene blue-simulated wastewater was treated by photocatalytic degradation with high-voltage mercury lamp and sunlight as excitation light source. Main factors, including the preparation conditions and dosage of ferric oxide, pH value, reaction time and initial concentration of simulated wastewater, and their influence to treatment effect were discussed. Test results showed that at a pulverization time of 1.5h, calcination time of 2h at 500°C, initial methylene blue (MB) concentration of 20mg/L, pH=2 and a ferric oxide dosage of 0.01g/30ml, for both high-voltage mercury lamp and sunlight, MB wastewater was degraded effectively in lab-scale experiment; after 5h's radiation, MB concentrations were reduced from 20mg/L to 0.51mg/L and 9.18mg/L respectively. With sunlight as the radiation light source, an enlarged experiment was done on a custom-built device, and MB concentration was reduced from 20mg/L to 0.11mg/L, which was significantly better than treatment results from lab-scale experiments and UV radiation. MB photocatatytic degradation reactions at different initial concentrations were in accordance with Lagergren's pseudo-first-order kinetic equation. Spectral analysis of degradation products showed that MB molecules were degraded to inorganic ions.


The lead foil of dental x-ray film packets may cause a number of artifacts; especially well known are the "tractor treads" and "herringbone patterns" following a backward filmpositioning in the patient's mouth. In the present paper a specific and seldomly occurring lead foil artifact is described which is caused by bending of the film packet. Four cases collected over a 5-year period are presented. Although different the four cases show a number of similarities. They appear as radiopaque areas covering the upper or lower halves of the films. Their borders show the characteristic "sandbar-pattern" previously described by the author. The explanation of their origin is that the patient has been occluding on a part of the film packet which has been bent to a nearly horizontal position. The x-rays directed against the edge of the lead foil will be absorbed causing irregular radiopaque areas on the film lined by "sandbar-pattern". When the film packet is bent, the lead foil will be stretched and drawn a little away from the edges of the films. Consequently the x-rays will be able to expose the edges of the films. Irregularities of the foil will give rise to concentric "bars". The lead foil is only of limited radiopacity, but due to the oblique direction of the x-rays through the foil the absorbing effect is intensified.


Cryptography and biometrics have been identified as two of the most important aspects of digital security environment, for various types of security problems the merging between cryptography and biometrics has led to the development of Bio-Crypto technology. In this paper we propose a cryptography key generating methodology based on graph construction and adjacency matrix of extracted minutiae. The formation of graph relies on contour division of minutiae points area. Minutiae points area is studied on both scenarios (with singular point, and without singular point detection). Results show that with singular point detection the average of minutiae points area dimension is less than in the other case and at some points of threshold, it show an improvement performance comparing to the other one. 100% uniqueness key was achieved on both cases.


This study presents is a classification of reservoir properties (porosity and shale volume) into rock types for carbonate Rumaila reservoir in Central Iraq (Ahdeb Field). The Cluster analysis method is used to identify rock types and to recognize well log clusters of similar characteristics. For most subsurface research, the determination of the rock type (lithofacies and petrofacies) is not adequate enough because of a lack of cores and cuttings. An interactive petrophysics software program was used to get the results of a cluster analysis technique, in order to determine the rock typing (log facies) in Rumaila formation units in the Ahdeb oil field. Initially, petrophysical parameters such as porosity, shale volume and quantity of various reservoir minerals were determined using the probabilistic evaluation process. In the second stage, the multiresolution graphic clustering method was employed to separate the sequential electrofacies which resulted in the identification of four electrofacies with different geological reservoir properties. The vertical variations of the rock type for Rumaila formation are based on four log facial groups. These log groups are categorized according to porosity and shale volume of formation based on responses to well logs after division of Rumaila formation into four units (Ru-1, Ru-2, Ru-3, and Ru-4).A 3D rock type model for Rumaila Formation was performed using Petrel software in order to illustrate the horizontal distribution of rock type along the Ahdeb field and showing the best characterized of reservoir rock type in any unit of Rumaila Formation. Cluster analysis technique classified porosity and shale volume, which were calculated for Rumaila Formation using well logs, into four similar characteristics rock types: rock This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Journal of Petroleum Research and Studies PISSN: 2220-5381 EISSN: 2710-1096 Open Access No. 31, June 2021, pp.49-73 50 type-1, rock type-2, rock type-3 and rock type-4. A 3D Petrel model of rock type shows that rock type-2 has better reservoir quality than other rock types in Rumaila Formation which is characterized by high porosity and low shale volume. The model clarifies the distribution of rock type-2 in the Ahdeb field at units Ru-1 and Ru-3 of Rumaila Formation.


We study size-selected deposition of Ag/sub 19//sup +/ clusters on Pd(100) at total kinetic energies of 20 and 95 eV using thermal energy atom scattering and molecular-dynamics simulations. Contrary to the case of Ag/sub 7/ where fragmentation is crucial to explain the data, the deposition leads at low temperature to noncompact structures localized around the impact point. We propose a model in which morphology changes take place between 200 and 300 K resulting in well-separated compact structures.


The role of IF2 from Escherichia coli was studied in vitro using a system for protein synthesis with purified components. Stopped flow experiments with light scattering show that IF2 in complex with guanosine triphosphate (GTP) or a non‐cleavable GTP analogue (GDPNP), but not with guanosine diphosphate (GDP), promotes fast association of ribosomal subunits during initiation. Biochemical experiments show that IF2 promotes fast formation of the first peptide bond in the presence of GTP, but not GDPNP or GDP, and that IF2–GDPNP binds strongly to post‐initiation ribosomes. We conclude that the GTP form of IF2 accelerates formation of the 70S ribosome from subunits and that GTP hydrolysis accelerates release of IF2 from the 70S ribosome. The results of a recent report, suggesting that GTP and GDP promote initiation equally fast, have been addressed. Our data, indicating that eIF5B and IF2 have similar functions, are used to rationalize the phenotypes of GTPase‐deficient mutants of eIF5B and IF2.


The growth of service sector is increasing the usage of digital applications worldwide. These digital applications are making use of database to store the sensitive and secret information. As the database has distributed over the internet, cybercrime attackers may tamper the database to attack on such sensitive and confidential information. In such scenario, maintaining the integrity of database is a big challenge. Database tampering will change the database state by any data manipulation operation like insert, update or delete. Tamper detection techniques are useful for the detection of such data tampering which play an important role in database forensic investigation process. Use of NoSQL database has been attracted by big data requirements. Previous research work has limited to tamper detection in relational database and very less work has been found in NoSQL database. So there is a need to propose a mechanism to detect the tampering of NoSQL database systems. Whereas this article proposes an idea of tamper detection in NoSQL database such as MongoDB and Cassandra, which are widely used document-oriented and column-based NoSQL database respectively. This research work has proposed tamper detection technique which works in forensic environment to give more relevant outcome on data tampering and distinguish between suspicious and genuine tampering.


Abstract Purpose: The in situ fenestration of a standard endograft is currently limited by difficulties in targeting the fenestration site under fluoroscopic control and by the lack of a safe method to perforate the graft. Evidence in the literature suggests the use of a 3 D electromagnetic navigator to accurately guide the endovascular instruments to the target and a laser to selectively perforate the graft. The aim of this work is to provide design guidelines to develop a sensorized catheter to guide the laser tool to the fenestration site and conduct preliminary testing of the feasibility of the proposed solution. Matherials and methods: Different catheter designs were delineated starting from engineering considerations, then prototypes were preliminarily tested to collect surgeon opinions and to steer the design process toward the preferred solution reported by the user. Finally, mechanical simulations were performed with CathCAD, a design software system for the development of composite tubing for endovascular catheters. Results: Based on surgeon feedback, a 9-French steerable catheter with a stabilization system was designed. CathCAD simulations allowed us to define the construction parameters (e.g., materials and geometric constrains) for the fabrication of composite tubes with mechanical properties (flexural, axial, and torsional rigidities) compatible with target values in the literature for guiding catheters. Conclusion: The presented results preliminarily demonstrate the clinical reasonability and feasibility of the designed tool in terms of mechanical properties. Further mechanical tests and extensive in vitro clinical trials are required prior to animal testing.