Diverse group of endophytic fungi exist within every plant tissues which constitute major and novel natural therapeutic compounds. Hence we investigated five fungal endophytes associated with the medicinal plant Mussaenda luteola L. (Rubiaceae) for the presence of phytochemicals, total phenolic, total flavonoid content, antioxidant and antibacterial activity. The results revealed that the ethyl acetate extract of Alternaria sp. (ML4) showed highest total phenolic and flavonoid content of 108.65±0.12 mg of GAE/g and 56.45±0.10 mg of RE/g of extract respectively. It also had DPPH scavenging activity of 85.20% at the concentration of 300 µg/ml and high reducing power activity. The remaining fungal extracts exhibited significant level of total phenolic and flavonoid content, antioxidant and antibacterial activity. This study shows that the endophytic fungi isolated from M. luteola can be a potential antioxidant and antibacterial resource.


Nowadays, much focus for vehicle manufacturers is directed towards improving the energy efficiency of their products. The aerodynamic drag constitutes one major part of the total driving resistance for a vehicle travelling at higher speeds. In fact, above approximately 80km/h the aerodynamic drag is the dominating resistance acting on a truck. Hence the importance of reducing this resistance is apparent. Cooling drag is one part of the total aerodynamic drag, which arises from air flowing through the heat exchangers, and the irregular under-hood area.When using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) in the development process it is of great importance to ensure that the methods used are accurately capturing the physics of the flow. This paper deals with comparative studies between CFD and wind-tunnel tests.In this paper, two comparative studies are presented. One is a comparison between cooling performance simulations and chassis dynamometer measurements; the other study is a comparison between external aerodynamics simulations and wind-tunnel measurements.The purpose of this study was to evaluate and develop methods and models for determining aerodynamic drag and cooling performance, which ultimately will be used to develop more energy-efficient cooling of heavy trucks.The results from the two comparative studies showed that there was in general good agreement between CFD and wind-tunnel measurements. For the cooling performance simulations, the analysed parameters were very close to the measured values. For the external aerodynamics simulations, the results were not easy to analyse. The overall results were still satisfactory; for the simulated yaw angles, the drag coefficient (CD) values were less than 4.1% different from measured data.


This work investigates the impact of correlated medium noise at high recording densities to various advanced recording channels. Based on spin-stand measurements, noise spatial correlations of dibit transitions at small bit intervals is characterized as two statistically independent correlation modes: the coherent amplitude fluctuation of the dipulse and shift-in-unison of the entire dipulse waveform. In the density region where supralinear noise enhancement is relatively pronounced, the amplitude fluctuation mode dominates the noise spatial correlation. It is found that the correlated medium noise can degrade the performance of a (0, k) coded PR4-ML channel by 5-6 dB over white Gaussian noise. However, (1, k) coded EPR4 and EEPR4 channels are much more immune to the coherent amplitude fluctuation mode noise. It is concluded that in the supralinear noise region, (1, k) coded EPR4 and EEPR4 channels could have much improved performance over (0, k) coded PR4 channel in the medium noise dominated environment.


Acacia nilotica was introduced to Baluran National Park in the late 1960s to create fire breaks which would prevent fire spreading from Baluran Savanna to the adjacent teak forest. However, A. nilotica has spread rapidly and is threatening the existence of Baluran Savanna as it has been observed to cause a ecosystem transition from open savanna to a closed canopy of A. nilotica in some areas. This study is one of a few that examines A. nilotica invasion in Baluran National Park through remote sensing. Land cover dynamics were quantified using a supervised classification approach on Landsat 7 and 8 multi-spectral images. Results showed that savanna and A. nilotica can be recognized using a composite of bands 6, 5 and 3 of the Landsat 8 image. Across a 14 year period (2000-14), A. nilotica has spread far north and south from its original introduction location, invading not only savannas but also dry forests in the Baluran National Park. The savanna size has decreased by 1,361 ha, meanwhile the A. nilotica stand has increased by 1,886 ha over this period. Spatial distribution of A. nilotica in Baluran National Park shows a clumped pattern. Acacia nilotica which develops into a homogeneous stand in the north-west and eastern parts of the national park occupied an area of 3,628 ha or about 14.5% of the total area. This study has demonstrated that remote sensing technology can be effectively used to estimate the patterns of distribution and amount of A. nilotica cover change over the whole Baluran National Park. This is one of the advantages of remote sensing and GIS, where as it is difficult and expensive to make such direct assessments using the conventional approach of field survey and vegetation analysis.


The mammary tumor-associated proto-oncogene Wnt-1/int-1 encodes a secreted protein implicated in the regulation of neural development in vertebrates and segmental pattern in Drosophila. Using a PCR-based strategy, we isolated cDNAs encoding six novel, related proteins that are expressed in fetal mice. Predicted proteins are of similar molecular masses (38-42 kD) and share between 50% and 85% of amino acids. All contain a putative hydrophobic signal sequence, and comparative analysis reveals 83 absolutely conserved amino acid residues, including 21 cysteines. Transcripts were detected throughout fetal development by Northern blot analysis. Detailed examination of the expression of two of these genes by in situ hybridization revealed complex temporal and spatial patterns of transcription. All new Wnt family members are expressed in adult tissues, particularly in brain and lung. These data support the view that the Wnt-1/int-1 family constitutes a large family of signaling peptides with diverse roles in mouse development.


In visible light communication (VLC), the fundamental limitation on the achievable data rate/spectral efficiency is imposed by the optical source, particularly the phosphorconverted white light emitting diode (LED). These low-cost white LEDs favoured in solid-state lighting have very limited modulation bandwidth of less than 5 MHz, typically. This imposes a severe limitation on the attainable data rate. This is recognised in the literature and has led to the emergence of techniques such as multiple-input-multipleoutput (MIMO) VLC systems as a means of addressing this challenge. The MIMO approach takes advantage of the multi-LED/multi-receiver structure to improve performance. In this chapter, we shall be discussing spatial modulation (SM) as a novel lowcomplexity MIMO technique for the VLC system. The SM technique exploits the spatial location of the individual LED as an additional degree of freedom in data modulation. Moreover, the chapter includes the comparison analysis of the SM technique with other traditional methods of modulation such as on-off keying (OOK) and pulse position modulation (PPM).


This diploma aims to study proportional reinsurance, dynamic proportional reinsurance, and dividend barrier strategies in the light of a two-dimensional ruin model. As an insurance company in one of its portfolios may have more than one risk class, we will expand the classic ruin model to more dimensions, with each dimension describing a risk class. Also in many cases, the risk classes (sub portfolios) can be linked together, so we will add another stochastic process to describe their interaction, in particular.
 In Chapter 1 we will recapitulate the classic model of risk theory by showing some basic results for Poisson's stochastic processes, the rejuvenation equation, the Gerber-Shiu function as well as some dams, and the Laplace transformation for the generalized Erlang process.
 In Chapter 2 we will begin by extending the classical model to m-dimensions by giving the corresponding function of Gerber-Shiu. In addition, we will specialize it in the two-dimensional, which is the main purpose of this diploma thesis, with some results for the phase-type distributions for some applications.
 In Chapter 3 we will give a lightweight different model that applies to dynamic proportional reinsurance and proportional reinsurance as well as some key risks for the probability of ruin and Laplace transformation of joint ruin time.
Finally, in chapter 4, a two-dimensional risk process is considered in which each individual class applies a dividend barrier strategy. The insurance portfolios of the insurer are related as they are subject to the common shocks that cause the claims. In order to analyse the expected discounted dividends up to the common time of ruin of the two-dimensional process, it is proposed with a distinct temporal counterpart of the model and a two-dimensional extension of the Dickson-Waters discretization (Dickson and Waters (1991)) is applied using a two- Panjer (Walhin and Paris (2000)). Detailed numerical examples under different dependencies through common shocks, probability theories (Copulas) and proportional reinsurance are taken into account, and applications are given to optimal problems in reinsurance, main distribution and dividends. It is also clarified that the optimal pair of dividend bars maximizing the dividend function depends on the original surplus level. Finally, we propose the type of dividend strategy.


Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand the destination image perceptions about Australia – a Western culture country – as held by the rapidly increasing, high spending, culturally dissimilar new segment of travellers, the Emiratis[1] from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative methodology was used to understand the cognitive, affective and conative images of Australia. A structured categorisation matrix was used to analyse the data so that only aspects fitting the matrix were selected.

Findings

Within the cognitive variable, Australia was found to be pleasant, family oriented, a fun place, laid back and the local people friendly. From an affective factor perspective, Australia was seen as being exciting, because of the variety of activities available for these tourists. Exciting was expressed by words like fantastic, amazing and extreme experience. In terms of the conative variable most of the Emirati tourists expressed strong feelings to go back to Australia and to even re-visit with friends. They also mentioned that they would recommend Australia to family and friends.

Research limitations/implications

A limitation of this study was that our sample comprised informants mainly from the Emirates of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the two largest Emirates of the nation. The study offers destination marketing organisations' (DMOs) insights into Emirati travellers' perceptions about Australia, which would benefit destination marketing.

Originality/value

This study examines the under researched area of how Australia – with its liberal Western culture – could be better marketed to the growing numbers of culturally conservative, high spending Emirati outbound tourists from the officially Islamic UAE, and also more generally to the socio-culturally homogeneous Gulf Cooperation Council region that the UAE is part of. Whilst destination image is an intensively analysed topic within the realm of tourism research, and reportedly a powerful influence on destination choice, the extant literature on how Australia is perceived as a travel destination by Emiratis is scant. For DMO's attempting to attract wealthy Emirati tourists into Australia, this research is valuable and timely, as several Emiratis are seeking newer travel destinations away from the Western hemisphere, where the general anti-Arab/Islamic sentiments are currently quite strong.


With the development of micro-grids including PV production and storage, the need for efficient energy management strategies arises. One of their key components is the forecast of the energy production from very short to long term. The forecast time-step is an important parameter affecting not only its accuracy but also the optimal control time discretization, hence its efficiency and computational burden. To quantify this trade-off, four machine learning forecast models are tested on two geographical locations for time-steps varying from 2 to 60 min and horizons from 10 min to 6 h, on global irradiance horizontal and tilted when data was available. The results are similar for all the models and indicate that the error metric can be reduced up to 0.8% per minute on the time-step for forecasts below one hour and up to 1.7% per ten minutes for forecasts between one and six hours. In addition, it is shown that for short term horizons, it may be advantageous to forecast with a high resolution then average the results at the time-step needed by the energy management system.


Using a panel of countries over 1920–2000, this paper examines the extent to which different dimensions of the institutional framework affect exports of total, manufactured, and nonmanufactured goods. It is observed that exports of manufactured goods are positively affected by the control of corruption, the rule of law, government effectiveness, and the lack of political violence. This result does not hold for non-manufactured and total exports. Instrumental variable regressions finally confirm that the control of corruption, but not the other dimensions of governance, robustly cause manufactured exports.


The Gene bank for domestic animals in the Republic of Croatia is provided by the National Program for the conservation of local and endangered breeds of domestic animals from 2010. For this purpose, the National Gene bank Network was established, which consists of (i) the Gene bank for domestic animals as a central point under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Agriculture, and (ii) Recognized Gene banks (authorized by the Ministry of Agriculture and operated by organizations, associations and/or authorized institutions). Until 2023, more than 32,000 samples from six types of domestic animals are stored in the Gene bank as follows: cattle (57.7%), horses (13.2%), sheep (12.1%), pigs (10%), donkeys (5%), and goats (1.9%). Tissue samples (29.2%), hair (28%), semen (42.2%) and blood (0.6%) are mainly stored in the Gene bank. The implementation of the National Program is supported by the Reference Expert Network for the Conservation of Animal Genetic Resources, which promotes greater collaboration with stakeholders. Future plans include further characterization of breeds with emphasis on adaptive traits, and the necessary monitoring and implementation of new and improved procedures in the conservation of local breeds.


At present, there are many problems in the existing content-based medical image retrieval (CBMIR) algorithms. The most important problem is the lack of feature extraction, resulting in the imperfect expression of semantic information and the lack of data-based learning ability. Meanwhile, the characteristic dimension is high, which affects the performance of image retrieval. In order to solve these problems, this paper presents a fully convolutional dense network (FCDN) algorithm, which solves the gap between the extracted low-level features and high-level semantic features. In order to improve the accuracy and efficiency of retrieval, the concept of Joint distance is proposed in this paper. Since the image information of lung nodules extracted from different layers of the network is different, the minimum Joint distance is selected by comparing the minimum Hamming distances of the layers 4, 17 and 25 of the similar images retrieved. Compared with other methods, the average accuracy of the lung nodule image retrieval can reach 91.17% under the 64-bit hash code length, the average time for retrieving a lung slice is 4.8×10 -5 s, The search results not only express the rich semantic features of the image, but also improve the retrieval efficiency. And the retrieval performance is better than other network structures to help doctors assist in diagnosis.


States surrounding Maryland passed laws in favor of sterilization, why didn't Maryland? While scholars have focused much attention on states such as Virginia and California where eugenics laws were passed, states such as Maryland have been left out of the conversation among historians about the popularity of eugenics in the twentieth century. Many writings have excluded Maryland because there was never a law that passed legalizing sterilization, nor a challenge to a state law that resulted in a Supreme Court case such as Buck v. Bell in 1927. Buck v. Bell upheld Virginia's sterilization law and sterilization laws soon became more prevalent in states across the United States. Scholars write about states such as California, Virginia, and many other southern states for exactly that reason: there were laws passed legalizing sterilization, Supreme Court cases, and evidence of multiple mass sterilizations. However court cases, state legislation, and news paper articles reveal public views in Maryland on Sterilization, both in favor and against, and show that there was a debate over eugenic ideas. If scholarship on eugenics has focused mainly on the movement's successes, it is equally important to investigate the movement's failures and examine the nature of opposition to eugenics. Maryland provides an important case because it did not choose the same path as its neighboring states and an examination of the eugenics debate in Maryland shows how state politics and opposition to sterilization played an important part in defeating the misguided movement to sterilize the "incurable idiots, imbeciles and morons."


A model for nonlinear transmission and degenerate four-wave mixing in semiconductor-doped glasses was developed and compared with experiment. The results of a plasma screening theory were used to model the nonlinear response of the semiconductor microcrystallites. The effects of carrier-density-dependent relaxation times, two-photon absorption, free-carrier absorption, and background absorption were included in the analysis. Good agreement between theoretical predictions and both nonlinear transmission and degenerate four-wave mixing experiments at λ = 532 nm was obtained for 15-nsec laser pulses. For 30-psec pulses, with which higher intensities were available, features suggestive of two-photon absorption and background absorption were observed. We conclude that free-carrier absorption is not significant in these systems. Finally, it was shown that photodarkening is associated with the semiconductor crystallites in the glass matrix and that the host glass itself and unstruck samples exhibit little or no photodarkening.


Financial time series prediction, especially with machine learning techniques, is an extensive field of study. In recent times, deep learning methods (especially time series analysis) have performed outstandingly for various industrial problems, with better prediction than machine learning methods. Moreover, many researchers have used deep learning methods to predict financial time series with various models in recent years. In this paper, we will compare various deep learning models, such as multilayer perceptron (MLP), one-dimensional convolutional neural networks (1D CNN), stacked long short-term memory (stacked LSTM), attention networks, and weighted attention networks for financial time series prediction. In particular, attention LSTM is not only used for prediction, but also for visualizing intermediate outputs to analyze the reason of prediction; therefore, we will show an example for understanding the model prediction intuitively with attention vectors. In addition, we focus on time and factors, which lead to an easy understanding of why certain trends are predicted when accessing a given time series table. We also modify the loss functions of the attention models with weighted categorical cross entropy; our proposed model produces a 0.76 hit ratio, which is superior to those of other methods for predicting the trends of the KOSPI 200.


The Tagus is the largest estuary in Portugal (320 km2). Its fish community is composed of 44 species, with species diversity values varying between 0.85 and 2.237. Seven fish species use the estuary as a nursery area: Trisopterus luscus (Linnaeus, 1758), Ciliata mustela (Linnaeus, 1758), Dicentrarchus labrax (Linnaeus, 1758). Trigla lucerna Linnaeus, 1758, Platichthys flesus flesus (Linnaeus, 1758), Solea vulgaris vulgaris Quensel, 1806, and Solea senegalensis Kaup, 1858. While in the estuary, their growth rate is very high. This may be related to the availability of suitable food items. The brown shrimp Crangon crangon (Linnaeus, 1758) also uses the estuary as a nursery, and is a prefered prey of T. lucerna, D. labrax and C. mustela, and a secondary prey for S. vulgaris and P. flesus. The main food of these last two species are two polychaete species, Nereis diversicolor Miiller, 1852 and Lanice conchilega Pallas, 1778. Three shallow water stations near highly productive salt-marshes are the principal nursery areas for fishes. Young of the year D. labrax were caught first in nursery areas in May with a minimum standard length of 25 mm. The first catches of Solea vulgaris occurred in April, when juveniles had a standard length of 30 mm. The highest density was observed in May with 142.3 ind. 1000 m-1. Density values of Solea senegalensis were lower.


The changing landscape of healthcare and recent formal Standards for innovation in pharmacy education presents a unique opportunity. To realize this opportunity, pharmacy should learn from the successes of other fields to make use of the rich environment for improvement in healthcare. The University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy presents one example of a Program that utilizes a curriculum, projects, and partners to realize innovation. Educators in pharmacy can make use of the opportunity for innovation by learning from successful examples and embracing the process's challenges of iteration.

Type: Commentary


In this paper we solve three problems in action recognition: sub-action, multi-subject, and multi-modality, by reducing the diversity of intra-class samples. The main stage contains canonical temporal alignment and key frames selection. As we know, temporal alignment aims to reduce the diversity of intra-class samples, however, dense frames may yield misalignment or overlapped alignment and decrease recognition performance. To overcome this problem, we propose a Sparse Canonical Temporal Alignment (SCTA) method which selects and aligns key frames from two sequences to reduce diversity. To extract better features from the key frames, we propose a Deep Non-negative Tensor Factorization (DNTF) method to find a tensor subspace integrated with SCTA scheme. First we model an action sequence as a third-order tensor with spatiotemporal structure. Then we design a DNTF scheme to find a tensor subspace in both spatial and temporal directions. Particularly, in the first layer the original tensor is decomposed into two lowrank tensors by Non-negative Tensor Factorization (NTF), and in the second layer each low-rank tensor is further decomposed by Tensor-Train (TT) for time efficiency. Finally, our framework composed of SCTA and DNTF could solve the three problems and extract effective features for action recognition. Experiments on synthetic data, MSRDailyActivity3D and MSRActionPairs datasets show that our method works better than competitive methods in terms of accuracy.


The Commission of Social Reforms was established in December 1883 as the first Spanish official institution to take charge of the study and to offer solutions to the so called social question. The objectives of this study are to describe and analyse the information about occupational injuries and safety conditions of working-class population in Spain at the end of 19th century. The study methods of the Commission of Social Reforms were based on the current scientific advances at that epoch, coming from the development of the Sociology, essential for a scientific knowledge about the real situation of society. A total of 48 county level commissions and 29 local commissions were set up. A questionnaire was designed and organised in 32 sections including a total of 223 questions. Section V was called disabled from work and included 10 open-ended questions related with occupational health and safety. A content analysis of the questions was performed. Some of the preliminary data of this research showed that the safety conditions of factories, workshops, brickwork industry, were quite deficient with a permanent exposition to injuries all around the different counties in Spain. As an example, a situation in the heavy industry is described as follows: there is a lack of clear space and a machinery accumulation that not allow to walk around; there are not scaffolds or devices for handling the mechanisms without risk; in many places children are in charge of the machinery care and inspection.


In the context of globalization and transformations, efficient knowledge potential assessment is a powerful tool for increasing the performance of organizations. Knowledge potential is defined as a whole of organization's resources and market opportunities. Its complex evaluation and efficient management create preconditions for satisfying changing customers' needs, creating value and uniqueness in the marketplace. Most researchers emphasize that the crucial components of an organization's knowledge potential should be integrated and balanced in the assessment of knowledge management, because in the complexity and uncertainty of knowledge management environment it is difficult to forecast and anticipate the results the organization is trying to achieve. As a consequence of this, the factors, approaches, and methods of the assessment of the factors that influence the external and internal knowledge potential are regarded as controversial in the scientific literature and practice. Different approaches that analyze the aspects of knowledge potential assessment interpret and evaluate organization's knowledge potential differently. In this research these problems are analyzed by examining and integrating contemporary management approaches and theories, different attitudes of researchers towards external and internal factors that influence knowledge potential, and their evaluation aspects. The aim of this study is to present the peculiarities of organization's knowledge potential assessment in the context of transformations and the conceptual research model of the influence of knowledge potential on the performance of an organization, which creates preconditions for assessing which factors impact the performance of knowledge management and the organization itself. The conceptual research model of the influence of knowledge potential on the organization's performance was formed by applying the analysis of scientific literature, systematic analysis, methods of synthesis, and by integrating the results of the empirical research conducted by the authors (Raudeliūnienė, 2017; Raudeliūnienė et al., 2018). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.30.1.20807


This study investigates the impact of low-skilled immigrants on urban labor markets in China. Using historical migration networks as an instrumental variable to overcome endogeneity problems, we find that low-skilled immigrants significantly increase local wages. Census data reveal significant occupational segregation between low-skilled immigrants and local inhabitants. Low-skilled immigrants are found to substitute for low-skilled local inhabitants but are complementary for high-skilled local inhabitants. In addition, low-skilled immigrants boost women's labor participation and wages through consumption service markets. This study's findings reveal that discrimination against low-skilled immigrants weakens the reciprocal effects among immigrants and local inhabitants and hinders urban development.


Nanocomposite made of clay minerals and polyolefin goes through several steps. During these steps materials will have changes especially in the structure and properties. Then the final material will be of both new structure and properties. These main steps in the manufacturing process will include the stages of preparation of the material components and mixing. The structures of the materials are well characterized at each step. Then, we can understand how the processing steps will affect the structures and mechanism for producing the final nanocomposite material. The results include characterization by SEM, TEM, XRD and EDAX chemical analysis. During the processing, the energy will be changed for both of the initial materials and the final product in addition to the materials properties which will depend on the energy changes. The analysis includes the methods of calculations of energy changes. Then, design suggestions are developed for energy control to produce nanocomposite with certain energy level to carry certain amount of loads. Therefore, the study will provide possibility for pre-control of the lifetime of the produced materials.


Recent embedded systems are dramatically increasing their features to satisfy a user's demanding requirements. In traditional approaches, each feature uses a dedicated processor to be implemented, but the approach increases the cost to develop highly functional embedded systems. A multi-core processor offers a new opportunity to solve the dilemma because various functionalities can be implemented on one multi-core processor. While the number of functionalities is increased, we can just add more cores in the multi-core processor. However, we need a desirable software platform to implement a large number of functionalities on a multi-core processor for developing highly functional embedded systems. A composition kernel makes it possible to compose multiple functionalities on a multi-core processor with the minimum modifications of OS kernels and applications. In this paper, we present SPUMONE, a composition kernel for developing highly functional embedded systems, and runs on the SH4-based multi-core processor. SPUMONE does not support the spatial isolation to isolate guest OSes not to sacrifice the performance due to its virtualization. The approach may sacrifice the reliability and security, so we also propose to add the monitoring service that runs in the outside of a target guest OS to enhance its reliability and security without relying on the spatial isolation.


We have examined mutations which overcome the requirement for SW15-dependent transcriptional activation of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae HO gene. We show that the RPD3 gene is the same as SDI2, and that SIN4 is the same as the TSF3 and SDI3 genes. We have also identified a new swi5 suppressor, RGR1. The RGR1 gene was identified originally as a negative regulator of SUC2. Epistasis analysis indicates that six swi5 suppressor genes function in four distinct pathways, with RPD3 and SIN3 in one pathway, RGR1 and SIN4 in a second pathway, and SDI4 and SIN5 each in distinct pathways. Finally, we show that complete suppression of the swi5 defect in HO expression by sin5 requires the wild-type ACE2 gene. This suggests that one function of SIN5 is to prevent ACE2, a SWI5 homolog, from activating HO expression.


In this study, carvacrol-loaded human serum albumin (HSA) nanoparticles were developed and characterised. Nanoparticles were prepared by desolvation and emulsion/desolvation methods. Encapsulation efficiency (EE%) and loading capacity (LC%) of nanoparticles prepared by desolvation method were 48.4 and 45.1%, respectively. Carvacrol-loaded nanoparticles had 132±42 nm in diameter with monomodal distribution. Carvacrol-loaded nanoparticles which is prepared by emulsion/desolvation method had EE% and LC% of 32 and 32.3%, respectively, and 230±38 nm in size. The release of carvacrol from nanoparticles was monitored in phosphate-buffered saline (pH=7.4), 100 rpm at 37°C for 10 days. About 21.4% of carvacrol was released after 3 h from nanoparticles that were prepared by desolvation method. In emulsion/desolvation method, 26.8% of total carvacrol was released during 3 h of incubation. Cytotoxicity effect of loaded carvacrol was assessed by 3-[4, 5 dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) test on gastric cancer cells line (AGS). Cell line was exposed to the free carvacrol, unloaded and carvacrol-loaded nanoparticles for 48 h. The half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) for free carvacrol, unloaded and carvacrol-loaded HSA nanoparticles were 30, 1070 and 120 µg/ml, respectively. In conclusion, the results of this study showed applications of HSA nanoparticles for entrapment of carvacrol and antigastric cancer activity. Moreover, loading of carvacrol in combination with chemotherapy agents into the HSA nanoparticles may treat cancer cells better than single drug loaded nanoparticles.


Adult health outcomes and health behaviors generally are strongly associated with schooling attainment. But such associations do not necessarily imply that schooling has causal effects on health outcomes and behaviors of the magnitudes of the associations. Schooling may be proxying for unobserved factors that are related to genetics and family background. Recently several studies have used within-identical (monozygotic, MZ) twins methods to control for those unobserved factors that are shared completely by identical twins. Estimates based on relatively small samples for the US, as well as some larger samples for other countries, suggest that causal impacts of schooling on health outcomes and behaviors are insignificant or much smaller than suggested by cross-sectional associations. This study contributes new estimates of cross-sectional associations and within-MZ causal effects of twins using three relatively large US samples: Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry, Minnesota Twin Registry and NAS-NRC Twin Registry of WWII Military Veterans. The estimates suggest that schooling is significantly associated with numerous health outcomes and behaviors in the US. However if within-MZ twins estimators are used to control for unobserved factors, there is no causal relationship between schooling and better health behaviors. There is some evidence that more schooling causally affects self-reported health and overweight status, net of unobservable cofounders, though not to the extent that cross-sectional associations suggest. Finally, spousal schooling is associated with better health outcomes and behaviors, but there is no evidence of any causal effect.


In this paper I outline three perspectives that emphasize different characters of play: useful; joyful; and willful play. I further argue that designing for willfulness (e.g. rule-bending) will allow players to become game-changers rather than being played.Generally speaking, computer games have created new arenas for play in several senses. Massive multiplayer online games have spurred, amongst other things, particular forms of social interaction and behavior; mobile and casual gaming has generated new breeds of gamers; the fundamentally code-based underpinnings of computer games make hacks and modifications possible; and grand ambitions of gamification, supported by digitization, even aims to turn 'anything and everything' into a race for points and badges. Instead of clearly situating itself within one particular practice, this paper will take an overarching perspective on play. It will go on to propose three perspectives that, in the light of processes such as the increasing specialization, quantification and rationalization of play, emphasize different characters of play. Useful play has connotations relating to instrumental, worthwhile and advantageous activities. Joyful play is perhaps most connected to the prototypical notion of play, as something different from work, done for the fun of it. Willful play conceptualizes play as a deliberate creation/visualization of problems and problematizations through games. These perspectives may, of course, overlap in actual practice, but as analytical tools they illuminate, what we may call, different characters of play. Out of these three characters of play, this paper will devote the most attention to willful play, as it is in that character where subversion, reconfiguration and opposition is most visibly performed.


Physics-informed neural networks (PINNs) is an emerging category of neural networks which can be trained to solve supervised learning tasks while taking into consideration given laws of physics described by general nonlinear partial differential equations. PINNs demonstrate promising characteristics such as performance and accuracy using minimal amount of data for training, utilized to accurately represent the physical properties of a system's dynamic environment. In this work, we employ the emerging paradigm of PINNs to demonstrate their potential in enhancing the security of intelligent cyberphysical systems. In particular, we present a proof-of-concept scenario using the use case of water distribution networks, which involves an attack on a controller in charge of regulating a liquid pump through liquid flow sensor measurements. PINNs are used to mitigate the effects of the attack while demonstrating the applicability and challenges of the approach.


The performance of a KrF excimer laser, excited by a discharge produced in a quartz tube between two metallic electrodes at its end and the inner tube wall serving as a dielectric electrode, is described. The dielectric electrode is capacitively coupled to a metallic electrode surrounding the quartz tube coaxially. Laser output energies up to 0.9 mJ in pulses having a duration of 6 ns FWHM could be obtained at a driving voltage of 100 kV.


When a drop impacts on a liquid surface its bottom is deformed by lubrication pressure and it entraps a thin disc of air, thereby making contact along a ring at a finite distance from the centreline. The outer edge of this contact moves radially at high speed, governed by the impact velocity and bottom radius of the drop. Then at a certain radial location an ejecta sheet emerges from the neck connecting the two liquid masses. Herein, we show the formation of an azimuthal instability at the base of this ejecta, in the sharp corners at the two sides of the ejecta. They promote regular radial vorticity, thereby breaking the axisymmetry of the motions on the finest scales. The azimuthal wavenumber grows with the impact Weber number, based on the bottom curvature of the drop, reaching over 400 streamwise streaks around the periphery. This instability occurs first at Reynolds numbers ( $Re$ ) of ${\sim}7000$ , but for larger $Re$ is overtaken by the subsequent axisymmetric vortex shedding and their interactions can form intricate tangles, loops or chains.


This article investigates community-based disaster responses among informal settlers in a barangay located just outside Metro Manila in the aftermath of Typhoon Ondoy (international code name Ketsana) in 2009. People have embraced some technical measures, such as forcible evacuation, but others have continued customary practices, such as seeking refuge on rooftops where they could get trapped during floods. An important factor in this process has been the credible work of a local people's organization, which has mediated technical expertise from outside the community. Adaptation of disaster expertise is an ongoing and unpredictable process, shaped by people's lived experiences and the wider political, economic, and social context.


Abstract New whole rock Rb-Sr and zircon U-Pb geochronological data and Sm-Nd isotopic data are presented from the central magmatic arc domain of the Antarctic Peninsula in the area of north-west Palmer Land and south-west Graham Land, Rb-Sr isochrons indicate an age of 169 ± 6 Ma for basement orthogneisses and 132 ± 9 to 71 ± 9 Ma for plutons. A U-Pb age of 183 ± 2.1 Ma, with no detectable inheritance, on zircons from an orthogneiss from Cape Berteaux provides the first reliable age for the orthogneisses, which are interpreted as metamorphosed silicic volcanic rocks, and Sm-Nd data indicate derivation in a mature volcanic arc. The age indicates they may be correlatives of the Jurassic 'Chon Aike' volcanism of the eastern Antarctic Peninsula. A U-Pb zircon age of 107 ± 1.7 Ma on a terrestrial volcanic sequence overlying an uncomformity strongly suggests a mid-Cretaceous age for the extensive volcanic cover of north-west Palmer Land that was previously thought to be Jurassic. The unconformity is interpreted to have been a result of compressional uplift related to the Palmer Land event. This is the first date for the event in the western part of the central magmatic arc terrane of the Antarctic Peninsula.


Adaptation of the organism to hypoxia has profound effect on multiple tissues including regulation of erythropoiesis, vasculogenesis, a proper regulation of embryogenesis as well as other functions. The elucidation of those congenital or acquired mutations giving rise to disease states affecting physiological systems devoted to oxygen homeostasis provides not only a practical diagnostic and potential therapeutic target, but also allows to identify the essential, non-redundant physiological pathways that may be hitherto unknown. The erythropoietin gene was the first gene expression found to be upregulated by hypoxia; the mechanism of this regulation lead to our current understanding of hypoxia sensing. Thus it is appropriate that the disorders resulting from augmented erythropoiesis are subject ofthis review.


We provide conditions for the existence and the unicity of strictly stationary solutions of the usual Dynamic Conditional Correlation GARCH models (DCC-GARCH). The proof is based on Tweedie's (1988) criteria, after having rewritten DCC-GARCH models as nonlinear Markov chains. Moreover, we study the existence of their nite moments.


ABSTRACT The concept of load matching refers to the simultaneous occurrence of loads and generation in buildings: it can be increased and optimised with modifications on both the energy demand and generation, but its pre-requisite is to guarantee passive energy efficiency. In the Mediterranean areas, a major challenge in new buildings is the increasing overheating even during mildly hot seasons. Ventilative cooling can be a potential solution to such issues and have an impact on load match in buildings and their grid interaction. The study analyses the potential of ventilative cooling to improve the load match in three different case studies in Italy. Ventilative cooling proved viable in moderately improving the load match and in more effectively reducing import of electricity from the grid under the appropriate climatic\indoor conditions. In addition, the thermal-physical features, energy generation and consumption characteristics of the buildings are a source of large variability in the results. Increases in the load cover factor through natural ventilative cooling among the case studies range from 0.5% (high-performance building, low cooling share) to 5% (prefabricated module, high cooling share on the total); energy import is reduced effectively from 1% up to 22% in the case of a Sicilian residential building.


A proposed benefit to additive manufacturing (AM) silicone components is the ability to selectively add fillers such as agents to make drug delivery devices. Laser curing silicones have benefits such as selective or graded curing of specific locations in the part. A challenge with high temperature extrusion-based AM processes is understanding how particles of various thermal sensitivities, sizes, and loading amounts may affect the AM build parameters, polymer crosslink densities, and final products produced. This manuscript investigates the effect of particle loading on laser cured medical grade silicone. Die swelling of silica gel loaded silicone, chosen as a relatively non-thermally sensitive representative filler for drug agents, was evaluated as a function of extrusion speed, particle size, and particle loading amount. A design of experiments (DoE) on silica gel loaded samples through tetrahydrofuran (THF) swell studies was done to explore how layer height, particle size, and particle loading amount may affect crosslink density. Last, the AM process with the female hormone (2-Me2) and the drug Cyclosporin was investigated using Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) elution to observe potential alterations of the final product. The results show promise for drug loaded silicone samples fabricated using an extrude and laser curing AM technique.


The impact of globalization on contemporary post-modern society in the light of an aging population requires methods and techniques of education that are appropriate for young people and reflect (or accommodate) intergenerational learning. The purpose of this paper is to analyse, through empirical research and study of literature, the context of the elderly who are too often marginalized and to show the impact of the knowledge of society based on the use of modern information and communication technologies, on intergenerational learning. The authors analyse some of the consequences of the demographic changes and highlight the role and importance of intergenerational learning and collaboration for sustainability, especially in the Slovenian ageing society. We identify the role and importance of intergenerational learning for coexistence of generations. In the analysis of the empirical data of the conducted research, we conclude that the effectiveness of the knowledge society is influenced by both: the globalization processes and the intergenerational integration, as well as (and in particular) the cultural capital of younger generations and, last, but not least, the willingness of all generations to participate in the transmission and acquisition of knowledge.


In arid and semi-arid regions, water resources are scarce and need climate change impact assessment for water conservation after each storm rainfall as rainfall harvesting in urban areas and runoff harvesting in rural areas. It is the main purpose of this paper to present necessary Water Harvesting (WH) preparation principles by considering simple climate change models for the Arabian Peninsula in general, and for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in particular. The proposed model is a mixture of the Global Circulation (Climate) Model (GCM)'s output scenarios with historical local rainfall records, and hence, prediction of monthly rainfall amounts up to 2100.


Predicting missing facts in a knowledge graph (KG) is crucial as modern KGs are far from complete. Due to labor-intensive human labeling, this phenomenon deteriorates when handling knowledge represented in various languages. In this paper, we explore multilingual KG completion, which leverages limited seed alignment as a bridge, to embrace the collective knowledge from multiple languages. However, language alignment used in prior works is still not fully exploited: (1) alignment pairs are treated equally to maximally push parallel entities to be close, which ignores KG capacity inconsistency; (2) seed alignment is scarce and new alignment identification is usually in a noisily unsupervised manner. To tackle these issues, we propose a novel self-supervised adaptive graph alignment (SS-AGA) method. Specifically, SS-AGA fuses all KGs as a whole graph by regarding alignment as a new edge type. As such, information propagation and noise influence across KGs can be adaptively controlled via relation-aware attention weights. Meanwhile, SS-AGA features a new pair generator that dynamically captures potential alignment pairs in a self-supervised paradigm. Extensive experiments on both the public multilingual DBPedia KG and newly-created industrial multilingual E-commerce KG empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of SS-AGA


We have investigated and developed a theoretical approach to explore stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) phenomena in single mode fiber. SBS happening threshold power condition has been studied in terms of fiber parameters and input pump power. To assess threshold power precisely, the pump depletion effect and fiber loss has been included by employing 1% criterion. The threshold exponential gain Gth can be anticipated by this simulation which strongly depends on the fiber length Brillouin gain content and effective area. The value of Gth is not a constant as usually assumed in the literature and its value is 4 for the longer lengths and between 10 and 18 is for relatively shorter lengths. This simulation can anticipate the optimum length of fiber against the every launched pump power to generate SBS effect.


Charles Bonnet syndrome is a condition associated with blindness1 and estimated to affect up to half of all blind people, although most have the condition in a very mild form. I have it in a very severe form and there is no known cure, although I have tried several different medications. My main symptoms are visual hallucinations, including dense, dazzling fog, increased sensitivity to natural or artificial light and hallucinations of varying forms of print that also may be dazzling. I can partially reduce the external light sensitivity by wearing dark glasses and/or a visor, but this has no effect on the other hallucinations, which occur with eyes open or closed. Sufferers from Charles Bonnet syndrome are aware that the hallucinations are not real, unlike the hallucinations of mental disorder2.

Forty years ago (1977), I was found on routine examination to have glaucoma and was started on treatment, though at that time I had no visual symptoms. …


The dynamics of spreading of small amounts of viscous fluids are usually investigated using spherical droplets of oils. Recently we applied Frenkel's method to this problem and obtained a wide angle relation between the edge speed and the dynamic contact angle and this gave good agreement with literature data. In this work we give a simple extension of the method to the spreading of a stripe, rather than droplet, of oil. The small angle limit for the time dependence of the width of the stripe on a high energy surface is d0 varies as (t+t0 to)1/7 and is in agreement with previous work. Results of optical observations on the time dependence of the width of stripes of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) oils of viscosities of 10000, 30000 and 100000 cS on glass and on lithium niobate substrates are also presented. Fits to these data give a time dependence close to that predicted. Furthermore, order of magnitude estimates of the value of a logarithmic cut-off factor appearing in the theory are consistent with those obtained by previous studies on the spreading of spherical droplets of PDMS oils. This work establishes a spreading problem with a plane spreading liquid front and which is used in an accompanying paper to study the feasibility of a new surface acoustic wave technique for the study of dynamic wetting.


Metabolomics, the quantification of small biochemicals in plasma and tissues, can provide insight into complex biochemical processes and enable the identification of biomarkers that may serve as therapeutic targets. We hypothesized that the plasma metabolome of asthma would reveal metabolic consequences of the specific immune and inflammatory responses unique to endotypes of asthma. The plasma metabolomic profiles of 20 asthmatic subjects and 10 healthy controls were examined using an untargeted global and focused metabolomic analysis. Individuals were classified based on clinical definitions of asthma severity or by levels of fraction of exhaled NO (FENO), a biomarker of airway inflammation. Of the 293 biochemicals identified in the plasma, 25 were significantly different among asthma and healthy controls (p < 0.05). Plasma levels of taurine, lathosterol, bile acids (taurocholate and glycodeoxycholate), nicotinamide, and adenosine-5-phosphate were significantly higher in asthmatics compared with healthy controls. Severe asthmatics had biochemical changes related to steroid and amino acid/protein metabolism. Asthmatics with high FENO, compared with those with low FENO, had higher levels of plasma branched-chain amino acids and bile acids. Asthmatics have a unique plasma metabolome that distinguishes them from healthy controls and points to activation of inflammatory and immune pathways. The severe asthmatic and high FENO asthmatic have unique endotypes that suggest changes in NO-associated taurine transport and bile acid metabolism.


A broadly applicable catalyst system consisting of water-soluble Pd--imidate complexes has been enployed for the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling of four different nucleosides in water under mild conditions. The efficient nature of the catalyst system also allowed its application in developing a microwave-assisted protocol with the purpose of expediting the catalytic reaction. Preliminary mechanistic studies, assisted by catalyst poison tests and stoichiometric tests performed using an electrospray ionization spectrometer, revealed the possible presence of a homotopic catalyst system.


In Provincializing Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty laid out a systematic critique of historicism as a marker of essential, racialized difference. Unquestioned assumptions of universal time and telos were instrumentalized by colonial power to rank and rule subaltern others. This paper builds on Chakrabarty's decolonizing project by seeking to denaturalize the legacies of imperialism inscribed in ideas about place (Europe or the nation-state) and time (the universal chronology of modernity). By provincializing political chronology, I challenge sovereign periodization as the key rubric of historical expertise by focusing on corporeal chronologies. This analytic stresses the role of embodiment in Amerindian expressions of colonial resistance; the somatic instantiation of categories of laggard time – the primitive, the savage, the child – produced in imperial knowledge-making imaginaries and projected onto racialized bodies; consider how the past is embodied and reiterated through memory, trauma, and disability; and the everyday spaces of intimacy and interpersonal rapports where cate- gories about self and empire are recapitulated, reified, and lived.


Overview of effective approaches to research, as well as tips on citing and writing; distinguishing popular from scholarly literature, and primary versus secondary sources.


Based on field research data of farmers in Zhejiang Province, the authors analyzed factors influencing farmers' participation in forest farmers cooperatives (hereafter referred to as FFCs) by the binary logistic regression model. Results show that understanding of farmers about cooperatives has a great influence on their behavior of participation in FFCs. Besides, educational level of householders and existing member scale of cooperatives also have significant influence on farmers' behavior of participation in cooperatives. Therefore, it is required to strengthen propaganda of cooperatives, deepen their understanding of cooperatives; cultivate new high quality farmers to provide talents for development of cooperatives; establish incentive mechanism to encourage farmers to participate in cooperatives.


We demonstrate the applicability of Sharpless "click" chemistry, specifically Huisgen 1,3-dipolar cycloadditions, as a general methodology for functionalizing surfaces coated with self-assembled monolayers. Ferrocene immobilization was used as our model, and the resulting monolayers were analyzed using traditional surface analytical techniques. Our preliminary results indicate that this reaction proceeds to completion at room temperature in aqueous solvent. The triazole group is a thermally and hydrolytically stable, conjugated linkage. The reactants, acetylenes and azides, are independently stable; they do not react with common organic reagents or with themselves. Thus the potential for this reaction to immobilize a wide range of functionally complex substances on metal surfaces is significant. To our knowledge this is the first report of the use of "click" chemistry to modify a well-defined electrode surface.


Interannual variability of the early summer (May-June) coccolithophore blooms within surface waters of the Black Sea was studied by means of satellite-based bio-optical observations. The performance of two coccolithophore detection algorithms were tested for Black Sea conditions, and were found to provide comparable spatial patterns consistent with the corresponding true color images. An analysis of six, year-long OCTS and SeaWiFS imagery from 1997 onwards points to the presence of a major phytoplankton bloom in every early summer season. Blooms are dominated by densely populated coccolithophore algae within the entire basin, except during 2001. In the early summer of 2001, the coccolithophore activity was limited to the northeastern coastal zone, and the bloom in the rest of the basin was formed by non-coccolithophore groups, as suggested by their relatively strong chlorophyll signature. More coccolithophore over, limited coccolithophore abundance noted in the historical CZCS data suggests substantial differences in terms of spatial coverage and total biomass from the early 1980s to the late 90s. The increasing contribution of coccolithophores to the early summer phytoplankton community structure during the last decade is also consistent with the current view of dramatic shifts in taxonomic composition from diatoms to coccolithophores and flagellates, as a part of transformations that took place in the Black Sea biogeochemistry and ecosystem structure under changing anthropogenic and climate forcing during the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.


This Rapid Communication proposes a comprehensive scaling theory for percolation, which clarifies the intrinsic nature of finite-size scaling and effectively addresses the finite-size effects. This theory applies to extensive systems, including especially the explosive percolation. It is suggested that explosive percolation shares the same scaling law as normal percolation, but may suffer from more severe finite-size effects. Remarkably, in contrast to previous studies, relying on the framework of our theory, the present Rapid Communication suggests that for all systems, the universal scaling functions do not depend on the boundary conditions.


Orientation: It is of theoretical and practical interest to establish the sequential relationship between work engagement and positive organisational behaviour, as represented by the psychological capital (PsyCap) construct.
Research purpose: The main aim of this study was to conceptualise and investigate the causal relationship and temporal order in the relationship between PsyCap and engagement by means of longitudinal data.
Motivation for the study: The rationale for establishing the sequence of engagement and psychological capital lies in the fact that training interventions to enhance the organisational well-being of employees may need to be focused on either one or the other.
Research design, approach and method: A longitudinal study with a cross-lagged panel design was conducted; data was gathered by means of a survey that was constructed for the purpose of the study. The survey contained the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES), and a measure of PsyCap. All employees within a chemical factory (N = 1003) were approached to provide data; 163 employees participated.
Main findings: Results revealed that PsyCap at Time 1 (T1) did not significantly predict engagement at Time 2 (T2). Evidence does however exist that initial levels of employee engagement predict subsequent PsyCap.
Practical/managerial implications: Results suggest that employee interventions aimed at protecting and fostering employee engagement may have implications for subsequent employee psychological capital.
Contribution/value-add: As an empirical, longitudinal study to address the temporal order between PsyCap and work engagement, this study makes a contribution especially to theory, but also with practical implications by indicating that engagement precedes employee psychological capital.


The posit number system is proposed as a replacement of IEEE floats. It encodes floating-point values with tapered precision: numbers whose exponent is close to 0 have more precision than IEEE floats, while numbers with high-magnitude exponents have lower precision, because their encoding takes bits from the significand. In addition, the posit standard mandates the presence of the "quire", a Kulisch-like large accumulator able to perform exact sums of products. Several works have demonstrated that posit arithmetic can provide improved accuracy at the application level. However, the variable-length fields of posit encoding impacts the hardware cost of posit arithmetic. Existing comparisons of posit hardware versus float hardware are unconvincing, and the overhead of the exact accumulator has not been studied in detail so far. This work aims at filling this gap. To this purpose, it introduces an open-source tool to compare the respective costs of floats and posits on an application basis. A C++ templatized library compatible with Vivado HLS implements operators for custom size posits and their associated quire. These architectures are evaluated on recent FPGA hardware and compared to their IEEE-754 counterpart. The standard 32 bits posit adder is found to be twice as large as the corresponding floating-point adder. Posit multiplication requires about 7 times more LUTs and a few more DSPs for a latency which is 2x worst than the IEEE-754 32 bit multiplier. Furthermore , the cost of the posit 32 quire is shown to be the same as a 32 bits floating-point Kulisch accumulator.


The European hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus Linnaeus, 1758, is a common host of Ixodes ricinus L. and I. hexagonus Leach, vectors of the Lyme disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato. To investigate whether hedgehogs are reservoirs for B. burgdorferi, hedgehogs were captured in a suburban area suitable for both tick species and in an urban area where I. ricinus is absent. The infection status of the hedgehogs was determined by xenodiagnosis using I. ricinus and I. hexagonus larvae. I. hexagonus and/or I. ricinus were found on all hedgehogs (n = 8) from the suburban area. In contrast, only I. hexagonus was infesting animals (n = 5) from the urban area. A total of 12/13 hedgehogs harboured B. burgdorferi infected ticks. Xenodiagnostic I. ricinus and I. hexagonus larvae that fed on hedgehogs became infected. The results clearly show that European hedgehogs are reservoir hosts of the Lyme disease spirochetes. DNA of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto, B. garinii and B. afzelii was detected in culture from ear biopsy and needle aspiration material and characterized by using a genospecies-specific PCR assay. One hedgehog presented a mixed infection of the skin with B. burgdorferi sensu stricto and B. garinii. This study also identifies an enzootic transmission cycle in an urban area involving E. europaeus and I. hexagonus. The close association of I. hexagonus with the burrows of its hosts mean that the risks of contact between I. hexagonus and humans may be low.


This research supports the interactive access to large-scale scientific data by creation of active user interfaces (AUIs). An AUI continuously emits events describing its current information needs, based on which methods may be developed for controlling the potentially immense information streams directed at the interface. More precisely the purposes of stream control are twofold. First, stream control is performed to deal with heterogeneity in underlying systems, where low end displays may receive only small portions of the data shown at high end displays. Second, stream control is used to achieve scalability with respect to the size and complexity of data streams directed at a user interface, by filtering the data stream and by offloading certain computations from the AUI to the information generators or to information routing sites, by dynamically migrating such computations to appropriate locations, and by adapting these computations in order to effect tradeoffs in the amount of data moved across network links vs. the computations required.


The paper presents an overview of the current research and methods applied to the problem of data cleansing. It presents a tool for automated data cleansing of data sets. The tool is designed to be domain independent and constitutes the first part in a proposed framework for automated data cleansing. Development of a tool to address the entire framework is the ultimate goal of the research. The paper addresses the data cleansing problem from a different perspective, that is identification of errors in single data sets. This research ties together data quality and data mining issues. Existing outlier detection methods are utilized: clustering, pattern identification, and statistical methods. Real-world data is used for experiments. The methods and results are presented and analyzed. Refinements of these methods and new methods are proposed to address the data cleansing problem. ∗ This research is supported in part by a grant from the Office of Naval Research. Maletic & Marcus Automated Identification of Errors in Data Sets Technical Report CS-00-02 2 2/2/2000


Abstract Sensitivity analysis is a technique that is widely used in reactor physics calculations to efficiently obtain first-order changes in responses of interest due to variations of input parameters. This paper presents an extension of the well-known perturbation procedures for the critical eigenvalue and flux functionals. The extended method makes it possible to determine sensitivities in coupled criticality problems with mutual feedback between neutronics and one or more augmenting systems (e.g., thermal hydraulics or fission product poisoning). The technique uses appropriate neutronic and augmenting adjoint functions, which can be obtained by solving a system of coupled adjoint equations. Three different approaches are presented for considering the effects of perturbations in coupled criticality problems with feedback: The steady-state power level is allowed to adjust to maintain criticality with the perturbed parameters (power perturbation), a change is allowed in the critical eigenvalue while the flux is constrained (eigenvalue perturbation), or simultaneous perturbations are made to ensure criticality at the unperturbed power level (control parameter perturbation). In the case of power and eigenvalue perturbations, sensitivities can be obtained with or without power- and k-reset procedures, respectively, yielding identical results to control parameter perturbation. The paper presents the theoretical background, an application to a one-dimensional slab problem with thermal and fission product feedback, and a numerical procedure to obtain the necessary adjoint functions. The proposed technique relies on using the neutronics and augmenting codes separately as a preconditioner for Krylov methods employed to the coupled adjoint problem. This makes the development of new codes unnecessary and provides a means of large-scale implementation.


Previous researches have shown that there are three main determinants of halal consumption, namely attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control. In addition, religiosity has been an important inquiry in human consumption, particularly in halal food consumption. In Malaysia, many initiatives have been conducted by the Malaysian government to encourage halal consumption. However, the influence attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, religiosity and the government initiatives in influencing halal food consumption among Generation Y as the main food consumers are still vague. Therefore, this study aims to identify and analyze the determinants influencing Generation Y Muslim consumers' intention in consuming halal food. The Theory of Planned Behavior with two added predictors which are religiosity and the government initiatives is proposed as the conceptual framework. This study employed a quantitative method by using questionnaires to achieve its objectives. Data were collected from 452 respondents from five Private Universities located in the Klang Valley. Descriptive analysis, Exploratory Factor Analysis, Multiple Linear Regression and Moderated Multiple Regression tests were used to analyse the findings. In determining the determinants of behavioral intentions to consume halal food, a five predictors Multiple Linear Regression model was used. In addition, this study, explores the possibility of gender and halal knowledge acquired at the university in moderating the relationship between all five predictors and behavioral intentions in consuming halal food. The results indicated that religiosity, subjective norms and attitude of Generation Y significantly influenced them to consume halal
iv
food. The findings of this study have also shown that gender plays a moderating role between attitude and behavioral intentions in consuming halal. In a nutshell, this study presents three main contributions which are contribution to the body of knowledge, contribution to the fiqh consumption and to the government in improving policies and strategies of halal food consumption in Malaysia.


Backgrounds. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) exists as population of closely related genetic variants known as quasispecies. HCV quasispecies diversity is strongly influenced by host immune pressure on virus. Quasispecies diversity is expected to decline as host immune response to HCV decreases over natural course of progressing from chronic hepatitis C (CHC) to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods. Ultradeep pyrosequencing (UDPS) was used to evaluate degree of quasispecies diversity in 49 patients infected with HCV including 26 with CHC and 23 with HCC. Whole structural protein of HCV genome was subjected to UDPS. Results. Shannon's indices for quasispecies diversity in HCV E1 were significantly lower in patients with HCC than in those with CHC. 14 amino acid positions differed significantly between two groups. Area under curve of ROC analysis for differentiating HCC from CHC was >0.8 for all of 14 amino acid positions. Conclusion. HCV quasispecies diversity as indicator of declining host immune functions was easily assessed by UDPS technology. Shannon's indices in 14 amino acid positions were found to differentiate between patients with CHC and those with HCC. Our data propose that degree of HCV quasispecies measured by UDPS might be useful to predict progression of HCC in chronic HCV patients.


Although it is widely accepted that 20%-30% of total HVAC energy in commercial buildings is wasted due to faulty or inefficient operation, there presently exist no widely adopted solutions to identify and remedy this waste. This lack of adoption is due primarily to the high upfront costs associated with the manual process of customizing commissioning solutions for each individual building. In order to reduce these costs, diagnostic technologies must automate the process of installing and customizing solutions for each implementation. A novel approach to addressing this problem for air handling units (AHUs) and variable air volume (VAV) boxes is presented here. This strategy utilizes a Bayesian network to identify and understand the system operation, identify faults that are wasting energy or impacting occupant comfort, and then generate performance baselines against which future operation will be compared. When this algorithm is first connected to a new building, an adaptive diagnostic Bayesian network identifies the components and configuration of the AHUs and VAVs, and then generates probabilistic outputs indicating the root causes of potential faults and inefficiencies. Once these issues have been rectified to the satisfaction of the building operator, the algorithm then begins to accumulate training data with detailed information about the system operation (while simultaneously continuing to monitor for additional faults). As this training data is accumulated, the diagnostic confidence of the Bayesian network is continuously improved. Additionally, this use of an operational baseline allows for accurate detection and diagnosis of faults causing gradual performance degradation in addition to faults that abruptly occur.


Power quality is one of the key factors in electrical systems and is taken into consideration to meet the demands of the customer. High voltage distribution system (HVDS) is one of the methods to improve quality and reliability of the distribution system. In HVDS, power is transmitted from the distribution station to consumer premises through the booster transformers and voltage regulators. Inrush currents or magnetizing currents and heating of insulation have been observed in transformers due to non-linear loads. As a result, the current drawn by the system is high. To overcome the effects of transformer, a step-up power converter with fuzzy control has been designed. In this paper, high voltage alternating current (HVAC) boost converter with fuzzy controller has been proposed for cost effective solution to reduce the distribution losses. Simulation studies have been carried out for verifying the utilities of the proposed design and found that the distribution system efficiency is improved by 4%.


We present principle and application of a novel noncontact velocity measurement of surface acoustic waves (SAW) on crystals and thin films using laser interference fringes scanned at the phase velocity of SAW. The scanning interference fringes (SIF) are produced by intersecting two laser beams with a frequency difference. The SAW velocity within the laser beam spot is measured as the ratio of observed SAW frequency and predetermined wave number of the SIF. The frequency measurement can be quite precise because of a large number of generated SAW carriers and amplitude enhancement effect. The SAW velocity measurement is free from the water loading effect accompanying the leaky SAW measurements. This principle was successfully applied to evaluate Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ and SiO/sub 2/ films deposited on Si [001] surface.<<ETX>>


i Since the evolution of 'open' cord care in 1974, the umbilical cord of the newborn has been treated prophylacticall~·· with many different forms of antibacterial solutions. Recent studies have demonstrated that cord separation is facilitated by bacteria and many of the current treatments, such as the use of alcohol, actually delay separation. The purpose of this study was to compare cleaning the cord with alcohol to dry cord care, a method of cord care which is now being considered as an acceptable alternative to prophylactic umbilical cord treatment. A convenience sample of 205 babies was taken from a small private maternity unit. A 2 x 2 factorial design was utilized to assess the effect of the independent variables of cord care and clamp removal time, on the dependent variable of cord separation time. In this study dry cord care was compared to the current practice of applying alcohol to the cord, and clamp removal times of 24 hours and 60 hours were considered. A 2 x 2 ANOVA indicated that significantly later mean cord separation times were associated with the use of alcohol on the cord. Variati,ons of cord clamp removal times had no significant effect on the mean cord separation times. Objective data collected on cord appearance indicated that cords treated with dry cord Care were more often reported as being moist or sticky.


THE GERM INSIDE ME: PEDIATRIC PATIENTS' CONCEPTUALIZATION OF ILLNESS AND REGULATION OF EMOTIONS DURING HOSPITALIZATION by Sarah E. Buck The transition into a medical setting can be difficult for children under the age of 18. Previous research has identified a child's capacity to construct accurate representations of illness, in addition to the construction and application of adaptive strategies to modify emotional arousal, as significant predictors of successful adjustment to a medical environment. Preexisting research has neglected to investigate the constructs of illness conceptualization and regulatory systems of emotions. Using a sample of 26 pediatric patients and 26 adult informants, the current study explored the complex relationship between emotional regulation and the conceptualization of illness among children, from the ages of three to five, in the management of a hospital setting. Measures of inhibition, attentional shift and inhibitory self-control were significantly and negatively related to general illness conceptualization. In addition, the study investigated the implications of increased exposure to hospitalization on pediatric patients' development of health-related knowledge and strategies to regulate emotional arousal in early childhood. Contrary to prediction, children characterized as experiencing frequent admittances to a medical setting attained significantly higher means scores, reflecting poor aptitude, on measures of attentional shift, emotional control, and flexibility. The present investigation validates the necessity of respective therapeutic models to appropriately intervene for vulnerable, medically fragile populations


Desmoplastic small round cell tumor (DSRCT) is a rare but highly fatal malignancy. Due to the rarity of this neoplasm, no large population based studies exist. Procedure. This is a retrospective cohort analysis. Incidence rates were calculated based on sex and ethnicity and compared statistically. Gender-, ethnicity-, and treatment- based survival were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results. A total of 192 cases of DSRCT were identified. Peak incidence age was between 20 and 24 years. Age-adjusted incidence rate for blacks was 0.5 cases/million and for whites was 0.2 cases/million (P = 0.037). There was no statistically significant difference in survival based on gender or ethnicity. When adjusted for age, there was no statistically significant difference in survival amongst patients who received radiation therapy compared to those who did not (HRadj = 0.73; 95% CI 0.49, 1.11). There was a statistically significant survival advantage for patients who received radiation after surgery compared to those who did not (HR 0.49; 95% CI 0.30, 0.79). Conclusion. DSRCT is more common in males and in people of African-American descent. Although overall survival remains poor, radiation therapy following surgery seems to improve outcome in these patients.


Preface Contributors Part I. Repeated and Stochastic Games Information and the Existence of Stationary Markovian Equilibrium / Ioannis Karatzas, Martin Shubik, and William D. Sudderth Markov Games under a Geometric Drift Condition / Heinz-Uwe Kuenle A Simple Two-Person Stochastic Game with Money / Piercesare Secchi and William D. Sudderth New Approaches and Recent Advances in Two-Person Zero-Sum Repeated Games / Sylvain Sorin Notes on Risk-Sensitive Nash Equilibria / Andrzej S. Nowak Continuous Convex Stochastic Games of Capital Accumulation / Piotr Wiecek Part II. Differential Dynamic Games Dynamical Core of Fuzzy Dynamical Cooperative Games / Jean-Pierre Aubin Normalized Overtaking Nash Equilibrium for a Class of Distributed Parameter Dynamic Games / Dean A. Carlson Cooperative Differential Games / Leon A. Petrosjan Part III. Stopping Games Selection by Committee / Thomas S. Ferguson Stopping Game Problem for Dynamic Fuzzy Systems / Yuji Yoshida, Masami Yasuda, Masami Kurano, and Jun-ichi Nakagami On Randomized Stopping Games / Elzbieta Z. Ferenstein Stopping Games -- Recent Results / Eilon Solan and Nicolas Vieille Dynkin's Games with Randomized Optimal Stopping Rules / Victor Domansky Modified Strategies in a Competitive Best Choice Problem with Random Priority / Zdzislaw Porosinski Bilateral Approach to the Secretary Problem / David Ramsey and Krzysztof Szajowski Optimal Stopping Games where Players have Weighted Privilege / Minoru Sakaguchi Equilibrium in an Arbitration Procedure / Vladimir V. Mazalov and Anatoliy A. Zabelin Part IV. Applications of Dynamic Games to Economics, Finance and Queuing Theory Applications of Dynamic Games in Queues / Eitan Altman Equilibria for Multiclass Routing Problems inMulti-Agent Networks / Eitan Altman and Hisao Kameda Endogenous Shocks and Evolutionary Strategy: Application to a Three-Players Game / Ekkehard C. Ernst, Bruno Amable and Stefano Palombarini Robust Control Approach to Option Pricing, Including Transaction Costs / Pierre Bernhard S-Adapted Equilibria in Games Played over Event Trees: An Overview / Alain Haurie and Georges Zaccour Existence of Nash Equilibria in Endogenous Rent-Seeking Games / Koji Okuguchi A Dynamic Game with Continuum of Players and its Counterpart with Finitely Many Players / Agnieszka Wiszniewska-Matyszkiel Part V. Numerical Methods and Algorithms for Solving Dynamics Games Distributed Algorithms for Nash Equilibria of Flow Control Games / Tansu Alpcan and Tamer Basar A Taylor Series Expansion of H-infinity Control of Perturbed Markov Jump Linear Systems / Rachid El Azouzi, Eitan Altman and Mohammed Abbad Advances in Parallel Algorithms for the Isaacs Equation / Maurizio Falcone and Paolo Stefani Numerical Algorithm for Cross-Coupled Algebraic Riccati Equations of Singularly Perturbed Systems / Hiroaki Mukaidani, Hua Xu and Koichi Mizukami Equilibrium Selection via Adaptation: Using Genetic Programming to Model Learning in a Coordination Game / Shu-Heng Chen, John Duffy and Chia-Hsuan Yeh Part VI. Parrondo's Games and Related Topics State-Space Visualization and Fractal Properties of Parrondo's Games / Andrew Allison, Derek Abbott and Charles Pearce Parrondo's Capital and History-Dependent Games / Gregory P. Harmer, Derek Abbott and Juan M. R. Parrondo Introduction to Quantum Games and a Quantum Parrondo Game / Joseph Ng and Derek Abbott A Semi-quantum Version of the Game of Life / Adrian P. Flitney and Derek Abbott


Peer-to-peer overlays provide a substrate well suited to building distributed storage systems. Applications that use the infrastructure need the ability to control access to their data. However, traditional authorization services were not designed to operate in the face of network partitions, malicious nodes, and on an Internet-wide scale.
 We describe the implementation of the Decentralized Authentication and Authorization Layer (DAAL), a mechanism to leverage the storage functionality of the overlay and obviate the need for an online, centralized access control service. The system can efficiently identify malicious nodes and continue to operate correctly when an arbitrary, predefined fraction of the network is unreachable (as occurs during an attack against the routing infrastructure or during a distributed denial-of-service attack).
 DAAL melds the access request efficiency of capability-based systems with the revocation power of reference monitor-based access control lists. It avoids the use of distributed leases as they create a vulnerability window during which there is a gap between the security policy and configuration. Actualizing the design can be challenging. Hence, we describe the protocol details and how they can be abstracted behind a minimal, intuitive application programming interface. As a proof of concept, we implemented DAAL as a Java prototype on a 200-node peer-to-peer overlay distributed across the world.


The rules that are employed to pass policies in legislative bodies vary widely. It is generally argued that policies that differ in complexity or importance level should be decided under different kinds of voting rules. While this question has been examined for static legislative mechanisms, an analysis of the precise relationship between the level of policy complexity and the type of voting rule is still missing for dynamic mechanisms. We address this problem from the perspective of a preference-blind political designer. Given the level of complexity of the decision that is to be made, the political designer's goal is to select the supermajority rule that avoids (1) policy instability; (2) guarantees efficiency; and (3) minimizes institutional status quo bias. We provide an answer to this objective problem, deriving a closed-form relationship between voting rule and policy complexity. Our analysis rationalizes the use of different rules to adopt different types of policy only when preferences are weak. When preferences are strong, the optimal rule is unique, and it does not vary by level of policy complexity. These findings significantly differ from those obtained for static mechanisms. Our study also implies that more complex policies are more likely to be persistent, even after a change in political preferences.


ABSTRACT Forward genetic screening of mutants using firefly luciferase (LUC) reporter gene became a standard practice in plant research. Such screenings frequently identified alleles of CPL1 (Carboxyl-terminal Phosphatase-Like 1) regardless of promoters or pathways studied. Expression of the corresponding endogenous genes often shows the minimal difference between wild type and cpl1. Here we show that the LUC coding sequence is responsible for the high expression in cpl1, using a classical RD29a-LUC. Deletion of the LUC 3′-UTR did not change hyperactivation of LUC in cpl1. However, a codon-modified LUC (LUC2) produced similar expression levels both in wild type and in cpl1. These results indicate that the coding region of LUC is responsible for the cpl1-specific LUC overexpression uncoupled with the expression of the endogenous counterpart.


Current models of the TCR / CD3 complex assume that, in mature peripheral T lymphocytes, variability is restricted to the alpha beta (or gamma delta) chains of the TCR heterodimer responsible for antigen recognition, whereas the CD3 polypeptides involved in signal transmission are invariant. Here we show that mouse CD4(+) T lymphocytes and T cell lines are bound with different avidity by anti-CD3 monoclonal antibodies. These findings cannot be accounted for by allelic differences between CD3 chains, by the nature of the TCR chains, or by the ratio of CD3epsilon delta to CD3epsilon gamma chain pairing. Rather, they are linked to heterogeneity of the N-terminal region of CD3epsilon chains, as detected by peptide-specific antibodies. In turn, these differences among CD3epsilon chains correlate with variations in the strength of TCR / CD3 interaction. N-terminal CD3epsilon heterogeneity is not due to alternative splicing mechanisms, but rather involves digestion by metalloproteases, as suggested by reverse transcription-PCR amplification and by the effect of protease inhibitors, respectively. Based on these data, we propose a model linking CD3epsilon N-terminal variability with altered CD3 recognition by monoclonal antibodies and TCR / CD3 interaction. This model suggests the possibility of distinct spatial arrangements of the TCR / CD3 complex.


The main aim of this study was to compare Grime's strategies in 91 plant taxa occurring from the eastern to the western part of the central Black Sea region of northern Turkey (Samsun). To do this, 45 sample plots were taken from different community types (from swamp forests to halophytic communities), and the strategies of plant species were compared with each other. Many tree and shrub species present in Haci Osman Forest, a protected swamp forest, exhibited a purely competitive (C) strategy; some other tree and shrub species exhibited secondary strategies such as competitive/competitive stress-tolerant (C/CS) and competitive/competitive ruderal (C/CR). The ecological features of Haci Osman Forest and Galeric Forest are similar, and species of either forest tended to adopt stress-tolerant strategies. Coastal dune species within the study area exhibited transient strategies. Finally, it was evaluated that the CSR classification model can be successfully applied to determine the responses of plant species to changing land use patterns and disturbance factors, even for woody shrub and tree species, although our data were not entirely consistent with Grime's succession theory.


The 3D-ranging systems based on time-of-flight (TOF) principle are nowadays
intensively investigated. As the key component of a 3D non-scanning TOF ranging
system, the novel P hotonic M ixer D evice (PMD) realized based on the standard CMOS technology, has won intensive, widespread interest from various sides since its appearance in 1997. The unique and astonishing features of PMD, and its easy integration into a sensing array and the flexible arrangement make the realization of extremely fast, flexible, robust and low cost smart 3D solid-state ranging cameras possible.
In this thesis, the experimental investigation of the PMD device was carried out, which offers an experimental basis for the further optimization in the PMD chip design. Based on the actually fabricated single PMD chips, the first generation of smart 3D PMD ranging cameras was developed. Because of the its outstanding electro-optical mixing features, the PMD ranging system overcomes the typical drawbacks in the conventional TOF-measurement techniques and considerably simplifies the system design without loss of the measurement accuracy. With the continuous development of the modern semiconductor technology and further improvement of PMD performance, the PMD will find more and more applications in different areas of the industry in the future.


Familial partial lipodystrophy of the Dunnigan type (FPLD) is characterised by a progressive reduction of adipose issue in the extremities and in the trunk and by an accumulation of fat in the head, neck and visceral adipose tissue, and is associated with diabetes, dyslipidaemia and cardiovascular diseases. The aim was to assess the level of physical activity, body composition (BC) and abdominal resistance in women with FPLD. Eighteen women with FPLD and 18 control women (CG) were evaluated in terms of anthropometric variables (weight, height, body mass index (BMI)). BC was evaluated by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (Hologic 4500W). A questionnaire divided into four parts was used for the assessment of habitual physical activity level (HPAL): occupational physical activities (OPA), physical exercise (PE) and locomotion and leisure activities (LLA), which are part of the evaluation of physical activity in the last 12 months (ET). Resistance was determined by the 1 min abdominal test. The characteristics of women with FPLD were: age=36±13 years, weight=64.7±14.1 kg, height=1.61±0.07 m, BMI=24.8±4.2 kg/m2 vs CG age=35.6±13 years, weight=63.9±12.4 kg, height=1.62±0.07 m, BMI=24.4±4.8 kg/m2. Regarding HPAL, women with FPLD presented: OPA=2.96±0.61, PE=1.92±0.48, LLA=2.50±0.59, ET=7.33±1.18 vs CG OPA=2.75±0.60, PE=2.14±0.56, LLA=2.47±0.66, ET=7.38±1.16. As expected, % fat (FPLD=23.5±9.5% vs CG=36.0±6.1% p<0.05) and lean mass (FPLD=42.5 kg vs CG=35.8 kg p<0.05) differed between groups. In the abdominal test, women with FPLD presented reduced abdominal resistance (FPLD=14 repetitions vs CG=26 repetitions) (p=0.01). HPAL was low in both groups and abdominal resistance was lower in the FPLD group. A low level of muscle strength may contribute to the onset of diseases that cause limitations of daily activities and a reduced quality of life.


This monograph addresses the worlds of social science theory and artificial intelligence (AI). The book examines the interaction of individual cognitive factors and social influence on human action and discusses the implications for developments in artificial intelligence. This book is intended for graduate and research level artificial intelligence and social science theory (including sociology, economics, psychology).


: The authors describe a prospective, random study which compares the usefulness, advantages and inconveniences between a 3M Tegaderm transparent surgical dressing and a gauze dressing under a protocol for the maintenance of peripheral venous blood vessels. Their conclusions highlight as major differences the ease and speed in the use of the 3M Tegaderm transparent surgical dressing, the vision in the syringe nozzle insertion zone allowed by this dressing and a higher degree of early detection of phlebitis when this dressing is used. This article was awarded the second place prize in the First 3M Tegaderm Contest.


The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of self-assembled microstructure on lipid digestibility in phytosterol (γ-oryzanol and β-sitosterol) oleogels. Different molar ratios of γ-oryzanol and β-sitosterol yielded a variety of crystal morphologies; the resulting gels were tested for their lipid emulsification efficiency, release rate of free fatty acids (FFAs) during lipolysis, and their effect on lipase behavior. Results indicated that oleogels were harder to emulsify when compared to oil samples. The emulsification efficiencly was affected by both the gel strength and crystal morphology of the self-assembled structures within phytosterol oleogels. In oil emulsions, intestinal digestion resulted in more extensive lipid droplet coalescence with increased particle size when compared to oleogel emulsions. The FFA release rate suggested that the extent of lipid digestion was correlated to the emulsification efficiency. The interfacial binding of lipase indicated that the amount of lipase adsorption was positively correlated to the interface area created during the emulsification process. Finally, isothermal titration calorimetry results indicated that self-assembled structures within these oleogels physically obstructed the interaction between lipase and lipid. Ultimately, this led to lower reaction rate during gastrointestinal digestion. Collectively, these results may have important implications in designing oleogel systems with controlled lipid digestibility as well as controlling the bioavailability of delivered lipid-soluble bioactive compounds.


This paper presents a Bibliography of High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) transmission technology for 2007-08. It provides a listing of various journal and conference papers in this area.


This study broaches the question of the impact of televised political satire as perceived by viewers. It offers a new perspective: the differing perceptions of citizens and the communication directors of political parties regarding its capacity for bringing about changes or contributing to the diffusion of information about political issues. The main research question is about whether there are differences between the views of citizens and those of the communication directors of political parties regarding the perceived effects of the satirical Spanish programme Polònia. As a result of data obtained by means of three cross-referenced methodological approaches (random surveys, focus groups and interviews), it is concluded that political communication directors consider that the satire is closer to real events than citizens do, and believe that it has a considerable persuasive effect. However, the citizens consulted in the sample deny that it could heighten their interest in politics or lead to a change of opinion.


Although the butterflies of North America have received considerable taxonomic attention, overlooked species and instances of hybridization continue to be revealed. The present study assembles a DNA barcode reference library for this fauna to identify groups whose patterns of sequence variation suggest the need for further taxonomic study. Based on 14,626 records from 814 species, DNA barcodes were obtained for 96% of the fauna. The maximum intraspecific distance averaged 1/4 the minimum distance to the nearest neighbor, producing a barcode gap in 76% of the species. Most species (80%) were monophyletic, the others were para- or polyphyletic. Although 15% of currently recognized species shared barcodes, the incidence of such taxa was far higher in regions exposed to Pleistocene glaciations than in those that were ice-free. Nearly 10% of species displayed high intraspecific variation (>2.5%), suggesting the need for further investigation to assess potential cryptic diversity. Aside from aiding the identification of all life stages of North American butterflies, the reference library has provided new perspectives on the incidence of both cryptic and potentially over-split species, setting the stage for future studies that can further explore the evolutionary dynamics of this group.


Reactive sintering of liquid Al with solid Ni resulting in the formation of intermetallic compounds was used for joining parts made of heat-resistant steel and parts made of ZrO2 ceramic. The constituents of the binding layer (the 'filler') were introduced in the form of foils (e.g. in the Al/Ni/Al sequence) in-between the two parts to be joined. The heat-resistant steel joints (steel- /NiAl/-steel) were bonded in vacuum within the temperature range from 1023K to 1323K, at a pressure of 6MPa for 30 to 60min. The ceramic joints of the ZrO2-/NiAl/-ZrO2 type were produced in an argon atmosphere within the temperature range from 1373K to 1723K at a pressure of 6MPa for a time from 30 to 60min. The joints of both types produced under these conditions had a required structure and were suitable for exploitation at high temperatures in air. Based on the results obtained for these joints, we experimented successfully with joining zirconium ceramics with heatresistant steel by using the reactive sintering of Ni-Al intermetallic compounds.