Although many counter-drone systems such as drone jammers and anti-drone guns have been implemented, drone incidents are still increasing. These incidents are categorized as deviant act, a criminal act, terrorist act, or an unintentional act (aka system failure). Examples of reported drone incidents are not limited to property damage, but include personal injuries, airport disruption, drug transportation, and terrorist activities. Researchers have examined only drone incidents from a technological perspective. The variance in drone architectures poses many challenges to the current investigation practices, including several operation approaches such as custom commutation links. Therefore, there is a limited research background available that aims to study the intercomponent mapping in unmanned aircraft system (UAS) investigation incorporating three critical investigative domains---behavioral analysis, forensic intelligence (FORINT), and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) forensic investigation. The UAS forensic intelligence-led taxonomy (U-FIT) aims to classify the technical, behavioral, and intelligence characteristics of four UAS deviant actions --- including individuals who flew a drone too high, flew a drone close to government buildings, flew a drone over the airfield, and involved in drone collision. The behavioral and threat profiles will include one criminal act (i.e., UAV contraband smugglers). The UAV forensic investigation dimension concentrates on investigative techniques including technical challenges; whereas, the behavioral dimension investigates the behavioral characteristics, distinguishing among UAS deviants and illegal behaviors. Moreover, the U-FIT taxonomy in this study builds on the existing knowledge of current UAS forensic practices to identify patterns that aid in generalizing a UAS forensic intelligence taxonomy. The results of these dimensions supported the proposed UAS forensic intelligence-led taxonomy by demystifying the predicted personality traits to deviant actions and drone smugglers. The score obtained in this study was effective in distinguishing individuals based on certain personality traits. These novel, highly distinguishing features in the behavioral personality of drone users may be of particular importance not only in the field of behavioral psychology but also in law enforcement and intelligence.


Abstract. We have investigated how the quality of stereoscopically measured topography degrades with varying illumination, in particular the ranges of incidence angles and illumination differences over which useful digital topographic models (DTMs) can be recovered. Our approach is to make high-fidelity simulated image pairs of known topography and compare DTMs from stereoanalysis of these images with the input data. Well-known rules of thumb for horizontal resolution (>3–5 pixels) and matching precision (~0.2–0.3 pixels) are generally confirmed, but the best achievable resolution at high incidence angles is ~15 pixels, probably as a result of smoothing internal to the matching algorithm. Single-pass stereo imaging of Europa is likely to yield DTMs of consistent (optimal) quality for all incidence angles ≤85°, and certainly for incidence angles between 40° and 85°. Simulations with pairs of images in which the illumination is not consistent support the utility of shadow tip distance (STD) as a measure of illumination difference, but also suggest new and simpler criteria for evaluating the suitability of stereopairs based on illumination geometry. Our study was motivated by the needs of a mission to Europa, but the approach and (to first order) the results described here are relevant to a wide range of planetary investigations.


Some motivations and experiences of a professor who became active twelve years ago in the development of educational software for use in teaching and learning engineering electromagnetics are described. Categories of educational tools are defined, exemplified, discussed, and ranked in order of effectiveness. The author provides opinions as to what has and has not been accomplished. >


The occurrence of temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ) disease in ankylosing spondylitis is not widely recognized and its incidence is disputed. Seventy-nine patients attending two routine rheumatology clinics were therefore examined by dental surgeon and nine (11-5 per cent) were considered to have specific TMJ involvement. These patients were older than the remainder, and had more extensive spinal and peripheral joint disease. Symptoms were mild and the predominant clinical feature was restricted mouth opening, which could present considerable difficulties during emergency anaesthesia. Bilateral condylectomy was undertaken in one patient with some benefit.


[1] We assess future flood hazard in view of climate change at pan-European scale using a large ensemble of climate projections. The ensemble consists of simulations from 12 climate experiments conducted within the ENSEMBLES project, forced by the SRES A1B emission scenario for the period 1961–2100. Prior to driving the hydrological model LISFLOOD, climate simulations are corrected for bias in precipitation and temperature using a Quantile Mapping (QM) method. For time slices of 30 years, a Gumbel distribution is fitted by the maximum likelihood method through the simulated annual maximum discharges. Changes in extreme river flows, here exemplified by the 100-year discharge (Q100), are then analyzed with respect to a control period (1961–1990). We assess the uncertainty arising from using alternative climate experiments to force LISFLOOD and from the fitting of extreme value distributions. Results show large discrepancies in the magnitude of change in Q100among the hydrological simulations for different climate experiments, with some regions even showing an opposite signal of change. Due to the low signal-to-noise ratio in some areas the projected changes showed not all to be statistically significant. Despite this, western Europe, the British Isles and northern Italy show a robust increase in future flood hazard, mainly due to a pronounced increase in extreme rainfall. A decrease inQ100, on the other hand, is projected in eastern Germany, Poland, southern Sweden and, to a lesser extent, the Baltic countries. In these areas, the signal is dominated by the strong reduction in snowmelt induced floods, which offsets the increase in average and extreme precipitation.


---
title: Quantitative assessment of brain tumor radiation treatment reveals decrease in tumor-supporting vessels
author:
 - David Haberthur^1^
 - Ruslan Hlushchuk^1^
 - Marine Potez^1^
 - Audrey Bouchet^1^
 - Valentin Djonov^1^
include-before: ^1^ Institute of Anatomy, University of Bern, Switzerland
date: \today
---

# Aims
Angiogenesis---the formation of new blood vessels---is an important factor for tumor growth [@Sherwood1971].
Reducing tumor-supporting vessels by radiation treatment is a powerful option for treating tumors; specialized treatments that deliver high radiation doses have shown to enable *excellent* survival rate [@Laissue1998].
Among rodent models for brain tumors, the 9L-gliosarcoma model is a widely used one, since it mimics important features of human brain tumor growth.

Our aim is to extract and assess biologically relevant values of brain tumors (tumor and vessel volume, vessel surface, etc.) from rats that underwent different radiation treatments.
These values are extracted based on two imaging modalities, namely microCT and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

# Method
Brain tumors were induced in 10-week-old Fisher 344 rats (n=59) by inoculation of gliosarcoma cells into the right caudate nucleus through the skull [@Bouchet2014].

Ten days after inoculation, tumor volume was assessed by MRI performed with a 4.7 T [Bruker Avance III](https://www.bruker.com/products/mr/nmr/overview.html) console [@Lemasson2015].
Based on tumor volume, animals were split into groups with comparable tumor size ready for either microbeam radiation therapy (`MRT`), conventional radiation therapy (so called broad beam, `BB`) or no therapy (`CTRL`).

Irradiation was performed at the [ID17 biomedical beamline](http://www.esrf.eu/UsersAndScience/Experiments/CBS/ID17) at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility.
Details on the facility and the radiation treatment are described by @Bouchet2016.

Briefly, rats were irradiated ten days after inoculation using two 8 x 10 mm irradiation fields focused onto the tumor location in the anterior part of the right hemisphere.
For the `MRT`-animals, the irradiation field was split into 40 microbeams (width 50 μm, 200 μm on-center spacing) using a multislit collimator.
The in-microbeam entrance dose was 250 Gy, the valley dose approximately 9 Gy.
For the `BB`-animals, the irradiation was homogeneously applied to the same area with a dose equivalent to the `MRT` valley dose.

On days 6, 10 and 14 after radiation treatment, rats were again imaged by MRI.
Subsequently, they were infused with a contrast agent (μAngiofil, @Schaad2017) and their brains extracted.
Fifty-four of those brains were imaged with a [Bruker SkyScan 1272](http://bruker-microct.com/products/1272.htm).
The brains were immersed in 4 % PFA in a custom-made sample holder and imaged at 5 μm voxel size.

After manually delineating the tumor regions of interest (ROIs) in CTAn we used a custom image processing pipeline in Python to assess the data sets and extract the aforementioned values.
The automatic assessment pipeline analyzes the 54 data sets fully autonomous and in a reproducible way.

Due to the contrast agent, separating blood vessels from the tumor volume was as easy as using standard gray value thresholding.
This makes it possible to easily extract values like tumor and vessel volume and thus the vessel volume ratio.
With a distance transformation we can also extract the vessel diameter and the vessel surface.

# Results
Tumor ROIs can easily be visualized.
Figure 1 shows three example tumors from the whole set of scans.

![Visualization of three of the 54 scanned tumors. Left to right: Control, microbeam and broad beam radiation therapy.](img/Montage.png)

Radiation treatment reduces the vasculature in the tumor, as can be seen in Figure 2.

![Box plots of the vessel volume per tumor volume.](../../Brain-Grenoble/fig/vessel_ratio.png)

# Conclusion
Using the described approach, we show that radiation treatment decreases the vasculature in the tumor, i.e. less vessels are available to provide the tumor with nutrients.
Our unbiased, automatic assessment shows that the performed radiation treatment is successful.

In parallel to performing the scans, we developed the analysis pipeline.
The reproducible analysis made it possible to easily add more samples, i.e. preliminary results could be obtained early on in this study.


Automatic directional excavation technology in the coal mine laneway is the important research direction of integrated excavation project. Shovel and support bracket are the most key parts for keeping roadheader body stable in excavation. This paper studies the control ability and extreme position of boom-type roadheader's shovel and support bracket, to calculate the adjustable vertical angles rang which is realized by shovel and support bracket, expanding roadheader's automatic compensating excavation ability, meanwhile ensuring body stable. Vertical angle is one of the four kinds of basic body pose deviation parameters. This study is the research basis for the accuracy analysis of boom-type roadheader's directional excavation. Because the depth that shovel and support brackets' tip compress into laneway ground, is mainly determined by laneway ground hardness and body weight, and can't be calculate accurately, paper's end gives feedback control application of shovel and support bracket according to laneway conditions.


: The novel agent pd-FVIIa/FX is a 1 : 10 protein weight mixture of activated factor VII (FVIIa) and factor X (FX) derived from donated blood plasma. A phase III clinical trial of pd-FVIIa/FX revealed high efficacy for bleeding episodes in haemophilia patients with inhibitors. However, up to now, only one case of this new agent being used for surgery had been reported. The objective of this study is to evaluate the perioperative haemostatic efficacy and safety of pd-FVIIa/FX in haemophilia patients with inhibitors. We retrospectively reviewed 25 operation charts from 14 haemophilia patients with high-responding inhibitors using pd-FVIIa/FX during the perioperative period. Efficacy was evaluated by attending physicians and results divided into four groups (excellent, good, fair, and poor). The operation chart was provided by nine Japanese medical institutes with expertise in haemophilia management. Out of the total of 25 surgical procedures, 44% (11/25) were classified as major surgery and the remainders were minor surgeries. In all of the surgeries but one, rFVIIa and/or APCC were administered in combination or sequential method. In all cases except one, the haemostatic efficiency rate was judged as excellent or good by treating physicians for an overall efficacy rate of 96%. No thrombotic adverse effects were reported. This study's results suggest that both combination and sequential therapy of pd-FVIIa/FX and other bypassing agents are well tolerated and effective for the control of perioperative bleeding in haemophilia patients with high-responding inhibitors.


Traditional Graph-Cut algorithm traverses all pixels at each time of computation; consequently, it consumes a lot of time. This paper improves on Graph-Cut algorithm based on characteristics of Watershed. The basic theory is to insert watershed into Graph-Cut to conduct pre-segmentation on image. With watershed, image is divided into regions which have different sizes and pixel color similarities. Images processed by watershed algorithm are converted into weighted undirected graph; and then translate energy function on pixel into that graph on separate regions after pre-segmentation. Performance of test programs has proved that the improved Graph-Cut algorithm can increase workload of user interaction mark effectively. As long as workload considered in the interaction process, improved Graph-Cut algorithm can achieve ideal segmentation effect even on complex background.


The Politics of (Post) Truth conference brings together academics, politicians, media practitioners, and members of the public in two days of collaborative exchange. It aims to revisit the prevailing understanding of what has popularly been labelled 'post-truth' politics. The conference brings together three, closely linked, disciplines – politics, philosophy and journalism – to explore new and shifting perspectives on this topic and establish an interdisciplinary understanding of 'post-truth'.

The post-truth phenomenon raises difficult questions for politicians, philosophers and the public alike: have we lost trust in the media and other key institutions of the state? How might we rebuild it? Can we reassert the role of academic knowledge in contemporary political debate? How might politicians construct healthier political debate in the face of the corrosion of the 'truthfulness' of political, academic and journalistic discourse?


Lebanon is a densely populated country crossed by major faults. Historical seismicity shows the potential of earthquakes with magnitudes >7, but large earthquakes have never been instrumentally recorded in Lebanon. Here, we propose a method to simulate near-fault broadband ground motions for a potential Mw 7 earthquake on the Yammouneh fault (YF)—the largest branch of the Dead Sea Transform fault that bisects Lebanon from north to south. First, we performed the first 3D tomography study of Lebanon using ambient noise correlation, which showed that Lebanon could be approximated by a 1D velocity structure for low-frequency (LF) ground-motion simulation purposes. Second, we generated suites of kinematic rupture models on the YF, accounting for heterogeneity of the rupture process, and uncertainty of the rupture velocity and hypocenter location. The radiated seismic energy was next propagated in the inferred 1D velocity model to obtain suites of LF ground motions (<1 Hz) at four hypothetical near-fault seismic stations. These LF simulations included the main features of near-fault ground motions, such as the impulsive character of ground velocity due to the rupture directivity or fling-step effects (so-called pulse-like ground motions). Third, to obtain broadband ground motions (up to 10 Hz), we proposed a hybrid technique that combined the simulated LF ground motions with high-frequency (HF) stochastic simulations, which were empirically calibrated using a worldwide database of near-fault recordings. Contrary to other hybrid approaches, in which the LF and HF motions are generally computed independently, the characteristics of stochastic HF ground motions were conditioned on those of LF ground motions (namely on the characteristics of the velocity pulse, if it existed, or on the absence of a pulse). The simulated peak ground accelerations were in agreement with the ones reported in the Next Generation Attenuation-West2 (NGA-West2) database for similar magnitude and distances and with three NGA-West2 ground-motion prediction equations.


Internet-based health information may be easier for people to access than traditional sources, in part because it can be found more privately. However there are threats to this privacy. Awareness of this, and loss of trust in Internet search technology, may reduce willingness to look for information online.


6H-SiC single crystal specimens were implanted at 600 K with 100 KeV He ions to three successively increasing fluences and subsequently annealed at different temperatures ranging from 600℃ to 1200℃ in vacuum. After the annealing, the samples were investigated by using Raman scattering spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectrometry,respectively. Both of the two methods showed that the damage induced by helium-ion-implantation in the lattice is closely related to the dose. The thermal annealing brings about recovery of the damage,and different levels of damage require different annealing temperature to recover efficiently. It is indicated that different annealing stages involve different mechanisms,corresponding to recombination of point defects,formation of He-vacancy complexes,and nucleation and coarsening of bubbles,respectively. The experimental results indicate that high temperature implantation is an effective way to avoid amorphization of the implanted layer due to damage accumulation. Helium implantation can be used to introduce buried nanoscale cavities as the nucleation site for the buried oxide in a well defined region proposed for an alternative and more economical method of manufacturing SiC-on-Insulator (SiCOI).


Firms increasingly equip field service workers with virtual team technology that enables them to deliver services more efficiently and take part in new service development. However, the "out-of-office" nature of field service tasks limits the possibilities for supervision, so virtual team outcomes are hard to control. To predict virtual team service performance, this study delineates the notion of team efficacy in the context of virtual service teams. The authors assess virtual team members' perceptions of virtual team efficacy and its perceived antecedents and consequences. The authors find that perceived virtual team efficacy explains service performance better than previously established, generalized confidence beliefs. Specifically, data collected from 192 field service employees in 28 virtual teams reveal that perceived virtual team efficacy provides a strong predictor of in-role service performance and extra-role innovative service performance. Factors external to the organization (i.e., competitors' use and customer appreciation of virtual team technology) drive perceived virtual team efficacy, whereas internal factors (i.e., supervisor and peer encouragement of virtual team technology) are less effective. Therefore, managers must keep up-to-date with competitive developments and openly discuss insights with the team. Positive customer feedback should also be distributed to team members when employee contributions to new service development are envisioned.


Synchronous Computer-mediated communication (CMC) creates affordable learning conditions to support both meaning-oriented communication and focus-on-form reflection that play an essential role in the development of language competence. This paper reports how corrective feedback was negotiated through expert-to-novice collaborative efforts and scaffolding with 30 subjects working on three different tasks—jigsaw, spot-the-differences and open-ended question. The findings reveal that text chats supported the focus-on-form procedure through collaborative engagement. Despite the fact that the experts were able to provide step-by-step scaffolding at the right moment to call learners' attention to nontarget-like-forms that resulted in error corrections, they needed to be made aware of not over-intervening as students reported interference between the expert's goals and the learner's. To maintain intersubjectivity, the use of both L2 and L1 shaped the route taken by experts and learners alike to negotiate L2 forms for both syntactic and lexical errors. The study concluded that it was not easy to provide corrective feedback and to attend to linguistic errors in a timely fashion during the meaning-based interaction. The long-term effect of focus-on-form procedures on L2 development through CMC remain to be explored in future studies.


Capparis spinosa is arangland plant species that growing in the Egypt's desert. It is one of the most important species in family cappariecia. It is one of established pharmaceutical and medicinal plants. A complete coding sequence of 606bp chloroplast ribosomal protein 4s (rps4) gene of Capparis spinosa was amplified, sequenced, cloned, and expressed. The isolated gene showed a maximum identity with Capparis flexuosa ribosomal protein S4 (rps4; 98%) gene and 96% with Nasturtium officinale ribosomal protein S4 (rps4) gene. The information of ORF of this gene was found to be a new gene encodes a 201 amino acids protein fragment with a calculated molecular mass of about 22 kDa.


If the appearance in 1948 of Norbert Wiener's "Cybernetics" was not in itself a major biologic breakthrough, it did confer a sort of ontologic and semantic validity on a concept long known to workers in nonbiologic sciences. Indeed, it helped pave the way for an interdisciplinary approach to biology long before that adjective had lost its respectability. Cybernetics—"control and communication in the animal and the machine," as Wiener would have it—concerns itself with self-regulating feedback systems. The fly-ball governor of a steam engine is a classic example of a negative feedback arrangement. So, too, is a thermostatically regulated electric oven—the hotter it gets, the less current is supplied—thus, negative feedback. And, of course, such systems are at the heart of the newer computer technology. Biologically, cybernetics constitutes an approach to understanding integrated function in living organisms—someting evident to the ancients but awaiting modern insights before earning a scientifically reputable name


Most terrestrial species occur in human‐modified landscapes that are experiencing climate change. In addition to direct impacts on species, both anthropogenic disturbance and climate change can have important effects through changes in species interactions, including the disruption of ecological services provided by them. Here we investigate how chronic anthropogenic disturbance (CAD) and aridity affect the effectiveness of plant protection services provided by ants to plants bearing extrafloral nectaries (EFNs). The study was conducted across 13 01‐ha plots distributed along CAD and aridity gradients in Caatinga vegetation of northeastern Brazil. We focused on Pityrocarpa moniliformis, the most abundant and widely distributed EFN‐bearing tree species occurring in our study area, and we used experimental attack rates on termites as a measure of effectiveness of ant protection services. We investigated the relative roles of nectar production (volume and concentration) and ant species composition in mediating the effects of CAD and aridity on the effectiveness of protection services. Attack rates by ants declined with increasing aridity but were not related to CAD. The volume of extrafloral nectar declined with increasing CAD but was not affected by aridity, whereas the concentration was not related to either CAD or aridity. The composition of attendant ant species varied with aridity but not with CAD. Synthesis. Our findings suggest that CAD does not affect plant‐protection services mediated by EFNs in Brazilian Caatinga. However, ant‐protection services declined with increased aridity, and this occurred through changes in the composition of attendant ant species rather than by changes in the production of extrafloral nectar. Such a response to increasing aridity highlights the vulnerability of EFN‐bearing plants to climate change through decreased predation of herbivores.


The paper presents a conceptual model of creative behavior among creative workers. This conceptual model is developed as the result of empirical study. Preliminary survey is conducted to identify the elements of mental attitude and creative behavior among creative workers in Indonesia design industry. The study found that a significant correlation between mental attitude and creative behavior. Through the development of mental attitude and creative behavior, their creative performance will be achieved consistently. Therefore, their work quality tends to improve design industry. Consequently, this model would play a role in development of mental attitude and creative behavior among creative workers in Indonesia. The study contributes to develop the existing and future development of humanity among creative workers in Indonesia design industry.


This presentation argues for the centralisation of the 'unknown' within contemporary healthcare law. This is not a significant leap. Epistemological questions have long sat at the heart of legal studies, and increasingly such questions are woven into the fabric of healthcare law scholarship. A voluminous literature highlights the many epistemic fault lines running through the law: between law-in-the-books and law-in-action, embedded within legal concepts and standards, and the stories about human life that result. Nevertheless, what is unknown takes on a 'deviant' state, where the aim is to close gaps, capture the "real world", to render unknowns knowable to us as scholars, judges, legislators, patients and clinicians. While important, this presentation advocates a slight tilt in focus; moving away from ignorance as deviant, in favour of exploring its normality and regularity (Gross and McGoey, 2015). Illustrating how much of what is known is 'tacit', and how routinely we confront 'glass walls' of knowledge, the paper encourages a direct confrontation with 'the limits of knowing' (Barnett, 2004). The aim is to open up quite different questions about the unknown, as well as to bring more clearly into view the strategies, structures, behaviours and methodologies of ignorance that populate our field. References Barnett, R., 2004. Learning for an unknown future. Higher Education Research & Development 23. Gross, M., McGoey, L. (Eds.), 2015. Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Routledge, London; New York.


The operational properties of a bipolar configuration composed of a Line-Commutated Converter (LCC) and a Voltage Source Converter (VSC) in a multilevel topology (MMC) are investigated. Simulation models are made in the PSCAD software in order to represent the two bipolar HVDC-links between Norway and Denmark, named Skagerrak 3 and Skagerrak 4. The topology combines two fundamentally different converter technologies with an intricate switching scheme for the function of power reversal. The objective of this thesis is to validate the three simulation models; a monopolar LCC model, a monopolar Modular Multilevel Converter (MMC) model, and an LCC-MMC model in a bipolar configuration. By investigating the interaction of the combined LCC model and MMC model, a better understanding of the challenges of the bipolar link is achieved. The steady state behaviors of the three systems are as expected based on the theory. The LCC consumes reactive power, and require reactive power compensation and filtering. When combined with the MMC, the MMC is able to provide the reactive power consumption by the system. There is an interaction between the MMC and the passive filters of the LCC, resulting in the need to redesign the filters in the bipolar configuration. Also, the DC voltages in the combined model are found to be divided somewhat unevenly between the HVDC-links. When a three-phase to ground fault is applied to the inverter side of the models, the LCC suffer from failure of commutation. This is due to the reduction in the AC voltage, and is to be expected. A DC chopper is placed at the MMC DC-link and reduces the DC voltage overshoot significantly during the fault. When the LCC and MMC systems are combined, they operate in an independent manner, and as a result, no additional protection arrangements are necessary. A single-phase to ground fault at the inverter side of the models, gives rise to harmonic disturbances due to the unbalance of the fault. The reduction in AC voltage results in failure of commutation at the LCC inverter side. The LCC and MMC systems are still almost unaffected by each other during the fault, and so no additional protection systems are required for the combined model. Finally, a DC pole to ground fault is applied to the three simulation models. The LCC model does not recover from the fault, because of loss of controllability in the PI controllers. There are solutions for this problem, for example anti-windup PI controller. An interesting result is observed when the two models are combined into the bipolar configuration. The MMC is able to support the LCC in such a way that it recovers. DC breakers are required for high voltage and current spikes during the DC fault at the MMC link. The LCC and MMC systems are no longer operating independently, and different protection strategies must be implemented when compared to the monopolar models.


In this article, we consider the continuation of race gender stereotypes in advertising images by way of the product's suggestive messages, specifically, connotations of higher or lower social status and promises of intangible social rewards (e.g., friendship, appearance, romance). We examined 1, 709 advertisements in magazines whose primary reading audiences differ by race and/or gender: Life, Cosmopolitan, Ebony, and Essence (1988-1990). For the analysis, we created and then compared three dimensions of status (affluent, trendy, and everyday) and five product promises (celebrity identification, sex romance, appearance, marriage family, and good times) as they are modeled by and presented to male, female, Black, and White readers in the magazines examined. We hypothesized that these status-image portrayals differ by race and gender. We found that most ads make use of positive (i.e., high-status) images of Blacks and Whites and women and men and that differences between magazines are more pronounced than ...


An algorithm is presented to numerically treat a free boundary problem arising in the theory of phase transition. The problem is one in which a collection of simple closed curves (particles) evolves in such a way that the enclosed area remains constant while the total arclength decreases. Material is transported between particles and within particles by diusion, driven by curvature which expresses the eect of surface tension. The algorithm is based on a reformulation of the problem, using boundary integrals, which is then discretized and cast as a semi-implicit scheme. This scheme is implemented with a variety of congurations of initial curves showing that convexity or even topological type may not be preserved.


The process of Bologna (European Space for Higher Education) has three fundamental nucleuses that are the European cultural diversity, the promotion of the exchange and the knowledge among people of the different European contries. Neither the european dimension of the higher education nor the search of a system "easily comrehensible and comparable" of degrees are synonymous of homogenizacion. The debate is open about the culture concept and the relationships among the diverse cultural groups; among tendencies to assimilation, to relativism, or miscegenation. The intercultural socialization implies a contradictory and complex wide dialogue, many times, about the values and the norms in the social interaction of people. For this, we should reflect upon the universal thing and the particular thing, upon the importance of the cultural and linguisitc diversity in the framework of interculturality


This article argues that a systematic, developmental and comprehensive music education should be at the heart of every child's formal education within the state education system. The benefits of a music education are briefly explored before a presentation of recent research data that demonstrates a decline in music education as a result of poorly designed and implemented government policies in recent years. Rather than an over-reliance on the 'outsourcing' of music education to music education hubs and other private providers, qualified teachers with appropriate musical and pedagogical skills and understanding hold the key to the provision of a quality music education for all young people. Within primary schools, teachers without a music specialism need to be reminded that music as a subject is not impossible to teach and can be done well with their 'generalist' skills; within secondary schools, music needs to relate to other curriculum subjects in a more explicit way. This is examined through a metaphor drawn from the Renaissance period.Ultimately, this article argues that music education is too important to be left to amateurs. All children deserve a music education that is designed and delivered by qualified and skilful professional educators.


Purpose: Recent studies have investigated Eyetronix Flicker Glasses (EFG) in treating refractive amblyopia. EFG provides rapid alternating occlusion of the two eyes at a particular rate. They have been shown to cause a significant improvement in visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, and stereoacuity in amblyopes. Amblyopia is a syndrome marked by a reduction in visual acuity as well as other monocular functions like fixations, saccadic eye movements, and accommodative lag. The purpose of this study was to investigate the intra-treatment effect of 7 and 20 Hz flicker on fixations, saccades, and the accommodative lag during reading, and on stereoacuity. Methods: A Latin Square was used to balance the treatment order within subjects and order sets were randomized across subjects. 51 normal subjects (ages 22-34) were enrolled in the study. Fixations and saccades during reading were tested with infrared oculography (ReadAlyzer, Compevo AB, Stockholm, Sweden). The Grand Seiko WAM-5500 open-field autorefractor was used to measure accommodative lag. Distance Lea Stereo (M&S chart) was used to determine the stereoacuity. Each test was performed three times (no flicker glasses, 7 Hz flicker glasses, and 20 Hz flicker glasses). Outcome measures were: (1) number of fixations, (2) number of regressions, (3) fixation duration, (4) reading rate, (5) accommodative response, and (6) stereoacuity. Results: Among the experimental conditions (no EFG, 7 Hz EFG, and 20 Hz EFG), the number of fixations, regressions, fixation duration, and accommodative lag did not differ significantly (p= 0.98, 0.33, 0.12, and 0.084, respectively). Reading rate (p < 0.05) and stereoacuity (p < 0.001) showed a significant difference, with 7 and 20 Hz negatively impacting reading rate and stereopsis. Reading rate dropped 18 words per minute with 7 Hz (7.4%), and 13 words per minute with 20 Hz (5.4%) compared with no flicker glasses. Stereoacuity was worse by 73 arc seconds with 7 Hz, and 17 arc seconds with 20 Hz. Conclusion: While using EFG, most visual skills explored by this study are unaffected. However, while worn, the goggles at 7 Hz and 20 Hz reduced reading rate as well as stereopsis.


The aim of the present study was to evaluate the feeding performance of Sudanese dromedary camel calves kept under controlled management systems and fed three different dietary regimes. It was also aimed to compare the body weight obtained by using direct weighing bridge and the body weight obtained by using certain body dimensions. The study was carried out at the Animal Research Unit, College of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Production, Khartoum North (Kuku). Twelve growing dromedary male camels were used in the 70 days study trial. The average initial body weight of the calves was 175.75 ± 0.25 kg. The calves were randomly divided into 3 groups, of 4 animals each. The calves in each group were randomly allotted into a separate iso-caloric and iso-nitrogenous dietary treatment. The fattening performance of experimental camels was significantly (P<0.05) affected by dietary treatments. Dry matter (DM) intake, average daily weight gain and feed conversion ratio were significantly (P<0.05) different among dietary treatments. Kenana feed (complete fattening pellets) tended to be superior for daily weight gain (0.815kg), daily DM intake (4.35kg ) and final live body weight (233.28kg). Camels fed diet of cottonseed cake (CSC) had lowes (P<0.05) feed intake (3.99kg) and daily gain (0.591kg) with poor feed conversion ratio (9.98). Prediction of body weight from body measurements has been proved in this study. The results showed that there was a high correlation (p<0.0001) between body weight obtained by direct weighing using a weigh bridge and the body weight obtained using certain body measurements.


Normal human gingival fibroblasts stimulated in vitro by lipopolysaccharides (LPS) from oral Bacteroides species produced cell-free and cell-associated thymocyte-activating factors (TAF). Neutralization assays using antisera to human interleukin-1 alpha (HuIL-1 alpha), HuIL-1 beta, and HuIL-6 revealed that cell-free TAF was attributable mainly to IL-1 beta and that IL-6 augmented the TAF activity of IL-1 beta in the culture supernatant. Another factor(s), however, may also be involved in cell-free TAF. By contrast, the active entity of cell-associated TAF was ascribed to IL-1 alpha alone. Furthermore, IL-6 was detected mainly in the supernatant of fibroblast cultures stimulated with Bacteroides LPS. Fibroblasts pretreated with natural human beta or gamma interferon, but not those pretreated with alpha interferon, synthesized higher levels of cell-associated IL-1 alpha in response to stimulation by Bacteroides LPS; however, no interferons exhibited direct IL-1-inducing activity or synergistic IL-1-inducing activity with LPS. Endogenously induced beta interferon was suggested to be necessary for fibroblasts to produce cell-associated IL-1 alpha in response to Bacteroides LPS.


The term "Nature Plus Plus Inspired Computing" is coined by us in this article. The abbreviation for this new term is "N++IC." Just like the C++ programming language is a superset of C programming language, Nature Plus Plus Inspired Computing (N++IC) field is a superset of the Nature Inspired Computing (NIC) field. We defined and introduced "Nature Plus Plus Inspired Computing Field" in this work. Several interesting opportunities in N++IC Field are shown for Artificial Intelligence Field Scientists and Students. We show a literature review of the N++IC Field after showing the definition of Nature Inspired Computing (NIC) Field. The primary purpose of publishing this innovative article is to show a new path to NIC Field Scientists so that they can come up with various innovative algorithms from scratch. As the focus of this article is to introduce N++IC to researchers across the globe, we added N++IC Field concepts to the Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm and created the "Children Cycle Riding Algorithm (CCR Algorithm)." Finally, results obtained by CCR Algorithm are shown, followed by Conclusions.


This study looks at the relevance of regional organisations in the Pacific Island region. It analyses the history of the key regional organisations: the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS). Since their establishment, there has been extensive criticism of the work of these organisations. This study tests and analyses the issue of legitimacy within supra-national organisations, and questions whether regionalism in the Pacific is an anachronism of the past.  In the Pacific, regionalism puts out a compelling argument for its existence. Throughout the region, small island developing states are spread across the world's largest ocean. Pacific Island states face many challenges, including: small economies, geographical disadvantages, vulnerability to climate change, varying availability to resources and a diverse range of cultures and languages. Regionalism provides a chance for these island states to influence world policy, build capacity in the region, promote good governance, maintain peaceful neighbourly relations, and create positive development outcomes.  The methodology uses qualitative research of document analysis and semi-structured interviews with key informants. The research claims a social constructivist epistemology and uses an inductive conceptual framework in order to find solutions to the complex challenges of Pacific regionalism.  It was found that regional organisations need to increase their transparency in order to enhance their legitimacy. They need provide a clearer evidence base, where all Pacific people can recognise and understand the benefit of regional organisations. The organisations need to work strategically to be nimble and reactive to upcoming critical junctures and issues. Council of Regional Organisations in the Pacific (CROP) agencies need to coordinate better amongst themselves, open up communication with all stakeholders and create clearer mandates. In order to promote positive development, all stakeholders and Pacific people need to take ownership of these organisations, and support the Framework for Pacific Regionalism process. This study argues that there is great potential for regionalism in the Pacific, but this will only be possible if the region works collectively to enhance the legitimacy of these organisations.


Background Following recent changes in UK case law, DNACPR decisions must be discussed with patients unless that conversation will cause harm. CPR should not be given if it is an inappropriate treatment. DNACPR conversations are therefore happening more frequently; yet evidence to support staff in knowing how to undertake these conversations is scarce from the patient/caregiver perspective. This integrative literature review aims to identify patient and family experiences of DNACPR conversations. Methods A search of multiple databases was performed for adult patients and caregivers, from all settings worldwide (2004–2014). Abstracts were reviewed for relevance and quality. First person, retrospective accounts of patient/carer experience of DNACPR conversations were gold standard. Relevant full texts were appraised and recurring themes analysed and tabulated. Results The initial search identified 559 abstracts. Of these, 46 full texts were deemed relevant including 9 UK and 37 international papers. Only 22 papers were original research with patients or carers who had experienced these conversations. Themes revealed the importance of DNACPR discussions being conducted by someone trusted and the importance of family/carer involvement, as well as perceived concerns about burdening family members. Timing preferences for discussions was variable revealing difficulties in finding the 'right time' to discuss. Discussions held at home or the GP surgery are preferable to discussions during acute admissions to hospital. Conclusions This review highlights potential discrepancies between patient and carer preferences for DNACPR conversations, and the reality of how these conversations are currently taking place. Public health approaches to tackle the societal taboo around death and dying may encourage people to think about and expect such conversations during their illness trajectories. Discussion of DNACPR decisions with the patient is now a legal requirement, but patient centred care remains paramount. More evidence is essential to bridge these expectations.


This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical research activities on a packed bed sensible thermal energy storage (TES) system. The TES consists of a cylindrical steel tank filled with small alumina beads and crossed by air used as the heat transfer fluid. Experimental tests were carried out while varying some operating parameters such as the mass flow rate, the inlet–outlet temperature thresholds and the aspect ratio (length over diameter). Numerical simulations were carried out using a one-dimensional model, specifically developed in the Matlab-Simulink environment and a 2D axisymmetric model based on the ANSYS-Fluent platform. Both models are based on a two-equation transient approach to calculate fluid and solid phase temperatures. Thermodynamic properties were considered to be temperature-dependent and, in the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model, variable porosity of the bed in the radial direction, thermal losses and the effective conductivity of the alumina beads were also considered. The simulation results of both models were compared to the experimental ones, showing good agreement. The one-dimensional model has the advantage of predicting the axial temperature distribution with a very low computational cost, but it does not allow calculation of the correct energy stored when the temperature distribution is strongly influenced by the wall. To overcome this problem a 2D CFD model was used in this work.


Magnesium hydroxide as a halogen-free inorganic filler has been shown to improve the thermal characteristics of polypropylene systems. The degradation of polypropylene filled with magnesium hydroxide was studied by means of various thermal analysis techniques, with further work involving Pyrolysis - Gas Chromatography. The latter technique showed that magnesium hydroxide interferes with the degradation process by reducing the chain length of residual fragments. Two decomposition steps. were noted in magnesium hydroxide / polypropylene formulations, the first step being associated with the dehydration of the filler and the second step due to polymer degradation.
In order to prove or disprove information cited in patents, several coatings were added to the filler in an attempt to reproduce an elevation in dehydration temperature and activation of the coated material. Initially, six coatings were examined. These coatings incorporated such groups as silane, stearate, phosphate and fatty acid. From these tests, it was determined that further investigation of the silane and fatty acid type derivatives were required.
Initially, methyltriethoxysilane gave promising results. However, structural variations of this compound proved to be expensive. As a result, trimethyl-trihexyl- and triphenyl- chlorosilanes were tested, with a further increase in effectiveness noted for those coatings with the bulkier side groups. Fatty acid based coatings provide a cost-effective, environmentally friendly product that has comparable effects to those seen by the silane derivatives. The addition of both types of compounds increased the dehydration temperature of magnesium hydroxide (by up to 20°C) whilst also increasing the enthalpy of dehydration (by up to 8.5%).


Background: Few methods have been introduced to assess the level of consciousness in critically-ill patients. This study was designed to evaluate how the AlertVerbalPainfulUnresponsive (AVPU) responsive scale corresponds with the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and Richmond Agitation-Sedation Scale (RASS) scores in drug-poisoned patients and to devise an augmented AVPU scale. Methods: In this prospective study, patients with diagnosis of acute drug poisoning were included and their level of consciousness was assessed using GCS, RASS and AVPU scales. Results: Overall, 165 poisoned patients (59% female) were studied. According to AVPU scale, 123 patients (74.5%) were graded as "alert", 26 patients (15.8%) as "responsive to verbal stimulation", 10 patients (6.1%) as "responsive to painful stimulation", and 6 patients as "unresponsive" (3.6%). AVPU grades of "alert", "responsive to verbal stimulation", "responsive to painful stimulation" and "unresponsive" corresponded with median [IQR] GCS scores of 15 [15–15], 13 [12–13], 8 [7–10] and 6 [5–6], and median [IQR] RASS scores of -1 [-1 – +1], -2 [-3 – -1], -3 [-4 – -1], -5 [-5 – -5], respectively. By taking the median of RASS scores corresponding with each AVPU grade, an augmented AVPU scale for the assessment of consciousness was devised. The first proposed version of AVPU plus includes 14 qualitative grades of consciousness. By application of this scale, clinicians can evaluate both the alertness/attentiveness and arousal/excitability of poisoned and critical patients. Conclusion: The AVPU plus is a new scale designed for more detailed assessment of neurologic status of poisoned and critical patients. The prognostic-ability, reliability and validity of the scale should be investigated in future studies.


The license plate location is an essential process in the license plate recognition system, and has been studied widely. In view of vehicles image on different background and light densities, this paper presents a license plate location algorithm based on combinatorial feature. Firstly, we propose to preprocess the image of license plate with traditional but rapid method. Secondly, we define some useful features so as to roughly locate the license plate. At last, we repeatedly use the combinatorial feature to obtain the real license plate from many candidates. We design this novel algorithm and integrate it into the project of the license plate recognition system. We implement and evaluate our system in various illumination and background conditions. Through extensive experiments, we show the algorithm of this paper can extract the license plate from the image efficiently and accurately.


Starting around the late 1950s, several research communities began relating the geometry of graphs to stochastic processes on these graphs. This book, twenty years in the making, ties together research in the field, encompassing work on percolation, isoperimetric inequalities, eigenvalues, transition probabilities, and random walks. Written by two leading researchers, the text emphasizes intuition, while giving complete proofs and more than 850 exercises. Many recent developments, in which the authors have played a leading role, are discussed, including percolation on trees and Cayley graphs, uniform spanning forests, the mass-transport technique, and connections on random walks on graphs to embedding in Hilbert space. This state-of-the-art account of probability on networks will be indispensable for graduate students and researchers alike.


Organic chemistry can be represented as a network of reactions and studied by mathematical tools of graph theory. In this paper, the structure of a network of organic reactions has been studied using several graph theory metrics. The network was based on a section of chemical space downloaded from Reaxys. The studied area of chemistry corresponds to the chemistry of terpenes and includes 12 238 931 species and 12 939 422 reactions after filtering of an initial set of 35 million reactions. The analysis of the network statistics confirmed that the network was scale-free, as was reported in the earlier literature from the analysis of a much smaller network. Many networks in other technological or non-technological areas show that nodes have a preference as to whether they connect to highly connected or scarcely connected nodes, but for chemistry no such trend was observed. It was found that the network of reactions exhibits "small world" behaviour and in simile to the 'six degrees of separation' encountered in social networks, on average, any molecule could be made from any other molecule in six synthesis steps. Scale-free networks have hubs in their wiring pattern. By investigating whether these hubs are not only well studied but also frequently used, it was found that they concentrated a large share of the network's load onto themselves, showing that the network's structure impacts the usage of chemistry, or vice versa, implying a hierarchy of molecules.


Background: Since the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, psychological distress is increased. Transdiagnostic mechanisms, including trauma, personality functioning, mentalizing and emotion regulation are considered relevant to the development and maintenance of mental health problems and therefore may play a role in individuals' reactions to the pandemic. Aim: To identify moderating and mediating factors associated with pandemic-related distress and mental health problems in adults and families, we aim to investigate the interactions of interpersonal trauma (childhood trauma and domestic violence), psychological capacities (personality functioning, mentalizing and emotion regulation) and pandemic-related adversity on psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we aim to investigate behavioral and cognitive consequences of the pandemic (e.g., media consumption, vaccination status, conspiracy beliefs).Methods: Using an online-based cross-sectional and longitudinal design, we will investigate a sample of adult participants recruited via online platforms in German-speaking countries over the course of one year with four measurements points via self-report instruments (personality functioning: PID5BF+; mentalizing: MentS, PRFQ; emotion regulation: DERS-SF; mental health problems: PHQ-9, GAD-7; a composite pandemic-related stress score). Structural equation and multi-level modeling will be performed for data analyses.Implications: This study will provide data on the moderating and mediating effects of trauma, personality functioning and mentalizing during the pandemic in a large community sample, particularly on vulnerable groups like families. Identifying transdiagnostic mechanisms of psychopathology in the course of a pandemic crisis may provide valuable insight for the development of pre- and intervention measures for potential psychological distress during and post the pandemic.


The design process can often introduce manufacturing challenges, and designers must be able to understand these challenges in order to minimize them. Frequently, the experience level of mechanical engineering students is insufficient for them to consider the limitations that manufacturing processes impose upon design, and they often design parts that are either difficult or impossible to manufacture. This work describes the development, implementation, and analysis of a system used to rapidly provide students with the knowledge they need to consider manufacturing challenges for machining processes. An experimental group of students was trained in the use of a software package (SculptPrint) that provides visualizations of the turning process and taught how to operate various computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools. A separate control group of students was trained on the operation of manual machine tools and did not receive access to the turning visualizations. Knowledge assessments were given to both groups to measure their understanding of a variety of topics in manufacturability. Analysis of the survey results indicates that student understanding of geometrical limitations in the turning process can be dramatically improved by employing visualizations of manufacturing processes.


Grid computing provides key infrastructure for distributed problem solving in dynamic virtual organizations. It has been adopted by many scientific projects, and industrial interest is rising rapidly. However, Grids are still the domain of a few highly trained programmers with expertise in networking, high-performance computing, and operating systems. This paper describes our initial work in capturing knowledge and heuristics about how to select application components and computing resources, and using that knowledge to generate automatically executable job workflows for the Grid. Our system is implemented and integrated with a Grid environment where it has generated dozens of workflows with hundreds of jobs in real time. The paper also discusses the prospects of using AI to improve current Grid infrastructure.


It has been shown that the space of possible minds is vast, actually infinite. Intellectology is a new field of study, which examines in more detail features of possible minds. Among the many open and unexplored questions in this field is the following: "Which activities can minds perform during their lifetime?" This question is very broad, thus our contribution here addresses the sub-question "Which non-boring activities can minds perform?" This issue is ethically relevant for human minds if the predicted significant extension of our lifetime materializes and we are then potentially challenged how to spend this additional time. The space of potential non-boring activities has been called "fun space." We analyze the relation between various types of minds and the portion of the fun space, which is accessible for them. As a novel result, we demonstrate that human minds can experience two types of fun when transforming information to knowledge: novelty fun and process fun.


The Costs and Benefits Appraisal Tool for Transit Buses ("the Tool") is an updated version of the Costs and Emissions Appraisal Tool for Transit Buses. It aims to inform bus operators and city officials of the costs, emissions, and social benefits associated with bus fleets using different fuel types. The Tool's outputs can help bus operators make the most cost-efficient decisions when making a clean bus upgrade, allow transit agencies to validate information provided by bus operators, and inform city officials of the social benefits of a low-carbon transit fleet. Compared with the previous version, this tool includes more default data on electric bus costs and operational information with wider geographic coverage and more bus types; provides social cost and benefit calculations; and includes simplified cost functions. Users are encouraged to input their own data to reflect their local situations. The Tool is published as a webtool to increase user friendliness, and allows users to compare basic procurement and business model scenarios.


Background: Raltegravir is the first approved antiretroviral able to prevent HIV genome integration into the host chromosomes. The aim of the study is to test if raltegravir plasma concentrations can be associated with proviral DNA decline during raltegravir-based salvage therapy. Methods: A total of 33 multidrug-resistant HIV-infected patients were enrolled in a longitudinal open-label pilot study and completed a 24-week follow-up. The CD4+ T-cell count, plasma viral load, proviral HIV DNA and twolong-terminal repeat (2-LTR) circular forms were assessed at baseline, day 14, 30, 60, 90 and 180. The raltegravir trough concentration (Ctrough) was measured by HPLCultraviolet and patients were divided into two groups according to the median raltegravir Ctrough. Results: The mean ±sd values of baseline HIV RNA, CD4+ T-cell count and HIV DNA were 4.4 ±0.82 log copies/ml, 256 ±177 cells/mm3, and 2,668 ±4,721 copies/106 peripheral blood mononuclear cells, respectively. Despite a transient increase of total DNA at week 2, a marked proviral DNA decay (P=0.01) with an increase of the 2-LTR unintegrated/ total DNA ratio (P=0.06) over time was observed. At univariate analysis, no correlation between raltegravir Ctrough and classical virological parameters was observed. Nevertheless, the decay of proviral HIV DNA was more pronounced in patients displaying Ctrough<158 ng/ml with respect to those with Ctrough>158 ng/ml (P=0.046). Conclusions: Successful raltegravir-based therapy produces a significant decline in proviral DNA and is associated with an increase of the unintegrated/total DNA ratio. Further studies are necessary to define the possible role of pharmacokinetic raltegravir monitoring and the biological meaning of unintegrated proviral DNA.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop strategies for potential environmental impacts as a result of institutional arrangement and development of oil palm downstream industry both regionally and nationally.

Design/methodology/approach
The research location is in the areas potential for oil palm plantation development, either by plasma through BUMN and BUMS or self-supporting by the society. The research location will be divided into two parts, namely, the land area and the coastal area. The Riau land areas are Regency of Kampar, Rokan Hulu, and Kuantan Singingi, while Riau coastal areas are Regency of Pelalawan, Siak, Bengkalis, Indragiri Hilir, Indragiri Hulu and Rokan Hilir. Both research areas have different productivity due to the different soil fertility levels. The sustainability level of oil palm plantation from the socio-economic and environmental aspects is analyzed using the multi-dimensional scaling approach modified into Rapid Appraisal-Index Sustainability of Palm Oil Management.

Findings
In Riau Province, the development of oil palm is quite rapid. This is reasonable for several reasons which include the following supporting factors: the geographical condition of the Riau region is very supportive; the high demand for palm oil derivative products; the existence of market guarantee for oil palm farmers; the higher income oil palm generates than other plantation crops; and the relatively flat area. Most of the problems faced by oil palm farmers are the use of less good seeds, the length of the fruit laying at the location of the plantation, the inadequate production road, the relatively far distance to palm oil mill (POM) (National Agency of Drug and Food Control), the tendency of determining the unilateral revenue of the POM, the collectively measurement of revenue and the general revenue information. The development of oil palm plantations has created an entrepreneurial capability for farmers who are able to capture business opportunities in the agricultural sector, especially the plantation sub-sector.

Originality/value
The originality of this paper shows the comprehensively control strategy, potential of environmental impact and palm oil plantation. The method used for data collection was rapid rural appraisal method because accurate information is needed in a limited time as it relates to decisions related to village development that must be taken immediately. The study area was conducted in Riau Province because Riau Province is one of the biggest palm oil producers in Indonesia. The study sites will be divided into two, namely, the land area and the coastal area.


no means exhausted and that there yet remain for the alert clinician opportunities of making notable contributions to diagnosis and to treatment. The monograph is based upon the analysis of 312 particular examples of subarachnoid hxmorrhage together with a review of the extensive literature on the subject. It is well written and arranged, and gives an admirable critical discussion upon treatment. The task of the reader would be made a little easier if every chapter were not infiltrated by figures of a statistical order. Statistics have their necessary place in a work of reference, but it is surely unnecessary that the important sections describing the clinical picture and course and their relation to the several lesions involved should everywhere tell us how many times this and that sign or symptom was present or absent in the total of cases reviewed. Subject to this minor criticism, the monograph may be strongly recommended as an interesting and comprehensive account of its subject.


Champagne coat color in horses is controlled by a single, autosomal-dominant gene (CH). The phenotype produced by this gene is valued by many horse breeders, but can be difficult to distinguish from the effect produced by the Cream coat color dilution gene (CR). Three sires and their families segregating for CH were tested by genome scanning with microsatellite markers. The CH gene was mapped within a 6 cM region on horse chromosome 14 (LOD = 11.74 for θ = 0.00). Four candidate genes were identified within the region, namely SPARC [Secreted protein, acidic, cysteine-rich (osteonectin)], SLC36A1 (Solute Carrier 36 family A1), SLC36A2 (Solute Carrier 36 family A2), and SLC36A3 (Solute Carrier 36 family A3). SLC36A3 was not expressed in skin tissue and therefore not considered further. The other three genes were sequenced in homozygotes for CH and homozygotes for the absence of the dilution allele (ch). SLC36A1 had a nucleotide substitution in exon 2 for horses with the champagne phenotype, which resulted in a transition from a threonine amino acid to an arginine amino acid (T63R). The association of the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with the champagne dilution phenotype was complete, as determined by the presence of the nucleotide variant among all 85 horses with the champagne dilution phenotype and its absence among all 97 horses without the champagne phenotype. This is the first description of a phenotype associated with the SLC36A1 gene.


Coastal reef communities dominated by zooxanthellate alcyonacean octocorals extract large quantities of suspended particulate matter (SPM) from the water column. Concentrations of SPM in water parcels, tracked by a curtain drogue, were measured before and after passing over 2 strips of soft coral dominated, near-shore reefs -200 m long, and over 2 adjacent sand-dominated strips for comparison. The reefs were covered with 50% zooxanthellate octocorals (total standing stock: -270 g AFDW m -2 ; mean live tissue volume: 701 m -2 ), 7% hard corals, 15 % turf algae with bioeroding sponges underneath, and <1% other filter feeders (sponges, tunicates, and bivalves). Downstream of the reef communities, chlorophyll, particulate organic carbon and particulate phosphorus were significantly depleted. The depletion of chlorophyll averaged 35% of the standing stock, whereas the net depletion of particulate organic carbon and particulate phosphorus was 15 and 23 %, respectively. Rates of depletion were similar for the 2 reef sites and 3 sampling periods, and were independent of upstream particle concentration. In contrast, concentrations of particulate nitrogen and phaeopigments were similar before and after passage across the reef sites. On the sandy sites, downstream concentrations of particulate nutrients, chlorophyll and phaeopigments were all similar to upstream concentrations. The net import of particulate organic carbon into the reef was estimated as 2.5 ± 1.1 g C m -2 d -1 . Less than 20% of this carbon import could be explained by area-specific rates of removal by sponges, tunicates, bivalves, and hard corals, suggesting that soft corals were the primary sink of carbon. The data suggest that detritus and other small SPM (<10 μm particle size) are an important food source for alcyoniid-dominated reef communities in high turbidity regimes.


In unstructured P2P systems, it is hard to find the desired files without distributing queries, since there is neither a centralized directory nor any precise control over the network topology or file placement. Many valuable efforts have been done towards improving search efficiency and increasing the scalability of unstructured P2P systems while guaranteeing endurable resource consumptions. In this paper, we purpose an active recommendation mechanism (ARM) which aims to provide efficient searching services and enhance benign competitions in P2P networks. We also build a two-tier proxy architecture consisting of reputation evaluating proxies and content indexing proxies. Based on the ARM and the new architecture, we purpose a distributed approximate indexing (DAI) method to support an efficient search without the need for a single centralized index host


This thesis is concerned with the application of the time-dependent Hartree-Fock method, adopting the Skyrme effective nuclear interaction, to investigate induced nuclear fission processes. Three-dimensional, symmetry-unrestricted constrained Hartree-Fock calculations of $^{240}$Pu are presented to obtain the static potential energy surface corresponding to an increasing quadrupole deformation. The time-dependent Hartree-Fock method is applied to evolve in time these deformed states. Different types of fission process are considered. Firstly, the evolution of static configurations which are deformed sufficiently such that they fission upon time evolution, without any external excitation, (`deformation-induced' fission) is investigated. The fragments smoothly form during a gradual evolution of the static state (taking up to $\approx1500$ fm/c for scission to occur), and the resulting fission products agree well with experimental neutron-induced fission data. The kinetic energy released in the process is also shown to compare well to experimental results. Secondly, the effect of providing an external excitation field to static configurations which would not otherwise fission (`boost-induced' fission) is investigated. Upon application of an instantaneous excitation, the evolution of the densities displays a violent oscillatory behaviour as the state evolves to fission, in contrast what was seen for the case of deformation-induced fission. The resulting fission products lie at the edges of typical mass distributions obtained from experiment. The evolution of the densities following the application of a gradual excitation field demonstrates behaviour similar to deformation-induced fission, suggesting that the timescale for the energy deposition has consequences regarding the fission dynamics. The comparison to experimental results following the application of a gradual excitations field is improved compared to an instantaneous excitation. Overall, the results provide a significant exploratory investigation of fission treated as a dynamic process, and suggest that the time-dependent Hartree-Fock method has potential to be applied further to describe the dynamics of nuclear fission.


Modern logic and physical synthesis tools provide numerous options and parameters that can drastically impact design quality; however the large number of options leads to a complex design space difficult for human circuit designers to navigate. We tackle this parameter tuning problem with a novel system employing intelligent search strategies and parallel computing, thus automating one of the key design tasks conventionally performed by a human designer. We provide an overview of this system, called SynTunSys, as well as results from employing it during the design of the IBM z13 22nm highperformance server chip, currently in production. During this major processor design, SynTunSys provided significant savings in human design effort and achieved a quality of results beyond what human designers alone could achieve, yielding on average a 36% improvement in total negative slack and a 7% power reduction.


It is almost twenty years since when a general process of organizational change has started in the Italian Public Administration. What results have been achieved? What lessons can be learned from the experience? Dealing with these questions, this essay tries to identify the problems that make the change an hard journey for public organizations and what approaches can improve their chance of success.


The grain orientations and microtextures in a friction–stir–welded magnesium alloy AZ80A were analyzed by Orientation Imaging Microscopy (OIM).The results showed that times random of grain orientations in the nugget zone were not strong and orientations were variety. They brought on very fine equiaxed grains. It also showed that deformation texture of {1,-1,0,4}<1,0,-1,0> was a few departure 20deg from the sample normal, The grains in the nugget zone from the base metal inherited the deformation texture of {1, -1,0,4}<1,0,-1,0> . It was concluded that re-crystallized grains in the nugget zone formed by a continuous dynamic re-crystallized mechanism.


We present a new table structure recognition (TSR) approach, called TSRFormer, to robustly recognizing the structures of complex tables with geometrical distortions from various table images. Unlike previous methods, we formulate table separation line prediction as a line regression problem instead of an image segmentation problem and propose a new two-stage dynamic queries enhanced DETR based separation line regression approach, named DQ-DETR, to predict separation lines from table images directly. Compared to Vallina DETR, we propose three improvements in DQ-DETR to make the two-stage DETR framework work efficiently and effectively for the separation line prediction task: 1) A new query design, named Dynamic Query, to decouple single line query into separable point queries which could intuitively improve the localization accuracy for regression tasks; 2) A dynamic queries based progressive line regression approach to progressively regressing points on the line which further enhances localization accuracy for distorted tables; 3) A prior-enhanced matching strategy to solve the slow convergence issue of DETR. After separation line prediction, a simple relation network based cell merging module is used to recover spanning cells. With these new techniques, our TSRFormer achieves state-of-the-art performance on several benchmark datasets, including SciTSR, PubTabNet, WTW and FinTabNet. Furthermore, we have validated the robustness and high localization accuracy of our approach to tables with complex structures, borderless cells, large blank spaces, empty or spanning cells as well as distorted or even curved shapes on a more challenging real-world in-house dataset.


While process technologists are obsessed to follow Moore's curve down to nanoscale dimensions, design technologists are confronted with gigascale complexity. On the other hand, post-PC and post dotcom products require zero cost, zero energy yet software programmable novel system architectures to be sold in huge volumes and to be designed in exponentially decreasing time. How do we cope with these novel silicon architectures? What challenges in research does this create? How to create the necessary tools and skills and how to organize research and education in a world driven by shareholders value? Can you spare half an hour to reflect on these challenges to the design community?


We examined a 32 mo continuous record of the flux of diatoms, silicoflagellates and bulk components collected between November 2000 and July 2003 at the pelagic mooring site Java Moor- ing (JAM), off southern Java in the tropical southeastern Indian Ocean. Temporal variations in the flux mainly reflected the dynamics of monsoon-driven seasonality of oceanographic and atmospheric conditions. Highest diatom fluxes coincided with the SE monsoon season during La Nina in Septem- ber 2001, with the NW monsoon season in February/March 2003 and with the early SE monsoon sea- son in 2003. Enhanced fluxes of diatoms, opal and organic carbon toward the end of the NW monsoon season are related to riverine nutrient inputs and the subsequent development of diatom-dominated phytoplankton blooms. During the SE monsoon season, the entrainment of nutrients from the subsur- face into surface waters, due to upwelling, enhanced flux. A highly diverse diatom community characterized the fluxes throughout the sampling period. Several pelagic, warm-water species of the genus Nitzschia, accompanied by Thalassionema nitzschioides var. parva and T. nitzschioides var. inflata, dominated during periods of strong stratification, high sea surface temperature and low sur- face water productivity. The simultaneous occurrence of the pelagic Azpeitia tabularis, Fragilariopsis doliolus and Planktoniella sol and the coastal planktonic diatoms Actinocyclus curvatulus and Tha- lassiosira oestrupii var. venrickae reveals the intermingling of water masses of moderate-to-low nutrient content. Coastal upwelling diatoms Thalassionema nitzschioides var. nitzschioides and rest- ing spores of Chaetoceros spp. occur most abundantly during the NW monsoon season. The diatom assemblage at the JAM site responded, with slight changes, to El Nino/Southern Oscillation occurrence. The co-occurrence of diatom species with different ecological affinities mirrors the fact that the JAM site was located in a region with large hydrographic variability over short time intervals.


This article outlines the developments and challenges involved in introducing a new securities market in Cambodia, a developing country with a relatively open economy but some significant government-linked enterprises as well as family-linked firms. They operate in an environment characterized by an authoritarian democracy, limited regulatory capacity and access to courts, extensive corruption, and quite ready access to bank finance. Corporate and securities legislation has been enacted, and a new stock exchange has been established with support from Korea, but it has struggled to attract many listings.

The article focuses on the requirements introduced for independent directors (IDs), as well as non-executive directors more broadly, in Cambodia's listed companies. Recent research illustrates how such requirements reveal important features of corporate governance regimes across Asia. The paper briefly compares developments in Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia, as well as other Southeast Asian states with more fledgling stock markets such as Laos and Myanmar. The path-breaking partly empirical analysis uncovers when and why ID requirements were introduced in Cambodia, how they were implemented, who are the IDs, and what the (likely) impacts are from IDs.


Introduction Herpes simplex virus (HSV) encephalitis is a rare severe form of brain inflammation that commonly leaves survivors and their families with devastating long-term consequences. The virus particularly targets the temporal lobe of the brain causing debilitating problems in memory, especially verbal memory. It is postulated that immunomodulation with the corticosteroid, dexamethasone, could improve outcomes by reducing brain swelling. However, there are concerns (so far not observed) that such immunosuppression might facilitate increased viral replication with resultant worsening of disease. A previous trail closed early because of slow recruitment. Method DexEnceph is a pragmatic multicentre, randomised, controlled, open-label, observer-blind trial to determine whether adults with HSV encephalitis who receive dexamethasone alongside standard antiviral treatment with aciclovir for have improved clinical outcomes compared with those who receive standard treatment alone. Overall, 90 patients with HSV encephalitis are being recruited from a target of 45 recruiting sites; patients are randomised 1:1 to the dexamethasone or control arms of the study. The primary outcome measured is verbal memory as assessed by the Weschler Memory Scale fourth edition Auditory Memory Index at 26 weeks after randomisation. Secondary outcomes are measured up to 72 weeks include additional neuropsychological, clinical and functional outcomes as well as comparison of neuroimaging findings. Patient safety monitoring occurs throughout and includes the detection of HSV DNA in cerebrospinal fluid 2 weeks after randomisation, which is indicative of ongoing viral replication. Innovative methods are being used to ensure recrutiment targets are met for this rare disease. Discussion DexEnceph aims to be the first completed randomised controlled trial of corticosteroid therapy in HSV encephalitis. The results will provide evidence for future practice in managing adults with the condition and has the potential to improve outcomes . Ethics and dissemination The trial has ethical approval from the UK National Research Ethics Committee (Liverpool Central, REF: 15/NW/0545, 10 August 2015). Protocol V.2.1, July 2019. The results will be published and presented as soon as possible on completion. Trial registration numbers ISRCTN11774734, EUDRACT 2015-001609-16.


Abstract This article examines the preconditions and reasons for interaction between BRICS countries in the fields of science, research and university education. It analyzes the particular ways in which the member countries develop and coordinate their positions in these areas. It also reviews and evaluates the practical experience gained from cooperating on scientific and technological research and innovation (STRI), and the functioning of the BRICS Network University, and considers the prospects for further joint work in these areas.


The problem-solving behaviour of Balistes fuscus was investigated in the Red Sea by under-water observation of three tame animals. The foraging behaviour of Balistes is adapted to moving objects aside with the mouth to get at hidden prey. In test problem situations with familiar objects, obstacles were deliberately and expediently removed in order to reach the prey (sea urchins). In test situations with unfamiliar objects (flat lid, glass cylinder: Fig. 2) it was also evident that the animals have a grasp of spatial connections and can solve arranged problems forthwith. If a once-solved problem is again presented the successful action sequence unwinds very quickly in the new situation. Modified tests for delayed action show that Balistes can retain short-term information for up to about 3 mins. The analysis of behavioural sequences makes it probable that, according to the criteria of Yerkes and Hassenstein, we are dealing with problem-solving behaviour guided by regrouping of engrams. The behaviour is interpreted as ecologically occasioned adaptation to an intensely structured habitat. The solving of problems by the moving of environmental objects seems to have evolved, in vertebrates, in interaction with their habitat, and independently of their systematic position.


Several plant-based nutrients and non-nutrients that can inhibit mutagenesis and cell proliferation have been identified. Some of the most promising compounds identified as chemopreventive and anti-metastatic agents include soybean-derived protease inhibitors (PIs), Bowman-Birk Inhibitor (BBI) and Kunitz-Trypsin Inhibitor (KTI). A growing body of evidence suggests that BBI could act as anti-carcinogenic agent and KTI is considered to prevent cancer invasion and metastasis. These inhibitors are non-toxic, are of low cost and can be taken orally or as a part of the daily diet. PIs are undergoing investigation in the clinical setting as potential agents for chemoprevention and anti-metastasis. A complex scenario about the interaction between PIs and cell signaling has been emerging. Soybean PIs are not just anti-proteolytic proteins, but can also be modulators of cell signal transduction. Cancer and inflammatory treatment strategies modulating signal transduction need further investigation.


Problem: Recurrent Implantation Failure (RIF) is a major cause of failure to achieve pregnancy after In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and embryo transfer treatment cycles. However, no formal criteria defining the number of failed cycles or the total number of embryos transferred in these IVF attempts exist. Methods: From January 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015, 644 women underwent IVF or embryo transfer procedures involving 2093 embryos. 427 women had positive HCG tests 7 days after transfer of 1364 embryos, resulting in 381 Embryonic Cardiac Activity (ECA) demonstrated by 6 weeks gestation. Of the 381 positive ECA, 55 had Preimplantation Genetic Screening (PGS) and 326 had no PGS. The percentage of pregnancies with demonstrable ECA was determined for each number of embryos transferred, and cumulative pregnancy rates for those undergoing PGS and not undergoing PGS were computed. In addition, the cumulative pregnancy rates were stratified by maternal age. Results: The total number of embryos transferred to achieve 80% of pregnancies with FHT is 4. The rate of ECA after 1 embryo transferred double from 13% to 29% with PGS. Whereas, after a cumulative of 4 embryos transferred the rate of ECA was 75% amongst PGS and 82% with no PGS. When stratified by maternal age, older women benefited most by PGS. Conclusion: The total number of embryos transferred to achieve 80% of pregnancies with ECA is 4. After a cumulative of 4 embryos transferred, PGS does not increase probability of successful pregnancy except in women over age 40 years.


Increasing demands on the world's resources require the design of off-highway machines that provide greater functionality and productivity along with greater efficiency. Model-based or virtual design provides a means for achieving these design improvements with reduced time and costs. However, virtual design is often limited by the fidelity with which human operators are modeled. A greater understanding of how highly skilled operators obtain high machine performance and productivity can inform machine development and advance agricultural and construction machine automation technology. This research investigated how machine operator expertise, strategies, and decision-making can be integrated into operator models that simulate authentic human behavior in construction machine operations. The initial effort of this work was to develop a virtual operator model (VOM) through a combination of human factors and physical system modeling techniques. Operator interviews were conducted to build a framework of tasks, strategies, and cues commonly used while controlling an excavator through repeated work cycles. A closed loop simulation demonstrated that a VOM could simulate the trenching work cycle and enable closed-loop virtual equipment operation simulation. Advancing the state of the art in operator modeling requires models that can adapt. Approaches to enable a generic virtual operator model to adapt to changes in the environment based on the operator's actions were investigated. The closed loop simulation performed successfully when using the VOM, the vehicle model, and an environment model which represented how the VOM adapted during a complete trenching operation.


Activated carbons have been previously produced from a huge variety of biomaterials often reporting advantages of using certain precursors. Here we used pine cones, spruce cones, larch cones and a pine bark/wood chip mixture to produce activated carbons in order to verify the influence of the precursor on properties of the final materials. The biochars were converted into activated carbons with extremely high BET surface area up to ∼3500 m2 g−1 (among the highest reported) using identical carbonization and KOH activation procedures. The activated carbons produced from all precursors demonstrated similar specific surface area (SSA), pore size distribution and performance to electrodes in supercapacitors. Activated carbons produced from wood waste appeared to be also very similar to "activated graphene" prepared by the same KOH procedure. Hydrogen sorption of AC follows expected uptake vs. SSA trends and energy storage parameters of supercapacitor electrodes prepared from AC are very similar for all tested precursors. It can be concluded that the type of precursor (biomaterial or reduced graphene oxide) has smaller importance for producing high surface area activated carbons compared to details of carbonization and activation. Nearly all kinds of wood waste provided by the forest industry can possibly be converted into high quality AC suitable for preparation of electrode materials.


Thirty-seven entomopathogenic bacteria isolated from six common pests of hazelnut in the Black Sea Region of Turkey have been screened for their potential of antibacterial substance production against indicator bacteria by the agar spot assay and well diffusion assay. Results indicated that 13.5% of entomopathogenic bacteria, Pseudomonas fluorescens (Pf-Xd1), Bacillus polymyxa (Bp-Ar2), Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt-Bn1), Serratia marcescens (Sm-Mm3) and Pseudomonas flourescens (Pf-Aa4) isolated from pests of Xyleborus dispar, Anoplus roboris, Balaninus nucum, Melolontha melolontha and Agelastica alni, respectively, showed significant levels of inhibitor activities against indicator bacteria. Well diffusion assay showed that supernatants of Bp-Ar2, Bt-Bn1 and Sm-Mm3 have antibacterial activity, whereas Pf-Xd1 and Pf-Aa4 did not show any activity. Furthermore, the antibacterial activity of the substance produced by the Bp-Ar2 has a narrow spectrum, whereas those of Bt-Bn1 and Sm-Mm3 exhibit broad spectrum. The production of these antibacterial substances were similarly determined at early logarithmic phase in the growth cycle of three bacteria and continued until the beginning of the stationary phase as primer metabolite. In addition, optimal pH (at 7–9 forBt-Bn1 and 5–9 forSm-Mm3), medium (Muller Hinton broth forBt-Bn1 and Luria Bertani broth forSm-Mm3), temperature (25°C for Bt-Bn1 and Sm-Mm3) and production time (24h forBt-Bn1 and 72h forSm-Mm3) of these substances were determined. Our results demonstrate that entomopathogenic bacteria are a potential source of antibacterial substances.


The problem of cooperative path‐finding is addressed in this work. A set of agents moving in a certain environment is given. Each agent needs to reach a given goal location. The task is to find spatial temporal paths for agents such that they eventually reach their goals by following these paths without colliding with each other. An abstraction where the environment is modeled as an undirected graph is adopted—vertices represent locations and edges represent passable regions. Agents are modeled as elements placed in the vertices while at most one agent can be located in a vertex at a time. At least one vertex remains unoccupied to allow agents to move. An agent can move into unoccupied neighboring vertex or into a vertex being currently vacated if a certain additional condition is satisfied. Two novel scalable algorithms for solving cooperative path‐finding in bi‐connected graphs are presented. Both algorithms target environments that are densely populated by agents. A theoretical and experimental evaluation shows that the suggested algorithms represent a viable alternative to search based techniques as well as to techniques employing permutation groups on the studied class of the problem.


Inflammatory diseases influence tissue metabolism, altering regulation of extracellular adenine nucleotides, with a resultant protective influence of adenosine. Ecto-5'-nucleotidase (CD73) is a central surface enzyme generating extracellular adenosine. Thus, we hypothesized that CD73 is protective in mucosal inflammation as modeled by trinitrobenzene sulfonate (TNBS) colitis. Initial studies revealed a >3-fold induction of CD73 mRNA levels after TNBS colitis. Additionally, the severity of colitis was increased, as determined by weight loss and colonic shortening, in cd73(-/-) mice relative to cd73(+/+) controls. Likewise, enteral administration of the selective CD73 inhibitor alpha,beta-methylene ADP to cd73(+/+) mice resulted in a similar increase in severity of TNBS colitis. Gene array profiling of cytokine mRNA expression, verified by real-time PCR, revealed a >90% down-regulation of IFN-alphaA in cd73(-/-) mice and alpha,beta-methylene ADP-treated cd73(+/+) mice, compared with cd73(+/+) mice. Exogenous administration of recombinant IFN-alphaA partially protected TNBS-treated cd73(-/-) mice. Cytokine profiling revealed similar increases in both IFN-gamma and TNF-alpha mRNA in colitic animals, independent of genotype. However, IL-10 mRNA increased in wild-type mice on day 3 after TNBS administration, whereas cd73(-/-) mice mounted no IL-10 response. This IL-10 response was restored in the cd73(-/-) mice by exogenous IFN-alphaA. Further cytokine profiling revealed that this IL-10 induction is preceded by a transient IFN-alphaA induction on day 2 after TNBS exposure. Together, these studies indicate a critical regulatory role for CD73-modulated IFNalphaA in the acute inflammatory phase of TNBS colitis, thereby implicating IFN-alphaA as a protective element of adenosine signaling during mucosal inflammation.


Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is becoming a promising new technology for extending coverage to farflung rural areas. This it achieves by linking the various wireless LANS (WLANs) in distant locations thus providing a vital mode complimentary to the wireless infrastructure-based networks. The benefits of WMN deployments, however, come with certain challenges e.g., power management. While focussing on WMN applications in rural areas, this paper explains the need for transmit power consumption control in WMNs and proposes an Enhanced Local Minimum Shortest-path Tree (ELMST) algorithm for topology control for the WMNs. The algorithm is distributed with each node using only the information gathered locally to determine its own transmission power. In the first phase of its construction, a minimum local shortest-path tree is obtained. The last phase then involves the removal of all unidirectional links. The performance of the algorithm is demonstrated via several simulation tests. The resultant network topology preserves network connectivity in addition to possessing other desirable features such as: (1) reduction in the average node degree, (2) evenly distributed power consumption among the nodes as well as (3) a reduced total power consumption leading to longer connectivity periods.


A control method is described to charge series-connected ultraelectric double-layer capacitors (ultra-EDLCs) suitable for photovoltaic generation systems in combination with a maximum power point tracking (MPPT) control method. The EDLC charge control method allows the maximum power acquired by the MPPT control to be quickly charged into series-connected ultra-EDLCs no matter how the weather conditions may change. In the MPPT control, the output current of the solar arrays is controlled so that the output power converges on the maximum power in the prediction line previously determined based on the linearity between the maximum output power and the optimization current. The proportionality coefficient of the prediction line is automatically corrected using the hill-climbing method when the panel temperature of the solar arrays is changed. The EDLC charge control is performed with the three charge modes, i.e., the constant current charge mode, constant power charge mode, and the constant voltage charge mode while supervising the maximum voltage and allowable temperature of each series-connected EDLC. Effectiveness of the methods is verified by simulations and experiments


In this work we present the design and the manufacturing processes, as well as the acoustics standard-
ization tests, of an acoustic barrier formed by a set of multi-phenomena cylindrical scatterers. Periodic
arrangements of acoustic scatterers embedded in a fluid medium with different physical properties are
usually called Sonic Crystals. The multiple scattering of waves inside these structures leads to attenuation
bands related to the periodicity of the structure by means of Bragg scattering. In order to design the
acoustic barrier, two strategies have been used: First, the arrangement of scatterers is based on fractal
geometries to maximize the Bragg scattering; second, multi-phenomena scatterers with several noise con-
trol mechanisms, as resonances or absorption, are designed and used to construct the periodic array. The
acoustic barrier reported in this work provides a high technological solution in the field of noise control.


Approximation of discrete cosine transform (DCT) is useful for reducing its computational complexity without significant impact on its coding performance. Most of the existing algorithms for approximation of the DCT target only the DCT of small transform lengths, and some of them are non-orthogonal. This paper presents a generalized recursive algorithm to obtain orthogonal approximation of DCT where an approximate DCT of length N could be derived from a pair of DCTs of length (N/2) at the cost of N additions for input preprocessing. We perform recursive sparse matrix decomposition and make use of the symmetries of DCT basis vectors for deriving the proposed approximation algorithm. Proposed algorithm is highly scalable for hardware as well as software implementation of DCT of higher lengths, and it can make use of the existing approximation of 8-point DCT to obtain approximate DCT of any power of two length, N > 8. We demonstrate that the proposed approximation of DCT provides comparable or better image and video compression performance than the existing approximation methods. It is shown that proposed algorithm involves lower arithmetic complexity compared with the other existing approximation algorithms. We have presented a fully scalable reconfigurable parallel architecture for the computation of approximate DCT based on the proposed algorithm. One uniquely interesting feature of the proposed design is that it could be configured for the computation of a 32-point DCT or for parallel computation of two 16-point DCTs or four 8-point DCTs with a marginal control overhead. The proposed architecture is found to offer many advantages in terms of hardware complexity, regularity and modularity. Experimental results obtained from FPGA implementation show the advantage of the proposed method.