1European rabbits are considered a keystone species in the Iberian Peninsula. Their populations have sharply declined over the past century, mainly due to habitat loss and the arrival of two viral diseases: myxomatosis in the 1950s and rabbit haemorrhagic disease (RHD) at the end of the 1980s. For the conservation of the Iberian Mediterranean ecosystem, it is important to determine whether rabbit populations are recovering two decades after the RHD outbreak, and to identify the factors associated with population recovery.
2Here, we review the current knowledge on recent rabbit population trends in the Iberian Peninsula and the factors associated with these trends.
3Although most rabbit populations are still declining in the Iberian Peninsula, a few seem to have recovered. In general, positive trends have been recorded in species-friendly habitats characterized by non-fragmented landscapes, interspersed patches of Mediterranean scrubland, good pastures and/or crops, soft soils that are suitable for warren construction and a Mediterranean climate with relatively high rainfall. Additionally, rabbits seem to be recovering better in areas where management practices (e.g. low hunting pressure, habitat management and predator control) are applied to increase their numbers.
4From these findings, it is possible to identify five broad objectives for rabbit conservation in the Iberian Peninsula. First, it is clearly necessary to establish a long-term programme for monitoring rabbit abundance and trends on a large scale. Second, the conservation and restoration of open Mediterranean scrubland should be a priority for stabilizing and maintaining existing healthy rabbit populations. Third, despite the lack of experimental evidence, management activities aimed at increasing the quantity and quality of both refuge and food should continue to be implemented. Fourth, legislation on the timing of the hunting season should be revisited following recommendations made by scientists. Finally, experimental approaches are required to investigate whether the control of generalist predators is a successful strategy to allow rabbit populations to recover.


Ocean acidification (OA), a consequence of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions, poses a serious threat to marine organisms in tropical, open-ocean, coastal, deep-sea, and high-latitude sea ecosystems. The diversity of taxonomic groups that precipitate calcium carbonate from seawater are at particularly high risk. Here we review the rapidly expanding literature concerning the biological and ecological impacts of OA on calcification, using a cross-scale, process-oriented approach. In comparison to calcification, we find that areas such as fertilization, early life-history stages, and interaction with synergistic stressors are understudied. Although understanding the long-term consequences of OA are critical, available studies are largely short-term experiments that do not allow for tests of long-term acclimatization or adaptation. Future research on the phenotypic plasticity of contemporary organisms and interpretations of performance in the context of current environmental heterogeneity of pCO2 will gre...


We provide a sequential Monte Carlo method for estimating rare-event probabilities in dynamic, intensity-based point process models of portfolio credit risk. The method is based on a change of measure and involves a resampling mechanism. We propose resampling weights that lead, under technical conditions, to a logarithmically efficient simulation estimator of the probability of large portfolio losses. A numerical analysis illustrates the features of the method and contrasts it with other rare-event schemes recently developed for portfolio credit risk, including an interacting particle scheme and an importance sampling scheme.


Employee Awareness of Organizational Cultural and Climate Expectations by Venita M. Govan MS, Lindenwood University, 2011 BA, Lindenwood University, 2005 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology Walden University October 2019 Abstract Organizational culture statements are established to pronounce and promote core values for employees to live while performing roles and responsibilities. It is essential for employees to be knowledgeable of cultural expectations. When considering organizational alignment, research has indicated there is deficient linkage when analyzing applied strategies versus envisioned strategies focusing on employees' actual lived experiences. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to survey whether theOrganizational culture statements are established to pronounce and promote core values for employees to live while performing roles and responsibilities. It is essential for employees to be knowledgeable of cultural expectations. When considering organizational alignment, research has indicated there is deficient linkage when analyzing applied strategies versus envisioned strategies focusing on employees' actual lived experiences. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to survey whether the corporate health care employees' lived experiences mirrored the stated cultural values associated with the theoretical framework concerning artifacts, espoused values, and basic assumptions. Through an online survey, this phenomenological study analyzed cultural experiences of 10 corporate health care employees, ranging from administrative support to the executive level. This study revealed experiences by employees based on stated cultural values and expectations. Many of the participants' lived experiences linked back to the organization's advertised cultural values. Results relative to behaviors emulating the culture statement were expressed based on employees' alignment with the organizational mission and vision. They feel included, recognize integrity, and have an appreciation for serving the community. Other findings linked to the communication mediums were based on utilization, frequency, and access to appropriate communication tools. Findings also demonstrated leaders' behaviors which align with innovation and granting autonomy for optimal performance. These results may influence social change by providing insight for better understanding employees' lived experiences, thus creating improved alignment, replication of behaviors, mutual respect, and collaboration. Employee Awareness of Organizational Cultural and Climate Expectations by Venita M. Govan MS, Lindenwood University, 2011 BA, Lindenwood University, 2005 Proposal Submitted in Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology Walden University October 2019


This paper proposes a voltage-control scheme for an SRAM that makes a minimum operation voltage down to 0.3 V even on a future memory-rich SoC. A self-aligned timing control guarantees stable operation in a wide range of Vdd under DVS environment. A measurement result of a 64-kb SRAM in a 90-nm process technology shows that 30% power reduction is achieved at 100 MHz. The area overhead is only 5.6%


Russia's engagement with Asian peoples and cultures forms a topic whose boundaries have yet to be thoroughly explored, particularly in the relationship between Russian and Asian architecture. As an artifact demanding significant resources as well as building skills, architecture involves numerous factors related to social, cultural, economic and technological history. The present article will point to specific instances, primarily in eighteenth-century Siberian church architecture that suggest a Russian receptivity to east Asian ornamentation. Russia is a Eurasian power, and it is plausible that the growth of trade between Russia and eastern Asia (especially China) in the eighteenth century would have fostered possibilities for cultural transference. Such exchange, it will be argued, seems to have occurred in the realm of architecture, in which decorative motifs could be observed, disseminated (even in printed form) and copied at significant points along Russia's Asian pathways.


Modulation instability (MI) as the main limit to the sensing distance of distributed fiber sensors is thoroughly investigated in this thesis in order to obtain a model for predicting its characteristics and alleviating its effects. Starting from Maxwell's equations in optical fibers, the nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) describing the propagation of wave envelope in nonlinear dispersive media is derived. As the main tool for analyzing modulation instability, the NLSE is numerically evaluated using the split-step Fourier method and its analytical closed-form solutions such as solitons are utilized to validate the numerical algorithms. As the direct consequence of the NLSE, self-phase modulation is utilized to measure the nonlinear coefficient of optical fibers via a self-aligned interferometer. The modulation instability gain is obtained by applying a linear stability analysis to the NLSE assuming a white background noise as the seeding for the nonlinear interaction. The MI gain spectrum is expressed by hyperbolic functions for lossless fibers and by Bessel functions with complex orders for fibers with attenuation. An approximate gain spectrum is presented for lossy fibers based on the gain in lossless optical fibers. The accuracy of the analytical results and approximate formulas is evaluated by performing Monte Carlo simulations on the NLSE. The impact of background noise on the onset and evolution of modulation instability is analytically investigated and experimentally demonstrated. Power depletion due to the nonlinear process of modulation instability is modeled by integrating its gain spectrum using Laplace's method. Based on that, a critical power for MI is proposed by introducing the notion of depletion ratio. The model is verified by numerical simulation and experimental measurement. An optimal input power for distributed fiber sensors is proposed to maximize the output optical power and thus, the far end signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, the recurrence phenomenon of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam is experimentally observed and numerically simulated, validating the utilized numerical techniques. A standard Brillouin optical time-domain analyser serves as the experimental test bench for the proposed model. As the physical phenomenon behind the experiment, stimulated Brillouin scattering is described based on a pump-probe interaction mechanism through an acoustic wave. A 25 km single-mode fiber is employed as a nonlinear medium with anomalous dispersion at the pump wavelength 1550 nm. The evolution of pump power propagating along the fiber is mapped using the Brillouin interaction with the probe lightwave. The measured longitudinal power traces are processed to extract the impact of MI on the pump power. It is experimentally demonstrated that distributed fiber sensors with orthogonally-polarized pumps suffer less from modulation instability. As the scalar modulation instability of each pump reduces, vector modulation instability occurs because of interaction between the pumps; however, the overall performance improves. A version of the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations known as the Manakov system is shown to describe the behavior of two-pump distributed fiber sensors employing optical fibers with random birefringence. The excellent agreement between the experimental and numerical results indicates that the performance limit of two-pump distributed fiber sensors is determined by polarization modulation instability.


Staffs are the most important capitals of the organizations. Today, focusing on quality of work life of staffs who devote more than onethird of their lives to the organization is very important and valuable. The main objective of the present project was "to examine the relation between organizational structure and quality of work life of women staff in Islamic Azad university branches". Our method in this descriptive study was selected as correlation-based. The universal society included all women staff of Mazandaran's Islamic Azad university branches,377 persons, and based on classified random sampling and with using krejcie and Morgan ta ble,191 persons were selected as our samples. We used "organizational structure" and "work life quality" questionnaires for gathering data. Data analyzing was performed by descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and inferential statistics (correlation coefficient and pierson coefficient and Regression). Results showed that there is a significant positive relationship between organizational structure and its dimensions with quality of work life. Also, the components of organizational structure (for mality, option hierarchy and centralization, respectively) were some significant predictors for quality of work life.


The subject of service convenience is important in service economies, yet little is known about this topic. The consumer convenience literature─strong in certain respects, underdeveloped in other respects─gives insufficient attention to service convenience. The prevailing pattern is either to treat service convenience generally or to lump services and goods together into an overall convenience construct. The authors seek to stimulate a higher level of research activity and dialogue by proposing a more comprehensive and multidimensional conceptualization of service convenience and a model delineating its antecedents and consequences. The authors build their case by systematically examining the convenience literature, explicating the dimensions and types of service convenience, developing the overall model and related research propositions, and presenting directions for further research.


Introducing a new drug to market is a lengthy and expensive process (typically 10-15 years and $1.7 billion). Better understanding of how and why a drug molecule binds to a target and what changes in the atomistic structure and chemistry could improve the binding affinity and shorten the process. In addition to structure-based approaches, the role of thermodynamics and molecular motions in binding selectivity and efficiency have attracted increasing attention. Whilst calorimetric methods can quantify total free energy and entropy change, it is difficult to estimate contributions from the different components of entropy, one of the largest unknowns being the magnitude of the configurational entropy. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the drug and target protein can provide more details of the different atomistic movements contributing to the total entropy change, thus potentially providing valuable clues for lead optimisation.
In this study we use the well characterised N-terminal domain of the Hsp90 chaperone protein as a model system to study the changes in conformational flexibility (configurational entropy) upon binding of small molecule inhibitors using MD simulations, NMR and ITC. We show that the two inhibitors studied cause different changes in the protein dynamics. These effects were seen with NMR relaxation dispersion methods and with MD but the dynamic changes however are not reflected in the global ITC parameters. Here the water is assumed to have a dominating effect in the overall entropy change.
However, as some Hsp90 clients have been shown to preferentially interact with only one conformation of the protein, we propose that the changes seen with NMR and MD could be of interest for drug design. Manipulating the dynamics by small molecules could favour interaction with a subset of client proteins, without affecting the interaction of others, all together providing specificity and potentially allowing to design an 'ideal' drug that only prevents the folding of 'bad' cancer related proteins without affecting Hsp90 functions in the normal cells. As the MD simulations also reflect these dynamic changes, we propose that simulations could be also used as a screening tool for selecting which inhibitors could be taken for further development in the lab.


The present study investigated the impact of different legal standards on mock juror decisions concerning whether a defendant was guilty or not guilty by reason of insanity. Undergraduate students (N = 477) read a simulated case summary involving a murder case and were asked to make an insanity determination. The cases differed in terms of the condition of the defendant (rationality deficit or control deficit) and the legal standard given to the jurors to make the determination (Model Penal Code, McNaughten or McNaughten plus a separate control determination). The effects of these variables on the insanity determination were investigated. Jurors also completed questionnaires measuring individualism and hierarchy attitudes and perceptions of facts in the case. Results indicate that under current insanity standards jurors do not distinguish between defendants with rationality deficits and defendants with control deficits regardless of whether the legal standard requires them to do so. Even defendants who lacked control were found guilty at equal rates under a legal standard excusing rationality deficits only and a legal standard excluding control and rationality deficits. This was improved by adding a control test as a partial defence, to be determined after a rationality determination. Implications for the insanity defence in the Criminal Justice System are discussed. © 2016 Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. Published by Elsevier España, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Descifrar los criterios de defensa de la vesania: estudio experimental de las pruebas de racionalidad y control en derecho penal


1. The activity of serum butyrylcholinesterase ('pseudocholinesterase', EC22.214.171.124) was investigated in 56 patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, 51 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus and 101 healthy control subjects. 2. Butyrylcholinesterase activity was significantly elevated in both type 1 (8.10 +/- 3.35 units/ml) and type 2 (7.22 +/- 1.95 units/ml) diabetes compared with the control subjects (4.23 +/- 1.89 units/ml) (P < 0.001). 3. In the patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes, serum butyrylcholinesterase activity was correlated with log serum fasting triacylglycerol concentration (r = 0.41 and r = 0.43, respectively, P < 0.001). In the type 2 population serum butyrylcholinesterase activity was also correlated with insulin sensitivity (r = -0.51, P < 0.001). 4. Serum butyrylcholinesterase activity was unrelated to age, gender, serum gamma-glutamyltranspeptidase activity, body mass index, or treatment for diabetes in both the diabetic populations. 5. In 37 non-diabetic patients with butyrylcholinesterase deficiency serum triacylglycerol levels were in the normal range. 6. These results are consistent with the view that butyrylcholinesterase may have a role in the altered lipoprotein metabolism in hypertriglyceridaemia associated with insulin insensitivity or insulin deficiency in diabetes mellitus.


The EUROCARE study is a joint effort by European cancer epidemiologists to measure cancer survival rates in a large sample of European countries. Its publication over a decade ago brought some salience to the poor performance of Britain within the European Union. The subsequent national cancer control programme initiated in England resulted partly of that event, which suggests that, along with the transformative effects of EU-level policy-making, Europeanization also occurs through the indirect activity of epistemic communities. I provide an analytical framework that draws on the sociology of quantification and on the politics of measurement and performance to show how cancer control and health policy can undergo significant reforms due to discrete and asynchronous acts of EU government.


Introduction: India has been promoting CBHI schemes as a part of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM)to reduce the burden of out of pocket expenditure.This study analyses the cost structure and package rates approved by the 5 CBHI schemes. Methodology:A Retrospective cross sectional study was conducted in a tertiary teaching hospital which included 126 surgical procedures carried out in the cardiology department.Patients who have undergone Percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty(PTCA)-one stent,PTCA-two stents, Atrial Septal Defect(ASD) device closure and Permanent Pacemaker implantation under any defined insurance scheme were a part of the inclusion criteria.The patient records were studied retrospectively by accessing files from the Medical Records Department (MRD) of the hospital. The direct and indirect costs involved in care were calculated and compared with the package cost of each insurance scheme to check whether the schemes were profit generating schemes or loss generating. Results: The analysis were performed on 126 cases of cardiac surgeries selected across five CBHI) schemes. The hospital is not making any losses under the Community Based Health Insurance(CBHI) schemes.The hospital is making more profit under Jyothi Sanjeevini for the treatment of ASD device closure. Vajpayee Arogyashree and Yeshasvini were relatively less profitable. The costs were allocated on a per patient basis.Costs were classified in to different categories: consumables,medicines,manpower,electricity,equipment costs.Then the total costs were compared with the scheme approved cost to determine whether the hospital is making any loss or profit.In all the cases major costs were attributed to the cost of medicines followed by consumables,manpower cost and equipment cost.For all the treatment procedures approved amount of insurance schemes was higher than the cost incurred by the hospital. The hospital got a profit margin in the range of 2.7% to 25.33%.Extended stay of patients at the hospital due to post treatment complications is not included in the treatment package by insurance schemes:this is an extra burden to the hospital.The study concluded that CBHI schemes are financially feasible for the cardiology department of the hospital


Background BRAF mutations are a common finding in malignant melanoma (MM). Nevertheless, apart from their significance as a therapeutic target in advanced melanoma, their prognostic value is still debated. Objective To assess BRAF mutation status in primary, recurrent, or metastatic MM and its correlations with histopathological findings. Methods We analyzed 203 samples from 178 consecutive patients: 129 primary cutaneous MM, 49 metastatic and recurrent MM of unknown primary site, and 25 cases of recurrences or metastases of primary MM. BRAF mutations in exon 15 were identified with real-time polymerase chain reaction and/or direct sequencing or pyrosequencing. Histopathological examination was performed according to standard procedures. Results We observed a 42.1% prevalence of BRAF mutations at codon 600 among our patients, 84% of whom harbored the V600E mutation. Mutations showed a statistically significant increase in younger patients (P = 0.011), in ulcerated tumors (P = 0.020), and in tumors lacking solar elastosis in adjacent dermis (P = 0.008). Mutations were also more common in male patients, as well as in primary MMs of the torso, and in nonvisceral metastases, however without reaching statistical significance. Logistic regression analysis identified type and ulceration as the only significant predictors of BRAF mutation. The highest frequencies of mutated BRAF were identified in superficial spreading and nodular types, and the lowest in acral lentiginous and lentigo maligna types. In situ MM and primary dermal melanoma displayed intermediate frequencies. Conclusion Frequency of mutated BRAF is type-related and correlated with ulceration, a known adverse prognostic factor.


In solution phosphate monoesters hydrolyze via a highly dissociative mechanism involving a "loose" or "exploded" metaphosphate-like transition state where bond formation to the incoming nucleophile is minimal and bond breaking between phosphorus and the leaving group is substantial. To better understand how protein-tyrosine phosphatase (PTPase) effects catalysis, it is important to determine the nature of the enzymic transition state. PTPases catalyze the hydrolysis of phosphate monoesters by a two-step mechanism that proceeds through a phosphoenzyme intermediate (E-P). Extensive heavy atom kinetic isotope effect and leaving group dependency studies have provided insights into the nature of the transition state for the first step (E-P formation) of the PTPase reaction. In this paper we have probed the transition state for the low M(r) PTPase-catalyzed dephosphorylation step by studying the effect of changing the alcohol basicity on its reactivity toward E-P. The Brønsted beta nu value for the reactions of alcohols and E-P is determined to be 0.14, which indicates that the enzymic transition state is highly dissociative and similar to that in uncatalyzed solution reactions. We show that the conserved hydroxyl group in the PTPase signature motif is primarily involved in the E-P dephosphorylation step. We further demonstrate that elimination of the hydroxyl group renders the transition state for E-P dephosphorylation less dissociative, suggesting that the main function of the hydroxyl group in the PTPase active site is to promote the E-P going through a dissociative pathway and to stabilize the dissociative transition state.


The first chapter of the thesis examines the impact of youth training programs on career and spell duration of professional athletes. A unique data set of post-war English trained soccer players is used to study the impact of the youth training program they attended on their career and spell duration. The results indicate that the duration patterns of players are dependent on the youth academy they attended. The spell analysis outlines the nature of the competitive environment between smaller and larger clubs. Finally, the results of both analyses addressed unobserved heterogeneity, allowed for nonlinearity of covariates using the cubic spline methodology, and were tested for endogeneity bias using a split sample test. The second chapter analyzes certain labour market implications of institutional changes in professional sports. The study examines the impact of the Bosman ruling on the competitive nature of new entrants to the English Premier League. Relevant labour economics literature suggests that post-Bosman entrants will be more productive and consequently have a higher probability of securing a first-team spot in top European leagues. To test these predictions, proprietary data was collected on all players that entered the English Premier League in four-year windows around the Bosman ruling. Nonparametric techniques, specifically Regression Discontinuity Design disiii played evident discontinuity in player productivity parameters around the ruling. In addition, strong and robust empirical support for the motivating predictions is established through the application of survival analysis. The third chapter utilizes the data sets from the first two chapters and analyzes internal promotion versus external hiring in the English Premier League. Robust results are established in support of more reputable youth programs providing more first-team opportunities through internal sources, consistently even in the aftermath of a major institutional change. Foreign sourced players become more prevalent in the league after the Bosman ruling, and their probability of selection is positively correlated with club stature. A separate survival analysis validates chapter one results in terms of youth training reputation of certain clubs, and establishes a presence of heterogeneity at youth club level that signals differences in player career prospects generated by their youth training.


This paper presents a design concept for a head-mounted display, incorporating color stereo vision using commercial LCDs and our own optical relay design. The focus here is on the optical system design, which must meet specifications for a wide field of view, size and cost constraints, and aberration minimization based on human factors. Two multispherical lens systems are presented and compared, one a straight structure and the other a folded structure, which satisfy the design constraints. Their aberrations (distortion, coma, lateral color, field curvature, and astigmatism) have been well corrected, according to human perceptual constraints explicitly discussed. Each has a 20-mm eye relief and an instantaneous field of view greater than 60°; the former has an exit pupil of 10 mm and the latter of 8 mm.


Fuzzy logic controller is one of the most important applications of fuzzy-rule-based system that models the human decision processing with a collection of fuzzy rules. Choosing appropriate fuzzy rules and sets is essential for a fuzzy Logic controller to perform at the desired level. In this paper, an adaptive ant colony algorithm is proposed based on dynamically adjusting the strategy of selection of the paths and the strategy of the trail information updating. The algorithm is used to design a fuzzy logic controller automatically for real-time control of an inverted pendulum. In order to avoid the combinatorial explosion of fuzzy rules due to multivariable inputs, state variable synthesis scheme is employed to reduce the number of fuzzy rules greatly. The simulation results show that the designed controller can control the inverted pendulum successfully.


The campaign titled "The Vietnamese Prioritizing Consuming the Goods Made in Vietnam" (TVPCGMIN) is considered as a guiding principle constructed by the Communist Party. It was issued on the 31st of July, 2009 in the Proclamation No. 264 -TB/TW from the Politburo. It remains as the main mission on the list of action plan of Fatherland's Front Institution. In that setting, we questioned the role of mass media during this campaign. The research was based on random sample selection of 200 samples from Nguyen Trai ward which is considered the inner city area, and the An Thuong commune which is considered the suburb area of Ha Noi city. The research employed focus group interview of twelve individuals among which six were retailers and six were consumers. The results showed that the campaign had a significant influence on both residents of the inner city as well as the suburb area. Among them, cable television and newspapers had stronger impact than radio, internet, banners, community meetings, and word-of-mouth from the individual's social network. After five years of campaigning, the movement altered people's awareness, attitude and consumption toward the Vietnamese brand products. The research indicated that people pay more attention to domestic produce, however, they pointed out that there's some room for improvement in regards of the visual aspect and quality, especially compared to foreign imported merchandises. In general, the research showed that local people preferred foreign imported goods to the domestic productions. They definitely favor digital products from Japan over all.


The bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak in the United Kingdom is regarded as one of the worst public policy crises the British government has experienced during the postwar era. In material terms, it has led to the slaughter of 3.3 million cattle and estimated economic losses of £3.7 billion. In administrative terms, the crisis brought about the dissolution of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. This article examines the istitutional context in which decisions about the scientific evidence on BSE were made. The authors argue that a centralized system in which government agencies control science for government is inherently vulnerable to alliances of experts and interest groups that undermine the credible assessment of public health and safety risks. Specific societal conditions may encourage risk-opportunistic behavior among policy makers that is conducive to delays and inaction until such time as the evidence of a health risk becomes overwhelming.


The so called "Livro de Visitas" is a book in which schools inspectors register some general perspectives when visiting a Public School, writing down remarks on the schooling process as, for instance, the results of annual examinations and comments on the school, teachers and students. This paper studies the "Livro de visitas" of the Rural School "Fazenda Ponte Alta/Bela Vista", in Bariri, State of Sao Paulo. Based on the records of twenty years of activity (1928-1948), some educational elements are highlighted: the demands of the inspectors at that time, how such requirements were (or not) referred by teachers or the community. This allows to sketch a socio-historical scenario focusing on the practices that took place in a school that taught literacy and primary arithmetic. As a result, one can understand that the discourse of equal opportunities between rural and urban schools, so intensely proclaimed by politicians, was not complemented by efforts to guarantee equality of means.


Remittances considered as one of the most important sources of financial inflows for developing countries. This study aims at investigating whether remittances have a significant role in promoting economic growth in Jordan or not. For this purpose the study tests the unit root for the variables and applies the cointegration test besides the error correction model using annual data for the period 1972 to 2016. Results reveal that there is a stable long run relationship between GDP percapita and remittances in Jordan as well as in the short run. As a result, the study confirms the positive significant effect of remittances on economic growth. In other words, remittances of Jordanians enhancing economic growth for local Jordanians which improve standards of living and participate in reducing level and depth of poverty in Jordan. The study recommends cutting fees on remittances transfers and to direct Jordanians to invest remittances in productive projects in order to achieve high economic growth, increase employment, and eventually improve the standard level of living. Besides, the study recommends liberalizing movement of workers across Arab countries and foreign friend countries. Moreover there is a real need for conducting more studies that reveal the ways of spending remittances in Jordan.


Die-casting moulds are subjected to severe conditions of cyclical thermal and mechanical loads, as well as chemical and mechanical wear. Dies mostly fail due to a combination of wear mechanisms. Heat checking, erosion, melt corrosion and soldering often lead to complete die failure. Ceramic plasma-sprayed coatings have a great potential for die protection, since they are chemically inert, and show high form stability at elevated temperatures. Furthermore, they show good resistance against thermal shock due to the porous state of the coated layer and low Young's modulus. In the present study, the influence of hot isostatic pressing on thermal fatigue resistance of plasma spraying coatings is investigated. Thermal and thermomechanical tests were applied to characterise their ability to protect dies. The coatings were evaluated by residual stress measurements, metallography, hardness test and X-ray diffraction.


What is the value of design? Why should firms invest in design? The paper aims at clarifying the value of design, its dimensions and its variables (qualitative and quantitative) throughout a literature review and analysis. The premise is that firms invest in design to create value. Design has evolved, becoming closely related to innovation, and the need to clarify its dimensions and relationships to value within firms and society rises. Despite the global growing interest in design, it is not fully understood how it brings benefits to the company. The concept of value is found in a fragmented literature including economics, marketing, business, management, value engineering, design domains, social and environmental sustainability. In conclusion, the value of design still is under-researched and new dimensions emerge. It is shaped by designers and companies visions, creativity and interpretations. Better crossfertilization is required to identify the mechanisms of value creation by design.


Author(s): Dietrich, William E | Abstract: The poorly understood relationship between specific land uses, consequent altered sediment loads and runoff, and the downstream river channel response to these altered patterns lies at the heart of the problem of management decisions regarding cumulative watershed effects. Most rivers in California have experienced altered sediment supply due to land use. The pristine state of these channels is unknown, and because channels do not respond Immediately to inputs of sediment, it can not be assumed that current channel conditions reflect current sediment loads. This makes stream rehabilitation projects, which are becoming increasingly commonplace. subject to considerable uncertainty as to their outcome. There are many aspects to this relationship between land use, sediment loads, runoff. and channel response that are challenging, including: 1) the prediction of the rate and grain size of altered sediment yield caused by a particular disturbance; 2) the prediction of the changes in runoff amounts, including how these effects influence hillslope erosion rates; and 3) the prediction of stream channel changes that include effects on surface grain size distributions, sediment storage, channel geometry. bank instability, sediment loads, and sediment concentrations. The pressure now to make decisions in advance of complete understanding of this relationship suggests that the problem be turned around: is it possible to examine a channel reach of interest and with some relatively simple observations anticipate how it will respond to altered sediment yields?The work accomplished here was oriented toward devising methodologies to predict probable channel response to altered runoff and sediment supply due to land use by "reading" rivers. Our approach was based on our recent experimental results that demonstrated a quantitative relationship between sediment supply and the degree and spatial extent of surface armoring in gravel bedded rivers (Dietrich, et al., 1989). The theory we proposed (see Appendix A for complete paper) argues that under an Imposed boundary shear stress, such as that which occurs at bankfull discharge, grain size adjustments modify critical boundary shear stress and, consequently. the excess stress that controls bedload transport rates. When sediment supply is high for the imposed shear stress. the grain size of the bed will be close to that of the load. In contrast, if the supply is reduced, the surface will coarsen, thereby causing reduction in transport rate in concert with the reduced load. Hence the degree of stream surface armoring may be used to define a stream's state of adjustment relative to sediment supply.Three specific research objectives were proposed in Project W-734. The first was to test in a natural river the validity of recent theories for initial motion of heterogeneous mixtures of gravels and sand size sediment. This objective was accomplished through a combination of tracer studies and direct measurement of friction angles of individual particles. The second objective was to test our theory regarding grain size adjustments (Dietrich, et al., 1989) by measuring vertical and lateral sorting variation in relation to sediment supply. (The theory assumes that the median grain size of the bed is the scale for critical shear stress of the bed and that selective entrainment can occur, causing grain size adjustments to develop from supply variations.) This work was done in conjunction with another project which examined several rivers. The work funded here focussed primarily on one study site and examined it in greater detail. The third objective was to examine whether alternating zones of high and low rates of sediment movement along a particular creek could be identified. This was done through a combination of mapping and tracer studies.As proposed, this work was accomplished in close collaboration with Laurel Collins, geologist for the East Bay Regional Park District.


In this study, the spatial structure of cumulus cloud populations is investigated using three-dimensional snapshots from large-domain LES experiments. The aim is to understand and quantify the internal variability in cloud size distributions due to subsampling effects and spatial organization. A set of idealized shallow cumulus cases is selected with varying degrees of spatial organization, including a slowly organizing marine precipitating case and five more quickly organizing diurnal cases over land. A subdomain analysis is applied, yielding cloud number distributions at sample sizes ranging from severely undersampled to nearly complete. A strong power-law scaling is found in the relation between cloud number variability and subdomain size, reflecting an inverse linear relation. Scaling subdomain size by cloud size yields a data collapse across time points and cases, highlighting the role played by cloud spacing in controlling the stochastic variability. Spatial organization acts on top of this baseline model by increasing the maximum cloud size and by enhancing the variability in the number of smallest clouds. This reflects that the smaller clouds start to live on top of larger-scale thermodynamic structures, such as cold pools, which favor or inhibit their formation. Compositing all continental cumulus cases suggests the existence of a prototype diurnal time dependence in the spatial organization. A simple stochastic expression for cloud number variability is proposed that is formulated in terms of two dimensionless groups, which allows objective estimation of the degree of spatial organization in simulated and observed cumulus cloud populations.


From his appointment as a lecturer in 1950, the author has spent all his academic career within the Department of Geography of the Université de Haute-Bretagne à Rennes, of which he was acting Head for a long while, until his retirement in 1984, when he became an emeritus fellow. After his doctorate thesis in 1955 and a short stay at Chicago and Northwestern Universities, in 1956 he met in Princeton Jean Gottmann who was then putting the first touches to his major work Megalopolis. Jean Gottmann was to play a decisive role in directing the young Breton geographer towards research work in applied geography. In France, applied geography suffered from severe backwardness until the publication of Géographie et action. Introduction à la géographie appliquée (1960). Forty years later, La Géographie appliquée: Du géographe universitaire au géographe professionnel (1999) showed the way covered on a national and worldwide scale. Michel Phlipponneau was chairman of the Commission on Applied Geography of the I.G.U from 1968 to 1980. He was himself an actor in regional planning in Brittany and abroad as an expert for the United Nations, and at a political level as a departmental and regional Counsellor and as Deputy-Mayor of Rennes and President of the Urban District.


Advanced braking devices can represent a promising application for ceramic matrix composites (CMC) with functional and structural properties. If the actual advanced braking materials could be at least partially replaced by CMCs, it might become the first consumer market for these materials. CMC containing three main phases, silicon carbide, graphite and carbon fibers were prepared. A systematic analysis of the processing-structure-properties relationship of the composite is carried out. In particular, silicon carbide provides the necessary hardness, whereas graphite is used for its lubricating properties, and carbon fibers are used as reinforcement. The samples, prepared using a reactive bonding technique, exhibited adequate mechanical properties, high resistance to thermal shocks and good stability after many thermal cycles. Morphological and structural investigations have been performed to optimize the content of each component. Preliminary tribological investigations are presented.


NiTi alloys with equiatomic composition of NiTi have the highest technological interest for its potencial application in differents areas such as biomedical, naval, aerospace, nuclear, automobilist , robotic,etc. In this work , it was used a 50Ni50Ti at % powder mixture, comercially pure, prepared by mechanical alloying in a Attritor with the following conditions: the milling speed and the ball charge were 1500 rpm and 10:1 respectively. The milling time was 2,4,8 and 16h, under an argon atmosphere at room temperature. After milling it was determined the particle size distribution, the phases by X-ray diffractions (XRD) and the powder morphology by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The milling promotes dissolution of Titanium in Nickel and continuous amorphization by increasing the milling time. After 16h milling the alloy was almost amorphous. The powders after milling were compacted and heat treated at high temperature and microstructural evolution was characterized. In the heat treated samples were detected different phases showing heterogeneity in the alloy. The detected phases were Ni3Ti, NiTi, Ni2Ti and Ni2Ti4O. Contamination by milling was detected in the powder after milling and in the heat treated samples.


SUMMARY. In 1910, H. B. Fantham described the life cycle of a coccidian parasite in birds. Fantham was a parasitologist at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom working for an enquiry into diseases affecting the red grouse. Despite the growing importance of the poultry industry and the realization that coccidiosis was an important disease of the fowl, little further work was carried out in the United Kingdom until coccidiosis research was initiated at the Veterinary Laboratory, Weybridge almost 30 yr later. Further progress depended upon research carried out at academic and agricultural institutions in the United States. E. E. Tyzzer at Harvard University provided the solid foundation upon which our present knowledge of coccidiosis, and the species of Eimeria involved in the disease, is based. Agricultural experiment stations (AESs) throughout the nation played an important role in communicating advances to the agricultural community. W. T. Johnson at Western Washington and, subsequently, Oregon AES made significant contributions to our understanding of the disease, as did C. A. Herrick and coworkers at Wisconsin AES, J. P. Delaplane and coworkers at Rhode Island AES, and P. P. Levine at Cornell University. Abbreviation: AES = agricultural experiment station


Quantum entanglement has applications in quantum cryptography and quantum computing as the main and speed-enhancing ingredient to quantum algorithms. A possible way to obtain spin-entangled electrons is by a Cooper pair splitter. In these devices electrons are extracted from a central superconducting contact into two parallel, spatially separated quantum dots. The first implementation of a Cooper pair splitter with InAs nanowires led to the detection of correlated electrical currents through the two quantum dots, evidencing that the Cooper pairs separate. The separation rate, i.e. efficiency was, however, low. Tunable quantum dots can help to boost the efficiency as high as it is needed for the detection of the entanglement. This work presents experiments on such InAs devices with a series of bottom gates providing the tunability. First, the formation of quantum dots in single crystalline InAs nanowires is investigated. Applying negative voltages to the individual bottom gates induces tunnel barriers in these InAs nanowires.In the so formed quantum dots, the electron g-factor is extracted from the splitting of Kondo resonances and is found to vary continuously in the range between |g∗|=5 and 15. The measurement of the g-factor anisotropy in these quantum dots reveals that the orientation of the g-tensor is random with respect to the orientation of the nanowire, i.e. the crystal structure. The main findings of this thesis are obtained from Cooper pair splitting devices. Transitions between positive conductance correlation in the quantum dots due to Cooper pair splitting and negative correlations due to quantum dot dynamics are induced by gate potential changes. Using a semi-classical rate equation model, the experimental findings is shown to be consistent with the manipulation of the weight of the different local and non-local quantum transport processes. Moreover, bias voltage dependence is measured and analysed, and it is found that a larger bias voltage can increase the splitting signal in accordance with theory. The preliminary results even indicate that Cooper pair splitting is possible at bias voltages larger than the superconducting gap. Thus, the present thesis shows that it is possible to in-situ optimize the efficiency of a Cooper pair splitter, thereby adding an important step to the construction of a source of entangled electrons.


The growing class of portable systems, such as personal computing and communication devices, has resulted in a new set of system design requirements, mainly characterized by dominant importance of power minimization and design reuse. The energy efficiency of systems-on-a-chip (SOC) could be much improved if one were to vary the supply voltage dynamically at run time. We developed the design methodology for the low-power core-based real-time SOC based on dynamically variable voltage hardware. The key challenge is to develop effective scheduling techniques that treat voltage as a variable to be determined, in addition to the conventional task scheduling and allocation. Our synthesis technique also addresses the selection of the processor core and the determination of the instruction and data cache size and configuration so as to fully exploit dynamically variable voltage hardware, which results in significantly lower power consumption for a set of target applications than existing techniques. The highlight of the proposed approach is the nonpreemptive scheduling heuristic, which results in solutions very close to optimal ones for many test cases. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated on a variety of modern industrial strength multimedia and communication applications.


There have been an increasing number of articles in the press related to various threats and attacks on computer systems and networks. The critical infrastructures upon which our communities, states, and nation rely are increasingly dependent on computer systems and networks and are thus also increasingly vulnerable to cyber attacks upon them. Communities understand their responsibility in terms of being prepared to prevent, detect, and respond to most natural and man-made disasters but few understand what is involved in defending against cyber attacks. The community cyber security maturity model provides a structure which communities and states can use to determine their level of preparedness and to create a plan to improve their security posture and enhance their chances of successfully preventing or detecting and responding to a cyber attack


Plasminogen activator (PA) activity in human polymorphonuclear leukocytes and embryonic lung cell cultures is reduced substantially following treatment with glucocorticoids such as dexamethasone. To determine whether tumor-derived cells responded similarly, we compared the effect of dexamethasone on the PA activity of a variety of tumor-derived and embryonic cell cultures. These cultures produced either exclusively M.W. 55,000 to 60,000 urokinase-like PA, exclusively M.W. 73,000 anti-urokinase immunoglobulin-resistant PA, or a mixture of both types of enzyme. Treatment of embryonic human lung, kidney, and uveal melanocyte cell cultures with 10-7 m dexamethasone strongly inhibited both extracellular and cell-associated PA activity. One lung adenocarcinoma-derived and two renal carcinoma-derived cell cultures also showed substantial inhibition of PA activity under these conditions. In contrast, treatment of six independently isolated, melanoma-derived cultures with 10-7 m dexamethasone produced no detectable inhibition of either extracellular or cell-associated PA activity. All six melanoma-derived cultures produced exclusively or principally the M.W. 73,000-type PA. [3H]Dexamethasone-binding assays indicated that the content and size of the cytoplasmic dexamethasone-binding protein were similar in both melanoma-derived and embryonic lung cultures. Our in vitro results suggest that, in vivo , physiological concentrations of glucocorticoids will inhibit the PA activity expressed by many embryonic and several tumor-derived cell types but not that expressed by the melanoma-derived cells.


The CRISPR/Cas9 system has revolutionized mammalian somatic cell genetics. Genome-wide functional screens using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated knockout or dCas9 fusion-mediated inhibition/activation (CRISPRi/a) are powerful techniques for discovering phenotype-associated gene function. We systematically assessed the DNA sequence features that contribute to single guide RNA (sgRNA) efficiency in CRISPR-based screens. Leveraging the information from multiple designs, we derived a new sequence model for predicting sgRNA efficiency in CRISPR/Cas9 knockout experiments. Our model confirmed known features and suggested new features including a preference for cytosine at the cleavage site. The model was experimentally validated for sgRNA-mediated mutation rate and protein knockout efficiency. Tested on independent data sets, the model achieved significant results in both positive and negative selection conditions and outperformed existing models. We also found that the sequence preference for CRISPRi/a is substantially different from that for CRISPR/Cas9 knockout and propose a new model for predicting sgRNA efficiency in CRISPRi/a experiments. These results facilitate the genome-wide design of improved sgRNA for both knockout and CRISPRi/a studies.


This paper deals with new approach of measurement of the concentration profiles, concerning the redistribution of substitution elements in close vicinity of welded joint of two different steels. These concentrations have been measured in three straight lines in a plane perpendicular to the weld interface. The concentration profiles have been evaluated from experimental data by modelling of diffusion based on 2nd Fick's law. Original computation program for nonlinear regression was evolved based on Levenberg - Marquardt`s algorithm for evaluation of diffusivities and other quantities. Three groups of measured data enable variations in methodology of their processing. If each group is processed individually then the possible differences in mutual position of concentration profiles offers the view on chemical heterogeneity of welded joint.


Inflammation has been implicated as an etiological factor in several human cancers. Growing evidence suggests that chronic inflammation may also play a role in the etiology of prostate cancer. Considering that genetic susceptibility is a major risk factor for this disease, we hypothesize that sequence variants in genes that regulate inflammation may modify individual susceptibility to prostate cancer. The lipopolysaccharide receptor Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is a central player in the signaling pathways of the innate immune response to infection by Gram-negative bacteria and is an important candidate inflammatory gene. We performed a systematic genetic analysis of TLR4 sequence variants by evaluating eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms that span the entire gene among 1383 newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients and 780 age- and residence-matched controls in Sweden. We found an association between a sequence variant (11381G/C) in the 3'-untranslated region of the TLR4 gene and prostate cancer risk. The frequency of the variant genotypes (CG or CC) was significantly higher in the patients (24.1%) than in the controls (19.7%; P = 0.02). The frequency of risk genotypes among patients diagnosed before the age of 65 years was even higher (26.3%). Compared with men who had the wild-type genotype of this single-nucleotide polymorphism (GG), those with GC or CC genotypes had a 26% increased risk for prostate cancer (odds ratio, 1.26; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-1.57) and 39% increased risk increased risk for early onset prostate cancer (before age 65 years; odds ratio, 1.39; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-1.91). The risk attributable to this variant for prostate cancer in Sweden was estimated to be 4.9%. Although the biological mechanism of the observed association remains to be elucidated, our finding supports a role for a bacteria-associated response pathway, possibly acting via inflammation, in the development of prostate cancer.


The classical problem of constructing a multidimensional pattern classifier in the Bayesian framework is considered. Preprocessing of the learning sequence by a quasi-inverse of a space-filling curve is proposed and properties of space-filling curves which are necessary to obtain Bayes risk consistency are indicated. The learning sequence transformed into the unit interval is used to estimate the coefficients in an orthogonal expansion of the Bayes decision rule. To transform a new observation into the unit interval requires O(d) elementary operations, where d is the dimension of the observation space. Strong Bayes risk consistency of the classifiers is proved when distributions of the random pair of the observation vector and its class are absolutely continuous with respect to the Lebesgue measure. Attainable convergence rate of the Bayes risk is discussed. Details of the classification algorithm based on the Haar series and its properties are presented. Distribution-free consistency of the classifier is established. The performance of such a classifier is tested both on simulated data and on the standard benchmarks providing misclassification errors comparable to, or even better than the k nearest neighbors (k-NN) method.


Abstact Javanese mystical ritual in Natour Garuda hotel is spiritual application for approaching upon God. The ritual held every Eve Tuesday Kliwon has been running since 20 May 1997 up to now. This research aims to give the understanding ethnographic analytic to word the Javanese mystical ritual existence which during this modern still done by part of Javanese community. Taking participant observation and in depth interview to the informant snowballingly held the data collection. The research result describes the Javanese mystical ritual in Natour Garuda  hotel is considered unique, because it is gatheredly done, in the relatively busy place, and it has been packed into the spiritual art collaboration. The ritual procession is set in accordance with structure of the leather puppet show consisting of seven phases. The seven phases inviting performance arts aspects towards the process manunggaling kawulo Gusti. Concurring with this, either the mystic or the hotel management will get the material value is the invisible essence spiritually. As seen from the aspect of function, the material value is more supporting the hotel vision, i.e, the direction into the traditional culture development, values, and Javanese mystical ritual meaning for the supporters. Keywords: Javanese mystical ritual, hotel Natour Garuda, cultural tourism


Bovine viral diarrhea virus (BVDV) is very important disease in domestic and wild ruminants and has a world wide distribution. Cattle persistently infected with BVDV (BVDV-PI) are the primary reservoir for BVDV infection in Korean native cattle herds. The prevalence of cattle persistently infected with BVDV (BVD-PI) was determined using 4,260 heads from 29 Korean native cattle farms at 8 districts from 2011 to 2012. The sera and ear nothches were collected for each sample. We surveyed BVD-PI cattle using antibody ELISA and antigen capture ELISA for detection of antibody and antigen respectively. Three thousand seventy-six cattle (72.2%) were positive for BVDV antibody and a total of 27 BVD-PI cattle were found in 12 farms. 11 cattle (40.7%) out of the total 27 BVDV-PI cattle were six months old or under. The positive rate of BVDV antibody (83.2%) from 12 farms with BVD-PI cattle was higher than the positive rate of BVDV antibody (63.6%) from 17 farms without BVD-PI cattle.


Existing studies of financing efficiency concentrate on capital structure and a single external environment or internal management characteristic. Few of the studies include the internal and external financing environments at the same time for hydrogen energy industry financing efficiency. This paper used the data envelopment analysis (DEA) model and the Malmquist index to measure the financing efficiency of 70 hydrogen energy listed enterprises in China from 2014 to 2020 from both static and dynamic perspectives. Then, a tobit model was constructed to explore the influence of external environment and internal factors on the financing efficiency. The contributions of this paper are studying the internal and external financing environments, and integrating financing cost efficiency and capital allocation efficiency into the financing efficiency of hydrogen energy enterprises. The results show that, firstly, the financing efficiency of China's hydrogen energy listed enterprises showed an upward trend during the years 2014–2020. Secondly, China's hydrogen energy enterprises mainly gather in the eastern coastal areas, and their financing efficiency is more than that in western areas. Thirdly, the regional economic development level, enterprise scale, financing structure, capital utilization efficiency and profitability have significant effects on the financing efficiency. These results can promote the achievement of "carbon neutrality" in China.


With the uptake of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, there is now a vast amount of new user generated content on a daily basis, much of it in the form of short, informal free-form text. Businesses, institutions, governments and law enforcement organisations are now actively seeking ways to monitor and more generally analyse public response to various events, products and services. Our primary aim in this project was the development of an approach for capturing a wide and comprehensive range of emotions from sparse, text based messages in social-media, such as Twitter, to help monitor emotional responses to events. Prior work has focused mostly on negative / positive sentiment classification tasks, and although numerous approaches employ highly elaborate and effective techniques with some success, the sentiment or emotion granularity is generally limiting and arguably not always most appropriate for real-world problems. In this paper we employ an ontology engineering approach to the problem of fine-grained emotion detection in sparse messages. Messages are also processed using a custom NLP pipeline, which is appropriate for the sparse and informal nature of text encountered on micro-blogs. Our approach detects a range of eight high-level emotions; anger, confusion, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, shame and surprise. We report f-measures (recall and precision) and compare our approach to two related approaches from recent literature. © 2013 IADIS.


Since the 1960's, there have been many initiatives for promoting theoretical understanding on design. However, in spite of definite progress, there are several puzzles and anomalies in the current theoretical landscape of design. We present an interpretation of the evolution of design theorizing that throws new light on these puzzles and anomalies. We contend that in the modern time, there have been two hidden inspirational sources for design theorizing, namely the method of analysis and rhetoric. As they concern different situations, their prescriptions in many ways differ. However, without explicit recourse to the sources, these mutually incompatible prescriptions, along with associated concepts and terms, have been mixed up in a confusing way. It is proposed that these two influences to design theory and practice have to be disentangled, to be able to act like two pillars supporting the phenomenon of designing. We hypothesize that actual design assignments require the mobilization of ideas and support from both pillars.


In this article,Tol andWanningen aim to quantify empirically how much the information ratio may improve for a 130/30 extension strategy versus a long-only strategy. The authors collected 42 estimates of transfer coefficients for U.S. large-cap benchmarked 130/30 products and their equivalent long-only products. According to the fundamental law of active management, an improvement in the transfer coefficient directly translates into an improvement in the information ratio, assuming a skillful manager. Their results show an average increase in the transfer coefficient of between 40% and 50%, depending on the long-only tracking error. This finding implies a 40%–50% increase in the information ratio. Furthermore, the authors reason that the increase in the transfer coefficient depends on the tracking error of the long-only strategy. Tol and Wanningen's empirical results show that to move from a long-only to a 130/30 strategy would result in an average increase in the transfer coefficient of 42% for a strategy with an ex ante tracking error of between 0% and 2%; 48% for a strategy with an ex ante tracking error of between 2% and 3%; and 29% for strategies with a tracking error higher than 3%. This shows that the sweet spot (i.e., the highest increase in transfer coefficient by moving from long-only to 130/30) occurs in the 2%–3% long-only tracking error range. The study reveals theoretically overestimated information ratio improvements for more than 40% of the product pairs.


Objective. To identify the risk factors for cystic periventricular leukomalacia (cPVL) and their implications for deciding between immediate delivery and conservative management of preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes (pPROM). Methods. The following risk factors were compared between cPVL infants and 6440 controls: chorioamnionitis, sex, gestational age (GA), birth weight, pPROM, and pPROM-delivery interval. Factor impact on cPVL risk and clinical decision-making was determined by multivariate logistic regression. Results. Overall cPVL prevalence (n = 32) was 0.99/1000 births. All cPVL infants but one were born <34 weeks of gestation and were <2500 g; 56% had histological chorioamnionitis versus 1.1% of controls (OR 35.9; 95%-CI 12.6–102.7). Because chorioamnionitis is a postnatal diagnosis, logistic regression was performed with prenatally available factors: pPROM-delivery interval >48 hours (OR 9.0; 95%-CI 4.1–20.0), male gender (OR 3.2; 95%-CI 1.4–7.3). GA was not a risk factor if birth weight was included. Risk decreased with increasing fetal weight despite a prolonged pPROM-delivery interval. Conclusion. pPROM-delivery interval is the single most important prenatally available risk factor for the development of cPVL. Immediate delivery favors babies with chorioamnionitis but disfavors those with non infectious pPROM. In the absence of clinical chorioamnionitis fetal weight gain may offset the inflammatory risk of cPVL caused by a prolonged pPROM-delivery interval.


The area of sloping cultivated lands were very large with stressed soil and water losses in the upper reaches of Yangtze River, which seriously threaten the local environment and development of social economy. Based on the agriculture of water and soil resources of sloping cultivated lands in the upper reaches of Yangtze River, five measurements of sloping cultivated lands were enhanced including: 1. Developing the water system engineering of the slopeland, reasonable and high efficiency use of the sloping cultivated lands. 2. Foundation of the agroforestry ecosystem establishment of the slopeland, especially terrace hedgerow. 3. Reasonable tillage such as the cutting-slope length and down-slope tillage. 4. Improved soil, cultivated fertilizer and selected better planting techniques. 5. Constructing the ecological ditches of soil and water conservation and the control of the non-point pollution.


In this talk, we present watermarking and identification techniques for FPGA IP cores. Unlike most existing watermarking techniques, the focus of our techniques lies on ease of verification, even if the protected cores are embedded into a product. Moreover, we have concentrated on higher abstraction levels for embedding the watermark, particularly at the logic level, where IP cores are distributed as netlist cores. With the presented watermarking methods, it is possible to watermark IP cores at the logic level and identify them with a high likelihood and in a reproducible way in a purchased product from a company that is suspected to have committed IP fraud. The investigated techniques establish the authorship by verification of either an FPGA bitfile or the power consumption of a given FPGA.


The following is a correction for an error that occurred in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, Vol. 6, No. 3. The error occurred in the article titled "Personality change disorder in children and adolescents following traumatic brain injury," pp. 279–289, by Max et al. On page 285, under the subheading "Injury Factors," beginning with the second sentence in the first paragraph, the statement should read: Visual inspection of the distribution of PC relative to lowest post-resuscitation GCS scores revealed that a cut-off of lowest post-resuscitation GCS score of 4 or less versus more than 4 yielded a sensitivity for a diagnosis of persistent PC of 9/14 (64.3%), specificity of 18/23 (78.3%), and a positive predictive value of 0.64 (9.14). A cut-off of duration of impaired consciousness of 100 hr or less versus more than 100 hr yielded a sensitivity for a diagnosis of persistent PC of 11/14 (78.6%), specificity of 20/23 (87.0%), and a positive predictive value (PPV) of 0.79 (11/14).


Prader–Willi syndrome (PWS) and Angelman syndrome (AS) are oppositely imprinted autism-spectrum disorders with known genetic bases, but complex epigenetic mechanisms underlie their pathogenesis. The PWS/AS locus on 15q11–q13 is regulated by an imprinting control region that is maternally methylated and silenced. The PWS imprinting control region is the promoter for a one megabase paternal transcript encoding the ubiquitous protein-coding Snrpn gene and multiple neuron-specific noncoding RNAs, including the PWS-related Snord116 repetitive locus of small nucleolar RNAs and host genes, and the antisense transcript to AS-causing ubiquitin ligase encoding Ube3a (Ube3a-ATS). Neuron-specific transcriptional progression through Ube3a-ATS correlates with paternal Ube3a silencing and chromatin decondensation. Interestingly, topoisomerase inhibitors, including topotecan, were recently identified in an unbiased drug screen for compounds that could reverse the silent paternal allele of Ube3a in neurons, but the mechanism of topotecan action on the PWS/AS locus is unknown. Here, we demonstrate that topotecan treatment stabilizes the formation of RNA:DNA hybrids (R loops) at G-skewed repeat elements within paternal Snord116, corresponding to increased chromatin decondensation and inhibition of Ube3a-ATS expression. Neural precursor cells from paternal Snord116 deletion mice exhibit increased Ube3a-ATS levels in differentiated neurons and show a reduced effect of topotecan compared with wild-type neurons. These results demonstrate that the AS candidate drug topotecan acts predominantly through stabilizing R loops and chromatin decondensation at the paternally expressed PWS Snord116 locus. Our study holds promise for targeted therapies to the Snord116 locus for both AS and PWS.


This article introduces a new physics-based method for rigid point set alignment called Fast Gravitational Approach (FGA). In FGA, the source and target point sets are interpreted as rigid particle swarms with masses interacting in a globally multiply-linked manner while moving in a simulated gravitational force field. The optimal alignment is obtained by explicit modeling of forces acting on the particles as well as their velocities and displacements with second-order ordinary differential equations of n-body motion. Additional alignment cues can be integrated into FGA through particle masses. We propose a smooth-particle mass function for point mass initialization, which improves robustness to noise and structural discontinuities. To avoid the quadratic complexity of all-to-all point interactions, we adapt a Barnes-Hut tree for accelerated force computation and achieve quasilinear complexity. We show that the new method class has characteristics not found in previous alignment methods such as efficient handling of partial overlaps, inhomogeneous sampling densities, and coping with large point clouds with reduced runtime compared to the state of the art. Experiments show that our method performs on par with or outperforms all compared competing deep-learning-based and general-purpose techniques (which do not take training data) in resolving transformations for LiDAR data and gains state-of-the-art accuracy and speed when coping with different data.


Peripheral giant cell reparative granuloma is a reactive and rare lesion of oral cavity with unknown etiology which is derived from periosteum and periodontal ligament and occurs frequently in young adults. Inflammation or trauma is underlying causative factor of reactive proliferation. In the present case report, a 35 year-old male with aggressive periodontitis and peripheral giant cell reparative granuloma is presented. The patient applied to our clinic with a complaining about a big nodule at his palate. The lesion was pedunculated and localized at his right maxilla between #16 and #17 which arose from distal aspect of #16, and the surface of the lesion was hyperkeratotic and the lesion was measured 22 x 30 mm at the largest diameter. He also had severe generalized aggressive periodontitis and hypertension. Amoxicillin clavulanate 625 mg, three times a day, metronidazole 500 mg three times a day and 0.2% chlorhexidine digluconate oral rinse, twice a day for a week, were prescribed to the patient. Then, scaling and root planing were performed along with systemic antibiotic treatment and he scheduled for surgery. The lesion was excised completely and #16 was extracted. After the healing period, periodontal surgery was planned for the treatment of aggressive periodontitis. Obtained tissue specimen was sent for histopathological examination. The diagnosis of peripheral giant cell reparative granuloma was confirmed with histopathological examination. No intra- and post-operative complications were seen.


Models of resource defense are usually based on the assumption that individuals fight over the possession of discrete food items. In many territorial species, however, conflicts occur over access to an area in space that contains resources rather than the resources themselves. We investigate under which conditions defense against depletion of local resources instead of single resource items can evolve from a nonaggressive ancestral population using a spatially explicit mechanistic model with resource dynamics and individual movement. We find that, in general, details of the model assumptions have a great influence on the costs and benefits of different behavior in the model. For patchy resources, defense evolves if fighting costs are very high or if individuals cannot unilaterally opt out of conflicts. If resources are distributed uniformly, defense appears only if individuals can make their behavior dependent on distance to their opponent. Introducing role asymmetries during conflicts in general increases the frequency of contests but reduces the probability that they escalate. If losers of a fight control how far they run, aggressiveness disappears or is greatly reduced for patchy resources but increases significantly for uniform resource distribution. Our results show how defense of space and territoriality could evolve even if resources are neither discrete nor clumped. The fact that seemingly minor differences in how individuals make decisions during encounters lead to huge differences in model outcome highlights the need for more mechanistic models of animal conflicts.


The brown marmorated stink bug. Halyomorpha halys, (BMSB) is an exotic pest causing damage to fruits and vegetables. They also transmit diseases. Integrated pest management strategies are lacking for this invasive. For the first time, information is presented on the virulence of several entomopathogenic fungi against BMSB. Three Beauveria bassiana and two Metarhizium anispoliae isolates were bioassayed against adult BMSB. One B. bassiana isolate was the active ingredient in BotaniGard® which produced 85 and 100% mortality in 9 and 12 days post treatment, respectively. Experimental isolates ERL 1170 and ERL 1540 were also efficacious. Metarhizium anispoliae isolates produced lower mortalities than the B. bassiana isolates. Data presented showed the potential for management of BMSB with entomopathogenic fungi.


At present, more than 70 million tons per year of technical lignins are obtained from cellulose pulping and lignocellulosic refineries (e.g., kraft, lignosulfonates, soda, and organosolv lignin). These lignins are commonly incinerated to produce steam and energy, and only a small part is used as an additive in various low volume and niche applications, such as dispersant, in concrete admixtures, as an adhesive and as a binder. Furthermore, the potential of technical lignins is considered to be beyond that of an inexpensive fuel or raw material to produce low added value products. The technical lignins consist of complex polyphenolic polymers that contain numerous chemical functional groups, such as phenolic hydroxyl, carboxylic, carbonyl, and methoxyl groups. The phenolic hydroxyl and methoxyl groups present in lignin reportedly possess various biological activities. The amount of data describing the biological activities of technical lignins has increased in the last 10 years. This review presents the most relevant research concerning the various biological activities (antioxidant, antimicrobial, antimutagenic, and others) of technical lignins. Additionally, the most promising and relevant applications are highlighted.


Generally, power plants have an environmental negative impact, due to emissions released from the power plant process. The Coal-fired power plant is the most dominant in the world. This is due to the relatively cheap price of coal and high calories produced. But on the other hand emissions generated by coal-fired power plants are quite large compared to other types of power plants, while all countries are working to reduce global warming, one of which is by reducing CO2 emissions. Utilization Renewable Energy is one of the solutions in efforts to reduce the use of fossil energy so that there is a decrease in CO2. Biomass is renewable energy which is currently widely used as fuel for electricity generation, Biomass fuel can be used 100% for a plant called PLTBm and can also be a coal-fired power plant with a certain percentage mix. Therefore, an analysis using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method is used to determine differences in emissions produced between coal-fired power plants compared to the Biomass co-firing system. The result is a PLTU with a Biomass co-firing system produces lower emissions than a 100% coal-fired power plant.


The development of food processing technology has increased the number and types of food products to meet human needs. The quality of a food product is not only seen from nutritional value and safety, but also from halalness aspect. For the purposes of quality control and halal authentication, the existence of a food testing method that is fast, accurate and easy to handling is needed. The application of electronic nose for various volatile compound detection purposes has been widely reported. This paper discusses electronic nose applications for quality control and halal testing purposes on food products. Furthermore, it also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of testing with an electronic nose. Based on the discussion, the electronic nose is a portable detection tool that is user friendly, fast and accurate for the identification and detection of food products based on the presence of the aroma of volatile compounds in the material. The advantages of this electronic nose have the potential to be used as an alternative rapid detection instrument in food testing, especially in authenticating pork and pig derivative.


Next Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation plays an important role in location-based services. State-of-the-art methods learn the POI-level sequential patterns in the user's check-in sequence but ignore the subsequence patterns that often represent the socio-economic activities or coherence of preference of the users. However, it is challenging to integrate the semantic subsequences due to the difficulty to predefine the granularity of the complex but meaningful subsequences. In this paper, we propose Adaptive Sequence Partitioner with Power-law Attention (ASPPA) to automatically identify each semantic subsequence of POIs and discover their sequential patterns. Our model adopts a state-based stacked recurrent neural network to hierarchically learn the latent structures of the user's check-in sequence. We also design a power-law attention mechanism to integrate the domain knowledge in spatial and temporal contexts. Extensive experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our model.


Abstract Spherical and chromatic aberrations limit the resolution of conventional electron microscopes. Both defects are unavoidable in the case of static rotationally symmetric electromagnetic fields (Scherzer theorem). To compensate for these aberrations, multipole correctors or electron mirrors are required. The correction of the resolution-limiting aberrations is demonstrated for the hexapole corrector, the quadrupole-octopole corrector, and the tetrode mirror. Electron mirrors require a magnetic beam separator, which must be free of second-order aberrations. The multipole correctors are highly symmetric telescopic systems compensating for the defects of the round lenses. The hexapole corrector has the simplest structure yet eliminates only third-order spherical aberration and coma, whereas the mirror and the quadrupole-octopole (QO) corrector are able to correct the chromatic aberration as well. The QO corrector eliminates chromatic aberration by means of crossed electric and magnetic quadrupoles and the third-order spherical aberration by octopoles. At present, aberration-corrected electron microscopes obtain a resolution limit of about 1 Å.


Oxidized cholesterols have emerged as important signaling molecules of immune function, but little is known about the role of these oxysterols during mycobacterial infections. We found that expression of the oxysterol-receptor GPR183 was reduced in blood from patients with tuberculosis (TB) and type 2 diabetes (T2D) compared to TB patients without T2D and was associated with TB disease severity on chest x-ray. GPR183 activation by 7α,25-hydroxycholesterol (7α,25-OHC) reduced growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and Mycobacterium bovis BCG in primary human monocytes, an effect abrogated by the GPR183 antagonist GSK682753. Growth inhibition was associated with reduced IFN-β and IL-10 expression and enhanced autophagy. Mice lacking GPR183 had significantly increased lung Mtb burden and dysregulated IFNs during early infection. Together, our data demonstrate that GPR183 is an important regulator of intracellular mycobacterial growth and interferons during mycobacterial infection. Graphical Abstract


Abstract Uranium is one of the main heat sources in the Earth, as about 25% of the total heat is produced by the radioactive decay of U. The location of U in the deep mantle is then essential for a better understanding of the geodynamics and thermal behavior of the Earth. For the first time, the crystal structure of natural simple dioxide UO2 uraninite has been studied by X-ray diffraction with synchrotron radiation (ESRF, Grenoble, France), in situ in a laser-heated diamond-anvil cell at pressures and temperatures relevant to the deep Earth's mantle. Fluorite-type UO2 displays a new sequence of phase transitions at high P and T, with a cubic modified fluorite Pa3 observed at 18 GPa, and an orthorhombic Pbca structure from 33 GPa up to 82 GPa. Using a second-order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state, we calculated room-pressure bulk modulus K0 = 166(7) GPa with pressure derivative K′0 = 4.0 for the Pa3̄ structure, and K0 = 225(8) GPa with K′0 = 4 for the Pbca structure. The expected Pnma cotunnite structure was not observed but is not excluded at pressures higher than 82 GPa. Since UO2 displays a Pbca structure stable up to 82 GPa and presents a density much higher than the average density of the surrounding mantle, UO2 could be a host of U in the deep lower mantle.


Uveitis is an inflammation of the uvea which may result in blindness. Uveitis may be caused by limited inflamation of the uveal tract, manifestation of systemic diseases (autoimmune, infection, cancer), expansion of inflammation in the cornea and sclera, trauma or idiopathic. Anterior uveitis is an inflammation of the iris and cilliary body with symptoms of pain, red eye, photophobia, and decrease in visual acuity. Intermediate uveitis is the inflammation of the pars plana and frequently involves anterior vitreous and posterior uveitis. Clinical manifestation of intermediate uveitis is usually mild without red eye and pain, however vision may decrease due to macular edema and cell aggregation in vitreous. Posterior uveitis is an inflammation involving choroid layer, which is common in developing countries due to high prevalence of infectious diseases (toxoplasmosis, tuberculosis, HIV, syphilis). Patient may complain of blurry vision but not accompanied by pain, red eye, and photophobia. Complications of posterior uveitis are cataract, glaucoma, macular edema, keratopathy, turbidity of vitreous, retinal detachment, and optic nerve atrophy. The prognosis of posterior uveitis is worse than anterior uveitis. Panuveitis is an inflammation of the uvea and surrounding structures (retina, vitreous). Diagnosis is made based on anamnesis, ophthalmic examination, laboratory examination, and imaging. Treatment of uveitis is intended to reduce inflammation, minimize structural destruction, prevent blindness, reduce pain and photophobia. Corticosteroid and immunosuppresant are the drugs of choice to manage the inflammation, where NSAID is used to reduce pain and cyclopegic administration to prevent posterior synechiae. Antimicrobial is given if uveitis is caused by infection. Underlying diseases of uveitis must be treated comprehensively to prevent further progression, complications and blindness.  Normal 0 false false false IN X-NONE X-NONE


Learning general functional dependencies is one of the main goals in machine learning. Recent progress in kernel-based methods has focused on designing flexible and powerful input representations. This paper addresses the complementary issue of problems involving complex outputs such as multiple dependent output variables and structured output spaces. We propose to generalize multiclass Support Vector Machine learning in a formulation that involves features extracted jointly from inputs and outputs. The resulting optimization problem is solved efficiently by a cutting plane algorithm that exploits the sparseness and structural decomposition of the problem. We demonstrate the versatility and effectiveness of our method on problems ranging from supervised grammar learning and named-entity recognition, to taxonomic text classification and sequence alignment.


This article based on the analysis of the major characteristics of today's international shipping center and developing pattern of the world's leading shipping center, along with factors such as location, hinterland economy development, points out the developing mode of Dalian international shipping center, brings out the direction of its construction, and then analyzes the elements that influence its formation and development at home and abroad. Revolving around the effective factors, the paper makes a further research on the status quo, diagnoses the ongoing major problems, and puts forward the priorities of their developments. Last but not the least, with reference to the success of international shipping centers at home and abroad, based on the priority development of influential elements, the paper presents corresponding countermeasures and suggestions aimed at ongoing problems, so as to promote the progress of Dalian international shipping center construction


High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is widely used as sweetener in processed foods and soft drinks in the United States, largely substituting sucrose (SUC). The orexigenic hormone ghrelin promotes obesity and insulin resistance; ghrelin responds differently to HFCS and SUC ingestion. Here we investigated the roles of ghrelin in HFCS- and SUC-induced adiposity and insulin resistance. To mimic soft drinks, 10-week-old male wild-type (WT) and ghrelin knockout (Ghrelin−/−) mice were subjected to ad lib. regular chow diet supplemented with either water (RD), 8% HFCS (HFCS), or 10% sucrose (SUC). We found that SUC-feeding induced more robust increases in body weight and body fat than HFCS-feeding. Comparing to SUC-fed mice, HFCS-fed mice showed lower body weight but higher circulating glucose and insulin levels. Interestingly, we also found that ghrelin deletion exacerbates HFCS-induced adiposity and inflammation in adipose tissues, as well as whole-body insulin resistance. Our findings suggest that HFCS and SUC have differential effects on lipid metabolism: while sucrose promotes obesogenesis, HFCS primarily enhances inflammation and insulin resistance, and ghrelin confers protective effects for these metabolic dysfunctions.


Introduction: The Roles of women in family businesses and the challenges and opportuni- ties they face in relations to these roles in the family businesses will be explored in this re- search. Although women are accepted very important players, yet the roles of women are not frequently well-defined. The thesis will explore roles of women who play an important role in family firms and challenges and opportunities they have within the Family Business- es in Pakistan and Bangladesh.Purpose: The purpose of this research is to explore what roles women in family business in Bangladesh and Pakistan have, and challenges and the opportunities they face in relation to these roles.Method: A qualitative approach was used to accomplish the purpose of this thesis. E-mail interview questionnaires from the participants were filled to gather information regarding the roles they play in the family business and the challenges and opportunities they have in the family business.Conclusion: Gender and the succession issue have a central role to play in the women par- ticipation in the family business. These factors along with invisibility issue are viewed as main challenges faced by women in the family businesses. Some of the results lead us to conclude that women situation in both countries is not so bad rather they have good posi- tions in the family businesses. So it was not in conformity with the literature written on women invisibility.


This paper summarizes the characteristics of the System of National Accounts as outlined in SNA93. It outlines the elements of infrastructure used to build the accounts and then describes the flow of accounts and supply and use framework used to construct integrated macro economic statistics. Three countries are then compared in the use of this standard; Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Each of the three countries uses the Supply and Use framework (variant of Input Output tables) as the key integrating tool for building the system of accounts and GDP benchmarks are determined using the "production" approach inherent in the Supply and Use framework. In Australia and United Kingdom, the supply and use framework is used to balance and benchmark the flow of accounts up to and including the measures of net lending/borrowing across the institutional sectors of the economy. In Canada the supply and use framework is used to determine the level of GDP but not all of the components of the flow of accounts are benchmarked to it, leaving statistical discrepancies between incomes and final expenditures and net lending/borrowing across sectors. This allows Canada to track the statistical system which provides independent estimates form establishment or kind of activity unit data (industry statistics) and institutional unit (savings and investment decision unit -- enterprise in the case of businesses) data used to build accounts by institutional sector. In particular, it allows coherence and coverage analysis of the data system.In all three countries, the financial accounts and balance sheets are integrated with the flow of accounts. Statistical discrepancies are shown in all countries between net lending/borrowing and net financial investment by institutional sector. None of the three countries publishes regular "other volume changes in assets" accounts although all recognize it as a part of the system which is more and more important to explaining wealth changes.Finally the paper ends with some summary comparisons of the three countries' systems of accounts and recognizes that while they all follow international standards to high degree, differences still exist which may or may not effect international comparability. International coordination is the key to making the standard meet this purpose. The United Kingdom system, as an example of the European system, best meets the standard for international comparison purposes.


Efficacy of water source treatment with temephos 200 EC had been tested with three methods after treatment of a natural reservoir in a temporary river bed. 1. Residual pesticide in water treatment was measured with a biological test based on the pesticide toxicity on mosquito larvae from a laboratory stock for which the standard LD50 for the considered pesticide is stable and accurately known. After pesticide treatment, samples of the treated source water were taken. 30 larvae were placed in 200 ml of the treated water either pure or diluted in untreated water (ten dilutions tested). The mortality rate of larvae after 24 hours was observed and marked on a probit scale. The LD50 was read directly from the curve. The corresponding dilution of the water sample that contained one standard LD50 was expressed in mg.l-1, using the value of the standard LD50. This method was found reproducible and sensitive (up to 0.001 p.p.m.), depending on the value of the standard LD50. 2. Lethality of cyclopides was measured by numeration of survivals in 10 liters samples and compared to the natural population of a close untreated water reservoir in the higher part of the same river. Results showed that half-life of temephos was shorter than 3 days and the concentration corresponding to the LD50 for cyclopides was reached a week after treatment. Two or three weeks after treatment the cyclopide population was significant and further pesticide application was needed. 3. Decrease of incidence of dracunculiasis was compiled by weekly examination of the population during the season of transmission. Authors observed an incidence of 37% during the 86/87 season.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Crystal and electronic structures of $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ thin films ($\ensuremath{\sim}10$ and \ensuremath{\sim}300 nm) grown on $\mathrm{SrTi}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ substrate have been investigated in terms of $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ film thickness dependence using the advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique. Electron diffraction patterns of both $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ thin films acquired along ${[011]}_{\mathrm{SrTi}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}}$ cross sections clearly exhibited the existence of extra Bragg's reflections which are absent in that from $\mathrm{SrTi}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$. Structure factor calculations unambiguously revealed that the electron diffraction pattern corresponds to the [211] net pattern of rhombohedral $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$. High-resolution TEM images combined with multislice simulation also demonstrated that the crystalline structure of both $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ films is rhombohedral. Electron energy loss spectroscopy results for both $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ thin films showed spectra with the characteristics of bulk $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$, i.e., rhombohedral. The lattice mismatch of 2.5% between $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ and $\mathrm{SrTi}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ found in a particular epitaxial relationship is considered to be the reason that $\mathrm{BiFe}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ can grow by maintaining its bulk crystalline, i.e., rhombohedral, structure.


In control and simulation of a modular robot system, which consists of standardized and interconnected joint and link units, manual derivation of its dynamic model needs tremendous effort because these models change all the time as the robot geometry is altered after module reconfiguration. This paper presents a method to automate the generation of the closed-form equation of motion of a modular robot with arbitrary degrees-of-freedom and geometry. The robot geometry we consider here is branching type without loops. A graph technique, termed kinematic graphs and realized through assembly incidence matrices (AIM) is introduced to represent the module assembly sequence and robot geometry. The formulation of the dynamic model is started with recursive Newton-Euler algorithm. The generalized velocity, acceleration, and forces are expressed in terms of linear operations on se(3), the Lie algebra of the Euclidean group SE(3). Based on the equivalence relationship between the recursive formulation and the closed-form Lagrangian formulation, the accessibility matrix of the kinematic graph of the robot is used to assist the construction of the closed-form equation of motion of a modular robot. This automatic model generation technique can be applied to the control of rapidly reconfigurable robotic workcells and other automation equipment built around modular components that require accurate dynamic models.