Perspectives and Practices of Irish Primary Teachers in Addressing the Needs of Exceptionally Able Pupils

In Ireland, exceptionally able pupils are included under the category of pupils with special educational needs in the 1998 Education Act. However, the scarcity of research in this country regarding these pupils means that little information is available on how, or even whether, their needs are being met in Irish schools. The aim of this study was to explore what is currently happening in primary schools with regard to exceptionally able pupils. This sequential mixed methods study was conducted in two phases. First, a specially designed questionnaire was sent to all primary schools in Cork city and county (n=209) in order to get a broad picture of how teachers in one geographical region conceptualise exceptional ability, and how they identify and make provision for exceptionally able pupils. This was followed by an in-depth exploration of the main issues with twenty-seven teachers who volunteered to participate in focus groups. The findings from the focus groups expanded, and at times contradicted, the findings from the questionnaires, as participants reported on what happens, in practice, in busy schools and classrooms every day. In general, teachers are positive towards pupils with exceptional ability and many would like to do more to challenge and support them. However, on a practical level, they face many barriers and only ad hoc provisions are in place. Teachers are unsure what constitutes exceptional ability, and how they would identify a pupil with such ability. In particular, the current emphasis on pupils with learning difficulties and the focus on raising the standard of low achievers pose considerable challenges. Further barriers include lack of time, funding and resources. Finally, teachers report a need for further training in this area, as they also feel that they lack the necessary skills, and indeed knowledge, to deal with exceptionally able pupils.


Mapping India's crafts was a mammoth task that took eleven years. During this period many new crafts were born, skills rejuvenated and some may have languished and faded away. The nature of crafts production in India is both ephemeral and resilient. India's crafts journey resembles the progress of a river from the mountains to the ocean, picking up material, depositing some, changes course, disappearing underground to surface somewhere else. Yet the tradition continues forever. The Dastkari Haat Samiti, a national association of craftspeople, undertook the enormous task of documenting whatever skills and crafts it could find and created artistic crafts maps of each state of India. Three new states were born during the process. A traditional art form of each state provides the backdrop for information meticulously gathered from first and second hand sources. The maps provide resource material to people working in different disciplines and a source of aesthetic joy to anyone who uses them as wall posters. The vibrant illustrations and academically rich content are recreated as an atlas of India's crafts, handmade textiles and traditional arts, covering India's cultural history. "The Crafts Atlas of India" is therefore a unique documentation and a rare visual treat.


Antique building materials immediately give timeless, inimitable style to a new or restored home. Reclaimed wooden floors, old terracotta tiles, traditional Burgundy slabs, old roof tiling, antique fireplaces...these all fit perfectly into contemporary or classic surroundings. This book presents dozens of inspiring examples, each one beautifully photographed, and also provides addresses of dealers in antique construction materials.


Peer review supports scientific conferences in selecting high-quality papers for publication. Referees are expected to evaluate submissions equitably according to objective criteria e.g., originality of the contribution, soundness of the theory, validity of the experiments. We argue that the submission date of papers is a subjective factor playing a role in the way they are evaluated. Indeed, program committee PC chairs and referees process submission lists that are usually sorted by paperIDs. This order conveys chronological information, as papers are numbered sequentially upon reception. We show that order effects lead to unconscious favoring of early-submitted papers to the detriment of later-submitted papers. Our point is supported by a study of 42 peer-reviewed conferences in Computer Science showing a decrease in the number of bids placed on submissions with higher paperIDs. It is advised to counterbalance order effects during the bidding phase of peer review by promoting the submissions with fewer bids to potential referees. This manipulation intends to better share bids out among submissions in order to attract qualified referees for all submissions. This would secure reviews from confident referees, who are keen on voicing sharp opinions and recommendations acceptance or rejection about submissions. This work contributes to the integrity of peer review, which is mandatory to maintain public trust in science.


In order to improve vibration energy harvesting, this paper designs an arc-shaped piezoelectric bistable vibration energy harvester (ABEH). The bistable configuration is achieved by using magnetic coupling, and the nonlinear magnetic force is calculated. Based on Lagrangian equation, piezoelectric theory, Kirchhoff's law, etc., a complete theoretical model of the presented ABEH is built. The influence of the nonlinear stiffness terms, the electromechanical coupling coefficient, the damping, the distance between magnets, and the load resistance on the dynamic response and the energy harvesting performance of the ABEH is numerically explored. More importantly, experiments are designed to verify the energy harvesting enhancement of the ABEH. Compared with the non-magnet energy harvester, the ABEH has much better energy harvesting performance.


RNA efflux from isolated nuclei can be studied either as a means of elucidating the general mechanism of nucleo-cytoplasmic RNA transport, or as part of an investigation of the processing and utilization of particular gene transcripts. The present paper describes an assessment of three methodological criticisms of RNA-efflux measurements that are made for the former reason: for such measurements, it is sufficient to show that the post-incubation supernatant RNA is similar overall to homologous cytoplasmic mRNA, rather than to nuclear RNA, that is nevertheless of intranuclear origin, and that alterations to the medium during experiments do not markedly perturb this general nuclear restriction. The results seem to justify the following conclusions. (1) Although degradation of the nuclear RNA occurs during incubation in vitro, this process does not account for the appearance of RNA in the postnuclear supernatant. The degradation can be largely prevented by the addition of serine-proteinase inhibitors without altering the RNA efflux rate. (2) Some adsorption of labelled cytoplasmic RNA to the nuclear surface occurs during both isolation and incubation of the nuclei, and some desorption occurs during incubation. However, these effects introduce errors of less than 10% into the measurements of efflux rates. (3) Exogenous acidic polymers, including polyribonucleotides, disrupt nuclei and increase the apparent RNA efflux rate by causing leakage of nuclear contents. However, this effect can largely be overcome by including the nuclear stabilizers spermidine, Ca2+ and Mn2+ in the medium. In terms of this assessment, it appears that RNA efflux from isolated nuclei in media containing nuclear stabilizers serves as a reasonable model for transport in vivo.


The maternal environment during pregnancy and lactation has important effects on the offspring's cardiovascular system. For example, changes in offspring blood pressure and vascular structure have been reported to occur in response to a maternal high salt intake during pregnancy and lactation. However, it remains unclear whether a maternal high salt intake may affect cardiac function in offspring. We previously demonstrated that high salt diet causes aggravation of hypertension in young spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Therefore, in the present study we investigated the influence of exposure to a maternal high salt diet during gestation and lactation on offspring cardiac function in SHR.
 SHR dams were fed either a high salt diet (4% NaCl) or a control (0.3% NaCl) diet. After weaning, the offspring were fed the control diet for 8 weeks. Systolic blood pressure and heart rate of the offspring were measured without heating using a photoplethysmographic tail-cuff system at 11 weeks of age. Indices of both left ventricular (LV) systolic and diastolic function (LV developed pressure [LVDP], and maximum rate of LV decline [-dP/dt]) and coronary flow were determined in 12 week old offspring using a Langendorff isolated perfused working heart system.
 Offspring of the high-salt diet-fed dams (High salt) had lower blood pressure, heart rate, and indices of both LV systolic and diastolic function, compared with offspring of the control diet-fed dams (control) (Fig.). There were no significant differences in coronary flow or heart weight between the two groups. These results suggest that a maternal high salt intake is a predisposing factor for disturbance of cardiac function in offspring.


Radio over fiber has become one of the most useful technologies for providing extended coverage of wireless communications services. ROF uses analog fiber optic links to distribute wireless radio signals from a central location to multiple remote locations where the added desired antennas are placed for stronger signal coverage. The adaptive predistortion technique of a LASER ROF chip is implemented using the digital IC design flow. The design flow can be separated into two main parts, namely the RTL design / synthesis and the generation of the actual chip.
 The first part in the design flow consists of generating the proper logical functionality of the IC using a hardware description language (HDL), namely VHDL or Verilog, and synthesizing the code to ensure proper operation. The second part in the design flow consists of floorplanning and physical layout of the ASIC.


Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) is a radiographic technique that has now been available in dentistry for about 20 years. The ability to display three-dimensional structures is of importance for many defects in the maxillofacial area. A disadvantage, however, is that the dose of a CBCT-study is higher than the dose of more conventional imaging techniques. This should be taken into account when prescribing a CBCT-examination. Because a CBCT-image usually displays a larger area than that of conventional radiography, there is the possibility that abnormalities may be shown that are outside the direct field of experience of the dentist. For all these reasons, the user of a CBCT-device needs to have additional knowledge.


The analysis of geomagnetic data from magnetic observatories demonstrated the existence of very rapid changes, or jerks, in the secular variation, especially the occurrence of the well known geomagnetic jerks of 1969 and 1978. A new geomagnetic jerk seems to have appeared around 1990 and is clearly visible at a selec- tion of European magnetic observatories as a rapid and sudden change in the secular variation pattern. The comparison between all day and quiet day means for two different observatories, respectively at high and middle latitude, suggests that this phenomenon, as stated by many authors for the other jerks, could be generated by an internal source.


This paper presents validation of the treatment of secondary stresses within Revision 4 of the R6 assessment procedure using finite element analyses of cracked cylinders under thermal loading. Cylinder with a fully-circumferential internal crack and a part-circumferential external surface crack are considered as model examples. The crack driving force values obtained from cracked-body finite element analyses are compared to values obtained using simplified uncracked-body routes within R6. The secondary stress is applied using a temperature gradient. Various temperature loadings and crack sizes have been examined. Also, work performed by the Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) in Japan, which has examined the same geometries, has been compared to the present finite element results in some instances. It is concluded that for the cylinder with a fully-circumferential internal crack the R6 routes are conservative when the thermal load is applied as an axially linear or radially non-linear temperature distribution. The R6 routes are generally conservative when the thermal load is applied as a radially linear temperature distribution, and is only very slightly unconservative in some of the cases. Good agreement is obtained between the present work and the CRIEPI data.


As the patients had hadno previous operations,and as starchis clearedrapidly from the peritoneumby enzymatic action from polymorphonuclearleucocytes, it would seem that the starch was introduced to the peritoneal cavity by migration following a pelvic examination. C. P. Paine and P. Smith,' who investigated the cases in Sheffield, therefore made a searchof the literature of talc granulomata. and found six casesin which no previouslaparotomy had heen performed. The six patientsconcerned,in many out-patient attendances,had undergone repeated vaginal examination. It would seemthat careful removal of glove powder from gloves is required before pelvic examinations as well as before surgical operations.


Auxins are crucial for plant growth and development. Auxin signalling primarily depends on four partially redundant F-box proteins of the TIR1/AFB2 Auxin Receptor (TAAR) clade to trigger the degradation of AUX/IAA transcriptional repressors. Auxin signalling is a balanced system which involves complex feedback regulations. miR393 regulation of TAAR genes is important for different developmental programs and for responses to environment. However, so far, the relevance of the two MIR393 genes for Arabidopsis leaf development and their significance for auxin signalling homeostasis have not been evaluated. First, our analyses of mir393a-1 and mir393b-1 mutants and of mir393ab double mutant show that the two genes have only partially redundant functions for leaf development. Expression analyses of typical auxin-induced reporter genes have shown that the loss of miR393 lead to several unanticipated changes in auxin signalling. The expression of DR5pro:GUS is decreased, the expression of primary AUX/IAA auxin-responsive genes is slightly increased and the degradation of the AXR3-NT:GUS reporter protein is delayed in mir393ab mutants. Additional analyses using synthetic auxin and auxin antagonists indicated that miR393 deficient mutants have higher levels of endogenous AUX/IAA proteins, which in turn create a competition for degradation. We propose that the counter-intuitive changes in the expression of AUX/IAA genes and in the accumulation of AUX/IAA proteins are explained by the intrinsic nature of AUX/IAA genes which are feedback regulated by the AUX/IAA proteins which they produce. Altogether our experiments provide an additional highlight of the complexity of auxin signaling homeostasis and show that miR393 is an important component of this homeostasis.


We develop a deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to deal with the blurry artifacts caused by the defocus of the camera using dual-pixel images. Specifically, we develop a double attention network which consists of attentional encoders, triple locals and global local modules to effectively extract useful information from each image in the dual-pixels and select the useful information from each image and synthesize the final output image. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed deblurring algorithm in terms of both qualitative and quantitative aspects by evaluating on the test set in the NTIRE 2021 Defocus Deblurring using Dual-pixel Images Challenge [1] [4]. The code, and trained models are available at https://github.com/tuvovan/ATTSF.


In the summer of 2009 macrozoobenthos of the danubean Lake Crivoe, located in the Odessa area was studied. 26 species of sponges, annelids, crustaceans, insects, gastropods and bivalves were revealed. In the up- per and middle part of the lake 24 were found, in the lower one 9 species were detected. Oligochetes, and larvae of dragonflies and chironomids are characterised by the greatest number (up to 300 spec/m²), the greatest bio- mass was found for gastropod molluscs (to 17 g/m²). The total maximal number of the macrozoobenthos reached 880 spec/m² and biomass - 40.2 g/m². Benthic faunas of two lakes, Crivoe and Lung, were compared. Введение


This paper presents a new vision Transformer, named Iwin Transformer, which is specifically designed for human-object interaction (HOI) detection, a detailed scene understanding task involving a sequential process of human/object detection and interaction recognition. Iwin Transformer is a hierarchical Transformer which progressively performs token representation learning and token agglomeration within irregular windows. The irregular windows, achieved by augmenting regular grid locations with learned offsets, 1) eliminate redundancy in token representation learning, which leads to efficient human/object detection, and 2) enable the agglomerated tokens to align with humans/objects with different shapes, which facilitates the acquisition of highly-abstracted visual semantics for interaction recognition. The effectiveness and efficiency of Iwin Transformer are verified on the two standard HOI detection benchmark datasets, HICO-DET and V-COCO. Results show our method outperforms existing Transformers-based methods by large margins (3.7 mAP gain on HICO-DET and 2.0 mAP gain on V-COCO) with fewer training epochs ($0.5 \times$).


ABSTRACT Clays included in the insoluble residue from 35 limestones (biomicrosparrudites) collected from the Kope and Fairview Formations in Hamilton County, Ohio were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to determine possible variations which might reflect changes in source during deposition of these lithic units. Illite and chlorite-vermiculite are the only clay groups identified. Illite comprises from 75 to 99 percent of the total clay fraction and averages 95 to 93 percent with the Kope and Fairview limestones respectively. No significant change in the clay percentages within insoluble residues occur across the Kope-Fairview contact, nor is there any obvious correlation between the clay percentages and mechanical energy fluctuations which occur within these two formations. These resul s suggest no significant variation concerning the source(s) of these clays during Kope and Fairview sedimentation.


The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods ('CISG') is an international sales law treaty concluded in 1980 and drafted with traditional (physical) goods trade in mind. While a significant body of scholarship has addressed its capacity to govern electronic software transactions, only limited commentary has explored the CISG's digital application beyond software per se. 'To Boldly Go, Part I', this article's counterpart, developed a specific legal framework for assessing the CISG's capacity to regulate international trade in non-software data. This article now applies that framework, confirming the CISG is capable of governing non-software data trade, and uses that framework to resolve the currently unsettled question of whether cryptocurrency trade falls within the CISG's scope. Since non-software data trade is becoming increasingly economically important, this article's conclusions stand to benefit data traders as well as the practitioners advising them.


This study had the main purpose of designing and implementing new solutions for ICT accessibility to persons with visual impairment at the Open University of Tanzania (OUT). A sample of 50 respondents, 36 sighted and 14 visually impaired persons participated in the study. Of the 36 sighted persons, 8 were system administrators, 8 ICT instructors, 10 Management officials and 10 were ICT students at OUT. All 14 Persons with Visual Impairement (PwVI) are either students or staff. The study was descriptive in nature, employing questionnaire, interview, observation and document review as data collection tools. The findings of the study indicate that, for visually impaired problems to accessibility were related to unavailability of ICT training opportunity and inaccessibility of online content. To measure the accessibility of the online content, Achecker tool was used. It was found that most of the ICT related solutions for ICT accessibility problems are provided by an international standard organization called World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). However, none of the System administrator at OUT had the skills to incorporate W3C in developing accessible online content, resulting to visually impaired persons having inaccessible developed support systems. In this study, it was also possible to design and implement two general solutions that can be used to solve many accessibility solutions. This study has also provided frameworks at the institutional level as well as at the technical level on how to improve ICT accessibility for persons with visually impaired.


We extend a result of Herstein concerning a derivation d on a prime ring R satisfying [d(x),d(y)]=0 for all x,y∈R, to the case of semiprime rings. An extension of this result is proved for a two-sided ideal but is shown to be not true for a one-sided ideal. Some of our recent results dealing with U*- and U**- derivations on a prime ring are extended to semiprime rings. Finally, we obtain a result on semiprime rings for which d(xy)=d(yx) for all x,y in some ideal U.


Mechanisms by which Plasmodium sporozoites survive and maintain their infectivity within the salivary glands of mosquitoes are unknown. In this study we establish a relationship between the number of sporozoites present in the salivary glands of individual mosquitoes (sporozoite load) and sporozoite infectiousness (or "quality") as measured by infections in BALB/c or ICR mice. When Plasmodium yoelii-infected Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes were each allowed to feed on a single mouse, we noted that sporozoites from mosquitoes with higher sporozoite loads were more infectious in 13 of 30 (43%) mice. In a second experiment, we inoculated mice with known numbers of sporozoites from individual mosquitoes. Eleven of 18 (61%) and 16 of 18 (89%) mice that received 25 and 100 sporozoites, respectively, became infected. For inoculations using 100 sporozoites, again we noted that sporozoites from mosquitoes with higher sporozoite loads were more infectious to mice. In a third and final experiment, the overall infectiousness of sporozoites from individual mosquitoes was evaluated first by allowing individual mosquitoes to feed on individual mice and then by intravenous inoculations of 100 sporozoites in a second mouse. There was a significant difference in host infections as a function of sporozoite loads in 14 of 19 (74%) mice. Analysis of the feeding times for infected versus noninfected mosquitoes did not show a significant difference between the 2 groups. The mean total feeding times for 50 infected and 45 noninfected An. stephensi mosquitoes were 306 (standard deviation [SD] = +/-230) and 441 (SD = +/-273) sec, respectively. Further, among infected An. stephensi mosquitoes there was no difference in probing times between cohorts that transmitted infectious sporozoites to mice and cohorts that failed to transmit infectious sporozoites. Our findings that sporozoite load influences sporozoite infectiousness or quality suggest that this may be an important factor in malaria parasite transmission.


A mixed population of mutagenic oligonucleotide primers was used to generate a set of point mutations in a short region of a retroviral gene by PCR amplification. The mixed population of mutagenic primers was generated by incorporating a mixture of A, G, C and T at specific sites during oligonucleotide synthesis. With the proportions of mutagenic nucleotides used for our experiments, 47 percent of the 213 clones analyzed had one or more point mutation in the target DNA sequence. In addition, unpredicted mutations were observed that contributed to the mutagenic complexity of the population. We have found this approach to be an efficient means for extensive mutagenesis of a defined target DNA sequence.


Resistance to infection by pathogenic organisms is critical for survival of livestock under commercial farming conditions. Understanding the complex processes involved in immunity to infection is essential to allow future selection of animals for disease resistance to become an attainable goal in livestock production. The overall aim of this study was to assess various aspects of immune function in a genetically defined population of male and female Holstein Friesian cross Charolais cattle from six months of age. One aspect of the study assessed the in vitro proliferation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) induced by Staphylococcus aureus or Phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) in over 300 second generation animals consisting of F2, Holstein-Friesian backcross and Charolais backcross individuals. Variation in S. aureus-induced, PHA-induced and control PBMC proliferation was found among individuals at each of the time points assessed. Statistical analyses by Residual Maximum Likelihood (REML) identified a significant effect of sex on all of the parameters assessed and a significant effect of control PBMC proliferation on S. aureus-induced and PHA-induced PBMC proliferation. Overall, males had higher levels of both specific and non-specific immunity measured by S. aureus-induced, PHA-induced and control in vitro PBMC proliferation. Following REML analysis, the control in vitro PBMC proliferation was found to have a regression coefficient greater than zero and less than one, which indicated that in this study, calculation of immunity using stimulation indices (SI) or delta counts per minute (Delta c.p.m.) would have been inaccurate and would have resulted in misleading interpretation of the data. On several occasions, sample age and year of birth were also identified as significant factors. The sample age and year of birth were found to have different effects on specific and non-specific immunity. Specific immune function, measured by S. aureus-induced PBMC proliferation, was shown to increase with sample age of the individual, whereas, non-specific immune function, measured by PHA-induced PBMC proliferation, was shown to decrease with sample age. Specific immune function, measured by S. aureus-induced PBMC proliferation, was shown to decrease in the animals born in the 1998 to 2000 cohorts, whereas, non-specific immune function, measured by PHA-induced PBMC proliferation was shown to increase in the animals born in the 1998 to 2000 cohorts. Following REML analyses, the cross and sire of the animal were found to be significant at several of the time points. Variation in immune function was identified among crosses with the Holstein-Friesian backcross animals having greater levels of S. aureus-induced PBMC proliferation than the Charolais backcross animals. In contrast, the Charolais backcross animals were identified as having greater levels of PHA induced PBMC proliferation than the Holstein-Friesian backcross animals. In addition, a small subset of animals for which additional MHC RFLP patterns were available, were ranked for S. aureus-induced and PHA-induced in vitro PBMC proliferation. This study identified that animals with high specific immune responses, measured by S. aureus- induced PBMC proliferation, may have low non-specific immune responses, measured by PHA-induced PBMC proliferation, and also, conversely, that animals with high non-specific immune responses may have low specific immune responses. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.).


The possibility of demonstrating the venous system of the entire pancreas by retrograde portal contrast injection with simultaneous balloon occlusion of the portal vein, coeliac axis and superior mesenteric artery was investigated in 12 dogs. In seven cases good filling of the larger pancreatic veins was obtained. Portal and arterial pressure relationships altered considerably during various experimental conditions. A rise in serum transaminases was observed only once when there was thrombosis of the portal vein and branches of the hepatic veins. Apart from this, there was no rise in trans-aminases or alphaamylase. Histo-logically there were only minor changes in the liver after total occlusion of 40 minutes, the occlusion having been performed over petiods of six minutes with two to five minutes of flow alternating. The application of this method to man is discussed.


The influx of malls into townships and rural villages post-1994 is well-documented, and researchers such as McGaffen (2010) have attributed this influx to the rising buying power of the Black middle class and other poverty intervention programs created by the government. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of establishing malls in rural Limpopo on spazas and general dealers. Furthermore, the study also evaluated the responses of both spazas and general dealers to competition from the malls. In this regard, 50 outlets composed of 25 spazas and 25 general dealers were interviewed face-to-face on their premises. These in-depth interviews were conducted using the semi-interview guidelines to gain the views of the store owners on the impact of malls in areas such profitability, employment, and the products sold in their outlets. The research further evaluated strategies employed by these outlets in order to cope with the competition from the malls. The main findings were that malls do have an impact on profitability, employment, and the products of both the spazas and general dealers. Similarly, the impact on customers was a mixed bag in that some establishments experienced a decline in the number of customers using their outlets, while at least one spaza shop saw an increase in the number of customers. Finally, the spazas and general dealers employed a number of strategies, such credit facilities, longer operating hours, and focusing on products generally not sold in the mall, in order to counter the impact of competition from the malls. Stellenbosch University http://scholar.sun.ac.za


Even if we ignore the consequences of Russia's intervention into Ukraine's internal affairs, Ukraine confronts some seemingly insurmountable problems in transitioning to a stable and prosperous state. Having inherited a top down and largely corrupt political structure, there are those who see decentralization in some form as a partial solution. Here, though, we argue that decentralization, even if crafted on the European Union template of subsidiarity, can introduce problems of collective action that would further undermine the country's viability. To avoid exacerbating the problems of collective action occasioned by Ukraine's fractured political economic system, decentralization must proceed with an understanding of how those problems are treated in successful federal states


In this research, we investigate the nonlinear vibration of functionally graded carbon nanotubes (FG-CNTs) for simply supported sandwich cylindrical panels. The sandwich consisting of three layers formed of (FG-CNTs) and isotropic material as (CNT, ALMINUME, CNT).  Mechanical properties of the sandwich media are acquired according to a refined rule of blend approach. The governing equations were derived using a first-order deformation theory (FOSDT). Four kinds of carbon nanotubes of sandwich cylindrical panels were analyzed. The volume fraction of CNTs is varied. The properties of nonlinear responses and free vibration are studied. The numerical approach employs the fourth-order Runge-Kutta and Galerkine procedure. Which conducted for the dynamic analysis of the panels to present the natural frequencies and non-linear dynamic response expression. The results show that; the natural frequencies and the nonlinear vibration amplitude decrease with the volume fraction and thickness ratio increase. The nonlinear vibration amplitude response increases when increasing the excitation force. The initial imperfection and the elastic foundation have a minor impact on the nonlinear vibration response of the panel. The Pasternak Foundation has a larger impact than the Winkler foundation. The structure formed of FG-CNT present an excellent choice for high-performance of engineering applications.


Makeham's formula is an actuarial formula expressing the present value of a payment stream in terms of its repayments instead of the payments themselves. The formula is largely neglected in the finance literature, but -- as this paper shows -- it has a number of useful applications in fixed income analysis. We use Makeham's formula to decompose the return on a bond investment into interest payments, realized capital gains and accrued capital gains for a variety of accounting rules for measuring accruals in order to study the theoretical properties of these accounting rules, their taxation consequences and their implications for the relation between the yield before tax and the yield after tax. We also show how Makeham's formula produces short-cut expressions for the duration and convexity of a bond and facilitates the analytical calculation of the yield in certain cases.


Abstract The stochastic volatility (SV) model and its variants are widely used in the financial sector, while recurrent neural network (RNN) models are successfully used in many large-scale industrial applications of deep learning. We combine these two methods in a nontrivial way and propose a model, which we call the statistical recurrent stochastic volatility (SR-SV) model, to capture the dynamics of stochastic volatility. The proposed model is able to capture complex volatility effects, for example, nonlinearity and long-memory auto-dependence, overlooked by the conventional SV models, is statistically interpretable and has an impressive out-of-sample forecast performance. These properties are carefully discussed and illustrated through extensive simulation studies and applications to five international stock index datasets: the German stock index DAX30, the Hong Kong stock index HSI50, the France market index CAC40, the U.S. stock market index SP500 and the Canada market index TSX250. An user-friendly software package together with the examples reported in the article are available at https://github.com/vbayeslab.


As the dissipation mechanisms considered for the heating of the solar corona would be sufficiently efficient only in the presence of small scales, turbulence is thought to be a key player in the coronal heating processes: it allows indeed to transfer energy from the large scales to these small scales. While Direct numerical simulations which have been performed to investigate the properties of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in the corona have provided interesting results, they are limited to small Reynolds numbers. We present here a model of coronal loop turbulence involving shell-models and Alfv́ en waves propagation, allowing the much faster computation of spectra and turbulence statistics at higher Reynolds numbers. We also present first results of the forward-modelling of spectroscopic observables in the UV.


NONUNIQUE EQUILIBRIA OF PROJECTED DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS AND THEIR APPLICATIONS Fatima Etbaigha Advisor: University of Guelph, 2018 Dr. Monica Cojocaru Projected dynamical systems were formulated in the 1990s by Dupuis and Nagurney. In contrast to classical dynamical systems, projected dynamical systems have discontinuous right hand sides that are associated with a projection operator. By the projection mechanism, the whole Hilbert space H is projected onto a non-empty, closed convex set K ⊂ H. Critical points of a projected dynamical system coincide with the solutions of a corresponding variational inequality problem; therefore, the applications of projected dynamical systems have been found in various fields such as economics, operations research and engineering. In this thesis, we study applications of equilibria of projected dynamical systems for market equilibrium problems, games and compartmental population models. First, the well-known market disequilibrium model with excess supply and demand is investigated to determine if it exhibits changes in the structure and the number of equilibrium states for specific choices of parameter values. We study the bifurcation problem (i.e., a qualitative change in equilibrium states) as a parameterized variational inequality problem. We conduct our analysis by modeling the markets via a projected dynamical system. Second, we present a combination of theoretical and computational results meant to give insights into the question of the existence of nonunique Nash equilibria for N-player nonlinear games. Our inquiries make use of the theory of variational inequalities and projected systems to classify cases where multiplayer Nash games with parameterized payoffs exhibit changes in the number of Nash equilibria, depending on given parameter values. Finally, we use the compartmental population model, namely, the deterministic Susceptible-Exposed-Infectious-Recovered model, to analyze the dynamics of influenza infection of a farrow-to-finish swine farm, and we explore the reinfection at the farm level. We further examine the effectiveness of two control strategies: vaccination and reduction of indirect contact. In this case, we show that the model is a projected dynamical system but the projection does not add any relevant applied meaning to the results. Therefore, we show that the problem can be studied using classical dynamical systems.


The Arctic region is experiencing a change from thick multiyear to much younger and thinner sea ice. In many places, increasing precipitation is leading to higher snow loads on young sea ice. Hence seawater can infiltrate the snow layer through pathways in the ice from below or from the side. Consequently parts of the snow layer may form a slushy layer that can freeze and form so called "snow ice". Involved processes have substantial impacts on sea ice and snow in terms of salinity and temperature. The spatial and temporal evolution of these is still only poorly understood. In this context my study concentrates on the establishment of unique measurement methods to investigate thermodynamics, temperature evolution and salt rejection during snow-ice formation. For the investigation of saltwater rise in snow and subsequent freezing I adapt existing methods from sea-ice investigations to the application in snow. I developed two new cost-efficient experimental setups in the cold laboratory environment at the University Centre in Svalbard to first, investigate saltwater rise in snow and second, realistically represent floating ice and vertical flooding. The salinity harp installed in snow and sea ice provides a non-destructive method to measure the impedance and temperature at high temporal and spatial resolution. Within the scope of 14 experiments at different parameter setups I find salinity of the flooding water to be the predominant driver of water rise and freezing. Results suggest a transition with time and height from capillary rise to freezing and brine drainage in the initial 24 h after flooding if initial temperatures between flooding water and pre-existing snow differ. Furthermore, first results of vertical flooding of floating ice highlight the capability of the new experimental setup. Characteristics indicate that ocean water displaces brine in sea ice which is pushed to the ice-snow interface and wets the snow. The presented methods provide a promising foundation for further investigations of vertical rise of water through sea ice and subsequent snow-ice formation.


Sunny and Cool Changes in solar output cause changes in the amount of radiation that Earth receives from the Sun, which in turn can cause climate variations. The effects of solar variations are not uniform over the globe—owing to the complexity of the climate system, larger solar fluxes may produce warming in one area but cooling in another. Marchitto et al. (p. 1378) present a record of Holocene sea surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean that shows cooling as solar output increased and warming as the Sun dimmed. These temperature changes resulted from dynamical control of El Niño and La Niña episodes by solar radiative forcing of Earth's climate. Enhanced solar activity caused the tropical Pacific to cool into a La Niña–like state during the mid-Holocene. We present a high-resolution magnesium/calcium proxy record of Holocene sea surface temperature (SST) from off the west coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, a region where interannual SST variability is dominated today by the influence of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Temperatures were lowest during the early to middle Holocene, consistent with documented eastern equatorial Pacific cooling and numerical model simulations of orbital forcing into a La Niña–like state at that time. The early Holocene SSTs were also characterized by millennial-scale fluctuations that correlate with cosmogenic nuclide proxies of solar variability, with inferred solar minima corresponding to El Niño–like (warm) conditions, in apparent agreement with the theoretical "ocean dynamical thermostat" response of ENSO to exogenous radiative forcing.


We develop an unsupervised learning framework for extracting popular product attributes from product description pages originated from different E-commerce Web sites. Unlike existing information extraction methods that do not consider the popularity of product attributes, our proposed framework is able to not only detect popular product features from a collection of customer reviews but also map these popular features to the related product attributes. One novelty of our framework is that it can bridge the vocabulary gap between the text in product description pages and the text in customer reviews. Technically, we develop a discriminative graphical model based on hidden Conditional Random Fields. As an unsupervised model, our framework can be easily applied to a variety of new domains and Web sites without the need of labeling training samples. Extensive experiments have been conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our framework.


Dramatic world change has stimulated interest in research questions about the dynamics of politics. We have seen increases in the number of time series data sets and the length of typical time series. But three shortcomings are prevalent in published time series analysis. First, analysts often estimate models without testing restrictions implied by their specification. Second, researchers link the theoretical concept of equilibrium with cointegration and error correction models. Third, analysts often do a poor job of interpreting results. The consequences include weak connections between theory and tests, biased estimates, and incorrect inferences. We outline techniques for estimating linear dynamic regressions with stationary data and weakly exogenous regressors. We recommend analysts (1) start with general dynamic models and test restrictions before adopting a particular specification and (2) use the wide array of information available from dynamic specifications. We illustrate this strategy with data on Congressional approval and tax rates across OECD countries.


Corporate Real Estate (CRE) is a significant asset, which has been shown to add value to businesses if it is efficiently and effectively managed. Globalisation of capital markets, advancements in technology and the current economic condition have again increased the awareness of the importance of CRE's contribution. In order to be successful businesses need CRE to create and maintain their competitive edge in the marketplace. Advancement in terms of Corporate Real Estate Asset Management (CREAM) and the positive attitude shift of executives towards corporate real estate (CRE) have been made possible through research into the contribution CRE makes to a business's bottom line. The objective of this study is to describe the financial reporting practices of companies (excluding investment companies) listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange (NZSE) in order to reveal the current attitudes of management towards CRE. The results showed that information chaos exists behind the façade of the Balance Sheet, revealing that management have a surface level attitude and lack a real focus towards CRE assets. In New Zealand and overseas there is minimal literature that this study could build upon. The methodology involved an exploratory study of the 2008 annual reports; the results formed a snap shot of the current reporting practices of CRE and revealed the current attitudes of management in entities towards CRE.


One of the challenges associated with the implementation of inclusive education in South Africa is the effective training of teachers to meet diverse learning needs in their classrooms. This article reflects on the pilot years of a postgraduate degree course in inclusive education developed at a South African university, using Cochran-Smith and Lytle's (1999) concept of "inquiry-as-stance". Replacing previous courses which focused on equipping students to provide individual support in clinical settings, the course emphasises inclusive teaching strategies appropriate for whole-class teaching. The course is designed to avoid both individual deficit constructions of learner difference and a rigid theory/practice dichotomy. To ensure context relevance and practical implementation of the pedagogies taught, lecturers visited students in their classrooms and provided support and feedback. Students also kept journals, supported one another by sharing experiences, and were assessed on a critical incident report. Course evaluations attest to student satisfaction with the course content and delivery. The difficulties that both students and lecturers encountered while implementing inclusive pedagogies can be explained as challenges associated with change. The article concludes that teachers need to develop a collaborative and classroom-based knowledge-of-inclusive practice by implementing, reflecting on and theorising inclusive pedagogies.


Railways play a significant role in daily life, offering speed, safety and massive capacity for delivering people from one place to another. However, developing countries such as Indonesia are currently encountering problems related to Operation and Maintenance (OM) contracts. Railway operators are mostly experiencing a negative rate of return when operations depend only on farebox revenue. Thus, an alternative approach that includes government involvement should be instigated to improve project performance. This research aims to evaluate the contract agreement between the state, in the form of the Ministry of Transportation, and business entities in the operation and maintenance phase. The Makassar–Parepare railway section on Sulawesi Island is used as a case study. The study uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches that follow three stages: assessing the initial design; generating an alternative OM scheme; and propose a suitable OM scheme. The results indicate five components that should be considered when developing an OM contract, namely the tariff, risk, feasibility, subsidy and period of the contract. The study recommends a five-year contract for operation and maintenance, and the government should assign a business entity to manage available assets in the project.


This guide is intended for Professor Craig's Fall 2016 48 Laws of Power students. Those wishing to borrow content from this guide, please contact Christina Connor (firstname.lastname@example.com).


The transformation from metastable polymorphs to stable alpha-Al2O3 in the scale formed on a CoNiCrAlY alloy is accelerated under lower oxygen partial pressure (PO2), where both Al and Cr in the alloy are simultaneously oxidized, resulting in the formation of a dense and monolithic alpha-Al2O3 scale. Under higher PO2, where all components of the alloy are oxidized, the transformation is retarded and (Co,Ni)(Al,Cr)2O4 is also produced. The oxygen permeability in polycrystalline alpha-Al2O3 wafers exposed to steep oxygen potential gradients is evaluated at high temperatures to investigate the complicated mass-transfer phenomena through the scale formed on the alloy. The diffusion of Al and O species, which are responsible for the oxygen permeation along the grain boundaries of Al2O3, is dependent on the formation of an oxygen potential gradients. For Lu-doped Al2O3 polycrystals, it was found that Lu depressed the mobility of oxygen, but did not directly influence the migration of Al.


In conversation with Sarah Nuttall's earlier essay 'Pluvial Time/Wet Form' and drawing on Isabel Hofmeyr's concept of hydrocolonialism and the works of, among others, Julia Kristeva and Robert Macfarlane, this essay juxtaposes readings of J G Ballard's 1962 novel The Drowned World and Pitchaya Sudbanthad's 2019 novel Bangkok Wakes to Rain to offer a meditative analysis of sea, rivers, and rain as complex temporal and narrative forms. Moving from Ballard's flooded science-fictional London, to Sudbanthad's flooding Bangkok, the essay considers 'wet form' as it reflects on ecological disorder, and considers the ways in which water has been vividly and imaginatively rendered in fiction, inhabiting our sense of memory and time, and generating forms of feeling, knowing, and inhabiting that are colonising, decolonising, and full of fears and fantasies and the growing realities of wet submergence.


Abstract:This essay introduces the concept of "autocratic genderwashing" to shed light on why authoritarian states adopt gender-equality reforms. Autocratic genderwashing occurs when autocrats take credit for advances in gender equality in order to turn attention away from persistent nondemocratic practices, such as violations of electoral integrity and human rights. In doing so, they exploit the often simplistic association between gender equality and democracy to seek legitimacy and achieve regime stability. Gender equality is used to devise legitimation strategies tailored to specific groups. Awareness of this phenomenon might make scholars and democracy activists less likely to accept inclusion as a substitute for competition in nondemocratic states.


OP-1 increases bone ingrowth distance of new bone into allografts (Tägil et al. 2000), but the bone density after incorporation may be reduced by an increase in resorption (Höstner et al. 2000). Bisphosphonates inactivate osteoclasts and can be used to increase allograft bone density after incorporation (Aspenberg and Åstrand 2002). A combination of locally-applied bisphosphonate and OP-1 in the graft could therefore be expected to increase both new bone ingrowth and density. We tested this by using a rat bone chamber model. OP-1 alone increased the ingrowth distance of bone. Clodronate increased final bone density greatly, but reduced the ingrowth distance of new bone into grafts that were extremely impacted. This reduction was improved by adding OP-1. Regardless of graft density, combinations of OP-1 and clodronate included a high final bone density, but the ingrowth distances were shorter than with OP-1 alone. These data indicate that new bone and tissue ingrowth into a compacted graft depends on resorption and that resorption is a prerequisite for the stimulating effect of OP-1 in this experimental set-up. Although the problems associated with the use of OP-1 in impaction grafting may be solved by adding a bisphosphonate, some of the benefits of OP-1 can be lost.


Students of all ages are motivated to learn to think and work in 3D. They see it in movies such as The Incredibles and Chicken Little. They see it in television shows such as Max Steel and Jimmy Neutron. They see it in their video games. It is an integral part of their world. It makes sense, then, that they can be taught the essence of 3D graphics by letting them create their own 3D scenes. This paper presents a program called shapes. It allows kids of all ages to create their own 3D scenes that are interesting and compelling. By gently and subtly weaving Cartesian coordinates throughout the program, the kids learn about X, Y, and Z without even knowing they are learning it.


Determining the spatial configuration of the structures of compounds used in the production of medicines is extremely important due to the different characteristics of each of them in its solid state and therefore its different qualities of each for use as pharmaceutical raw material. This study aimed to identify the phase of the solid state of Atorvastatin hemi-dihydrate, a lipid-lowering medication HMG-CoA reductase widely use in the present and their characterization by four different instrumental analytical techniques: X-ray diffractometry, differential scanning calorimetry, thermogravimetry and infrared spectroscopy, comparing the obtained analytical results with those found in the literature. Using data obtained from these four techniques are able to show that the study sample exists predominantly in the 27 form of amorphic hemi-dihydrate calcic atorvastatin.


The advanced MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system can provide higher capacity gain or higher diversity gain in modern wireless networks. The capacity gain is achieved by interference cancellation technique to fully utilize the spatial degree of freedom. In a multiuser wireless system, the increased degrees of freedom provide the chance to select multiple wireless stations (STAs) to maximize the throughput. In this paper, we consider a scenario where the access point (AP) equipped with two antennas to simultaneously communicate with two STAs, each with single antenna. After obtaining the statuses of the size of buffered traffic and the achievable transmission rate, the AP should pair compatible STAs to minimize the loss of spatial degree of freedom. Therefore, three pairing algorithms are proposed and are evaluated through computer simulations. The algorithms have much less implementation complexity than the brute force pairing algorithm and achieve satisfactory performance of throughput.


This study addresses the issue of how leading firms manage information about their business processes. The researchers interviewed twenty firms, many of which were Baldrige quality award winners, and conducted a detailed case study of one firm particularly advanced in process management. The paper suggests that a key aspect of success in process improvement is effective management of information about process performance, even independent of information technology. The concept of double-loop learning is applied to process information. A process model of how to manage process information is advanced, with many examples from interviews of leading practices. Challenges in moving toward increased use of process information are also described.


This museum-based study analyzes museum visitors" emotional responses to viewing and creating artwork within the context of the museum space. Five clients from a women"s shelter participated in the study, with ages ranging from fourteen to fifty two years old. Museum visitors were instructed to choose an artwork within the museum that resonated an emotion, feeling, or memory, followed by the completion of a guided written response. Participants shared the chosen artwork with one another and discussed the rationale for choosing the object. Artwork was created in response to the museum tour. Data collected and examined include: a State Anxiety Inventory (SAI) before and after the program; museum narrative written response; observations; analysis of artwork and writing responses; and a follow-up survey. Participants demonstrated personal connections to viewing museum objects that corresponded to themes within their own artwork. Results of the study determine that anxiety was reduced overall, although certain levels of anxiety were unchanged or slightly increased within some participants. The findings provide insight into museum visitors" responses to museum content and may be applicable to educators interested in implementing healing art-based programs in collaboration with museums and community organizations.


This paper proposes an approach for unsupervised speaker segmentation and gender discrimination of broadcast news. In this paradigm, a speaker segmentation mechanism using MDL-based Gaussian model is firstly adopted to determine the speaker changes using mean and covariance of the Gaussian model. These speaker segments partitioned by speaker changes are smoothed and discriminated into male or female. Experimental results show the proposed method achieved a better performance with 9.2% missed detection rate and 7.5% false alarm rate compared to the Delta-BIC method for speaker segmentation on broadcast news. In addition, the segment-based gender discrimination improves 9% accuracy compared to the clip-based discriminator.


Sliced, cured bacon, packed in cans and seeded with 6 x 10(5) spores per can of Clostridium botulinum strains 33A or 41B, or with 3 x 10(6) spores per can of strains 36A, 12885A, 9B, or 53B, was irradiated to various dose levels with gamma radiation. Evidence provided by swelling, toxicity, and recoverable C. botulinum with 2,200 inoculated, irradiated cans demonstrated that: (i) 4.5 Mrad were more than adequate as a sterilization dose; (ii) the experimental minimal sterilizing dose was 2.0 Mrad, and the theoretical 12-log reduction dose was 2.65 or 2.87 Mrad depending on the method of calculation; (iii) some spoilage occurred at dose levels below 2.0 Mrad; (iv) all visible spoilage of irradiated bacon was due to strains 33A and 12885A only, whose D values were, respectively, 0.141 and 0.177 Mrad based on spoilage data, and 0.221 and 0.188 Mrad, respectively, when based on recovery data; (v) toxic cans did not always result in swelling, nor did swollen cans always produce toxic spoilage; and (vi) viable C. botulinum can exist for at least 8 months in storage at 30 C without producing visible or toxic spoilage at doses below 2.0 Mrad.


Chapter 1 studies the properties of the two most commonly used legal institutions, the inquisitorial system and the adversarial system. In the former, the decision maker takes a decision based on her own acquired information, whereas under the latter the decision maker requires the advocates to present their acquired information prior to making a decision. When information is both verifiable and costly to collect, I show that the decision maker expects to make fewer decision making errors in the adversarial system than in the inquisitorial system. The main factor behind this result is that the advocate with the burden of proof values information more and, consequently, works harder to collect information under the adversarial system than the impartial decision maker under the inquisitorial system. This larger effort exerted by the advocates leads to more informed decision making under the adversarial system in spite of the advocates' incentives to distort information. Chapter 2 studies the problem of an uninformed decision maker who acquires expert advice prior to making a decision. I show that it is less costly to hire partisan agents than impartial agents, especially under advocacy, and that the decision maker prefers partisan advocacy to other forms of institutions. I also extend the literature, originating with Dewatripont and Tirole (1999), to a setting with contracts that condition on information provided and not just the decision made. Chapter 3 studies the robustness of fully revealing equilibria (FRE) in multidimension-multisender cheap talk games. A FRE is outcome-robust (strategy-robust) if there is an equilibrium whose outcome (strategy) is close to the FRE outcome (strategy) when the noise in senders' observations is small. I show that there is no outcome- robust FRE in the model of Levy and Razin (2007), and discuss the connections between these new notions of robustness and the existing stability concepts studied in the literature


Gelevard dam is one of the under construction dams in Iran. Gallery tunnels have been executed to implement the possibility of appropriate grout curtain, complete sealing of support and dam foundation. Current paper has studied and analyzed the left bottom gallery (LG3) with length of 380 meters, 3 meters drilling diameter and optimal coverage concrete thickness of gallery. The required armature in the appropriate host rock pile has been determined average and weak. Accordingly, the optimal thickness of gallery covering concrete has been assumed 30 centimeters in the roof and walls, 45 centimeters on the floor. Geometry of this area has been modeled commensurate with the reality in the software limited elements as much as possible. Results have been presented in graphs, after evaluation of place changes, minimum and maximum tensions, axial force, shear force and bending moment. The obtained results indicated that30 centimeters thickness permanent concrete coverage without armature and 1.5 meters and 3 meters thickness of grout area of weak host rock is suitable for the host rock with appropriate quality and average one.  The 40 centimeter thickness armature concrete coverage and injection thickness of 4.5 meters can be appropriate as well.


Paclitaxel is a standard-of-care chemotherapy for breast cancer, despite the increasing recognition of its poor effectiveness in the treatment of patients with advanced disease. Here, we report that adenovirus-type 5 E1A-mediated elevation of the miRNA-processing enzyme Dicer is sufficient to enhance paclitaxel sensitization and reduce cancer stem-like cell properties in this setting. Elevating Dicer expression increased levels of the AXL kinase targeting miRNA miR-494, thereby repressing AXL expression to increase paclitaxel sensitivity. We found that Dicer expression was regulated at the transcription level by E1A, through activation of an MAPK14/CEBPα pathway. Our findings define a mechanism of E1A-mediated chemosensitization for paclitaxel, which is based upon the suppression of breast cancer stem-like cells, with potential implications for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer patients. Cancer Res; 76(13); 3916-28. ©2016 AACR.


Objectives: To assess the relationship between dynamic balance and risk of valgus collapse.
Methods: An exploratory observational analysis was completed. This study consisted of fifty subjects between the ages of 18 and 35. Each subject performed a standard Star Excursion Balance Test (SEBT), and measurements were recorded in each reach direction to identify dynamic balance performance. The subject wasthen recorded using video motion analysis software performing a Drop-Jump Test (DJT) to record the amount of valgus collapse. A correlational measure was then completed to test for associationbetween the two variables.Results: Through analysis with a correlation matrix in SPSS it was found that there was no significant correlation (p ≥ .05) between a subjects score on SEBT and their amount of valgus collapse on the drop jump test.
Conclusion: No significant correlation was found between dynamic balance scores and valgus alignment during dynamic movement in young adults. In measuring a subject's level of valgus collapse using the DJT and correlating with their level of dynamic balance using the SEBT, no relationship was found between having poor dynamic balance and having valgus collapse. There was also no found relationship between having good dynamic balance and a lack of valgus collapse. In light of these results, other musculoskeletal deficits such as trunk landing angle; knee, hip and ankle range of motion deficits; motor control deficits; hip, knee and ankle strength deficits; the level of sports participation; previous coaching; Body Mass Index (BMI); and lack of core control may contribute individually or in combination to dynamic knee position during landing. Further investigation of these variables is warranted.


Objective: Epilepsy is one on of the commonest neurological problem seen in neurology and the ultimate aim is to manage the fits. Despite giving various medicines, fits are not controlled in some patients. This study has been carried out to define various factors which account for poor control of fits in these patients. These include incorrect diagnosis of epilepsy, under dosage, improper selection of the drugs, noncompliance of the patient, lack of education, etc. If proper emphasis were given to all these factors while treating the patient of epilepsy, fits can be effectively controlled in the majority of the patients.Material and Methods: It was a retrospective and prospective study. The duration of study was six months from 1st January to 31st Dec 2016. The study has been carried in the department of neurology, Gujranwala medical college/DHQ teaching hospital Gujranwala.Results: A total number of hundred patients were entered into the study. This was a heterogeneous group according to gender and age. There were a total of 62 (62%) males, and 38 (38%) females. Out of total 100 patients, 86 had idiopathic epilepsy which constitutes 86% of total patients. Four (4%) had fits following meningitis. There were no patients with a history of fits following trauma. There were four (4%) patients who had a brain tumor.Conclusion: It is concluded from our study that: Idiopathic Epilepsy is the commonest among etiology of fits almost (86%). Tonic clonic generalized epilepsy is the commonest type of presentation for Epilepsy (76%). The control of seizures can be improved by education/councelling of the patients.


possible whether or not: (a) the drug affects the production of milk; (b) the drug is excreted in the milk and, if so, whether the amount is of clinical significance; and (c) the amount excreted would adversely affect the neonate or infant. The information would then be readily at hand when the increasing number of lactating mothers consult their practitioners. I am trying to assemble such data to produce a useful reference to drugs which are safe rather than the negative lists which currently predominate. C D E MORRIS


One of the most important technologies in cloud computing is virtualization. This paper presents the results from a performance comparison of three well-known virtualization hypervisors: KVM, VMware and XenServer. In this study, we measure performance in terms of CPU utilization, disk utilization and response time of a large industrial real-time application. The application is running inside a virtual machine (VM) controlled by the KVM, VMware and XenServer hypervisors, respectively. Furthermore, we compare the three hypervisors based on downtime and total migration time during live migration. The results show that the Xen hypervisor results in higher CPU utilization and thus also lower maximum performance compared to VMware and KVM. However, VMware causes more write operations to disk than KVM and Xen, and Xen causes less downtime than KVM and VMware during live migration. This means that no single hypervisor has the best performance for all aspects considered here. Keywords-Cloud Computing; KVM; Live Migration; VMware vMotion; XenMotion.


To understand the processes involved in phase mixing during deformation and the resulting changes in rheological behavior, we conducted torsion experiments on samples of iron‐rich olivine plus orthopyroxene. The experiments were conducted at a temperature, T, of 1200°C and a confining pressure, P, of 300 MPa using a gas‐medium deformation apparatus. Samples composed of olivine plus 26% orthopyroxene were deformed to outer radius shear strains up to γ ≈ 26. In samples deformed to lower strains of γ ≲ 4, elongated olivine and pyroxene grains form a compositional layering. Already by this strain, mixtures of small equant grains of olivine and pyroxene begin to develop and continue to evolve with increasing strain. The ratios of olivine to pyroxene grain size in deformed samples follow the Zener relationship, indicating that pyroxene grains effectively pin the grain boundaries of olivine and inhibit grain growth. Due to the reduction in grain size, the dominant deformation mechanism changes as a function of strain. The microstructural development forming more thoroughly mixed, fine‐grained olivine‐pyroxene aggregates can be explained by the difference in diffusivity among Me (Fe or Mg), O, and Si, with transport of MeO significantly faster than that of SiO2. These mechanical and associated microstructural properties provide important constraints for understanding rheological weakening and strain localization in upper mantle rocks.


Wooden statuette belonging to a kind of boxes or chests the "canopic chests", are reported in ancient Egypt from the 2nd millennium BC to Ptolemaic period. Due to their wide use, often the dating or function of such objects is questionable. In this paper we shed the light on dating and original function of this statuette through alternative multi-analytical techniques, such as, Optical Microscopy (OM), Portable X Ray fluorescence (PXRF) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR-ATR), coupled with archaeological and typological study. The results revealed that it is depicting the God Soker in falcon headed mummy shape and was used to surmount the lid of shrine or naos shape canopic chests. Analytical investigation resulted to the identification οf wood species (Ficus sycamore), the preparation layer composed of calcium carbonates, and the pigments used: Egyptian blue, malachite, orpiment and cinnabar, while, the gilded layer is alloy of gold and silver, and the binding media identified as animal glue. The combination of techniques for dating and typological criteria suggests that this statuette can be dated from late 27th dynasty (ca. 525 404 BC) to the Greco-Roman period.


The difference between expert and novice problem solvers is that experts have organized their thinking into schemata or mental constructs to both see and solve problems. This article demonstrates why schemata are important, arguing that they need to be made explicit in the classroom. It illustrates the use of schemata to understand and categorize complex research problems, map the terrain of legal research resources, match appropriate resources to types of problems, and work through the legal research process. The article concludes by calling upon librarians and research instructors to produce additional schemata and develop a common hierarchical taxonomy of skills, a "Bloom's Taxonomy," which would define legal research problem-solving skills more precisely and set benchmarks for assessment.


Excellent current-carrying tribological properties including the low-friction, high anti-wear, high current-carrying efficiency, and stability are important for the current-carrying application in transmitting electrical signals and power. Here, the Cu/graphene composites with graphene uniformly distributed in Cu matrix were successfully prepared by combining the electroless plating process and powder metallurgy process. The current-carrying tribological properties including friction, wear, and electrical stability of the Cu/graphene composites with brass pairs were investigated by varying normal applied load and sliding speed under multiple applied voltages. The friction reduction and anti-wear properties of Cu/graphene composites were enhanced by the introduction of graphene. The friction coefficient of the Cu/graphene composites keeps stable under current-carrying and non-current-carrying conditions due to the benefit of the graphene enhancement to Cu. The graphene on wear surface reduces friction force and wear. The current-carrying efficiency and stability increased with the increase of applied load but decreased with increasing sliding speed. The contact stability increased with applied load, while high sliding speed caused the drastic vibration of sliding contact. The studies can provide a beneficial guideline for the current-carrying applications of Cu/graphene composites to reduce the friction and wear.


Radiotelemetry was used to study regional blood flow distribution in Alaska sled dogs during cross-country runs. Doppler ultrasonic flowmeter transducers were chronically implanted on the coronary, renal, and mesenteric arteries, terminal abdominal aorta, and ascending aorta or pulmonary artery, and a miniature blood pressure gauge was installed in the aorta or carotid artery. Flow and pressure data telemetered from dogs running on the trail were received and recorded remotely. The heart rate, 40 to 60/min in sleeping dogs, increased to 80 to 100/min when the dogs were ambulatory and to 100 to 150/min when the dogs were excited before a race. Heart rate accelerated to 300/min at the start of exercise and commonly remained at that level throughout prolonged runs. Aortic blood pressure averaged 130/90 mm Hg at rest, but the systolic pressure often exceeded 300 mm Hg when the dogs were running. A transient drop in mean pressure occurred at the onset of running, but mean pressure during sustained exercise was practically identical to that at rest. Flow in the terminal aorta increased 9 to 12 times and coronary flow 5 to 6 times, but mesenteric and renal flows were unchanged during violent, prolonged exercise. These findings contrast with diminished visceral flows recorded in exercising humans and suggest that compensatory redistribution of flow is not a significant reserve mechanism in these animals during exercise.


We investigated the influence of tilling, N fertilization and crop stage on arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) fungal species diversity in a wheat monoculture in the Pampa region of Argentina. Glomalean spores were isolated by wet sieving and decanting from conventionally tilled and nontilled soils cropped with wheat with or without N fertilization, at three phenological stages of the crop (tilling, flowering and grain filling) and fallow. Morphological characterization yielded at least 24 AM fungi taxa in the field samples, belonging to six genera of AMF: Acaulospora Archaeospora, Entrophospora, Gigaspora, Glomus and Scutellospora. Tilling and fertilization treatments did not result in decreased spore biodiversity. Wheat phenology influenced AM communities, with highest spore biodiversity during grain filling.


The present study used multilevel modeling and measures of the Big Five to test Rogers' prediction that discrepancies between ideal and actual self-concept would be negatively associated with well-being, and to test the prediction drawn from self-determination theory that partners' autonomy support would be associated with smaller discrepancies. Discrepancies and well-being were found to be negatively associated in samples from the USA, Russia, and China, but participants' actual self-concept was closer to their ideal when with autonomy supportive partners. Although there was some moderation by country membership, associations were in the same direction for all countries. Discussion focuses on the cultural and clinical implications.


Purpose
This paper aims to develop a model to predict online review ratings from multiple sources, which can be used to detect fraudulent reviews and create proprietary rating indexes, or which can be used as a measure of selection in recommender systems.

Design/methodology/approach
This study applies machine learning and natural language processing approaches to combine features derived from the qualitative component of a review with the corresponding quantitative component and, therefore, generate a richer review rating.

Findings
Experiments were performed over a collection of hotel online reviews – written in English, Spanish and Portuguese – which shows a significant improvement over the previously reported results, and it not only demonstrates the scientific value of the approach but also strengthens the value of review prediction applications in the business environment.

Originality/value
This study shows the importance of building predictive models for revenue management and the application of the index generated by the model. It also demonstrates that, although difficult and challenging, it is possible to achieve valuable results in the application of text analysis across multiple languages.


Traditionally, mudstones (shales) have been of interest to the petroleum industry because they form seals or source rocks. In geophysical circles, mudstones have also been of interest because their sometimes pronounced velocity anisotropy can lead to imaging problems and because of overpressures that can be defined by other types of velocity anomalies. Only within the past decade, and due largely to advances in drilling and stimulation techniques, have mudstones been seriously regarded as reservoirs in their own right. Although mudstones form approximately 70% of sedimentary rocks, much remains to be learned about these fine-grained rocks. For example:


Abstract Low amounts of ethanol reduce cardiac damage induced by ischemia. The protection from ischemic damage by acute exposure to low amounts of ethanol in isolated myocytes and intact heart have been attributed to activation of protein kinase C (PKC). We previously found that two PKC isozymes, δ and ξ, are activated by ethanol in several cell models. Here, we perfused isozyme-selective agonist and antagonist peptides that we have generated into intact heart to determine the role of these two isozymes in ethanol-induced protection from transient ischemia. Whereas ξ PKC activation was required for ethanol-induced protection, δ PKC activation led to further damage. These data explain the conflicting reports on the role of acute exposure to ethanol in protection from cardiac ischemia. The clinical implications of these findings are also discussed.


type="main"> The aim of this paper is to identify the determinants of the geographical mobility of skilled individuals, such as inventors, across European regions. Among a large number of variables, we focus on the role of social proximity between inventors' communities. We use a control function approach to address the endogenous nature of networks, and zero-inflated negative binomial models to accommodate our estimations to the count nature of the dependent variable and the high number of zeros it contains. Our results highlight the importance of physical proximity, job opportunities, social networks, as well as other relational variables in mediating this phenomenon.


The most common cause of hyperthyroidism is Graves disease (GD) which is characterised by the presence of autoantibodies which binds to the TSH receptor (TRAb). Recently, a rapid, fully automated electrochemiluminescent immunoassay Elecsys  Anti-TSHR for detection of autoantibodies to TSH receptor was made available for routine clinical use. The objective of this study is to evaluate this assay and to determine the sensitivity, specificity and cut-off value. Interassay and total imprecision (CV) were determined at 3.78-7.02 IU/L and 13.5-21.2 IU/L respectively. A total of 124 samples which comprised of 46 GD, seven Hashimoto thyroiditis (HD), 11 non autoimmune nodular goitre (NAG), 2 thyroid cancers (Ca) and 58 normal controls were retrospectively analysed to determine the sensitivity, specificity and cut-off value. Inter-assay CV's were 2.4% at a concentration of 3.90 IU/L (range: 3.78-7.02 IU/l) and 0.8% at 20.80 IU/L (range:13.5-21.2 IU/l). Total imprecision was 3.8% at a concentration of 3.80 IU/L (range:13.5-21.2 IU/l) and 1.0% at 20.8 IU/L (range:13.5-21.2 IU/l). The ROC analysis of patients with GD, other thyroid disorders and normal controls revealed that the highest sensitivity (94%) and specificity (98%) were seen at cut-off value of 1.69 IU/L. Positive predictive value (PPV) and negative predictive value (NPV) was 95% and 94% respectively. At this derived cut-off value of 1.69 IU/L, we found that the sensitivity of TRAb positivity within the group of 29 newly diagnosed GD patients was 94%. Our results demonstrate that this fully automated assay with testing time of 27 minutes has high sensitivity in detecting GD and high specificity for discriminating other thyroid disease and represent major improvement in the diagnosis and management of patients with thyroid diseases.


This paper describes the precision positioning of an XY-planar motion stage driven by a two-axis Sawyer motor. The moving part of the stage is levitated on the stage platen by an air-bearing. The X- and Y-forcers mounted on the moving part generate electromagnetic forces against the platen for the X- and Y-directional motions, respectively. The position of the moving part is feedback-controlled based on the measurement result of a surface encoder, which is composed of a 2-D slope sensor mounted on the stage moving part and an angle grid film stuck on the stage platen. The angle grid film, on which sinusoidal micro-structured surface with 100 nm amplitude and 100 ?m wavelength is fabricated by UV replication, is as thin as 100 ?m. It is confirmed by experiments that necessary driving performance can be maintained when the forcer moves on the film. Experimental results also indicate that sub-micrometers positioning accuracy can be achieved by closed-loop positioning control based on the surface encoder output.


In the presence of scale, dynamism, uncertainty and elasticity, cloud software engineers faces several challenges when modeling Quality of Service (QoS) for cloud-based software services. These challenges can be best managed through self-adaptivity because engineers' intervention is difficult, if not impossible, given the dynamic and uncertain QoS sensitivity to the environment and control knobs in the cloud. This is especially true for the shared infrastructure of cloud, where unexpected interference can be caused by co-located software services running on the same virtual machine; and co-hosted virtual machines within the same physical machine. In this paper, we describe the related challenges and present a fully dynamic, self-adaptive and online QoS modeling approach, which grounds on sound information theory and machine learning algorithms, to create QoS model that is capable to predict the QoS value as output over time by using the information on environmental conditions, control knobs and interference as inputs. In particular, we report on in-depth analysis on the correlations of selected inputs to the accuracy of QoS model in cloud. To dynamically selects inputs to the models at runtime and tune accuracy, we design self-adaptive hybrid dual-learners that partition the possible inputs space into two sub-spaces, each of which applies different symmetric uncertainty based selection techniques; the results of sub-spaces are then combined. Subsequently, we propose the use of adaptive multi-learners for building the model. These learners simultaneously allow several learning algorithms to model the QoS function, permitting the capability for dynamically selecting the best model for prediction on the fly. We experimentally evaluate our models in the cloud environment using RUBiS benchmark and realistic FIFA 98 workload. The results show that our approach is more accurate and effective than state-of-the-art modelings.


High-speed front-end amplifiers and CDR circuits play critical roles in broadband data receivers as the former needs to perform amplification at high data rate and the latter has to retime the data with the extracted low-jitter clock. In this paper, the design and experimental results of 40 Gb/s transimpedance-AGC amplifier and CDR circuit are described. The transimpedance amplifier incorporates reversed triple-resonance networks (RTRNs) and negative feedback in a common-gate configuration. A mathematical model is derived to facilitate the design and analysis of the RTRN, showing that the bandwidth is extended by a larger factor compared to using the shunt-series peaking technique, especially in cases when the parasitic capacitance is dominated by the next stage. Operating at 40 Gb/s, the amplifier provides an overall gain of 2 kOmega and a differential output swing of 520 mVpp with for input spanning from to . The measured integrated input-referred noise is 3.3muArms. The half-rate CDR circuit employs a direction-determined rotary-wave quadrature VCO to solve the bidirectional-rotation problem in conventional rotary-wave oscillators. This guarantees the phase sequence while negligibly affecting the phase noise. With 40 Gb/s 231 - 1 PRBS input, the recovered clock jitter is and 0.7psrms. The retimed data exhibits 13.3 pspp jitter with BER . Fabricated in 90 nm digital CMOS technology, the overall amplifier consumes 75 mW and the CDR circuit consumes 48 mW excluding the output buffers, all from a 1.2 V supply.


Patients diagnosed with haematological malignancies require specialist treatments provided by major metropolitan hospitals. Those living outside the cities where the specialist care is located have to relocate for this specialist treatment. The findings presented in this article are from a program of research that documents the psychosocial impact of relocation on patients and their families. Prior Australian-based research conducted as part of the program indicates that the process of relocation exacerbates the stress of treatment and creates significant practical, emotional, social, and financial disruption to the families involved. The Australian findings provided the basis for a recent comparative study conducted by the program that explores the experience of relocation for haematology from the perspective of patients and their carers in New Zealand. The findings from the comparative study indicate that whilst there is evidence of similar psycho-social distress associated with relocation, there are a number of factors specific to living in New Zealand that ameliorate the impact, including smaller distances, strong community connections, and the participants' personal determination to retain the focus on living.


The relationship between low-grade metasedimentary and high-grade paragneissic Precambrian rock units in the Bras d'Or terrane of central Cape Breton Island is a long-standing geological problem. Whole-rock geochemical and Nd isotopic data from representative components of these units in the Kellys Mountain area, the Glen Tosh formation and Kellys Mountain Gneiss, show strong similarity. Major and trace element characteristics suggest that protolith sediments for both units were wackes derived from felsic igneous sources and deposited at an active continental margin. Neodymium isotopic data in combination with previously published detrital zircon ages show that the sediments contained an ancient (ca. 2 Ga) end-member of recycled continental crust mixed with a juvenile component of Late Neoproterozoic age.  The similarities suggest that the rocks represent the same sedimentary unit at different grades of metamorphism.


Inflammation is believed to contribute to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD in turn is believed to be a consequence of accumulated amyloid-β (Aβ) peptides, that subsequently form senile plaques, due to imbalance between production and clearance of Aβ. Senile plaques are associated with dystrophic neurites, activated glia and various pro-inflammatory molecules. Microglia and astrocytes become activated to repair damage and kill intruders. There is a dramatic change in gene expression upon activation leading to production of pro-inflammatory and cytotoxic molecules. However in AD, glial cells fail to eliminate the disturbing agent and inflammation becomes chronic. Gene expression of putatively neurotoxic factors is under the control of various transcription factors. To find ways to increase beneficial effects of inflammation (phagocytosis of plaques) and dampen detrimental effects (production of neurotoxic molecules) it is important to understand how transcription factors responsible for these processes are regulated. The aim of this thesis was to investigate the effects of Aβ on C/EBP and NF-кB transcription factors in mixed primary glial cultures activated by inflammatory mediators. In addition, we investigated the possibility to block effects downstream of the кB element with an NF-кB decoy coupled to a cell-penetrating peptide (CPP). Our results show that Aβ peptides blocked interleukin (IL)-1β induced activation of C/EBPβ and C/EBPδ whereas the effect on NF-кB was the opposite. Furthermore, we observed C/EBPδ containing complexes binding to the кB element only in the presence of Aβ peptides and IL-1β. In addition, NF-кB p65 was found in complexes binding to the C/EBP site under all conditions. Lastly, we could block IL-6 mRNA expression levels to 50% using a CPP-NF-кB decoy. In summary, dysregulation of C/EBPβ, C/EBPδ and NF-кB in response to Aβ peptides and inflammatory mediators support that the normal inflammatory response is disturbed in AD.


It is expected that Great Lockdown caused by Covid-19 will cause the worst recession since the Great Depression, and far worse than the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. This paper aims to analyse the effectiveness of export credit insurance as a tool to mitigate the consequences of default in deferred international trade payments. A panel data analysis will be realized by using the data of 27 Berne Union member countries for 11 years in order to elaborate the effects of the export credit insurance commitments on exportation by taking into account other related economic factors such as export as a percentage of GDP, export volume, real effective exchange rate. The results of the analysis indicate that the export credit insurance schemes, mainly supposed to be provided by the public insurers, may mitigate the detrimental effects of Covid-19 on international trade.


Customization can match consumers' individual needs and avoid the unnecessary waste and use of the producers' materials. In order to lower the impact of products on the ecological environment, this study explored and analyzed customization development procedures in product service systems (PSSs). Decision-making analysis was conducted on the development factors of customization, and important elements and weight factors related to environmental benefits were identified according to the analytical result. The research methods included three stages. First, literature review and analysis were conducted to generalize the criteria of PSSs and customization development. Second, expert interviews, literature review, and the analytic network process were conducted to identify the key elements of the customization development procedures in PSSs. Finally, a customization development procedure was designed for a PSS, and a customization development evaluation tool was planned as the important criterion for product customization development procedures in PSSs.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the growth trajectory of college and university students in core competencies between entering and exiting the Camp Adventure Child and Youth Services (CACYS) experience using Bok's (2006) framework for undergraduate education. Bok's competency framework included: communication, critical thinking, character development, citizenship, diversity, global understanding, widening of interest and career and vocational development. The sample comprised 82 college and university students serving for the first time as participants in CACYS. A repeated measures 3-phase design was used to collect data pre and post and after field service. Citizenship was the highest mean self-rating, and global understanding, communication and critical thinking were consistently the lowest across time. Results indicate that there was growth in all of participants' core competencies from the baseline to end through the entire programme. The findings show that the core competencies can be taught and developed through experiential learning experiences. The study provides a model for linking undergraduate core competencies with parks, recreation, leisure and tourism curricula in an integrated and holistic fashion.


Objective The first cohort of Turkish fellows has begun to graduate from a newly accredited training program on gynecologic oncology. This study aimed to investigate the value of experience on the confidence of these fellows to perform surgical procedures. Methods We assessed the characteristics of 32 fellows, including the perceived adequacy of their fellowship training, the facilities of the clinics at which they were trained, and their levels of exposure and confidence in performing a total of 44 procedures. Exposure levels were performing, assisting with, observing, or no exposure. Confidence was assessed by asking whether they could perform each procedure. Correlation analysis was used to determine the link between exposure levels and confidence. Results The confidence of fellows to perform a surgical procedure increased with exposure to that procedure (r = 0.820, P < 0.001). Performing, assisting with, and observing a procedure created a sense of confidence in 97.2%, 54.1%, and 31.1% of fellows. The majority of fellows (>75%) had performed type 2 hysterectomy, total omentectomy, and pelvic and para-aortic lymphadenectomy. None of the fellows had ever performed a trachelectomy. Conclusions Efforts should be made in accredited systems for gynecologic oncology surgical training to provide more opportunities for trainees to perform surgical procedures, rather than assisting with and observing them.


: The formation of passivation fi lms by interfacial reactions, though critical for applications ranging from advanced alloys to electrochemical energy storage, is often poorly understood. In this work, we explore the formation of an exemplar passivation fi lm, the solid − electrolyte interphase (SEI), which is responsible for stabilizing lithium-ion batteries. Using stochastic simulations based on quantum chemical calculations and data-driven chemical reaction networks, we directly model competition between SEI products at a mechanistic level for the fi rst time. Our results recover the Peled-like separation of the SEI into inorganic and organic domains resulting from rich reactive competition without fi tting parameters to experimental inputs. By conducting accelerated simulations at elevated temperature, we track SEI evolution, con fi rming the postulated reduction of lithium ethylene monocarbonate to dilithium ethylene monocarbonate and H 2 . These fi ndings furnish fundamental insights into the dynamics of SEI formation and illustrate a path forward toward a predictive understanding of electrochemical passivation.


Objectives. Approximately 13% of all births occur prior to 37 weeks gestation in the U.S. Some established risk factors exist for preterm birth, but the etiology remains largely unknown. Recent studies have suggested an association with environmental exposures. We examined the relationship between preterm birth and exposure to a commonly used herbicide, atrazine, in drinking water. Methods. We reviewed Kentucky birth certificate data for 2004–2006 to collect duration of pregnancy and other individual-level covariates. We assessed existing data sources for atrazine levels in public drinking water for the years 2000–2008, classifying maternal county of residence into three atrazine exposure groups. We used logistic regression to analyze the relationship between atrazine exposure and preterm birth, controlling for maternal age, race/ethnicity, education, smoking, and prenatal care. Results. An increase in the odds of preterm birth was found for women residing in the counties included in the highest atrazine exposure group compared with women residing in counties in the lowest exposure group, while controlling for covariates. Analyses using the three exposure assessment approaches produced odds ratios ranging from 1.20 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.14, 1.27) to 1.26 (95% CI 1.19, 1.32), for the highest compared with the lowest exposure group. Conclusions. Suboptimal characterization of environmental exposure and variables of interest limited the analytical options of this study. Still, our findings suggest a positive association between atrazine and preterm birth, and illustrate the need for an improved assessment of environmental exposures to accurately address this important public health issue.


Social media have become one of the key platforms to support the debate on climate change. In particular, Twitter allows easy information dissemination when running environmental campaigns. Yet, the dynamics of these campaigns on social platforms still remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we study the success factors enabling online petitions to attain their required number of signatures. We present an analysis of e-petitions and identify how their number of users, tweets and retweets correlate with their success. In addition, we show that environmental petitions are actively promoted by popular public campaigns on Twitter. Finally, we present an annotated corpus of petitions posted by environmental campaigns together with their corresponding tweets to enable further exploration.


This paper is intended for verifying the implementation of Long Term Evolution (LTE) over satellite in Forward Link. Recent developments in wireless communication such as MIMO technique that allow improving the received signal quality and capacity, in combination with OFDM makes the signals more robust against delay spread in frequency selective channel. A dual satellite Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing and Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (OFDM-MIMO) model is considered which provides a handy and robust resource over satellite channel for this purpose. It is OFDM in aggregation to quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) with Turbo Coding using 2×2 MIMO as specified for LTE 5 MHz BW, transmitted with satellite power delay profile has analyzed in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER). Spatial multiplexing and diversity are the two features that MIMO provides which has also been investigated. The investigation has been conducted considering downlink transmission over satellite forward link over dual-satellite 2×2 MIMO channel.