The current focus of the EMELD project is on the inter-comparability of data categories. The similarities between linguistic concepts used in diverse language documentation projects can be made explicit through a linguistic ontology. GOLD takes interlinear glosses as a starting point and is being built up mainly by the addition of semantic concepts. Interlinear glossing is the product of a compromise between what a linguist analysing a language knows and is able to present within a very limited visual format. Certain phenomena are commonly omitted from interlinear glosses. In particular, those semantic concepts which are not uniquely expressed by a single morpheme but through an entire construction. As an example I wish to look at the Inclusory Construction, a type of nominal coordination construction which has not been recorded as having a unique grammatical marker in any language, so is never indicated in an interlinear gloss. The Inclusory Construction involves a unique semantic relation which will be referred to here as 'inclusory', which is similar to a part-whole relation. The Inclusory Construction is globally common. It is found in most large-scale linguistic areas and is extremely common in some groups such as Austronesian languages and Australian languages (Schwartz 1985). In many languages the construction involves the use of a particular grammatical marker. What is interesting about the use of markers in the Inclusory Construction is that the construction always involves the use of a grammatical marker which is also used to mark a different semantic relation in another construction. In other words, no unique marker is ever found of the Inclusory Construction. Consequently, the inclusory construction is never indicated in an interlinear gloss. Current efforts at building up GOLD involve the expansion of the types of semantic relations included. Semantic relations such as the inclusory relation, which lack unique morphological expression could be overlooked if interlinear glosses alone are used as a basis for finding new semantic relations to input to GOLD. Important grammatical meanings reside in constructions as well as morphemes. Thus grammatical constructions should be seen as an important area to survey for new semantic relations for GOLD.


The advent of powerful cosmological surveys demands a new generation of high-precision, large-volume, and high dynamic range simulations of structure formation in the Universe. Key aims of these simulations are understanding why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating and what dark matter is made of. The availability of Roadrunner, the world's first petaflop platform, led us to develop a new hybrid cosmology simulation code making essential use of hardware acceleration. We describe the strategies underlying the code and aspects of its implementation.


We investigated causal factors driving German hog-price dynamics with an innovative 'diagnostic' modeling approach. Hog-price cycles are conventionally attributed to randomly-generated behavior best modeled stochastically—most recently as randomly-shifting sinusoidal oscillations. Alternatively, we applied nonlinear time series analysis to empirically reconstruct a deterministic hog-price attractor from observed hog prices. Hog prices cycle aperiodically along this attractor as time evolves. The empirically diagnosed attractor indicates that causal factors driving the German hog-price cycle are endogenous to the hog industry itself. We next formulated a structural (explanatory) model of the pork industry to synthesize the empirical hog-price attractor and to determine causal factors generating it. Model simulations demonstrate that low price elasticity of demand contributes to aperiodic price cycling—a well know result—and further reveal two other important causal factors: the irreversibility of investment (caused by high specificity of technology), and the liquidity-driven investment behavior of German farmers.


AD mouse models contributed widely to our understanding of the pathophysiology of AD and represent invaluable tools in testing potential therapeutic interventions. In the present study, age-dependent characterization of the neuropathological and behavioral hallmarks of the 5XFAD mouse model was performed, demonstrating that the 5XFAD mouse model develops a variety of AD neuropathological and behavioral hallmarks. It was shown for the first time that the 5XFAD mice develop neurological and motor phenotypes, which coincide with spinal cord pathology such axonopathy and intraneuronal (amyloid beta) Aâ. One of the most important characteristics originally reported in the 5XFAD mouse model is the neuron loss; however, this was never appropriately quantified. Using designed-based stereology, it was shown that the 5XFAD mice develop significant selective neuron loss in the fifth cortical of the frontal cortex which correlates with the accumulation of intraneuronal Aâ peptides. The 5XFAD mouse model develops early age-dependent alterations in anxiety levels and impaired spatial working memory starting from 6 months of age. Employing a variety of Aâ specific antibodies, abundant intraneuronal Aâ and extracellular plaque deposition was noted and showed age-dependent alterations. Altogether, the simultaneous occurrence of age-dependent neuropathological and the behavioral changes present the 5XFAD mouse model as an invaluable model to study AD. More importantly, the cosegregation of the mutations in the 5XFAD facilitates its use to generate bigenic mouse models. pyroglutamate Aâ (AâpE3-x) is a modified form of Aâ which is particularly interesting due to its predominance in AD brains and its high pathogenicity. The above mentioned considerations, in addition to the early deposition and the abundance of AâpE3-x in the 5XFAD mouse model, prompted its use to test genetic strategies for modulating this Aâ isoform. Several in vitro and in vivo lines of evidence suggested that glutaminyl cyclase (QC) enzyme is responsible for the formation of AâpE3-x. In order to study the pathological contribution of QC to the pathology of AD, 5XFAD mice were crossed with hQC mice to generate a bigenic model of AD with QC overexpression, the 5XFAD/hQC model. The 5XFAD/hQC mouse model brought together QC and the Aâ precursor leading to higher AâpE3-x levels. As a consequence, the 5XFAD/hQC mice exhibited higher AâpE3-x plaque pathology and accelerated motor and spatial working memory impairments in comparison to the 5XFAD mice. More importantly, the endogenous contribution of QC to AD pathology was studied by generating the 5XFAD/QC-KO bigenic mouse model. Complete depletion of QC reduced AâpE3-42 and Aâx-42 concentrations, alleviated the plaque pathology and improved the memory impairment in the 5XFAD/QC-KO mouse model. Taken together, the outcome of this work clearly indicates the pivotal role of QC in AD pathology. In summary, the aim of this thesis was to perform an age-dependent characterization of the 5XFAD mouse model and to verify its use in studying strategies that modulate AâpE3-x and thus AD pathology. Based on that, data from the 5XFAD/hQC and the 5XFAD/QC-KO mice clearly demonstrate that QC is an essential enzyme modulating AâpE3-42 levels in vivo and proves on a genetic basis the concept that reduction of QC activity is an interesting new therapeutic approach for AD.


An entropic depletion-driven phase separation is known to be observed for mixtures of polymers and nanoparticles. While polymer-linked nanoparticles have been synthesized, their phase behavior has only been predicted for chemically specific interactions. We use integral equation theory to determine the structure and phase behavior of chemically isotropic polymer-linked nanoparticles at high densities. When each end of a linear polymer is grafted to a nanoparticle, we predict an entropy-driven microphase separation of locally segregated polymer-rich and nanoparticle-rich domains. The formation of these self-assembled structures is purely a consequence of the shape of the polymer-linked particle species. The depletion-driven demixing of ungrafted polymer-nanoparticle composites (with small amounts of nanoparticles) is enhanced as particle diameter (D) grows compared to the polymer radius of gyration (Rg). However, this study shows that for polymer-linked nanoparticle systems, the transition from a liquid to microphase separated state shifts to higher densities (i.e. is inhibited) as D/Rg increases. The transition volume fractions attain a unique value (of ∼0.69) at D/Rg ∼ 1.13. The repeating length scale (L*) is 1.4-2.2 times the size of the entire species (D + Rg). Surprisingly, L*/(D + Rg) is a non-monotonic function of the polymer radius of gyration. The repeating length scale also displays a remarkable scaling behavior, as a function of the particle diameter and the polymer density. Additionally, our study implies that two different mechanisms of transitioning to the microphase separated state are possible for these systems, which has important implications for the transition density and the kinds of structures formed.


Organizations no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Christopher 1998; Cox 1999; Lambert and Cooper 2000), and these organizations more and more realize the performance potential of chains (Pearson and Samali 2005; Gellynck, Vermeire and Viaene 2006). Being part of a well‐performing chain generates important performance benefits for the individual organization (Zhenxin, Hong and Edwin 2001). As a result, there is increasing interest in the performance of chains as a research subject (Beamon 1998). A vast group of authors (Neely, Mills, Platts, Gregory and Richards 1994; Neely, Gregory and Platts 1995; Beamon 1998; Christopher 1998; Beamon 1999; Li and O'Brien 1999; Van der Vorst 2000; Gunasekaran, Patel and Tirtiroglu 2001; Lambert and Pohlen 2001; Gunasekaran, Patel and McGaughey 2004; Van Der Vorst 2006) endorses the need to address the measurement of chain performance. Nonetheless, previous studies investigating chain performance have considered multiple individual chains, but rather compared groups of chain members. Some notable exceptions of such analysis are Spekman et al. (1998), Lu et al. (2006) or Clare et al. (2002). Second, with regard to measuring performance of chains active in the agri‐business sector or in the traditional food [2] sector in particular, (Aramyan 2007) notes a number of challenges. First, this type of firm does not typically gauge their performance in a standardized way that allows comparison (Collins, Henchion and Reilly 2001), implying the collection of secondary data from these firms are highly challenging. Further, chains belonging to different sectors may have different characteristics such as chain length, closeness of chain relationships and types of process links (Lambert and Cooper 2000) possibly influencing their performance. Consequently, chain performance measurement being carried out in other sectors might reveal differences as compared to performance measurement of traditional food chains. Therefore, traditional food as a potential focus of chain performance measurement cannot remain neglected.


In recent years, local journalism as well as social cohesion have faced disruptions and discontinuities. While local journalism is challenged by dwindling readership, media concentration, and economic crisis, social cohesion in cities is dealing with social fragmentation, gentrification, and the increasing inflow of migrants. At the same time, the concepts are interrelated, as perceptions of belonging, identity, or community are heavily mediatized: local media provide the informational backbone of what people know about social life in their city. In our study, we operationalize cohesion as a multidimensional concept and discuss the results from a standardized content analysis of about 1300 articles in seven local newspapers from three German cities. We find remarkably similar images of social cohesion across cities. However, while social cohesion is similarly reported across cities, we found wide variation across newspaper types. Depending on whether readers prefer local newspapers, weekly advertisers or tabloids, they are presented with different images of their local society.


Waveguide couplers are combined with lambda /4 shifted distributed feedback (DFB) resonators to produce narrowband channel dropping filters. The bandwidth of the filter can be made much narrower than the stopband of the grating. It is possible to remove the spurious responses of the grating filter by appropriate dispersion characteristics for the coupled waveguides. However, in some practical applications it may not be necessary to do this, if all channels can be accommodated within half the grating bandwidth of the filters. >


The specific objectives are: i) to determine the level of awareness of pesticide residue in locally available food among food sellers in Ile Ife area of Osun state, Nigeria; ii) to identify the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of food sellers who use pesticides, natural means in preserving their foodstuff from getting spoilt; iii) to determine the level of understanding of food sellers who use pesticides about the likely health implications that could result. The design of the study is cross sectional. Structured open-ended questionnaires were administered to 98 randomly selected food sellers in Ile Ife area Osun state, Nigeria. This includes males and female. The inference from the study shows that majority of the food sellers were between ages 21 and 30 years, suggesting that more of the young people are involved in the selling of foodstuff in the area of study. Most of the food sellers used phostozin, an organophosphate compound as preservatives for cereals. The majority of those that were aware of the health hazards associated with the usage of pesticides as preservative were literate school leavers. Among respondents to the questionnaire, it was expected that many of those food sellers likely to demonstrate caution in the usage of pesticide would be the literate school leavers. This is because they are more aware of the possible associated health hazards than their fellow food sellers who are not literate. The level of awareness of health implications associated with use of pesticides on consumable food items is higher among school certificate holders who are food sellers. Phostozin, an organophosphate, is a common preservative pesticide used on cereals foodstuff (e.g., bean, rice, maize) in the area of study, especially among the age group between 21 and 30 years.


Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a crucial chemotactic factor in peripheral blood (PB) involved in the mobilization process and egress of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) from bone marrow (BM). Since S1P is present at high levels in erythrocytes, one might assume that, by increasing the plasma S1P level, the hemolysis of red blood cells would induce mobilization of HSPCs. To test this assumption, we induced hemolysis in mice by employing phenylhydrazine (PHZ). We observed that doubling the S1P level in PB from damaged erythrocytes induced only a marginally increased level of mobilization. However, if mice were exposed to PHZ together with the CXCR4 blocking agent, AMD3100, a robust synergistic increase in the number of mobilized HSPCs occurred. We conclude that hemolysis, even if it significantly elevates the S1P level in PB, also requires attenuation of the CXCR4-SDF-1 axis-mediated retention in BM niches for HSPC mobilization to occur. Our data also further confirm that S1P is a major chemottractant present in plasma and chemoattracts HSPCs into PB under steady-state conditions. However, to egress from BM, HSPCs first have to be released from BM niches by blocking the SDF-1-CXCR4 retention signal.


In order to provide the most effective therapy for cancer, it is important to be able to diagnose whether a patient's cancer will respond to a proposed treatment. Methylation profiling could contain information from which such predictions could be made. Currently, hypothesis testing is used to determine whether possible biomarkers for cancer progression produce statistically significant results. However, this approach requires the identification of individual genes, or sets of genes, as candidate hypotheses, and with the increasing size of modern microarrays, this task is becoming progressively harder. Exhaustive testing of small sets of genes is computationally infeasible, and so hypothesis generation depends either on the use of established biological knowledge or on heuristic methods. As an alternative machine learning, methods can be used to identify groups of genes that are acting together within sets of cancer data and associate their behaviors with cancer progression. These methods have the advantage of being multivariate and unbiased but unfortunately also rapidly become computationally infeasible as the number of gene probes and datasets increases. To address this problem, we have investigated a way of utilizing prior knowledge to segment microarray datasets in such a way that machine learning can be used to identify candidate sets of genes for hypothesis testing. A methylation dataset is divided into subsets, where each subset contains only the probes that relate to a known gene pathway. Each of these pathway subsets is used independently for classification. The classification method is AdaBoost with decision trees as weak classifiers. Since each pathway subset contains a relatively small number of gene probes, it is possible to train and test its classification accuracy quickly and determine whether it has valuable diagnostic information. Finally, genes from successful pathway subsets can be combined to create a classifier of high accuracy.


ABSTRACT This study proposed a cognitive-based game mechanism based on the revised Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive processing dimensions. Moreover, a mobile Chinese history educational game, Void Broken: The Qing Dynasty, was developed based on the cognitive-based game mechanism to promote learners' cognitive thinking in history learning. This empirical study conducted an experiment with a quasi-experiment design and the participants were 70 high school freshmen from northern Taiwan, who were selected by convenience sampling. The present study analyzed the participants' historical knowledge gains and flow state. This study proposed an operational behavior coding scheme to analyze learning behaviors and evaluate the proposed cognitive-based game mechanism design and conducted sequential analyses to explore their learning behavioral patterns and their collaborative problem solving (CPS) behaviors in the game-based learning (GBL) process. The results suggested that the mechanism helped learners' historical knowledge gains, flow, and CPS behaviors. The high flow groups showed more multifaceted and active problem-solving behavioral patterns than the low flow groups. We suggest educational game designers consider including the cognitive-based game mechanism and flow antecedents into their game designs.


Abstract In his obituary for Haim Schwarzbaum (1911-1983), Dov Noy tells that upon his arrival at Bloomington, Indiana in 1952 to begin his graduate studies, Stith Thompson asked him whether he knew Haim Schwarzbaum in Israel. He did not, and Professor Thompson invited Dov Noy to his office and showed him the thick file of correspondence that he conducted with Schwarzbaum, saying: "You should know that I correspond with over a hundred folklorists worldwide, and your Haim Schwarzbaum is the most erudite of them all" (Noy 1986, 88). At the time Schwarzbaum was in his early forties. Most of his publications to that date appeared in the literary supplement of newspapers; only two of his articles were published in Hebrew scholarly journals (GANUZ 1984, 10). Yet in his private scholarly correspondence he had already demonstrated his overflowing erudition to be deserving of such an accolade from the leading folktale scholar of our time. Folklorists learned about his scholarly acumen only in the late fifties, when his articles began to appear regularly in scholarly publications.


The Supreme Court and lower courts often rely on legislative history to confirm or reinforce what they already have concluded is the plain meaning of statutory text. The Roberts Court has done so on numerous occasions since 2006: six of these majorities, including four cases decided during the 2009 Term, have drawn sharp rebukes from Justice Scalia.This Essay maintains that persistent judicial reliance on confirmatory history reflects important shortcomings in the textualist approach. When courts move beyond the presumptively clear meaning of statutory language, they recognize - even if implicitly - that assertions of clarity can too often serve as either a mirage or a refuge. Clarity may be a mirage because apparently precise words or phrases often give rise to conflicting "plain meanings," and also because apparently assured readers of those words or phrases are conditioned to perceive clarity based on their own specialized training, background, and level of self-confidence. Assertions of clarity may serve as a refuge in that they obviate the need for judges to provide more complete explanations for their decisions. This aspiration for completeness, although not embraced by Justice Scalia, is important to many other judges as they seek to explain adjudicative resolutions before the diverse audiences to whom they are responsive and responsible.


About a million Rohingyas have fled due to the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and sought refuge in Bangladesh. The refugees are located in temporary settlements on hilly areas of Cox's Bazar with inadequate water and sanitation facilities, giving rise to diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and diarrhea. This exploratory study reports drinking water security challenges in two Rohingya refugee camps within the larger camp network—Camp 2 and the recently-built Camp 4 Extension (Camp 4Ext)—to discover the key everyday issues refugees are facing related to drinking water. Both qualitative and quantitative methods have been applied to determining whether contamination is occurring during the collection, transportation, and storage of drinking water by comparing the water quality at the source with that in storage. The results show that Camp 4Ext is more suited for living in several respects compared with the other camps, attributable to significantly better planning during its construction: there is a lower prevalence of diseases, lower water collection times, higher standards of sanitation, and better access to water sources. This study's outcomes will help camp authorities and the various agencies working there to provide sustainable water and sanitation interventions to improve the wellness of the Rohingya refugees in Cox's Bazar. The outcomes will also provide useful information and strategic direction to the global scientific and development communities who are working in refugee camps in other parts of the world, to tackle water security challenges.


Depth of anesthesia is a matter of great importance in surgery. Determination of depth of anesthesia is a time consuming and difficult task carried out by experts. This study aims to decide a method that can classify EEG data automatically with a high accuracy and, so will help the experts for determination process. This study consists of three stages: feature extraction of EEG signals, feature selection, and classification. In the feature extraction stage, 41 feature parameters are obtained. Feature selection stage is important to eliminate redundant attributes and improve prediction accuracy and performance in terms of computational time. Effective feature selection algorithms such as minimum redundancy maximum relevance (mRMR); ReliefF; and Sequential Forward Selection (SFS) are preferred at the feature selection stage to select a set of features which best represent EEG signals. These obtained features are used as input parameters of the classification algorithms. At the classification stage, six different classification algorithms such as random forest (RF); feed-forward neural network (FFNN); C4.5 decision tree algorithm (C4.5); support vector machines (SVM); naive bayes; and radial basis function neural network (RBF) are preferred to classify the problem. A comparison is provided between computation times and accuracy rates of these different classification algorithms. The experimental results show that better results according to other classifiers when the obtained attributes by ReliefF algorithm are used with RF classifier.


First isolated in 2009 from the ear canal of a Japanese patient, Candida auris has become a growing concern. It has been found to have a similar profile of virulence to Candida albicans. It forms biofilms and produces phospholipase and protease activity. The virulence of C. auris varies according to the strain, with aggregating strains showing less virulence than non-aggregating strains, though reports find it to be less virulent overall than C. albicans. Alarmingly, however, it has shown greater resistance to multiple drugs from all three classes of antifungals and routine cleaning protocols. Most at risk of invasive and systemic infections are severely immunocompromised patients in intensive care settings particularly those with a urinary catheter in situ. Due to impaired immunity and associated comorbidities, patients with diabetes mellitus are considered a high-risk group. The study investigated whether synthetic urine mimicking the high glucose and low pH conditions found in diabetic urine would increase the production of biofilms, protease and phospholipase of an aggregating (NCPF 8977) and non-aggregating strain (NCPF 8971) of C. auris. C. auris was found to grow well in the synthetic urine media in its planktonic form where the culture medium is shaken to preventing biofilm formation, and the growth increased in line with glucose concentration and varied in respect to pH with pH 5.6 showing less growth than pH 5.2 or pH 6.3. The study found that there was no significant change in biofilm formation at any of the tested pH levels and glucose concentrations. However, variation in phospholipase and protease activity was seen when the conditions were altered, and this appeared to be in a strain dependent manner. Other studies have shown that C. auris produces protease and phospholipase in a strain dependent manner, though this study has shown that this can vary with respect to glucose and pH.


We trained a convolutional neural network (CNN) to map raw pixels from a single front-facing camera directly to steering commands. This end-to-end approach proved surprisingly powerful. With minimum training data from humans the system learns to drive in traffic on local roads with or without lane markings and on highways. It also operates in areas with unclear visual guidance such as in parking lots and on unpaved roads.
The system automatically learns internal representations of the necessary processing steps such as detecting useful road features with only the human steering angle as the training signal. We never explicitly trained it to detect, for example, the outline of roads.
Compared to explicit decomposition of the problem, such as lane marking detection, path planning, and control, our end-to-end system optimizes all processing steps simultaneously. We argue that this will eventually lead to better performance and smaller systems. Better performance will result because the internal components self-optimize to maximize overall system performance, instead of optimizing human-selected intermediate criteria, e.g., lane detection. Such criteria understandably are selected for ease of human interpretation which doesn't automatically guarantee maximum system performance. Smaller networks are possible because the system learns to solve the problem with the minimal number of processing steps.
We used an NVIDIA DevBox and Torch 7 for training and an NVIDIA DRIVE(TM) PX self-driving car computer also running Torch 7 for determining where to drive. The system operates at 30 frames per second (FPS).


USDA established MyPlate as a guide to establish healthier eating choices. We investigated the influence of USDA MyPlate food group consumption on Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) parameters in Weber State students. We hypothesize that variation in the consumption amount and the percentage of daily calorie goals for each of the five food groups (grains, fruits, vegetables, dairy, protein, and empty calories) will significantly modulate MetS in the study participants.

 etS parameters were measured in 236 Weber State University student participants, ages 18–59 years.
 Two-day diet records for each participant were collected and analyzed using Diet and Wellness Plus. Multiple linear regression (MLR) analysis was conducted to determine the influences of food groups on the MetS parameters.

 According to the MLR analysis conducted using MetS and food groups as predictors; we found that for an ounce increase in grain, SBP increased by 0.67239 mm/Hg (P = .001). DBP decreased by 0.87999 mm/Hg (P = .001448) per cup increase of dairy. Similarly, a one cup increase of fruit was associated with a Glucose increase of 0.96578 mg/dL (P = .029). For each percentage increase of empty calorie percentage, HDL-C increased by 0.018054 mg/dL (P = .001)and LDL-C increased by 0.014072 mg/dL (P = .005).

 Specific food groups accounted for some of the variability of multiple parameters. Among the food groups studied; Grain consumption was the best predictor for systolic blood pressure. Dairy was the most influential for diastolic blood pressure. Glucose was influenced by fruit amount consumption. Empty calorie consumption was the most important predictor of HDL-C and LDL-C. Finally, details on specific food components within the food groups may help to enhance the models to predict these metabolic parameters.

 Weber State University, Office of Undergraduate Research.


This article examines the way perceived congruence between scent and brand image affects emotions and immersion to the ambiance of a physical space. An experiment was undertaken in a space belonging to the AntiCafe company and branded Anti-Cafe (N = 303) based on a design examining three conditions (presence of congruent scent vs. presence of incongruent scent vs. absence of scent). When the scent is perceived as congruent with the brand image of conviviality, sharing, coffee, and coworking, consumer reactions to the ambiance are more favorable, measured by emotions and immersion. The results and implications of this study are discussed in relation to theory and managerial practices.


: Pseudomonas phaseolicola infected with bacteriophage φ6 synthesized all three viral double-stranded RNA segments, three single-stranded RNAs, and three replicative intermediate-like RNAs in the presence of rifampin. The single-stranded RNA intermediates sedimented and electrophoresed along with melted viral double-stranded RNA, annealed with melted viral double-stranded RNA, and were transient in nature. The relative amounts of the single-stranded RNA intermediates varied during the infection cycle and were altered in the presence of chloramphenicol. The replicative intermediate-like RNAs sedimented faster than double-stranded RNA, failed to enter 2.5% polyacrylamide gels, eluted with double-stranded RNA from a CF-11 cellulose column, were precipitated with single-stranded RNA in 2 M LiCl, and yielded three genome-size pieces of double-stranded RNA upon digestion with RNase. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that complementary strands of the φ6 double-stranded RNAs are synthesized asynchronously during the infection cycle.


Sustainable manufacturing is a relatively new but a very complex manufacturing paradigm. The complexity arises as this paradigm covers three interdependent yet mutually supporting sustainability dimensions of economic, environmental and social. In a further step to embark on the essence of sustainable manufacturing, the development of appropriate indicators needs to be emphasized as compared to other efforts. Regrettably, the existing indicators have several drawbacks that may
hamper the accuracy of sustainability performance assessment of an organization.
As such, there are only a few standardized indicator mechanisms which can suit specific requirements of various manufacturing organizations. Hence, this study suggests a novel Knowledge-Based Fuzzy Analytic Network Process (KBFANP) system which can assist the decision making process of sustainable manufacturing by developing a new indicator mechanism. The KBFANP system comprises of four
major phases, namely Initialization, Selection, Evaluation and Prioritization. The system incorporates the advantages of Knowledge-Based System Fuzzy Set Theory and Analytic Network Process into a single unified approach as a standardized indicator, which is applicable to all types of problem setting. A prototype of
KBFANP system was developed, tested and analyzed on three experimental data sets and two real manufacturing settings. The system was able to provide solutions on the areas that need improvement with different levels of priority. This study also supports the notion of lean and green manufacturing as the elementary foundation of sustainable manufacturing implementation. The proposed KBFANP system can act as an advisory Decision Support System which is beneficial to both academia and industrial practitioners.


The kanamycin films were used once for the treatment of 28 patients with the cornea ulcers. The positive effect was registered in 20 patients. Eight patients were treated with the films and the antibiotic acqueous solution. The best results were observed in the patients with affection of the surface layers of the cornea. The positive therapeutic results were registered in 20 patients after operations in connection with cataracta and glaucoma when treated with the films containing kanamycin and dexametazon.


1. Density dependence of avian reproduction has often been analysed using correlations between annual mean reproductive output and population density. Experiments are necessary to prove that density is the cause of the observed patterns, but so far, three out of four experimental studies do not support a direct causal effect of density on reproduction. 2. This paper presents experimental evidence that reproductive decisions in great tits, Parus major L., are causally affected by breeding density. The breeding density of great tits was manipulated by providing nest-boxes at different densities in an ecologically homogeneous area. 3. Within years the densities in the high and low density plots differed approximately 8-fold. During the 11 years of the experiment, clutch size, nestling mass and the proportion of birds starting a second brood were all lower in the high density plot. In 5 years with equal breeding densities in both parts, clutch size did not differ between the plots. The patterns found were consistent with the density effects as predicted from the non-experimental data. [KEYWORDS: clutch size; density dependence; density manipulation; Parus major; reproduction Flycatcher ficedula-hypoleuca; clutch-size; parus-major; interspecific competition; population fluctuations; food; survival; habitat; fitness; winter]


It is known that great Sanriku tsunamis sometimes hit the Sendai Plain in the north part of the Honshu Island in Japan. Among those great tsunamis, the field investigation had been rarely carried out about the tsunami of July 13th, 869 (11th year of the Jogan Era) because of the lack of the materials of old documents. We carried out the field investigation of the height of this tsunami in the Sendai Plain on the basis of the archaeological view and the sedimentologic examination. The former method is based on the archaeologist's judgement whether historic relics have the trace buried by the running water or not. We estimated the inundated area from the result of the survey for the 8 points in the Sendai Plain. In the latter method, we dipped the test pit and observed the soil layer of the side wall minutely to find the sand layer being supposed to be carried by the tsunami from the dune. Moreover to analyze the character of the sand layer, we made the physical examination, the chemical analysis and the measurement of the age by 14C method. From the results of these investigations, the height of the Sanriku Jogan 11 earthquake-tsunami (A. D. 869) is estimated as 2.5-3m at the point 3 km from the coastline in the Sendai Plain. Finally we checked it with the social and geographic circumstances at that time, and we got the result that the estimated height is not inconsistent with the record of this tsunami.


Health systems are abstract spaces in which cosmopolitanisms of care emerge. This article identifies four key types of care cosmopolitans: health care practitioners, health care students, patients, and informal carers of patients. Care cosmopolitans are individuals who enter into health systems from their various angles and draw upon their individually-held cultures, experiences and knowledge – aided by technology and salient discursively-operationalised ideas – to manage their own or other people's health. To illustrate, I first explore the enculturating processes of medical education – including training in cultural competence and cultural safety – in terms of the way they inform students and health care practitioners as care cosmopolitans. Then, taking the case of chronic illness, I turn to patients and informal carers, who navigate tensions in their existing and intimate relationships, and where different levels of knowledge, common heuristics, and access to technology influence their practices of care. In discussing the nuances of care cosmopolitans in these contexts, I draw on data collected in Australia and New Zealand over an eight year period (2010–2018).


Blockchain technology can solve development problems as it improves existing instruments and enables the development of new ones. Blockchain-based applications particularly address institutional weaknesses and financial inclusion because they restrict deception, corruption and uncertainties. In the future, the blockchain can also be a development vehicle empowering people directly and mitigating power asymmetries.


In this short note we discuss high-dimensional examples of Legendrian submanifolds of the standard contact Euclidean space with an infinite number of exact Lagrangian fillings up to Hamiltonian isotopy. They are obtained from the examples of Casals and Ng by applying to them the spherical spinning construction.


Using pooled time series with random and fixed effects regression models, we examine the effect of age, period, and family life course events on a measure of religious influence on daily life in a panel of 1,339 adults interviewed three times between 1980 and 1992. The results show a significant, non-linear increase in religiosity with age, with the greatest increase occurring between ages 18 and 30. We also found a significant decline in religiosity between 1980 and 1988, but no evidence of a period effect between 1988 and 1992. Comparison of fixed and random effects solutions found little evidence that a cohort effect accounted for the age findings. The age effect was significantly stronger for Catholics than Protestants and the lower religiosity of males was also significantly stronger for Catholics. Adding children in the range from age two to ten significantly increased religiosity, but family life course events accounted for little if any of the age effect.


In earlier papers [cf. for example, R. B. Hetnarski and J. Ignaczak,Proceedings of the First International Symposium on Thermal Stresses,Thermal Stresses '95, Shizuoka University, Hamamatsu, Japan, 5–7 June (1995), pp. 271–274; and R. B. Hetnarski and J. Ignaczak, Int. J. Eng. Sci., to be published in 1996] a low‐temperature nonlinear thermoelastic model has been proposed in which one‐dimensional solitonlike waves may propagate. Both exact and asymptotic solutions to the nonlinear governing equations have been obtained there. In the present paper a further study of the one‐dimensional model is given. A new approximation to the nonlinear governing equations is postulated, and two implicit‐form solitonlike solutions valid in a neighborhood of thermodynamical equilibrium are obtained. The two solutions are less restrictive than the asymptotic solutions obtained earlier, and one of them corresponds to a slow quasithermal wave, while the other matches a fast quasimechanical wave. The graphs illustrating the so...


To interact effectively with humans, mobile robots will need certain skills. One particularly important skill is the ability to pursue moving agents. To do this, the robot needs a robust visual tracking algorithm and an effective obstacle avoidance algorithm, plus a means of integrating these two behaviors in a seamless manner. In this paper, we introduce the proximity space method as a means for performing real-time, behavior-based control of visual gaze. We then show how this method is integrated with robot motion using an intelligent control architecture that can automatically reconfigure the robot's behaviors in response to environmental changes. The resulting implementation pursues people and other robots around our laboratory for extended periods of time.


Classifier ensembles constitute one of the main research directions in machine learning and data mining. The use of multiple classifiers generally allows better predictive performance than that achievable with a single model. Several approaches exist in the literature that provide means to construct and aggregate such ensembles. However, these ensemble systems contain redundant members that, if removed, may further increase group diversity and produce better results. Smaller ensembles also relax the memory and storage requirements, reducing system's run-time overhead while improving overall efficiency. This paper extends the ideas developed for feature selection problems to support classifier ensemble reduction, by transforming ensemble predictions into training samples, and treating classifiers as features. Also, the global heuristic harmony search is used to select a reduced subset of such artificial features, while attempting to maximize the feature subset evaluation. The resulting technique is systematically evaluated using high dimensional and large sized benchmark datasets, showing a superior classification performance against both original, unreduced ensembles, and randomly formed subsets.


Textile reinforced concrete is a rather promising structural material which improves characteristics of traditional materials in many ways. In this paper, based on uniaxial tension experiments of TRC plates, the loading behavior of TRC plates and influence factors on their ultimate load capacity are discussed. The main parameter in the experiments is textile ratio. With the increasing of textile ratio, the efficiency of fibers decreases in a linear way, and the cracking performance is ameliorated. Moreover, a calculation formula is proposed taking the textile ratio into consideration to forecast the ultimate bearing capacity of TRC plates. Finally, according to the mixture law and ACK model, the stress-strain curve of TRC plates is simplified as a trilinear model. Providing a theoretical foundation, this investigation extends further application of TRC in practice.


Teachers, academics and politicians have historically had different views about what it means to be 'physically educated' or what inclusive physical education is and today there still remains a lack of consensus. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the matter and establish exactly what physical education teachers are expected to do, what they are not expected to do and what they can realistically achieve in the time at their disposal with all pupils irrespective of their ability. Physical education teachers are more than just games masters and mistresses, sports coaches, physical trainers, or fitness instructors and yet this is often the stereotype the media choose to portray on the television and in the cinema.


Purpose: The purpose of this work is two fold 1) to validate the ability of the two Tomotherapy Hi ART II machines to produce consistent dose distributions 2) Validate the use and ability of sinogram‐based quality assurance (QA) for Tomotherapy IMRT delivery on two machines Materials and Methods: Two helical Tomotherapy machines were twinned in our clinic to have nearly identical beam characteristics. However, there is no provision for determining the consistency of delivery for a patient plan transferred from one machine to the other. One way to do this is to perform point dose and planar dose measurements for each plan on both machines, but this takes a lot of time. Another is to compare the patterns of MLC leaf‐open times (sinograms) on the two machines. In this work we have studied the dosimetric characteristics of our two Tomotherapy machines, namely the treatment beams and their ability to deliver consistent dose distributions for 50 patients. We also compared the planned sinogram to the recalculated sinogram after transferring the patient plan to the other machine, and plotted the sinogram differences between the two machines. Results: The planned sinogram and delivery sinogram for both machines were found to be sufficiently similar (after taking into account the small differences between the two machines). The sinogram‐based QA was validated using point and planar dose measurements. Conclusions: From the results it can be concluded that in spite of the complex delivery system, Tomotherapy machines can be matched to have similar beam characteristics and can yield nearly identical intensity‐modulated dose distributions. Also, it is not necessary to perform patient‐specific QA on both machines to ensure dose delivery similarity. Sinogram‐based QA provides an efficient QA for twinned Tomotherapy delivery.


In field experiment involving six Clcer arietinum I. genotypr;s and 0 and 52 kg N/ha. traits related to growth and nitrogen assimilation along with seed yield were observed during post rainy seasons of 1994–95 and 1995–96. There Was a variable genotypic response for nitrogen input High nitrogen resulted in increased dry matter accumulation and rale of dry matter accumulation, Leaf area, leaf area duration, nitrate reductase activity, grain nitrogen and total nitrogen per unit area. Relative plant growth rate net assimilation rate and extent of nodulation decreased under higher nitrogen levels. Amongst genotypes, K 850 and PDG 83–13 had maximum yinld ann maximum yield/kg of nitrogen application


This paper demonstrates a new two-stage valving concept for microfluidic systems that uses the reversible gelation of a thermally responsive polymer solution in a control channel to deflect a membrane into the main flow channel for flow control. This method can control flow through a system of microchannels using integrated electric heating elements and only one control pressure source, compared to the off-chip pressure manifold needed in existing systems. This valve technology therefore enables portable microfluidics-based diagnostic tools for biomedical applications and environmental monitoring allowing on-site analysis. Valves with zero leakage rates and a response time of about 3 s have been achieved.


Recent technological advances have enabled human users to interact with computers in ways previously unimaginable. Beyond the confines of the keyboard and mouse, new modalities for human-computer interaction such as voice, gesture, and force-feedback are emerging. Despite important advances, one necessary ingredient for natural interaction is still missing-emotions. Emotions play an important role in human-to-human communication and interaction, allowing people to express themselves beyond the verbal domain. The ability to understand human emotions is desirable for the computer in several applications. This paper explores new ways of human-computer interaction that enable the computer to be more aware of the user's emotional and attentional expressions. We present the basic research in the field and the recent advances into the emotion recognition from facial, voice, and physiological signals, where the different modalities are treated independently. We then describe the challenging problem of multimodal emotion recognition and we advocate the use of probabilistic graphical models when fusing the different modalities. We also discuss the difficult issues of obtaining reliable affective data, obtaining ground truth for emotion recognition, and the use of unlabeled data.


In the study, thermal efficiency in MIG welding of aluminum alloy with longitudinal magnetic field was analyzed, as well as softening behavior of heat-affected zone (HAZ) and base metal were investigated. The results showed that welding current decreased and resultingly total heat input reduced as the exciting current increased, meanwhile arc thermal efficiency increased and melting efficiency decreased. As a result of action of the magnetic field, the trend of grain growth of HAZ slowed down and the influence on base metal of heat input decreased. When the exciting current was 20A, microhardness of HAZ and base metal improved evidently. However, as the exciting current continued to increase, the effect of magnetic field on softening behavior did not change significantly.


Developing effective resource management strategies to limit or prevent saltwater intrusion as a result of increasing demands on coastal groundwater resources requires reliable information about the geologic structure and hydrologic state of an aquifer system. A common strategy for acquiring such information is to drill sentinel wells near the coast to monitor changes in water salinity with time. However, installation and operation of sentinel wells is costly and provides limited spatial coverage. We studied the use of noninvasive electromagnetic (EM) geophysical methods as an alternative to installation of monitoring wells for characterizing coastal aquifers. We tested the feasibility of using EM methods at a field site in northern California to identify the potential for and/or presence of hydraulic communication between an unconfined saline aquifer and a confined freshwater aquifer. One-dimensional soundings were acquired using the time-domain electromagnetic (TDEM) and audiomagnetotelluric (AMT) methods. We compared inverted resistivity models of TDEM and AMT data obtained from several inversion algorithms. We found that multiple interpretations of inverted models can be supported by the same data set, but that there were consistencies between all data sets and inversion algorithms. Results from all collected data sets suggested that EM methods are capable of reliably identifying a saltwater-saturated zone in the unconfined aquifer. Geophysical data indicated that the impermeable clay between aquifers may be more continuous than is supported by current models.


OBJECTIVE Inflammatory processes have been implicated in the mechanisms of reperfusion injury. The migration of leukocytes into ischemic tissue on reperfusion, which involves binding to the intercellular adhesion molecule (ICAM) of the endothelial cell, is thought to exacerbate tissue injury. The aim of the present study was to assess the effects of an anti-ICAM-1 antibody on reperfusion-induced injury after late reperfusion in a rat middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) suture model. METHODS The animals were divided into four groups: 1) Group 1 (n = 7), 6 hours of permanent MCAO; 2) Group 2 (n = 7), 3 hours of MCAO followed by 3 hours of reperfusion; 3) Group 3 (n = 6), 6 hours of permanent MCAO and treatment with anti-ICAM-1 antibody (designated 1A29, 1 mg/kg) at 2 hours after onset of MCAO; and 4) Group 4 (n = 6), 3 hours of MCAO followed by 3 hours of reperfusion and 1A29 treatment. During the experiment, regional cerebral blood flow was measured by a laser Doppler flowmetric scanning technique. At the 6-hour time point, all rats were killed, and the results of leukocyte infiltration by myeloperoxidase activity and histological analysis using 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining were examined. RESULTS Regional cerebral blood flow values before and after MCAO were not significantly different among the four groups. Regional cerebral blood flow values after reperfusion were not significantly different in the two reperfused groups. The percentage brain injury volumes in both the total and cortical areas and the myeloperoxidase activity in the latter were significantly larger in Group 2 (the reperfused group) than in the other groups (P < 0.05) but were decreased by anti-ICAM-1 antibody treatment (Group 2 versus Group 4, P < 0.05). However, there were no differences between Groups 1 and 3 without reperfusion. Myeloperoxidase activities correlated positively with infarct volumes (P < 0.01). CONCLUSION The findings of this study demonstrate that the anti-ICAM antibody treatment is effective at inhibiting early inflammatory processes and reperfusion-induced injury caused by late arterial recanalization, which would contribute to widening the therapeutic window of thrombolytic therapy.


This paper investigates hybrid fiber-radio networks for in-building distribution of ultrawideband (UWB) signals, in order to extend UWB radio coverage area. An original multipoint to multipoint UWB-over-fiber system, proposed in the frame of BILBAO project, is presented and discussed. System link gain and noise figure are evaluated through theoretical analysis. A simulation model is used to study the impact of E/O transceivers nonlinearity on UWB signals. Experimental results show good agreement with simulation results. A high data rate file transfer, with UWB radio propagation and transmission over 100 m of multimode fiber, has been also successfully demonstrated.


The octomeric exocyst complex governs the final step of exocytosis in both plants and animals. Its roles, however, extend beyond exocytosis and include organelle biogenesis, ciliogenesis, cell migration, and cell growth. Exo70 is a conserved component of the exocyst whose function in Drosophila is unclear. In this study, we characterized two mutant alleles of Drosophila exo70. exo70 mutants exhibit reduced synaptic growth, locomotor activity, glutamate receptor density, and mEPSP amplitude. We found that presynaptic Exo70 is necessary for normal synaptic growth at the neuromuscular junction (NMJ). At the neuromuscular junction, exo70 genetically interacts with the small GTPase ralA to regulate synaptic growth. Loss of Exo70 leads to the blockage of JNK signaling-, activity-, and temperature-induced synaptic outgrowths. We showed that this phenotype is associated with an impairment of integral membrane protein transport to the cell surface at synaptic terminals. In octopaminergic motor neurons, Exo70 is detected in synaptic varicosities, as well as the regions of membrane extensions in response to activity stimulation. Strikingly, mild thermal stress causes severe neurite outgrowth defects and pharate adult lethality in exo70 mutants. exo70 mutants also display defective locomotor activity in response to starvation stress. These results demonstrated that Exo70 is an important regulator of induced synaptic growth and is crucial for an organism's adaptation to environmental changes. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The exocyst complex is a conserved protein complex directing secretory vesicles to the site of membrane fusion during exocytosis, which is essential for transporting proteins and membranes to the cell surface. Exo70 is a subunit of the exocyst complex whose roles in neurons remain elusive, and its function in Drosophila is unclear. In Drosophila, Exo70 is expressed in both glutamatergic and octopaminergic neurons, and presynaptic Exo70 regulates synaptic outgrowth. Moreover, exo70 mutants have impaired integral membrane transport to the cell surface at synaptic terminals and block several kinds of induced synaptic growth. Remarkably, elevated temperature causes severe arborization defects and lethality in exo70 mutants, thus underpinning the importance of Exo70 functions in development and adaptation to the environment.


This study focuses on the elements of patriotism in the novel "Pahlawan Pasir Salak" by Mohd Ismail Sarbini. This novel is a compulsory Bahasa Melayu text used as a Literature Component for Form Two. The setting of this novel is during the British Colonial Era. There are seven elements of patriotism adopted as the basis for the study which are Personal Patriotism, Official Patriotism, Icon Patriotism, Symbolic Patriotism, Capital Patriotism, Environment Patriotism and Symbolic Nationalists Patriotism. According to the study, the personal, icons, symbolic nationalist as well as capital patriotism is found to be very dorminant through the characters and certain events occurring in this novel. These patriotism elements are very important to be instilled in the next generation of our country that is emerging in the golden era for the betterment of the nation.


With over 1.5 billion people, East Asians are the most populous race in the world. Health status in this population is an important global issue. In the contemporary trials of antithrombotic treatment, East Asian patients have a lower risk for atherothrombotic diseases (especially, Coronary Artery Disease [CAD]) and a higher risk for bleeding (especially, gastrointestinal bleeding and hemorrhagic stroke). Despite these observations, antithrombotic treatment strategies in East Asian patients are mainly based on the American or European guidelines that are derived from randomized, controlled trials including mostly Caucasians. Despite a low response to clopidogrel, East Asian patients with CAD show a similar or even a lower rate of ischemic event occurrence and higher bleeding risk compared with Caucasian patients. The latter is referred to as the "East Asian Paradox", suggesting a dissimilar therapeutic window for antiplatelet therapy than Caucasians. In addition, different net clinical benefits have been observed between the races with potent P2Y12 inhibitors that may be related to racial differences in pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles. Furthermore, there is emerging concern regarding differences between East Asian vs. Western patients in pharmacodynamic and clinical efficacies of anticoagulant agents. We now summarize experimental and clinical evidence of the efficacy and safety of antithrombotic agents in the East Asian population. We suggest the concept of "race-tailored antithrombotic treatment" in CAD patients and/or in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention.


There has been a general view articulated within the railway industry that there needs to be greater systems thinking and systems engineering applied to major projects within the industry (Network Rail, 2013 and Rail Safety and Standards Board, 2012). However, there are many differing ideas held by practising engineers of exactly what systems engineering is and how it is applied within the industry. There are also barriers within industry in general, management and practising engineers to using systems engineering techniques. They can be seen as an overhead in terms of, training, tooling, effort and costs. Also the benefits to be gained from applying these techniques are not easily seen when they work well.

A key pillar of systems engineering and systems thinking is the ability to look at a system as a whole. Part of this is getting to grips with what a system really is, it's interaction with its operational environment and the world around it and to understand the various subsystems that the system is comprised of and their interaction, including people. This is particularly difficult when it comes to complex systems like railways.

This project attempts to develop an approach to modelling a whole railway system (or Guided Transport System (GTS) as it is defined in this project) by implementing a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and techniques. It also proposes definitions of a system and system engineering that are applicable to the Railway industry. Through a common view of a GTS as a whole and a common approach to modelling it, it should be possible to address some of the barriers to systems engineering techniques that currently exist.

MBSE has three pillars, a method, a modelling language and a modelling tool (Delligatti, 2014, pp. 4-7). The author has developed a method that can be applied to a whole complex system, such as a GTS, supported by the SysML modelling language implemented through the Enterprise Architect modelling tool (other languages and modelling tools could also be used).

The method developed was then tested on a body of students studying for an MSc in Railway Systems Engineering and Integration at the University of Birmingham. This body was chosen because the course is part time and the majority of the students work full time in the industry. Thus the author was able to gain an insight into how diverse the opinions on systems engineering and its application actually are within the industry and get valuable feedback on the systems modelling methodology developed during this research.

It has been demonstrated through the development of a partial model of various representative parts of a GTS, that it is possible, within a single model, to capture and represent a large and diverse amount of information about a GTS as it is defined within this thesis. This includes:

• its context within the wider world and its operational environment;
• its physical structure;
• the relationships between its various subsystems and the outside world;
• the views of a diverse stakeholder group and their Requirements; and
• critical system properties and how these are derived from the various layers of abstraction within the system.

The methodology drives the user to develop a model that:

1. is re-usable, e.g. applicable to different railways at different times;
2. is extendable in length (be able to model more railway) and depth (greater levels of detail);
3. allows the inclusion of existing quantitative and qualitative models from other sources;
4. encourages the use of data from existing sources;
5. is open and transparent to allow others to use and add to them; and
6. enables the production of outputs that are readily understandable across disciplinary divides e.g. common representation.


Heat conduction in a medium can be modelled as the motion of a weighty phonon gas in a dielectric based on the concept of thermomass. Newtonian mechanics has then been used to establish the momentum equation for the phonon gas, which is the general conduction law and it degenerates into various heat conduction models for the appropriate simplified conditions. These phenomena show that heat has energymass duality, that is, heat acts like energy during its conversion with other forms of energy and then acts like mass during its motion. Furthermore, the general relation between the heat flux and the temperature gradient can be derived from the Boltzmann transport equation for phonons. In the high heat flux case the thermal conductivity for nano-materials calculated based on Fourier's law is the apparent thermal conductivity, which is less than the actual intrinsic thermal conductivity. A more general heat conduction model for nano-systems is then presented. Finally, the quantity, entransy, is introduced based on an analogy between heat conduction and electric conduction, which is a simplified expression of the thermomass potential energy. The principle of minimum entransy dissipation-based thermal resistance can be used for optimizing the heat transfer process to increase the energy efficiency.


This study by O'Connor and colleagues investigated the combination of brentuximab vedotin plus bendamustine in patients with relapsed/refractory Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). Both drugs have been studied as single agents in this setting; brentuximab vedotin was found to have an overall response rate (ORR) of 74% and complete response (CR) rate of 32% in a pivotal phase II trial (1). For single agent bendamustine an ORR of 53% and CR rate of 33% was reported (2). The clinical rationale of this study was to combine the two agents to increase their efficacy. However, no preclinical rationale was provided for this combination in this manuscript.


Previous research has shown that speech comprehension is a left hemisphere (LH) dominant task for right-handed individuals. Associating hemispheres of the brain with specific tasks helps us relate cognitive function to brain structures. The majority of past research has been conducted using English. The purpose of the present research was to determine if language is lateralized in Gujarati, an Indian language, to the same extent as English. In this experiment, participants were asked to determine if an auditorily presented stimulus was a word or nonword in Gujarati. Each word/nonword was presented randomly to the participant's right or left ear. Because the auditory cortex is arranged contralaterally, words presented to the right ear are initially processed in the left hemisphere and words presented to the left ear are initially processed in the right hemisphere. Half of the real words were concrete words (e.g., carrot) and half were abstract (e.g., truth). According to Paivio's dual coding theory, concrete words strongly activate both hemispheres, while abstract words strongly activate only the LH. As a result, I hypothesized that concrete words will be processed the fastest and there should be no difference when they are presented to the right ear (LH) or left ear (RH). In contrast, decision times for abstract words should be faster when presented to the right ear (LH) than the left ear (RH). Both abstract and concrete words should be processed faster than nonwords. While further research must be conducted, the results of this experiment provided much needed information about the processing/lateralization of both English and Gujarati words in the brain.


In this paper I examine women survivors' stories about childbirth and child-raising during the period of mass violence following Indonesia's 1965 coup, as well as some accounts of abortion during detention. The focus of my research is not on children's experiences per se but rather on women survivors' accounts about what happened to their children. I discuss various aspects of these experiences, including: being pregnant and giving birth; caring for children in and outside detention; the harm and abuse of children; losing children; and forced abortions. These stories reveal much about how women cared for and lost children as well as about what happened to children during the violence of 1965. I argue that examining these experiences must therefore also be central to understanding how women and their children survived and coped with the mass violence of 1965–1966. I also argue that these stories of caring for children, as well as of how children were harmed or lost, were fundamental parts of many women's testimonies.


∗ Most cosmopolitans who are concerned about world poverty assume that for citizens of affluent societies, justice beyond national borders is a matter of their positive duty to provide aid to distant people suffering from severe poverty. This assumption is challenged by some authors, notably Tomas Pogge, who maintains that these citizens are actively involved in the incidence of poverty abroad and therefore neglect their negative duty of refraining from harming others. This paper examines the extent to which it is pertinent to contend that citizens in economically advanced countries are morally liable for the impoverishment of a sizable population of the developing world. The contention in question can be interpreted in two nonexclusive ways. First, it might imply that historical injustices, including colonialism and slavery, contributed to both contemporary affluence in some parts of the world and poverty in others. Second, it could imply that the present global economic system, instituted and implemented by the governments of rich and powerful countries acting in the name of their citizens, is benefiting the citizens while harming the world's disadvantaged. The author argues that the idea of reparation for historical injustices suffers from serious philosophical difficulties, including the non-identity problem presented by Derek Parfit, and thus fails to provide a satisfactory approach to the existing problem of poverty. This paper then examines the alleged liability of citizens in affluent countries, with a special reference to empirical observations on the policy process. The paper concludes by suggesting a twofold theory of global justice, which combines material, managerial, and moral assistances for a society lacking a competent government and proposes institutional reforms in the global order in order to achieve poverty reduction.


Atomic force microscope (AFM) has been developed at first for topography imaging; in addition, it is used for characterization of mechanical properties. Most researches have been primarily focused on rectangular single-beam probes to make vibration models simple. Recently, the U-shaped AFM probe is employed to determine sample elastic properties and has been developed to heat samples locally. In this study, a simplified analytical model of these U-shaped AFM is described and three beams have been used for modelling this probe. This model contains two beams are clamped at one end and connected with a perpendicular cross beam at the other end. The beams are supposed only in bending flexure and twisting, but their coupling allows a wide variety of possible dynamic behaviors. In the present research, the natural frequency and sensitivity of flexural and torsional vibration for AFM probes have been analyzed considering influence of scale effect. For this purpose, governing equations of dynamic behavior of U-shaped AFM probe are extracted based on Eringen's theory using Euler–Bernoulli beam theory and an analytical method is employed to solve these equations. The results in this paper have been extracted for different values of nonlocal parameters; it is shown that for a special case, there is a good agreement between reported results in available references and our results. The obtained results show that the frequencies of U-shaped AFM decrease with increasing the nonlocal parameter.


This paper presents a review of the most important flow phenomena associated with flying at high angles of attack, as well as behavior of aerodynamic stability derivatives under such flight conditions. A short note is given of problems encountered by todays fighter aircraft, when flying at a high angle of attack. Discussion of reliable aerodynamic and flight mechanics models is also included. The paper emphasises the fact that, for a correct prediction of aircraft motion at high angle of attack, significant changes in aerodynamic stability derivatives should be taken into consideration. New concepts in combat aircraft design require more attention to be given to the prediction of aircraft dynamic behavior at extreme maneuvers. At the early stages of the developing program, where wind-tunnel results are still not fully available, simple and reliable computational and prediction techniques of non-linear aerodynamic characteristics are required. In some flow regimes, especially for thin wings having sharp leading edges and/or tips the nonlinear Vortex Lattice Method can be recommended as giving load distribution and stability derivatives in good agreement with the experimental results.


Noninvasive measurements of variceal pressure adequately reflect the hemodynamic effects of propranolol on portal hypertension. However, the prognostic value of variceal pressure responses during continued propranolol therapy has not been evaluated, and it is unclear whether this may substitute invasive measurements of portal pressure response. Fifty‐five portal hypertensive patients with cirrhosis were studied before and at 4 months of continued propranolol therapy. Variceal pressure was measured using an endoscopic pressure gauge. Portal pressure was evaluated as the hepatic venous pressure gradient (HVPG). Over a 28 ± 11 month follow‐up, 16 patients experienced variceal bleeding. Baseline characteristics were similar in bleeders and nonbleeders. At 4 months, reduction in variceal pressure was less marked in bleeders than in nonbleeders (5% ± 20% vs. −15% ± 24%; P = .03). A fall in variceal pressure 20% or greater of baseline was an independent predictor of absence of variceal bleeding; which occurred in 5% of patients with a 20% or greater fall in variceal pressure versus 42% of patients with less than a 20% reduction (P = .004). The HVPG response had similar independent prognostic value (decrease ≥20%: 6% bleeding; decrease <20%: 45% bleeding; P = .004) but identified different patients. Achieving a 20% decrease in either variceal pressure or HVPG was highly sensitive (85%) and specific (93%) identifying patients not bleeding on follow‐up. Endoscopic measurements of variceal pressure response to continued pharmacotherapy provide useful prognostic information on the risk of variceal bleeding. As with HVPG response, a fall in variceal pressure of 20% or greater is associated with a very low risk of variceal bleeding. The combination of both parameters allows almost optimal prognostication.


Amorphous hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids have been successfully fabricated via a facile one-pot hydrothermal route, followed by morphological conversion into urchin-like structured NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 nanorods and irregular-shaped hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 polyhedral nanocrystals through air-annealing treatment at 450 °C and 650 °C, respectively. The phase structure, morphology and chemical composition have been characterized in detail. Calcined hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids show improved microwave absorption properties, which are ascribed to the synergistic effect of dielectric CoNiO2 and NiCo2O4 phases. In particular, the calcined hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids at 450 °C exhibit significant enhancement in complex permittivity with respect to others due to their remarkable dipole polarization and interfacial polarization. The maximum reflection loss (RL) of the calcined hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids at 450 °C reaches −42.13 dB at 11.84 GHz with a matching thickness of 1.55 mm, and a relatively broad absorption bandwidth (RL ≤ −10 dB) in the 13.12–17.04 GHz range. Very interestingly, the electromagnetic (EM) wave absorption performance of the hierarchical NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids shows dependence on the Co2+/Co3+ ratio. The calcined NiCo2O4–CoNiO2 hybrids at 450 °C of the most defect concentration possess the best EM wave absorption ability among all the samples. The results suggest that appropriate interactions between the building blocks in hybrids can guide us to design and fabricate highly efficient EM wave absorption materials.


The genus Rhodococcus comprises aerobic gram-positive actinomycetes that show considerable morphological and metabolic diversity and are known to be involved in the development of plant diseases and degradation of environmental pollutants. We describe a method for cell lysis and large plasmid DNA isolation from Rhodococcus by creating lysozyme susceptible cells by predigestion with the enzyme mutanolysin. Mutanolysin action resulted in the liberation of reducing sugars and free amino acids from the peptidoglycan layers of the cell wall. A 1-h predigestion with mutanolysin followed by a 0.5-h incubation with lysozyme resulted in spheroplast formation. Complete lysis of cells and efficient isolation of intact large plasmid DNA (108 kb) from wild-type Rhodococcus strains was confirmed.


This paper deals with the scattering of electromagnetic waves by rough surfaces. The problem is examined using the Rayleigh hypothesis (i.e. we assume that the field can be represented in the selvedge region by a plane wave expansion). In order to obtain the spectral components of the transmitted field we use the extinction theorem as a boundary condition. This leads to a generalized form of the reduced Rayleigh equations for any case of polarization and for any surface. Then an exact iterative series solution can be obtained. The numerical implementation and properties of convergence of this solution are discussed. Scattering by a grating is considered in details and comparisons with previous rigorous approaches are reported. In addition, it is shown that the case of conical diffraction is easily handled with this formalism.


developed the means to organize traditions in the way their successors at Usha elaborated and which characterize the Mishnah. We are also introduced to Neusner's well-known criterion of 'verification' by which a reference from a named authority to an already existing tradition provides the terminus ad quem for the date of the saying; i.e. attributions are never taken at face value. Finally, what do we learn about the Pharisees? Nothing is remembered of their external relations or of any political activity; what the rabbis record is a sect occupied with matters of dietary regulations, table purity and associated agricultural requirements. This profile coheres with that of the New Testament leaving Josephus's description on the agenda for the next stage of the debate.


More than 1 million wildlife-vehicle collisions occur annually in the United States. The majority of these accidents involve white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and result in >US $4.6 billion in damage and >200 human fatalities. Prior research has used collision locations to assess sitespecific as well as landscape features that contribute to risk of deer-vehicle collisions. As an alternative approach, we calculated road-crossing locations from 25 GPS-instrumented white-tailed deer near Madison, Georgia (n = 154,131 hourly locations). We identified crossing locations by creating movement paths between subsequent GPS points and then intersecting the paths with road locations. Using AIC model selection, we determined whether 10 local and landscape variables were successful at identifying areas where higher frequencies of deer crossings were likely to occur. Our findings indicate that traffic volume, distance to riparian areas, and the amount of forested area influenced the frequency of road crossings. Roadways that were predominately located in wooded landscapes and 200–300 m from riparian areas were crossed frequently. Additionally, we found that areas of low traffic volume (e.g., county roads) had the highest frequencies of deer crossings. Analyses utilizing only records of deer-vehicle collision locations cannot separate the relative contribution of deer crossing rates and traffic volume. Increased frequency of road crossings by deer in low-traffic, forested areas may lead to a greater risk of deer-vehicle collision than suggested by evaluations of deer-vehicle collision frequency alone.


Circular leaf spot (CLS), caused by Plurivorosphaerella nawae, is a serious disease of persimmon (Diospyros kaki) inducing necrotic lesions on leaves, defoliation and fruit drop. Under Mediter-ranean conditions, P. nawae forms pseudothecia in the leaf litter during winter and ascospores are released in spring infecting susceptible leaves. Persimmon growers are advised to apply fungicides for CLS control during the period of inoculum availability, which was defined based on ascospore counts under the microscope. A model of inoculum availability of P. nawae was developed and evaluated as an alternative to ascospore counts. Leaf litter samples were collected weekly in L'Alcúdia from 2010 to 2015. Leaves were soaked, placed in a wind tunnel, and released ascospores of P. nawae were counted. Hierarchical Bayesian beta regression methods were used to fit the dynamics of ascospore production in the leaf litter. The selected model, having the lowest values of DIC, WAIC and LCPO, included accumulated degree days (ADD) and ADD taking into account the vapor pressure deficit (ADDvpd) as fixed effects, and year as a random effect. This model had a MAE of 0.042 and RMSE of 0.062. The beta regression model was evaluated in four orchards for different years from 2010 to 2015. Higher accuracy was obtained at the beginning and the end of the ascospore production period, which are the events of interest to schedule fungicide sprays for CLS control in Spain. This same modelling framework can be extended to other fungal plant pathogens whose inoculum dynamics are expressed as proportion data.


In 4G/5G high speed systems the receiver should be able to recover the data i.e effective channel estimation is essential. Basically it is done to know or to predict the behaviour of wireless channel. We add extra bits with the data bits to know the behaviour of the channel these bits are called pilots. Now, it is achieved by using dedicated pilot symbols which consume a non negligible part of the throughput and power resources especially for large dimensional systems. The main objective of this paper is to quantify the rate of reduction of this overhead due to the use of a semi-blind channel estimation. Different data models and different pilot design schemes have been considered in this study. By using the Cramér Rao Bound (CRB) tool, the estimation error variance bounds of the pilot-based and semi-blind based channel estimators for a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) system are compared. In particular, for large MIMO-OFDM systems, a direct computation of the CRB is prohibitive and hence a dedicated numerical technique for its fast computation has been developed. Many key observations have been made from this comparative study. The most important one is that, thanks to the semi-blind approach, one can skip about 95% of the pilot samples without affecting the channel estimation quality.


The contents of total flavonoid(TF) and total phenolic acid(TPA) in ethanol extracts from bamboo leaves of 21 species of Phyllostachys were determined, and the scavenging effects of ethanol extracts from bamboo leaves on DPPH and ABTS were also studied. The results showed that the ethanol extracts from bamboo leaves of 20 species of Phyllostachys contained rich flavonoid and phenolic acid, total content of which were respectively 8.963 mg/g~28.0614 mg/g and 12.3767 mg/g~31.8915 mg/g. Through the studies of antioxidant activities, it indicated that ethanol extracts of different bamboo species all had potent antioxidant activities, which was positively correlated with total flavonoids and phenolic acid. This paper provided a scientific basis for the research of active constituent and the exploitation of bamboo leaves from different species.


Numerical simulation becomes essential in manufacturing large part by incremental forging processes. It is a splendid tool allowing to show physical phenomena however behind the scenes, an expensive bill should be paid, that is the computational time. That is why many techniques are developed to decrease the computational time of numerical simulation. Multi-Grid method is a numerical procedure that permits to reduce computational time of numerical calculation by performing the resolution of the system of equations on several mesh of decreasing size which allows to smooth faster the low frequency of the solution as well as its high frequency. In this paper a Multi-Grid method is applied to cogging process in the software Forge 3. The study is carried out using increasing number of degrees of freedom. The results shows that calculation time is divide by two for a mesh of 39,000 nodes. The method is promising especially if coupled with Multi-Mesh method.


Currently, in the paper industry, paper mill pulping relies on unsustainable and costly processes to remove lignin from lignocellulosic material. A greener approach is biopulping, which uses microbes and their enzymes to break down lignin. ABSTRACT Novel bacterial isolates with the capabilities of lignin depolymerization, catabolism, or both, could be pertinent to lignocellulosic biofuel applications. In this study, we aimed to identify anaerobic bacteria that could address the economic challenges faced with microbial-mediated biotechnologies, such as the need for aeration and mixing. Using a consortium seeded from temperate forest soil and enriched under anoxic conditions with organosolv lignin as the sole carbon source, we successfully isolated a novel bacterium, designated 159R. Based on the 16S rRNA gene, the isolate belongs to the genus Sodalis in the family Bruguierivoracaceae. Whole-genome sequencing revealed a genome size of 6.38 Mbp and a GC content of 55 mol%. To resolve the phylogenetic position of 159R, its phylogeny was reconstructed using (i) 16S rRNA genes of its closest relatives, (ii) multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of 100 genes, (iii) 49 clusters of orthologous groups (COG) domains, and (iv) 400 conserved proteins. Isolate 159R was closely related to the deadwood associated Sodalis guild rather than the tsetse fly and other insect endosymbiont guilds. Estimated genome-sequence-based digital DNA-DNA hybridization (dDDH), genome percentage of conserved proteins (POCP), and an alignment analysis between 159R and the Sodalis clade species further supported that isolate 159R was part of the Sodalis genus and a strain of Sodalis ligni. We proposed the name Sodalis ligni str. 159R (=DSM 110549 = ATCC TSD-177). IMPORTANCE Currently, in the paper industry, paper mill pulping relies on unsustainable and costly processes to remove lignin from lignocellulosic material. A greener approach is biopulping, which uses microbes and their enzymes to break down lignin. However, there are limitations to biopulping that prevent it from outcompeting other pulping processes, such as requiring constant aeration and mixing. Anaerobic bacteria are a promising alternative source for consolidated depolymerization of lignin and its conversion to valuable by-products. We presented Sodalis ligni str. 159R and its characteristics as another example of potential mechanisms that can be developed for lignocellulosic applications.


In this article, it is argued that in the process of cultural transfer, literary translation and reception, the recipient will often transform the cultural rules and literary discourse in the original texts to make them fit the rules and discourse of the recipient reader/audience to target the taste of new readers. This phenomenon, which we call literary 'domestic appropriation', is a kind of transformation on a deeper level. Domestic appropriation is what can we get from literary variation, and it is the core part of variation studies. In cultural and literary exchange and dialogue between Chinese and European cultures, it occurs in both literary works and literary theory. History has witnessed how Chinese literary works are translated and introduced to Europe, in the process becoming an integral part of the canon of European literature. Chinese literary theory, when interpreted by European theorists, blends with local theory and furnishes new perspectives.


Recent evidence suggests that an aldosterone synthase (AS) separate from the 11 beta-hydroxylase (11 beta-OHase) mediates the final step(s) in aldosterone synthesis in the rat. We have compared changes in AS and 11 beta-OHase mRNA levels with experimental maneuvers known to stimulate or suppress aldosterone secretion. In Exp 1, male rats were fed regular rat chow (group 1), a low sodium, high potassium diet (group 2), or a high sodium, low potassium diet (group 3). Northern analysis of adrenal capsular (zona glomerulosa) and decapsulated adrenal core (fasciculata-reticularis) tissues was performed with specific oligonucleotide probes for AS and 11 beta-OHase mRNAs, normalized with a cDNA probe for 18S ribosomal RNA (rRNA). There was a marked increase in capsular AS mRNA in group 2 rats compared to levels in group 1 (P < 0.0001) and group 3 (P < 0.0001) rats. Capsular As mRNA decreased (P < 0.05) in group 3 compared to that in group 1 rats. Adrenal core AS mRNA levels were quite low with all three diets. In contrast, capsular and core 11 beta-OHase mRNA levels did not change significantly with diet. In Exp 2, two groups served as controls (groups 1 and 3), and two groups received sc injections of repository ACTH (groups 2 and 4). Control and ACTH-treated rats were killed 3 h (groups 1 and 2) or 24 h (groups 3 and 4) after initial ACTH administration. Capsular and core AS and 11 beta-OHase mRNA levels were evaluated with and without normalization with 18S rRNA, cyclophilin, and glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase housekeeping probes. Capsular AS mRNA increased at 3 h (P < 0.05), but decreased at 24 h (P < 0.01). Nonnormalized adrenal capsular and core 11 beta-OHase mRNA levels were unchanged at 3 h, but increased significantly at 24 h (P < 0.05) in capsular tissue of ACTH-treated rats. However, in ACTH-treated rats, 18S rRNA and cyclophilin mRNA levels increased at 24 h in both capsular and core tissue (P < 0.01), and glyceraldehyde phosphate dehydrogenase mRNA levels increased in capsular tissue (P < 0.00001), resulting in a lack of change in normalized 11 beta-OHase mRNA. Changes in cholesterol side-chain cleavage were similar to those in 11 beta-OHase mRNA. These data provide further evidence that a separate AS plays a significant role in modulating aldosterone secretion in rodents.


Urdu is spoken by more than 500 million people around the world but still is an under-researched language. The studies presented in this thesis focus on typical and poor literacy development in Urdu-speaking children during early reading acquisition. In the first study, we developed and validated a series of tests to assess reading and reading-related skills in Urdu, resulting in a test battery to diagnose dyslexia. For an in-depth understanding of the nature of typical and impaired reading processes in Urdu, in next two substudies the dual-route model (DRM) was adopted. In the first substudy we elaborated on the dual orthography of Urdu due to the presence or absence of short vowel markers or diacritics. We investigated this transparency effect as well as lexicality effects in terms of the DRM by measuring accuracy and speed of reading of (a) words with and without diacritics and (b) words and pseudowords. We found that both the typical and struggling readers preferred the visual word-recognition route over letter-to-sound conversion. Our final study addressed the letter-position effect resulting from the fact that in the Urdu orthography many letters change shape according to their position in a word. We found reading accuracy to be higher for words in which migrated letters changed shape as compared to same-shape cognates. This was again true for both the typical and the struggling readers but more so for the latter group. We conclude that the test battery allows for diagnosing and profiling the reading skills and deficits of typically developing and struggling readers in Urdu.


The Workshop on Reliability Issues in Nanomaterials was held at the Boulder Laboratories of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on August 17-19, 2004. It was designed to promote a particular subset of NIST's responsibilities under the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The goal was to achieve consensus on two related topics: (a) identification of specific measurement-related barriers to successful incorporation of reliable nanomaterials into widespread engineering practice in the next 5 to 10 years; and (b) identification of measurement methodologies, standards, data, and models that might be appropriate for overcoming these barriers. 34 participants, representing cutting-edge nanomechanics-related research and development in industry, academia, and national laboratories attended and contributed. Adding NIST-Boulder staff who attended brought the total to about 40. The workshop format promoted discussion on the intended topics, and included: (i) a pre-workshop questionnaire addressed by plenary and breakout speakers; (ii) invitation of 10 plenary speakers who gave hour-long presentations, and 23 breakout speakers who gave brief presentations addressing points raised in the questionnaire. Key conclusions included: Industrial, academic, and national laboratory consensus indicated that there is always a need to understand fundamental causes of failure. Such understanding should then lead to re-design that is more reliable, and to improved manufacturing. The goal of accurate performance and lifetime prediction for nanomaterials depends on the interplay between accurate materials testing and characterization, and reliability models incorporating valid measured data. Attendees agreed that while the synergy among industry, academia, and national laboratories was effective, more fundamental materials research is needed, where the actual division of labor would be determined by market forces and policy. It was suggested that NIST could serve the unique role of developing metrology, standards, and materials characterization methods for improving reliability of nanomaterials. The most challenging and general metrology recommendation was the development of an "atom imager," a hypothetical instrument capable of measuring the chemical identity and precise 3-dimensional position of every atom within a nanomaterial. Such an instrument was postulated to be the key tool for optimizing fabrication/manufacturing and controlling reliability of nanomaterials. Nearer-term recommendations centered on improving the metrological performance of scanned probe microscopy (SPM) and nanoindentation. A secondary theme in many presentations was the need for modeling to be formally coupled with physical measurement in any study of nanomaterials; however, no novel computational tool or dataset was identified as a priority need.


Many moth species biosynthesize their sex pheromones by the action of unique desaturases. These membrane-bound family of enzymes are especially interesting, since some of them produce (E)-unsaturated fatty acids either exclusively or along with the (Z)-isomer. In this article we present the first mechanistic study on one of these enzymes, namely, the Delta11-myristoyl-CoA desaturase of the moth Spodoptera littoralis. Intermolecular primary isotope effect determinations were performed in competition experiments. The unusual use of odd-number fatty acids, tridecanoic acid and deuterium-labeled tridecanoic acid, in these experiments showed the existence of a large isotope effect for the carbon-hydrogen bond cleavage at C11, but no isotope discrimination occurred in the removal of C12-H. The results of the competitive experiments are consistent with the hypothesis that this Delta11-desaturase involves a first slow, isotope-sensitive C11-H bond cleavage, with probable formation of an unstable intermediate, followed by a second fast C12-H bond removal. We suggest that a single enzyme may be responsible for the formation of both (Z)- and (E)-11-tetradecenoic acids by accommodating both gauche and anti conformers of the substrate, respectively. It is also possible that two mechanistically identical discrete enzymes are involved in each desaturation. In this case, the geometry of the resulting double bond would result from the different conformation adopted by the acyl substrate at each enzyme active site.


An experimental comparison of the performances of a new high intensity contactor and a conventional packed column in stripping dissolved aromatics from water is described. The contactor gives significantly lower values of HOL. These, combined with the much higher liquid fluxes, give volumetric mass transfer coefficients, KLa, several hundred times higher than those for the packed column and substantially higher than those in the literature for bubble columns. Performance is particularly good on saline water due to suppression of bubble coalescence. That characteristic would be beneficial in the removal of aromatics from produced water in oil and gas production. The contactor utilizes enhanced acceleration fields achieved by water injection and so should be insensitive to the marine motion and tilt experienced on offshore floating production systems, as well as being compact. At constant water rate, KLa ∝ Gn with n ranging from 0.50 to 0.92. Some preliminary results on the effects of liquid feed rate and initial bubble size are included, the latter confirming the importance of bubble size on performance. Pressure drop and consequent energy requirements are also considered.


The similarity between the semantic relations that exist between two word pairs is defined as their relational similarity. For example, the semantic relation, is a large holds between the words in the word pair (lion, cat) and (ostrich, bird), because lion is a large cat, and ostrich is the largest living bird on earth. Consequently, the two word pairs, (lion, cat) and (ostrich, bird), are considered to be relationally similar. A high degree of relational similarity can be observed between analogous pairs of words. Measuring the relational similarity between word pairs is important in numerous natural language processing tasks such as solving word analogy questions, classifying noun-modifier relations and disambiguating word senses. We propose a supervised ranking-based method to detect relationally similar word pairs to a given word pair using information retrieved from a Web search engine. First, each pair of words is represented by a vector of automatically extracted lexical patterns. Then a ranking Support Vector Machine is trained to recognize word pairs with similar semantic relations to a given word pair. To train and evaluate the proposed method, we use a benchmark dataset that contains 374 SAT multiple-choice word-analogy questions. To represent the relations that exist between two word pairs, we experiment with 11 different feature functions, including both symmetric and asymmetric feature functions. Our experimental results show that the proposed ranking-based approach outperforms several previously proposed relational similarity measures on this benchmark dataset, achieving an SAT score of 46.9.