The Administration of Justice in Spain is going through a deep modernization process aiming both at procedural and organizational reforms. The setting up of the new Judicial Office is precisely the major change of the organization of the Administration of Justice in the last century. In this context, there is a shift in the role played by the regional governments with responsibilities in the field of Justice, as far as these regional governments are not only collaborators of the Judiciary at domestic jurisdiction, but they also become "actors" as they have decision making powers to create, to design and to organize the common procedural services of the Judicial Office and, hence, to set up the Judicial Office in each judicial district in their territory. This text presents the context and the reasons behind the setting up of the Judicial Office as a new way of organization of the Spanish Administration of Justice; the Judiciary in Spain and the responsibilities of the regional governments in the Administration of Justice; the meaning of the Judicial Office and its guiding principles; the role of the Basque Government in setting up the Judicial Office in the Basque Country, paying special attention to its activity in the field of standardization of processes, the quality system, and of information, communication and coordination; the results of the first Judicial Offices. Finally the paper questions whether the regional or national governments are just "collaborators" or real "actors" of the Administration of Justice at domestic jurisdiction.


The goals of this study were: to determine the possibility of forecasting for the preferences of cycling on the basis of all relevant factors Zagreb cycling (1) and to determine the differences between the participants in all the relevant factors in Zagreb cycling, by gender, in relation to membership in the Association "Trad Union of bicyclists", type of cycling and part of the city where cyclists live (2). Over 3000 members of the Association and cyclists who are not members of the Association ("average" cyclist) are tested, using conveniently assembled questionnaire. It turned out that latent dimensions of the sub-questionnaires well represented themes: barriers to cycling, the role of the City in bicycle traffic, the purpose of using bicycle accident during bicycle traffic. People who are more inclined to participate in city traffic riding, often believe that the City should significantly improve conditions for cycling, tend to safer driving and more negative estimate lack of road cycling conditions in Zagreb. Women and members of the Union of cyclists often feel that the City should improve conditions for cycling and negatively evaluate the existing conditions of cycling, more often use the bike for different purposes and had frequent accidents bicycle. In the northern part of the city, Samobor, Zapresic and Sesvete, Dugo Selo and Ivanja Reka participants were assessed to have the most adverse road conditions for cycling, while the wider center of Zagreb currently has the most favorable conditions for cycling. The results provide the guidance for improving the safety of the cycling in Zagreb and its surrounding, for taking constructive social actions at the state level and on the local- community level, as well as in the broader context of sustainable development.


Inconsistent results in prior work that link environmental strategy to competitive advantage may be due to the empirical difficulties of marrying the theoretical connection between a firm's resource base and its environmental strategy. The authors contribute to the field by developing a measure that is congruent with the natural resource—based view, a dominant paradigm in this line of work. This article content analyses company reports and secondary data to develop a measure of environmental strategy grounded in the natural resource—based view. They identify six environmental capabilities that form components of a reliable, multidimensional construct of proactive environmental strategy. They also identify a measure of reactive compliance strategy. They verify reliability of their new measure through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, establish convergent and discriminant validity via a multitrait, multimethod matrix and demonstrate superior predictive validity of their measure compared to two others commonly used in the literature. In the conclusion, they discuss implications for research and practice.


A numerical solution of the RLW equation is presented using a cubic spline collocation method. Basic cubic spline relations are outlined and incorporated into the numerical solution procedure. Two test problems are studied to show the robustness of the proposed procedure.


The methods of the structural reliability mainly involve analytical approximate reliability index or numerical simulation, which using the finite element solver is time-consuming and large computation. Important sampling (IS) for structural reliability analysis based on radial basis functions neural network (RBFNN) is proposed in the paper, in which trained RBFNN can model the implicit function between the structure response and input random variables. And limit state function of structure is simulated with RBFNN model applied to calculate the design point. The results show that the RBFNN can simulate the limit state functions of structures. Besides, calculation procedure based on finite element solver for structural analysis is greatly reduced and the efficiency in structural reliability evaluation is improved.


This essay commemorates the large historical lives of Chinua Achebe and Nelson Mandela, both of whom died in 2013. It is noted that the nature of African and world reactions to the deaths of the two men undoubtedly reflected their different biographies, the relative valuations of the political and the artistic in the popular imagination, the oscillation of ideas and action in the praxis and political economy of social struggle, and the assorted demands and terms of literary and political combat. It is argued that underlying the different remembrances were the thick braids of the twists and turns of modern African history, of the continent's struggles for the triple dreams of African nationalism—decolonization, democracy, and development—that intersected the lives of the two men. Achebe's and Mandela's significance arises out of the manner in which their stories embodied and bore witness to Africa's protracted drama for historical and humanistic agency, for the reclamation, reconstitution, reaffirmation, and self-representation of Africa and its peoples from the existential, economic, and epistemic violence of Europe that began with the depravities of the Atlantic slave trade and intensified with the depredations of colonialism. Also, their lifetimes reflected the profound complexities, contradictions, and changes of colonial and postcolonial Africa, the development of African worlds—its cultures, arts, polities, economies, societies, and ecologies—out of the interconnections, intersectionalities, and intertextualities of Africa and Europe, as well as Africa and the world mediated by the diaspora and globalization. The essay explores the historical journeys and meanings of Achebe's and Mandela's lives placed in the expansive context of African nationalism. In this intriguing story, their two countries bookend each other.


We present a solution to estimate in-vivo the joint dynamics of the human limbs during passive movements. The method is based on well-known modelling and approach used in robotics that allow simultaneous multi-joint estimation. The modelling of the human body and the human joint as well as the method are described. The experimental set-up based on the use of an optical motion capture system is detailed. Three types of movements are recorded and used to perform the identification. We concluded that designed movements and movements from clinical diagnosis of neuromuscular diseases are good to perform the identification; however swing of the arms during normal walk does not provide enough excitation to obtain consistent results.


Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the level of kyphotic deformity of spinal column among osteoporotic patients during balloon Kyphoplasty with T-score and Z-score and the effect of osteoporosis on the results of kyphoplasty surgery.
Methods: After operation conducted patients suffering from osteoporotic fractures resorting for kyphoplasty from 2015 to 2016. Based upon inclusion criteria, the patients underwent kyphoplasty. Kyphotic angle, Cobb angle, the height of the fractured vertebrae in the anterior, the middle and posterior parts of the body in each patient were measured and assessed before and after operation.
Results: A significant reduction was observed in post-operation VAS compared to what was observed prior to operation. The post-operation average pain had also decreased in various times (immediately after operation, 2 weeks later, 6 months later) (P=0.0001). The kyphotic angle and post-kyphoplastic Cobb angles had reduced and the height of the vertebrae in the anterior and middle part of the vertebrae had increased. As the level of osteoporosis increased, the sagittal correction was balanced and the height of vertebrae increased. There was no statistically significant correlation between VAS and the level of osteoporosis (P=0.909). The unilateral and bilateral injection of cement caused no significant difference in the results of operation and VAS (P>0.05). There was no significant correlation between the amount of injected cement and correction level of kyphotic and Cobb angles and rise of vertebrae's height.
Conclusions: Kyphoplasty helps improve kyphosis angle and Cobb and increases the height of vertebraes and reduces pain. As the level of osteoporosis increased, the level of sagittal balance correction and height of vertebrae also increased, but no significant correlation was observed between it and average pain reduction.


: A method for quantitative estimation of total deoxyribonucleosides in human urine is based on the preliminary purification of urine usina ion exchange resin Dowex 1X 8 in OH- form, subsequent treatment of urine with acetone-ethynol mixture and the quantitative estimation of deoxyribonucleosides content by a microbiologic method. Urine of healthy persons contained 95.4+/-12.7 microng of deoxyribonucleosides.


In this paper we have analyzed the energy consumption of five mobility models under five different routing protocols. The mobility models considered are Random Walk with Wrapping (RW-W), Random Waypoint with Steady State (RWP-SS), Gauss Markov Mobility Model (GM), Community Based Mobility Model (CM) and Semi-Markov Smooth Mobility Model (SMS). The selected routing protocols are AOMDV, DYMO, FSR, OLSR and TORA. In the literature many have concentrated on the amount of energy consumed by the routing protocols. But there is no detailed analysis of the mobility model's role on routing protocols in energy consumption. We also found contradicting results for TORA routing protocol than that has been found until now. The energy consumed by each of these mobility models are mapped by varying the mobility speed. Our results indicate that the routing protocols are indeed influenced by these mobility models. We also claim that our paper is the first to consider these five mobility models under five different routing protocols and to analyze the energy consumption of each of these mobility models. From our simulation we deduce that with increased complexity of the mobility models the amount of energy consumed also increases among the routing protocols.


Accurate, affordable non-invasive markers are highly needed for efficient diagnosis and management of liver fibrosis caused by chronic hepatitis B. This is the first study to investigate the diagnostic efficiency of Aspartate Transaminase to Platelet Ratio (APRI), Fibrosis Index (FIB-4), Aspartate transaminase to Alanine Transaminase Ratio (AAR) and AAR/Platelet ratio index (AARPRI) as non-invasive markers to predict hepatic fibrosis caused by Chronic Hepatitis B (CHB) in Bangladesh.In this study, a training cohort of 1041 CHB patients were recruited, whereas 104 and 109 CHB patients of matched ages were recruited as internal and external validation cohort groups respectively. Histological and hematological data were analyzed. METAVIR scoring system was used to classify liver fibrosis stages. Area Under Receiver Operating Curve (AUROC), correlations and cutoff values for the four diagnostic markers were calculated and assessed.92%, 81% and 84% of the patients had liver fibrosis in the training cohort, internal and external cohort groups respectively. Among the four noninvasive panels, APRI showed the best area under ROC; (0.767, CI: 0.780-0.914; 0.775) for the training cohort, (0.775, CI: 0.693-0.857), and (0.847, CI: 0.780-0.914) for the internal and external cohorts respectively. Cut-off value of APRI was 0.512 with sensitivity/specificity of 84%/67% in training cohort, 81% / 66% in the internal cohort, and 88% / 66% in an external cohort. The odds ratio for APRI was 32.95 (95%CI: 4.746-228.862,p<0.001).Among all the four tested markers, APRI is the most accurate non-invasive test to predict major liver fibrosis (F2-3) in Bangladeshi CHB patients.


Canadian Large Value Transfer System. We define an operational outage as either no or unusually low activity. We test our algorithm against a database of outages by participants reported in order to reduce false negatives. The false positives can be reduced by excluding "outages found" by the algorithm if a participant historically has no payment in a given five minute time interval. Additionally, we can test whether participants do indeed report all their operational outages. The results show that our algorithm works best for the largest participants as they send in payments continuously. Our method can be used by LVTS system operators and overseers to identify sources of operational risks.


A variational model for epitaxially-strained thin films on rigid substrates is derived both by {\Gamma}-convergence from a transition-layer setting, and by relaxation from a sharp-interface description available in the literature for regular configurations. The model is characterized by a configurational energy that accounts for both the competing mechanisms responsible for the film shape. On the one hand, the lattice mismatch between the film and the substrate generate large stresses, and corrugations may be present because film atoms move to release the elastic energy. On the other hand, flatter profiles may be preferable to minimize the surface energy. Some first regularity results are presented for energetically-optimal film profiles.


When compared to metropolitan cities, rural/regional cities have disadvantages in attracting international students. They face aging populations, a smaller number of companies and less employment and entertainment opportunities. However, these areas can actually provide advantages such as inexpensive living-costs, rich natural environment, and local culture.
This Session will introduce the joint efforts by local governments and universities in Oita of Japan in comparison with Adelaide of South Australia to attract and support international students.
We will cross-analyze the resulting social changes and the effect in creating international envirnment according to their economic/demographic/linguistic conditions.

The speaker will present the two cases of Oita in Japan and the State of South Australia (SA).
In Oita the number of international students has increased by 14 times since the establishment of a private university in 2000. University Consortium Oita was established by the prefectural and city governments in collaboration with the local universities and the local Chambers of Commerce & Industry in order to support the increased number of international students and to promote their exchange with local people in order to create more international environment in the region. Oita prefectural government drew up internationalization strategy in which international students are referred as important actors who will contribute to economy through their employment in local industry and cooperation in the PR of tourism in Oita.

The state government of SA set up Education Adelaide in 1998 in collaboration with the Adelaide City Council and local universities in order to increase SA's market share of international students in Australia and to establish Adelaide as an international education destination. International education is SA's fourth biggest export earner, generating 1 billion Australian dollars in 2010.

Finally, the efforts to attract and support international students and the resulting social changes in Oita of Japan and Adelaide of Australia will be cross-analyzed and categorized according to their economic, demographic, and linguistic attributes.
Then, the audience will be invited to ask questions and to introduce the efforts of their municipalities and universities to attract international students and promote their social inclusion.


This Article offers a theory of secured credit that aims to answer fundamental questions that have long percolated in the bankruptcy and secured transactions literatures. Are security interests property rights, contract rights, or something else? Why do secured creditors enjoy a priority right that, in bankruptcy, requires them to be paid in full before other debt holders recover anything? Should we care that secured credit creates distributional unfairness when companies cannot pay their debts?
This Article argues that security interests are best understood as a form of "limited liability property." Limited liability—the privilege of being legally shielded from liability that would normally apply—has long been considered the quintessential feature of equity interests. But limited liability is in fact a critical feature of security interests as well. When examined closely, security interests enable their holders to assert several privileges of ownership without bearing any of ownership's concomitant burdens.
In seeking to explain security interests, this Article offers a comprehensive account of capital investment more generally, systematically examining the various property-like interests held in corporate capital structures. Though critics have bemoaned the inequity associated with the priority right in bankruptcy—a secured debtholder can get all its assets back in the event of a bankruptcy while unsecured creditors like unpaid employees get nothing—this priority right is an inevitable consequence of recognizing security interests as a form of direct ownership. The real problem lies in the scope of secured debt holders' limited liability protections. While equity holders enjoy limited liability, in return they are paid only after other claims in the event of insolvency. Secured lenders, by contrast, collect first, and are thus arguably overprotected. Understanding security interests as limited liability property, then, offers a more elegant way to understand capital investment at the theoretical level while also helping us recognize when and where our system of secured debt may need reform.


The aeolid nudibranch Caloria elegans (Facelinidae) is quite common in the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Atlantic Ocean and is easily recognized by the presence of a typical black spot at the apical portion of its cerata. Facelina quatrefagesi (Facelinidae) was long considered as a synonym of C. elegans until recently, when it was re-evaluated as a valid species based mainly on rhinophore morphology. In order to definitively assess the status of these aeolid taxa, we employed an integrative taxonomy approach using the nuclear H3 and the two mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I and 16S markers. The molecular analyses clearly showed that, although morphologically closely related to C. elegans, F. quatrefagesi is a valid species.


Large and medium-size transport infrastructure shall increasingly cope with acceptability-related problems. This is due to the lack of confidence that nowadays characterises the relations between public administrations and their citizens, as well as between citizens and the project promoters. Moreover, the subjects that take advantage from the project implementation and those not often do not coincide, whereas the latter are not compensated for the damages they bear. A sound cost-benefit analysis supporting the entire decision-making process may be a valuable tool for fostering the dialogue with all concerned subjects, provided that a set of basic conditions is met. Firstly, cost-benefit analysis has to be credible as far as the effects generated by the project are concerned. Therefore, it shall: (i) secure transparency of: results achieved by the evaluation (including the assumptions and criteria that led to such results), and procedures embedded into the evaluation process; (ii) be performed by independent evaluators rather than those sponsoring the project; (iii) be as much robust as possible, and finally (iv) deliver structured and thorough risk analyses. In order to reinforce credibility and soundness of the analysis and the evaluations undertaken, previous project experiences shall be duly taken into account, which implies fine-tuning ex-ante evaluations upon the basis of the results obtained by ex-post analysis of projects already implemented. Additionally, the evaluation shall be dynamic, as it shall back since the very beginning the whole process of infrastructure designing, and until the project is finalised. Transparency of such process is then a key pre-requisite . The second condition refers to the fact that stakeholders interested into the project shall be actively involved into the planning process. Further major token is that the economic evaluation at the level of approximation featuring the various steps of the project cycle feeds and frame the public debate on the project implementation. This article is based upon results from research activities, enriched with the explanation of few recent case-studies.


Objectives We aimed to assess the effect of metabolic syndrome (MetS) on incident oral potentially malignant disorder (OPMD). Design We conducted a prospective cohort study of the Changhua community-based integrated screening (CHCIS) programme and nationwide oral cancer screening programme during the period between 2005 and 2014. Setting CHCIS, Taiwan. Participants We enrolled 17 590 participants aged 30 years and older. Main outcomes and measures We assessed the impact of MetS on the outcome measured by incident OPMD. Results The incidences of OPMD among subjects with and without MetS were 7.68 ‰ and 5.38 ‰, respectively. After adjusting for confounders, subjects with MetS exhibited a statistically greater risk of developing OPMD compared with those who were free of MetS by 33% (adjusted rate ratio, aRR=1.33, 95% CI 1.14 to 1.55). Individual components of MetS still remained significant, including central obesity (aRR=1.22, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.44), hypertriglyceridaemia (aRR=1.26, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.49) and hyperglycaemia (aRR=1.20, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.41). Central obesity and hypertriglyceridaemia were also statistically associated with a subtype of OPMD, namely, leukoplakia. Conclusion The temporal influence of MetS on the risk of incident OPMD was noted in our prospective cohort study. Therefore, promoting an MetS prevention and control programme might reduce the occurrence of OPMD and oral cancer.


This review focuses on the latest developments in applications of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in medicine. A brief history of CNTs and a general introduction to the field are presented. Then, surface modification of CNTs that makes them ideal for use in medical applications is highlighted. Examples of common applications, including cell penetration, drug delivery, gene delivery and imaging, are given. At the same time, there are concerns about their possible adverse effects on human health, since there is evidence that exposure to CNTs induces toxic effects in experimental models. However, CNTs are not a single substance but a growing family of different materials possibly eliciting different biological responses. As a consequence, the hazards associated with the exposure of humans to the different forms of CNTs may be different. Understanding the structure–toxicity relationships would help towards the assessment of the risk related to these materials. Finally, toxicity of CNTs, are discussed. This review article overviews the most recent applications of CNTs in Nanomedicine, covering the period from 1991 to early 2015.


Kinked saturated m = 1 helical structures are frequently observed in tokamak hybrid plasmas and in reversed field pinches (RFP). These modes occur when an extremum in the safety factor is close to, but necessarily resonant with, a low order rational (typically qmin ≈ 1/1 in tokamaks, and qmax ≈ 1/7 in RFPs). If the exact resonance can be avoided, the essential character of these modes can be modelled assuming ideal nested magnetic flux surfaces. The methods used to characterize these structures include linear and nonlinear ideal magnetohydrodynamic stability calculations, which evaluate the departure from an axisymmetric plasma state, or equilibrium calculations using a 3D equilibrium code. The extent to which these approaches agree in tokamaks and reverse field pinches is investigated, and compared favourably for the first time with an analytic nonlinear treatment that is valid for arbitrary toroidal mode number.


Objective The aim of our study was to assess the effects of acute and chronic smoking on skin microvascular properties of young healthy subjects. Design An observational study, using a totally non-invasive approach, employing continuous palmar microvascular flow (laser Doppler) and arterial pressure measurements, to compute estimates of microvascular resistive (Z0) and oscillatory (impedance, i.e. ZC) properties. Measures were obtained at baseline and after iontophoretic administration of acetylcholine (ACh), an endothelium-dependent vasodilator and of sodium nitroprusside (NP), an endothelium-independent vasodilator. Participants A total of 20 healthy male subjects (nine habitual smokers and 11 non-smokers; aged 27 ± 1 and 29 ± 2 years, respectively) in resting conditions and during administration of ACh and of NP (in two different days), before and after smoking one cigarette were evaluated. Results Smokers showed significant lower baseline Z0 and ZC than non-smokers. In non-smokers, ACh and NP iontophoresis induced a significant decrease of both Z0 and ZC, before and after smoking one cigarette (P < 0.02). Conversely, in smokers, both Z0 and ZC were not affected by ACh iontophoresis before acute smoking, while, after smoking, a significant decrease of both Z0 and ZC (P < 0.02) was detected after ACh challenge. In smokers, both Z0 and ZC were not affected by NP iontophoresis, either before or after smoking a cigarette. Conclusions Smokers appeared characterized by a complex disruption of peripheral microcirculatory regulation, including inappropriate resting vasodilation, impaired endothelium-dependent and independent vasodilation, paradoxical recovery of endothelium-dependent vasodilation in response to acute smoking.


Many modern high-performing machine learning models such as GPT-3 primarily rely on scaling up models, e.g., transformer networks. Simultaneously, a parallel line of work aims to improve the model performance by augmenting an input instance with other (labeled) instances during inference. Examples of such augmentations include task-specific prompts and similar examples retrieved from the training data by a nonparametric component. Remarkably, retrieval-based methods have enjoyed success on a wide range of problems, ranging from standard natural language processing and vision tasks to protein folding, as demonstrated by many recent efforts, including WebGPT and AlphaFold. Despite growing literature showcasing the promise of these models, the theoretical underpinning for such models remains underexplored. In this paper, we present a formal treatment of retrieval-based models to characterize their generalization ability. In particular, we focus on two classes of retrieval-based classification approaches: First, we analyze a local learning framework that employs an explicit local empirical risk minimization based on retrieved examples for each input instance. Interestingly, we show that breaking down the underlying learning task into local sub-tasks enables the model to employ a low complexity parametric component to ensure good overall accuracy. The second class of retrieval-based approaches we explore learns a global model using kernel methods to directly map an input instance and retrieved examples to a prediction, without explicitly solving a local learning task.


A synthetic 52-residue peptide based on the sequence-specific DNA-binding domain of Hin recombinase (139-190) has been equipped with ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) at the amino terminus. In the presence of Fe(II), this synthetic EDTA-peptide cleaves DNA at Hin recombination sites. The cleavage data reveal that the amino terminus of Hin(139-190) is bound in the minor groove of DNA near the symmetry axis of Hin recombination sites. This work demonstrates the construction of a hybrid peptide combining two functional domains: sequence-specific DNA binding and DNA cleavage.


Despite the abundance of electronic corpora now available to researchers, corpora of natural speech are still relatively rare and relatively costly. This paper suggests reasons why spoken corpora are needed, despite the formidable problems of construction. The multiple purposes of such corpora and the involvement of very different kinds of language communities in such projects mean that there is no one single blueprint for the design, markup, and distribution of spoken corpora. A number of different spoken corpora are reviewed to illustrate a range of possibilities for the construction of spoken corpora.


Context. Recent studies suggest that in comparison to their host star, many giant exoplanets are highly enriched with heavy elements and can contain several tens of Earth masses of heavy elements or more. Such enrichment is considered to have been delivered by the accretion of planetesimals in late formation stages. Previous dynamical simulations, however, have shown that planets cannot accrete such high masses of heavy elements through "in situ" planetesimal accretion.
Aims. We investigate whether a giant planet migrating inward can capture planetesimals efficiently enough to significantly increase its metallicity.
Methods. We performed orbital integrations of a migrating giant planet and planetesimals in a protoplanetary gas disc to infer the planetesimal mass that is accreted by the planet.
Results. We find that the two shepherding processes of mean motion resonance trapping and aerodynamic gas drag inhibit the planetesimal capture of a migrating planet. However, the amplified libration allows the highly-excited planetesimals in the resonances to escape from the resonance trap and to be accreted by the planet. Consequently, we show that a migrating giant planet captures planetesimals with total mass of several tens of Earth masses if the planet forms at a few tens of AU in a relatively massive disc. We also find that planetesimal capture occurs efficiently in a limited range of semi-major axis and that the total captured planetesimal mass increases with increasing migration distances. Our results have important implications for understanding the relation between giant planet metallicity and mass, as we suggest that it reflects the formation location of the planet – or more precisely, the location where runaway gas accretion occurred. We also suggest the observed metal-rich close-in Jupiters migrated to their present locations from afar, where they had initially formed.


The increasing of petroleum requirement right now causing the importance of exploiting of rechargeable energy source as part of energy diversification program. Exploiting of Jatropha oil as bio-diesel matter was an ideal alternative to decrease the tension of petroleum needed. Breeding of Jathropa plant currently limited to selection and field test of describing plant by using morphology character. Molecular biology has giving chance to develop and identify gene map of plant cultivar (Maftuchah,2006). Molecular analysis can support breeding plant correctly, faster, and spend much fund and time
This research was done at Molecular laboratory, Biotechnology Development Center , University of Muhammadiyah Malang, by using 7 Accession of Jatropha plant : HS 49, SP 16, SP 38, SP 8, SM 33, SP 34, SM 35 which come from BALITTAS plantation, Karangploso Malang. Amplification PCR _ RAPD process conducted by using 5 type of Primer : OPA 2, OPA 9, OPA 13, OPA 18 and OPA 20. This research started by doing DNA isolation, Electroforesis of DNA isolation result, then Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) process and ended with electroforesis of PCR result that wild showed as Polaroid picture then analysed with Biner data and NTSYS program
The result of this research showed the ribbon pattern of 7 Aksesi of jatropha by using 5 primer. Number of DNA ribbon in each aksesi are HS 49 counted 23 ribbon, SP 16 counted 31 ribbon, SP 38 counted 23 ribbon, SP 8 counted 24 ribbon, SM 33 counted 27 ribbon, Sp 34 counted 28 ribbon, Sm 35 counted 31 ribbon. Number of DNA ribbon that resulted in each primer varying between 3 – 9 ribbon. The highest number of DNA ribbon are 54 ribbon, resulted by using primer OPA 18, while the lowest are 21 ribbon by using primer OPA 20. the longest of size alel was detected by primer OPA 9 that is 1078 bp, and the shortest of alel size that is 118 bp, detected at 2 primer, OPA 9 dan OPA 18.
Based on the family reletion analisys, results coefisien value turn between 75 %-95%. Accession SM 33 and SP 34 have the highest degree of genetic similarity with coefesien value is about 97%. HS 49 and SP 8 have genetic similarity by coefisien value abaout 97%. SM 33 and SP 34 have genetic similarity with HS 49 and SP 8 by coefisien value about 88%, that way between SP 16 and SM 35. SP 16 and SM 35 have genetic similarity with SP 38 with coefisien value 75%. Otherwise SM 33, SP 34, HS 49, and SP 8 also have genetic similarity with SP 16 and SM 35 by coefisien value 75%.

Key words: Molecular Analysis Based to RAPD Marker, Jatropha curcas L, RAPD


We propose a decentralized security framework for smart grids that supports data aggregation and access control. Data can be aggregated by home area network (HAN), building area network (BAN), and neighboring area network (NAN) in such a way that the privacy of customers is protected. We use homomorphic encryption technique to achieve this. The consumer data that is collected is sent to the substations where it is monitored by remote terminal units (RTU). The proposed access control mechanism uses attribute-based encryption (ABE) which gives selective access to consumer data stored in data repositories and used by different smart grid users. RTUs and users have attributes and cryptographic keys distributed by several key distribution centers (KDC). RTUs send data encrypted under a set of attributes. Since RTUs are maintained in the substations they are well protected in control rooms and are assumed to be trusted. Users can decrypt information provided they have valid attributes. The access control scheme is distributed in nature and does not rely on a single KDC to distribute the keys which makes the approach robust. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first work on smart grids, which integrates these two important security components (privacy preserving data aggregation and access control) and the first paper which addresses access control in smart grids.


Simple in-shoe sensors based on film-type sensor materials were developed in this study. Three sensor materials were tested: polyvinylidenefluoride (PVDF), cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) and ElectroMechanical Film (EMFi). Plantar pressure distributions of a subject were measured with the developed in-shoe sensors; each consisting of three sensor channels (lateral and medial metatarsal heads and heel). In addition, piezoelectric sensor sensitivities and crosstalk between the sensor channels were determined. Differences between the tested film-type materials and measured plantar pressure distribution signals were studied.


A market for virtual electricity trade is formed with the basis of hydro-thermal exchange in this paper. Based on the virtual electricity market, each participants formulate their own plan considering the principle of maximizing benefits. This paper sets up an optimal dispatch model for electricity volume exchanged among plants which participate in the virtual electricity trades. The calculation indicates that the discussed model can leverage the current two factors, state energy policies and market mechanism quite well and can be practically used in the initial phase of electricity market reform of our country.


Making lyric containing national character is a fundamental requirement for prospective elementary school teachers in Indonesia. Without the music applications' assistance, students would face difficulties in making lyrics. This paper aims at analyzing the ability of students in making lyrics containing national character with the assistance of MuseScore music application. The method used was content analysis using computer media. The data were collected through surveys and collections of the midi files containing songs' melody, the lyrics of which were written afterward by students. Sixty-six students from the primary school teacher education program were taken as the samples. The results showed that the majority of students already had a good ability to choose diction in the lyrics of the song and to write the lyrics that match the designated theme. However, students in general did not have adequate ability in making the lyrics of songs that matched the melodic phrase of the song.


We describe a 15-year study of the loss of reproductive fitness and population decline in Adenostoma sparsifolium, a rosaceous shrub endemic in the fire-prone chaparral vegetation of southern California (USA) and adjacent northern Baja California, Mexico. Our studies of background extinction concentrated on small relict populations occurring in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains where reproduction is genetically compromised by uniquely high rates of embryonic/endosperm abortion (97–99%) resulting largely from self-pollination in highly heterozygous populations. Environmental factors further reduce reproductive fitness. The relatively few viable seeds produced are not well adapted to survive wildfires that are a regular (approximately 21 years) occurrence in chaparral. Seedling recruitment after burning is rare and any established seedlings ultimately die from the annual 4–9-month summer droughts typical of Mediterranean climates. Adult mortality is manifest from wildfire (approximately 6%) and occasional multiple-year droughts (approximately 15%). Given the virtual absence of new post-fire reproduction and a low but persistent rate of adult mortality, slow population demise resulting in background extinction is inevitable. We posit that A. sparsifolium is ecologically 'out of place' in the present chaparral environment and appears best adapted to a moister climate with summer rains and few wildfires that prevailed before the increasing aridity and warming from mid-Holocene to the present. © 2011 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2012, 105, 269–292.


Phase retrieval algorithms have become an important component in many modern computational imaging systems. For instance, in the context of ptychography and speckle correlation imaging, they enable imaging past the diffraction limit and through scattering media, respectively. Unfortunately, traditional phase retrieval algorithms struggle in the presence of noise. Progress has been made recently on more robust algorithms using signal priors, but at the expense of limiting the range of supported measurement models (e.g., to Gaussian or coded diffraction patterns). In this work we leverage the regularization-by-denoising framework and a convolutional neural network denoiser to create prDeep, a new phase retrieval algorithm that is both robust and broadly applicable. We test and validate prDeep in simulation to demonstrate that it is robust to noise and can handle a variety of system models.
A MatConvNet implementation of prDeep is available at this https URL.


A multi-scale model is proposed to explain the effect of material induced vibration and the quantitative relation between cutting force and the surface quality from dislocations, grain orientations, cutting tools, machine tools used in the simulation of the nano-3D surface topology in single-point diamond turning. The model-based simulation system composes of several model elements which include a microplasticity model, a dynamic model and an enhanced surface topography model. The multi-scale model brings together knowledge from various disciplines to link up physical phenomenon occurring at different length scales to explain successfully the surface generation in single-point diamond turning of crystalline materials, and offers a new direction of research in ultra-precision machining.


Abstract Surface plasmons, the collective oscillation of electrons, enable the manipulation of optical fields with unprecedented spatial and time resolutions. They are the workhorse of a large set of applications, such as chemical/biological sensors or Raman scattering spectroscopy, to name only a few. In particular, the ultrafast optical response configures one of the most fundamental characteristics of surface plasmons. Thus, the rich physics about photon–electron interactions could be retrieved and studied in detail. The associated plasmon-enhanced electric fields, generated by focusing the surface plasmons far beyond the diffraction limit, allow reaching the strong field regime with relatively low input laser intensities. This is in clear contrast to conventional optical methods, where their intrinsic limitations demand the use of large and costly laser amplifiers, to attain high electric fields, able to manipulate the electron dynamics in the non-linear regime. Moreover, the coherent plasmonic field excited by the optical field inherits an ultrahigh precision that could be properly exploited in, for instance, ultraprecision spectroscopy. In this review, we summarize the research achievements and developments in ultrafast plasmonics over the last decade. We particularly emphasize the strong-field physics aspects and the ultraprecision spectroscopy using optical frequency combs.


To produce a scientific book that holds the attention of the general reader from cover to cover is something achieved by few research workers. But to write with engaging enthusiasm, yet with all the wiles and devices of modern biophysics, about the complicated behaviour of normal and malignant cells must be a unique achievement. Here are some of Joseph G. Hoffman's chapters: " What is Life ? "; " Automation in Cells "; " Variations and Mistakes "-an exciting survey of chromosome counts and chromosome breakage; "Cancer Cells "-which begins with the provocative sentence, " Cancer is a disease of organization, a cell mistake in tissues where the number and growth of cells is precisely regulated "; " Submicroscopic Fibres "-concerned with collagen and fibres of tissue cells, bacteria, and algae; " Games of Chance '-we are initiated into statistical mechanics before considering cell multiplication by the so-called Monte Carlo method; and " The Importance of Death." I especially enjoyed the exciting account of physical forces that govern the organization of molecules both outside and within cells. The discussion of van der Waals's forces is masterly. Biology seems to be aiding pure chemistry almost as much as chemistry is helping biology in this field. No doubt many of the author's views will not be acceptable to all cancer research workers, but at least they will arouse vigorous discussion, which is something to be thankful for nowadays. I strongly recommend this delightful book to readers who enjoy the unusual. A few references to assist further reading and some well-planned diagrams would have been acceptable. The index is adequate, but the price is far too high. Roy CAMERON.


Complex dynamic models of carbon and nitrogen are often used to investigate the consequences of climate change on agricultural production and greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. These models require high temporal resolution input data regarding the timing of field operations. This paper describes the Timelines model, which predicts the timelines of key field operations across Europe. The evaluation of the model suggests that while for some crops a reasonable agreement was obtained in the prediction of the times of field operations, there were some very large differences which need to be corrected. Systematic variations in the date of harvesting and in the timing of the first application of N fertiliser to winter crops need to be corrected and the prediction of soil workability and trafficability might enable the prediction of ploughing and applications of solid manure in preparation for spring crops. The data concerning the thermal time thresholds for sowing and harvesting underlying the model should be updated and extended to a wider range of crops.


Objective: The purpose of the study the implementation of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) regarding Investment, Property company profit after the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) regarding Investment Property and analysis of application of IFRS on Property Investment to increase company profits. Then what will be investigated is the valuation of investment properties using the fair value model and the difference between the profit balance before tax and operating income. Methodology: The study examines financial statement observation, within 2010-2015 financial statements from PT. Astra International Tbk. using descriptive statistics, correlation and regression analyses. Results: It is found of the study prove how an increase in property value is obtained by an increase in corporate profits after the application of the International Financial Statements


The motivation for this research into flow in pipes with non-uniform geometry comes from physiological flows. It is now widely believed that haemodynamics plays an important role in the initiation and development of atherosclerosis. Experiments have shown that the preferred sites for atherogenesis are regions of low wall shear stress. The build-up of atherosclerotic plaques in the coronary arteries can lead to arterial blockage and coronary failure. Previous studies have examined uniformly curved pipes and, more recently, uniformly curved and twisted pipes. However, it is well known that the arterial system displays non-uniform, time-dependent geometry. The main objective of this thesis is to describe flow in various pipes with weakly non-uniform curvature and torsion, with a view to understanding the resulting wall shear stress distribution and velocity profiles. The work herein models the flow of an incompressible Newtonian fluid through a pipe whose curvature and torsion vary along the pipe. The governing equations are first derived, then solved for both steady and oscillatory pressure gradients. The solution of these equations involves asymptotic and numerical techniques. The effects due to the non-uniform geometry and possible applications to physiology are discussed. Finally, the effects of torsion upon fluid motion are studied from the Lagrangian viewpoint, using numerical particle tracking.


ISSUE ADDRESSED
Community-based gambling venues provide a range of activities for children alongside adult products, such as gambling. However, there has been little examination of children's experiences with, and exposure to, a range of gambling and non-gambling activities within venues.

METHODS
Visual sociology methods were used to measure unprompted recall, prompted recall, current use and intended adult use of activities in community gambling venues in 44 children who attended venues. Qualitative data were also collected to gain further insight into children's perceptions of the venue and the activities within.

RESULTS
Children displayed high unprompted and prompted recall of gambling and nongambling activities within the venue. Children indicated positive perceptions of the venue overall. Just over half of the children (52.3%) reported current use of gambling activities in the venue. The large majority of the children indicated that they would attend community gambling venues as an adult (90.9%).

CONCLUSION
This research provides a starting point in understanding the extent to which children are exposed to gambling products in community gambling venues. SO WHAT?: This research will be important for researchers, policy makers and practitioners in developing health promotion initiatives to prevent children from being exposed to gambling products in community settings.


The main focus of this article is how a set of practices revolve around the formation of an imagined community in dispersion – diasporisation. The study discusses the case of the Chilean diaspora in Sweden and its transformation from an exile context to a post-exile context facing a drastically altered historical situation. This transformation is analysed as a matter of agency where practices are framed differently as a response to the demand perceived in the context. The outcome of this argument speaks in favour of a diaspora concept that focuses on practices and how these are framed in order to mobilise a putative dispersed population.


An efficient table-to-text summarization system can drastically reduce manual efforts to understand and summarise tabular data into textual reports. However, in practice, the problem is heavily impeded by data sparsity and the inability of the state-of-the-art natural language generation models (such as T5, PEGASUS, and GPT-Neo) to produce coherent and accurate outputs. This is particularly true in pre-clinical and clinical domains. In this paper, we propose a novel table-to-text approach and tackle these problems with the help of synthetic data generation as well as copy mechanism. Experiments show that the proposed method can boost the performance of copying concise and relevant information from tabular data to generate assay validation and toxicology reports.


The tumor microenvironment (TME) has an essential role in the development of cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC); however, the dynamic role of the stromal and immune cells is still unclear in TME. We downloaded data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and applied ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms to measure the quantity of stromal and immune cells and the composition of tumor-infiltrating immune cell (TIC) in 253 CSCC cases. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and Cox regression analysis presented the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Then, C-C chemokine receptor type 7 (CCR7) was screened out as a prognostic marker by the univariate Cox and intersection analysis of PPI. Further analysis showed a positive correlation between the expression of CCR7 and the survival of CSCC patients. The result of the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) of genes in the high CCR7 expression group displayed a predominant enrichment in immune-related pathways. An enrichment in metabolic activities was observed in the low CCR7 expression group. CIBERSORT analysis showed a positive correlation between Plasma cells, CD8+ T cells, and regulatory T cells and the CCR7 expression, suggesting that CCR7 might play a crucial role in maintaining the immunological dominance status for TME. Therefore, the expression level of CCR7 might help predict the survival of CSCC cases and be an index that the status of TME transitioned from immunological dominance to metabolic activation, which presented a new insight into the treatment of CSCC.


Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) is a neurotransmitter that mediates a wide range of sensory, motor, and cortical functions by activating multiple 5-HT receptor subtypes. In the present study we performed a systematic mutation scan of the complete coding region of the 5-HT5Areceptor to explore its variability in the general population. Investigating 46 unrelated healthy subjects by single-strand conformation analysis no sequence changes of likely functional relevance were observed. The detection of a frequent G→C substitution at position −19 was used for fine scale linkage mapping of the 5-HT5Agene. Employing a polymerase-chain-reaction based assay we genotyped 7 CEPH families (Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humaine) and mapped the receptor to genetic markers on chromosome 7q34-q36.


We describe an algorithm for dining activity analysis in a nursing home. Based on several features, including motion vectors and distance between moving regions in the subspace of an individual person, a hidden Markov model is proposed to characterize different stages in dining activities with certain temporal order. Using HMM model, we are able to identify the start (and ending) of individual dining events with high accuracy and low false positive rate. This approach could be successful in assisting caregivers in assessments of resident's activity levels over time.


Results of angle dispersive x-ray powder diffraction measurements under pressure up to 25 GPa on adamantane carried out at the synchrotron source SPRING-8 are reported. The disorder-order transition at 0.5 GPa in adamantane known earlier is reproduced with detailed structural information. For this ordered tetragonal (P4̄21c, z = 2) phase, the shortest intermolecular hydrogen separation (H...H) reduces from 2.37 Å at 0.7 GPa to 1.87 Å at 12.5 GPa and the relative angle of rotation (ϕ) of the two molecules within the cell about the c-axis increases from 8.5° to 10.5°. This is consistent with values determined from energy minimization in this pressure region. The anomaly in the pressure variation of c/a, and the failure of the constrained Rietveld refinement, occurring close to 9 GPa, are interpreted as due to distortion of the adamantane molecule when H...H distance decreases below the critical value of 1.9 Å. Above 16 GPa there is a subtle change in the diffraction pattern that indicates a transition to a closely related phase. Beyond 22 GPa, a monoclinic phase with one molecule per cell could only index the patterns. The ambient cubic phase is recovered on unloading indicating the absence of decomposition or polymerization. The results of high pressure x-ray diffraction experiments confirm the changes in the Raman spectra observed in the earlier measurements.


An engaging history of the founding of one of the world's most popular environmental organizations, the Audubon Society In 1887, a year after founding the Audubon Society, explorer and conservationist George Bird Grinnell launched Audubon Magazine. The magazine constituted one of the first efforts to preserve bird species decimated by the women's hat trade, hunting, and loss of habitat. Within two years, however, for practical reasons, Grinnell dissolved both the magazine and the society. Remarkably, Grinnell's mission was soon revived by women and men who believed in it, and the work continues today. In this, the only comprehensive history of the first Audubon Society (1886-1889), Carolyn Merchant presents the exceptional story of George Bird Grinnell and his writings and legacy. The book features Grinnell's biographies of ornithologists John James Audubon and Alexander Wilson and his editorials and descriptions of Audubon's bird paintings. This primary documentation combined with Carolyn Merchant's insightful analysis casts new light on Grinnell, the origins of the first Audubon Society, and the conservation of avifauna.


From 2004 to 2007 the California HealthCare Foundation's Step by Step: Lo- cal Coverage Expansion initiative supported insurance coverage expansions for uninsured children and adults in thirty California counties. In this paper we describe the initiative and its achievements as well as challenges for grantees. Also, we discuss the implications of the initiative's outcomes for expanding coverage locally and more broadly. Implementing new insurance programs is possible in the most difficult settings. Although there are real challenges to sustaining these expansions and limits to what they can accomplish in the face of major unmet needs, they may lay useful groundwork for broader expansions later.


The antagonistic interaction between marine fungi and marine bacteria was investi- gated using 19 bacterial species isolated from marine biofilm and 46 waterborne fungal isolates obtained from Hong Kong waters. Of the 46 fungal isolates, 70% inhibited the growth of at least 1 tar- get bacterial species. Active fungal strains belonged mainly to the genera Cladosporium, Para- phaeosphaeria, Trichoderma, Alternaria, Phoma, and Arthrinium. Eight fungal isolates (17% of all fungal isolates tested) were sensitive to at least 1 target bacterial species. Eleven of the 19 bacterial species showed antifungal activity. Two Staphylococcus strains inhibited the growth of all of the sensitive fungal strains. The results indicated that marine fungi could provide an important source of natural antimicrofouling compounds and that the interaction between marine fungi and marine bacteria in biofilms cannot easily be generalized.


BACKGROUND
The application of information technology (IT) to the field of critical care nephrology is a process that may reduce errors in care delivery, improve monitoring, decrease unintentional practice variation, increase the quality and accuracy of delivered treatments.

METHODS
This review presents some examples of potential applications of recent IT achievements to clinical practice.

RESULTS
The adequacy calculator for continuous therapy dose prescription was recently shown to accurately predict urea clearance. When clearances above 60 ml/min where prescribed, the calculator tended to overestimate effective clearances; this overestimation generally remained within an error of 15%. Nevertheless, the delivered Kt/V in 24 h will always approach the target value of 1.2. The use of the calculator enabled strict monitoring of treatments. Furthermore, the so-called 'next generation' machines have technical characteristics in common that allow the highest safety and accuracy levels: some of these aspects are addressed and commented on in the present review.

CONCLUSION
IT is having and will likely have a significant impact on patient safety, practice variation, patient assessment and monitoring, and documentation of the demographics of acute renal failure and dialysis. One of the most recent and potentially interesting aspects of IT implementation on acute dialysis might be the renal replacement dose monitoring and calculation: close control of the therapy delivery and, eventually, prescription adjustments might be optimized.


Abstract. The 3-D structure of the solar wind varies dramatically along the Sun's activity cycle. In the present paper we focus on some properties of the polar solar wind. This is a fast, teneous, and steady flow (as compared to low-latitude conditions) that fills the high-latitude heliosphere at low solar activity. The polar wind has been extensively investigated by Ulysses, the first spacecraft to perform in-situ measurements in the high-latitude heliosphere. Though the polar wind is quite a uniform flow, fluctuations in its velocity do not appear negligible. A simple way to characterize the solar wind structure is that of performing a multi-scale statistical analysis of the wind velocity differences. The occurrence frequency distributions of velocity differences at time lags from 1 to 1024h and the corresponding values of mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis have been obtained. A comparison with previous results in ecliptic wind at both low and high solar activity has been performed. It comes out that the kind of trend observed in the distributions for changing scale is the same for the different solar wind regimes. Differences between different flows just have an effect on the values of the distribution moments and the scales at which the transition from non-Gaussian to Gaussian-like behaviours occurs. This is typical of systems in which random fluctuations are mixed to coherent structures of some characteristic size, in other words, systems where long-range correlations cannot be neglected.


Industrial era has been replaced with the information era of development. Under such influences of surroundings, all the companies have been forced to introduce information systems in their organizations in order to be competitive. Since Serbia technologically tags along the developed part of Europe and bearing in mind that adjusting to changes is the condition of success, this paper aims at answering the question: how many companies in Serbia have an information system, when and how was it introduced and which fields of business were integrated in that way? We came to the conclusion that all the interviewed business subjects use the information system to a greater or lesser extent and mostly for the needs of accounting, sales and supply and that in most cases all fields of business were integrated into a unique IS, which led to the notable savings in business.


The purpose of this research is to evaluate the cooperative learning applications according to the opinions of teachers working at secondary schools, high schools and colleges under General Secondary Education Office (GSEO). The universe of the research consists of 1978 teachers in total who are working at secondary schools (497), high schools and colleges (1481). The sample consists of 728 teachers who were chosen with random sampling method at 37% ratio at lower layers determined with simple stratification method. The data were made using frequency (f), percentage (%), arithmetic mean (X ), Standard deviation (S), t-test, Variance Analysis (ANOVA), Post Hoc Tukey, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney-U tests with SPSS 16.0 package programme. At the end of the research teachers usually stated positive opinions at the border of " I agree " as regards the items directed towards the application of cooperative learning questionnaire. In this context, according to teachers it was concluded that cooperative learning applications could be used at secondary education stage, make contribution to the existing education process, improve problem-solving skills, social and psychological developments of students, reduce class education costs of institutions and decrease the workload of teachers


Based on some derived closed-form equations for determining the wide-band frequency-dependent ohmic attenuation constant, loss tangent, and equivalent permittivity, the average power handling capabilities (APHC) are accurately characterized for some thin-film microstrip interconnects (TFMIs) on a single-layer polyimide and a microstrip on a double-layer polyimide and GaAs substrates, respectively. The accuracy problem arising from some closed-form equations for calculating the ohmic attenuation constant is highlighted, and the temperature-dependent property of thermal conductivity needs to be considered in calculating the temperature rise in some substrates, such as GaAs, etc. Possible ways to efficiently predict and improve the APHC are suggested, which could be useful when applying the microstrip interconnects in a high-power operating environment.


Future nearshore wave energy converter (WEC) arrays will influence coastal wave and sediment dynamics, yet there are limited numerical methodologies to quantify their possible impacts. A novel coupled WEC-Wave numerical method was developed to quantify these possible influences on the nearshore coastal wave climate. The power performance of an Oscillating Surge Wave Energy Converter (OSWEC) array was simulated to quantify the wave energy dissipation due to the array. The OSWEC's effect on the local wave climate was quantified by a novel coupling of two numerical models, WEC–Sim and XBeach. WEC–Sim characterizes the power extraction and wave energy transmission across the OSWEC, while XBeach captures the change in wave dynamics due to the WEC and propagates the waves to shore. This novel methodology provides the ability to directly quantify the impact of the effect of a WEC array on the local wave climate. Three case studies were analyzed to quantify the impact of a single WEC on breaking conditions and to quantify the impact of number of WECs and the array spacing on the local nearshore wave climate. Results indicate that when the WEC is placed 1100 m offshore, one WEC will cause a 1% reduction in wave height at the break point (Hsbp). As the WEC is placed further offshore, the change in Hsbp will become even smaller. Although the change in wave height from one WEC is small, WEC arrays magnify the cross–shore extent, area of influence and the magnitude of influence based on the spacing and number of WECs. For arrays with 10 or 15 WECs, the cross–shore extent was on average 200–300 m longer when the WECs were placed one to two WEC widths apart, compared with being spaced three or four widths apart. When the spacing was one WEC width apart (18 m), there was a 30% greater spatial impact on the nearshore region than arrays spaced three or four widths apart. The trend for the average transmission coefficient is within 5% for a 5, 10 or 15 WEC array, with a cumulative average of 78% transmission across all conditions.


This paper through the analysis on status and barriers of carbon trade in China and factors for price, made a study on the game of carbon trade risks under non-market function. This paper used the reverse signal transduction model, analyzes the path selection of emissions measures under the government mandatory policy. And it established the two stages carbon trading competition model, which reveals the best effort level and the optimal referral reward (incentive problems) under the voluntary emissions of carbon trading. And then it established the characteristic carbon trade mode of China providing reference to the economic development of China's future carbon emission trade market.


Background: Microcystic adnexal tumor is a rare sclerosing variant of ductal carcinoma of eccrine sweat glands which is highly invasive. This tumor is often misdiagnosed as other benign or malignant skin lesions and improper treatment is carried on and is associated with high recurrence rate. Case presentation: We reported here in a 59-years old man who underwent incisional biopsy for a congenital lesion on posterior neck which had grown recently. Microscopic examination exhibited an infiltrative tumor as constituted by small cord-like and angulated tubules with tadpole or comma-like shapes, individually set in abundant fibrous stroma in dermis. So, the diagnosis was syringoma. In the next step, the lesion underwent excisional biopsy. Histologically, a tumor located in dermis with extension to subcutis was noted which contained basaloid keratinocytes with occasional horn cysts and abortive hair follicles. In other areas, ducts and gland-like structures lined by two-cell layers predominated. The tumor extended to skeletal muscle and perineurial structures but no significant atypia or mitosis was identified. Eventually, with respect to mentioned features, the diagnosis was microcystic adnexal tumor. Conclusion: It is concluded that thinking about this rare invasive skin tumor with proper use of Mohs' surgery and its correct diagnosis is clinically of high significance to reduce its recurrence rate. Meanwhile, this tumor was noticeably set in a congenital lesion in this reported case.


The study aims to figure out the effect on global capacity enhancement and improvement of multiculturalism awareness in participating children by developing and conducting a multiculturalism capacity development program of children for multicultural and non-multicultural families in Korea's central region, South Chungcheong Province and North Chungcheong Province. The development of the research program was derived based on the needs survey focused on multicultural and non-multicultural family mothers using related literature review and HCD (Human Centered Design) following the development model by15, and through an expert Delphi survey a 10 session program was confirmed. After conducting the program, using the survey on 10 participating children and parents interviews, and analysis of change in children by session using observers the performance of the program was analyzed from various angles. In the case of the participating children, as sessions progressed they started naturally becoming aware of the characteristics and differences of each countries, and the pride and personal self-esteem of each country increased and the sense of identity improved, showing that they were gradually understanding the diversity of culture.


The primary objectives of this investigation of environmental pollution were to assess spatio-temporal concentrations and predictions of transport behaviour of pollutants in aqueous media. In order to attain these goals for the Msimbazi river, the analytical and numerical solutions to the 1-D advection-dispersion equation (ADE) implemented the first-type inlet condition. The MATLAB software was used to solve the analytical equation resulting from the ADE equation. The solution to the ADE model enabled effective prediction of contaminants'spatial distribution within a distance of 200 m from a point source in the direction of flowing water. Among the first and third-types inlet conditions, the first-type had the best exponential concentration prediction with descending concentration gradients between –100 ng/L.m and –0.4 ng/L.m, while beyond it the concentration gradient was merely constant. These findings are the first of this type in our region to the best of our knowledge, and hence a milestone for understanding the transport behaviour of emerging contaminants, and enable estimation of probable pollution-free zones. This study gave results that can form a basis for analytical and public interventions.
Keywords: Modelling emerging contaminants; Advection-Dispersion Equation; Contaminants transport; First-type inlet condition; Concentration gradient


Abstract Why do some protest movements in Latin America succeed in rolling back privatizations while others fail? This article argues that protests against privatizations have tended to succeed under two conditions. First, privatization's opponents form linkages (or "brokerage") across multiple sectors of society. Broad coalitions are more likely to achieve their goals, while groups acting alone, such as labor unions, are more easily defeated or ignored by governments. Second, civil rights are protected but political representation is weak. In that case, opponents have the legal right to protest, but are unlikely to have opportunities for communicating their concerns through formal institutions, which prompts them to channel their demands outside of existing political institutions. Using case examples and logistic regression, this study confirms these arguments and discusses the implications for democracy in the region.


Rectangular bars loaded by opposite concentrated forces via rollers are appropriatetest specimens for the determination of strength under contact loading which comprisesmultiaxial stresses with very strong stress gradients. In the paper, the stress solutionin the whole specimen is given for the case of a Hertzian contact stress under the loadingcylinders. The contact strengths measured on several ceramics revealed significantly reducedWeibull exponents compared with those obtained from 4-point bending tests.


Guidance and Counselling services are essential requirement for effective teaching and learning in educational institutions. Almajiri schools are newly created schools designed to bring education to the door steps of a special group of children who had been previously neglected. In view of the importance of Universal Education, this paper examines the need for guidance and counselling services in Almajiri schools in Nigeria. The historical background of Almajiiri schools, the concept of guidance and counselling and the need of guidance and counselling services in Almajiri schools are highlighted the paper. Based on the review, the paper presents strategies for effective integration of students of Almajiri schools into the Nigeria education system in order to promote Universal Education. Keywords : Almajiri; Inclusive Education; Education for All.


Covariation among traits can modify the evolutionary trajectory of complex structures. This process is thought to operate at a microevolutionary scale, but its long-term effects remain controversial because trait covariation can itself evolve. Flower morphology, and particularly floral trait (co)variation, has been envisioned as the product of pollinator-mediated selection. Available evidence suggests that major changes in pollinator assemblages may affect the joint expression of floral traits and their phenotypic integration. We expect species within a monophyletic lineage sharing the same pollinator type will show not only similarity in trait means but also similar phenotypic variance-covariance structures. Here we tested this expectation using eighteen Salvia species pollinated either by bees or hummingbirds. Our findings indicated a non significant multivariate phylogenetic signal and a decoupling between means and variance-covariance phenotypic matrices of floral traits during the evolution to hummingbird pollination. Mean trait value analyses revealed significant differences between bee-and hummingbird-pollinated Salvia species while fewer differences were detected in the covariance structure between groups. Variance-covariance matrices were much more similar among bee-than hummingbird-pollinated species. This pattern is consistent with the expectation that, unlike hummingbirds, bees physically manipulate the flower, presumably exerting stronger selection pressures favouring morphological convergence among species. Overall, we conclude that the evolution of hummingbird pollination proceeded through different independent transitions. Thus, although the evolution of hummingbird pollination led to a new phenotypic optimum, the process involved the diversification of the covariance structure.


Background and Aims: Troops deployed at high-altitude area (HAA) suffer from various high-altitude illnesses (HAIs) including high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE). There are various criteria to diagnose and assess the severity of HAPE, but point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) of the lung has also been used in isolation by physicians. The aim is to assess whether POCUS of the lung improves the ability to diagnose the severity of HAPE. Methodology: A retrospective, cross-sectional descriptive study was planned for the patients treated for HAPE (n = 46) at our hospital from January 2019 to March 2020. Prehospital admission data, hospital admission data, and discharge data for the first-time inductees and reinductees were collected from the central hospital admission registry and central database of the medical department and intensive care unit. Results: The incidence of HAPE was 2.2 per 1000. First-time inductees (n = 30) were affected more when compared to reinductees (n = 16) and the maximum were at the third stage of HAA. POCUS of the lung facilitated the diagnosis of the six patients with mild HAPE with no positive radiological features. Conclusions: POCUS of the lung should be routinely used by the medical officers deployed at high altitudes. It will increase the diagnostic rate of HAPE with meticulous grading of the severity, thereby aiding in formulating the case-specific treatment protocol.


Interleukin‐2 (IL‐2) is a 15,000 dalton glycoprotein produced naturally by human T‐cells during an immune response. IL‐2 has been demonstrated to have substantial activity alone or in combination with the adoptive transfer of lymphokine‐activated killer cells in murine tumor models. IL‐2 derived from both natural (Jurkat human T‐cell tumor) and recombinant (Escherichia coli) sources has been studied in Phase I protocols designed to evaluate toxicity in patients with a variety of solid tumors and to ascertain improvement in clinical parameters and immunologic status. A total of 16 patients (7 with acquired immune deficiency syndrome [AIDS] and 9 with non‐AIDS malignancies) were treated with Jurkat derived IL‐2. The total maximum dose (1.3 × 105 U/kg) was limited only by supply of this reagent. A total of 25 patients have been treated with recombinant IL‐2 (RIL‐2) alone. Dose‐limiting toxicity manifested by marked malaise and weight gain was achieved with doses of RIL‐2 of 106 U/kg as a single bolus or 3000 U/kg/hr. IL‐2 could be administered intraperitoneally with similar toxicity. Minimal renal or hepatic toxicity was demonstrated. Hematologic toxicity was limited to mild anemia (25/25), thrombocytopenia (10/25), and marked reversible eosinophilia (15/25). Pronounced weight gain greater than 2 kg (16/25) occurred in most patients, primarily those who received cumulative doses of greater than 1–3 × 105 U/kg of IL‐2. The weight gain amounted to as much as 10% to 20% of the pretreatment weight over 3 weeks of treatment and limited our ability to give higher doses. Two partial responses (>50% decrease in cross sectional diameters) were seen in two patients with melanoma metastatic to the lung.


To completely understand the ecology of a bacterial community, we need to identify its ecologically distinct populations (ecotypes). The greatest promise for enumerating a community's constituent ecotypes is held by molecular approaches that identify bacterial ecotypes as DNA sequence clusters. These approaches succeed when ecotypes correspond with sequence clusters, but some models of bacterial speciation predict a one-to-many and others a many-to-one relationship between ecotypes and sequence clusters. A further challenge is that sequence-based phylogenies often contain a hierarchy of clusters and subclusters within clusters, and there is no widely accepted theory to guide systematists and ecologists to the size of cluster most likely to correspond to ecotypes. While present systematics attempts to use universal thresholds of sequence divergence to help demarcate species, the recently developed 'community phylogeny' approach assumes no universal thresholds, but demarcates ecotypes based on the analysis of a lineage's evolutionary dynamics. Theory-based approaches like this one can give a conceptual framework as well as operational criteria for hypothesizing the identity and membership of ecotypes from sequence data; ecology-based approaches can then confirm that the putative ecotypes are actually ecologically distinct. Bacterial ecotypes that are demonstrated to have a history of coexistence as ecologically distinct lineages (based on sequence analysis) and as a prognosis of future coexistence (based on ecological differences), are the fundamental units of bacterial ecology and evolution, and should be recognized by bacterial systematics.


Background: Drug therapy can improve a patient's quality of life and health outcomes if only used properly. However, data on prescription quality at primary health care facilities in Tanzania is scanty. The objective of this study was to assess the quality of drug prescriptions in selected health care facilities in two districts of Mwanza, Tanzania. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out in Ilemela and Nyamagana districts in Mwanza, Tanzania. The study included 20 randomly selected public and private health care facilities. A random sample of the patient records in each facility was included. From each patient record, the latest prescription was assessed. Information assessed and recorded included prescribing indicators, frequency of prescription error, various formulations and groups of drugs prescribed. Prescribers were interviewed on factors affecting prescribing practices. Results: A total of 570 prescriptions were studied. The average number of drugs prescribed per encounter was 2.8. The percentage of encounters with an antibacterial agent prescribed was 33.8% and injections constituted 7.9% of cases. Prescriptions by generic name were 85.8% while 90.6% of drugs prescribed were from the national essential drug list. Antibacterial agents, analgesics and antimalarial agents accounted for 75.3% of all drugs prescribed. Of all prescriptions, 485 (85.1%) had at least an error. A total of 1,177 errors were made. Errors of omissions accounted for the majority (99.3%) of all errors. The most commonly observed missing prescription particulars were the drug strength (23.2%) and patient weight (22.2%).  The average number of drugs per encounter was higher in private facilities (3.2) than in public facilities (2.4) ( P <0.0001). The range of drugs per prescription was also higher in private (1-7) than in public facilities (1-5) ( P <0.0001). There were statistically significant differences in the distribution of various drug groups prescribed between public and private facilities and between health centres and dispensaries ( P <0.001 and 0.027, respectively). Conclusion: Prescribing of higher number of drugs than the WHO recommendations and overuse of antibiotics is still a problem at health care facilities in Mwanza Tanzania. The frequency of occurrence of prescription errors found during the study was considerably high.


Maintenance of high plant diversity in tropical rain forests has been hypothesized to be related to intense seed predation, and studies have shown that the impact of seed-eaters varies according to seed size, forest type and level of disturbance. The hypothesis that seed survival and seedling recruitment depending on seed size, are related to forest type and the intensity of harvesting and stand refinement was therefore tested at Paracou, French Guiana, for three animal-dispersed tree species. Two forest areas, corresponding to two forest types, were selected based on the occurrence of a dominant species, Eperua falcata (Caesalpiniaceae). Two factors were tested: forest type (E. falcata-rich and E. falcata-poor) and level of harvesting (unlogged, low intensity of logging, low intensity of logging and thinning liberation by tree-poison girdling) within each forest type. Overall, there was no effect of species nor of logging treatment within forest type after 6 wk. There was only a significant effect of forest type on seed survival in the large-seeded Carapa procera, a rodent-dispersed species in the Meliaceae. In the two medium-sized seed species, Pradosia cochlearia and Manilkara bidentata, two frugivore-dispersed Sapotaceae, the effect of treatment was overall significant but was also highly variable between plots within treatments. After 1 y, C. procera showed little seedling recruitment due to low seed removal and dispersal, and high seed-seedling predation under all conditions. Neither forest type, nor treatment nested within forest type, affected seedling recruitment in P. cochlearia whereas M. bidentata seedlings were favoured in unlogged conditions at the E. falcata-poor forest type. These results suggest that species characteristics (such as seed size and palatability), or local tree diversity and resources for granivores select for contrasting patterns in tree recruitment between forest type in the rodent-dispersed tree species, and these interact with level of tree harvesting and stand refinement in the other frugivore-dispersed tree species.


Cigarette smoking and aging are major risk factors for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. An unsolved question is whether elderly lungs are particularly vulnerable to cigarette smoke (CS) exposure. In this study, we used a mouse model to test the hypothesis that aging increases the susceptibility to CS-induced pulmonary inflammation. We subjected 9-week-old and 69-week-old C57BL/6J mice to CS (whole-body exposure, 90 min/d), and evaluated neutrophil infiltration in the lungs, the levels of keratinocyte-derived chemokine (KC) and macrophage inflammatory protein (MIP)-2 in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, and mRNA expression in bronchiolar epithelium retrieved by laser capture microdissection. The 69-week-old mice showed a greater number of neutrophils and higher levels of bronchiolar KC and MIP-2 expression than 9-week-old mice after 9 days of CS exposure. Furthermore, single CS exposure induced the rapid up-regulation of KC and MIP-2 in bronchiolar epithelium in both 9-week-old and 69-week-old mice, and the much higher levels in 69-week-old mice were associated with greater nuclear translocation of NF-kappaB. In contrast, no age-related differences were observed in the bronchiolar expression of NF-E2-related factor 2-regulated antioxidant and detoxification genes, heme oxygenase-1, reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate quinone reductase 1, and glutamate-cysteine ligase, modifier unit, or antioxidant activity in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid, regardless of CS exposure. In summary, aging increases susceptibility to CS-induced inflammation in a mouse model, and robust mRNA up-regulation and nuclear translocation of NF-kappaB in bronchiolar epithelium may be involved.


The conformational dependence of the intermolecular electrostatic interaction energy has been studied for three model compounds interacting with water molecules. The variation in the molecular charge distribution with conformation can have an important influence on intermolecular hydrogen-bond energies. Rotational barriers of hydrated molecules are substantially affected when this variation is taken into account. The significance of this effect has been evaluated for N-methylacetamide, ethanol and N,N-dimethylacetamide. It is shown that the conformational dependence of the molecular charge distribution can be described with high accuracy by expressing the atomic multipole moments as a short Fourier series in the dihedral angle.


Microshrinkages are known as probably the most difficult defects to avoid in high-precision foundry. This failure renders the casting invalid, with the subsequent cost increment. Modelling the foundry process as an expert knowledge cloud allows machine learning algorithms to foresee the value of a certain variable, in this case, the probability that a microshrin-kage appears within a casting. However, this approach needs to label every instance for generating the model that can classify the castings. In this paper, we present a new approach for detecting faulty castings inspired on anomaly detection methods. This approach represents correct castings as feature vectors of information extracted from the foundry process. Thereby, a casting is classified as correct or not correct by measuring its deviation to the representation of normality (i.e., correct castings). We show that this method achieves good accuracy rates to reduce the cost and testing time in foundry production.


The publication of numerous articles on tardive dyskinesia has had little effect on the excessive use of neurolepic drugs in psychiatric populations. If current prescribing patterns are not drastically changed, larger numbers of patients will be afflicted by conspicuous, sometimes disabling neurological side effects. The risk of permanent neurological disorder can be minimized by monitoring side effects and systematically reducing drug doses in hospitals, outpatient centers, and private practice. However, one should not underestimate the difficulty in implementing such a program in facilities that rely heavily on chemotherapy.


Managing fuel to reduce wildland fire risk often creates substantial public debate. Although the acceptability of various fuel management strategies has been explored in some regions, particularly North America, the social acceptability of fuel management is less well understood in other countries. This paper begins to address this knowledge gap by exploring acceptability by residents living in and near the Australian Capital Territory, Australia of three fuel management strategies (prescribed burning, livestock grazing and mechanical thinning) used to reduce wildland fire risk to life and property. All three were considered acceptable by most survey respondents. Acceptability did not vary substantially between strategies or by the location in which the strategy was undertaken. Acceptability of fuel management was associated with trust in fire management agencies, having knowledge of fuel management, feeling vulnerable to wildland fire and respondent characteristics such as previous effects of wildland fires, location of residence, gender, age, income and employment status.


The SNP A6986G of the CYP3A5 gene (*3) results in a non-functional protein due to a splicing defect whereas the C3435T was associated with variable expression of the ABCB1 gene, due to protein instability. Part of the large interindividual variability in tacrolimus efficacy and toxicity can be accounted for by these genetic factors. Seventy-two individuals were examined for A6986G and C3435T polymorphism using a PCR-RFLP-based technique to estimate genotype and allele frequencies in the Jordanian population. The association of age, hematocrit, platelet count, CYP3A5, and ABCB1 polymorphisms with tacrolimus dose- and body-weight-normalized levels in the subset of 38 pediatric renal transplant patients was evaluated. A Markov model was used to evaluate the time-dependent probability of an adverse event occurrence by CYP3A5 phenotypes and ABCB1 genotypes. The time-dependent probability of adverse event was about double in CYP3A5 non-expressors compared to the expressors for the first 12 months of therapy. The CYP3A5 non-expressors had higher corresponding normalized tacrolimus levels compared to the expressors in the first 3 months. The correlation trend between probability of adverse events and normalized tacrolimus concentrations for the two CYP3A5 phenotypes persisted for the first 9 months of therapy. The differences among ABCB1 genotypes in terms of adverse events and normalized tacrolimus levels were only observed in the first 3 months of therapy. The information on CYP3A5 genotypes and tacrolimus dose requirement is important in designing effective programs toward management of tacrolimus side effects particularly for the initial dose when tacrolimus blood levels are not available for therapeutic drug monitoring.


We present and study a fractal model of a non-uniform granular system for the first time, based on which wenumerically solve the dynamics actions in the system successfully in one-dimensional case. The multi-mixture is composed of N different particles, whose granularity distribution has the fractal characteristic. The particles are subject to inelastic mutual collisions and obey to Langevin equation between collisions. Far from the equilibrium,i.e. the given typical relaxation time τ of the driving Brownian process is much larger than the mean collision time τc, the results of simulation indicate that the degree of inhomogeneity in the granularity distribution signed by the fractal dimension D of size distribution has great influence on the dynamics actions of the system. The velocity distribution deviates obviously from the Gaussian distribution and the particles cluster more pronouncedly with the larger value of D in the system. The velocity distribution and spatial clnsterization change with D are presented.


This study aims at understanding how a general positive attitude toward the
environment results in a limited purchase of environmentally friendlier cars,
often referred to as the attitude-action gap. In a first experiment 27 volunteers
performed a judgment task on car purchase intention. Participants were asked
to evaluate the probability of buying cars varying in purchase price,
environmental performance, operating cost and vehicle quality. A second
experiment required 47 participants to express their purchase intention of
vehicles varying in driving experience, environmental aspects, Life-Cycle
Costs and vehicle quality. Results in both experiments show that participants
integrate car attribute information according to a differential weighting
averaging rule. Model weight and scale values show to be indicative of a
positive attitude toward environmental performance. On the other hand, the
empirically established model weights consistently indicate that
environmental performance is outweighed by other car attributes.
Conceptually, the averaging integration model provides an explanation about
the psychology of the attitude-action gap. Implications for policy making are
discussed.


Currently, most IP multicasting applications are implemented based on any-source multicast (ASM) model that supports many-to-many multicast services. However, it is known that current ASM-based multicast architecture has several deployment problems such as scalability and lack of access control. The source-specific multicast (SSM) working group in IETF has suggested SSM architecture which is based on one-to-many multicast service model in order to overcome the weaknesses of ASM architecture. In order to encourage the deployment of SSM, we need an effective and accurate implementation of SSM capable router and host on easily available platforms such as Linux and FreeBSD. We describe the key design and implementation features of our SSM capable router and host, applied to Linux 2.4.21 kernel. Then, we report the packet forwarding performance of SSM router. The forwarding performance of our implementation shows 95% of wire speed, when the packet length is IPv6 minimum path MTU


The theory of endogenous technical change has deeply contributed to our understanding of the fundamental sources of economic growth and development. In this chapter we survey important contributions in the field by focussing on the basic structure of endogenous growth models with horizontal as well as vertical innovation and emphasizing important implications for growth policy. We address issues like the scale effect problem, directed technological change to understand the evolution of wage inequality, long-run divergence between the innovating North and the imitating South due to inappropriate technology in the South, the relationship between trade and growth, competition and R&D, and the role of imperfect capital markets for R&D-based growth.


SUMMARY Earthworms have been studied as a feed additive and animal protein source for poultry for many years. The interest in earthworm use for manure management has greatly increased over the past few decades. However, it is unknown whether earthworm powder in the diet poses a potential heavy metal risk for broiler pullets. This study was conducted to investigate the safety of adding earthworm powder in the diets of broiler pullets. A total of 240 Ningdu Yellow broiler pullets were randomly assigned to 4 groups receiving diets supplemented with 0%, 1%, 3%, or 5% earthworm powder for 30 d. Feed conversion ratios were improved by 12.64% and 22.45%, when 3% and 5% earthworm powder, respectively, were added (P = 0.02). Supplementing the diet with 5% earthworm powder had no negative effects on the growth of pullets, and increased antioxidant enzyme (superoxide dismutase, catalase, and glutathione peroxidase) activities in the liver (P < 0.05). The liver contained higher levels of heavy metals than did the thigh and chest muscles. All heavy metal residues in the thigh and chest muscles, as well as the liver, were below China's permissible limits. These results suggest that dietary supplementation with 1%‐5% earthworm powder is safe for broiler pullets.


The radiative properties of sub-tropical marine stratocumulus, which cover large regions and affect the global climate, are influenced by the presence of drizzle, aerosols, and cloud-top entrainment, all of which are coupled. VOCALS, the VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study, is examining the climate system of the southeast Pacific to reduce uncertainties in current and future climate projections, especially those associated with marine stratocumulus and coupled ocean-atmosphere processes. As part of VOCALS-UK we are investigating the small-scale structure and microphysics of marine stratocumulus, and hence its radiative properties, by using the UK Met Office Large Eddy Model (LEM). The model simulations are validated against measurements from the BAe-146 research aircraft obtained during the VOCALS field campaign over the southeast Pacific in October and November 2008.

We have incorporated the new Morrison microphysics scheme into the LEM and compared simulations with the Morrison scheme to those from the LEM standard bulk microphysics. Simulations with the Morrison scheme tend to produce a deeper marine stratocumulus with increased Liquid Water Path (LWP), but reduced precipitation compared to the standard LEM scheme. The cloud droplet effective radii (Re) is increased as not all the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) are activated, so that radiative cooling at the cloud tops, vertical mixing and cloud top entrainment are all reduced. Overall, results from the Morrison scheme are in better agreement with the measurements.

We then carried out sensitivity studies to quantify the effects of increased CCN number concentration, entrainment of clean air at cloud top, and precipitation on the simulated clouds and their radiative properties, including the inhomogenity over different domain sizes. Increased CCN results in reduced Re, increased albedo, cloud top cooling, vertical mixing and entrainment, and reduced LWP, inhomogeneity and precipitation. Entrainment of clean air results in slightly increased Re, reduced albedo, cooling, vertical mixing, entrainment and LWP, and increased inhomogeneity and precipitation. Precipitation removes liquid water from the cloud, but evapouration of the raindrops then moistens and cools the air below, reducing LWP, vertical mixing and albedo, and increasing cloud layer inhomogeneity. Furthermore the effects are coupled with increased CCN leading to reduced precipitation, and precipitation removing CCN.

The amount of horizontal inhomogeneity in the albedo of the simulated cloud tops over different domain sizes is also examined. Increasing CCN reduces the inhomogeneity across all domain sizes, while both the entrainment of clean air and precipitation increase the inhomogeneity with the greatest increases over the largest domains.