Cropping system models are typically used to simulate crop growth and development at the field scale. Spatial extension of the results to larger scales needs spatially referenced databases using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). However, GIS generally lack accuracy and pertinence in the soil characteristics and delineations that are required for this purpose. In addition, most soil parameters used in the soil-water models are empirical and are estimated without any reference to soil structure, making it difficult to characterize the hydrostructural functionality of spatial soil mapping units in the GIS. The objective of this article is to present an application of a new approach in soil physics for coupling a soil information (mapping and characterization) system based on the soil organization with an agronomic model, CropSyst, to be used for soil and water management purposes. Accordingly, a GIS based on a map of hierarchical natural units in the irrigated area of Cebalat (northern Tunisia) was used to build a geo-referenced soil information system for the study area. Additional information from the existing GIS of the zone was overlaid to produce "agronomic units," which result from the spatial superposition of the soil information system, farm map units, and land use. The inputs for the model were different sets of soil, crop, and crop management parameters. Simulations were conducted at the field scale for testing the ability of CropSyst to simulate yield, soil water dynamics, soil salinity, nitrogen leached, and at the regional level, yield. At the field scale, the model accurately, without calibration of soil properties, simulated the soil water content and salinity (RRMSE less than 10%). Simulated soil nitrate concentration was not close to observed values (RRMSE of 54%), but the latter were also associated with large variability. At the regional scale, the model offered an overall good integrated performance in simulating yield in the area under evaluation. For rainfed crops, the regression line between simulated and observed yield was close to 1:1; however, the model slightly underestimated simulated yield for the irrigated crops.


Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most malignant human brain tumour, characterized by rapid progression, invasion, intense angiogenesis, high genomic instability, and resistance to therapies. Despite countless experimental researches for new therapeutic strategies and promising clinical trials, the prognosis remains extremely poor, with a mean survival of less than 14 months. GBM aggressive behaviour is due to a subpopulation of tumourigenic stem-like cells, GBM stem cells (GSCs), which hierarchically drive onset, proliferation, and tumour recurrence. The morbidity and mortality of this disease strongly encourage exploring genetic characteristics of GSCs. Here, using array-CGH platform, we investigated genetic and genomic aberration profiles of GBM parent tumour (n = 10) and their primarily derived GSCs. Statistical analysis was performed by using R software and complex heatmap and corrplot packages. Pearson correlation and K-means algorithm were exploited to compare genetic alterations and to group similar genetic profiles in matched pairs of GBM and derived GSCs. We identified, in both GBM and matched GSCs, recurrent copy number alterations, as chromosome 7 polysomy, chromosome 10 monosomy, and chromosome 9p21deletions, which are typical features of primary GBM, essential for gliomagenesis. These observations suggest a condition of strong genomic instability both in GBM as GSCs. Our findings showed the robust similarity between GBM mass and GSCs (Pearson corr.≥0.65) but also highlighted a marked variability among different patients. Indeed, the heatmap reporting Gain/Loss State for 21022 coding/noncoding genes demonstrated high interpatient divergence. Furthermore, K-means algorithm identified an impairment of pathways related to the development and progression of cancer, such as angiogenesis, as well as pathways related to the immune system regulation, such as T cell activation. Our data confirmed the preservation of the genomic landscape from tumour tissue to GSCs, supporting the relevance of this cellular model to test in vitro new target therapies for GBM.


The oxidation behaviour of binary Fe-Cr alloys containing 10 and 20 mass % Cr, respectively, was studied in Ar-20%O2, Ar-7%H2O and in Ar-4%H2-7%H2O at temperatures between 800 and 1050°C. Thermogravimetric analyses in combination with analytical studies using SEM/EDX and Raman Spectroscopy revealed, that in atmospheres in which water vapor is the source of oxygen, Cr exhibits a higher tendency to become internally oxidized than in the Ar-O2 gas. Contrary to previous studies which showed the presence of water vapor to affect transport processes in the surface oxide scale, the present results reveal that the presence of water vapor also affects the transport processes in the alloy. The enhanced internal oxidation, which is likely the result of water vapor increasing the solubility and/or the diffusivity of oxygen in the alloy, explains the frequently observed effect that Fe(Ni)Cr alloys with intermediate Cr contents (e.g. 10-20%, depending on temperature) exhibit protective oxidation in dry gases but breakaway type oxidation in steam. The temperature dependence of the change from protective to non-protective behaviour in Ar-H2O differs quantitatively, but not qualitatively from that in Ar-O2.


Monocytes are circulating mononuclear phagocytes, poised to extravasate to sites of inflammation and differentiate into monocyte-derived macrophages and dendritic cells. Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and its receptors are up-regulated during monopoiesis and expressed by circulating monocytes, as well as effector monocytes infiltrating certain sites of inflammation, such as the spinal cord, during experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). In this study, using competitive in vitro and in vivo assays, we show that monocytes deficient for TNF or TNF receptors are outcompeted by their wild-type counterpart. Moreover, monocyte-autonomous TNF is critical for the function of these cells, as TNF ablation in monocytes/macrophages, but not in microglia, delayed the onset of EAE in challenged animals and was associated with reduced acute spinal cord infiltration of Ly6Chi effector monocytes. Collectively, our data reveal a previously unappreciated critical cell-autonomous role of TNF on monocytes for their survival, maintenance, and function.


Stepping motors are used in many systems due to their simple driving method using open-loop control with switching devices. In the case such that a stepping motor is driven at low speed, the profile of angular displacement of the rotor becomes stepped one and rotor oscillation occurs in each step because of its switched operation. It is well known that microstep drive is one of the solutions of this problem, however currents in stator windings must be controlled precisely for execution of microstepping and consequently the drive circuit becomes complicated and expensive.The authors suggest a method to adjust the waveform of angular displacement in a step response of a stepping motor. In this method, the waveform is adjusted only by tuning the exciting sequence used for switching of the applied voltage on each winding, therefore no modification for the drive circuit is required. By adjusting the waveform appropriately, the profile of angular displacement becomes smooth even in the low-speed region.For tuning of the exciting sequence, genetic algorithm is used in the present work. In this algorithm, the step response of the motor is modeled as an individual of artificial life which has a genotype constructed by coding the exciting sequence. Each individual is evaluated by its fitness of the waveform to desirable one. Applying this method to the tuning process of the exciting sequence, it is shown that the waveform of angular displacement can be adjusted to a ramp function. Moreover, the driving characteristic in lowspeed region is improved by using the tuned exciting sequence.


Zaikin Sergey - Postgraduate Student, Department of Constitutional and Municipal Law, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Address: 20 Myasnitskaya Str., Moscow, 101000, Russian Federation. E-mail: email@example.com article features the history of election blocs in the RF and studies the examples of agreements of political parties and establishing election blocs. The relevance to the topic may be explained by the current reform of election laws. The article describes the main stages of this reform, i.e. decreasing electoral threshold in the State Duma election, changes as to the requirements of minimum number of political parties from 40, 000 to 500 members, cancelling the requirement of collecting signatures by political parties not represented in the Duma etc. The article shows a sharp rise in the number of registered parties since the spring of 2012 and justifies that these parties will unify into election blocs due to insufficient number of members. The article makes an analysis of legal regulation of election blocs and agreements, public associations which have arranged such unions. All this promotes to the accumulation of practical experience. The analysis has allowed revealing the following trends in the development of the institution of election blocs in Russia. The election blocs achieved success at the federal level (State Duma elections) In 1993, i.e. when the Russian election system had started developing and the elections of 2003 - the last time when they with a status of election associations were eligible for plebiscite. However, the largest number of election blocs was represented at the 1995 elections. - none of them cleared a 5 % threshold. Simultaneously, legal regulation of election blocs strived to recognize the unions as associations, but there was no requirement as to making an agreement confirming the creation of an election bloc. In its legal norms, the RF Central Election Commission interpreted this agreement on creating an election bloc a succinct decision containing the agreement of public associations to enter this bloc and making up a joint list of nominees. As an example, of the agreement on creating an election bloc for a detailed analysis of advantages and disadvantages was taken an agreement on creating an election bloc for joint participation in the election to the State Duma concluded September 14, 2003 on the election bloc Rodina.


A novel SBA-15 (2.5N-SBA-15) with pores penetrating into the silica walls has been synthesized with amino-ended hyperbranched polyamide (AEHPA) and P123 as co-templates. This novel template method successfully imprints mesoporous cavities into the silica structure. The obtained composites are used as a Co (15 wt%) catalyst support for Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis (FTS). The catalytic activity and product selectivity are significantly influenced by the support structure. Compared with the conventional 15Co/SBA-15 catalyst, the 15Co/2.5N-SBA-15 catalyst with a penetrating pore structure shows improved reducibility of cobalt species, leading to better catalytic properties with respect to CO activity and C5+ selectivity during the FTS reaction.


There has been a great deal of discussion of actively managed exchange-traded funds at conferences and in the press. However, there has been little evidence of progress in dealing with the operating and regulatory issues active management of ETFs presents. In August 2005, Managed ETFs™ LLC filed an application for exemptive relief to offer a comprehensive range of actively managed ETFs. To our knowledge, this is the first such application. We have excerpted some of the distinctive features of this application that might be of interest to our readers. The sometimes formal language of this legal document and its capitalization and punctuation have not been altered. We have added a few appropriate headings to highlight specific topics. Information on how to obtain copies of SEC exemptive application filings is available on the SEC website, http:// www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm.


Liaohe Oil Field is a low permeability reservoir, formation oil poor, so far taken the field is ongoing recovery process, but the time of really pumping oil doesn't account for 20% of running time, most of the time pumping machines have "empty pumping" phenomenon, it results in energy loss, increasing the mechanical wear, reducing the mechanical life and increasing the oil production cost. Aiming at the status of Liaohe oil field, I will develop an economical and effective way to achieve remote monitoring of the pumping unit. The method uses a time difference ultrasonic measurement techniques, the following is my brief description of measurement methods.


There are two common methods to characterize organic chemical composition of decomposing plant litter, a forest products method and a forage fiber method. These methods divide litter into a few fractions based on extractions using different solvents. In this study, equivalencies were established between the fractions of the methods. Some of the equivalencies were based on similarities in the fractionation methods, whereas some were estimated empirically. The equivalencies gave similar chemical composition for different litter types as measurements. The results were also comparable to, or for certain fractions even better than, those obtained using earlier conversion equations. The equivalencies established are suitable for converting the forage fiber fractions to the forest products fractions in litter decomposition studies. Thus, they increase possibilities to exchange data on litter chemical characteristics across the methods in decomposition studies.


In the era of context-aware services, users are enjoying remarkable services based on data collected from a multitude of users. To receive services, they are at risk of leaking private information from adversaries possibly eavesdropping on the data and/or the un–trusted service platform selling off its data. Malicious adversaries may use leaked information to violate users' privacy in unpredictable ways. To protect users' privacy, many algorithms are proposed to protect users' sensitive information by adding noise, thus causing contextaware service quality loss. Game theory has been utilized as a powerful tool to balance the tradeoff between privacy protection level and service quality. However, most of the existing schemes fail to depict the mutual relationship between any two parties involved: user, platform, and adversary. There is also an oversight to formulate the interaction occurring between multiple users, as well as the interaction between any two attributes. To solve these issues, this dissertation firstly proposes a three-party game framework to formulate the mutual interaction between three parties and study the optimal privacy protection level for context-aware services, thus optimize the service quality. Next, this dissertation extends the framework to a multi-user scenario and proposes a two-layer three-party game framework. This makes the proposed framework more realistic by further exploring the interaction, not only between different parties, but also between users. Finally, we focus on analyzing the impact of long-term time-serial data and the active actions of the platform and adversary. To achieve this objective, we design a three-party Stackelberg game model to help the user to decide whether to update information and the granularity of updated information. INDEX WORDS: Privacy Protection, Game Theory, Nash Equilibrium, ThreeParty Game, Context-Aware Services GAME THEORY BASED PRIVACY PROTECTION FOR CONTEXT-AWARE SERVICES


Significant advances are reported in the application of HR-EBSD to the imaging of the dislocation structure of polycrystalline materials. The central assumption of the method is the compatibility of the total displacement field, which relates the (Nye) dislocation tensor to the (partially measurable) curl of the elastic displacement field. Two key challenges must be addressed, including: a) the fundamental limitation imposed by the electron-opacity of typical materials, which limits the measurement of gradients in the displacement field in the direction normal to the sample surface; and b) the inability of HR-EBSD to recover the spherical (elastic) distortions of the lattice. This second challenge can be overcome if a traction free boundary condition is applied. It is illustrated that consideration of the familiar stress equilibrium relations gives additional information, which may enable estimates of the missing components of the Nye tensor. An example of application of HR-EBSD to a Mg-Ce sample is presented.


707 Background: In the current era of Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), the role and timing of nephrectomy in the case of complete response on metastatic sites is still unknown. We aimed to evaluate the feasibility of nephrectomy for residual disease in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) and complete response (CR) on metastatic sites following ICI. Methods: Patients who underwent partial or radical nephrectomy after prior ICI between 2015 and 2018 were retrospectively included and clinicopathological data were reviewed. Perioperative data and postoperative outcomes were recorded. Results: Eleven patients without initial cytoreductive nephrectomy at diagnosis underwent delayed nephrectomy after long ICI administration because of complete response on metastatic sites. Median age was 59.8 years [38-67]. All patients had clear cell RCC on the initial biopsy. IMDC prognostic group was intermediate (81.8%) or poor (18.2%). ICI was administered as first-line therapy in 36.4% of cases (4/11) and as second-line option after TKI in 63.6% of cases (7/11). Treatments regimens were: nivolumab + ipilimumab (n = 3), nivolumab + tivozanib (n = 2) or nivolumab alone (n = 6). The median duration of ICI treatment was 10 months (range: 3-38 months) and the mean number of cycles was 27 (range: 6-75). Median operative time was 243 minutes [135-345] and mean blood loss was 909 cc [40-4000]. In 81.8% (n = 9) of the cases, surgeons experienced challenges for finding dissection planes due to inflammatory infiltration. The 30-day Clavien-Dindo postoperative complication rate was 54.6%, including 1 surgery-related death. Pathological report showed lymphocyte and/or macrophage infiltration in 54.6% and complete pathological response in 2 cases. Median follow-up was 15 months, with 73% of patients free from progression and 54% free from systemic treatment at 1 year. Conclusions: Nephrectomy following ICI for mRCC could allow achieving CR in selected patients. Due to technically complexity and complications rates, this surgery should be performed in centers with extensive experience.


Abstract

Chickens were exposed to aflatoxin sourced from rice substrate.Enzyme immunosorbent assay was used to evaluate the immune response to newcastle disease vaccinations vis a vis the hematological pictures. Results shows a dose dependent reduction in immune titer to newcastle disease.Hematological findings confirms leucopenia,throbocytopenia, with increased PCV and hemoglobin.Also increased is the heterophils which was masked by other lucocytes reduction. This hematological picture and immunosuppression is being linked to increased glucocorticoid in the subjects.


This work describes the synthesis and application of a novel magnetic metal–organic framework (MOF) [(Fe3O4–ethylenediamine)/MIL-101(Fe)] to preconcentrate the trace amounts of Cd(II), Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cr(III) ions and their determination by flame atomic absorption spectrometry. A Box–Behnken design was used to find the parameters affecting the preconcentration procedure through response surface methodology. Three variables, including sorption time, amount of the magnetic sorbent, and sample pH, were selected as affecting factors in sorption step, and four parameters, including type, volume, concentration of the eluent, and elution time, were selected in elution step for the optimization study. The values of the amount of the magnetic sorbent, sorption time, sample pH, type, volume, concentration of the eluent, and elution time were 29 mg, 15 min, 6.1, EDTA + HNO3, 4.2 mL, 0.7 mol L−1 EDTA in 0.07 mol L−1 HNO3 solution, 17.0 min, respectively. The limits of detection (LOD) were 0.15, 0.8, 0.2 and 0.5 ng mL−1 for Cd(II), Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cr(III) ions, respectively. The relative standard deviations (RSD) of the method were less than 7.6% for five separate batch experiments in the determination of 30 μg L−1 of Cd(II), Pb(II), Zn(II) and Cr(III) ions. The sorption capacity of [(Fe3O4–ethylenediamine)/MIL-101(Fe)] was 155 mg g−1 for cadmium, 198 mg g−1 for lead, 164 mg g−1 for zinc and 173 mg g−1 for chromium. Finally, the magnetic MOF nanocomposite was successfully applied to rapidly extract the trace amounts of heavy metal ions in agricultural samples.


Aspects of the built environment may be contributing to the upward trend in obesity through constrained availability and affordability of healthful foods. The neighborhood food environment factors such as the availability of food retail stores is increasingly being recognized as playing an important role in health behaviors and health outcomes. We examine the local availability of retail food stores and their influence on the risk of obesity in North Carolina. Data on food stores were linked through county codes to individual data from the BRFSS data and multilevel modeling was employed to assess their associations with BMI. In regressions that included fruit and vegetable servings, and food store types as explanatory variables, our result show that BMI decreased with availability of supermarkets, and consumption of more servings of fruits and vegetables. In contrast increased availability of gas and convenience type food store outlets was associated with increased BMI.


Article describes diagnose and research methods Common Rail system fuel injectors. Profesional diagnose modern fuel injectors is very dificult procedure. Basic theirs work parameter influencing on correctly work parameters are magnitude injection and return dosages by definite pressures prevailing in system and injetion times. Sometimes dosages during diagnose by coordinate task and actual fuel injector are correct but engine work is not proper. So that during diagnose should extend tests procedure in range varie work conditions. Fuel injectors work characteristics are one of method researching in whole range work. During researches has been used Continental fuel injector.


ABSTRACT Background: There is increasing evidence that moral injuries (MIs) may affect the mental health of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members and veterans. Despite knowledge suggesting that MIs are related to multiple negative mental health outcomes, including the onset of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), it is unknown whether pre-traumatic variables, including the presence of childhood abuse, are related to MIs. Objective: This study seeks to investigate the potential relationship between adverse childhood experiences and later onset MI in military members. Methods: Thirty-three patients newly admitted to an inpatient unit for treatment of trauma-related disorders received a standardized self-assessment package, including the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5), the Moral Injury Events Scale (MIES; adapted for the Canadian context), and the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (ACE-Q), which is a retrospective measure of childhood abuse. Results: Analyses revealed a significant relation between childhood emotional abuse and the presence of MI in adulthood. Specifically, emotional abuse during childhood was correlated with total score on the MIES (p = 0.006) and with its two subscales, perceived betrayals (p = 0.022) and perceived transgressions (p = 0.016). These correlations remained significant when controlling for age and gender. Conclusions: Among CAF members and veterans, childhood events are related to the presence of MI during adulthood. These preliminary data are provocative in suggesting that emotional abuse during childhood may increase the likelihood of endorsing MI during adult military service. Further work is needed to identify pre-traumatic variables that may serve to increase risk or enhance resilience to the development of MI in military members. HIGHLIGHTS • Prior research suggests that adverse childhood experiences influence the development of adult post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in civilian and military populations. • Moreover, research suggests a relation between PTSD and moral injury (MI) in military populations. • The current study finds that experiencing childhood emotional abuse is related to the presence of MI during adult military service, even after controlling for age and gender.


Social pressure, work overload, high level of productivity requirement and lack of recognition and autonomy are factors that affect the nutritional status of workers. This study aims to estimate the nutritional profile and assess its association with psychosocial factors in a sample of workers of the Court of Justice of Minas Gerais State, Brazil. A cross-sectional study with a probabilistic sample of workers (pregnant individuals and those on vacation or away for other reasons for excluded), is being conducted through telephone interview (data collection finishes at march 2016), in order to provide socioeconomic, health and psychosocial data. Self-reported information on weight and height will be used to estimate worker's body mass index and allow nutritional status classification. The translated, adopted and validated in Portuguese version of the Swedish Demand-Control-Support Questionnaire will be used to address the psychosocial factors. Estimates of nutritional status will be presented by sex, age and education. Linear regression models will be used to evaluate the association between nutritional status and psychosocial factors. This survey results will provide an unprecedented assessment of nutritional status of the judiciary workers of Brazil as well as it work related associated factors.


One essential aspect to improve patient safety and reduce medical errors focuses on the need for healthcare organizations to promote a patient-safety culture, and to banish the blame and shame culture and "conspiracy of silence"--traditional approaches within organizations when reacting to medical errors. Culture change arises when physicians, pharmacists, nurses and other self-regulated professionals are encouraged and expected to report errors without fear of retribution. A culture of patient safety will evolve in healthcare organizations and regulatory agencies only if top leaders demonstrate their commitment to change by making this a personal priority by assimilating new knowledge about medical errors and human behavior. Leaders must also promote strategies to integrate patient safety into every process that supports the system of patient-care delivery.


The sera of 55 trachoma patients were tested against two strains of Bact. granulosis (Tu. 3.4 and MC) and 40 of these against strain 1R. Twenty-six "control" sera, obtained from miscellaneous patients, including types of conjunctivities and other diseases of the eye, as well as from normal persons and a variety of surgical cases, were also examined. Certain sera were found to agglutinate Bact. granulosis in dilutions of 1:4 to 1:100 which was the highest dilution tested.

The three strains of Bact. granulosis behaved somewhat differently in their agglutinability with patient's sera. Thus strain MC agglutinated with 17 out of 55 "trachoma" sera while strain Tu. 3.4 reacted with only 8, and strain 1R agglutinated with 6 out of 41. Sera which were allowed to age in the icebox were often reduced in agglutinin titer and occasionally gave negative results.

The results recorded in the tables indicate that in a general way agglutination of Bact. granulosis occurs more frequently in the sera of trachoma patients than that of normal individuals. The agglutination appears to occur to a higher dilution of serum from trachoma patients. Moreover, several points are of interest. Thus, serum 37, obtained from a Negro with normal conjunctivae, showed a high agglutinin titer (1:100 ++, table 2). It will be recalled that Testa (22) and others observed that full blooded Negroes are immune to trachoma. (This writer has suggested the use of Negro blood in the treatment of trachoma.) Patient 57, was suffering from a conjunctivitis of undiagnosed type at the time when her blood was taken, and being a nurses' assistant at the Presbyterian Hospital for Navajo Indians, she was constantly exposed to infection with trachoma. Her serum titer was 1:100+++.

An attempt was made to analyze the agglutination reactions of the "trachoma" sera with reference to the age, race and sex of the patient, the stage and duration of the disease, the presence of follicles or of conjunctival scars, of pannus or of mixed infections, but the total number of patients was insufficient to warrant any conclusions.

For the purpose of comparison, the literature on immunological reactions in other infections of the eye was reviewed. It was noted that, in general, these localized infections do not cause appreciable antibody production. Thus, Reis (23) observed that in infections on the conjunctiva due to the diplobacillus of Morax, the serum manifested no increased bacteriolytic or bacteriocidal properties. Likewise, the conjunctival secretions in this disease had no increased phagocytic activity. zur Nedden (24) similarly observed negative results in phagocytic experiments with conjunctival secretions due to the pneumococcus and to the Koch-Weeks bacillus. It is remarkable that even in a case of panophthalmitis due to a diplococcus, Bach (25) was unable to demonstrate specific agglutinins in the serum of the patient. It is only when the ocular infection is part of a generalized or systemic disease that serum antibodies are demonstrable. Thus, complement fixing antibodies were found by Reber and Lawrence (26) and by Edmund (27) in the serum of patients suffering with iritis of gonorrhoeal origin, while agglutinins in fairly high concentration (1:140 to 1:320) were observed by Vail (28) and by Dvorak (29) in patients having the oculo-glandular type of tularemia. Similarly, Pascheff (30) who described a new type of infectious conjunctivitis, due to a specific coccobacillus, observed an agglutinin titer of 1:2000. This disease is similar to tularemia in its glandular and febrile manifestations.


Abstract Purpose Online reviews on tourism attractions provide important references for potential tourists to choose tourism spots. The main goal of this study is conducting sentiment analysis to facilitate users comprehending the large scale of the reviews, based on the comments about Chinese attractions from Japanese tourism website 4Travel. Design/methodology/approach Different statistics- and rule-based methods are used to analyze the sentiment of the reviews. Three groups of novel statistics-based methods combining feature selection functions and the traditional term frequency-inverse document frequency (TF-IDF) method are proposed. We also make seven groups of different rules-based methods. The macro-average and micro-average values for the best classification results of the methods are calculated respectively and the performance of the methods are shown. Findings We compare the statistics-based and rule-based methods separately and compare the overall performance of the two method. According to the results, it is concluded that the combination of feature selection functions and weightings can strongly improve the overall performance. The emotional vocabulary in the field of tourism (EVT), kaomojis, negative and transitional words can notably improve the performance in all of three categories. The rule-based methods outperform the statistics-based ones with a narrow advantage. Research limitation Two limitations can be addressed: 1) the empirical studies to verify the validity of the proposed methods are only conducted on Japanese languages; and 2) the deep learning technology is not been incorporated in the methods. Practical implications The results help to elucidate the intrinsic characteristics of the Japanese language and the influence on sentiment analysis. These findings also provide practical usage guidelines within the field of sentiment analysis of Japanese online tourism reviews. Originality/value Our research is of practicability. Currently, there are no studies that focus on the sentiment analysis of Japanese reviews about Chinese attractions.


Experiments were conducted with chicks during the period 10-20 d posthatching to assess va line accretion and protein accretion as a function of incremental valine intakes between 5 and 95% of its ideal level (requirement for maximal growth). Chemi cally defined crystalline amino acid diets were fed, and amino acids other than valine were maintained at mini mized excess levels as valine was increased. With di etary valine concentrations representing 5, 10, 40, 55, 70 and 95% of the ideal level, weight gain (r2 = 0.98), protein accretion (r2 = 0.98) and valine accretion (r2 = 0.99) increased linearly (P < 0.01) as a function of valine intake. Slope of the valine accretion curve was 0.73 ±0.02, and there was no indication of decreased valine utilization as valine intake increased to 95% of its required level for maximal growth. Using the linear regression equation, i.e., valine accretion (Y) re gressed on valine intake (X), the maintenance valine requirement (X at Y zero) was 18.4 mg/d or 48.8 mg/ d per kg body weight374. Whole body valine was 4.72 g/100 g whole body protein accreted and was constant at all levels of valine intake. At zero protein accretion, however, valine accretion was negative (-3.8 mg/d). Thus, the valine requirement for zero valine accretion (48.8 mg/d per kg3/4) was higher than the valine re quirement for zero protein accretion (32.4 mg/d per kg' '). In a subsequent experiment, also involving whole body valine and protein accretion, valine doses of 40, 55 and 70% of ideal were compared using amino acid-balanced diets (amino acids other than valine at 55, 70 and 85% of ideal levels, respectively) or imbalanced diets (amino acids other than valine at a con stant 100% of their ideal levels). Straight-line (P < 0.01) valine and protein accretion responses occurred, but slope of the response curves (accretion vs. valine intake) was lower in the "unbalanced series than in the balanced series. The results of these studies suggest a constant utilization above maintenance of absorbed valine over a wide range of valine intakes. J. Nutr. 126: 1844-1851, 1996.


Graph-based groupwise image registration (G-GIR) aims to register a group of input images accurately without any bias. In G-GIR, an image similarity metric (ISM) is used to construct a graph that links similar images with graph edges. From the graph, a group center image and the shortest paths linking it to all other images can be determined. The deformation field aligning each image to the group center image can be obtained by composing sub-deformation fields that come from registration of adjacent images along the corresponding shortest path. The majority of ISMs used in G-GIR are based on image intensity. Since image intensity can be ambiguous and is not directly related to deformation directions, inconsistency problem in the sub-deformation fields along the shortest paths can occur. The word ``inconsistency'' mentioned here refers to the directions of deformation vectors in the sub-deformation fields along each shortest path are significantly different or even opposite at corresponding locations. Such problem can make G-GIR inefficient and easily to be trapped in local minimum. In this paper, we propose a new ISM for G-GIR, by which the consistency in the sub-deformation fields along the shortest paths can be significantly improved. We evaluate our method in comparison with three state-of-the-art ISMs using a common G-GIR framework. The experimental results with both toy and real images show that our method significantly improves registration accuracy.


We propose and demonstrate an AC-coupled burst-mode transmitter with a differential interface for 10-Gbit/s-class passive optical network (PON) systems by using a novel baseline-wander common-mode-rejection (BLW-CMR) technique. This technique can cancel the transient responses of capacitors at the AC-coupled differential interface, and produce an optical burst-mode signal with a fast response. We confirmed the feasibility of this technique experimentally with the prototype we developed. The response time of the optical burst-mode signal was 500 ps, which is the fastest response time reported for a burst-mode transmitter. Good temperature dependences were also observed. Moreover, we conducted a burst-mode upstream experiment using a burst-mode avalanche photodiode (APD) receiver that we developed for 10 G-EPON systems. We obtained a large loss budget of 33 dB and a wide dynamic range of 25.5 dB at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-3.


In this paper, the loaded cylindrical metallic cavity loaded by lossy dielectric slab is modelled using multilayer perceptron networks. A proper neural model is defined, which includes the dielectric slab losses and is used for modelling of the cavity with circular cross-section when lossy dielectric slab is placed at the bottom of the cavity. An original approach for significantly decreasing neural network training set is suggested. The results obtained show that the suggested approach provides microwave cavity modelling with high accuracy.


In extracting gear box acoustic signals embedded in excessive noise, the need for an online and automated tool becomes a crucial necessity. One of the recent approaches that have gained some acceptance within the research arena is the Wavelet multi-resolution analysis (WMRA). However selecting an accurate mother wavelet, defining dynamic threshold values and identifying the resolution levels to be considered in gearboxes fault detection and diagnosis are still challenging tasks. This paper proposes a novel wavelet-based technique for detecting, locating and estimating the severity of defects in gear tooth fracture. The proposed technique enhances the WMRA by decomposing the noisy data into different resolution levels while data sliding it into Kaiser's window. Only the maximum expansion coefficients at each resolution level are used in de-noising, detecting and measuring the severity of the defects. A small set of coefficients is used in the monitoring process without assigning threshold values or performing signal reconstruction. The proposed monitoring technique has been applied to a laboratory data corrupted with high noise level.


Memories fade, alas, and more rapidly with age, though the aging brain holds more tenaciously to the longer past. Or does it? The brain may be continually editing those seemingly clear memories. That the immature brain constructs, "sculpts" itself by configuring its neural linkages to make best use of the sensory input received in early life has been known for decades. The more recent news is that mature brains also re-arrange these linkages as sensory inputs change. So what? Well, by some estimates inadequate stimulation in early childhood leaves 25% of Canadians neurally challenged by the modern world. Countries with systematic early child development programs show better results. Are there also opportunities for exploiting the plasticity of adult brains? (Or is that already happening, all around us?).


I captured 16 Perimyotis subflavus on property owned by the Indianapolis International Airport, of those 16 animals I obtained roosting data on all 16 and foraging data on 11 individuals. The goal of this project was to see if a short broad winged bat's foraging and roosting habits were affected by the fragmentation of habitat due to rapid urbanization. Using radio telemetry to find roosts and to create multi-azimuth triangulation I was able to create data points and place them onto a habitat map inside ArcGIS software. Sampling the size of woodlots available to the bats I was able to see that the bats only roosted in larger woodlots on the property. Using Euclidian distance analysis I was able to compare the distance of data points both with roosting and foraging from habitat classes to see that this species roosts in woodlots next to old fields and maintained habitats, does not roost in woodlots near commercial areas, and prefers foraging in forests, agricultural fields, maintained habitats, and old fields.


Issues such as global climate change, poverty and inequity, and the unsustainable use of resources are becoming more commonly understood amongst the public, governments and organisations. As a result the pressure on businesses to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into policies and activities is mounting.

Over the last 50 years, the discipline of project management has matured, the tools of which are increasingly used to deliver specific organisational objectives and introduce or improve new or existing products and services. The traditional definition of a project is an endeavour with a defined beginning and end, undertaken to meet unique goals and objectives. This definition would seem to be at odds with definitions of sustainable development that aim to recognise the long-term nature of environmental or societal impacts arising from business activities. In order to address this apparent dichotomy a new paradigm of project management that both implicitly and explicitly incorporates social, economic and environmental issues is emerging.
The concept of sustainable project management is relatively new, but its role in contributing to sustainable development is increasingly gaining interest amongst project management professionals and academics. This paper will introduce the concept of sustainable project management and report on current research that seeks to re-define the relationship between project management and sustainability.


Embedded systems are proliferating at an amazing rate with no end in sight. In 1998 only 2% of all processors where used for general purpose workstations and 98% for embedded systems. The percentage of processors used for workstations is rapidly approaching 0% for the year 2000. Success of embedded systems depends on low cost, a high degree of tailorability, quickness to market, cost-effective variations in the product, and sometimes flexible operation of the product. The reliability of these products and the degree of configurability will become paramount concerns. Currently, there is no efficient way to build software for these systems. The use of component based software for constructing and tailoring these systems has promise. However, most components are too heavyweight and don't explicitly address real-time, memory, power and cost constraints. What is required is a new type of component that is lightweight and relates to the physical and real-time properties of embedded systems. The first part of the solution is developing the new components themselves. This problem is where most people have spent their energies. While this is a necessary step, it is the easiest step and it ignores fully addressing how the components interact with other components or how they fit into a component infrastructure. The second problem is that while significant work has been done in developing CORBA [33], DCOM [22], Jini [1] components, much less has been done with components suitable for embedded systems. Third, most tools available for the configuration process provide little more than linking or an extended "make" capability. It is the designer who has to know everything about the components and their (often hidden) constraints. For example, a designer may know that the combination of 2 seemingly unrelated components leads to unpredictable delays in network protocol processing. What is needed are tools that support the specification of embedded system requirements followed by knowledgeable and helpful construction of the embedded system with careful analysis of component dependencies as well as the time, memory, power, and cost constraints. The final product must offer as many guarantees as possible along many dimensions including correctness, performance and reliability. Our work is focusing on the development of effective composition, configuration, and reconfiguration mechanisms, and the associated dependency


Startup companies face many challenges in the early years of their existence. During these critical stages, they must convince decision makers to provide them with critical resources, such as capital investments, support from startup incubators, or obtaining grants or subsidies.To succeed, entrepreneurs must present their fledgling businesses in an engaging and convincing way. As they create legitimacy surrounding their entrepreneurial project, they tend to bend reality by presenting their ideas as being far more developed and mature than is the case. While presenting a well-defined project hides the "fuzzy" aspects of innovation and creating a new business, it may present a risk that fixates and curtails the startup's ability to adjust their trajectory as they move ahead.In this paper, we study a specific formalization of innovative ideas: startup pitch decks. We analyze 121 startups as they apply to enter an incubator. In this paper, we identify common trends and differences in their content and structure. We then show how a presentation's content can be characterized using formal design theory as a descriptive language and decision-making tool by proposing a model we call "conceptual architecture". Further analysis of interactions between entrepreneurs and the incubator's selection committee explores the decision process as a design task that densifies the conceptual content of the pitch. We then suggest a process of systematic conceptual densification that could help both entrepreneurs and decision makers fully express the potential of an idea in terms of continued or future product development, or in some cases preparing entrepreneurs for a shift or "pivot" towards an alternative but conceptually related market.


There are no products available that make anal sex completely safe from the point of view of HIV acquisition, and the likelihood of this happening in the future is slim. However, in terms of risk reduction, there are practical interventions to implement, the possibility of new concepts to explore, and the promise in the future of an effective rectal microbicide. The individual risks of anal intercourse (apart from those posed by the insertive partner) are multifactorial and may be broadly broken down to three main areas: trauma, co-infection, and products that may all facilitate inflammation and so increase HIV acquisition risk. Trauma: The anal canal is a high pressure environment due to the combined effects of both internal and external anal sphincters and requires preparation prior to anal intercourse that may be usefully discussed in directed sex education to reduce traumatic injury. Co-infection: Human papillomavirus is an almost ubiquitous infection in sexually active adults and is an independent risk factor for HIV acquisition by both vaginal and anal intercourse. The vaccination of both boys and girls prior to sexual debut may have the potential to reduce HIV acquisition risk. Products: These may potentially harm and also protect. Many unregulated off the shelf sexual lubricant products have high osmolality and may contain Nononxynol 9 that can both injure and induce inflammation in rectal epithelium and so provide an environment conducive to HIV infection. However, the gel formulation of tenofovir has shown efficacy in reducing both HIV and herpes simplex virus acquisition (a cofactor for HIV infection) following vaginal application. The reduced glycerin rectal formulation of this product has been shown to be safe in a short Phase 1 study and is currently entering an extended safety Phase 2 study. These elements will be explored during this presentation.


Route guidance systems are used every day by both, sighted and visually impaired people. Systems, such as those built into cars and smart phones, usually using speech to direct the user towards their desired location. Sounds other than functional and speech sounds can, however, be used for directing people in distinct directions. The present paper compares response times with different stimuli and error rates in the detection. Functional sounds are chosen with and without intrinsic meanings, musical connotations, and stereo locations. Panned sine tones are identified as the fastest and most correctly identified stimuli in the test while speech is not identified faster than arbitrary sounds that have no particular meaning.


A computational study was performed for the formation of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the n-heptane laminar premixed flame and the homogeneous charge compression ignition (HCCI) combustion. A detailed reaction mechanism describing fuel pyrolysis and oxidation, benzene formation, and PAHs mass growth and oxidation including 107 species and 542 elementary reactions was adopted. The species concentration distributions were analyzed numerically in the laminar premixed n-heptane flame. The computational results compared well with experimental data show that this reaction mechanism can be used to predict reaction products in premixed n-heptane combustion. A single zone model which can numerical simulate the combustion process and emissions of HCCI engine were built. The formation and evolvement mechanisms of PAHs in n-heptane HCCI combustion were simulated.


Enantiopure allylic alcohols are very powerful synthons for the synthesis of a variety of natural products, agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals; therefore, the synthesis of these compounds has received considerable attention. For this purpose, several strategies involving asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction with 9-methylanthracene 202 have been used to generate the Diels-Alder adduct 203 in high enantioselectivity and acceptable yield, which would be used as a key starting material towards enantiopure allylic alcohols.
Among these approaches are: catalytic enantioselective reactions via chiral Lewis acids and organocatalysts, as well as chiral dienes. Unsuccessful attempts to perform asymmetric Diels-Alder reactions highlighted the use of a chiral dienophile strategy. Thus, a modified dienophile protocol by the addition of electron-withdrawing groups was considered. Despite the failure of a sulfone dienophile 272 to perform an asymmetric Diels-Alder reaction in an enantioselective manner, the utilisation of a chiral sulfoxide dienophile 302 was successful in providing (after desulfinylation) an optically pure cycloadduct 203 in 68% yield.

An enantiomeric adduct 203 underwent different asymmetric transformations, including dehydrogenation–conjugate addition reaction and reduction, furnishing alkylated alcohols 322-325 with complete conversion and high levels of diastereoselectivity (> 99:1 dr) which was controlled by anthracene system ring.
Subsequent retro Diels-Alder reactions via flash vacuum pyrolysis (FVP) demonstrated a valuable method for the synthesis of functionalised allylic alcohols 330-3332 in high enantiomeric excess (67-100% ee).


The vibrations of the propargyl cation (H3C3H ) have been studied by vibrational configuration interaction (VCI) calculations, using explicitly correlated coupled cluster theory at the CCSD(T*)-F12a level to determine the underlying 12-dimensional potential energy surface. The wavenumbers of the fundamental vibrations are predicted with an accuracy of ca. 5 cm . Harmonic wavenumber shifts for three different energy minima of the complex H2C3H + Ar are combined with the corresponding VCI values in order to provide a comparison with recent infrared photodissociation (IRPD) spectra (A. M. Ricks et al., J. Chem. Phys., 2010, 132, 051101). An excellent agreement between experiment and theory is obtained for bands n2 (symm. CH stretch), n3 (pseudoantisymm. CC stretch), and n4 (CH2 scissoring). However, reassignments are suggested for the bands observed at 3238 cm , the ''doublets'' around 3093 and 1111 cm , and the band at 3182 cm . The assignment of the latter to the asymmetric CH stretching vibration of c-C3H + 3 Ar is certainly wrong; the combination tone n3 + n5 of H2C3H + Ar is a more likely candidate. Furthermore, accurate proton affinities are predicted for the carbenes H2Cn with n = 3–8, thereby providing data of interest for interstellar cloud chemistry.


An extensive body of data demonstrates that diverse groups of mycotoxins can alter the structure and function of the nervous system in a variety of ways with notable human health consequences. Myconeurotoxicity refers to any adverse effects of exposure to mycotoxins or byproducts of primary and secondary mold metabolism, including volatile organic compounds (VOCs) on the structural or functional integrity of the developing or adult nervous system. Neuromycotoxic effects may involve a spectrum of biochemical, morphological, behavioral, and physiological abnormalities whose onset can vary from immediate to delayed action, following exposure to a mycotoxin, and whose duration may be transient or persistent and result in disability, while some may have life-threatening consequences. Myconeurotoxicity may result from effects of the mycotoxins acting directly on the elements of the nervous system or acting on other biological systems, which then adversely affect the nervous system. This paper reviews the application, effectiveness, and limitations of the electrophysiological diagnosis of myconeurotoxic effects of chronic environmental exposure to mycotoxins. The systemic targets of mycotoxic effects were reviewed for greater understanding as to why different neurophysiological test techniques have different levels of outcomes. Thus, nerve conduction velocity, sensory, motor, and evoked potentials, electroencephalographic techniques were evaluated using previously published papers and our clinical experience. Although, neuromycotoxic disorders can be established using clinical electrophysiological diagnosis, there is always the possibility of false positive and false negative results in some patients, which may be due to a multi-factorial etiopathogenesis of neuromycotoxicity. Detection of nervous system toxicity and other measures of toxicity could be achieved using a combination of these neurodiagnostic techniques.


In A Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls introduces the concept of "reflective equilibrium." Although there are innumerable references to and discussions of this concept in the literature, there is, to the present author's knowledge, no discussion of the most important question: Why reflective equilibrium? In particular, the question arises: Is the method of reflective equilibrium applicable to the choice of this method itself? Rawls's drawing of parallels between Kant's moral theory and his own suggests that his concept of "reflective equilibrium" is on a par with Kant's concept of "transcendental deduction." Treating these two approaches to justification as paradigmatic, I consider their respective merits in meeting the reflexive challenge, i.e., in offering a justification for choice of mode of justification. My enquiry into this topic comprises three parts. In the first part (Eng 2014a), I raised the issue of the reflexivity of justification and questioned whether the reflexive challenge can be met within the framework of A Theory of Justice. In this second part, I shall outline a Kantian approach that represents a paradigmatic alternative to Rawls.


Problems of energy efficiency, along with increasing environmental safety of production and increasing social responsibility, are becoming a central object of research. Therefore, the main goal of the work is to analyze the prospects for the development of the oil and gas industry. It was established that innovative technologies play an important role in the development of energy. In the structure of public administration, the definition of the place in the close relationship with commodity-money relations, mediating its implementation. But refusal of oil resources will lead to negative consequences. It is established that the maximum production of conventional oil in the world in the amount of 4.5-4.8 billion tons per year will be achieved in 2020-2030. Major areas of conventional oil production in this period will be oil and gas basins of the Persian Gulf, Western and Eastern Siberia, the Caspian sea, the Atlantic shelves of Africa and South America. The achieved level of oil production can be maintained by large-scale involvement in the development of non-traditional sources (bitumen and shale oil). According to the raw material base, the leaders of unconventional oil production should be Venezuela, Canada, Russia and the United States.


The paper analyses effectiveness of treatment of keratitis with cornea ulceration in 114 patients with and without epicorneal covering by keracol. The preparation is a dehydrated and powdered cattle cornea. It easily hydrates by the own corneal fluid to a jelly-like consistency in its epicorneal application. It is shown that epicorneal medicinal covering by keracol allows to have a necessary keratoplastic effect in diseases of the cornea accompanied by its ulceration. Microsurgical interventions, such as scarification of epithelium, dosed local keratectomy of superficial pathologically changed portions of the cornea with subsequent epicorneal covering by keracol, allowed to arrest the pathologic process within 3-10 days in 85% of patients; in the control group--the same results were achieved in 68.4% of cases.


One of the important methods to ensure the durability of cement concrete pavement is utilizing excellent waterproof bond layer. Firstly, based on the mechanism of strength of the thermosetting epoxy asphalt waterproof bond material (EAWBM), the construction temperature which is strictly controlled above 130°C, is insured. Then the amount, the curing time and temperature of the thermosetting epoxy asphalt, are studied as the influencing factors of mechanical properties based on the composite structures of the concrete cement pavement. Finally, through the three-point bending fatigue test of composite structures, the fatigue durability of different waterproof bond material is compared. The results show that: the optimal amount of the thermosetting epoxy asphalt is 0.60~0.80L/m2; the asphalt concrete paving must be carried out within 24~32h after the EAWBM is constructed; the mechanical properties of the material decreases as the increasing test temperature; the waterproof bond materials have greater impact on the fatigue durability for the composite structures of the concrete cement pavement compared with the paving material, and the fatigue durability of the EAWBM is the optimal selection for cement concrete pavement.


In the middle of the present struggle to keep interaction complexity in check, as artifact complexity continues to rise and the technical possibilities to interact multiply, the notion of interface is scrutinized. First, a limited number of previous interpretations or thought styles of the notion are identified and discussed. This serves as a framework for an analysis of the current situation with regard to complexity, control, and interaction, leading to a realization of the crucial role of surface in contemporary understanding of interaction. The potential of faceless interaction, interaction that transcends traditional reliance on surfaces, is then examined and discussed, liberating possibilities as well as complicating effects, and dangers are pointed out, ending with a sketch of a possibly emerging new thought style.


Electrospun fiber mats are currently gaining attention as advanced drug delivery systems. Dissolution testing for such systems is generally performed in small vials by immersing the fiber mats in buffered solutions. Defined aliquots of dissolution medium are withdrawn at predefined time points, and the dissolved drug is quantified. However, this procedure is associated with several drawbacks. The method is not automated, and as such requires manual sampling, which potentially leads to inaccuracies particularly in frequent sampling intervals as required for characterization of rapid drug release. Further, the sheet-like fiber mats tend to partially fold upon contact with the dissolution medium, which may potentially affect the release kinetics and reproducibility of the acquired release data.
In this study, we investigated the application of a fully automated fiber-optics based dissolution testing system for in situ monitoring of drug release from electrospun fiber mats. Electrospun poly (vinyl alcohol) fibers loaded with lysozyme were used as a model system. To prevent folding of the fiber mats and ensure a fixed position in the dissolution vessel throughout the experiment, a flexible adapter was developed to allow for the attachment of the fiber mats to the vessel walls. Lysozyme release from the fiber mats was compared with the release from cast films with the same composition. Even though the release processes were rather fast and differences in release kinetics of the two systems were marginal, the fiber-optics based dissolution setup allowed for the successful detection of released protein in both cases. The present study, therefore, highlights the potential for the utilization of fully automated fiber-optics based dissolution testing systems for advanced in situ monitoring of drug release from electrospun fibers.


Understanding the processes that determine the distribution of populations is a fundamental goal in ecology. In this study, I determined the relative contribution of space and the biotic and abiotic environment to the distribution of the palm-leaf skeletonizer Homaledra sabalella (PLS; Lepidoptera: Coleophoridae) among patchily distributed dwarf palmettos (Sabal minor; Arecaceae). Based on surveys conducted at two sites in the Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, Louisiana, I found that the distribution of the PLS was primarily related to local environmental conditions – number of PLS increased with palmetto height, was greater in dry versus wet habitats, and varied in an inconsistent way with the type of understory cover. Spatial structure of the forest and isolation of the host plant were of minor importance to the distribution of the PLS. Based on a series of experiments, the mechanisms underlying the effects of these environmental variables on PLS abundance were elucidated. Tall palmettos have a greater abundance of PLS because they are 2.5 times more likely to be colonized than small palmettos. Tall palmettos do not represent better hosts (in terms of PLS survival to pupation, pupal length, or risk of parasitism). Similarly, an open understory increased colonization by two-fold, relative to a shrub understory, but understory type had no effect on host quality. Wet soils greatly reduced palmetto quality as a host (survival and pupal length), but only for the smallest palmettos (<0.75 m height). Finally, corroborating the survey data, my dispersal experiment revealed that the PLS is a strong flier and that local PLS populations (i.e., infested palmettos) are likely well connected by dispersal. I conclude by discussing how landscape-level changes at Sherburne Wildlife Management Area, owing to recent hurricane activity, could affect the risk of palmetto infestation by the PLS.


The Bank of England introduced the Special Liquidity Scheme (SLS) in April 2008 to improve the liquidity position of the UK banking system. It did so by helping banks finance assets that had got stuck on their balance sheets following the closure of some asset-backed securities markets from 2007 onwards. The Scheme was, from the outset, intended as a temporary measure, to give banks time to strengthen their balance sheets and diversify their funding sources. The last of the SLS transactions expired in January 2012, at which point the SLS terminated. During the period in which the SLS was in operation, the Bank undertook a fundamental review of its framework for sterling market operations and developed a new set of facilities to provide ongoing liquidity insurance to the banking system. This article explains the design and operation of the SLS and describes how that experience has influenced the design of the Bank's permanent liquidity insurance facilities.


There is substantive evidence that chemotaxis is a key requisite for efficient pathogenesis in plant pathogens. However, information regarding particular bacterial chemoreceptors and the specific plant signal that they sense is scarce. Our work shows that the phytopathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato mediates not only chemotaxis but also the control of pathogenicity through the perception of the plant abundant amino acids Asp and Glu. We describe the specificity of the perception of l- and d-Asp and l-Glu by the PsPto-PscA chemoreceptor and the involvement of this perception in the regulation of pathogenicity-related traits. Moreover, a saturating concentration of d-Asp reduces bacterial virulence, and we therefore propose that ligand-mediated interference of key chemoreceptors may be an alternative strategy to control virulence. ABSTRACT Chemotaxis has been associated with the pathogenicity of bacteria in plants and was found to facilitate bacterial entry through stomata and wounds. However, knowledge regarding the plant signals involved in this process is scarce. We have addressed this issue using Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato, which is a foliar pathogen that causes bacterial speck in tomato. We show that the chemoreceptor P. syringae pv. tomato PscA (PsPto-PscA) recognizes specifically and with high affinity l-Asp, l-Glu, and d-Asp. The mutation of the chemoreceptor gene largely reduced chemotaxis to these ligands but also altered cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) levels, biofilm formation, and motility, pointing to cross talk between different chemosensory pathways. Furthermore, the PsPto-PscA mutant strain showed reduced virulence in tomato. Asp and Glu are the most abundant amino acids in plants and in particular in tomato apoplasts, and we hypothesize that this receptor may have evolved to specifically recognize these compounds to facilitate bacterial entry into the plant. Infection assays with the wild-type strain showed that the presence of saturating concentrations of d-Asp also reduced bacterial virulence. IMPORTANCE There is substantive evidence that chemotaxis is a key requisite for efficient pathogenesis in plant pathogens. However, information regarding particular bacterial chemoreceptors and the specific plant signal that they sense is scarce. Our work shows that the phytopathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato mediates not only chemotaxis but also the control of pathogenicity through the perception of the plant abundant amino acids Asp and Glu. We describe the specificity of the perception of l- and d-Asp and l-Glu by the PsPto-PscA chemoreceptor and the involvement of this perception in the regulation of pathogenicity-related traits. Moreover, a saturating concentration of d-Asp reduces bacterial virulence, and we therefore propose that ligand-mediated interference of key chemoreceptors may be an alternative strategy to control virulence.


In this work, the energy status and supply plans of Saudi Arabia are discussed with a focus on concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies. Subsequently, optimal designs for a 20 MWe solar power plant external receiver, combined with a 15 h thermal energy storage unit, operating under the weather conditions of Neom City, located in northeast Saudi Arabia, is proposed. The effects of receiver tube diameters, tube thicknesses, tube thermal conductivity and receiver's performance are studied in detail and compared to those used in a well know operational CSP plant. Results show that a smaller tube diameter and thickness give higher receiver thermal efficiency but increase the annual cost of pumping energy. However, that increment in cost is negligible compared to the total energy gained. Furthermore, the aspect ratio is investigated and it was found that a higher aspect ratio gives a higher thermal efficiency. The thermal efficiency of the optimised receiver was increased by about 1% more than the reference plant. In addition, the new design decreases the total estimated cost of tube material by approximately 43%. It is anticipated that the reported results could pave the path for more efficient solar thermal power plants.


Copy number alteration (CNA) of chromosome 16, a frequent genetic event in tumors including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), has been associated with HCC etiology of hepatitis B virus (HBV) and with clinical outcomes in multiple types of cancer. This study identified CNAs in chromosome 16 in relation to intrahepatic recurrence of HCC in a population with high HBV prevalence, and further screened for differentially expressed genes in recurrence-related CNAs. Array comparative genomic hybridization and expression arrays were used to detect CNAs and gene expression differences, respectively. The associations between CNAs and intrahepatic recurrence were analyzed on 66 patients, follow-up period of 3-73 months. One hundred and nine cases were further evaluated regarding the differentially expressed genes. Losses at 16q and 16p were detected in 62.1% and 51.5% of the 66 cases, respectively. The most recurrent CNAs (with frequency >20%) were losses at 16p13.3-13.2, 16p13.11, 16q11.2-22.1, 16q22.1, 16q22.2-24.2 and 16q24.2. Of the CNAs, 16q22.1 loss was significantly associated with unfavorable intrahepatic recurrence-free survival (P = 0.025). Multivariate Cox analysis identified 16q22.1 loss as an independent risk factor for intrahepatic recurrence (HR = 2.32, 95% CI = 1.26-4.27). A panel of 21 genes, including TRADD, PSMB10, THAP11, CTCF and ESRP2, were significantly downregulated in HCCs with 16q22.1 loss compared to those without the loss. These results suggest that loss at 16q22.1 was associated with increased risk for intrahepatic recurrence of HCC, at least in the HBV-prevalence population. Multiple downregulated genes correlated with the loss were screened.


The global distributions of water availability and population density are uneven and therefore inequality exists in human access to freshwater resources. Is this inequality unjust or only regrettable? To examine this question we formulated and evaluated elementary principles of water ethics relative to human rights for water, and the need for global trade to improve societal access to water by transferring 'virtual water' embedded in plant and animal commodities. We defined human welfare benchmarks and evaluated patterns of water use with and without trade over a 25-year period to identify the influence of trade and inequality on equitability of water use. We found that trade improves mean water use and wellbeing, relative to human welfare benchmarks, suggesting that inequality is regrettable but not necessarily unjust. However, trade has not significantly contributed to redressing inequality. Hence, directed trade decisions can improve future conditions of water and food scarcity through reduced inequality.


Excessive accumulation of salts is one of the most important factors affecting the production quality of plants. The difficulty to develop salt stress tolerant crops has prevented the security of the global food system. The classical crop breeding approach that uses random mutagenesis/recombination is time-consuming in the face of an ever-increasing human population and extreme weather pattern shifts. Today, technologies introducing foreign genetic material into plants have the best potential to assist in crop breeding improvement due to its high efficiency, accuracy, low risk of off-target effects, and minimal labour compared to classical methods. The notion of Na+/H+ antiporters in this technology has increased rapidly in recent years with numerous successful examples. In the awe of rapidly developing modern techniques, which do not yet exist at the required scale to face the aforementioned challenges, the current knowledge of the co/overexpressing Na+/H+ antiporters NHX1 and SOS1 will be explored as a potential method to produce staple crops with greater resilience to over concentrated ions and abnormally high osmotic stress.


The enzyme ferric reductase catalyses the reduction of Fe(III) as a prerequisite to its transportation across the cell membrane. Duodenal mucosal biopsies from iron overloaded patients with genetic haemochromatosis (GH) have increased ferric reductase activity and iron absorption compared with controls, yet the GH mucosa is iron deficient. A similar GH-related iron deficiency is also seen in macrophages. The aim of this study was to investigate whether macrophage ferric reductase activity is altered in GH, and to determine ferric reductase activity in monocytes and differentiated macrophages. The erythroleukaemic K562 cell line was studied as a clonal reference cell line. The basal K562 ferric reductase activity is characteristic of a membrane bound enzyme, being both temperature and protease sensitive. Ferric reductase activity was also demonstrated in human leucocyte, monocyte and macrophage preparations. Assays of K562 and macrophage cell supernatants confirmed that the ferric reductase activity was not due to a secreted factor. Assay of ferric reductase in normalized-iron and iron-enriched (100 microM ferric citrate) conditions showed no significant difference between Cys282Tyr (Cys282-->Tyr) homozygous GH macrophages and Cys282-Tyr negative control activities (P>0.05). However, a 900% increase in ferric reductase activity was observed during monocyte to macrophage differentiation (P<0.05), possibly reflecting the co-ordinate up-regulation of iron metabolism in these cells. The demonstration of approx. 25% activity after macrophage differentiation at high free-iron concentrations compared with 'normalized' iron is consistent with repression of human ferric reductase activity by iron. The identification of the human ferric reductase gene and its protein will ultimately provide insight into its regulation and role in mammalian iron metabolism.


Grace is an interesting and potentially significant domain within positive psychology, but remains largely neglected. The present study examined the relationships among three known grace scales to evaluate the potential for creating a stronger single measure. It also explored their relationships to several other religious/spiritual measures to examine whether the three scales are measuring the same construct, to explore the implications for our understanding of grace, and to provide insights for further study. The three measures had moderately strong correlations with each other (r = .55 to .66), had similar relationships to other measures of religion/spirituality, and had distinct relationships to measures of psychological health and distress. This suggested that the three scales measure somewhat different constructs. Two grace scales showed significant negative skew, indicating ceiling problems. Differences in the underlying grace constructs, contamination by other concepts, or an underlying multidimensional structure for grace could account for these differences. Further study should better articulate the constructs underlying grace measures, address problems related to negative skew in responses, and clarify whether grace is multidimensional.


Life expectancy at birth is the average number of years that a group of people born in the same year should live. The estimate for those born in 2010 is 80.2 years for Italy. On the other side of the chart are a number of countries in sub Saharan Africa. Haiti is in last place: children born in this country in 2010 have a life expectancy by an average of even 30 years, fifty in less than peers born in Italy. From a bioethical point of view, the first question that arises is: Is it right? Is it right that there is such inequality in health? The answer is simple: it is not right. But if we ask ourselves what are the best solution to remedy this situation, the answers become more than one. The differences in life expectancy depends on many factors, including no doubt the effectiveness of health systems. The scope of this work is precisely that of justice in health care and how the different general concepts related to it can be applied in health care settings with very limited financial and human resources. The first chapter describes the main inequalities in global health. The second discusses the main theories of justice. In the next chapter we reason on official development assistance and health cooperation. In the fourth we analyze the contribution of theories of justice through such issues as equity in health, the right of access to health services and right to health. In the fifth chapter the aim is to reason about global justice, the role of health in this context and how the official development assistance in health can contribute.


Zero-shot and few-shot learning aim to improve generalization to unseen concepts, which are promising in many realistic scenarios. Due to the lack of data in unseen domain, relation modeling between seen and unseen domains is vital for knowledge transfer in these tasks. Most existing methods capture seen-unseen relationimplicitly via semantic embedding or feature generation, resulting in inadequate use of relation and some issues remain (e.g. domain shift). To tackle these challenges, we propose a Transferable Graph Generation (TGG ) approach, in which the relation is modeled and utilizedexplicitly via graph generation. Specifically, our proposed TGG contains two main components: (1) Graph generation for relation modeling. Anattention-based aggregate network and arelation kernel are proposed, which generate instance-level graph based on a class-level prototype graph and visual features. Proximity information aggregating is guided by a multi-head graph attention mechanism, where seen and unseen features synthesized by GAN are revised as node embeddings. The relation kernel further generates edges with GCN and graph kernel method, to capture instance-level topological structure while tackling data imbalance and noise. (2) Relation propagation for relation utilization. Adual relation propagation approach is proposed, where relations captured by the generated graph are separately propagated from the seen and unseen subgraphs. The two propagations learn from each other in a dual learning fashion, which performs as an adaptation way for mitigating domain shift. All components are jointly optimized with a meta-learning strategy, and our TGG acts as an end-to-end framework unifying conventional zero-shot, generalized zero-shot and few-shot learning. Extensive experiments demonstrate that it consistently surpasses existing methods of the above three fields by a significant margin.


Our work treat the effect of the temperature on the appearance of partial discharges in high voltage cables. We modelize the heterogeneous insulator of the cable using finite difference method. The numerical treatment is carried out in bidimensional due to the observed symmetry in the cavities. We simulate regions of weak concentration to an insulator containing one cavity, this is justified by the absence of interactions between cavities. The regions of great concentrations are simulated to an insulator, which contain two cavities in mutual interactions. Once the two cavities are in contact, we speak then of a complex defect called "bi-vacuole". The physical proprieties two simulate are the electrical field and the temperature. We present the results of computation obtained by an established program, this result show that the partial discharge is occurred in cavities of small diameters in regions either near the core or the wrapping. The mutual interaction between cavities contributes much the apparition of the partial discharges.


Optimal motions are usually used as joint reference trajectories for repetitive or complex motions. In the case of soccer robots, the kicking motion is usually a benchmark motion, computed off-line, without taking into account the current position of the robot or the direction of the goal. Moreover, robots must react quickly to any situation, even if not expected, and cannot spend time to generate a new optimal motion by the classical way. Therefore, we propose a new method for fast motion re-planning based on an off-line computation of a feasible sub-set of the motion parameters, using Interval Analysis.


For bimodal patients, with a hearing aid (HA) in one ear and a cochlear implant (CI) in the opposite ear, usually a default frequency-to-electrode map is used in the CI. This assumes that the human brain can adapt to interaural place-pitch mismatches. This 'one-size-fits-all' method might be partly responsible for the large variability of individual bimodal benefit. Therefore, knowledge about the location of the electrode array is an important prerequisite for optimum fitting. Theoretically, the electrode location can be determined from CT scans. However, these are often not available in audiological practice. Behavioral pitch matching between the two ears has also been suggested, but has been shown to be tedious and unreliable. Here, an alternative method using two-formant vowels was developed and tested with a vocoder system simulating different CI insertion depths. The hypothesis was that patients may more easily identify vowels than perform a classical pitch-matching task. A spectral shift is inferred by comparing vowel spaces, measured by presenting the first formant in the HA and the second either in the HA or the CI. Results suggest that pitch mismatches can be derived from such vowel spaces. In order to take auditory adaptation in individual patients into account, the method is tested with CI patients with contralateral residual hearing.


As Paltridge (2004, p.90) has claimed, 'there is no such thing as the one-size-fits-all academic essay that can be written in all areas of study'. Yet research on academic writing by scholars such as Ivanic and Lillis and ideas from social theory offer useful insights, which can be applied to the specific demands of essay-writing on pre-qualifying social work degrees. By failing to clarify how students may succeed, social work educators may misdirect their efforts to improve students' written communication skills or make students feel falsely that they personally are not smart or hard working enough to meet the requirements of higher education. We close the article by proposing 22 unspoken requirements for success in social work essay-writing, and drawing out the implications of our analysis for social work educators.


Fatigue crack propagation rate of pressure-sintered Ag nanoparticles was investigated and prediction method of fatigue crack propagation using strain energy density computed by FEM was proposed. The fatigue crack propagation rate was lower than that of pressureless-sintered Ag nanoparticles around ambient temperature. At high temperature, multiple small cracks occurred ahead of a main crack and they were connected with one another and the propagation rate of the main crack increased, so that properties of fatigue crack propagation in the high temperature region were close to those of pressureless-sintered Ag nanoparticles. As the inelastic strain energy density and the length of its acquisition area were inversely proportional, the prediction of fatigue crack propagation that do not depend on the size of the area was possible by the use of the proportional constant of the relationship. The behavior of thermal fatigue crack propagation of sintered joint structure that was predicted by the derived fatigue crack propagation law was mostly in agreement with experimental behavior.


Purpose This report presents data on the acoustic environments in which older adults with age-related hearing loss wear their hearing aids. Method This is an observational study providing descriptive data from 2 primary datasets: (a) 128 older adults wearing hearing aids for an average of 6 weeks and (b) 65 older adults wearing hearing aids for an average of 13 months. Acoustic environments were automatically and continuously classified about every 4 s, using the hearing aids' signal processing, into 1 of 7 acoustic environment categories. Results For both groups, older adults wore their hearing aids about 60% of the time in quiet or speech-only conditions. The automatic classification of sound environments was shown to be reliable over relatively short (6-week) and long (13-month) durations. Moreover, the results were shown to have some validity in that the obtained acoustic environment profiles matched a self-reported measure of social activity administered prior to hearing aid usage. For a subset of 56 older adults with data from both the 6-week and 13-month wear times, the daily amount of hearing aid usage diminished but the profile of sound environments frequented by the wearers remained stable. Conclusions Examination of the results from the automatic classification of sound environments by the hearing aids of older adults provides reliable and valid environment classifications. The present data indicate that most such wearers choose generally favorable acoustic environments for hearing aid use.


Children living as well as working in the streets is a common sight in almost all the cities of the world. They have been the subject of so many studies. They have been a topic of discussion at national, regional and international levels. Several programmes world-wide have been designed and developed with a view of reaching these children. Despite these actions and concern, are we (those involved in the actions as well as inactions) able to say we know these children very well? Where they come from
(their background)? How many they are? Who are they? Where they are? What they do? Reactions and answers to this questions, which have been answered in one way or the other, reveal that the term does not mean the same and one thing to the users, whether at a policy, programme, or/and project levels, even in everyday use at local levels. This implies significant differences among conclusions and the
eventual responses to these children all levels. Therefore any appropriate point of departure for a discussion on street children in any forum should begin with a viable definition of these children, although the task to come up with a definition has not been easy.


We consider the problem of steady flow around a growing protein crystal in a medium of its solution in a normal gravity environment. The whole flow system is assumed to be rotating with a constant angular velocity about a vertical axis which is anti-parallel to the gravity vector. Convective flow takes place due to the solute depletion around the growing crystal which leads to a buoyancy driven flow. Such convective flow can produce inhomogeneous solute concentration, which subsequently generate non-uniformities in the crystal's structure finalizing lower quality protein crystal. Using scaling analysis within a diffusion boundary layer around the crystal, we estimate the magnitude of the convective flow velocity and other dependent variables of the flow system for cases of weak, moderate and strong rotation and either strong or weak buoyancy. We find, in particular, that for moderate rate of rotation, convective flow is weakened significantly as the rotation rate increases. This result may be of interest for production of high quality protein crystal since the effect of the convective flow around the growing protein crystal is found to be weakened significantly by the rotational constraint.


The aim of this work was to develop a range of learning resources and experiences that students could engage with to varying degrees in order to create their own learning journey. This approach was used for a second year analytical science module included in chemistry, forensic, pharmaceutical and biochemistry degree pathways. The work presented here focuses on material developed for teaching ICP-MS.
In addition to the traditional lectures and class tutorials, we have augmented the learning experience by introducing active learning approaches into the classroom and by providing a range of online teaching resources. Screencasts were used to provide students with an introduction to the topic before lectures and to aid revision afterwards. Electronic voting pads were used to assess learning during lectures, to increase active learning and to provide instant feedback to students on their understanding of material presented. Online tutorials were used to complement in-class tutorials, drawing on the concept of assessment for learning. The online tutorials were designed to provide instant marks, feedback and model answers to students. They could also be undertaken over and over again, but with new questions presented each time. Badges were also awarded to students based on performance in the online tutorials, in order to introduce gamification of learning and its associated benefits. Further teaching and learning resources developed include Wikis (used to provide interactive e-notes), directed reading, learning objectives and case studies. Here we present an overall picture of how these resources and approaches come together to create an immersive learning experience.


THIS paper dealt with a very important branch of lubricant testing. Methods of field testing cutting oils have presented difficult problems since they were first used and laboratory tests are also difficult because of the many varying operating conditions during test. The author described tests for drilling and turning which are designed to evaluate cutting oils. This work emphasises the difficulties involved. The efficiency of a cutting tool is dependent mainly upon cooling and lubrication, the physical requirements of the former being known. Reduction in friction will lower the cutting forces at the tool and result in more economical cutting, but the complex nature of the cutting process does not lend itself readily to a fundamental study of these properties, for the many variables present influence the chip form on which depends the ability of the lubricant to penetrate into the cutting region.


The genus Rubus L. (Rosaceae) has as yet not been investigated satisfactorily in terms of palynology. This genus is taxonomically very difficult due to the large number of species and problems with their delimitation, as well as very different distribution areas of particular species. The aim of this study was to investigate pollen morphology and for the first time the ranges of intrageneric and interspecific variability of Rubus species, as well as verify the taxonomic usefulness of these traits in distinguishing studied taxa from this genus. They were analysed for 11 quantitative pollen characteristics and the following qualitative ones: exine ornamentation, pollen outline and shape, as well as bridge structure. Analyses were conducted on a total of 1740 pollen grains, which represent 58 blackberry species belonging to a majority of subgenera and all the sections and series found in Poland. The diagnostic characters included exine ornamentation (exine ornamentation type, width and direction of grooves and striae, number and diameter of perforations) and length of the polar axis (P). The arrangement of the examined species on the dendrogram does not corroborate division of the genus Rubus into subgenera, sections and series currently adopted in taxonomy. The lack of dependence may result from apomixis observed in Rubus, which could reduce natural variability. Pollen features should be treated in taxonomy as auxiliary, because they fail to differentiate several (10) individual species, while the other ones create groups with similar pollen traits.


Introduction Early diagnosis and prompt treatment of tuberculosis is the need of the time to prevent the morbidity and mortality related to it. The diagnosis of tuberculosis by conventional methods(culture) are time consuming. Objectives Early diagnosis of tuberculosis by using molecular method (PCR) targeting hup B gene and to find out whether M.bovis could be a cause of MDR-TB or not . Materials and Methods 50 MDR-TB patients were enrolled in our study after informed written consent. After processing the samples by Universal Sample Processing (USP) method, two step nested PCR was performed using two sets of primers (N1S1 & CTFR) of hupB gene. The amplicons were resolved on 8 % Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE), stained with ethidium bromide and viewed in a gel documentation system. Results In our study, we observed that 86 % of patients have positive PCR assay for hup B gene. Of the total 43 patients those were positive in PCR assay for hup B gene; all (43) were infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis. None of the patients were infected with Mycobacterium bovis. Conclusion PCR targeting hup B gene can be used for early diagnosis of tuberculosis and it has the added advantages of differentiating between Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium bovis.


Sulfonated microphere material based on crosslinked polystyrene was synthesized by emulsification polymerization, the polymerization yield was of 75 % ± 5 % and the size of microspheres was ranging from 30–180 µm. In order to obtain the suitable capacity for the enrichment of aromatic amines (1.0 meqv/g) the condition for sulfonation process were derived from the model based on an experimental design. The products were used as a stationary phase in solid phase extraction (SPE) to enrich 18 aromatic amines derived from banned azo dyes in textile. In this study, an analytical method has been developed, with LOQ of 2 ppm. The correlation coefficient R2 of the cabliration curve was ≥ 0.9997, most of the aromatic amines had the recoveries > 80 % and RSD < 5 %. In addition, a comparison between obtained results by the developed method and those by international standard methods BS EN 14326-1: 2012 and BS EN 14326-3:2012, was also done.


Viral diseases. Herpesvirus 1 (rhinotracheitis; FHV-1) and calicivirus (FCV) are the most common viral causes of sneezing and nasal discharge in the cat. If oral ulcers are present, calicivirus is most likely. If corneal ulcers are present, herpesvirus 1 is most likely. FHV-1 has now also been associated with chronic stomatitis, facial dermatitis, and endogenous uveitis. Viral rhinitis with or without secondary bacterial infection can be recurrent. FHV-1 can be documented by direct fluorescent staining of conjunctival scrapings, virus isolation, or polymerase chain reaction. Since FHV-1 DNA can be detected in conjunctival cells of approximately 25% of healthy cats, the positive predictive value of these tests in diseased cats is low. Quantitative PCR may ultimately prove to correlate to the presence or absence of disease. Currently used PCR assays also detect vaccine strains of FHV-1. RT-PCR assays can be used to amplify the RNA of FCV. However, these assays have the same problems with predictive value as those to detect DNA of FHV-1.


In the present paper, we describe and discuss the evaluation of parsed corpora, namely the ones that are available on the Web for querying in the AC/DC project. The paper has two parts: the first one suggests a set of different evaluation parameters and measures that are much more illuminating than commonly used simple precision measures, while the second evaluates the parsed corpus for a particular task -that of automatic thesaurus building. The two evaluations are thus complementary, in that, in Gaizauskas (1998) terminology, the first is a typical user-transparent evaluation, while the second is user-visible.


Abstract A systemic approach to safety management has potential to be more cost effective than a traditional hot-spot approach in reducing crash frequency as it aims to identify sites with promise (SWiPs) by targeting certain crash types and select countermeasures accordingly, and therefore, effectively connects target crashes to their corresponding countermeasures. Although it seems to be promising, there are many challenges to evaluate the effects of countermeasures under the systemic approach, i.e. evaluate the effects of countermeasures by crash types. These challenges mainly include (1) low sample mean, (2) correlation among crash types, and (3) correlation among the effects of countermeasures on different crash types. A random parameter multivariate Poison lognormal (random parameter MVPLN) model is proposed. It was shown that the random parameter MVPLN model not only mitigates the three challenges, but also provides useful information than traditional crash frequency models. Shoulder rumble strips were found to be effective in reducing fix-object crashes, the primary crash type targeted by this countermeasure. The effectiveness of shoulder rumble strips on fixed-object crashes was found to be positively correlated with opposite-direction sideswipe and head-on crashes, meaning that the effects of shoulder rumble strips on fixed-object crashes would spillover to opposite-direction sideswipe and head-on crashes.


Reference 1 Brudek T, Christensen T, Hansen HJ, Petersen T, Moller-Larsen A. Synergistic Immune Responses Induced by Endogenous Retrovirus and Herpesvirus Antigens Result in Increased Production of Inflammatory Cytokines in Multiple Sclerosis Patients. Scand J lmmunol 2008;67:295–303. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-3083.2008.02092.x


The study involves analyzing the performance of bivoltine Bombyx mori larvae reared on different host plants varieties. The consumption rate (CR) of different strains of B. mori was high when fed with Jorhat and TR10 mulberry plant varieties. Jorhat and TR10 mulberry plant varieties were found to contain significant amount of calcium, potassium, magnesium and phosphorus. Local (Hmute) mulberry plant variety had high amount of protein, carbohydrate and reducing sugar. Majority of the B. mori strains reared on Jorhat and TR10 mulberry plant varieties had high level of fibroin protein which resulted in increased silk productivity than those larvae reared with other mulberry varieties. The filament length was higher when reared on Jorhat and TR10 mulberry plant varieties. CSR4 × CSR2, FC1 × FC2, and FC2 × FC1 strains reared on Jorhat and TR10 mulberry plant varieties performed well in terms of economic parameters. Proteins and other nutrients in combination with high levels of micronutrients are very much essential for better silk quality. The present study attempted to identify the most suitable host plants for silkworm rearing under mountainous agro-ecological conditions which can lead to sustainable production of silk in relation to physiological and economic parameters.