A developing understanding of instream flow needs now supports maintenance of ecological flow regimes rather than a fixed, time-invariant regulatory minimum flow. This shift is reflected in management of streamflow change created by existing reservoirs and flow diversion structures. With an emphasis on regime-based approaches a new connectivity is demanded between reservoir operations and the resulting downstream flow conditions. Complicating this situation is reservoir management that may be legally limited to flood control and water supply requirements reducing options for supplying downstream needs. This paper proposes an approach to reservoir operation that is based on ecological flow regime concepts. Reservoir operation is guided by six hydrologic indicators selected both to meet the specific flow needs of the local indigenous fish community and to satisfy authorized reservoir operational rules. The approach is based on incorporation of ecology and life history requirements of the fish community in the decision making process to better define and meet flow needs. Optimization using nondominated sorting genetic algorithms provides a basis for reservoir operational schemes that are expected to provide benefit to fish communities downstream while also meeting authorized reservoir storage needs.


ABSTRACT Providing professional development (PD) for Papua New Guinea (PNG) teachers is highly challenging due to the remoteness of schools, limited budgets, travel costs, and safety. The essential follow-up guidance and support after PD workshops is rarely possible, especially for the majority of teachers, who work in rural schools. In addition, the effectiveness of PD in facilitating collaboration among members of the school community can be affected by traditional cultural approaches to knowledge building and sharing. This article reports on an innovative form of PD with PNG elementary school teachers that used classroom teaching videos provided on SD cards for mobile phones. Videos of authentic teaching by other PNG teachers in similar contexts were provided to 260 teachers as follow-up to literacy practice workshop training sessions. The SD cards were used by 80% of the teachers in their own teaching, and more than half also shared the SD cards with other teachers. These findings show the value of SD cards in PD training in low-income countries, both for the development of individual teacher self-efficacy leading to confidence and better outcomes for the children in their classes, and for the development of teacher collaboration with colleagues


It is widely known that there are Islamic ideological sects and groups whose doctrinal opinions still exist to date, such as Asha'yrah, Maturidis, and Hanbalis, while we find other ideological groups that do not exist in our modern times. Chief among these ideological sects and groups is Sālimīyah sect, that belongs to its founder, Abul-Hassan Al-Basry Ahmad bin Mohammad bin Salem, who died in (297) AH / (909) AD. Sālimīyah sect is an Islamic ideological group that emerged in the middle of the third century AH / mid-tenth century AD. In fact, one of the most problematic issues of this study is that there are no ideological books for Sālimīyah sect available in our time. Few scholars mentioned the ideological views of Sālimīyah sect and we could hardly find any other academic studies that have considered these views. What really distinguishes this study is its ability to scrutinize for the first time the emergence of Sālimīyah sect from a historical point of view. Moreover, this research studies Sālimīyah sect's ideological views related to the Divine Self in particular. The scientific approaches used in the study are the extrapolative approach, the analytical approach and the comparative approach.


ABSTRACT Introduction: We report on the surgical results of a series of 91 patients who received gastric neobladders as urinary diversion after radical cystectomies performed for the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancers. Materials and Methods: We report on a retrospective case series of 91 patients who received gastric neobladders as urinary diversion after radical cystectomies performed for the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancers. Different techniques of gastric neobladders were employed from 1988 to 2013 at a university hospital in the South of Brazil. Results: Initial outcomes utilizing Leong (Antral) and Nguyen-Mitchell (Wedge) technique were unsatisfactory, yielding high pressure, low capacity reservoirs. Further developments of these techniques, with the detubularized gastric neobladder and the "spherical" gastric neobladders resulted in low pressure, high capacity reservoirs, with better surgical and urodynamic outcomes. Complication and perioperative mortality rates of our series of gastric neobladders were significantly higher than historical results of techniques using ileum or colon. Conclusions: Stomach is an exceptional option for the creation of neobladders after radical cystectomies, but due to the increased complication rates it should be reserved for specific situations (e.g., renal insufficiency, previous pelvic/abdominal radiotherapy, short bowel syndromes).


An open reading frame (rapP) encoding the putative pipecolate-incorporating enzyme (PIE) has been identified in the gene cluster for the biosynthesis of rapamycin in Streptomyces hygroscopicus. Conserved amino acid sequence motifs for ATP binding, ATP hydrolysis, adenylate formation, and 4'-phosphopantetheine attachment were identified by sequence comparison with authentic peptide synthetases. Disruption of rapP by phage insertion abolished rapamycin production in S. hygroscopicus, and the production of the antibiotic was specifically restored upon loss of the inserted phage by a second recombination event. rapP was expressed in both Escherichia coli and Streptomyces coelicolor, and recombinant PIE was purified to homogeneity from both hosts. Although low-level incorporation of [14C]beta-alanine into recombinant PIE isolated from E. coli was detected, formation of the covalent acylenzyme intermediate could only be shown with the PIE from S. coelicolor, suggesting that while the recombinant PIE from S. coelicolor was phosphopantetheinylated, only a minor proportion of the recombinant enzyme from E. coli was post-translationally modified.


The spatial cropland products are of great importance in water and food security assessments, especially in India, which is home to nearly 1.4 billion people and 160 million hectares of net cropland area. In India, croplands account for about 90% of all human water use. Cropland extent, cropping intensity, crop watering methods and crop types are important factors that have a bearing on the quantity, quality and location of production. Currently, cropland products are produced using mainly coarse-resolution (250-1000 m) remote sensing data., our study was aimed at producing three distinct spatial products at 30m and 250m resolution that would be useful and needed to address food and water security challenges. The first of these, Product 1, was to assess irrigated versus rainfed croplands in India using Landsat 30 m data in GEE platform. The second, Product 2, was to map major crop types using MODIS 250 m data. The third, Product 3, to map cropping intensity (single, double and triple cropping) using MODIS 250 m data. For the kharif season (the main cropping season in India, Jun-Oct), 9 major crops (5 irrigated crops: rice, soybean, maize, sugarcane, cotton and 5 rainfed crops: pulses, rice, sorghum, millet, groundnut) were mapped. For the rabi season (post rainy season, Nov-Feb), 5 major crops (3 irrigated crops: rice, wheat, maize and 2 rainfed crops: chickpea, pulses) were mapped. The irrigated versus rainfed 30 m product showed an overall accuracy of 79.8% with the irrigated cropland class providing a producer's accuracy of 79% and the rainfed cropland class 74%. The overall accuracy demonstrated by the cropping intensity product was 85.3% with producer's accuracies of 88%, 85% and 67% for single, double, and triple cropping respectively. Crop types were mapped to accuracy levels ranging from 72% to 97%. A comparison of the crop type area statistics with national statistics explained 63-98% variability. The study highlights production of multiple cropland products to support food security studies using multiple satellite sensor big-data, and RF machine learning algorithm that were coded, processed and computed.


Background. Although chick embryogenesis has been studied extensively, there has been growing interest in the investigation of skeletogenesis. In addition to improved poultry health and minimized economic loss, a greater understanding of skeletal abnormalities can also have implications for human medicine. True in vivo studies require noninvasive imaging techniques such as high-resolution microCT. However, the manual analysis of acquired images is both time consuming and subjective. Methods. We have developed a system for automated image segmentation that entails object-based image analysis followed by the classification of the extracted image objects. For image segmentation, a rule set was developed using Definiens image analysis software. The classification engine was implemented using the WEKA machine learning tool. Results. Our system reduces analysis time and observer bias while maintaining high accuracy. Applying the system to the quantification of long bone growth has allowed us to present the first true in ovo data for bone length growth recorded in the same chick embryos. Conclusions. The procedures developed represent an innovative approach for the automated segmentation, classification, quantification, and visualization of microCT images. MicroCT offers the possibility of performing longitudinal studies and thereby provides unique insights into the morpho- and embryogenesis of live chick embryos.


Up to 25% of patients with profound neutropenia lasting for >10 days develop lung infiltrates, which frequently do not respond to broad-spectrum antibacterial therapy. While a causative pathogen remains undetected in the majority of cases, Aspergillus spp., Pneumocystis jirovecii, multi-resistant Gram-negative pathogens, mycobacteria or respiratory viruses may be involved. In at-risk patients who have received trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP/SMX) prophylaxis, filamentous fungal pathogens appear to be predominant, yet commonly not proven at the time of treatment initiation. Pathogens isolated from blood cultures, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) or respiratory secretions are not always relevant for the etiology of pulmonary infiltrates and should therefore be interpreted critically. Laboratory tests for detecting Aspergillus galactomannan, β-d-glucan or DNA from blood, BAL or tissue samples may facilitate the diagnosis; however, most polymerase chain reaction assays are not yet standardized and validated. Apart from infectious agents, pulmonary side-effects from cytotoxic drugs, radiotherapy or pulmonary involvement by the underlying malignancy should be included into differential diagnosis and eventually be clarified by invasive diagnostic procedures. Pre-emptive treatment with mold-active systemic antifungal agents improves clinical outcome, while other microorganisms are preferably treated only when microbiologically documented. High-dose TMP/SMX is first choice for treatment of Pneumocystis pneumonia, while cytomegalovirus pneumonia is treated primarily with ganciclovir or foscarnet in most patients. In a considerable number of patients, clinical outcome may be favorable despite respiratory failure, so that intensive care should be unrestrictedly provided in patients whose prognosis is not desperate due to other reasons.


We introduce Semstem, a new method for the reconstruction of so called stemmatic trees, i.e., trees encoding the copying relationships among a set of textual variants. Our method is based on a structural expectation-maximization (structural EM) algorithm. It is the first computer-based method able to estimate general latent tree structures, unlike earlier methods that are usually restricted to bifurcating trees where all the extant texts are placed in the leaf nodes. We present experiments on two well known benchmark data sets, showing that the new method outperforms current state-of-the-art both in terms of a numerical score as well as interpretability.


In Hong Kong, onscreen marking (OSM) is superseding paper-based marking (PBM) across the entire national examinations system. This paper describes a qualitative study of the attitudes of Liberal Studies markers towards OSM. This becomes a compulsory subject in Hong Kong's new senior secondary school curriculum to be first examined in 2012, with a candidature of 80 000 compared to the current candidatures of 3300. The current study describes semi-structured interviews with Liberal Studies markers who provided in-depth opinions on key aspects of the OSM process. Markers were positive about many aspects of the new system including: the advantages of marking by single question rather than by whole paper; improved reliability using control scripts; and relief from administrative tasks associated with PBM. There are, nonetheless, aspects of the new system that markers are unhappy with, primarily logistical, involving travel to marking centres and marking at fixed times when they are tired. Reading onscreen was also an issue. In summary, 43% of markers stated that they preferred the status quo of PBM, 35% stated they felt OSM was better, while 21% were ambivalent. While OSM has not yet been wholeheartedly accepted by markers, its potential advantages are beginning to be appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


We tested the hypothesis that primary cultures of human hepatocytes could predict potential drug interactions with methadone and buprenorphine. Hepatocytes (five donors) were preincubated with dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) (vehicle), rifampin, or nelfinavir before incubation with methadone or buprenorphine. Culture media (0–60 min) was analyzed by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry for R- and S-methadone and R- and S-2-ethylidene-1,5-dimethyl-3,3-diphenylpyrrolidine (EDDP) or for buprenorphine, norbuprenorphine, and their glucuronides [buprenorphine-3-glucuronide (B-3-G) and norbuprenorphine-3-glucuronide (N-3-G)]. R- and S-EDDP were detected in three of five, four of five, and five of five media from cells pretreated with DMSO, nelfinavir, and rifampin. R-EDDP increased 3.1- and 26.5-fold, and S-EDDP increased 2.5- and 21.3-fold after nelfinavir and rifampin. The rifampin effect was significant. B-3-G production was detected in media of all cells incubated with buprenorphine and accounted for most of the buprenorphine loss from culture media; it was not significantly affected by either pretreatment. Norbuprenorphine and N-3-G together were detected in three of five, four of five, and five of five donors pretreated with DMSO, nelfinavir and rifampin, and norbuprenorphine in one of five, one of five, and two of five donors. Although there was a trend for norbuprenorphine (2.8- and 4.9-fold) and N-3-G (1.7- and 1.9-fold) to increase after nelfinavir and rifampin, none of the changes were significant. To investigate low norbuprenorphine production, buprenorphine was incubated with human liver and small intestine microsomes fortified to support both N-dealkylation and glucuronidation; N-dealkylation predominated in small intestine and glucuronidation in liver microsomes. These studies support the hypothesis that methadone metabolism and its potential for drug interactions can be predicted with cultured human hepatocytes, but for buprenorphine the combined effects of hepatic and small intestinal metabolism are probably involved.


The catalytic oxidation of ethane, propane, 2-methylpropane, butane, pentane, and cyclohexane has been studied over Mg3(VO4)2-MgO, Mg2V2O7, and (VO)2P2O7. These reactions produced a wide range of products ranging from alkenes, dienes, anhydrides, acids, and carbon oxides. Broadly speaking, the major products were dehydrogenation products over Mg3(VO4)2, combustion products over Mg2V2O7, and oxygen-containing organic products over (VO)2P2O7, although there are exceptions to this broad generalization. From the product selectivities, the moles of oxygen consumed per mole of alkane reacted could be calculated. These were the average oxygen stoichiometries for the reactions. They had values of about unity for ethane oxidation over VPO, about two when oxidative dehydrogenation was the predominant reaction, and about four for the other reactions studied. The selectivity patterns in terms of the formation of dehydrogenation products versus oxygen-containing products including carbon oxides were explained by assuming that there existed a selectivity-determining step, which could be the reaction of the surface alkyl species or the adsorbed alkene before its desorption. The formation of oxygen-containing products would be facilitated if the surface alkyl or adsorbed alkene could interact with the vanadium ions in two adjacent VOx units such that it could easily react with the reactive oxygen in the V-O-V bridge. The results of ethane oxidation, however, could not be explained simply by this model, and other factors needed to be considered.


Ad-hoc networks are basically self organizing, self configuring and peer to peer multi-hop mobile wireless networks in which the information packets are transmitted in a 'store and forward' manner from a source to an arbitrary destination via intermediate nodes. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the performance of various ad-hoc networks routing protocols viz. DSDV (Destination Sequence Distance Vector), DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) and AODV (Ad-hoc On Demand Distance Vector). The comparison of these protocols is based on different performance metrics, which are throughput, packet delivery ratio, routing overheads, packet drop. The simulation is performed through the simulation tool NS-2 (Network Simulator- 2) due to its open source simplicity and free availability.


We present experiments and theory of a constant flow-driven microfluidic oscillator with widely tunable oscillation periods. This oscillator converts two constant input-flows from a syringe pump into an alternating, periodic output-flow with oscillation periods that can be adjusted to between 0.3 s to 4.1 h by tuning an external membrane capacitor. This capacitor allows multiple adjustable periods at a given input flow-rate, thus providing great flexibility in device operation. Also, we show that a sufficiently large external capacitance, relative to the internal capacitance of the microfluidic valve itself, is a critical requirement for oscillation. These widely tunable microfluidic oscillators are envisioned to be broadly useful for the study of biological rhythms, as on-chip timing sources for microfluidic logic circuits, and other applications that require variation in timed flow switching.


Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common degenerative disease of the nervous system, whose incidence increases with age. Despite increasing progress in the treatment of PD, resulting from development of diagnostic methods and experimental research into the understanding of the essence of this disease, an increase in the severity of disability is still observed with the passing time. Physiotherapy is one of the non-pharmacological methods, which through its complexity, phases and regularity is aimed at preventing early physical disability as well as permanent disability. Maintaining independence as long as possible, functional self-reliance and social usefulness are the main targets. Facing a real risk of PD incidence, the aim of the work was to present rehabilitation strategy in reducing the severity of motor symptoms like; tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia and impaired postural reflexes. Therapeutic activities are aimed at working out a strategy to cope with trembling while in rigidity, emphasis is not laid on eliminating rigidity but on reducing the negative impact of increased muscle tension and slowing down of mobility. The goal of rehabilitation is to assure optimal use of stored patterns for automatic movements and acquired ones, using control signals in disorders of postural reflexes on the implementation of rehabilitation when there are still no severe difficulties in performing daily activities. The conclusion that may be drawn is that physical therapy tailored to the severity of individual symptoms of motion, allows for improving the functionality and quality of life of people with PD.


The aim of this study was to investigate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors' apperceptions about practical, technical, and affective aspects of online teaching as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our study involved qualitative data collection using an open-ended interview form, including three sections developed by the researchers. EFL instructors (N =18) from randomly selected three state and three private universities of Turkey participated in the study. The results of the content analysis indicated that instructors perceived the distance teaching environment less favorably than the face-to-face environment, although they generally feel competent using the technology. However, the instructors were also found to have negative attitudes towards the psychology of distance teaching by reporting it as boring and an awkward way of teaching. The study concluded that EFL instructors regard distance teaching as inconvenient since teaching and learning foreign languages involve face-to-face interaction and higher learner engagement and motivation.


This thesis work consists of constructing and validating a module designed tofacilitate automatic testing of digitizers at SP Devices. The focus of the report isthe use of simulations of transmission lines to maximise signal integrity. Signalintegrity is discussed mainly from an electromagnetic point of view and the parametersaffecting the signal integrity are presented and discussed. It is shownthat simulations using 2D field solvers work well in the cases where 2D modelsare applicable, while 3D field solvers should be used in other cases. The importanceof simulating all transmission line features is seen in the resulting measurementsas the characteristic impedance misses the mark in the cases that are notsufficiently simulated.The design of a trigger generation circuitry is presented and the resulting mismatchbetween Spice simulations and results are discussed and analysed.


For several reasons, vulture funds have never been popular. While economic literature about venture capital is very articulated, this is not the case with vulture funds. Even in recent years, only a few academic papers have appeared (Hotchkiss & Mooradian, 1997; Rosenberg, 2000; Gilson 2001; Feder & Lagrange, 2002; Altman 2004; Altman & Hotchkiss, 2006; Kutcher & Meitner, 2006 about the German market; Krasoff & O' Neill, 2006). In mature markets, especially Anglo-Saxon ones, high segmentation and specialization are normal. For every phase in the life cycle of companies there is a correspondent set of specific investors. Whether in decline or in crisis, it is easy to find investors willing to buy out shares, in order to check the chances for a turnaround or to acquire relevant portions of debts in order to carry out arbitrages of value. The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of turnaround financing in Italy, meaning operations regarding distressed or troubled companies, carried out by professional private equity investors. Sectorial data show that total investment in turnarounds is on the rise but still amounts to less than 5% of the Italian private equity market. Greater attention, however, seems to be paid by professionals and the media because of the great economic returns expected. Rare, older works dedicated to the Italian market (Perrini, 1997; Danovi, 2001 and 2003) have shown not only the absence of dedicated operators, but also a general lack of interest for this private equity niche. More recent studies (AIAF 2009) trace the birth and first steps of specialized investment funds. In comparison to the situation surveyed in the past, this study tries to investigate whether there has been an improvement by means of analyzing the answers to a questionnaire submitted to a selected sample of professionals. A significant change within the sector was expected due to both internal and external factors, a more developed private equity market and the reform of the Italian bankruptcy law in primis. The wider range of solutions offered by the new set of laws, indeed, aims at easing the successful restructuring of distressed companies. However, empirical data highlight only a modest increase in total investment despite a growing interest towards the topic. Furthermore, there is evidence that a few private equity funds, originally set as specific to turnaround, have now diversified their activity to target also more traditional deals. The new legislative framework will probably cause significant, long-term effects; 125 ESPERIENZE D'IMPRESA 1/2010 ESPERIENZE D'IMPRESA 1/2010 126


Mathematical solvers can be parameterized today with a multitude of different parameters. While default parameter settings often provide good results, in terms of low runtime, often parameter settings can be found, which speed-up the solving process for a particular model. Before considering the construction of strategies for optimizing parameter settings for particular models, it is necessary to understand the underlying search space. We do so by investigating systematically the effects of different parameter settings, taking into account the parameters considered to me most important in the literature. Based on three pre-existing mathematical models, we explore runtime for solving them, systematically varying the parameters of the solver. As a result of our study, we can provide a better understanding of the underlying search space, that needs to be investigated for effectively perform parameter tuning of mathematical solvers. Also we highlight that choosing bad parameters can have significant disadvantages, e.g. compared to the default parameters.


We analyze question-answer pairs in a variety of ways, for three different kinds of yes/no questions. We find that the classification of yes/no questions described in (Carletta et al., 1995) for the Edinburgh map task corpus correlates well with whether a response will be a bare yes or no, a yes or no plus additional speech, or just speech without an overt yes or no. Correlation with responses described as "direct" or "indirect" is less good. We also find that the strength of a question's expectation for a YES response correlates with the move type, the form of the response, and lexical yes choices; and that the move type correlates with the form of the question and with turn-taking schema. Comments University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-97-11. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/83


A Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) summer Bridge Program was developed for high school students. The program was designed to encourage students to consider choosing an engineering major in college and to explore STEM as a future career. This was accomplished through a 10-week program involving multidisciplinary research activities. The participants in the program included 33 high school students. Among former participants in position to make a choice in terms of attending college, 100% had chosen to continue on in college, and 86% had chosen to major in a STEM area. The results indicated that that the program had enhanced their confidence in STEM and motivated them in choosing careers in STEM areas. Overall, the participants were very positive about the program and expressed appreciation for the opportunity.


Periodontal diseases are a major problem in human health. Decades of research have shown that the most common disease is chronic periodontitis, cha-racterized by a slow evolution with the formation of periodontal pockets, subsequent alveolar bone resorption, loss and destruction of teeth and bone tissue. While we know the multifactorial origin of the development of periodontitis, the participation of subgingival microbiota is relevant in the etiology of periodontal disease. Some pathogenic bacteria species that have been associated with the develo-pment of periodontal disease are Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Tannerella forsythia, Fusobac-terium nucleatum, among others. In this work we studied which of these five species were present in the periodontal pockets of 51 Uruguayan patients with chronic periodontitis. To achieve the results a conventional microbiological technique and meta-genomics (multiplex-PCR) were used. The results of the microbiological conventional technique showed the presence of A. actinomycete-mcomitans (33%) and black pigmented anaerobic bacteria (100%) in the samples. From the results obtained in the multiplex-PCR we saw that the most prevalent species were F. nucleatum (100%), T. forsythia (92%) and P. gingivalis (88%). In con-trast, lower prevalence species were P. intermedia (39%) and A. actinomycetecomitans (33%).


Mechanochemical process in polymeric vials has been carried out successfully to produce nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite (HAp) through two different reactions R1 and R2. Morphological properties and structural evaluation of obtained materials are studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM). The obtained data show that the increase in milling time leads the increasing in lattice strain and decreasing in crystallite size. The average crystallite size of HAp is below 20 and 23 nm for R1 and R2 reactions, respectively. Based on XRD patterns and SEM/TEM micrographs, the possible formation mechanism of nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite by mechanochemical process in polymeric milling media is confirmed. Final results indicate that the nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite with low chemically stable contaminations and suitable morphology can be produced in Polyamide6 vials similar to stainless steel vials, therefore it seems that using polymeric vials could lead to a new way for the mass production of nanocrystalline hydroxyapatite with high performance, low contamination and cost and also suitable morphology.


In this study, protocorm and shoot formation abilities of the seeds of Dactylorhiza iberica (Bieb. ex Willd.) Soo, Dactylorhiza umbrosa (Kar. and Kir.) Nevski and Orchis palustris Jacquin species in binucleic Rhizoctonia and Rhizoctonia solani isolates in vitro, which are used as symbiotic culture medium and isolated from the tubers of these plants, and in oat medium (OM) and modified oat medium (MOM) are examined. The shortest time for protocorm and shoot development of D. umbrosa sowed in oat media are determined as 42.67 and 66 days, respectively. The highest protocorm development rate and the least darkening protocorm percentage are observed as 60 % (OM) and 2.99 % (MOM) in D. umbrosa species. The maximum percentage of shoots obtained from protocorms is observed as 35.04 % in D. iberica species developed in OM. All data were obtained that the inoculation of binucleic Rhizoctonia sp. in the nutrient mediums.


The big data is currently a growing topic in the world of information technology. Based on the literature mentioned that manage of big data can create significant value for the world economy, improving productivity and competitiveness of enterprises and the public sector as well as creating a large economic surplus for consumers. However, based on the information obtained, the big data is still not widely applied in the company or organization. This study aimed to explore more information about the big data and proceed with making an application prototype big data management. This experiment established with the big data storage that is database, this research use NoSQL database technology that can map the needs of both structured and unstructured. And this research will be carried out migration of Relational Database (RDBMS) into the database MongoDB.   Prototype will be create with the object of study is structured and unstructured data. The expected result of this research is a model or prototype of big data management that can help organizations and companies (especially education) to make decisions based on various types of data.


In the article are analyzed the results of treatment of 16 children with Perthes disease. There is given clinico-roentgenologic substantiation of surgical treatment. The authors concluded that the surgical methods of treatment of children with Perthes disease of the II-III degree are the principal ones. The developed procedure of surgical intervention integrates the methods of intervention which were earlier applied by many authors and includes: correcting intertrochanteric detortion-variative osteotomies of femur, tunneling and biostimulation of neck and epiphysis of femoral head by allogenic osseous matrix and cortical transplants, by administration of chemotrypsin into epiphysis, decompression of hip joint with subsequent restorative-conservative treatment. Complex treatment allows 2-3-fold reduction of the terms of treatment of patients with good anatomic and functional results, prevents development of secondary hip joint deformations.


Students have various motivations for participating and engaging in courses offered by distance education technologies over the Internet. While many of these courses have traditionally been Web-based asynchronous offerings, enhanced technology and reduced costs of IP-enabled teleconferenced synchronous course sections are encouraging more institutions to adopt this effective option for delivering important content to several physical locations at the same time. This study examines differential student motivations for participating in local and distance teleconferenced sections of an information technology course, enabled by Internet-based videoconferencing. This research lends support to three hypotheses concerning technologymediated distance education systems. First, that traditional college age students prefer the local section of a distance education course on measures of satisfaction with the teleconferenced course, while non-traditional (age 25-34) students do not share this preference. Second, that older, non-traditional, students rate a distant course higher for satisfaction than do 18-24 year old students. Finally, that the social presence advantages of Internet-enabled teleconferencing appeal more to socially-oriented students than they do to students with a low social orientation. An unexpected, but serendipitous, finding of this research was that the group that could likely derive the greatest benefits from Internet-enabled distance education – older, non-traditional students – also may be more comfortable with the use of that technology, based on their higher reported degrees of selfperceived technical competency


Many -rich (up to 97% by volume) natural gas pools have been found in the continental margin basins of the northern South China Sea. By combining the geochemical data from 53 samples with their geologic backgrounds, this study investigated the origins and accumulation mechanism of , and discussed the role of in driving oil as it charged the reservoirs. The results reveal that the gases in the Yinggehai basin originate mainly from the thermal decomposition of both Miocene calcareous shales and Paleozoic carbonates, and that from mantle degassing is only a minor contributor. The accumulations in the Yinggehai basin are mainly controlled by diapiric faults and episodic thermal fluid movements. The gases in the eastern Qiongdongnan and western Pearl River Mouth basins are mainly related to magmatic or mantle degassing, and the volatiles from magmatic degassing during the igneous intrusion stage are the most likely major source of in these reservoirs, with basement faults providing pathways for upward migration of -rich mantle fluids. Natural displacements of oil by appear to be common in the eastern Qiongdongnan and western Pearl River Mouth basins. The -flooded oil or gas reservoirs have two common features that the present gas pools or oil-bearing structures have residual oils representing prior charge, and are close to the basement faults that provide pathways along which the mantle-derived -rich gas was migrated. The oils from prior hydrocarbon reservoirs have been naturally driven out by to form secondary oil reservoirs in the eastern Qiongdongnan and western Pearl River Mouth basins. Therefore, a full understanding of the origin and distribution of cannot just be used to trace hydrocarbon migration pathways, but also provide useful information for risk assessment prior to drilling.


William Wilkie Collins (WWC) is a well-known prolific and innovative English writer of the Victorian age. After 150 years he is still being extensively read and all his main works are translated into Spanish. Furthermore, WWC has been acclaimed by famous writers such as JL Borges and TS Eliot as one of the best story-tellers of all times, and a master of the complexities of the plot of stories. WWC mentioned on his works many innovator aspects of medicine, demonstrating an uncanny power of observation and real interest in science. Notoriously, WWC described posttraumatic epilepsy, the clinical effects of opium, the introduction of people with sensorial deficits, such as blindness and deafness, as main figures in his novels. WWC also showed an interest in the management of mental disorders and the use of music as a potential therapy. In this review, we comment these interesting aspects of the creative work of this genius of the fiction literature.


A number of studies have shown that the convective stability criterion for the intracluster medium (ICM) is very different from the Schwarzchild criterion, due to the effects of anisotropic thermal conduction and cosmic rays. Building on these studies, we develop a model of the ICM in which a central active galactic nucleus (AGN) accretes hot intracluster plasma at the Bondi rate and produces cosmic rays that cause the ICM to become convectively unstable. The resulting convection heats the intracluster plasma and regulates its temperature and density profiles. By adjusting a single parameter in the model (the size of the cosmic-ray acceleration region), we are able to achieve a good match to the observed density and temperature profiles in a sample of eight clusters. Our results suggest that convection is an important process in cluster cores. An interesting feature of our solutions is that the cooling rate is more sharply peaked about the cluster center than is the convective heating rate. As a result, in several of the clusters in our sample, a compact cooling flow arises in the central region with a size rcf that is typically a few kpc. The cooling flow matches onto a Bondi flow at smaller radii. The mass accretion rate in the Bondi flow is equal to, and controlled by, the rate at which mass flows in through the cooling flow. Our solutions suggest that the AGN regulates the mass accretion rate in these clusters by controlling rcf: if the AGN power rises above the equilibrium level, rcf decreases, the mass accretion rate drops, and the AGN power drops back down to the equilibrium level.


The Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Program (IPM CRSP) has been implementing IPM farmer field schools (FFS) with small scale farmers in Eastern Uganda since 2001. This study assesses the impact of cowpea-specific IPM FFS on IPM knowledge and the theoretical link between increased knowledge on the adoption of IPM strategies. The assessment was conducted to evaluate the impact of IPM FFS on adoption of IPM strategies. Comparison groups consisting of FFS participants and non participants were used to evaluate the impact of FFS on IPM knowledge and cowpea specific IPM strategies. A summated ratings scale consisting of five attributes was used to measure farmers' knowledge of IPM and another summated scale consisting of five IPM strategies for cowpea was used to measure adoption. The results indicate that participation in FFS leads to more knowledge of IPM and knowledge of IPM is the most important variable in explaining adoption of IPM strategies. These results provide a confirmation of the adoption decision making process and a validation of FFS as an effective mechanism for increasing both knowledge of IPM and the adoption of cowpea specific IPM strategies. Farmers were more likely to adopt component strategies rather than the entire IPM package. The diffusion of IPM knowledge and strategies to farmers who did not participate in the FFS appears to have been limited.


Minutes of Northwest Texas Conference include a list of members, committees, formal minutes of the conferences, condensed minutes, resolutions, reports from committees, selected biographies, and statistical tables.


With the increasing number of computers on the Internet, there is a growing interest in harnessing the unused and inexpensive computational resources over the Internet. However, current approaches such as the grid computing paradigm are not sufficient. We present our preliminary work that uses extends peer-2-peer (P2P) computing with a framework that allows grid computing over the Internet.


Mirror-image asymmetric molecules, i.e., chiral isomers or enantiomers, are classically considered as chemically identical. Recent studies, however, have indicated that parity violation by the nuclear weak force induces a tiny energy difference between chiral isomers. Upon combination with a massive amplification process, expansion of this difference to a detectable macroscopic level may be achieved. Yet, experimental tests of this possibility, where one enantiomer is compared to the other in solution, are hampered by the possible presence of undetectable impurities. In this study we have overcome this problem by comparing structural and dynamic features of synthetic D- and L-polyglutamic acid and polylysine molecules each of 24 identical residues. In these water-soluble polypeptides helix formation is an intramolecular autocatalytic process amplified by each turn, which is actually unaffected by low level of putative impurities in the solvent. The helix and random coil configurations and their transition were determined in this study by circular dichroism (CD) and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) in water and deuterium oxide. Distinct differences in structure and transition energies between the enantiomeric polypeptides were detected by both CD and ITC when dissolved in water. Intriguingly, these differences were by and large abolished in deuterium oxide. Our findings suggest that deviation from physical invariance between the D- and L-polyamino acids is induced in part by different hydration in water which is eliminated in deuterium oxide. Based on the recent findings by Tikhonov and Volkov (V. I. Tikhonov and A. A. Volkov, Science 2002, 296, 2363) we suggest that ortho-H(2)O, which constitutes 75% of bulk H(2)O, has a preferential affinity to L-enantiomers. Differential hydration of enantiomers may have played a role in the selection of L-amino acids by early forms of life.


The Travel Survey is a module of the Household Income and Consumption (HIC98) survey carried out in 1998. A certain number of the sample households used for this survey were questioned about pleasure and business trips with or without overnight stays that they had made during the preceding months. From the data obtained it was possible to analyse the travel habits of the Swiss within their own country and abroad. The general aims of the Travel Survey were, on the one hand, to fill the gaps in the official statistics on tourism and, on the other, to meet international recommendations concerning this field. The main specific aim of the survey was to obtain the best possible data on expenditure by Swiss people when they travel. This information is to be used for drawing up a Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) which will measure the economic significance of tourism in Switzerland. The HIC98 Travel survey examined private and business trips with or without overnight stays. The different types of trips included in the study correspond to the following definitions: Private excursions are same-day trips with no professional or commercial involvement. In the Travel Survey private excursions lasted at least 4 hours and took the subject away from his or her usual environment. Activities carried out on a regular and repeated basis were not considered as private excursions. Private trips with an overnight stay were defined as trips away from one's usual environment involving at least one overnight stay but lasting not more than one year without interruption, made not for professional or commercial reasons. All types of private trips were included in the study. Business trips are those away from one's usual environment, with an overnight stay or not and are for business or other professional purposes; they last not more than one year without interruption. Travelling companions are also on business.


Mastitis is a major disease affecting dairy cattle worldwide. Especially the subclinical form of the disease causes high economic losses. The evaluation of udder health is based on somatic cell count (SCC) and bacteriological examinations. A SCC threshold of 100,000 cells/mL in quarter foremilk samples is used to differentiate between healthy and diseased mammary glands. However, the overall goal of this thesis was the analysis of the immunological status of clinically healthy and subclinically infected bovine mammary glands to contribute to a more detailed understanding of subclinical mastitis.Initially, the results of 615,187 quarter foremilk samples taken between 2000 and 2008 in Hesse, Germany, were analyzed. The data indicated SCC >100,000 cells/mL in 38% and ≤100,000 cells/mL in 62% of all samples; 31% revealed SCC ≤25,000 cells/mL. Mastitis pathogens were detected in 83% of samples with SCC >100,000 cells/mL and in 8.5% of samples in the SCC range from 1,000 to 100,000 cells/mL. Based on these results, inflammatory processes were already suspected in udder quarters with SCC ≤100,000 cells/mL. We argued that such inflammation can be detected by examination of the relationship of immune cells in milk. Hence, in a second and a third study 20 cows, respectively, were selected and differential cell count (DCC) patterns of apparently healthy (SCC ≤100,000 cells/mL) and diseased quarters (>100,000 cells/mL) were compared. While in the second study 100 milk cells of each quarter were differentiated into lymphocytes, macrophages and polymorphonuclear neutrophilic leukocytes (PMNL) using light microscopy, a flow cytometric method was applied for differentiation of 5,000 cells in the third study. In both studies almost all DCC patterns of quarter foremilk samples taken from apparently healthy mammary glands were dominated by lymphocytes. Interestingly, microscopic DCC patterns of three milk samples with 43,000 to 45,000 cells/mL and flow cytometric DCC patterns of six samples with SCC values from 9,000 to 46,000 cells/mL indicated already inflammatory reactions based on the predominance of PMNL. Both studies revealed PMNL as dominant cell population with proportions of ≥49% in milk samples drawn from diseased quarters. In both studies, almost all samples tested revealed macrophages as second predominant cell population in relationship to lymphocytes and PMNL. Further analysis of the flow cytometric data demonstrated significant differences of the cellular components between quarters infected by major or minor pathogens and culture-negative quarters. In the second and third study, inflammatory reactions in milk of udder quarters classified as healthy according to SCC ≤100,000 cells/mL were detected based on DCC.The aim of a fourth study was to identify cytological parameters for differentiation between healthy and diseased udder quarters. Quarter foremilk samples were collected from 48 cows and bacteriological status, SCC, and microscopic DCC were determined. Mean lymphocyte percentage was significantly higher in group N (normal secretion, n = 96 samples) than in the three groups of diseased quarters (LM, latent mastitis, n = 15 samples; UM, unspecific mastitis, n = 47 samples; M, mastitis, n = 30 samples). Mean PMNL percentage was significantly lower in group N than in groups UM and M, but not LM. Macrophages did not vary significantly between by the four groups. The mean value of phagocytes (macrophages and PMNL) was significantly lower in group N than in the other groups. Both logarithmic (log) PMNL:Lym and log phagocyte:lymphocyte ratios were significantly lower in group N than in groups LM, UM, and M. However, calculating Fisher values for all variables, the log PMNL:lymphocyte ratio revealed the highest value. A subsequent study concentrated on establishment and verification of cutoff values differentiating between healthy and diseased quarters applying the log PMNL:lymphocyte ratio. Initially, quarter milk and blood samples were taken from eight cows for five consecutive days to investigate short-term repeatability of DCC in milk of healthy mammary glands. While SCC and bacteriological status were determined only for milk samples, DCC was analyzed in all blood and milk samples using flow cytometry. Neither milk nor blood DCC patterns were significantly influenced by sampling day, parity, lactation stage, or quarter position suggesting that DCC can be reliably applied to evaluate udder health. A cutoff value of 0.495 for log PMNL:lymphocyte was established. For the second part of the study 16 animals were randomly selected in a different herd and quarter milk samples were taken on three consecutive days. When the cutoff value was applied to the data along with SCC, high sensitivity and good specificity of 97.3% and 92.3%, respectively, were found under field conditions.Since all DCC studies revealed lymphocytes as predominant cell population in milk of healthy udder quarters, in a sixth study quantitative relationships of CD2+ T and CD21+ B lymphocytes were investigated using flow cytometry. Percentages of CD2+ T cells were significantly higher in apparently healthy quarters (SCC ≤100,000 cells/mL, n = 65) than in diseased quarters (n = 15), whereas the behaviour of CD21+ B cells was the contrary. As a result of this antidromic effect, a new variable – the CD2/CD21 index – was defined. While diseased quarters indicated values 10 in apparently healthy quarters. To test whether CD2/CD21 indices 100,000 cells/mL (n = 32) – either culture-negative or containing minor or major pathogens – were selectively examined. Interestingly, CD2/CD21 indices <10 were found in quarters showing SCC ≤100,000 cells/mL and minor or major pathogens at the time of the current or previous sampling. The results of our examinations indicated a clear connection between the CD2/CD21 index and the bacteriological status. A CD2/CD21 index of 10 may be suitable to aid differentiation between unsuspicious and suspicious or diseased udder quarters.The aim of a seventh study was to explore DCC patterns of host-microbial interactions for improvement of disease diagnosis. Data collected from six bovine, two human, and one avian study with viral, parasite, or bacterial agents were analyzed. In all studies, no classic data structure (e.g., percentage of an individual cell population) discriminated disease-positive (D+) from disease-negative (D–) samples without overlapping. In contrast, advanced data analysis, like the 3D approach, distinguished three (steady, positive, and negative) feedback phases, in which D– data characterized the steady phase, and D+ data were found in the positive and negative phases. Due to the advanced data analysis methods, in the seventh study host-microbial interactions could be assessed, which might be helpful for earlier diagnosis, differentiation of D+ classes, and lower rates of false-negatives.In conclusion, this thesis indicated immunological processes and inflam-matory reactions appearing already in the SCC range of apparently healthy mammary glands. In addition, new concepts for data analysis and potential new tools for the diagnosis of subclinical mastitis were described.


Chitosan (CS) and sodium alginate (SA) are two widely popular biopolymers which are used for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications from many years. The objective of present study was to study the effect of biofield treatment on physical, chemical and thermal properties of CS and SA. The study was performed in two groups (control and treated). The control group remained as untreated, and biofield treatment was given to treated group. The control and treated polymers were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, CHNSO analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), particle size analysis, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). FT-IR of treated chitosan showed increase in frequency of –CH stretching (2925→2979 cm- 1) vibrations with respect to control. However, the treated SA showed increase in frequency of –OH stretching (3182→3284 cm-1) which may be correlated to increase in force constant or bond strength with respect to control. CHNSO results showed significant increase in percentage of oxygen and hydrogen of treated polymers (CS and SA) with respect to control. XRD studies revealed that crystallinity was improved in treated CS as compared to control. The percentage crystallite size was increased significantly by 69.59% in treated CS with respect to control. However, treated SA showed decrease in crystallite size by 41.04% as compared to control sample. The treated SA showed significant reduction in particle size (d50 and d99) with respect to control SA. DSC study showed changes in decomposition temperature in treated CS with respect to control. A significant change in enthalpy was observed in treated polymers (CS and CA) with respect to control. TGA results of treated CS showed decrease in Tmax with respect to control. Likewise, the treated SA also showed decrease in Tmax which could be correlated to reduction in thermal stability after biofield treatment. Overall, the results showed that biofield treatment has significantly changed the physical, chemical and thermal properties of CS and SA.


According to the carin theory of Gagne & Shoben (1997), conceptual relations play an important role in compound interpretation. This study develops three measures gauging the role of conceptual relations, and pits these measures against measures based on latent semantic analysis (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The carin measures successfully predict response latencies in a familiarity categorization task, in a semantic transparency task, and in visual lexical decision. Of the measures based on latent semantic analysis, only a measure orthogonal to the conceptual relations, which instead gauges the extent to which the concepts for the compound's head and the compound itself are discriminated, also reached significance. Results further indicate that in tasks requiring careful assesment of the meaning of the compound, general knowledge of conceptual relations plays a central role, whereas in the lexical decision task, attention shifts to co-activated meanings and the specifics of the conceptual relations realized in the compound's modifier family.


Neuropathic pain is a pathological pain, caused due to damaged nerves, as a result of an injury on the somatosensory system. Its effect is mainly on the outside of the brain and spinal cord. Therefore, it is mainly considered as " peripheral neuropathy pain", which has yearly impacted, over 20 million Americans. A nerve fiber injury, does effect the functionality of the nerve at the site of damage or around the injury. Its prevalence depends on the type of neuropathy; but in the general population; it is counted around 7-8%. The etiology of neuropathic pain is complex and varied in different cases. These include neurodegenerative disease, physical trauma, infectious agents and metabolic diseases. There is considerable variation in treatment initiation, dosage, drug selection. In general, Antidepressants (antidepressants [TCAs], selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs],serotonin– norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors [SNRIs]), anticonvulsants (antiepileptic), topical lidocaine,tramadol and opioid analgesics are the options available for treatment. Even though treatment of Neuropathic pain is still a challenge to manage, and evidence of clinical recommendations for pharmacological management are required in the area of its management. The main obstacle for the neuropathic pain is the lack of awareness and misconception about neuropathic pain's complexities, which often leads to misdiagnosis and mistreatment. This article focuses on the various types of treatment, prognosis and management of the neuropathic pain.


Governance is defined as a process allowing actors to contextualise the regulatory system and, as a result, to transform sustainable development (SD) into an instrument of action. It will be all the easier for actors to familiarise themselves with SD and its implementation measures if these measures are similar to their representation on SD and its consequences on their activity and social life. In a research project carried out on the production of SD indicators, regulatory systems and the representation that actors have of aquaculture were analysed in various environments (Cameroon, Cyprus, France, Indonesia, and the Philippines). The main assumption is that implementing SD requires and leads to a deconstruction/construction process of the actors' activity. This process is supported by a collective organisation and depends on individual and collective learning about technical and organisational aspects, in particular regarding the (re)definition of activities and governance methods of aquaculture areas.


In this paper, we propose an event-centric planning framework for directing interactive narratives in complex 3D environments populated by virtual humans. Events facilitate precise authorial control over complex interactions involving groups of actors and objects, while planning allows the simulation of causally consistent character actions that conform to an overarching global narrative. Events are defined by preconditions, postconditions, costs, and a centralized behavior structure that simultaneously manages multiple participating actors and objects. By planning in the space of events rather than in the space of individual character capabilities, we allow virtual actors to exhibit a rich repertoire of individual actions without causing combinatorial growth in the planning branching factor. Our system produces long, cohesive narratives at interactive rates, allowing a user to take part in a dynamic story that, despite intervention, conforms to an authored structure and accomplishes a predetermined goal.


Researchers nowadays claim that educators must accommodate the learning styles of "digital natives". Thus, many new and challenging educational experiences have tried to cater for the "singularity" of digital natives. These studies have focused on facilitating the communication between teachers and students using the students' own language and style. In this context, we analyse the use of a Web 2.0 application in higher education integrated in a traditional language course. The paper questions the technical expertise of digital natives and observes the contribution of Web 2.0 to promote construction of knowledge while developing a proficiency in English. The conclusions signal the rewarding benefits of Wikis to construct knowledge collaboratively and the positive effects on the improvement of linguistic skills. Additionally, the study suggests that the incorporation of new online projects into traditional higher education requires careful planning with consideration given to sound pedagogy so as to lead to effective learning.


Soft error has become one of the most critical reliability issues for nano-scaled CMOS designs. Many previous works discovered that the pulse width due to a particle strike on the device increases with temperature, but its system-level effect has not yet been investigated with statistical soft-error-rate (SER). Therefore, in this paper, a combinational circuit (c17 from ISCAS'85) using a 45nm CMOS technology is f rst observed under different temperatures for SER. As a result, a SER increase (2.16X more) is found on c17 as the ambient temperature elevates from 25°C to 125°C. Second, along with growing design complexity, the operational temperatures of gates are distributed in a wide range and much higher than the ambient temperature in reality. Therefore, we are motivated to build a temperature-aware SSER analysis framework that integrates statistical cell modeling to consider the ambient temperature (Ta) and the temperature variation (Tv), simultaneously. Experimental result shows that our SSER analysis framework is highly eff cient (with multiple-order speed-ups) and accurate (with only <;4% errors), when compared with Monte-Carlo SPICE simulation.


Scorpions rely predominantly on mechanosensory and chemosensory organs to guide their orientation behaviors. Once sensory organs are affected by the presence of dirt such as clay or prey bodily fluid, scorpions may display a cleaning behavior to reduce or eliminate its influence on their sensory capabilities. In the laboratory, cleaning behaviors of two buthid species, Mesobuthus eupeus (Koch, 1839) and Mesobuthus caucasicus (Nordmann, 1840), and one euscorpiid species, Scorpiops luridus Zhu Lourenco & Qi, 2005 from China, were observed before and after feeding. Moreover, two distinct cleaning behaviors in Scorpiops luridus and three in Heterometrus petersii (Thorell, 1876) (Scorpionidae) were noted for several times during daily activities. Based on these observations, we were able to conclude that different tools and the same tool with diverse applications are used for cleaning the same object in numerous scorpion species.


K-Nearest Neighbour (K-NN) is one of the popular classification algorithm, in this research K-NN use to classify internet traffic, the K-NN is appropriate for huge amounts of data and have more accurate classification, K-NN algorithm has a disadvantages in computation process because K-NN algorithm calculate the distance of all existing data in dataset. Clustering is one of the solution to conquer the K-NN weaknesses, clustering process should be done before the K-NN classification process, the clustering process does not need high computing time to conqest the data which have same characteristic, Fuzzy C-Mean is the clustering algorithm used in this research. The Fuzzy C-Mean algorithm no need to determine the first number of clusters to be formed, clusters that form on this algorithm will be formed naturally based datasets be entered. The Fuzzy C-Mean has weakness in clustering results obtained are frequently not same even though the input of dataset was same because the initial dataset that of the Fuzzy C-Mean is less optimal, to optimize the initial datasets needs feature selection algorithm. Feature selection is a method to produce an optimum initial dataset Fuzzy C-Means. Feature selection algorithm in this research is Principal Component Analysis (PCA). PCA can reduce non significant attribute or feature to create optimal dataset and can improve performance for clustering and classification algorithm. The resultsof this research is the combination method of classification, clustering and feature selection of internet traffic dataset was successfully modeled internet traffic classification method that higher accuracy and faster performance.


The question of what teachers should know and be able to do endures, given the central role teachers play in the development of young people into wise and contributing citizens for world societies. Research has demonstrated the relationship between teacher preparation and competence, and that quality teachers achieve better academic outcomes for learners. Moreover, the issue of quality teachers has become even more salient in the 21st century as forces of globalization blur boundaries, heightening both competition and cooperation among nations. These forces include: (a) massive global migration as a result of war and other political disruptions, such that countries around the world are receiving newcomers, many of whom are school-aged and bring with them new cultures and languages; (b) increased attention to human rights, with a focus on inclusion, equity, poverty reduction, and social uplift for all children, regardless of their circumstance or backgrounds, through universal education; and (c) international benchmarking assessments such as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) that are driving international conversations about quality education and educators. The demands on teachers have increased, and definitions of quality emphasize the ability to capably teach children who represent multiple diversities (race, language, national origin, gender identities) and multiple vulnerabilities (poverty, dis/ability, immigrant status).
 Preparing teachers for diverse students has long been relevant to the U.S. given its history as a country of immigrants, juxtaposed against a devastating legacy of enslavement, genocide, and imperialism. But the 1970s was when educators began to more seriously attend to educating diverse children who had been uniformly ignored because of racism, discrimination, and segregation. This was on the heels of civil rights legislature, activism on the part of people of color, people with disabilities, and indigenous people for better schools for their children, and large waves of immigration from Latin America and Asia, versus primarily European countries as in the past. As the proportion of non-white students increased in U.S. schools, preparing teachers for diversity became imperative, especially since the majority of teachers were white, and the achievement gap between mainstream children and diverse children remained stubbornly wide. Researchers also documented the inequities diverse learners faced in schools—poorly funded schools, less qualified teachers, limited access to academic curriculum, excessive disciplinary practices, and so on—as well as the teaching practices that made a positive difference in the educational experiences and achievements of diverse children. These included Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP), meaningful learning that honors diverse students' culture and communities, high academic standards supported by excellent teachers, and multiple access points into the curriculum. The solution to inequitable education requires that all teachers instruct and advocate for every student as if she or he mattered, that all students receive the same care and attention as the richest, most advantaged. This solution is deceptively simple because it requires teachers to examine and revise their own biases and misconceptions, and actively resist the persistent messages that depict diverse children as deficient, so as to see them as worthwhile, full of capacity, and on the brink of greatness.


Searching for similar strings is an important and frequent database task both in terms of human interactions and in absolute worldwide CPU utilisation. A wealth of metric functions for string comparison exist. However, with respect to the wide range of classification and other techniques known within vector spaces, such metrics allow only a very restricted range of techniques. To counter this restriction, various strategies have been used for mapping string spaces into vector spaces, approximating the string distances within the mapped space and therefore allowing vector space techniques to be used. In previous work we have developed a novel technique for mapping metric spaces into vector spaces, which can therefore be applied for this purpose. In this paper we evaluate this technique in the context of string spaces, and compare it to other published techniques for mapping strings to vectors. We use a publicly available English lexicon as our experimental data set, and test two different string metrics over it for each vector mapping. We find that our novel technique considerably outperforms previously used technique in preserving the actual distance.


The nucleotide sequence for human arglnlnosucclnat e synthetase cDNA was determined by analysis of six clones isolated from a single experiment. The sequence covered 1623 nucleotides Including 76 bases of poly(A) and contained a 1236 nucleotide open reading frame encoding a protein of 46,434 daltons. In one cDNA isolate, a cloning artifact or perhaps RHA polymerase error involving addition of an A in a region of six A's within the coding sequence was documented. Single base variations in the 3' untranslated region were examined in detail since detection of DNA polymorphisms in the cDNAs could imply over-expression of both alleles at the active locus in canavanine— resistant cells, i.e. a trans-acting mechanism for enzyme overproduction. However, the sequence from five cDNAs suggested some single base artifacts, and DNA polymorphism remains uncertain. The occurrence of three tandem arginine codone in the 5' untranslated region of the cDNA suggested the possibility of an interaction of arginyl-tRNA with mRNA to regulate RNA processing or half-life as a mechanism for arginine-mediate d repression.


This thesis presents a non-visual game for visually impaired people which uses technology designed for interacting with Virtual Reality (VR) environments to provide a tailored experience that focuses on touch and sound. According to the world health organisation, 0.03% of the world's population is blind. However, according to the world's largest computer game market, Steam, only 0.0003% of games published in its catalog are designed for visually impaired people. This discrepancy shows that there is a clear issue in regards to the representation of visually impaired people in the design of computer games.   By examining existing computer games designed for visually impaired people, a set of design criteria was established in order to improve the experience delivered to a visually impaired player in a computer game. This was accomplished by adopting existing   VR input methods such as tracked motion controllers and head tracking technology in order to track a player's motion and position in space. The experience reacts to the position and placement of the player's head and hands by using outputs such as spatialized audio combined with haptic feedback. A game was then designed using these inputs and outputs that would allow a visually impaired player to use their sound and proprioceptive senses to navigate and interact with the environment.   Visually impaired people were interviewed in regards to their experience and thoughts upon computer games. The game experience was then be tested by the same group of visually impaired players and user feedback was then integrated into an iterative design process. The final outcome of this thesis is a game experience that takes into account the needs and requirements of the underrepresented audience of visually impaired people who wish to enjoy computer games as a medium.


The investigation, charge, prosecution, and rehabilitation of female terrorists is a controversial subject because patriarchal values widely drive the context of jihadi violence. Thousands of women made their way from over 80 countries worldwide to the Islamic State realms in Syria and Iraq, with Central Asia accounting for 20 per cent of this migration. As the forces of ISIS were retreating – and even before – Central Asian countries were keen to repatriate women and children from Syria and Iraq. In contrast to Western Europe, public opinion was supportive of these humanitarian operations. This study is informed by the debriefing of approximately fifty of these women, in a context in which they have already faced the legal repercussions for "joining" the ranks of ISIS. The women interviewed hail from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan; it is clear women left an overwhelmingly patriarchal context to find a dehumanisingly misogynistic jihadi society. Their agency as second-class ISIS "citizens" needs to be systematically explored to inform effective counterterrorism strategy, be it profiling, legislation, preemptive intervention and rehabilitation policies.


In this paper we explore how visual simultaneous localisation and mapping (vSLAM) systems might estimate the pose (position and orientation) of a vehicle surveying highway assets, as part of a wider transport asset management (TAM) system. Such a system would reduce reliance on (or enhance estimation from) a GPS-enabled inertial measurement unit (IMU). Two problems with employing vSLAM systems on highway survey imagery are identified. Firstly, straight segments of the highway cause low parallax issues, and secondly the presence of other vehicles breaks the assumption that the camera moves within a static environment. To overcome these problems, an existing monocular vSLAM system is modified with two state-of-the-art deep neural network (DNN) tools. We show that the modified system provides an improved estimation of pose. In addition to TAM, our work has clear applications in autonomous vehicles, when there is only limited visual field sensing.


High-performance concrete (HPC) are advanced materials used in advances applications such as tunnels or nuclear power plant in which they can be accidentally submitted to severe stress or thermal conditions. The present study deals with the material response to thermal loading conditions. The main objective of this research is the characterization of the fracture toughness under Mode I at high temperature of high performance mortars by using notched specimens in three-point bending test in accordance with the RILEM recommendations. The mechanical loading is applied to the specimens while heated at various temperatures ranging from 25 to 900°C in isothermal conditions. The maximum applied load is found to be maximum at 300°C temperature and then to decrease sharply at higher temperatures. Analysis of SEM micrographs undertaken on the heated specimens after mechanical tests helps in the understanding of the material macroscopic behaviour. The evaluation of the material toughness during the hot testing is undertaken through analytical approach based on Fracture Mechanics. Lastly, the stress intensity factor as well as the energy of fracture evolves similarly versus temperature as the maximum applied load.


Bacteria cells are protected from osmotic and environmental stresses by an exoskeleton-like polymeric structure called peptidoglycan (PG) or murein sacculus. This structure is fundamental for bacteria's viability and thus, the mechanisms underlying cell wall assembly and how it is modulated serve as targets for many of our most successful antibiotics. Therefore, it is now more important than ever to understand the genetics and structural chemistry of the bacterial cell walls in order to find new and effective methods of blocking it for the treatment of disease. In the last decades, liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry have been demonstrated to provide the required resolution and sensitivity to characterize the fine chemical structure of PG. However, the large volume of data sets that can be produced by these instruments today are difficult to handle without a proper data analysis workflow. Here, we present PG-metrics, a chemometric based pipeline that allows fast and easy classification of bacteria according to their muropeptide chromatographic profiles and identification of the subjacent PG chemical variability between e.g. bacterial species, growth conditions and, mutant libraries. The pipeline is successfully validated here using PG samples from different bacterial species and mutants in cell wall proteins. The obtained results clearly demonstrated that PG-metrics pipeline is a valuable bioanalytical tool that can lead us to cell wall classification and biomarker discovery.


The purpose of this reflective paper is to give an account of how we managed to navigate online learning and teaching amid the COVID-19 pandemic to enhance students' learning at a rural university in South Africa. The aim is to share our experiences on how we used community of practice as a theory to support ourselves as lecturers in designing, accessing, and engaging with online content amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the paper details the successes and pitfalls encountered in trying to adjust to the online mode of delivery. The paper makes use of qualitative self-reflexive personal narrative inquiry. Community of practice theory and connectivist theory guide our reflections. We succeeded not only in helping each other navigate the e-learning platform but our working relationships also improved as well as our skills. Through use of community of practice and connectivism, we managed, not without difficulties, to migrate content online, to engage meaningfully with our students, and to network with other lecturers. We recommend adoption of community of practice by lecturers even beyond the pandemic since it promotes knowledge- and skill-sharing, and networking, thereby easing lecturers' burden and fears. Furthermore, community of practice encourages scholars to share their work in the form of scholarship of teaching and learning.


Geoffrey Lloyd, in his book Cognitive Variations (2007), addresses the puzzle of cognitive diversity vs. cognitive unity of our mental life by analyzing a number of debates related to it. Accounting for the fact that human mental life across cultures both shares many of its fundamental features and differs in many others, no less fundamental ones, apparently cannot but engender a dilemma, as long as only reductionist solutions are considered, for neither radical diversity is reducible to unity nor vice versa. The situation is further complicated by the fact that 'division of labor' solutions involving a sort of schizophrenic fragmentation of the mind, are also unlikely, since even the most diverse mental tasks complement each other in what appears to be a seamless unity. In this review article, I undertake to highlight what I take to be the cornerstone of Lloyd's account, namely an approach that rejects the dichotomy 'diversity vs. unity' and thus creates an alternative, 'pragmatic' path for their essential cooperation-through- opposition. This proposal is supported by an analysis of Lloyd's treatment of several of the debates discussed in the book's chapters, as well as by references to my own work in pragmatics and controversies.


The robots are used more commonly in all the fields. In this paper the focus is on the design of a charging system for batteries with the help of tracked solar panels. And we will apply it to a robotic vehicle. The use of a solar tracking system for increasing the robot's power. The design of power system performance is with a pack of two batteries. The aim is complete the process of charging a battery independently while the other battery provides energy consumed by the robotic vehicle.


Obesity is a serious public health issue of epidemic proportions. Although drug therapy is one of the therapeutic approaches, it should be preceded by a change in eating habits along with regular exercise. This study assessed prescription of such drugs in 2009, in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Data were collected from consumption bulletins sent monthly to the municipal sanitary surveillance agency (VISA), and from the Brazilian National Management System of Controlled Products. Of the 7,759 notifications assessed, 93.3% were dispensed by prescription pharmacies and 6.7% by drugstores. Of that total, 55.4% were for amphepramone, 33.1% for femproporex, and 11.5% for mazindol. The three drugs had a larger consumption rate in the municipality (daily defined dose/1,000 inhabitants/day) than in the country as a whole, during the period under study. The professional with the highest prescription rate was responsible for 3,535 prescriptions. All of these were dispensed by prescription pharmacies, a single outlet being responsible for 99.5% of these prescriptions. This scenario shows that anorectic psychotropic drug prescription is a relevant public health issue and the criteria for monitoring the prescription and consumption of these drugs should be re-evaluated.


The present study aims to determine the optimum blank shape design for the deep drawing of Elliptical-shape cups with a uniform trimming allowance at the flange i.e. cups without ears. This earing defect is caused by planar anisotropy in the sheet and the friction between the blank and punch/die. In this research, a new method for optimum blank shape design using finite element analysis has been proposed. Present study describes the approach of applying Response Surface Methodology (RSM) with Reduced Basis Technique (RBT) to assist engineers in the blank optimization in sheet metal forming. The primary objective of the method is to reduce the enormous number of design variables required to define the blank shape. RBT is a weighted combination of several basis shapes. The aim of the method is to find the best combination using the weights for each blank shape as the design variables. A multi-level design process is developed to find suitable basis shapes or trial shapes at each level that can be used in the reduced basis technique. Each level is treated as a separated optimization problem until the required objective – minimum earing function – is achieved. The experimental design of RSM method is used to build the approximation model and to perform optimization. MATLAB software has been used for building RSM model. Explicit non-linear finite element (FE) Code Abaqus/CAE is used to simulate the deep drawing process. FE models are constructed incorporating the exact physical conditions of the process such as tooling design like die profile radius, punch corner radius, etc., material used, coefficient of friction, punch speed and blank holder force. The material used for the analysis is Stainless steel St12. A quantitative earing function is defined to measure the amount of earing and to compare the deformed shape and target shape set for each stage of the analysis. The cycle is repeated until the converged results are achieved. This iterative design process leads to optimal blank shape. So through the investigation the proposed method of optimal blank design is found to be very effective in the deep drawing process and can be further applied to other stamping applications.


The chief aim of the present work is to investigate the preparation for silver nanoparticles antimicrobial agent and its antibacterial activity on cotton fabric. In this study, antimicrobial agent was fabricated by a reaction between an amino-terminated hyperbranched polymer (HBP-NH2) and silver nitrate solution of certain concentration. Meanwhile, cotton fabric was oxygenated to afford aldehyde groups which could connect with the amino groups of the HBP-NH2 to provide cotton fabric with durable antimicrobial properties. The effects of different biocides made of various molecular structures of synthetic material (HBP-NH2) on antimicrobial properties of nano-silver colloid solution were discussed, and three different agents generated then were characterized in following aspects as silver nanoparticles size and distribution by using DLS, TEM and UV-vis. Furthermore, the fabric structure, mechanical properties and antimicrobial property of treated cotton fabric were also tested. Included in this part of experiment were transverse micro morphology of cotton fibre by SEM, fabric strength retention after finishing, silver nanoparticles molecular conformation on fabric and content analysis via ICP-AES. The results showed that stable silver nanoparticles collide solution with 20-30 nano, applied on oxidized cotton fabric under certain condition, could produce ideal antibacterial rate over 94% of bacterial reduction to both Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus) and Escherichia coli (E.coli) after 50 consecutive washings.


A 43-year-old Asian American man with asthma and hypertension was referred to the movement disorder center with a 5-year history of gradually progressive action-induced ankle inversion followed by trunk tightness and painful neck twisting with right shoulder elevation. He was born in the United States and successfully graduated college as a B/C student with mild learning difficulties. He always had disproportionally long limbs and digits and at age 12 developed ectopia lentis (medial-inferior displacement). Numerous ocular surgeries were performed including intraocular lens exchange with iris fixation. Marfan syndrome was previously diagnosed based on physical findings. There was no family history of Marfan syndrome, marfanoid features, or early death due to aortic dissection. FBN1 mutations were not tested and serial echocardiograms demonstrated no aortic root dilation. Diagnosis was later refined to ectopia lentis syndrome per updated guidelines. At age 29, he required allograft repair of an anterior cruciate ligament following minor impact. Four years later, while walking, he had musculoskeletal trauma in the left foot with subsequent toe extension weakness. Nerve conduction studies confirmed absence of compound motor action potentials in the left peroneal nerve lateral terminal branch. At age 38, he developed left foot pain with tendency for dorsiflexion and ankle inversion when walking. Severity gradually progressed and tightness extended to the trunk within 2 years. At age 41, he developed elevation of the right shoulder and several weeks later rightward rotation of the neck and back. Dystonia gradually progressed. Symptoms were exacerbated by stress but not relieved by alcohol or muscle relaxers.


REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY
Application of the lactose (13) C-ureide breath test (LUBT) for measurement of equine orocaecal transit time (OCTT) has not been reported previously. The ability to assess OCTT noninvasively, and to investigate its relationship to gastric emptying rate and small intestinal transit, would be of both clinical and research value.

OBJECTIVES
1) Assessment of the LUBT in healthy horses, with comparison of induced versus noninduced test protocols. 2) Application of a new dual stable isotope breath test (lactose (13) C-ureide and (13) C-octanoic acid) for gastrointestinal transit measurement.

HYPOTHESIS
The LUBT will allow quantification of equine OCTT, and test efficacy will be enhanced by prior administration of lactose (12) C-ureide as shown in vitro. The dual tracer breath test will permit simultaneous measurement of gastric emptying, OCTT and small bowel transit times.

METHODS
Induced and noninduced LUBTs were performed in 3 healthy mature horses in randomised order using a standard test meal and protocol. Combined LUBT and (13) C-octanoic acid breath tests ((13) C-OABT) were performed in 4 individuals on 4 occasions at weekly intervals. Expiratory isotopic recovery was modelled to allow generation of gastric emptying data, small bowel transit times and caecal transit parameters.

RESULTS
The induction protocol for the LUBT increased the rate and magnitude of expiratory (13) CO(2) significantly. Mean ± s.d. values for OCTT, caecal lag phase (t(lag) ) and caecal t(1/2) using the induced LUBT were 3.24 ± 0.65 h, 5.62 ± 1.22 h and 6.31 ± 1.21 h, respectively. Dual stable isotope tests resulted in the production of 2 discrete peaks in expiratory (13) CO(2) in 15/16 tests from which gastric t(1/2), OCTT and small bowel transit (SBT) parameters could be calculated.

CONCLUSIONS
The induced LUBT provides a reliable noninvasive measure of equine OCTT and can be paired with the (13) C-OABT to provide further information about small intestinal motility.


Previous studies on patients with breast cancer, who received postsurgical irradiation, displayed a markedly suppressed inflammatory response in the lung of smoking patients compared to nonsmokers. The aim of the present study was to investigate further the effect of exposure to tobacco smoke on the development of irradiation-induced pneumonitis in the rat. Four groups of animals were used: controls (C); those exposed to tobacco smoke (S); those irradiated but not exposed to smoke (RNS); and those irradiated and exposed to tobacco smoke (RS). The rats were exposed to a diluted main stream of cigarette smoke, at a concentration of about 0.4 mg.l-1, in a nose-only exposure system for 1 h.day-1, 5 days.week-1 for 10 weeks. Exposure to tobacco smoke started 3 weeks before irradiation. The basal one third of both lungs was exposed to a single radiation dose of 28 Gy (6 MeV photons). All animals were killed 7 weeks after irradiation. We compared findings in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) and tissue morphology. The alveolar tissue showed less inflammation in the RS-group than in the RNS-group. Most strikingly, mast cells were increased one hundredfold in the lung interstitium and thirty fold in the peribronchial area in the RNS-group, whereas no increase was found in the RS-group or in the controls. The alveolar septa of the RNS-group were thickened, with occurrence of inflammatory cells and mast cells, whereas the RS-group displayed no difference as compared to the non-irradiated, nonsmoking group (C).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


To demonstrate the instability of microsatellite sequences, which have been linked to DNA mismatch repair deficiency and indicate a high risk of carcinogenesis, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and electrophoretic analysis have been used. However, the electrophoretic profiles of PCR-amplified microsatellite sequences are often too complicated, and the conventional method using autoradiography has critical problems in detection characteristics and migration accuracy. First, we made use of fluorescence-labeled PCR and laser scanning to detect bands quantitatively. Second, we characterized Taq polymerase-dependent modification of the amplified microsatellite sequences and optimized the electrophoretic profiles by enzymatic modification with T4 DNA polymerase. Third, we developed a dual fluorescence co-electrophoresis system, in which both samples derived from cancer and normal tissues are electrophoresed in the same lane, in order to minimize migration errors. Furthermore, we classified all of the observed patterns of microsatellite alteration and set up new criteria for assessing microsatellite instability. Using the system developed here and the criteria we proposed, a precise judgment can be made and rates of positivity in various human malignancies may be corrected.


A female infant with generalized GM1-gangliosidosis differing in several aspects from previously reported cases is described. Clinically she is the first case to have cardiomegaly, unilateral congenitial dislocation of the hip and normal facial appearance. She had a higher residual leucocyte β-galactosidase activity towards two synthetic substrates, namely p-nitrophenyl-β-D-galactoside (PNP-β-gal) and 4-methylumbelliferyl-β-D-galactoside (MU-β-gal) than in previously reported cases. Total β-hexosaminidase activity was raised in cultured fibroblasts, leucocytes, brain, kidneys and liver of the patient, and in fibroblasts from the parents. The parents' leucocytes had normal β-galactosidase activity towards PNP-β-gal but slightly reduced activity towards MU-β-gal. The parents' cultured fibroblast enzyme, however, had moderately low activities towards both substrates. It is suggested that she may represent a genetic variant of generalized GM1-gangliosidosis and that assay of leucocyte β-galactosidase activity should be added to the list of investigations for infantile cardiomegaly of unknown origin.


Infrastructures serving on-line applications experience dynamic workload variations depending on diverse factors such as popularity, marketing, periodic patterns, fads, trends, events, etc. Some predictable factors such as trends, periodicity or scheduled events allow for proactive resource provisioning in order to meet fluctuations in workloads. However, proactive resource provisioning requires prediction models forecasting future workload patterns. This paper proposes a multi-model prediction approach, in which data are grouped into bins based on content locality, and an autoregressive prediction model is assigned to each locality-preserving bin. The prediction models are shown to be identified and fitted in a computationally efficient way. We demonstrate experimentally that our multi-model approach improves locality over the uni-model approach, while achieving efficient resource provisioning and preserving a high resource utilization and load balance.


AIMS
A discussion of the personal and social contexts for Millennial family caregivers and the value of including complex identity and intersectionality in Millennial family caregiving research with practical application.

DESIGN
Discussion paper.

DATA SOURCES
This discussion paper is based on our own experiences and supported by literature and theory.

IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING
Millennial family caregivers have distinct generational, historical and developmental experiences that contribute to the care they provide as well as their own well-being. Complex identity, the integration of multiple identities, and intersectionality, systems and structures that disempower and oppress individuals with multiple identities, need to be addressed in nursing research so intervention tailoring and health equity can be better supported in this population. From research conceptualization and design to data analysis, data must be used intentionally to promote equity and reduce bias. The inclusion of diverse Millennial caregivers throughout all stages of the research process and having a diverse nursing research workforce will support these efforts.

CONCLUSION
Millennial family caregivers comprise one-quarter of the family caregiving population in the United States, and they are more diverse than previous family caregiving generational cohorts. Their needs will be more fully supported by nursing scientists with the adoption of methods and techniques that address complex identity and intersectionality.

IMPACT
Nursing researchers can use the following research approaches to address complex identity and intersectionality in Millennial caregivers: inclusion of qualitative demographic data collection (participants can self-describe); data disaggregation; data visualization techniques to augment or replace frequencies and descriptive statistics for demographic reporting; use of researcher reflexivity throughout the research process; advanced statistical modelling techniques that can handle complex demographic data and test for interactions and differential effects of health outcomes; and qualitative approaches such as phenomenology that centre the stories and experiences of individuals within the population of interest.


This will serve as a reading guide for Dr. Rhame's ACCT 5325 - Intermediate Financial Accounting Readings for Week 1


Speed Warning Device SIR,-A belief, and fear, is being widely expressed that the pedestrian casualty rate will rise when the petrol crisis ends and more cars come on to the roads again. In this city we have what has been called " the murderous mile," where three elderly women were killed within four weeks, and we are asked: " Do these figures shock you, or have you ceased to be shocked by road accidents ? " The Minister of Transport is concerned about the speed limit, and has ordered larger 30 m.p.h. traffic signs, and especially large ones for main roads. I am a motorist, living in the city's centre, and I find that strict observance of the speed limit is rare, and overtaking of cars running at between 35 and 40 m.p.h. is frequent. In order to overtake, acceleration must be either rapid for a short distance or a moderate speed for a dangerously long distance. Impact on an unfortunate pedestrian, even at the slower speed, is dreadful to contemplate. Imagination falls short at the effect at higher speeds. Nothing effective is being done to enforce observance of the regulation. I believe it is not beyond ingenuity to contrive a device which would indicate to drivers that they are exceeding the speed limit, and to external observers also that this is occurring and that the driver is, or should be, aware of it. The orthodox speedometer, even in line with the driver's direct vision, is of little value, perhaps because we are accustomed to ignoring it. I believe there is a solid core of well-disposed motorists who would welcome any change which would lessen the ghastly toll of the roads and would agree to the fitting of such a device on their cars, especially if the Minister of Transport would arrange to subsidize such a unit.-I am, etc.,


Abstract. In this study we apply a nonlinear spectral unmixing algorithm to a nearly global lunar spectral reflectance mosaic derived from hyper-spectral image data acquired by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument. Corrections for topographic effects and for thermal emission were performed. A set of 19 laboratory-based reflectance spectra of lunar samples published by the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium (LSCC) were used as a catalog of potential endmember spectra. For a given spectrum, the multi-population population-based incremental learning (MPBIL) algorithm was used to determine the subset of endmembers actually contained in it. However, as the MPBIL algorithm is computationally expensive, it cannot be applied to all pixels of the reflectance mosaic. Hence, the reflectance mosaic was clustered into a set of 64 prototype spectra, and the MPBIL algorithm was applied to each prototype spectrum. Each pixel of the mosaic was assigned to the most similar prototype, and the set of endmembers previously determined for that prototype was used for pixel-wise nonlinear spectral unmixing using the Hapke model, implemented as linear unmixing of the single-scattering albedo spectrum. This procedure yields maps of the fractional abundances of the 19 endmembers. Based on the known modal abundances of a variety of mineral species in the LSCC samples, a conversion from endmember abundances to mineral abundances was performed. We present maps of the fractional abundances of plagioclase, pyroxene and olivine and compare our results with previously published lunar mineral abundance maps.