The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the institutionalized Swedish Psychiatric practice during the period 1850 and 1970 - the era of the large mental hospitals - in terms of a modem disciplinary project. Point of departure relates to the meeting between the admitted patient and the educational work of the mental hospital and its everyday practice. The main sources of information for this study consists among other things of case sheets and texts closely related to the work of the mental hospitals.The study has two important aspects. The first deals with the normalized procedures in the practice of mental care, and draws the attention to the relation between social and cultural standards and the way the mental hospitals reviews, treats and handles the patient. The second aspect deals with the actual administration and the techniques of the hospital to correct the patient and his/her actions in a desirable direction. An overarching discussion deals with the relation between liberating and Controlling practitioners, and how the Controlling power of the hospital relates to the modem society's conception of a independent man.At the same time as the physical coercion of the mental hospital diminished, controlling methods were required which were not merely based on obedience and Submission, but also on the participation and will of the patient. Informal system of rewards, confession-techniques as well as various forms of a conditionalised and regulated freedom is combined with a more concealed potential of coercion of the institution. The compulsory work is being analysed as the most important educational therapy - both socially and ethically. Work is being described as a liberal Controlling technique. By connecting work to the system of rewards as well as increased physical freedom enables the hospital to exercise control and predictability without resorting to coercion.How the hospital looked upon and handled the sexual body, and how cultural conceptions regarding sexual normality dominated the practical care-taking is being analysed with the starting point in case sheets. The sexual behaviour, especially concerning women, resulted in a meeting of different opinions between restraining and testing practitioners where moral reliability was a condition for physical freedom.The thesis describes a movement over time towards increased physical freedoms for the patients of the mental hospitals. This did not imply that the control or the normalization decreased in intensity. But rather that the forms and the conditions for these processes changed. The freedom that was placed in sight was always connected with the well behaviour of the patient.


Recent studies have shown that Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) are relatively easy to attack through the generation of so called adversarial examples. Such vulnerability also affects CNN-based image forensic tools. Research in deep learning has shown that adversarial examples exhibit a certain degree of transferability, i.e., they maintain part of their effectiveness even against CNN models other than the one targeted by the attack. This is a very strong property undermining the usability of CNN's in security-oriented applications. In this paper, we investigate if attack transferability also holds in image forensics applications. With specific reference to the case of manipulation detection, we analyse the results of several experiments considering different sources of mismatch between the CNN used to build the adversarial examples and the one adopted by the forensic analyst. The analysis ranges from cases in which the mismatch involves only the training dataset, to cases in which the attacker and the forensic analyst adopt different architectures. The results of our experiments show that, in the majority of the cases, the attacks are not transferable, thus easing the design of proper countermeasures at least when the attacker does not have a perfect knowledge of the target detector.


Implantable polymeric medical devices suffer from a lack of visibility under current clinical imaging techniques. To circumvent this problem, poly(e-caprolactone-co-α-triiodobenzoate-e-caprolactone)s (PCL-TIB) containing from 3.5% to 24% of triiodobenzoate-e-caprolactone units were synthesized as new X-ray macromolecular contrast agents. Physico-chemical and thermal properties of PCL-TIBs were evaluated by 1H NMR, SEC, DSC and TGA. Their potential as radio-opacifying additive for medical devices was evaluated by preparing polymeric blends of PCL-TIB with various (co)polyesters. At first, in vitro X-ray visibility of PCL/PCL-TIB blends was evaluated. A more in depth characterization was then carried out based on PCL/PLA50-PEG-PLA50 blends. The impact of PCL-TIB content on the mechanical properties of blends was evaluated by tensile tests. Stability of X-ray visibility was evaluated by ex vivo implantation of non-degraded blends and of blends degraded for 6 weeks in vitro. Finally, cytocompatibility was assessed by evaluating the proliferation of L929 fibroblasts on the blends.


Induction of supramolecular chirality from achiral compounds has been exploited in small molecules, oligomers and polymer systems. However, the relationship between the structure of building blocks and induction of supramolecular chirality is often poorly understood. Herein, we designed and synthesized a series of azobenzene (Azo) side-chain polymers with different spacer lengths (n is the number of methylene units in the spacer, n = 0, 2, 4, 6, 11) and push–pull electronic substituents (R is the terminal group of the Azo unit, R = OCH3, CH3, CN, N(CH3)2, H) by reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer polymerization. The structure of achiral side-chain Azo polymers with different push–pull groups and spacer lengths had strong effects on supramolecular chirality induced by chiral limonene. No apparent chiral amplification phenomena were observed for all Azo polymer systems. These aggregates of several Azo polymers in dichloroethane/limonene mixed solvent were characterized by circular dichroism (CD) and UV-vis spectroscopy, demonstrating the successful chirality transfer from limonene molecules to PM4Az, PM6Az, PM11Az, PM6CN and PM6N. However, when spacer lengths were shorter (PM0Az and PM2Az), the supramolecular chirality arising from well-assembled achiral side-chain Azo units was not observed and the polymer aggregates had no CD signal. Meanwhile, the CD signal was absent for Azo polymers containing CH3 or H terminal groups. The polymers with longer spacer lengths (PM11Az) showed better reversibility of the chiral–achiral switch by trans–cis photoisomerization and cis–trans thermal-isomerization processes compared to PM4Az, PM6Az and PM6CN. Intriguingly, the chiral aggregate of PM6N showed good stability of supramolecular chirality under 405 nm light exposure over 40 min. These findings will not only provide significant insight into the structure–property relationship for inducing supramolecular chirality from achiral polymers, but also give cues for design of stabilized chiroptical materials.


The COVID-19 pandemic has brought several challenges to businesses and societies. In response, many corporations have supported local communities and authorities in the management of the pandemic. Although these initiatives, which can be considered forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), were highly coupled with explicit CSR communication campaigns, little is known about whether these campaigns were effective. Previous research indicates that culture can shape people's perceptions of CSR initiatives and communications, suggesting that businesses pay attention to careful consideration of cultural norms for effective CSR communication. However, the COVID-19 pandemic as a new CSR setting may challenge earlier findings. This study empirically investigates whether three cultural factors (individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance) affect public perceptions measured as recall of and favorability towards corporate COVID-19 response initiatives across six countries. Findings from a representative survey of adults across these countries show that respondents in individualistic and collectivistic countries recall these CSR communication campaigns about these corporate COVID-19 response initiatives quite differently, and these are related to differences in power distance and uncertainty avoidance. However, no difference was found in overall corporate favorability, indicating that cultural factors did not affect levels of favorability towards such initiatives. This, we argue, can be explained by the global dimension of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is the context of these CSR initiatives. This study contributes to CSR communication literature with empirical findings from a global pandemic setting. It offers businesses and managers empirical grounds to understand the communicative impact of COVID-19 response initiatives, which can inform future CSR actions.


We consider an optimization problem for deterministic flow shop systems of traditional machines with service costs penalizing small service times. A regular completion-time cost is also included so as to complete jobs as early as possible. The service times are assumed to be initially controllable, i.e., they are set at the startup time. Assuming convexity of the cost functions, we formulate a convex optimization problem after linearization of the max constraints. The numeric solution of this problem demands a large memory limiting the solvable system sizes. In order to relieve the memory bottleneck, some waiting characteristics of jobs served in fixed-service-time flow shop systems are exploited to result in a simpler equivalent convex optimization problem. These characteristics and the benefit of CNC machines are demonstrated in a numerical example. We also show that the simplifications result in significant improvements in solvable system sizes and solution times.


We have investigated the effect of TRH on the release of GH in 20 acromegalic patients (14 females and 6 males) before and after selective removal of a pituitary tumour via transsphenoidal route. The follow-up period was 8 years. Pre-operatively the paradoxical response was present in 15 patients (75%). Mean GH values in TRH responders were significantly lower than in non-responders. According to the size and expansion diffusion of the adenoma, the patients were divided into 3 classes. The percentage of paradoxical response in patients in class III was significantly lower than in the other two classes. Postoperatively, mean GH values in pre-operative TRH responders were significantly lower than in non-responders; among 15 responders, 13 (86%) had postoperative GH levels under 5 micrograms/l; among 5 non-responders only 2 (40%) had GH values under 5 micrograms/l. Postoperatively 8 patients still had GH responsiveness to TRH: 6 with GH levels persistently (follow-up 8 years) under 5 micrograms/l and 2 with elevated GH values. The other 7 patients, who were responders pre-operatively and non-responders postoperatively, persistently exhibited low GH levels, except one subject who showed an increase in GH levels with reappearance of the paradoxical response, two years after surgery. These results suggest: 1. the paradoxical response may be expressed only when the hypothalamus-pituitary interactions are intact; 2. the disappearance of the paradoxical response cannot surely suggest a remission, and 3. the presence of a pre-operative paradoxical response is a good prognostic feature.


This paper describes a system for estimating load curves at low-voltage (LV) substations. The system is built by the aggregation of individual fuzzy inference systems of the Takagi-Sugeno type. The model was developed from actual measurements forming a base of raw data of consumer behavior. This database allowed one to build large test and training sets of simulated LV substations, which led to the development of the fuzzy system. The results are compared in terms of accuracy with the ones obtained with a previous artificial neural network approach, with better performance.


A sequence of real numbers is said to be positive if all terms are positive, and ultimately positive if all but finitely many terms are positive. In this article we survey recent progress on long-standing open problems concerning deciding the positivity and ultimate positivity of integer linear recurrence sequences. We briefly discuss some of the many contexts in which these problems arise, and relate them to the well-known Skolem Problem, which asks whether a given linear recurrence sequence has a zero term. We also highlight some of the mathematical techniques that have been used to obtain decision procedures for these problems, pointing out obstacles to further progress.
 In the second half of this survey we move on to closely related questions concerning the termination of linear while loops. This is a well-studied subject in software verification and by now there is rich toolkit of techniques to prove termination in practice. However the decidability of termination for some of the most basic types of loop remains open. Here again we discuss recent progress and remaining open problems.


New radiation detectors are being developed which are based upon transition metal oxide (TMO) semiconductive diodes. Transition metals are characterized by having a range of oxide states. Feasibility tests have identified that certain TMOs exhibit p-type semiconductor properties and others n-type, which when connected as a junction exhibit diode behavior. The TMOs are deposited on to a substrate via a flame spray process. The inert nature of the TMOs means that a wide variety of materials can provide a suitable substrate. Standard ceramic tiles and glass have routinely been used to date. Transition metal powders, of either p- or n-type, are injected into the flame by a controlled process and deposited in layers. The heat of the flame causes the transition metals to oxidize. The advantages of these detectors are that they can be deposited in very large areas on any shape substrate at a much lower cost than alternative semiconductor detectors. Although still in the development stage, these prototype detectors have demonstrated a useful response to x-ray in the keV and MeV range and protons. Recently preliminary tests were performed at UV wavelengths at the BaD ElPh beamline at Elettra. Results showed a linear response to UV flux across the 5 to 40 eV range, and excellent correlation with a silicon diode.


In general, the susceptibility of envelope mutants of Escherichia coli to beta-lactam compounds correlates well with the permeability of these antibiotics through the outer membrane. However, several mutants were isolated which, although apparently freely permeable to penicillins, showed only marginal increases in susceptibility to these agents.


Evaluating the severity of pipe wall distortions is a crucial step towards safeguarding the structural integrity of aging hydrocarbon pipeline infrastructure. The present research refers to the remaining life of oil and gas transmission steel pipelines with local wall distortions (i.e. dents and buckles) under repeated loading. The research described in this paper constitutes the first part of a large numerical/experimental research project, aimed at developing methodologies and relevant design guidelines towards assessing and repairing structural pipeline damages in the form of local wall distortions. The paper describes numerical research aimed at investigating the residual structural integrity of smooth dented and buckled steel pipes, with respect to repeated loading that causes fatigue, with the purpose of designing large-scale experiments. Finite element models are developed to simulate the formation of dents and buckles on the pipe wall at various sizes (depths). The deformed steel pipes are further subjected to cyclic pressure or cyclic bending loading in order to estimate the remaining fatigue life of the deformed pipe. The local stress and strain variations due to cyclic loading application are calculated numerically at the deformed area of the pipe wall. In addition, the local strain variations are expressed in terms of strain concentration factors (SNCF) at the critical region of the pipe.


Vulnerabilities in Web based applications will always be present. Several measures were taken to extenuate the effects of this reality but with limited success. In fact, we are bombarded by new technologies to harden systems and monitor and respond to threats, like firewalls, IDS (intrusion detection system) and IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). However, the flow of attacks and threats is so important to the point that the configuration and reconfiguration of these tools becomes difficult to insure in time. In this paper we introduce "a framework for dynamic security Policy for Web services" called SmartWSSec. The main goal of our architecture is to guarantee better security for web services based on adaptive security models. It aims to identify the appropriate actions that must be taken when a zero day attack occurred resulting on a smart protection for web service in a self-adaptive manner. The proposed architecture uses a knowledge based mechanism to learn and adjust the system when new notknown before attack appears. The proposed architecture also includes an isolation faculty to protect the system when selfadaptation fails, which will notify and involve a system administrator. We have included on this paper also the design, the components, models and concepts of adaptive security architecture, and finally gives insights on a possible implementation by providing a POC applied to different use cases.


We consider probabilistic methods to compute the near midair collision risk using state estimate and covariance from a target tracking filter based on angle-only sensors such as digital video cameras. Existing work is only concerned with risk estimation at a certain time instant, while the focus here is to compute the integrated risk over the critical time horizon. This novel formulation leads to evaluating the probability for level-crossing. The analytic expression for this involves a multi-dimensional integral which is hardly tractable in practice. Further, a huge number of Monte Carlo simulations would be needed to get sufficient reliability for the small risks that the applications require. Instead, we propose a sound numerical approximation that leads to a one-dimensional integral which is suitable for real-time implementations.


Can favorability for public laws be manipulated merely by changing the short title of the bill or act? Based on an exploratory survey of undergraduate students from the University of Stirling, the results suggest that naming may indeed play a small but significant part of the assessment. Employing five different types of short titles, it was found that "evocative" titles attracted higher favorability ratings than the "descriptive/technical" titles. Additionally, the survey found that most participants were satisfied with a short vignette of information on the bill or law rather than further explanation, and a notable number of participants supported legislation because they liked the "sound of it." While also describing the structural context in which short titles are used and providing some political and psychological evidence that naming could be of significance to public law favorability, I ultimately advocate deliberative caution when drafting the short titles of bills and acts in order to ensure accuracy.


The present study was conducted to detect possible chemicals (phytoconstituents), and investigate antioxidant, antimicrobial and thrombolytic activities of the extract of Aphanamixispolystachyastem bark.Phytochemical screening was carried out using the standard test methods of different chemical group. For investigating the antioxidant activity, two complementary test methods namely DPPH free radical scavenging assay and total phenolic content determination were carried out. For the evaluation of in vitro antimicrobial activity, disc diffusion method, and to determine the thrombolytic activity, the method of Prasad et al., 2007 with minor modifications were used. The bark extracts were a rich source of phytochemicals. In DPPH free radical scavenging test,the Carbon tetra chloride soluble fraction showed the highest free radical scavenging activity with IC50 value 19.86µg/ml. while compared to that of the reference standards ascorbic acid .Aphanamixispolystachyawas also found as a good source of total phenolic contents.Morever, the extracts revealed broadspectrum antimicrobial activity at the concentration of 400 µg/disc. By comparing with the negative control the mean clot lysis % was significant (p value <0.0009). Therefore, further studies are suggested to determine the active compounds responsible for the biological activities of the plant extracts.


Worldwide experience indicates that projected economic returns on investments in field irrigation systems are seldom obtained by farmers, due to improper strategies on irrigation scheduling, lack of operational control, and limited feedback on the actual performance of irrigation systems, in terms of application efficiency and uniformity. An approach to dynamic integration of soil hydrodynamic characteristics, potential evapotranspiration, and crop leaf area index evolution throughout the irrigation season is detailed, oriented to integrate smart water management strategies and techniques in the operation and maintenance of farm irrigation systems. This dynamic integrative platform has been used in Perú and México by actual farming companies producing table grapes, wine grapes, avocado, and bell peppers exported to international markets; this chapter documents its practical results in terms of water and energy savings, crop yield, and fruit quality.


The cloud model is rapidly evolving, with maturing intercloud architectures and progressive integration of sparse, geodistributed resources into large datacenters. The single-provider administrative barrier is also increasingly crossed by applications, allowing new verticals to benefit from the multicloud model. For instance, in home healthcare systems, transparent usage of resources from multiple providers enables "follow-me" scenarios, where healthcare services are accessible anywhere, anytime, with quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees. However, transparency might be at odds with security and jurisdictions, imposing restrictions on where data and applications might be stored and run. Existing intercloud approaches either disrupt application deployment mechanisms or compromise infrastructure homogeneity, making enforcing a uniform QoS level more complex, notably for protection. This article introduces Orchestration for beyond Intercloud Security (Orbits), an infrastructure-as-a-service-level architecture that enables flexible and legacy intercloud application deployment for mobile remote healing, while providing a homogeneous service abstraction across multiple clouds. The authors also present a work-in-progress prototype and several benchmarks to demonstrate the viability of the approach and highlight key implementation choices.


In today's era, drug is the first and one of the bad elements that effected the society with  loss. According to the reports of WHO, two billions people are alcoholic in irrecoverable  the world. Drug users are additional to this volume of alcoholic people. The dignity of humanity is planed and maintained by prohibiting all types of drugs. Social values are things by shareeha. Thousands of getting worse and worse by ignoring the prohibited  the families are nearby the destruction, divorce ratio is badly increasing. Builders of  the According to different ahadees, use of  future of  Ummat are putting their lives to big risk day of  drugs and alcohol are the symptoms of getting near to the end of world  judgment. We can see easy access to these poisonous things around us, destructing the health and characters of our youth in the shape of liquid, capsool, tables and many more.
We tried to shortly brief about the use of all these prohibited things in the article bellow.
Key Words: Makhzora, Fator, Qabahat, Asarat, Mokalif, Asqat e Hamil, Ganga, Nekoteen, Razeel, Manshiyat, Efat, Devanapan, Aqal, Khamar, Mozerrat


Abstract Purpose: The potential of service robots for seniors is given increasing attention as the ageing population in Western countries will continue to grow as well as the demand for home care. In order to capture the experience of living with a robot at home, a multi-perspective evaluation was conducted. Methods: Older adults (n = 10) were invited to execute an actual interaction scenario with the Care-O-bot® robot in a home-like environment and were questioned about their experiences. Additionally, interviews were conducted with the elderly participants, informal carers (n = 7) and professional caregivers (n = 11). Results: Seniors showed to be more keen to accept the robot than their caregivers and relatives. However, the robot in its current form was found to be too limited and participants wished the robot could perform more complex tasks. In order to be acceptable a future robot should execute these complex tasks based on the personal preferences of the user which would require the robot to be flexible and extremely smart, comparable to the care that is delivered by a human carer. Conclusions: Developing the functional features to perform activities is not the only challenge in robot development that deserves the attention of robot developers. The development of social behaviour and skills should be addressed as well. This is possible adopting a person-centred design approach, which relies on validation activities with actual users in realistic environments, similar to those described in this paper. Implications for rehabilitation Attitude of older adults towards service robots Potential of service robotsfor older adults


ABSTRACT Buffelgrass (Pennisetum ciliare (L.) Link), a non-native perennial bunchgrass, invades ecologically intact areas of the Sonoran Desert. It competitively excludes native plants and increases fire frequency and intensity. Since the 1990s, whole buffelgrass plants have been manually uprooted and removed to control the invasion in southern Arizona. Uprooting plants results in bare, disturbed soil which promotes buffelgrass seed germination. This study examined whether leaving entire uprooted buffelgrass plants (thatch) on a field site reduces future buffelgrass establishment compared to removing uprooted plants from the site. A secondary goal was to determine whether light reduction and autoallelopathy were major factors in the negative effect of thatch on buffelgrass seedling density. Field plots with an average of 8,095 kg/ha thatch had 1.9 buffelgrass seedlings/m2 which was significantly fewer than the 2.9 seedlings/m2 in plots without thatch. Thatched portions of thatch plots (50% of their total area) had only 0.7 seedlings/m2. In the greenhouse, which reduced outdoor light intensity by 35.2%, buffelgrass seeds sown in bare soil resulted in significantly higher seedling density than beneath buffelgrass thatch. Potential autoallelopathic chemicals leached from partially decomposed buffelgrass thatch and leached thatch had an intermediate but not significant (p = 0.09) effect on seedling numbers. Results suggest that leaving uprooted buffelgrass plants has the benefit of reducing seedling establishment in the area disturbed by uprooting.


A healthy 4-year-old girl presented to the emergency department (ED) with suspected inflicted burns on the tongue. Initially, the patient had complained of a burning mouth to school staff. On direct questioning by the principal, the child said her mother had burned her tongue with a cigarette. School staff noted the lesions.


Abstract:In contemporary Japan, police and law enforcement are often reluctant to assist in family conflicts. In practice, law enforcement and the family law system offer little assistance for people struggling with family conflicts in particular, following the logic that "law does not belong in families." This article examines the informal, familial, financial, and social means people use to solve what might be called "family problems" when formal legal assistance is foreclosed. Operating as alternatives to the legal system, these strategies nevertheless are structured directly in response to the formal legal system, what it supports and allows. The article uses theorizations of legal consciousness, law's "shadows," and "order without law" to compare strategies and reactions of Japanese citizens and foreigners engaging the legal system in Japan. It argues that the written and unwritten rules surrounding Japanese family law reward those who seek solutions outside of formal channels, thereby co-constructing the legal system as unable to solve family conflicts. Linking individual strategies with outcomes, it concludes that family members who expect less assistance from the formal legal system often end up winning more.


There is growing interest in systematic establishment of marine protected area (MPA) networks and representative conservation sites. This movement toward networks of no-take zones requires that reserves are deliberately and adequately spaced for connectivity. Here, we test the network functionality of an ecoregional assessment configuration of marine conservation areas by evaluating the habitat protection and connectivity offered to wide-ranging fauna in the Gulf of California (GOC, Mexico). We first use expert opinion to identify representative species of wide-ranging fauna of the GOC. These include leopard grouper, hammerhead sharks, California brown pelicans and green sea turtles. Analyzing habitat models with both structural and functional connectivity indexes, our results indicate that the configuration includes large proportions of biologically important habitat for the four species considered (25–40%), particularly, the best quality habitats (46–57%). Our results also show that connectivity levels offered by the conservation area design for these four species may be similar to connectivity levels offered by the entire Gulf of California, thus indicating that connectivity offered by the areas may resemble natural connectivity. The selected focal species comprise different life histories among marine or marine-related vertebrates and are associated with those habitats holding the most biodiversity values (i.e. coastal habitats); our results thus suggest that the proposed configuration may function as a network for connectivity and may adequately represent the marine megafauna in the GOC, including the potential connectivity among habitat patches. This work highlights the range of approaches that can be used to quantify habitat protection and connectivity for wide-ranging marine species in marine reserve networks.


Introduction: Fundamental movement skills (FMS) are basic movement patterns that form the building blocks of physical activity (PA). The preschool years (ages 3-5) represent an important time for the development of FMS and healthy PA behaviours and the childcare setting plays an important role in this. Low levels of PA and FMS have been demonstrated for preschool children internationally, though research in Ireland has not yet focused on this age group.
Objectives: The main aim of this study was to design and evaluate an educator-led FMS and PA (through active play) intervention for preschool children in services participating in the Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) scheme. Additionally, this study aimed to investigate current levels of PA and FMS of preschool children in this setting during ECCE hours.
Methods: The pilot programme was delivered to 42 educators from 18 services. Data were collected by trained researchers from 141 children in 9 preschool services (5 intervention, 4 control) in March 2016 (pre-intervention) and June 2016 (post-intervention). Accelerometry was used to collect PA data and FMS proficiency was measured for four skills using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2) (Ulrich, 2000). All educators who received the programme and those from the control group completed the CAN-Teach questionnaire (Derscheid et al, 2014) pre-and post-intervention (n=32) to measure confidence to teach PA.
Results: At baseline, boys aged 3 were the most active with 46.9% meeting PA recommendations. Gender and age influenced PA, with boys more active than girls and younger children more active than older. Mastery or near mastery of FMS ranged from 4.9% (throw) to 88.4% (run). Post-intervention, intervention educators achieved significantly higher confidence scores than control educators. All children decreased sedentary behaviour (SB) and increased PA, with the intervention group significantly decreasing SB (-7 minutes) while the control group increased SB (+2.1 minutes) in hour two of the three-hour ECCE day. Children in the intervention group significantly increased scores in the throw compared to control group (increase of 1.3 vs 0.1).
Conclusion: Increases in educator confidence highlights the potential for increasing educator confidence to deliver PA and FMS opportunities in ECCE services through training. Although PA changes were small, significant differences in the throw show potential for the Kids Active programme over a longer time frame. Further research, including a qualitative component, is warranted to gain greater understanding of how to influence PA behaviour and FMS development in ECCE.


In this paper, a new steganography method for spatial domain has been proposed, which includes a new mapping technique for the secret messages. The algorithm coverts any kinds of message to text using bit manipulation tables, applies hill cipher techniques to it and finally hides the message into red, green and blue images of a selected image. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is a combination of encryption of the message first then hiding the message into the cover image which provides double security. The result of the proposed algorithm is analyzed and discussed using MSE, PSNR, SC, AD, MD and NAE. The histogram of the cover and stegano image is also shown.


Background: Basic infection control measures in any healthcare setup can reduce the rates of healthcare-associated infections. A study to assess the knowledge and practice of 400 healthcare personnel regarding hospital infection control practices was performed. Materials and Methods: A structured questionnaire was distributed to the study group and collected the same day. Knowledge and practices of 329 nurses and 71 doctors regarding hand hygiene, SPs, hospital environmental cleaning and needle stick injury were collected and analyzed. Results: The study group had suboptimal knowledge regarding the SPs (55.3%) and risks associated with NSI (31.8%). The implementation of SPs was biased towards the HIV positive status of the patient. Only 57% of the doctors and nurses followed the maximal barrier precautions before a CVC insertion. Discussion: The lack of knowledge and practices regarding basic infection control protocols should be improved by way of educational intervention, in the form of formal training of the doctors and nurses and reinforcement of the same.


The effects of orally ingested dihomo-gamma-linolenic acid (DHLA), the natural biosynthetic precursor of prostaglandin E1 (PGE1), were assessed in human volunteers. Single doses of DHLA (0.1--2g) increased the proportion of DHLA relative to arachidonic acid in plasma and platelets and also increased the ex-vivo capacity of platelets to produce PGE1 and PGE2. More pronounced effects were observed during sustained treatment (five days to four weeks) when DHLA also accumulated in red cell membranes. These biochemical changes were accompanied by potentially antithrombotic changes in haemostatic function. The most common effect, which was consistently detected after 0.1-g single doses of DHLA or its methyl ester, was a decrease in plasma heparin-neutralising activity. Inhibition of platelet aggregation induced by adenosine diphosphate was also detected, though this was generally less pronounced. Sustained treatment in one subject also produced definite inhibition of ristocetin-induced platelet aggregation. There was only one possible adverse effect--a transient cough in a subject with a history of asthma. DHLA therefore seems to have considerable potential as an agent for preventing and treating human thromboembolic disease.


Structural health monitoring is spreading widely across engineering domains. Its added value is not restricted to observing structural behavior, but crosses over to enabling the assessment of structural integrity under varying operating conditions. Damage prognosis is one vital demand from structural health monitoring solutions. Many methods have been developed to update damage predictions based on sensor data, nonetheless the selection and positioning of sensors to alleviate the prediction errors remains a question under investigation. In this work, an optimal sensor placement method is proposed for fatigue damage prediction in structures. An optimization problem is formulated to minimize the a-posteriori damage estimation error based on a Kalman filter. The derivation of the objective function is presented, along with a discussion of algorithm-related issues. Finally, the mentioned damage prediction approach is applied to two structures to verify the adequacy of the sensor configurations proposed by the method.


We present an array of aluminum-coated fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) inscribed in high-attenuation fibers capable of measuring the liquid level in a cryogenic environment. The sensors are heated by the optical energy propagating in fiber core that is absorbed in high-attenuation fibers. Thermal responses of Bragg gratings to liquid nitrogen level at 77 K were observed. Precise control over the light absorption and heated FBG temperatures of individual level sensors using high-attenuation fibers enables multipoint liquid nitrogen level sensing using a single fiber and a single fiber feedthrough.


Introduction: Traumatic Brain injury is considered as a major health problem which causes frequent deaths and disabilities in paediatric population with special concern to tribal regions of developing countries like India where etiology of traumatic brain injury in the paediatric population fall from height dominant over the road traffic accident as a major.
Aim and objective: The aim is to analyse the epidemiology, mechanism, clinical presentation, severity and outcome of paediatric head injury in the tribal region of northern India that could help to make preventive policies to improve their care.
Material methods: It is a prospective observational study of 345 children of up to 18 years of age admitted under Department of Neurosurgery from October 2017 to April 2019.
Results: The study population comprised of 345 paediatric patients. Mean age was 9.25 years.36.81% patients were in 1-6-year age group and male to female ratio was 2.45. The most common cause for trauma was fall from height in 179(52%) cases followed by RTA in 141(41%) cases. The most common radiological finding was depressed skull fractures in 97(50%) cases. There was 35% mortality in severe head injury patients.
Conclusion: This study through some light on the different scenario of head injury in Tribal regions of Developing country and will help to formulate effective strategies for prevention and better care of the patients.


We aimed to evaluate the feasibility of transradial primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with ST elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) by comparing the procedural results and complications with those of transfemoral intervention. From April 1997 to October 2004, we enrolled 352 consecutive cases of STEMI who underwent primary PCI. The femoral route was used in 132 cases (TFI group) and the radial route was used in 220 cases (TRI group). Cases with Killips class IV, a negative Allen test or a non-palpable radial artery were excluded from our study. Baseline clinical and angiographic profiles were comparable in both groups. Vascular access time was 3.8 ± 3.5 min in the TFI group and 3.6 ± 3.1 min in the TRI group, and cath room to reperfusion time was 25 ± 11 min in the TRI group and 26 ± 13 min in the TRI group. The procedural success rate was 89% in the TFI group and 88% in the TRI group. Crossover occurred in 9 cases (4%) due to approaching vessel tortuosity in the TRI group. Major access site complications occurred in 7 cases (5%) in the TFI group, and there were no complications in the TRI group (p < 0.001). Although radial occlusion occurred in 5 cases of the TRI group, there was no evidence of hand ischemia. The total hospital stay was significantly shorter in TRI group than in TFI group. In conclusion, use of the radial artery might be a potential vascular access route in performing primary PCI in selected cases.


Natural disasters have negative health impacts on patients who need dialysis in affected areas. Severely affected areas are usually rural, with limited basic infrastructure and a population without optimal dialysis-specific care after a disaster. A population-based longitudinal case–cohort study enrolled 715,244 adults from the National Health Insurance Registry who lived in areas affected by a major natural disaster, Typhoon Morakot, in 2009. The observation period was from 2008 to 2011. A total of 13,268 patients (1.85%) had a history of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Of the ESRD patients, 1264 patients (9.5%) received regular dialysis. Only eight patients missed dialysis sessions in the first month after the disaster. Compared to the moderately affected areas, the incidences of acute cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases were higher in patients in severely affected areas. Male dialysis patients aged 45–75 years had a higher mortality rate than that of the general population. Among the affected adults receiving regular dialysis, patients with diabetes (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR): 1.58, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.20–2.08) or a history of cerebrovascular disease (aHR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.12–2.21), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma (aHR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.24–3.17) in moderately affected areas had significantly elevated mortality rates. Additionally, among dialysis patients living in severely affected areas, those with a history of cerebrovascular disease (aHR: 4.52 95% CI: 2.28–8.79) had an elevated mortality rate. Early evacuation plans and high-quality, accessible care for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases are essential to support affected populations before and after disasters to improve dialysis patients' health outcomes.


As the number of advanced driver assistance systems in modern cars increases the question of possible negative behavioral adaptation is raised. We have investigated this phenomenon for night vision systems in a driving simulator. One common opinion is that there is a risk for using the enhanced visual conditions that come with these systems to increase speed during nighttime driving and thereby eliminate the safety margins the system was designed to provide. In our study two system approaches were compared, one with continuous presentation and one with presentation only when dangerous objects were detected by the system. The latter approach was meant to minimize the risk of negative adaptation, which was partly confirmed in the study. Moreover, the results showed better and more consistent driver performance with the situation-dependent system and all subjects preferred this approach from a workload perspective.


Background The Department of Pharmacy of the University Hospital of Ferrara (AOUFE) activated a project called 'Monitoring and use of the Reference Centre for antidote stocks'. The project followed the correct allocation of available antidotes to the Reference Centre of the Emilia Romagna Region (ERR). Purpose Epidemiological analysis to identify different types of intoxication and check that they have been treated successfully. Materials and methods All 17 Hospitals of the ERR were asked to provide information about episodes of intoxication recorded from 1/1/2005 to 31/12/2009 as well as the antidote treatments administered. Required data were: year, type of intoxication and toxic substance, patient demographic data, type of antidote used and treatment period. Results 16 hospitals took part in the analysis. 8151 intoxications were recorded and they are grouped as follows: 1704 intoxications in 2005 (21% of the 5-year total); 1523 in 2006 (19%); 1593 in 2007 (20%); 1560 in 2008 (19%); 1771 in 2009 (21%). Categorisation by toxic substance showed the following: 31% caused by drugs; 17% caused by ethanol; 4% by opioids; 3% by carbon monoxide; 3% by food; 1% by sodium hypochlorite and derivatives; 36% by non-classifiable intoxications; 5% by various intoxications. The authors only evaluated complete intoxication data (1223 cases) and The authors had calculated in 80% of these cases the following antidotes were used: 19% (232/1223) activated charcoal associated with gastric lavage; 11% (132/1223) activated charcoal; 9% (109/1223) activated charcoal associated with MgSO4; 12% (144/1223) flumazenil; 6% (76/1223) hyperbaric oxygen; 12% (151/1223) naloxone; 7% (80/1223) metadoxine; 4% (53/1223) benzodiazepines. Conclusions Drug and ethanol poisonings were the most frequent; non-specific treatments were the most frequently performed, followed by the use of specific antidotes such as flumazenil and naloxone. Epidemiological analysis shows that the frequency of intoxications in ERR is 3.82 per 10000 inhabitants/year.


This survey guides the reader through the open literature on the principle of initial synchronisation in single-antenna-assisted single- and multi-carrier Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) as well as Direct Sequence-Ultra WideBand (DS-UWB) systems, with special emphasis on the DownLink (DL). There is a paucity of up-to-date surveys and review articles on initial synchronization solutions for MIMO-aided and cooperative systems - even though there is a plethora of papers on both MIMOs and on cooperative systems, which assume perfect synchronization. Hence this paper aims to fill the related gap in the literature.


Carbon nanotubes are a kind of new carbon-based nanomaterials, which have drawn great attention in many application fields including the biomarker analysis in biomedical and clinical research. In the present study, the feasibility of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) as solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbent for the determination of amino acid neurotransmitters (AANs) (glutamic, dopamine and γ-amino-n-butyric acid) in human cerebrospinal fluids (CSFs) was investigated. Various parameters affecting SPE efficiency including the eluent and its volume, adsorbent amount and sample volume were systematically studied. The acquired calibration curves were linear (r2 > 0.999) over the concentration range 10 to 500 ng per injection. By using SWCNTs as the SPE adsorbent, the detection limit of 12.9-42.5 fmol (at S/N of 3) were achieved with the preconcentration efficiency of more than 500-folds. The feasibility of the proposed method was validated by successfully applied to the measurements of ANNs in human CSFs sampled from healthy subjects and the patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, malignant melanoma and hypertension. This original application represents a powerful tool to study the kinetics of ANNs release by neuronal cells during neurotransmission, as well as for the understanding of the pathobiological and therapeutic basis of these remarkable molecular for diverse diseases.


Enterprise users at different geographic locations generate large-volume data and store their data at different geographic datacenters. These users may also issue ad hoc queries of big data analytics on the stored data to identify valuable information in order to help them make strategic decisions. However, it is well known that querying such large-volume big data usually is time-consuming and costly. Sometimes, users are only interested in timely approximate rather than exact query results. When this approximation is the case, applications must sacrifice either timeliness or accuracy by allowing either the latency of delivering more accurate results or the accuracy error of delivered results based on the samples of the data, rather than the entire set of data itself. In this paper, we study the QoS-aware data replications and placements for approximate query evaluation of big data analytics in a distributed cloud, where the original (source) data of a query is distributed at different geo-distributed datacenters. We focus on placing the samples of the source data with certain error bounds at some strategic datacenters to meet users' stringent query response time. We propose an efficient algorithm for evaluating a set of big data analytic queries with the aim to minimize the evaluation cost of the queries while meeting their response time requirements. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm through experimental simulations. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is promising.


What is the law of contract in Myanmar/Burma and how far does it differ from modern English contract law? These are difficult and intriguing questions. Any assumption that the general law of contract in Myanmar can simply be found and understood by reading the Myanmar Contract Act 1872 must be dispelled. The burning question is, what is Myanmar contract law where the 1872 Act does not apply or is out of date and there is no other statute in play? How far do underpinning principles of 'justice, equity and good conscience' (Burmese Law Acts 1898, s 13(3)) assist? Certainly an answer is urgently needed if those seeking to enter into contracts in Myanmar are to feel confident that the domestic contract law of Myanmar is fit for purpose.


The snowcover energy balance is typically dominated by net radiation and sensible and latent heat fluxes. Validation of the two latter components is rare and often difficult to undertake at complex mountain sites. Latent heat flux, the focus of this paper, is the primary coupling mechanism between the snow surface and the atmosphere. It accounts for the critical exchange of mass (sublimation or condensation), along with the associated snowcover energy loss or gain. Measured and modelled latent heat fluxes at a wind‐exposed and wind‐sheltered site were compared to evaluate variability in model parameters. A well‐tested and well‐validated snowcover energy balance model, Snobal, was selected for this comparison because of previously successful applications of the model at these sites and because of the adjustability of the parameters specific to latent heat transfer within the model. Simulated latent heat flux and snow water equivalent (SWE) were not sensitive to different formulations of the stability profile functions associated with heat transfer calculations. The model parameters of snow surface roughness length and active snow layer thickness were used to improve latent heat flux simulations while retaining accuracy in the simulation of the SWE at an exposed and sheltered study site. Optimal parameters for simulated latent heat flux and SWE were found at the exposed site with a shorter roughness length and thicker active layer, and at the sheltered site with a longer roughness length and thinner active layer. These findings were linked to physical characteristics of the study sites and will allow for adoption into other snow models that use similar parameters. Physical characteristics of wind exposure and cover could also be used to distribute critical parameters in a spatially distributed modelling domain and aid in parameter selection for application to other watersheds where detailed information is not available. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The paper tries to improve our understanding on the role of institutions in development by critically examining the current orthodox discourse on institutions and highlighting some of its key problems. After discussing some definitional problems, the chapter examines a number of problems in the orthodox literature arising from the widespread failure to distinguish between the forms and the functions of institution. Then it critically examines the excessive emphasis on property rights in the orthodox literature. Finally, it discusses a number of problems that arise from the simplistic view on institutional change that underlies the orthodox view on institutional persistence.


6 cases of Behçet's disease are reported. Diagnosis was particularly arduous because the typical triad of symptoms (oral aphthae, genital ulcers, uveitis) was masked by secondary disturbances in other organs and systems. Immunology confirmed the presence in these patients of changes in various in vivo and in vitro tests and particularly interesting was the aspecific cutaneous hypersensitivity seen in 5 cases and enhanced lymphocyte blastic transformation. This was seen spontaneously and following PHA. On the basis of the outcome of the studies carried out and the literature data, the possibility that Behçet's disease may contain immunological changes and changes in the mechanisms that regulate quinine, complement and clotting activation is suggested. Therapeutically, confirmation was obtained of the effectiveness, at least temporarily, of corticosteroid treatment and antilymphocyte globulin was experimented for the first time in these patients. This might be used to replace the immune depressant antiblastic substances already successfully employed in patients with Behçet's disease.


The expectations for teacher education graduates having appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities to meet the challenges of learning and teaching in the 21st century are widely accepted. However, it should not be assumed that tomorrow's teachers will enter their profession with those ICT capabilities. The conceptual framework of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) (Mishra & Koehler, 2006, AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology, 2008) was used to guide the study undertaken in 2009 of final year students in two Universities in Queensland, Australia. The findings are compared with those reported in an earlier study (Watson et al., 2004) which found that there was a limited band of applications with which the participants expressed high levels of competence. Importantly, high percentages of participants perceived themselves to have no competence with applications such as multimedia development, visual thinking software and digital video editing which could be particularly stimulating for learning outcomes in their future students. Furthermore, participants' self-perception of their confidence to integrate ICT into student learning also revealed that the percentage of participants who rated themselves as having no or limited confidence with particular integration examples was of concern. This paper provides a summary of some of the findings of the TPACK capabilities of the student teachers studied in 2009, which reveal important insights to inform the review and design of teacher education programs to more directly address TPACK capabilities. The study suggests that teacher education programs tend to have been designed using Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) (Shulman, 1986, 1987) where students undertake studies in a range of curriculum (content, disciplinary) courses, pedagogy courses, and professional studies (practicum, Internship) courses, and this is now insufficient as TPACK capabilities are needed.


In the present paper, we have made a taxonomic revision of the previously monotypic genus Troglostygnopsis Silhavý, 1974. Based on the revision of diverse material, the genus is rediagnosed and the type species, Troglostygnopsis anophthalma Silhavý, 1974 is redescribed. The new species Troglostygnopsis kalebi sp. nov. is described from specimens collected in a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, and this species is compared with T. anophthalma. A final discussion on some troglobitic genera of Stygnopsidae is addressed.


Forward Error Correction (FEC) schemes are an essential component of wireless communication systems. Convolutional codes are employed to implement FEC but the complexity of corresponding decoders increases exponentially according to the constraint length. Present wireless standards such as Third generation (3G) systems, GSM, 802.11A, 802.16 utilize some configuration of convolutional coding. Convolutional encoding with Viterbi decoding is a powerful method for forward error correction. The Viterbi algorithm, which is the most extensively employed decoding algorithm for convolutional codes. The main aim of this project is to design FPGA based viterbi algorithm which encrypts / decrypts the data . In this project the encryption / decryption algorithm is designed and programmed in to the FPGA.


Uncertainty is ubiquitous in games, both in the agents playing games and often in the games themselves. Working with uncertainty is therefore an important component of successful deep reinforcement learning agents. While there has been substantial effort and progress in understanding and working with uncertainty for supervised learning, the body of literature for uncertainty aware deep reinforcement learning is less developed. While many of the same problems regarding uncertainty in neural networks for supervised learning remain for reinforcement learning, there are additional sources of uncertainty due to the nature of an interactable environment. In this work, we provide an overview motivating and presenting existing techniques in uncertainty aware deep reinforcement learning. These works show empirical benefits on a variety of reinforcement learning tasks. This work serves to help to centralize the disparate results and promote future research in this area.


We introduce Zaturi, a system enabling parents to create an audio book for their babies by utilizing micro spare time at work. We define micro spare time at work as tiny fragments of time with low cognitive loads that frequently occur at work, such as waiting for an elevator. We show that putting together micro spare time at work helps a working parent (1) build a tangible symbol conveying his/her thoughts to the beloved baby and (2) develop his/her own feelings of parental achievement without compromising regular working hours. Zaturi lets the parent immediately be aware of micro spare time and provides a crafted interface to seamlessly record the book piece by piece, so that the baby can enjoy listening to the book recorded in the parent's own voice. Through an extensive design process, we characterize the notion of micro spare time and build a working prototype of Zaturi. We also report parents' perceptions and family reactions after a two-week deployment.


We present a new algorithm for the display of RNA secondary structure. The principle of the algorithm is entirely different from those currently in use in that our algorithm is 'object oriented' while current algorithms are 'procedural'. The circular RNA molecule of chrysanthemum stunt viroid was used as input data for demonstrating the operation of the program. The major interest of this method will be found in its potential use in simulation graphics of RNA folding processes.


The purpose of this study was to determine to what extent the cat parastriate cortex processes afferent geniculate activity in a way similar to that in area 17. The area explored was located on the lateral gyrus between the Horsley-Clarke coordinates A1 to 4 and L3 to 4. The receptive-field properties of area 18 cells and their responses to electrical stimulation of afferent and efferent pathways were measured with the same methods as described previously in area 17. Mutual correlations among these items were calculated and compared with the respective data from area 17. The results of this correlative analysis revealed numerous similarities between the two areas with regard to their afferent and efferent connections and their intrinsic organization. Consequently, the structure of the receptive fields and their numerical distribution resembled those in area 17. The same was true for the correlations between receptive-field parameters and afferent and efferent connectivity. The main differences were that area 18 cells had larger receptive fields and responded to considerably higher stimulus velocities. It is suggest-d that these differences are caused by the fact that area 18 receives subcortical afferents of the Y-type, whereas the dominant input to area 17 comes from the X-system. It is concluded that the area investigated in this study is organized in parallel to area 17 and deals with other aspects of visual information than area 17.


Deployment on different platforms has been a great issue for mobile companies that aim to maximize the return on investments by making their mobile applications available on different mobile platforms. Consequently, the app may be developed several times to match different platforms. Therefore, there is a need to have solutions that enable the developers to develop the app once, and run it everywhere to reduce the cost of development and reach out to maximum users across several platforms. In this paper a tool is provided with the most popular languages /frameworks (native, cross platform) based on their market share to select the desired framework among them to code with, get the developed application written in the target language that meets their business requirements, and give the ability to convert native application to cross platform one. A trans-compiler based solution is introduced to convert the UI and UI-related backend code of application from a set of languages to any other language in the set and ability of adding more languages and frameworks in the future to achieve the concept of generalization of code conversion.


OBJECTIVE To report thrombocytopenia in a patient prescribed thalidomide for multiple myeloma (MM). CASE SUMMARY A 70-year-old woman was diagnosed in 2003 with MM. At diagnosis, melphalan 0.25 mg/kg/day and prednisolone 2 mg/kg/day were started; however, the patient became refractory to therapy. Melphalan and prednisolone were discontinued, and monotherapy with dexamethasone 40 mg for 12 days per month was started. The patient's hematologic condition deteriorated again after about one year; dexamethasone was discontinued, and treatment with oral thalidomide 200 mg/day was initiated. About 2 weeks after thalidomide administration, the woman developed disabling adverse effects (flu-like symptoms, swollen fingers, rash and hematoma on her legs, shortness of breath, dry mouth, multiple petechiae). Laboratory testing showed neutropenia (neutrophils 0.4 × 109/L) and thrombocytopenia (platelets 58 × 109/L). Thalidomide was promptly discontinued; within 3 weeks, the laboratory values returned to pretreatment levels (1.3 × 109/L and 267 × 109/L, respectively) and her symptoms disappeared. DISCUSSION Thrombocytopenia is a rarely reported hematologic adverse consequence of thalidomide therapy. A recent report identified 5 patients who developed thrombocytopenia while undergoing monotherapy with thalidomide for MM. According to the Naranjo probability scale, thalidomide was classified as the probable cause of thrombocytopenia in our patient. CONCLUSIONS Unlike other antineoplastic drugs, thalidomide is rarely reported to cause severe hematologic toxicity. We present this case to increase clinicians' awareness for the potential of thalidomide to adversely affect platelet counts, particularly because its effectiveness in MM will likely result in expansion of its clinical use.


SURGERY IS NOW being widely employed for correction of stenosis or occlusion of extracranial vessels caused by thrombosis, degenerative disease, or mechanical disorders. Although elongation and kinking of the carotid arteries from degenerative vascular disease has been reported as being an etiological agent in the development of intermittent attacks of cerebral vascular insufficiency, 1 (particularly when the head is turned), kinking caused by a congenital disturbance has not, to our knowledge, been commented upon. The neurological arteriographic operation and postoperative findings are reported for a 78-year-old man who experienced an acute episode of cerebral vascular insufficiency and was found to have kinking of the right internal carotid artery by a dense fibrous band of connective tissue and complete congenital absence of the right external carotid artery. Report of a Case A 78-year-old, white, male retired office worker was admitted to the emergency room of the Washington Hospital Center at 2:40


Practical recording channels deviate significantly from the oft-used model based on linearity and additive Gaussian noise. Among the well-known anomalies are partial erasure and transition jitter. In this paper, we first describe a precompensation technique to combat the partial erasure effect. It utilizes the unique property of the maximum transition run (MTR) code wherein all dibits are isolated. The idea is to increase the spacing between the two transitions that make up each dibit. This tends to mitigate the nonlinear amplitude reduction associated with partial erasure. Next, we consider a recording channel that is linear but subject to transition jitter. We modify the hyperplane-based detector known as 3D-110 by introducing data-dependent threshold terms. The overall complexity of the detector is small, yet this modification provides almost 2 dB of improvement relative to the original 3D-110 structure and the extended partial response maximum likelihood (EPRML) method tuned to additive Gaussian noise.


Pigeons are not aristocratic bird but its body shape, colorful feathers, ornamentation, care, mode of breeding; availability and cost seem to be aristocratic. From the very beginning of human welfare there existed a good relation between pigeon and human. At the dawn of human civilization pigeons are used as letter sending. Later on its tumbling is another great point for its peculiar life. These birds are more social, lovely and sophisticated and found most of the houses in rural and urban areas. Observed seven very nice pigeons are- western crowned pigeon, fantail, jacobin, frillback, pouter, trumpeter and swallow. Their breeding is not normal as local pigeon except fantail. Though the western crowned pigeon is wild but in captivity its breeding and maintenance is not bad. Though these pigeons are produced fewer squab but only 1-2 pair in a year is shown great economic value. Mentioned pigeons are chosen by peoples only on ornamental feathers except the enlarge crop of the pouter. Observed some pigeons are reared in aristocratic family of the famous people or for research affairs so that it can be easily considered as aristocratic ones. Jacobin pigeon was the best to queen Victoria. In America, trumpeter is one of the most popular breed to all. Moreover, emperor Akbar reared fantail and pouter pigeons with other pigeons and naturalist Charles Darwin established a pigeon farm in his yard for explain his book 'variation of plants and animals under domestication'. From the history the frillback is called Darwin pigeon. Pablo Picasso and Gypsy Rose Lee like fantail pigeon and Johnny Otis is famous for swallow pigeon collection. Out of seven breeds only crown pigeon and frillback evolved by natural selection and others from artificial selection by judicious breeding. Except fantails other six pigeons need to foster pigeons for its squab rising.


This paper examined the profitability of litchi production in Dinajpur district of Bangladesh. Both primary and secondary data were used to accomplish the study. The primary data were collected during production period of litchi from February to May, 2015 through direct interviews with litchi growers. In total 60 litchi growers were interviewed from four villages of Dinajpur district to collect the necessary information. Profitability analysis was employed for analyzing the data and testing the hypotheses of the study. The life cycle of litchi is divided into five parts; juvenile or non-bearing stage, early bearing stage, young bearing orchards, full bearing orchards and old declining orchard, respectively. Per acre production in a season of its full bearing stage was considered for this paper. The production of litchi largely depends on its age and weather during the four month of litchi production. The major findings of the present study revealed that per acre net return of litchi considering selected varieties was Tk. 171624 based on one production period (February to May) in its full bearing stages which means litchi production is a profitable enterprise.


The study had the purpose to analyze the evolution of the rural population and its living standard in the South Muntenia region in the period 2007-2016. The data were collected from the National Institute of Statistics and the fixed basis index and comparison method were used to establish the evolution of the following indicators: rural population, rural population dealing with agriculture, human resource, civil occupied population, GDP and GDP/inhabitant, average monthly income and expense per household, and poverty rate. The results showed that rural population represents 58 % of the region population, and is in a continuous decline due to the low birth rate, high mortality rate and migration. Most of the people work in agriculture. The living standard is low as GDP/capita, average income and expense per household are much lower than the average in the country. In this context, the authorities both at the national and local level should establish a corresponding strategy for the sustainable development of the South Muntenia region for improving the living standard of the local population.


Cross-linked polyethylene (XLPE) has been recognized as an outstanding insulator for high-voltage power cables due to its favorable structural integrity at high temperature, low moisture sensitivity, chemical resistance, and low rates of failure due to aging. However, the roles of by-products and amorphous regions generated during the XLPE production are not clearly known at the atomistic scale. In this study, we present an eReaxFF-based molecular dynamics simulation framework with an explicit electron description verified against density functional theory data to investigate the roles of XLPE by-products and processing variables such as density and voids on the time to dielectric breakdown (TDDB) of polyethylene (PE). Our simulation results indicate that an increase in density of PE increases the TDDB; however, adding a by-product with positive electron affinity such as acetophenone can reduce the TDDB. Furthermore, during the electrical breakdown in PE, electrons tend to migrate through voids when transferring from the anode to cathode. In comparison with neutral acetophenone, we find that the acetophenone radical anion can significantly reduce the energy barrier and the reaction energy of secondary chemical reactions.


The effect of geometric uncertainty due to statistically independent, random, normally distributed shape parameters is demonstrated in the computational design of a 3-D flexible wing, A first-order second-moment statistical approximation method is used to propagate the assumed input uncertainty through coupled Euler CFD aerodynamic / finite element structural codes for both analysis and sensitivity analysis, First-order sensitivity derivatives obtained by automatic differentiation are used in the input uncertainty propagation, These propagated uncertainties are then used to perform a robust design of a simple 3-D flexible wing at supercritical flow conditions, The effect of the random input uncertainties is shown by comparison with conventional deterministic design results, Sample results are shown for wing planform, airfoil section, and structural sizing variables,


29 cases of primary total hip arthroplasty (THA) using interface bioactive bone cement technique (IBBC) combined with third generation cementing technique were evaluated clinically and radiologically. The present study includes 2 men 2 cases and 24 women 27 cases with an average age at operation of 63 years old (ranging 42 to 81). Mean postoperative follow up period was 17.3 months (ranging 12 to 23 months). Pre- and postoperative (1 year) evaluation using Japan Orthopaedic Association (JOA) hip score were 36.0, and 85.0 points, respectively. Postoperative cementing grade using Barrack's classification was A in every case. At one year, radiolucent line at bone-cement interface was not observed, except one case of rheumatoid arthritis patient at zone 3 (Delee and Charnley) in the acetabular side. Neither osteolysis nor loosening was observed in every case. No major complications, such as infection, dislocation, pulmonary embolization, were observed. The present study revealed excellent short-term result was obtained by IBBC technique combined with third generation cementing technique for primary THAs.


The basic divisions of the family Micropterigidae are discussed. Hypomartyria micropteroides n.gen., n.sp. from Osorno province, Chile, and Squamicornia aequatoriella n.gen., n.sp. from Napo province, Ecuador, are described; they are the first genuine micropterigids recorded from South America. The new taxa are assigned to the Sabatinca-group of genera, and their cladistic relations within the group are tentatively assessed. Hypomartyria appears to be derived from an ancestor closely similar to that of the entire group. Squamicornia exhibits some possible synapomorphies with Old World southern hemisphere taxa. There is no evidence that the two South American genera are each other's closest relatives.


The power of investigation refers to the country's investigation organ and investigators in order to achieve the purpose of the investigation: in accordance with legal procedures, using special investigative means to carry out the investigation activities of power. As the youngest police classification in China, Chinese air marshal is the important member that first faces the hijacking suspects, and the effective implementation of its investigation right is crucial on how to identify, investigate and prevent the hijacking behavior. This paper, using empirical analysis, comparative analysis and other research methods, aims to analyze and discuss how to overcome the defects of current Chinese air marshal's investigation power existing in the hijacking in criminal cases, in order to obtain the earliest direct investigation clue, find the suspect, define the direction and determine the specific target of investigation, and then puts forward the conception and suggestion of some reform.


Emotions are widely thought to involve coordinated responses across multiple responses (e.g., experiential, behavioral, and physiological). However, empirical support for this general "response coherence" postulate is inconsistent. The present research takes a dual-process perspective, suggesting that response coherence might be conditional upon response system (i.e., automatic versus reflective). In particular,


Abstract Human Papillomavirus (HPV) associated with oropharyngeal and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC and OSCC) is escalating over the years. Hence, the present review aims to determine the prevalence of HPV-OSCC and HPV-OPSCC in Asian countries over the last decades. An electronic search was conducted using nine online databases to identify English-language articles on the prevalence of HPV-OPSCC and HPV-OSCC in Asian countries from January 2011 to June 2022. The risk of bias was assessed using the JBI critical appraisal checklist and the level of evidence was determined based on the OCEBM guideline. Single-arm meta-analysis was used to estimate the weighted mean prevalence of HPV-OPSCC and HPV-OSCC among patients in Asia. Subgroup analysis meta-regression and Egger's tests were also conducted. 59 eligible studies were included with a higher prevalence of HPV-OPSCC (32.6%-37.4%) as compared to HPV-OSCC (10.9%-23.5%). Subgroup analysis revealed that the weighted mean prevalence of HPV-OPSCC was significantly higher (P<0.001) among East Asians, while the weighted mean prevalence of HPV-OSCC was significantly higher (P<0.001) among South Asians. All studies showed a low to moderate risk of bias with the level of evidence ranked between 2 and 3. The diagnostic tools utilised and geographical locations significantly affect the findings.


The option subentry affects the handling of citations referring to members of a reference set. If this option is enabled, such citations get an extra letter which identifies the member (it is also printed in the bibliography): [3b, 7a, 8, 13c, 15c]. This option is disabled by default, but it has been enabled in this example. If disabled, citations referring to a set member will point to the entire set, i.e., the above citations would come out as [1, 2, 8].


The fibrous histiocytoma is a soft tissue neoplasm that affects the dermis and the subcutaneous tissue, rarely is found in the oral cavity and perioral regions, and is originated from the proliferation of fibroblasts and histiocytes. The objective of this paper is to report a case of Benign Fibrous Histiocytoma in a 30-year-old male patient, complaining of a painless nodule in the tongue for about six months. With the clinical diagnostic hypotheses of Fibrous Hyperplasia or Traumatic Neuroma an excisional biopsy was performed. The histopathological examination revealed a non-encapsulated proliferation of spindle cells with some giant multinucleated cells in the periphery of the lesion.  Immunohistochemical reactions were performed, staining only for vimentin in the spindle cells and for CD68 in the multinucleated giant cells. According to these characteristics, the final diagnosis was Benign Fibrous Histiocytoma. The correct diagnosis of spindle shaped cell neoplasia must be performed with the aid of histopathological analysis and immunohistochemistry, mainly because the morphological similarities with other benign and malignant lesions.


In this chapter, solder joint cracks at Sn-Bi58 solder ACF joints were investigated in conventional thermal compression bonding and ultrasonic bonding. It was found that resin storage modulus is the crucial for solder joint morphology regardless of bonding pressures. At high temperature, polymer resin tends to rebound above Tg and break the molten solder morphology. We proposed two useful methods to keep off solder joints cracks during bonding process. One is to remain bonding pressure until room temperature, the other is to use fillers to increase resin thermal mechanical property. The thermal cycling reliability was significantly enhanced when solder joint morphology was modified using 10 wt% 0.2 μ m SiO 2 fillers in acrylic based Sn-Bi58 solder ACF joints.


Voltage source converter-based multi-terminal high-voltage direct current (VSC-MTDC) systems are starting to be commissioned. However, concentrated integration of large-scale wind power demands stronger robustness against power fluctuation and system disturbances to increase the reliability of the whole system. This study proposes a perturbation observer-based robust passivity-based control (PORPC) for VSC-MTDC systems connected to an offshore wind farm to meet the demands. The aggregated effect of system nonlinearities, parameter uncertainties, unmodelled dynamics and external disturbances includes grid faults and time-varying wind power output is estimated by a linear perturbation observer and fully compensated by a passive controller, thus no accurate VSC-MTDC system model is required. PORPC attempts to regulate DC voltage and reactive power at the rectifier side, as well as active power and reactive power at the inverters side connected to an offshore wind farm. Besides, a DC-link voltage droop controller is introduced so as to provide immediate response to the grid unbalance situation. Moreover, a noticeable robustness against parameter uncertainties can be achieved as no accurate system model is needed. Case studies are carried out to compare the performance of PORPC to other typical approaches. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop test is undertaken via dSPACE which validate its implementation feasibility.


Particulate matter (or aerosols) are particles suspended in the atmosphere. Aerosols are believed to be the most important pollutant associated with increased human mortality and morbidity. Therefore, it is important to investigate the relationship between sources of aerosols (such as industry) and the concentration of harmful aerosols at ground level. Furthermore, aerosols influence the climate system by scattering and absorbing solar radiation and by influencing cloud properties. The total climate effect of aerosols is poorly understood compared to the climate effect of greenhouse gases. Therefore, climate studies also benefit from a better understanding of aerosols. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the spatial distribution of aerosols over Europe with focus on the Netherlands. The aerosol life cycle and effects are calculated with numerical simulations. Performing numerical simulations of aerosols is very challenging, because, in contrast to gas molecules, each individual aerosol differs in size, composition and microphysical properties. Without simplifications, a model has to track each individual particle, which would take far too much computational time, even for modern supercomputers. The challenge is to design simplifications in such a way that the life cycle of aerosols and the effects of aerosols on human health and climate are still properly represented. Many model studies are supported by measurements. Both the measurements and the models can have different purposes. Using the correct combination of different models and observations is key for studies on aerosols. A different combination of models and observations is required to accomplish the different sub goals of this thesis. These sub goals are: Investigation of the aerosol life cycle over Europe Improvement of the understanding of gas-aerosol phase transition of ammonium nitrate and aerosol optics Improvement of representation of aerosols and their effects in models The life cycle of aerosols in Europe is investigated in chapter 3. The full life cycle of aerosols has been implemented in a global transport model. It is concluded that Europe is a net source of anthropogenic (man-made) aerosols and a net sink of natural aerosols. The most important sink of anthropogenic aerosols is removal by clouds and rain, while natural aerosols are removed predominantly by dry deposition processes. By comparing model results with observations, it is concluded that the largest uncertainties are caused by the parameterisation of wet removal processes and by missing emissions. In the Netherlands, emissions of nitrogen oxides and ammonia are high because of the high population density and intensive agriculture. After oxidation of nitrogen oxides to nitric acid, ammonium nitrate aerosols can be formed. This aerosol is special, because it can evaporate under warm and dry conditions and condense back to the aerosol phase under cold and moist conditions. Like the case of clouds, the phase equilibrium changes with altitude as the atmospheric temperature decreases with altitude. The phase of ammonium nitrate is poorly detected by many measurement instruments, because the gas-aerosol partitioning can change inside the instrument. Partly due to the scarcity of reliable measurements, the phase transition of ammonium nitrate is poorly implemented in large-scale models. Because ammonium nitrate aerosol and its phase transition is important for the aerosol budget of the Netherlands, this process has further been investigated in case studies. The goal of case studies is to gain detailed insight in the aerosol processes and, ultimately, to develop better parameterisations for large-scale models. These case-studies are performed with more detailed small-scale models. In these models, not the full aerosol life cycle is simulated but only the processes that are being investigated. A large advantage, however, is that these models have a higher resolution both in the spatial and the temporal domain. As a result, the important processes can be resolved more precisely. Chapter 4 presents a case study where the interaction between ammonium nitrate phase transition and mixing in the lower atmosphere (boundary layer) is investigated for a warm day in spring. During an intensive measurement campaign near the Cabauw tower in the Netherlands, measurements of ammonium nitrate have been performed. Importantly, the gas and the aerosol phases have been separated with a special instrument so that both concentrations are measured without errors due to phase transition inside the instrument. It is shown that the observed partitioning between gas and aerosol ammonium nitrate deviates significantly from the thermodynamic equilibrium. The hypothesised explanation for this mismatch is that aerosol-rich air from higher altitudes (where the aerosol phase is preferred due to lower temperatures) is transported to the surface, increasing the aerosol-phase fraction of ammonium nitrate at the surface. This implies that the thermodynamic equilibrium is not instantaneously restored at the surface. A simulation of ammonium nitrate partitioning in the boundary layer has been performed with a simplified column model. The match between model results and observations improved drastically when applying a delay timescale up to two hours for the gas-aerosol equilibrium. The interaction between turbulence and ammonium nitrate partitioning is further investigated in a more detailed model study (chapter 5). In this model, turbulent motions are explicitly resolved. As highlighted above, downward motions are associated with higher aerosol concentrations, because the phase equilibrium of ammonium nitrate is shifted towards the aerosol phase at higher altitudes. Therefore, turbulent motions induce a fluctuating concentration of aerosol ammonium nitrate with updrafts containing lower aerosol ammonium nitrate concentrations and subsidence motions containing enhanced aerosol ammonium nitrate concentrations. It is discussed that these fluctuations in observations may provide information about the speed of gas-aerosol partitioning, which is very difficult to measure directly. Throughout chapters 3 to 5, several ideas for model improvements have been posed. These ideas originate both from knowledge gained in the studies and from further challenges that are discovered. One such improvement for models is a computationally efficient and adequate representation of the optical properties of aerosols. Implementation of aerosol optics has been quite challenging, because the physics of aerosol optics is very complicated. Chapter 6 presents a package that allows easy implementation of aerosol optics in atmospheric models that represent aerosols. Aerosol modelling is a very challenging task and can be developed much further. In this thesis, important steps have been taken to improve knowledge about aerosols. Future research should proceed by unravelling remaining aerosol mysteries, such as those presented in the final chapter (7) of this thesis.


Cloud computing is an emerging technology for rapidly provisioning and releasing resources on-demand from a shared resource pool. When big data is analyzed/mined on the cloud platform, the efficiency of resource provisioning would affect the system performance. This work proposes a framework for proactive resource provisioning in IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) clouds to improve system performance. The proposed framework consists of the virtual cluster computing system, the profiling system, the resource management system, and the monitoring system. In this framework, the over-commit mechanism is applied to improve resource utilization. Furthermore, a proactive task scheduling approach is also present to prevent the postponement of tasks in critical stages, especially when the amount of aggregated resources requested by virtual machines exceeds that of available resources on the over-committed physical machines. Experimental results show that the over-commit approach indeed improves the resource utilization. However, when the degree of applying the over-commit approach increases, the burden of this proposed approach also conceivably increases. Therefore, the proposed framework further applies the proactive task scheduling approach to execute the time-critical tasks earlier to shorten the processing time. A small-scale cloud system including 3 servers is built for experiments. Preliminary experimental results show the performance improvement of our proposed framework in IaaS clouds.


In Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs), where LEO satellites and User Equipment (UE) move relative to each other, Line-of-Sight (LOS) tracking, and adapting to channel state variations due to endpoint movements are a major challenge. Therefore, continuous LOS estimation and channel impairment compensation are crucial for a UE to access a satellite and maintain connectivity. In this paper, we propose a Actor-Critic (AC)-Reinforcement Learning (RL) framework for traffic scheduling in NTN scenarios where the channel state is non-stationary due to the variability of LOS, which depends on the current satellite elevation. We deploy the framework as an agent in a Multi-Path Routing (MPR) scheme where the UE can access more than one satellite simultaneously to improve link reliability and throughput. We study how the agent schedules traffic on multiple satellite links by adopting the AC version of RL. The agent continuously trains based on variations in satellite elevation angles, handoffs, and relative LOS probabilities. We compare the agent retraining time with the satellite visibility intervals to investigate the effectiveness of the agent's learning rate. We carry out performance analysis considering the dense urban area of Chicago, where high-rise buildings significantly affect the LOS. The simulation results show how the learning agent selects the scheduling policy when it is connected to a pair of satellites. The results also show that the retraining time of the learning agent is up to 0.1 times the satellite visibility time at certain elevations, which guarantees efficient use of satellite visibility.


Objective:Our objective was to evaluate the safety and durability of biologic mesh for single-staged reconstruction of contaminated fields. Introduction:The presence of contamination during ventral hernia repair (VHR) poses a significant challenge. Some advocate for a multistaged reconstructive approach with delayed definitive repair, whereas others perform definitive repair at the initial operation. Methods:Patients undergoing single-staged VHR in a contaminated field with biologic mesh over a 5-year period were retrospectively reviewed from a prospectively maintained database. Outcome measures included wound complication and hernia recurrence. Results:A total of 128 patients (76 F, 52 M) were identified, with a mean age of 58.2 years, mean American Society of Anesthesiologist (ASA) score 3.1, and mean body mass index (BMI) 34.1 ± 9.7 kg/m2. Comorbidities included COPD (n = 29), diabetes (n = 65), smoking (n = 29), and immunosuppression (n = 8). Mean hernia defect size was 431 cm2 (range 40–2450 cm2). Reasons for contamination included the presence of infected mesh (n = 45), stoma (n = 24), concomitant gastrointestinal (GI) surgery (n = 17), enterocutaneous fistula (n = 25), open nonhealing wound(s) (n = 6), enterotomy/colotomy (n = 5), and chronic draining sinus (n = 6). Postoperative wound complications were identified in 61 (47.7%) patients. Predictors of wound complications included ASA score, diabetes, smoking, number of previous abdominal surgeries or hernia repairs, hernia defect size, and operative time. With a mean follow-up time of 21.7 months, hernia recurrence was identified in 40 (31.3%) patients. The majority of recurrent hernias were asymptomatic and 7 patients underwent repair. Conclusions:Despite the high rate of wound morbidity associated with single-staged reconstruction of contaminated fields, it can safely be performed with biologic mesh reinforcement. Although biologic mesh in these situations is safe, the long-term durability seems to be less favorable.


Computed tomography (CT) is the diagnostic modality of choice in the staging of abdominal malignancies. Metastatic disease in the lymph nodes is defined on CT as nodal enlargement. The presence of enlarged nodes does not preclude inflammatory involvement. There are clues that will indicate whether enlarged nodes are malignant or not (i.e., associated bony destruction). This paper will delineate normal nodal anatomy of the abdomen and pelvis. Clinical examples will be used to demonstrate normal structures simulating adenopathy and malignant adenopathy will be illustrated in lymphoma, seminoma, carcinoma of the cervix, prostate, and other pelvic malignancies.


Children with autism have a less response to stimuli that come from other people or circumstances that are around it so that children find it difficult to receive information from teachers about how to perform self-care skills compared to normal children their age. Therefore one type of learning media is needed to train the skills of children with autism in self-care. On the other hand, optimizing VR technology as a learning media about self-care for children with autism is still limited. This Human Centered Design (HCD) method is used in making User experience on VR as a learning media for children with autism. The flow of research starts from the study of literature, analysis of usage context, analysis of user needs, making solution designs, evaluating solution designs, results and conclusions. User experience Questionnaire (UEQ) was chosen as a measure and evaluation of application user experience because UEQ allows rapid assessment of a product and data analysis tools are available. The results of research conducted at SLB Negeri Semarang and SLB Putra Mandiri show the average value obtained from the evaluation of user experience applications using UEQ namely at Attractiveness of 1.41, Perspicuity of 1.80, Efficiency of 1.28, Dependability of 1 , 80, Stimulation of 1.49, Novelty of 1.39, and it can be concluded that the design according to the UEQ scale has a positive user experience because all scales above 0.8.


This paper presents an investigation of the microstructure effects of multi-phase materials on tool wear at microscale machining. A new generic method is developed to estimate the tool wear when machining multi-phase materials. The average values of cutting edge radius and tool flute profile were used to estimate the tool wear. A new experimental setup was proposed to determine these two parameters, and series of experiments on two materials with distinctive properties were conducted in order to assess the validity of the proposed method. Especially, the machining response of pearlite and ferrite were studied independently to capture differences in their cutting conditions, and thus to model the effects of each phase on the tool wear. Then, based on the experimental data two regression models were created to estimate the increase of the cutting edge radius for pearlite and ferrite steel independently. To demonstrate the applicability of the proposed generic method and at the same time to validate the models, they were used to estimate the tool wear of AISI1040 as an example of dual-phase steel. A good agreement between the estimated tool wear and the experimental results was obtained; the average error was 17.9%. This empirical study demonstrates the validity of the proposed generic method for estimating the tool wear when machining multi-phase materials.


ABSTRACT To gather information on the importance of current educational-technology innovations for students in the IBM Teacher Preparation Program (an integrated Bachelor's and Master's program) at the University of Connecticut's School of Education, a survey was sent to all students enrolled in the program in April 1993. Responses were received from 115 students, 93 of whom were female. Almost 95% had taken a course that taught them to use computers, with 80.57. of these courses at the college level. Approximately 56% reported that they often used computers. As teachers, 35.47. indicated that they seldom used a computer, while 27.4% used one often, and 22.1% never used one. Nearly 16% used computers often as an instructional tool. A majority (79.6%) used computers for word processing, but almost 577. did not use any computer applications to develop instruction. Subjects had the greatest degree of confidence in computer use for individualized instruction and the least confidence in computer use for large group instruction. Overall, it is evident that students are learning with and about computers. Nine figures present survey findings. An appendix presents the survey itself. (SLD)


For several centuries artisanal meanings dominated Anglophone discourse on skill. By the start of the twentieth century this dominance was being eroded. The records of the New South Wales Arbitration Court show that older artisanal meanings were losing the credibility that they used to have and were being contested by new understandings of skill more attuned to the commodified labour regime of industrial capitalism. Heydon's apparent oxymoron reflected his position as a mediator of these changes, trying to balance the historical stability presented by artisanal classifications, with the taxonomy that was developing to describe new and more-intensively commodified industrial realities.


Three arcs, corresponding to the bulk, interfacial, and electrode responses, are apparent in the impedance spectrum of cement paste / reinforcing steel systems. The 3-point impedance technique, without potentiostat, is capable of simultaneously and continuously monitoring these three responses over several orders of frequency (MHz-mHz). The high frequency (MHz) bulk arc provides such parameters as diffusivity and permeability of the paste, which in turn have implications for the ingress of corrosive species, such as chloride ions, known to greatly affect the corrosion rate of reinforcing steels. The double layer arc (Hz) provides insight into the nature of the near interfacial zone of the paste/ steel system, where the higher degree of porosity may affect corrosive behavior. The low frequency (mHz) electrode arc is related to the passive nature of the steel. Oxide film thickness can be inferred, as well as corrosion rates in active, passive, and pitting regimes.