Throughout the world, the tourism industry is developing at an astonishing rate and contributing to the economy. Since the past decade, it has been continuously evolving by diversifying itself. Within the tourism sector, religious tourism is considered a vital aspect where tourists are motivated due to religious aspects. Considering this aspect, Jordan must be analyzed for its business activities since religious tourism contributes significantly to the economy. Within the current research, the association amongst religious tourism and the perception of the Christian visitor towards the holy site of mount Nebo would be analyzed. The empirical research would be carried out using the likert scales which is part of the survey method. The data gathered would be helpful in extracting information regarding the association of religious tourism at the holy site of mount Nebo and the perception of Christian visitors. The dimensions used to measure the perception of the visitors are accessibility; security and safety; hospitality and local people; social life at the holy site area and; prices. According to the results, the perception of Christian visitors towards the five dimensions was significant. Within a statistical sense, these dimensions and religious tourism maintain a positive relationship.


ABSTRACT A non-linear optimal control system is developed for attenuating thermos-acoustic pressure oscillations in a combustion chamber where the unsteady flow field associated with the internal instability is modelled in terms of a finite set of assumed modes of the non-linear in-homogeneously driven pressure wave field. A distributed set of auxiliary fuel injectors are used to control the thermo-acoustic pressure field with pressure measurements at independent locations. The mathematical model of the thermo-acoustic pressure field with multiple fuel injectors is developed. The flame dynamics is also modelled and its states are included in the design of the controller. Extensive simulations are performed to reveal the features of the thermo-acoustic pressure field within the combustion chamber and qualitatively compared with published data. The controller is synthesized on the basis of a non-linear quadratic Gaussian approach as well as a non-linear H∞ controller approach. The performances of the two controllers are compared. The influence of the flame dynamics is assessed by comparing the closed-loop performance by including the lag effects of a simplified flame transfer function. In particular it is shown that the non-linear H∞ controller approach is well-suited for the control of the combustion chamber pressure field as it has the structure of comb or multiple-notch filter and can attenuate acoustic tones associated with the combustion instabilities.


The present study sets out to examine the realisation of the speech act of expressing sympathy in Persian, which, notwithstanding its significant communicative role, has not received the attention it deserves. More precisely, drawing on data collected through open role-plays and retrospective interviews, and using rapport management theory (Spencer-Oatey 2005), this study is an attempt to scrutinise Persian speakers' sympathy expressions in a situation exhibit-ing solidarity between the interlocutors. Results show that by employing 12 distinct strategies, Persian speakers respect behavioural expectations through expressing involvement, empathy and respect in the context of sympa-thising. Also, they respect and mostly enhance their own and the interlocutor's identity and respectability face. In addition, their interactional goals are strongly relational.


Abstract To characterize potential air pollution issues related to recycling facilities of waste plastics, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) emitted from melted virgin and waste plastics pellets were analyzed. In this study, laboratory experiments were performed to melt virgin and waste plastic pellets under various temperatures (150, 200, and 250 °C) and atmospheres (air and nitrogen [N2]). In the study presented here, low-density polyethylene (LDPE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS) and the recycled waste plastic pellets were used. The VOCs generated from each plastic pellets were collected by Tenax/Carboxen adsorbent tubes and analyzed by thermal desorption-gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (TD-GC/MS). The result showed the higher temperatures generated larger amounts of total VOCs (TVOCs). The VOCs emitted from the virgin plastic pellets likely originated from polymer degradation. Smaller TVOC emissions were observed in N2 atmosphere than in air atmosphere. In particular, larger amounts of the oxygenated compounds, which are generally hazardous and malodorous, were detected in air than in N2. In addition to the compounds originating from polymer degradation, the compounds originating from the plastic additives were also detected from LDPE and PS. Furthermore, various species of VOCs likely originating from contaminant inseparate polyvinyl chloride (PVC), food residues, cleaning agents, degreasers, and so on were detected from the waste plastic. Thus, melting waste plastics, as is conducted in recycling facilities, might generate larger amounts of potentially toxic compounds than producing virgin plastics.


The current study investigates whether repetitive subconcussive impacts cause changes in plasma S100β levels, and also tests the associations between S100β changes and frequency/magnitude of impacts sustained. This prospective study of 22 Division-I collegiate football players included baseline and pre-season practices (one helmet-only and four full-gear). Blood samples were obtained and assessed for S100β levels at baseline and pre- to post-practices; symptom scores were assessed at each time-point. An accelerometer-embedded mouthguard was employed to measure the number of impacts (hits), peak linear acceleration (PLA), and peak rotational acceleration (PRA). Because we observed a distinct gap in impact exposure (hits, PLA, and PRA), players were clustered into lower (n = 7) or higher (n = 15) impact groups based on the sum of impact kinematics from all five practices. S100β levels significantly changed across the study duration. Although S100β levels remained stable from baseline to all pre-practice values, statistically significant acute increases in S100β levels were observed in all post-practice measures compared with the respective pre-practice values (range: 133-246% in the overall sample). Greater number of hits, sum of PLA, and sum of PRA were significantly associated with greater acute increases in S100β levels. There were significant differences in head impact kinematics between lower and higher impact groups (hits, 6 vs. 43 [Mlower - Mhigher = 35, p < 0.001]; PLA, 99.4 vs. 1148.5 g [Mlower - Mhigher = 1049.1, p < 0.001]; PRA, 7589 vs. 68,259 rad/s2 [Mlower - Mhigher = 60,670, p < 0.001]). Players in the higher impact group showed consistently greater increases in plasma S100β levels, but not symptom scores, at each post-practice than the lower impact group. Collectively, these data suggest that although players continued to play without noticeable change in symptoms, a brain-enriched serological factor suggests an acute burden from head impacts. Assessing the effects of repetitive subconcussive head impacts on acute changes in S100β levels may be a clinically useful blood biomarker in tracking real-time acute brain damage in collegiate football players.


INTRODUCTION
Hypercalcaemia with calcinosis cutis occurring at relapse of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is rare and unusual.

CLINICAL PICTURE
A 19-year-old lady with B precursor ALL presented with extensive waxy, verrucous, tender plaques over the flexures of her arms and legs a week after relapse of leukaemia. She was found to have hypercalcaemia, hyperphosphataemia, hyperuricaemia and acute renal impairment. Skin biopsy was consistent with calcinosis cutis. There was no evidence of metastatic calcification in other organs.

TREATMENT
Hypercalcaemia was treated with aggressive hydration and intravenous pamidronate. High doses of analgesics were required for partial pain relief.

OUTCOME
Cutaneous lesions proved resistant to early calcium lowering and were a source of constant pain. She succumbed to leukaemia four months later.

CONCLUSION
Treatment of calcinosis cutis was unsatisfactory and would have been dependent on the successful treatment of the underlying leukaemia.


Grinding is one of the machining methods for finishing that is performed by using a large number of abrasive grains with irregular shapes and random distribution. While this feature enables accurate and high-quality machining, it complicates analysis of the grinding process. To solve this problem, a great number of computer simulations have been carried out using the Monte Carlo method. Most of them, however, statically calculate geometric interaction between a grain and a workpiece, and have not provided enough achievements for practical applications. In this study, taking this background into account, a simulation program has been developed based on the elastic support model of a grain in which the elasticity of grain support changes according to its location. The program focuses on the generation process of a workpiece surface, and simulates the interaction between grains and a workpiece, which includes the elastic and plastic deformation as well as the removal of workpiece material. Examples of the simulation shown in this study verify the fact that the simulation program facilitates analysis of the microscopic grinding phenomena, and can be used as a practical tool for predicting the grinding results and for optimizing grinding parameters.


We report on Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) observations of the pulsar wind nebula (PWN) associated with PSR B0355+54 (eight observations with a 395 ks total exposure, performed over an eight month period). We investigated the spatial and spectral properties of the emission coincident with the pulsar, compact nebula (CN), and extended tail. We find that the CN morphology can be interpreted in a way that suggests a small angle between the pulsar spin axis and our line of sight, as inferred from the radio data. On larger scales, emission from the ( pc) tail is clearly seen. We also found hints of two faint extensions nearly orthogonal to the direction of the pulsar's proper motion. The spectrum extracted at the pulsar position can be described with an absorbed power-law + blackbody model. The nonthermal component can be attributed to magnetospheric emission, while the thermal component can be attributed to emission from either a hot spot (e.g., a polar cap) or the entire neutron star surface. Surprisingly, the spectrum of the tail shows only a slight hint of cooling with increasing distance from the pulsar. This implies either a low magnetic field with fast flow speed, or particle reacceleration within the tail. We estimate physical properties of the PWN and compare the morphologies of the CN and the extended tail with those of other bow shock PWNe observed with long CXO exposures.


"Heil Hitler"-Pastoral bedingt: Vom Politischen Katholizismus zum Pastoralkatholizismus. By Maximilian Liebmann. (Vienna: Bohlau Verlag. 2009. Pp. 179. euro29,90. ISBN 978-3-205-78412-8.) In "Heil Hitler" Maximilian Liebmann presents what he understands to be the single motivational framework for how the Austrian Catholic Church responded to National Socialism. He is responding to historians who he believes have offered "reproachful criticism of the behavior of our bishops" under National Socialism (p. 11). Identifying the framework as "pastoral Catholicism" or the "pastoral doctrine," Iiebmann finds its origins in St. Paul's Letter to the Romans 13:1-2, which emphasizes obethence to governing authorities as a divine command. From the establishment of Austrian fascism in 1933 under Chancellor Engelbert Dollfus, Liebmann argues that the church hierarchy separated itself from the political realm and devoted its energies to promoting and safeguarding its pastoral mission to the Catholic faithful. Only in the postwar period, as the Church gradually moved to the Second Vatican Council, did its members reclaim a significant role in political life. This reclamation, however, influenced and shaped by the lived experiences under National Socialism, emphasized the ethical and moral voice of the Church in state and society. Pastoral Catholicism developed as a response to an unchecked political Catholicism that grew from the late-1860s Austrian Kulturkampf that, unlike its German counterpart, centered on a clash between traditional church-state cooperation and a growing secular-liberal influence in Austrian politics and society. To counter this development, the Church nurtured the growth of associational life, rife with political overtones and lay leadership. Clergy, too, participated; as Iiebmann writes, "The Sunday sermons at the expense of the Gospel . . . were often so apologetically and party-politically overloaded that one can and must speak of a real misuse of the Mass" (p. 29). This situation changed in 1933 with the onset of Austrian fascism under Dollfus, who suppressed democratic-party politics and guaranteed the religious interests of the Church. In June 1933, the chancellor ensured this latter fact by signing a Concordat with the Holy See. No longer was church associational life necessary to ensure religious interests in the corporative state. In November 1933, the Austrian bishops attested to this fact by depoliticizing the clergy and removing them from politics, although they did continue to receive appointments to Federal Councils.Thus a paradigm shift took place in ecclesial-state life whereby the primary focus of the Church moved from party-political to pastoral-doctrinal concerns. No longer did political chambers or associational meeting halls dominate, but instead the parish became central to championing Catholic pastoral concerns. Leading this shift were two priests and theologians, Michael Pfliegler and Karl Rudolf, the latter the founder of the Vienna Pastoral Institute. Pfliegler and Rudolf worked tirelessly to promote the pastoral doctrine. They placed great emphasis on a hierarchical leadership principle that was authoritarian. Supported by the Austrian hierarchy, especially Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, the archbishop of Vienna, they endeavored to incorporate all church associations into or put them directly under the all-encompassing Catholic Action movement that promoted lay participation in the Church's pastoral mission- all of which were directly under episcopal and clerical leadership. Rudolf even traveled to Italy to study how Catholic Action there had been influenced by Italian fascism. The portrait of this pastoral movement in the Church allows the reader to conclude that the Austrian Catholic Church was well "prepared" for the onslaught of National Socialism and its policy of Gleichschaltung. Those associations, such as the Cartel Federation of Catholic Student Associations, which did not comply, were excluded from recognition in official church publications. …


Background: Women are integral to all aspects of society. They are worshipped, but when it comes to dealing with them, much still remains. Women bear the burden of responsibility associated with being wives, mothers and carers of others. There is a dearth of case-control studies. Domestic violence in women with psychiatric morbidity has not received sufficient attention. There are certain statistical and psychiatric considerations like:Unipolar depression, predicted to be the second leading cause of global disability burden by 2020, is twice as common in women, depression is not only the most common women's mental health problem, but may be more persistent in women than men. Psychiatric morbidity as a determinant of domestic violence has received little attention. Indian culture is unique and there is limited work on domestic violence from Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Objective: To study and compare married women with psychotic and non-psychotic and the nature of psychiatric morbidity in married women. Method: 65 women attending psychiatry OPD department of SSL Hospital with 35 psychotic (Group 1) and 30 non-psychotic women (Group 2) were studied for the magnitude of domestic violence by husband. Domestic Violence Questionnaire of Indu et al. Psychiatric diagnosis in women was based on medical records. Results: Significantly more women in Group 1 than Group 2 reported domestic violence (total/ psychological and physical) by husbands in past year (Group 1:80% total/ psychological violence; 65.7% physical violence) and non-psychotic women (Group 2:50% total/ psychological violence; 43.3% physical violence). Total domestic violence with Psychiatric morbidity was observed in 66.2%. Conclusion: Women with psychotic illness have a higher reporting of domestic violence by husbands during the past year. As people with mental disorders are likely to be victims of violence. Mental disorder may increase vulnerability to domestic violence by increasing the likelihood of women being in unsafe relationships and environments and increase their vulnerability to violent victimization.


The objectives of the study was to establish the occupational health and safety programs in CMC Motors group of companies and also to determine the effectiveness o f these occupational health and safety programmes in the umbrella company. The need for this study was motivated by the fact that there are cases of accidents, injuries and health problems experienced and reported by various companies that create the CMC motors group. The various subsidiaries of the group also have many of its operations highly automated with its workshops having the latest or modem machines, tools and equipments. Thus with the instances o f accidents and health problems in the workplace, the questions arose as to whether the group of companies actually embrace the use of occupational health and safety programmes and if they do, are these programmes effective enough to an extent that they can reduce some of these hazards. The findings of the study revealed that indeed the occupational health and safety programmes are in use in CMC motors group o f companies and they nearly address each and every need of the employees towards protecting themselves from eminent accidents and ill health. Various hazards were also identified in the workplace and there was found to be programmes in place to address them. However, despite the fact that there are occupational health and safety programmes in CMC motors, the safety officers are faced with a problem of implementation as there are constraints such as the finances, time allocated on the implementation process, the balancing of the legal standards with the company's standards, the perception of the employees towards these programmes and lack of commitment by the employees. The researcher recommended that adequate funds should be allocated towards implementation, adequate time should be set aside and constant persuasion should be done to employees so that they can view the programmes as largely beneficial to themselves and not the company.


One of the hottest topics in neuroscience is the study of brain-behavioural circuits underlying the processing of reward-related stimuli. A growing body of studies has shed new light on the neural structure of this reward system. In this paper, we discuss the significance of these studies from the perspective of a neuropsychological theory of personality, namely the Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory (RST). RST assumes that variation in sensitivity/reactivity of the reward system is the cause of individual differences in approach motivation (e.g. desire or need for achievement, persistence, and positive emotionality). Within RST, these individual differences are contained in the construct of the Behavioural Approach System (BAS). However, there is an ongoing debate as regards the nature of the BAS. This fact motivated us to review the latest refinements in the neuroscience of the BAS in the context of the reward system. In this review, we identity four distinctive aspects of the BAS: wanting, incentive motivation, striving and liking. Their behavioural effects are compared with the behavioural manifestations of testosterone, dopamine, serotonin and endogenous opioids, respectively. We conclude that the unidimensional view of the BAS is overly oversimplified; and we suggest that it should be studied as a multidimensional construct and, by implication, so too should the reward system.


Diversification of our energy supplies – especially in the transport and electricity generation sectors – is required to meet decarbonisation targets. Algae have been identified as suitable alternative feedstocks for third generation biofuels due to their fast growth rates and non-competitiveness with land for food crops. Hydrothermal processing of algae is an appropriate conversion route as it allows the processing of wet feedstock thus removing the energy penalty of drying.
In this study, supercritical water gasification was used for (i) the hydrothermal processing of macroalgae for the production of gaseous fuel – mainly hydrogen and methane – and (ii) the upgrading of the process water from hydrothermal liquefaction of microalgae for hydrogen production for biocrude hydrotreating.
The supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of the four macroalgae species investigated (Saccharina latissima, Laminaria digitata, Laminaria hyperborea, and Alaria esculenta) produced a gas that mainly consisted of hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. Non-catalytic SCWG resulted in hydrogen yields of 3.3-4.2 mol/kg macroalgae and methane yields of 1.6-3.3 mol/kg macroalgae. Catalytic SCWG (using ruthenium) resulted in hydrogen yields of 7.8-10.2 mol/kg macroalgae and methane yields of 4.7-6.4 mol/kg macroalgae.
The yield of hydrogen was approximately three times higher when using sodium hydroxide as catalyst (16.3 mol H2 / kg macroalgae) compared to non-catalysed SCWG of L. hyperborea (5.18 mol H2 / kg macroalgae). The energy recovery (an expression of how much chemical energy of the feedstock is recovered in the desired product following hydrothermal processing) was 83% when sodium hydroxide was used as a catalyst, compared to 52% for the non-catalytic SCWG of L. hyperborea.
The yield of methane was approximately 2.5 times higher (9.0 mol CH4 kg 1macroalgae) when using ruthenium catalyst compared to the non-catalysed experiment (3.36 mol CH4 / kg macroalgae) and the energy recovery increased by 22% to 74%.
The selectivity of methane or hydrogen production during the SCWG of macroalgae can be controlled using ruthenium or sodium hydroxide respectively. Longer hold times and increased reaction temperature favoured methane production when using ruthenium. An increase in catalyst loading had no significant effect on the methane yield. Higher hydrogen yields were obtained through using higher concentrations of sodium hydroxide, lower algal feed concentration and shorter hold times (30 min). Increasing reaction times (>30 min) with a base catalyst (sodium hydroxide) decreased the hydrogen yield. Overall energy recovery was highest at the lowest feed concentrations; 90.5% using ruthenium and 111% using sodium hydroxide.
The process waters from the hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) of microalgae (Chlorella, Pseudochoricystis, and Spirulina) were gasified under supercritical water conditions to maximise hydrogen production. Hydrogen yields ranged from 0.18-0.29 g H2 / g biocrude from SCWG of the process water of HTL along with near complete gasification of the organics (~98%). Compared to the hydrogen requirements for hydrotreating algal biocrude (~0.05 g H2 / g biocrude), excess hydrogen can be produced from upgrading the process water through SCWG. The results indicate that process waters following SCWG are still rich in nutrients that can be recycled for algal cultivation.


It has been recently shown that neural networks can recover the geometric structure of a face from a single given image. A common denominator of most existing face geometry reconstruction methods is the restriction of the solution space to some low-dimensional subspace. While such a model significantly simplifies the reconstruction problem, it is inherently limited in its expressiveness. As an alternative, we propose an Image-to-Image translation network that jointly maps the input image to a depth image and a facial correspondence map. This explicit pixel-based mapping can then be utilized to provide high quality reconstructions of diverse faces under extreme expressions, using a purely geometric refinement process. In the spirit of recent approaches, the network is trained only with synthetic data, and is then evaluated on "in-the-wild" facial images. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses demonstrate the accuracy and the robustness of our approach.


Stamp duty contributes about one quarter of annual state taxation revenue. Given the structural challenges of state and territory budgets, calls to abolish stamp duty without proposing viable replacement revenue sources are naive. A considered proposal, which is gaining support, is to abolish stamp duty and replace the revenue it generates through an extension of the land taxation base. This would involve removing current exemptions from land tax, such as the exemption for the family home. This paper will examine this proposal, including assessing the economic and social impact of such a reform, in order to determine whether abolishing stamp duty and extending land tax will deliver economic and social benefits to the majority of New South Wales residents.


The levels of tryptophan (TRP) metabolites such as kynurenine (KYN), kynurenic acid (KYNA), quinaldic acid, 3-hydrocynynene, anthranilic acid, picolinic acid (PA) and xanthurenic were determined systematically in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Previous studies found a negative correlation with TRP levels and IBD disease activity. However, there is no data about serum levels of TRP metabolites and their correlation with severity of IBD. We aimed to determine the correlation between the levels of TRP, its metabolites and the clinical, laboratory, and endoscopic findings of the disease activation including fecal calprotectin.

 A total of 115 patients, 77 (66.4%) with UC and 38 (33.6%) with CD, were included. Forty three % (n=49) of the patients were female. 57 % (n=66) were male. The mean age of females and males were 42.07±13.39 and 44.23± 10.04 years, respectively. Patients were categorized according to their disease activity: Sixty-five (57%) of the patients were in remission and 50 (43%) were active. The predictive value of the disease activity was evaluated by the levels of serum tryptophan, its metabolites and the fecal calprotectin levels.

 At a cut-off value of ≤11328.41 ng/ml of tryptophan, the sensitivity to predict disease activation is 76.9% and the specificity is 71.7%. On the other hand, at a cut-off value of ≥89.60 µg/g of fecal calprotectin, the sensitivity of detecting disease activation was 88.1% and the specificity was 80.0%. Calprotectin, sedimentation, CRP, KYN/TRP values were found to be significantly higher in patients in the active period than in patients in remission (p<0.001, p<0.001, p<0.007 respectively). KYNA, TRP, and PA values were found to be statistically significantly lower in patients in the active phase compared to those in remission (p=0.01, p<0.001, p=0.022 respectively).

 Serum TRP levels were lower in increased disease activity. Quinolinic acid levels did not differ between active patients and patients in remission. Quinolinic acid, which is the metabolite of TRP degradation, was increased with active disease. However, fecal calprotectin still had superior predictive value for IBD disease activity. Further studies are needed to assess the TRP pathway for the disease severity and disease course in IBD.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
The number of medical students traveling to nations outside the United States is steadily increasing. The Association of American Medical Colleges graduation questionnaire notes an increase from 2,838 students in 2001 to 3,799 students in 2009, the last year for which information is available. The risk of having any type of illness during international travel approaches 50%. Up to 19% of students will seek medical care on their return to the United States for illnesses. Most illnesses are benign and self limited. However, when deaths do occur, the leading causes are motor vehicle crashes and drownings. If air medical evacuation occurs, the most likely cause is an injury event. The authors review the literature to determine the risk of and type of illnesses and injuries suffered by travelers while overseas, especially medical volunteers. We describe the major categories of illness and injury risk and propose reasonable risk reduction and prevention strategies for prevention for injury, a relatively neglected area. We recommend that medical schools provide pre-travel training that includes injury prevention so that students are prepared not only for illness prevention but also for injury prevention. A focus on injury prevention, especially from motor vehicle crashes and drowning, is warranted given their role in causing death and serious injury to traveling students.


BACKGROUND
Increasing antimicrobial resistance combined with a lagging pipeline of novel antimicrobial compounds have resulted in a resurgence of interest in phage therapy. To select optimal phage or phage combinations for patients for whom phage therapy is considered, assessment of activity of a panel of phages against the patients' bacterial isolate(s) should ideally be performed. Classical phage susceptibility testing methods (i.e., agar overlay) may be laborious, with expertise outside of normal training and competency of medical laboratory science staff needed.

CONTENT
Adaptive Phage Therapeutics™ leveraged a commercially available phenotyping system (Biolog OmniLog®) to generate the PhageBank Susceptibility Test™, which uses a custom data analysis pipeline (PhageSelect™) to measure the delay in reaching log-phase metabolic activity ("hold time") when a given isolate is challenged with a specific phage. The goal of this study was to preliminarily assess reproducibility of this approach by testing 2 bacterial species at 2 sites, APT and an academic site. Nineteen Escherichia coli phages were tested against 18 bacterial isolates, and 21 Staphylococcus aureus phages, against 11 bacterial isolates. Result comparisons were statistically excellent for E. coli (κ = 0.7990) and good/fair for S. aureus (κ = 0.6360).

SUMMARY
The described method provides good/fair to excellent statistical reproducibility for assessment of phage susceptibility of 2 commonly encountered bacterial species.


Background
Primary conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia exhibit atypical clinical symptoms and easy to cause misdiagnosis and mistreatment.Understanding the clinical characteristics of primary conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia is of an important clinical significance.

Objective
This study was to analyze the clinical characteristics and therapeutic outcome of patients with primary conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia.

Methods
The medical records of 20 patients with primary conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia who was treated in Beijing Tongren Hospital from January 2012 to December 2014 were retrospectively analyed.The age, symptoms, therapy, prognosis, histopathological features and immonochemistry results were reviewed, and the treating approach targeting to different types of conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia was evaluated.The fellow-up duration was 1-2 years.

Results
Age of the patients ranged from 27 to 83 years old.The lesions were classified as benign lymphocytic hyperplasia, atypical lymphoid hyperplasia and lymphoma.Majority of lesions located in fornix conjunctiva tissue (90%). Follicle-like appearance was seen in the benign lymphocytic hyperplasia, and pink elavation was exhibited at the bulbar conjunctiva in the atypical lymphoid hyperplasia.A diffuse salmon fish like appearance in conjunctiva was the primary feature of conjunctival lymphoma.Histopathological examination showed that conjunctival benign lymphocytic hyperplasia had follicle-like tissue in lesions, atypical lymphoid hyperplasia exhibited diffuse lymphocyte filtration, and conjunctival lymphoma appeared monocyte filtration.The 3 tpyes of lesions also could be differentiated by immunochemistry.The medicine was applied in the eyes with benign lymphocytic hyperplasia, and the combination of resection of lesions with conjunctival tissue or amniotic membrane transplantation was used for the atypical lymphoid hyperplasia or lymphoma eyes.No recurrence of the lesions was found during fellow-up duration.

Conclusions
The clinical manifestations of conjunctival lymphoid hyperplasia lesions are varied, and it is easy to be confused with chronic ocular surface diseases.Pathology and immunochemistry are helpful for the differential diagnosis.The treating regimen is dependent on the lesion type.Most patients have a favorable prognosis with treatment.

Key words:
Conjunctival diseases/pathology; Conjunctival neoplasms/diagnosis & therapy; Hyperplasia; Lymphoid tissue/pathology; Lymphoma/pathology; Retrospective studies; Humans


Ontologies have been widely accepted as the most advanced knowledge representation model. This paper introduces PsychoNet, a new knowledgebase that forms the link between psycholinguistic taxonomy, existing in LIWC, and its semantic textual representation in the form of commonsense semantic ontology, represented by ConceptNet. The integration of LIWC and ConceptNet and the added functionalities facilitate employing ConceptNet in psycholinguistic studies. Furthermore, it simplifies utilization of the huge network of Concept-Net for a specific multimedia application based on key category(ies) from LIWC, such as visual or biological applications. PsychoNet adds a new layer of complementary psycholinguistic functions to the original semantic network. Moreover, learning, either clustering or classification, is more applicable in the developed ontology. The paper shows a sample application of text classification for mood prediction task. The result confirms the validity of the proposed network as PsychoNet outperforms LIWC in mood prediction.


This thesis is commissioned by the regional sales manager of company X, where I'm currently working as a salesman. Company X is currently working in the telecommunications business in Finland, which currently offers their customers mobile phone connections, broadband connections and also some devices that are used with them, such devices like mobile phones, tablets and dongles. The research is going to focus on consumer behavior and the matters that are leading to the buying decision in a situation, where the consumer hasn't decided of buying from the first contact with the sales person. The research problem is to find out, which are the factors that affect the everyday customer's buying decision in the mobile market. The aim of the research is to have a better understanding of the customers and gain better sales results in the future. The objectives of this research are to identify the most important factors that will lead to the customer's decision of either buying or not buying from the sales person and make recommendations for the company based on the results. Theoretical framework of this thesis first examines consumer characteristics that are divided to cultural, social, personal and psychological factors. The second part of the theoretical framework consists of consumer decision-making from the perspective of the consumer and the sales person. The research of this study was conducted using quantitative research methods and the data of the research was collected using a survey that was filled after the respondents had visited the selling stand. Results lead into more understanding of the factors that lead to the buying decision. Feedback from the respondents were mostly positive and encouraging but some of the statements showed that respondents' expectations about the service wasn't exceeded. Moreover these results were able to identify some problems that might affect the sales results of the stand. Lack of offering devices from the sales people and the amount of visiting regulars were found to be a problem in the selling stand. More specific selling training that involves customer mapping and devices is recommended. Furthermore sales people need to be instructed to take more advantage of supporting services. Subject headings, (keywords) consumer decision-making, consumer behavior, selling, buying decision, consumer characteristics


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the role of telomere and DCC in tumor transformation and progression.

METHODS
Telomere length and DCC gene mRNA expression were examined by southern blot hybridization and RT-PCR analysis in 46 adenomas of large intestine, 62 cancers of large intestine and corresponding normal mucosa.

RESULTS
Shortening of the telomere was present in the tissues of 41.3% of the adenomas and 53.2% of the cancers, and their average TRF lengths were significantly shorter than those of corresponding normal mucosa(P<0.05, P<0.01), whereas the telomere elongation was only detected in 4.4% and 6.5% of the adenomas and cancers respectively. In addition, the average telomere length in colon carcinomas was also shorter than that in rectal carcinomas. Moreover, the average telomere lengths of the colorectal cancer mucosa became shorter with age. The rates of DCC mRNA expression deletion were 34.8% and 62.9% in the tissues of adenomas and cancers respectively. The DCC mRNA expression deletion occurred more frequently in poorly differentiated and Dukes C, D carcinomas than in well-differentiated and Dukes A, B carcinomas (P<0.05, P<0.01). However, no significant correlation was found between the length of telomere and the deletion of DCC mRNA expression in the cancers of large intestine.

CONCLUSION
The telomere shortening and DCC mRNA deletion may represent the biologic behavior of transformation and development of the large intestine cancers.


Offshore oil and gas drilling operations generate significant amounts of drill mud waste, some of which is transported onshore for subsequent thermal treatment (i.e. via thermal remediation). This treatment process results in a mineral waste by-product (referred to as thermally treated drill mud waste; TTDMW). Bentonites are originally present in many of the drill mud products and it is hypothesized that TTDMW can be utilized in landfill containment applications (i.e. cover or base liner). The objective of this paper is to examine the feasibility of this application by performing various physical and chemical tests on two TTDMW samples. It is shown that the two TTDMW samples contained relatively small amounts of clay-sized minerals although hydraulic conductivity values are found to be less than 10—8 m/s. Organic carbon contents of the samples were approximately 2%. Mineralogy characterization of the samples confirmed varying amounts of smectite, however, peak friction angles for a TTDMW sample was greater than 36°. Chemical characterization of the TTDMW samples show potential leaching of barium and small amounts of other heavy metals. Discussion is provided in the paper on suggestions to assist in overcoming regulatory issues associated with utilization of TTDMW in landfill containment applications.


: In this brief overview, I have identified some of the cardinal facts involving neuroantigens and neuroautoimmunologic responses to them, briefly listed the clinical-immunohistopathologic features of EAE, discussed the presence of circulating MBP degradation fragments in the blood of rats and humans and the high probability of some of these fragments serving to act as immunomodulating factors with respect to maintaining immunologic silence of varying numbers of MBP-reactive lymphoid cells in the blood and peripheral lymphoid tissues of clinically well humans. Perhaps more important is the inhibitory effect which such factors might well exert on expanding MBP-reactive clones of lymphocytes should they escape from immunological silence and become activated for one reason or another. The degree of concordance of immunological events and responses characterizing animals with EAE and patients with MS serves to underline the usefulness and the validity of the EAE animal model system for probing fundamental mechanisms implicated in the tissue injury characterizing the MS process.


The mechanism by which spermidine induces the appearances of floral buds in thin-layer tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) tissue culture was studied by following the fate of the radioactive compound. [3H]Spermidine was taken up rapidly by the tissue, and after a brief lag, a portion was bound to trichloroacetic acid precipitable macromolecules. Such binding increased to a maximum on day 4 of culture, coinciding with the onset of bud differentiation, and declined thereafter until shortly before flowering. About 82% of the label in the trichloroacetic acid precipitate remained as spermidine, 14% was metabolized to putrescine, 3% to spermine, and 1% to gamma-aminobutyric acid. Spermidine was covalently bound to a protein with a molecular size of about 18 kilodaltons. Hydrolysis of this protein and analysis of the labeled entities revealed 81% spermidine, 16% putrescine, and 3% spermine. This post-translational modification of a unique protein by attachment of spermidine may be causally connected to the appearance of flower buds in thin-layer tobacco cultures.


Using both text and image content features, a hybrid image retrieval system for Word Wide Web is developed in this paper. We first use a text-based image meta-search engine to retrieve images from the Web based on the text information on the image host pages to provide an initial image set. Because of the high-speed and low cost nature of the text-based approach, we can easily retrieve a broad coverage of images with a high recall rate and a relatively low precision. An image content based ordering is then performed on the initial image set. All the images are clustered into different folders based on the image content features. In addition, the images can be re-ranked by the content features according to the user feedback. Such a design makes it truly practical to use both text and image content for image retrieval over the Internet. Experimental results confirm the efficiency of the system.


OBJECTIVE
To study whether administration of 1.25 and 5.0 mg ramipril daily, compared with placebo treatment, reduces the urinary albumin excretion rate (UAER) in normotensive patients with type 1 diabetes.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Ramipril was administered double blind at two different doses (1.25 [n = 19] and 5.0 mg [n = 18]), and compared with placebo (n = 18) after a single-blind placebo period of 1-4 weeks. The patients (total, n = 55; women, n = 14) were followed for 2 years. To document an effect on the renin-angiotensin system, ACE activity and plasma-renin activity (PRA) were measured. In addition, 24-h ambulatory blood pressure (BP) was recorded at baseline and repeated after 1 and 2 years using a Spacelab 90207 ambulatory BP recording device (Spacelab, Redmont, CA).

RESULTS
Both doses of ramipril were sufficient to reduce ACE activity and to increase PRA significantly as compared with placebo (P < 0.05 for both). On the other hand, neither ambulatory nor clinic BP was affected by either dose of ramipril compared with the placebo group. There was no progression of UAER in the placebo group during the 2 years of the study. Analysis of covariance showed no differences in UAER between the three treatment groups at year 1 (P = 0.94) or year 2 (P = 0.97), after adjusting for baseline. Furthermore, there were no statistically significant changes from baseline UAER within any of the three treatment groups.

CONCLUSIONS
Treatment with ramipril did not affect microalbuminuria or clinic or ambulatory BP in this study. On the basis of the present study, we question the clinical use of ACE inhibitors in stably normotensive patients with type 1 diabetes and microalbuminuria in whom a concomitant reduction in BP is not demonstrated.


RNA interference (RNAi) is a method of gene silencing where dsRNA is digested into small interfering RNA (siRNA) in the presence of enzymes. These siRNAs then target homologous mRNA sequences aided by the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC). The mechanism of dsRNA uptake has been well studied and established across many living organisms including insects. In insects, RNAi is a novel and potential tool to develop future pest management means targeting various classes of insects including dipterans, coleopterans, hemipterans, lepidopterans, hymenopterans and isopterans. However, the extent of RNAi in individual class varies due to underlying mechanisms. The present review focuses on three major insect classes viz hemipterans, lepidopterans and coleopterans and the rationale behind this lies in the fact that studies pertaining to RNAi has been extensively performed in these groups. Additionally, these classes harbour major agriculturally important pest species which require due attention. Interestingly, all the three classes exhibit varying levels of RNAi efficiencies with the coleopterans exhibiting maximum response, while hemipterans are relatively inefficient. Lepidopterans on the other hand, show minimum response to RNAi. This has been attributed to many facts and few important being endosomal escape, high activity dsRNA-specific nucleases, and highly alkaline gut environment which renders the dsRNA unstable. Various methods have been established to ensure safe delivery of dsRNA into the biological system of the insect. The most common method for dsRNA administration is supplementing the diet of insects via spraying onto leaves and other commonly eaten parts of the plant. This method is environment-friendly and superior to the hazardous effects of pesticides. Another method involves submergence of root systems in dsRNA solutions and subsequent uptake by the phloem. Additionally, more recent techniques are nanoparticle- and Agrobacterium-mediated delivery systems. However, due to the novelty of these biotechnological methods and recalcitrant nature of certain crops, further optimization is required. This review emphasizes on RNAi developments in agriculturally important insect species and the major hurdles for efficient RNAi in these groups. The review also discusses in detail the development of new techniques to enhance RNAi efficiency using liposomes and nanoparticles, transplastomics, microbial-mediated delivery and chemical methods.


Two experiments collectively explored four factors that may influence people's judgments of exocentric (interobject) distances in virtual environments. Participants freely navigated in a simple virtual environment and repeatedly made magnitude estimations of exocentric distances. Distances were generally overestimated. An exponential model (Stevens' power law) fit the data, and exponent estimates were generally less than unity. Geometric field of view (GFOV) and the presence of error-corrective feedback were found to have the strongest effect on accuracy. In fact, distance perception was nearly veridical when made with an 80 deg. GFOV and when receiving feedback. Display type (head-mounted versus desktop) and the presence of additional perspective cues were less influential.


SUMMARY: Following transfer to medium lacking a nitrogen source, cells of Synechocystis PCC 6803 continued to divide, giving a doubling of cell number after 40 h. Phycocyanin degradation commenced immediately after the transfer, with a rapid phase lasting 5 h in which 50% of the phycocyanin disappeared and a slow second phase in which the phycocyanin content decreased to 10% of its initial value by 24 h. In the presence of glucose, a utilizable carbon source for this facultatively heterotrophic cyanobacterium, phycocyanin was degraded initially at a rate 60% of that observed in the absence of the sugar and proteolysis was almost completely inhibited after 6 h when only 27% of the phycocyanin had been lost; cell division ceased at this time. Photosynthetic O2 evolution decreased rapidly in the presence of glucose and the cells consumed O2 in the light after 7 h, indicative of a switch to oxidative metabolism; net O2 uptake in the absence of glucose occurred only after approximately 25 h. Inhibition of phycocyanin degradation by glucose required metabolism of the sugar, probably via the oxidative pentose phosphate cycle, and appeared to result from irreversible inactivation of the protease.


We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the designer maximizes a social welfare function over all feasible mechanisms---accounting for agents' characteristics, as well as their endogenous behavior in the face of the pandemic. The framework emphasizes the role of externalities and incorporates equity as well as efficiency concerns. Our results provide an economic justification for providing vaccines immediately and for free to some groups of agents, while at the same time showing that a carefully constructed pricing mechanism can improve outcomes by screening for individuals with the highest private and social benefits of receiving the vaccine. The solution casts light on the classic question of whether prices or priorities should be used to allocate scarce public resources under externalities and equity concerns. Full Paper: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3846931


An increasing lack of commitment and brutalization was observed due to the erosion of traditional communities in late modernism (cf. Duerr 1993; Sennet
 1998). In Social Media, this is shown as an aggressive style (flaming) or as "hate speech" (cf. Butler 2013), increasingly in organized forms of ensembles
 of actors of aggression directed specifically against individuals. This libel and these hate acts underlie a complex practice which can be described with
 Harold Garfinkel's concept as "status degradation ceremony". Garfinkel's terms refer to court cases, i. e. an institutionalized form of aggression
 exercising – according to Sigmund Freud's terms one of the main benefits of every culture in order to prevent violent squalor and brutality. At the same
 time, however, Freud also expressed unease ("Unbehagen") that this aggression could more or less break with institutional failure. Today, such processes
 can be increasingly observed in a bandwidth ranging from simple online petitions to radical forms of vigilantism.
 In order to understand why individuals take the law into their own hands and – often associated with a more or less large swarm formation – why they are
 trying to define law, to judge, and even to execute their own "judgments" outside of the democratically constituted legal system, a second concept is
 introduced, the concept of "Selbstermachtigung" which refers to practices of autonomy. This concept of "Selbstermachtigung" is understood as a
 time diagnostic term to describe a number of communicative practices which could jeopardize democracy in one of its institutional foundations in question:
 its legal constitution. "Selbstermachtigung" describes a contemporary mentality which contains a strong, emotionally charged tension between the
 individual and the institution namely in all sorts of social institutions, such as in health, science, but also democracy – which only just enables these
 criticism of institutions. From the two analytical concepts of "Selbstermachtigung" and the status degradation ceremony, we can develop the concept of
 a "self-authorized status degradation ceremony". With this concept, we can examine both simple online petitions and extreme forms of vigilante justice,
 which are similar to lynching. This is done plausible on the basis of exemplary analyzes. Finally, the danger is clear that the anti institutionally
 polarized mentality of "Selbstermachtigung" exactly threatens the institution that enables them.


Insurance-linked securities portfolio with the VaR constraint optimization problem have a kind of weak dominance or ordering property, which enables us to reduce the variables' dimensions gradually through exercising a genetic algorithm with randomly selected initial populations. This property also enables us to add boundary attraction potential to GA-MPC's repair operator, among other modifications such as using Sobol sequence in the initial population selection for multiple runs, using WELL algorithm for RNG, adding orthogonal crossover to the mutation operator, using opposition-based starting population, using clockwise-shaped searching vectors instead of the original counterclockwise-shaped searching vectors, adding the catfish and pivot algorithms for combating the stagnation, and using slowly-changing betas in the searching vector coefficients, resulting in a hybridized GA-MPC-OX algorithm. Numerical experiment shows that the evolved GA-MPC-OX algorithm used in our relay optimization process gives the best objective values for our specific real world optimization problem, among more than twenty other algorithms.


correspondence: ramon Balius consell català de l'esport, generalitat de catalunya, Barcelona, Spain Tel +34 678624671 email firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract: Muscle injuries generally occur in two-joint muscles with a high percentage of type II fibers during the performance of eccentric activity. Some muscle injuries, such as those located in the adductor longus, a monoarticular muscle, as well as rectus abdominis do not fully comply with these requirements. This study examines five cases of elite handball players with ruptured rectus abdominals. Sonographically, lesions in rectus abdominis are shown as a disruption of the fibrillar pattern with a hematic suffusion that invades the entire lesion. In some of the cases, the ultrasound study was complemented with a MRI. A unified rehabilitation protocol was applied and the return to play time of each handball player ranged between 16 and 22 days, with an average of 18.2 days. Follow-up at 15 months showed no evidence of re-injury or residual discomfort and all of them are playing at their highest level. The aim of this study was to illustrate a feature of handball injury that, as in tennis and volleyball, is uncommon and so far has not been specifically reported. The phenomenon of contralateral abdominal hypertrophy in handball appears in the dominant arm as in tennis and volleyball.


Transformers have proved to be very effective for visual recognition tasks. In particular, vision transformers construct compressed global representations through self-attention and learnable class tokens. Multi-resolution transformers have shown recent successes in semantic segmentation but can only capture local interactions in high-resolution feature maps. This paper extends the notion of global tokens to build GLobal Attention Multi-resolution (GLAM) transformers. GLAM is a generic module that can be integrated into most existing transformer backbones. GLAM includes learnable global tokens, which unlike previous methods can model interactions between all image regions, and extracts powerful representations during training. Extensive experiments show that GLAM-Swin or GLAM-Swin-Unet exhibit substantially better performances than their vanilla counterparts on ADE20K and Cityscapes. Moreover, GLAM can be used to segment large 3D medical images, and GLAM-nnFormer achieves new state-of-the-art performance on the BCV dataset.


One of the most salient aspects of speech is accent – either dialectal differences attributable to region or class, or phonological variations resulting from L1 influence on the L2. Our primary concern is with the latter, because of the strong social, psychological, and communicative consequences of speaking with an L2 accent. The decline of audiolingualism led to a concomitant marginalization of pronunciation research and teaching. It was believed that pronunciation instruction could not be effective, in part because of the unrealistic goal of native-like speech in L2 learners, and also because of research findings that suggested that instruction had a negligible impact on oral production. The recent revival of interest in pronunciation research has brought a change of focus away from native-like models toward easy intelligibility. The effects of this change have yet to be fully realized in L2 classrooms. However, many L2 students themselves are keenly interested in pronunciation instruction, a fact not lost on individuals who have recognized a lucrative marketing niche in 'accent reduction/elimination' programs that may do more harm than good. Our presentation will relate the core issues of intelligibility, identity, social evaluation, and discrimination to appropriate pronunciation pedagogy for L2 learners.


: Estrogen therapy is indicated for the vasomotor, genitourinary, and menstrual changes of the climacteric woman. Estrogens should be prescribed to relieve these symptoms specifically, and in the lowest dosage for the shortest time. Vaginal estrogens are appropriate in the treatment of genitourinary symptoms and may be given until sexual activity ceases. Vaginal ointments may be given even to patients in whom oral therapy may be contraindicated. Alternative therapy is helpful in the treatment of vasomotor symptoms, vulvitis, and breast tenderness. Appropriate therapy for all women includes a complete history and physical examination, and a thorough discussion of the physiologic and psychological changes of menopause. Appropriate studies include tests for estrogen effect to monitor therapy. They assist in treatment of the complexity of the menopause.


The distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello was drawn in the traditional theory of the just war long before it appeared in modern international law. The theory of the just war is a theory about morality, not law--although most of its earlier proponents understood it as an account of the natural law. In this moral theory, the main reason for the traditional insistence on the separation of jus ad bellum and jus in bello is that the two doctrines must be independent if the orthodox doctrine of the "moral equality of combatants" is to be justified. The moral equality of combatants is the view that all combatants, irrespective of whether they fight in a just or unjust war, have the same rights, immunities, and liabilities. Under this view, a combatant is not guilty of wrongdoing merely by virtue of fighting for an unjust cause, or in an unjust war. According to the traditional theory of the just war, responsibility for matters of jus ad bellum lies with the sovereign, not his soldiers. In Shakespeare's Henry V, the king, disguised as an ordinary soldier, is conversing with some of his soldiers on the eve of the battle of Agincourt. He remarks: "Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the King's company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable." One soldier replies: "That's more than we know," whereupon a second says: "Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough if we know we are the King's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the King wipes the crime of it out of us." (1) What I will argue is that the doctrine of the independence of jus in bello from jus ad helium, and its implication that whether the war in which a combatant fights is just or unjust has no bearing on that combatant's rights and liabilities in the conduct of war, have no foundation in the basic, nonconventional morality of war. If it is desirable in law--and I think it is--to have rules for the conduct of war that are neutral between those who fight in a just cause and those who do not, there must be substantial divergence between the basic, nonconventional morality of war and the law of war. The fundamental reason why, as a matter of basic morality, the principles of jus in hello cannot be independent of those of jus ad helium is that it is simply not morally permissible to fight in a war with an unjust cause. This is so for a number of reasons, one of which is that acts of war that promote an unjust cause cannot be proportionate, since any good effects they have are not of the sort that can justify being at war and hence cannot outweigh the serious forms of harm that war inflicts. Neither can acts of war that promote an unjust cause be discriminate. Let us refer to those who fight in a just war as "just combatants" and to those who fight for an unjust cause as "unjust combatants." My claim is that acts of war by unjust combatants cannot be discriminate because just combatants are innocent in the relevant sense and are therefore not legitimate targets. This may seem a strange claim. For in the context of war, "innocent" is usually treated as synonymous with "civilian," and just combatants certainly are not civilians. But in fact the term "innocent" has two uses in discourse about war that are commonly assumed to coincide. My claim invokes the other sense, according to which the innocent are simply those who have done nothing to lose their right not to be attacked. Just combatants are innocent in this sense because people do not lose rights by justifiably defending themselves or other innocent people against unjust attack. So even when unjust combatants confine their attacks to military targets, they kill innocent people. Most of us believe that it is normally wrong to kill innocent people even as a means of achieving a just goal. How, then, could it be permissible to kill innocent people as a means of achieving goals that are unjust? For these and other reasons, unjust combatants act wrongly when they fight for an unjust cause. …


Motivated by the highly-unionized public sectors, the high public shares in total employment, and the public sector wage premia observed in Europe, this paper examines the importance of public sector unions for macroeconomic theory. The model generates cyclical behavior in hours and wages that is consistent with data behavior in an economy with highly-unionized public sector, namely Germany during the period 1970-2007. The union model is a significant improvement over a model with exogenous public employment. In addition, endogenously-determined public wage and hours add to the distortionary effect of contractionary tax reforms by generating greater tax rate changes, thus producing significantly higher welfare losses.


Long-term glycemic normalization in diabetic dogs has been achieved using a portable insulin delivery device. Six pancreatectomized male dogs carried the device for periods of 7 ± 2 (range –12) mo. Pulses of insulin were delivered every 90 s into the inferior vena cava through an exteriorized indwelling catheter In the postabsorptive period, insulin was infused at the mean rate of 0.44 ± 0.03 mU/min/kg and glycemia was 93 ± 7 mg/dl, while in the postprandial period insulin was infused for 7 h at the mean rate of 3.10 ± 0.22 mU/min/kg. A standard daily diet was provided, and the resulting glycemic profiles were similar to an age-, sex-, and weight-matched group of six healthy controls. Peripheral insulin levels in the infused diabetic dogs (15 ± 1 μU/ml) were not significantly different from nondiabetic controls in the fasting state and were unresponsive to caloric provocation. However, in the postprandial period of enhanced delivery, insulin levels in the diabetic dogs were two to four times higher than in the controls. Unaccountable episodes of hypo- or hyperglycemia did not occur. Techniques for long-term vascular access were developed such that catheter-related complications, including infection and thrombosis, were not encountered. This study demonstrates the feasibility of long-term glycemic control in unrestrained diabetic animals using a preprogrammed waveform of insulin delivery. Hyperinsulinism accompanies the glycemic normalization when the hormone is delivered peripherally.


We introduce a novel generative formulation of deep probabilistic models implementing "soft" constraints on the dynamics of the functions they can model. In particular we develop a flexible methodological framework where the modeled functions and derivatives of a given order are subject to inequality or equality constraints. We characterize the posterior distribution over model and constraint parameters through stochastic variational inference techniques. As a result, the proposed approach allows for accurate and scalable uncertainty quantification of predictions and parameters. We demonstrate the application of equality constraints in the challenging problem of parameter inference in ordinary differential equation models, while we showcase the application of inequality constraints on monotonic regression on count data. The proposed approach is extensively tested in several experimental settings, leading to highly competitive results in challenging modeling applications, while offering high expressiveness, flexibility and scalability.


[Context] Several static analysis tools allow the development of custom rules for locating application-specific defects. Although this feature is powerful and commonly available, it is not well explored in practice. Custom static analysis rules can check design and policies that are shared between applications, allowing the reuse of rules. However, the benefits, scope, and concerns that software engineers should have on reusing custom static analysis rules are unknown. [Goal] In this preliminary study, we investigate the reuse of custom static analysis rules produced by applying Pattern-Driven Maintenance (PDM). PDM is a method to locate defect patterns in web applications that produces custom static analysis rules as output. [Method] We selected a set of rules produced by a previous usage of the PDM method and applied them to other three applications in two contexts, within the same company where the rules were produced, and in other companies. [Results] We successfully reused some rules in both scenarios with minor adjustments, finding new defects to be fixed. The reuse of rules could discard from 58-90% of source code locations found by a naive search for the defects, reducing verification effort. However, the reused rules need adjustments to improve precision for defect localization, as precision ranged from 40-75%. Finally, we identified factors that have an impact on reusing custom rules. [Conclusions] We put forward that reusing customized static analysis rules can be beneficial, in particular when similarities in the architecture and programming style are observed. However, adjustment of the rules might be needed to enable effective reuse. We shared our insights and methodology on how to reuse custom static analysis rules properly.


Abstract In this study, plum slices were dried in three different driers (tray, fluid bed, and heat pump (HP) driers). Drying experiments were carried out at an air temperature range of 45-55 °C with an air velocity of 1.5 m/s. The performance of the driers along with their main components was evaluated and compared by using the exergy analysis method. The most important component for improving the system efficiency was determined to be the fan—heater combination for both the tray and fluid bed driers, and the motor—compressor assembly for the HP drier. The exergy loss and flow diagram (the so-called Grassmann diagram) of the driers was also presented to give quantitative information regarding the proportion of the exergy input dissipated in the various system components. Effects of the drying air temperature on the performance of the drying process were discussed. The highest exergetic efficiency values were obtained to range from 72.72 to 75.66 per cent for the HP drier, followed by the tray and fluid bed driers varying between 37.94 and 39.46 per cent, and between 22.83 and 24.07 per cent, respectively.


Humor is a multifaceted construct that is generally regarded as a positive emotional experience positively associated with well-being. Despite this generally accepted relationship, empirical research on humor and meaning (both situational meaning and global evaluations of meaning in life) is surprisingly limited. The current research examined the relationship between humor and situational meaning making in the context of stressful events, as well as general evaluations of meaning in life. Study 1 replicated and extended research on the association between humor and well-being by assessing the relationship between several aspects of humor and ratings of meaning in life. Studies 2 and 3 explored the role of humor in making sense of stressful experiences using retrospective and prospective designs. Study 2 took a retrospective approach to examining the role of humor in coping with stressful experiences by having participants reflect on a stressful experience from the previous two years. Study 3 prospectively examined the role of humor in meaning making and coping with a stressful experience using an expressive writing paradigm. Participants in the humor condition were asked to write about a stressful experience they were currently dealing with and to specifically make an effort to find humor in the experience. Well-being, discrepancy, and meaning making outcomes were assessed 4 weeks later to evaluate the effectiveness of effortful attempts to use humor in coping with stressful experiences. The results replicated previous research on humor and well-being, and supported the hypothesized relationship between healthy/unhealthy humor and meaning in life. Humor was also associated with meaning making, however, the role of humor in making initial attributions for a potentially stressful experience and discrepancies was not clearly supported. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.


A single-threshold detector is derived for a wide class of classical binary decision problems involving the likelihood-ratio detection of a signal embedded in noise. The class of problems considered encompasses the case of multiple independent (but not necessarily identically distributed) observations of a nonnegative (or nonpositive) signal embedded in additive and independent noise, where the range of the signal and noise is continuous. It is shown that a comparison of the sum of the observations with a unique threshold comprises an optimum detector if a weak condition on the noise is satisfied independent of the signal. Examples of noise densities that satisfy and that violate this condition are presented. A sufficient condition on the likelihood ratio which implies that the sum of the observations is also a sufficient statistic is considered.


The search for new congeners of the leading anticancer drug doxorubicin has led to an analog that is approximately 1000 times more potent, noncardiotoxic at therapeutic dose levels, and non-cross-resistant with doxorubicin. The new anthracycline, 3'-deamino-3'-(3-cyano-4-morpholinyl)doxorubicin (MRA-CN), is produced by incorporation of the 3' amino group of doxorubicin in a new cyanomorpholinyl ring. The marked increase in potency was observed against human ovarian and breast carcinomas in vitro; it was not accompanied by an increase in cardiotoxicity in fetal mouse heart cultures. Doxorubicin and MRA-CN both produced typical cardiac ultrastructural and biochemical changes, but at equimolar concentrations. In addition, MRA-CN was not cross-resistant with doxorubicin in a variant of the human sarcoma cell line MES-SA selected for resistance to doxorubicin. Thus antitumor efficacy was dissociated from both cardiotoxicity and cross-resistance by this modification of anthracycline structure.


Summary
1There are few long-term experimental studies of plant community responses to changes in grazing intensity. Here we report species' changes in a mesotrophic grassland after 12 years of a grazing experiment and relate these changes to species' life-history traits.
2The experiment was set up in 1986 on an extensified species-poor grassland in lowland UK. Treatments comprised sheep grazing vs. no grazing in winter, grazing vs. no grazing in spring, and two grazing intensities in summer, in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with two replicate blocks.
3Point quadrat surveys in 1998 showed responses to grazing treatments by 17 of the 22 most common species. Species showed different responses, many of which were specific to a grazing season. Community changes were similar under spring and winter grazing, but the heavier summer grazing had different consequences. Species richness was increased by spring grazing, decreased by heavier summer grazing and unaffected by winter grazing.
4More species responded to treatments in the 1998 survey compared with a survey in 1990. Furthermore, the whole experimental grassland had changed between the surveys, probably as a result of falling soil fertility. The two dominant grasses had declined drastically and most other species had increased in abundance. Five new species were found in 1998.
5Intensive surveys of dicotyledonous species in 1998 showed five of the 12 most common species had responded to grazing treatments. In most cases dicotyledonous species had increased in abundance under heavier grazing in one or more season, and species richness was increased by spring and winter grazing. Compared with a 1991 survey, the number of species responding to treatments had increased by 1998 and seven new species were found.
6We tested whether species' responses to grazing were linked to life-history traits according to three hypotheses: that heavier grazing would disadvantage (i) species grazed preferentially, (ii) species less able to colonize gaps or (iii) more competitive species. Mechanisms differed among seasonal treatments. Responses to heavier summer grazing were linked strongly to gap colonization ability. Responses to spring and winter grazing were positively related to grazer selectivity, a surprising result that might be explained if selectivity was positively related to plant regrowth ability.
7This study shows the need for long-term experimental analyses of community responses to grazing as vegetation responses may develop over a long time. The traits analysis suggests it may be possible to predict changes in species composition under grazing through an understanding of the mechanisms of plant responses. Grassland managers require such information in order to manipulate grazing regimes to achieve, for example, diversification or weed control.


Chronic bacterial infections of the lower respiratory tract (LRTI) are a relevant problem in patients with primary ciliary dyscinesia (PCD) and therefore a continuous antibiotic treatment regime is often used. However, it remains unclear if all of these children indeed have relevant chronic LRTI and thus profit from antibiotics. Data on bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) with cytological and microbiological analysis in PCD patients are still lacking. In a retrospective study BALF findings of 19 children with PCD were analyzed and the clinical course of patients treated with antibiotics has been investigated. Median age of the patients at the time of bronchoscopy was 10 year (range 4-17 years). Situs inversus was seen in 10 patients. The main symptoms leading to bronchoscopy were chronic cough, recurrent bronchitis or pneumonia. Lung function was performed in 17 patients before bronchoscopy. FEV1 ranged between 62-114% (median 80%). In the BALF of 12 patients significant bacterial counts (>10 4 CFU/ml) have been confirmed. Haemophilus influenzae (n =10) and Streptococcus pneumoniae (n= 3) were the most frequent isolated species. In all of the cases where a BALF-cytology was performed a granulocytic inflammation was detected. Furthermore, these findings correlated with a worse lung function before bronchoscopy (FEV-1 Bronchoscopy is a safe diagnostic method in children with PCD to distinguish between patients with LRTI from these without infections. This has an extensive clinical relevance because we could show that patients with a proven infection profit from an antibiotic therapy.


When designed well, user guides and related documentation can reduce significantly the costs of manufacturing, operating and maintaining products. Diagrams can be key features of such informational material, but, until recently, they have not been the subject of serious study. Diagrams are powerful information resources: this power arises from the use of graphic metaphor, which can also cause problems of interpretation. A taxonomy is presented of the fundamental design variables available when creating diagrams. User guides, and the diagrams they contain, are integral to products, and their development is the business of information designers. The scope of information design has been extended enormously now that diagrams may be animated, interactive and distributed digitally around the globe. The multimedia technical documentation system developed at Coventry University, called the 'cinegram', is outlined, and the re-utilisation of three-dimensional CAD data for instructional purposes at Rolls-Royce Aerospace is described. Future research is signalled, including the possibilities for hybrid 2-D and 3-D interactive diagrammatic documents.


It was established that 2/3 of extrasenses sustained head injury, clinical death etc. The same ratio are left-handed. It is this group that show the déjà vu phenomenon and abnormal orientation in time and space. It is suggested that in several subjects organic lesions of the brain do not result in neurological deficit, but create preconditions for the appearance of extrasensory capabilities in the victims. The necessity is postulated for a detailed and mass screening of extrasenses by neurologists that may create a basis for scientific elaboration and understanding of this complex, interesting and unclear phenomenon.


ABSTRACT Electricity energy has a crucial importance role for social and economic developments all over the world. Nowadays, the worldwide generation of electricity mostly depends on conventional sources. These sources are limited in the environment and also responsible for ecological problems like environmental pollution. Renewable energy sources have important aspects such as feasibility, efficiency, and environment-friendly in comparison to conventional energy resources. In order to overcome environmental problems, this proposed study focuses on solar photovoltaic hybrid system for eco-friendly electric vehicle charging and house based on machine learning system. In order to realize numerical study, Homer Pro and PVSOL software are used. Various parameters of economic feasibility, sizing strategies with logical advancements, and optimization methods are numerically considered and analyzed to compare measurement one.


Node architectures in wireless sensor networks often have to balance ultra-low-power idling, with an occasional need for high performance, due in part to the sporadic nature of the phenomena they usually monitor. Higher performance processors, with more computing resources, peripherals, and larger on-chip memories, typically also have larger idle power dissipation. Existing node platforms employing off-theshelf microcontrollers target one point in a tradeoff space, and are either resource constrained and low power, or are high performance and less power efficient. Rather than employing a single processor implementation that is limited to one point in the tradeoff space, an alternative approach is the use of multi-microcontroller designs. This is feasible since many sensor network applications have a fair amount of coarse-grained parallelism, ranging from protocol stack pipeline parallelism to event-level concurrency. Motivated by these observations, and by recent attempts in the research literature to develop programming models, language implementations, and system software for platforms consisting of networks of resource-constrained computing elements, a hardware platform, Ladon, was developed. The platform implements a miniature reusable multimicrocontroller module for use in wireless sensor network research. This paper presents the system architecture of the Ladon processor module and evaluates its hardware implementation.


The study of continental Portuguese criticism on the short story has shown that it has been rather limited in quantity although the conto (literᲩo moderno) is highly esteemed in Portuguese fiction studies. Upon a close reading, and following a study of the theoretical distinction between genre and mode, the conclusion that continental Portuguese short story criticism and theory had been under the spell of Anglo American short story theory, becomes readily apparent. This influx of Anglo-American theoretical positions through the mediation of Latin American theories and due to the powerful influence of narratology in modern Portuguese Fiction studies reveals how theorists have heavily relied on later works of second wave short story criticism (1976-1989) in the Anglo-American critical tradition. This reliance carried over a fatal error, for Anglo-American criticism mistook genre for mode and ascribed a false universal nature to genre description, in part as a result of a retrospective illusion which represented Poe's critical writings on the short story as authoritative, timeless and complete. Bringing these insights, drawn from the Anglo-American tradition of short story theory and criticism, to bear upon the Portuguese short story, while taking into account both the history of the Portuguese short story and the findings of genre pragmatics, it has not proved impossible to select an appropriate literary corpus for further analysis. Using French inspired discourse analysis, clear results surfaced concerning the specific strategies utilized most frequently by the fifteen writers selected: techniques of deletion, summary, and acceleration. Surprisingly, external analepsis showed a strong presence in virtually all of the selected fictions, demonstrating a clear difference between the Portuguese short story practices and the Anglo-American theory, and thus, showing a wide gap between theory and practice in Portuguese short fiction studies. The most prominent deviating feature is that the original (oral) communication scheme of story-telling is internalized in the fiction, that is, both a narrator and narratee are present, almost bodily. The resulting strategy is one in which narrator and narratee exchange positions: the original narrator merely serves as a device to communicate the story to the reader. Besides this clearly present poetics of intimacy and the strategy of narrator turned into narratee, strong differences occurred for three specific categories which have been consistently highlighted by Portuguese theorists: the protagonist narrated time and narrated space. Moreover, the results of the analysis, in terms of these three categories, helps account for the density of the short story and suggest a suitable metaphor for the place of the (Portuguese) short story as such. Inhabiting the interstices of space, time and reality as a third term, the Portuguese short story can likewise be seen as a tertium genus: between poetry and prose.


Strategic messaging is ever more important in the age of explosive social media, and not all information on the Internet is benign. Negative information campaigns were used by Hitler in the Austrian Anschluss, and more recently by Vladimir Putin in the annexation of Crimea and the conflicts in Donetsk and Luhansk. Similarly, seeds of public dissent and discord have been entering through Russian trolls and bots into American social media. Central and Eastern European countries are particularly vulnerable to negative messaging from Russia, or even from terrorist groups. This article delves into cultural paradigms of the US, Russia and numerous Central and Eastern European societies to uncover cultural areas of vulnerability to outside influences; how the cultural underpinnings of power, competition, individualism, uncertainty avoidance, long term orientation and indulgence can highlight openings to negative influences. It concludes with ideas for nations to guard against unwanted information attacks.


This study proposes to analyse in an exploratory way the state of innovation and production systems in Swiss biotechnology and especially its innovative capacity and related factors. As biotechnology as such cannot be considered as an industrial sector but rather as a set of technologies developed in the field of life sciences, the direct link with science makes innovative capacity a major determinant of competitiveness. While large multinationals, such as biopharmaceuticals, may not need local technology suppliers, the presence of a local industry of research-based firms and technology suppliers is critical, because the industry is, by itself, a major source of growth and social progress. By observing how research and development (R&D) activities are organised in the field of biotechnology, we try to identify the relations existing between universities and the biotechnology industry, but also the relations between biotechnology firms among themselves.


We have observed propagation of edge magnetoplasmon (EMP) modes in graphene in the quantum Hall regime by performing picosecond time-of-flight measurements between narrow contacts on the perimeter of micrometric exfoliated graphene. We find the propagation to be chiral with low attenuation and to have a velocity which is quantized on Hall plateaus. The velocity has two contributions, one arising from the Hall conductivity and the other from carrier drift along the edge, which we were able to separate by their different filling factor dependence. The drift component is found to be slightly less than the Fermi velocity as expected for graphene dynamics in an abrupt edge potential. The Hall conduction contribution is slower than expected and indicates a characteristic length in the Coulomb potential from the Hall charge of about 500 nm. The experiment illustrates how EMP can be coupled to the electromagnetic field, opening the perspective of GHz to THz chiral plasmonics applications to devices such as voltage controlled phase shifters, circulators, switches and compact, tunable ring resonators.


Numerous EEG-based brain-computer interface (BCI) systems that are being developed focus on novel feature extraction algorithms, classification methods and combining existing approaches to create hybrid BCIs. Several recent studies demonstrated various advantages of hybrid BCI systems in terms of an improved accuracy or number of commands available for the user. But still, BCI systems are far from realization for daily use. Having high performance with less number of channels is one of the challenging issues that persists, especially with hybrid BCI systems, where multiple channels are necessary to record information from two or more EEG signal components. Therefore, this work proposes a single-channel (C3 or C4) hybrid BCI system that combines motor imagery (MI) and steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) approaches. This study demonstrates that besides MI features, SSVEP features can also be captured from C3 or C4 channel. The results show that due to rich feature information (MI and SSVEP) at these channels, the proposed hybrid BCI system outperforms both MI- and SSVEP-based systems having an average classification accuracy of 85.6 ± 7.7% in a two-class task.


For many indigenous women of Latin America, their association as bearers of culture hindered their ability to efficaciously engage in national society. Yet their subordinate position as females in patriarchal communities conversely afforded them more freedom than men to negotiate their gender norms, rights, and obligations. Based on archival documents and oral histories, an examination of quotidian Mayan life in early-twentieth-century highland Guatemala reveals competing gender codes. Mayan women's efforts to expand their autonomy ranged from cross-dressing to wielding tools traditionally reserved for males. While these activities loosened the reins of gender limitations, they were not necessarily harbingers of improved lifestyles. Often women who transgressed gender identities experienced more oppression than liberation. Against the backdrop of Guatemala's effort to count itself among the world's modern nations by instituting liberal reforms and championing the ideas of positivism, these gender negotiations seem at once both appropriate and radical. When dictators Manuel Estrada Cabrera (1898-1920) and General Jorge Ubico (1931-1944) sought to impose order and progress, they assumed patriarchy was immutable; in contrast, contemporary Mayan gender benders exposed its organic nature.


Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was introduced during in situ synthesis of hydroxyapatite (HA) in neutral collagen (COL) solution and final PVA-COL-HA nanohybrids were achieved via sequential steps including gelation by fibrillogenesis, freezing-thawing physical crosslinking, removal of unreacted residues and dehydration. This method is expected to endow the pure PVA with good bioactivity and meanwhile the presence of elastic PVA would improve the properties of COL-HA composites. The phase, microstructure and possible molecular interactions of the achieved PVA-COL-HA nanohybrids were analyzed by using X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The results indicate that the inorganic phase is poorly crystallized apatite with a nanometer size due to the confinement of organic macromolecules which forms a network structure.


Access to education is not freely available to all. Open Educational Resources (OERs) have the potential to change the playing field in terms of an individual's right to education. The Open University in the United Kingdom was founded almost forty years ago on the principle of 'open' access with no entry requirements necessary. The University develops innovative high quality multiple media distance-learning courses. In a new venture called OpenLearn , The Open University is making its course materials freely available worldwide on the Web as OERs ( see http://www.open.ac.uk/openlearn). How might other institutions make use of these distance-learning materials? The paper starts by discussing the different contexts wherein two institutions operate and the inequalities that exist between them. One institution is a university based in South Africa and the other is a college located in the United Kingdom. Both institutions, however, deliver distance-learning courses. The second part of the paper discusses preliminary findings when OERs are considered for tertiary education at these two institutions. The findings emphasise some of the opportunities and challenges that exist if these two institutions adopt OERs.


As a confluence of data mining and World Wide Web technologies, it is now possible to perform data mining on Web log records collected from the Internet Web-page access history. The behaviour of Web page readers is imprinted in the Web server log files. Analyzing and exploring regularities in this behaviour can improve the system performance, enhance the quality and delivery of Internet information services to the end user, and identify populations of potential customers for electronic commerce. Thus, by observing people using collections of data, data mining can bring a considerable contribution to digital library designers. In a joint effort between the TeleLearning-NCE (Networks of Centres of Excellence) project on the Virtual University and the NCE-IRIS project on data mining, we have been developing a knowledge discovery tool, called WebLogMiner, for mining Web server log files. This paper presents the design of WebLogMiner, reports current progress and outlines future work in this direction.


Purpose: Using a mixed methods approach, this study aimed to develop a better understanding of school administrators' perceptions of teacher evaluation systems, specific to physical education (PE). Method: This study used two sources of data collection: (a) a survey sent to administrators (n = 19) in one urban school district and (b) a formal semistructured interview with 10 administrators from the original surveyed group. Results: Statements from the survey indicated that administrators valued PE, but could not control policies concern-ing amount and quality of PE. Administrators also felt that they were not properly trained in PE teacher evaluation and needed help. Four common themes that emerged from the interview data were (1) I value PE, but I live in reality (administrators value PE, but practice within their reality); (2) good teaching is good teaching; (3) I know my limitations, and I want/need help (relative to teacher evaluation in PE); and (4) where's the training? (administrators felt there were short-comings in their training specific to teacher evaluation). Conclusion: Evidence from this study suggests more training for administrators in PE teacher evaluation is needed, along with a content-specific evaluation instrument. Subscribe to TPE


Genetic dissection of the S rat genome has provided strong evidence for the presence of 2 interacting blood pressure quantitative trait loci (QTLs), termed QTL1 and QTL2, on rat chromosome 5. However, the identities of the underlying interacting genetic factors remain unknown. Further experiments targeted to identify the interacting genetic factors by the substitution mapping approach alone are difficult because of the interdependency of natural recombinations to occur at the 2 QTLs. We hypothesized that the interacting genetic factors underlying these 2 QTLs may interact at the level of gene transcription and thereby represent expression QTLs or eQTLs. To detect these interacting expression QTLs, a custom QTL chip containing the annotated genes within QTL1 and QTL2 was developed and used to conduct a transcriptional profiling study of S and 2 congenic strains that retain either 1 or both of the QTLs. The results uncovered an interaction between 2 transcription factor genes, Dmrta2 and Nfia. Furthermore, the "biological signature" elicited by these 2 transcription factors was differential between the congenic strain that retained Lewis alleles at both QTL1 and QTL2 compared with the congenic strain that retained Lewis alleles at QTL1 alone. A network of transcription factors potentially affecting blood pressure could be traced, lending support to our hypothesis.


If we presume an organizational ontology of complex, dynamic change, then what role remains for strategic intent? If managerial action is said to consist of adaptive responsiveness, then what are the foundations of value on the basis of which strategic decisions can be made? In this essay, we respond to these questions and extend the existing strategy process literature by turning to the Aristotelian concept of prudence, or practical wisdom. According to Aristotle, practical wisdom involves the virtuous capacity to make decisions and take actions that promote the "good life" for the "polis". We explore contemporary interpretations of this concept in literature streams adjacent to strategy and determine that practical wisdom can be developed by engaging in interpretative dialogue and aesthetically‐rich experience. With these elements in view, we re‐frame strategy processes as occasions to develop the human capacity for practical wisdom.


Health, cultural, social, community and environmental psychologists have foregrounded the importance of links between places and daily practices in the construction of the self and wellbeing. This article explores the role domestic gardening plays in self reconstructing among older Chinese immigrants. Core issues explored include the participants' experiences of a sense of loss and the need for new connections in their lives, the role of gardening in the cultivation of a sense of rootedness in a new country and the ways in which family relationships and tensions between older adults and their children are played out in relation to household gardening and renovations.


An effect of addition of 2 mass % aluminum powder on the oxidation rate of magnesia-carbon refractory, MgO-C, containing 5 mass % carbon has been investigated by measuring weight change with a thermobalance for the cubic specimens in the temperature range from 1073 to 1823 K in air. The oxidation rate of carbon was measured by analyzing the residual carbon in the specimens at some oxidation time. The variations of the weight with oxidation time at temperatures from 1273 to 1673 K showed the similar tendency. The oxidation rate of carbon in the MgO-C refractory with 2 mass % of aluminum additive was a little smaller than that of the MgO-C refractory with no additives. When the oxidation temperature increased to 1823 K, the weight change became very small. It was suggested that the gaps between MgO grains in the thin oxidation layer were bridged by MgO·Al2O3, which was identified by a X-ray diffraction method.


Abstract. Gases in ice cores are invaluable archives of past environmental changes (e.g., the past atmosphere). However, gas fractionation processes after bubble closure in the firn are poorly understood, although increasing evidence indicates preferential leakages of smaller molecules (e.g., neon, oxygen, and argon) from the closed bubbles through the ice matrix. These fractionation processes are believed to be responsible for the observed millennial δO2/N2 variations in ice cores, linking ice core chronologies with orbital parameters. In this study, we investigated high-resolution δAr/N2 of the GISP2 (Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2), NGRIP (North Greenland Ice Core Project), and Dome Fuji ice cores for the past few thousand years. We find that δAr/N2 at multidecadal resolution on the "gas-age scale" in the GISP2 ice core has a significant negative correlation with accumulation rate and a positive correlation with air contents over the past 6000 years, indicating that changes in overloading pressure induced δAr/N2 fractionation in the firn. Furthermore, the GISP2 temperature and accumulation rate for the last 4000 years have nearly equal effects on δAr/N2 with sensitivities of 0.72 ± 0.1 ‰ °C−1 and −0.58 ± 0.09 ‰ (0.01 m ice year−1)−1, respectively. To understand the fractionation processes, we applied a permeation model for two different processes of bubble pressure build-up in the firn, "pressure sensitive process" (e.g., microbubbles: 0.3–3 % of air contents) with a greater sensitivity to overloading pressures and "normal bubble process". The model indicates that δAr/N2 in the bubbles under the pressure sensitive process are negatively correlated with the accumulation rate due to changes in overloading pressure. On the other hand, the normal bubbles experience only limited depletion (