The choice of hyperparameters and the selection of algorithms is a crucial part in machine learning. Bayesian optimization methods and successive halving have been applied successfully to optimize hyperparameters automatically. Therefore, we propose to combine both methods by estimating the initial population of incremental evaluation, our variation of successive halving, by means of Bayesian optimization. We apply the proposed methodology to the challenging problem of optimizing neural network architectures automatically and investigate how state of the art hyperparameter optimization methods perform for this task. In our evaluation of these automatic methods, we are able to achieve human expert performance on the MNIST data set but we are not able to achieve similar good results for the CIFAR-10 data set. However, the automated methods find shallow convolutional neural networks that outperform human crafted shallow neural networks with respect to classification error and training time.


This study analyzed samples taken along internal transects through a small waste-stabilization pond system in New Zealand that had rock filters installed between the final maturation cells. The aim of the study was to determine the respective importance of the ponds and rock filters for phosphorus (P) removal since routine monitoring from the preceding 2 months had indicated effluent P levels below 2 g/m3 for influent levels around 9 g/m3. Despite the filters being constructed from a reactive sorbent (i.e., limestone) it was found that phosphorus removal was mainly occurring in the ponds. A solubility analysis suggested that phosphorus removal may have been due to moderate calcium hardness levels of around 60 g/m3 as Ca2+, while an analysis of sludge samples in the system suggested that the ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the sludge was consistent with the precipitation of phosphorus as calcium hydroxyapatite.Key words: waste-stabilization ponds, phosphorus removal, limestone rock filters.


This introduction offers an overview of the research discussed in the 37 chapters in the Oxford Handbook of American Economic History. It discusses the path of economic growth and development and the methods that economic historians have used to measure and analyze them. Over the last 300 years population growth has slowed, and the population has lived longer and healthier lives. The economy has shifted from predominantly agricultural through a major industrialization period into a service-based modern economy largely located in urban areas. Per capita incomes have grown largely through increased productivity from improved technologies, better education, improved organizations of processes, and governments that established private property rights, rule of law, and protections of individual freedom. Capital aspects of the economy have varied more than commonly known, and financial institutions have gone through several innovations as their regulatory regimes have waxed and waned. A diverse population of men, women, ethnic groups, races, and ages played major roles in labor markets. Labor market institutions changed with the elimination of slavery, the development of "at will" contracts, internal labor markets, and changing treatment of collective bargaining. In the federal system of governments, states were initially the dominant actors, followed by local governments in the late nineteenth century, and then an expansion of all governments and the national government in the last hundred years, partially in response to the major crises of the World Wars and the Great Depression.


Abstract This research discusses the development of urban transport in Medan during the first half of 20 th century. In this period, Medan was the city at outside Java that had the most good strides in social and economic life. Although the urban situation had a remarkable development, but the transport system was not complicated as well as Batavia or Surabaya. Therefore, the problem of this thesis emphasize the urban transportation development in the midst of Medan urban's development. The urban spaces, the dynamics of employing transportation, and regulation are some important factors which discuss in this thesis. This research analyzing primary and secondary sources which include archives, newspapers, magazines, photographs, and other references. There are several findings in this thesis. First , most of the urban streets in Medan were built originally for the plantation needs, before then became the public road and the urban main street. Second , although the mechanic vehicle had existed, but generally, the urban center was filled by the smaller number of upper middle class rather than lower middle class groups which generally live at suburbs. Third , the policy on the Medan urban transport system was not fully held by the city government, because the other parties of non-government also intervenes to adjust their personal or group interests. Fourth , public transport which could carry mass passenger tends to be marginalized by economic reasons, i.e. the economic opportunity where people engaged in transportation was lost and effect on peoples income. Fifth , the sorts of urban transport in Medan are connoting also to social symbol. Keywords: Development, transportation, city, spatial.


The Tao Te Ching, or Book of the Way, is an ancient Chinese collection of 81 wisdom verses. In "The Simple Explanation" model, the Tao spoken of by Lao Tzu refers to the metaversal information and principles of organization that have informed our universe since the moment before creation. When one loses touch with the metaversal consciousness, one loses the Tao's information pipeline. Once your personal Unit of Consciousness has lost its way, you no longer have true goodness. Morality is what you are left with once love departs. Morality is a system of rules meant to engender Godly behavior in those who no longer know God.


Ab s t r Ac t Aims and objectives: Percutaneous nephrostomy (PCN) is an interventional procedure which is mainly used in the decompression of the renal collecting system. Urinary diversion by this procedure can improve renal function. We examined the role of PCN in the management of advanced cervical cancer patients presenting with obstructive uropathy with a detailed analysis of improvement in the quality of life, morbidity, and survival rates. Materials and methods: We prospectively evaluated 50 gynecology patients having cervical cancer with obstructive uropathy and deranged renal functions. A PCN was performed under local anesthesia using the Seldinger technique. Positions of catheters were confirmed with the nephrostogram at the end of the procedures. Health survey was conducted before the PCN procedure, 1st week, and 4th week and at the 3rd month after the PCN procedure. Results: PCN was successfully established in all patients with the recovery of renal function. The median serum creatinine before and 1 month after the procedure was 6.6 and 2.0, respectively. Complications relating to the procedure (60%) were fever/sepsis 7 (14%), bleeding in 5 (10%), pericatheter leak in 10 (20%), and slippage of catheter requiring replacement in 7 (14%). Overall, 45 (90%) patients died of the primary disease and 5 are alive. The 3, 6, 9, and 12 months' death rates were 8 (16%), 15 (30%), 21 (42%), and 2 (1%), respectively. Fifty percent of death occurred within 6 months and 90% of death occurred by 9 months. Conclusion: PCN provides a significant improvement in renal function parameters in majority of the patients. The quality of life is improved significantly at 1 week and 1 month which is not sustained at 3 months. As the benefits of PCN urinary diversion after 3 months are not established, counseling is essential and the wishes of the patient and her family have to be considered.


The Risk Assessment Subcommittee of the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria in Foods has prepared a generic document on the principles of risk assessment as applied to biological agents that can cause human foodborne disease. Typical biological agents include bacteria, viruses, fungi, helminths, protozoa, algae, parasites, and the toxic products that these agents may produce. Basic principles elaborated to characterize food pathogen risks include the four broadly accepted components of risk assessment. The role of surveillance and investigational activities to link biological agents and their food sources to consumer illness is described as is the role of predictive modeling for food pathogens.


In the age of ubiquitous media and globalization, the entertainment industry has changed dramatically to accommodate a more comprehensive and diverse audience. As such, research into the influence of culture on entertainment and the media is necessary in order to facilitate further developments in the industry. Handbook of Research on the Impact of Culture and Society on the Entertainment Industry provides a review of the academic and popular literature on the relationship between communications and media studies, cinema, advertising, public relations, religion, food tourism, art, sports, technology, culture, marketing, and entertainment practices. Founded on international research, this publication is essential for upper-level students, researchers, academicians, business executives, and industry professionals seeking knowledge on the current scope of the entertainment industry.


The integration into one automated system of the qualitative knowledge of the physician, who is accustomed to visually scanning a paper record, with possibly sophisticated signal analysis tools that must replace the visual scanning is addressed. The automated interpretation of bioelectrical signals must combine signal analysis knowledge with knowledge about the application domain of the signal and, as such, requires the knowledge of two experts. The role of event-oriented interpretation and the use of spatial and temporal context is discussed. An architecture for a system tailored to fit the characteristics of automated bioelectrical signal interpretation is described. It contains two separate, cooperating knowledge bases, and it makes use of object-oriented knowledge representation and spatial and temporal operators. An example of the automated detection of epileptogenic electroencephalograph sharp transients is presented.<<ETX>>


Ocular trauma is the under-recognized cause of unilateral blindness particularly in developing nations.The growing demand on generated electricity has also led to increase in electricity related occupational trauma. We report a case of bilateral cataract in a 22 years professional electrician. He survived a high voltage electric shock and sustained burn injury on the right side of his head. Ocular examination revealed typical anterior as well as posterior subcapsular cataract in right eye and visually insignificant early anterior subcapsular vacuoles in the left eye. There was a significant difference in lenticular opacification density in between these two eyes. Uneventful phacoemulsification and foldable posterior chamber intraocular lens implantation was performed in the right eye and the sufferer was rehabilitated with normal best corrected visual acuity. The possibility of ocular complications and importance of ocular screening is emphasized in the survivors of electrical injury. The lenticular opacities can be successfully managed with surgery, however the final visual acuity depends on damage to other vital ocular structures. The clinical features, pathogenic mechanism of these opacities and review of the literatures are discussed.


To investigate the optimum specimen for quantifying low, but abnormal, concentrations of albumin in urine, we assessed the analytical and biological components of variation in first morning, random untimed, and 24-h urine specimens from 11 apparently healthy individuals. The results were expressed in terms of albumin concentration, albumin/creatinine ratio, and albumin excretion rate. Analytical methods generally can meet the analytical goal of CV '18%. For reasons detailed herein, we prefer measurement of the albumin concentration in the first morning specimen. Expressing results as an albumin/creatinine ratio has little advantage. Albumin concentrations in first morning urines from 16 diabetic subjects showed larger intra-individual variation than for nondiabetic subjects but clearly fell into two groups: those with consistently normal albumin concentrations in urine and those with abnormal concentrations in some specimens. The intrinsic biological variation of the latter group means that the ideal 100% nosological specificity cannot be achieved with any cutoff point without inclusion of a large proportion of the former. Qualitative testing with a latex-agglutination technique also demonstrates this problem. Use of data on biological variation allows development of an appropriate clinical strategy to investigate diabetic patients.


A color test has been developed for the selection and identification of mutants in Neurospora crassa, constitutive for the three normally inducible enzymes which convert quinate to protocatechuate. By this means seven such mutants have been recovered after ultra violet irradiation of wild type and have been shown to be allelic (or very closely linked) to the qa-1(C) mutants previously obtained by other means. Thus, the regulation of the synthesis of these three catabolic enzymes is indicated to be under the control of a single gene, qa-1(+).


ABSTRACT Both source area and wave sorting affect the heavy-mineral distributions of beach sands. Although source and sorting effects are difficult to distinguish, they can be separated on four Oregon beaches by studying the magnetic fraction of the sand. Prominent headlands bound the four beaches, which are located on the southwestern Oregon coast. On three beaches the percentage of magnetite in the sand from the upper swash zone consistently increases toward the north end of each beach, apparently owing to selective sorting during littoral transport. However, the percentages of chromium and titanium in the magnetite are generally independent of the relative location of the samples along the beach and therefore independent of sorting effects. Each beach appears to be characterized by a fairly distinct range of Ti/Cr in the magnetic fraction, and the range differs from beach to beach. The magnetite percentage and the Ti/Cr range suggest that sorting and source effects can be distinguished on beaches rich in "black" sands, and that sand transport around headlands in this area is not extensive enough to mask source differences. The results of this study suggest that sorting and source effects can be distinguished wherever there are chemical or mineralogical differences in a restricted density fraction.


The effects of temperature on transmission through the voltage-sensitive giant motor synapse (GMS) were investigated in crayfish both experimentally and in computer simulation. The GMS is part of the fast reflex escape pathway of the crayfish and mediates activation from the lateral giant (LG) command neurone to the motor giant (MoG) flexor motoneurone. The investigation was motivated by an apparent mismatch between the temperature sensitivity of the activation time constant of the GMS, with a Q10 reported to be close to 11, and that of the active membrane properties of LG and MoG, which are thought to have Q10 values close to 3. Our initial hypothesis was that at cold temperatures the very slow activation of the GMS conductance would reduce the effectiveness of transmission compared with higher temperatures. However, the reverse was found to be the case. Effective transmission through the GMS was reliable at low temperatures, but failed at an upper temperature limit that varied between 12 degrees C and 25 degrees C in isolated nerve cord preparations. The upper limit was extended above 30 degrees C in semi-intact preparations where the GMS was less disturbed by dissection. The results of experiments and simulations both indicate that transmission becomes more reliable at low temperatures because the longer-duration presynaptic spikes are able to drive more current through the GMS into the MoG, which is more excitable at low temperatures. Conversely, effective transmission is difficult at high temperatures because the transfer of charge through the GMS is reduced and because the input resistance of MoG is lowered as its current threshold is increased. The effect of the high Q10 of the GMS activation is to help preserve effective transmission through the synapse at high temperatures and so extend the temperature range for effective operation of the escape circuit.


Blind equalizers avoid the transmission of pilot sequences, allowing a more efficient use of the channel bandwidth. Normally, after a first rough equalization is achieved, it is necessary to switch these equalizers to a decision-directed (DD) mode to reduce the steady-state mean-square error (MSE) to acceptable levels. The selection of an appropriate MSE threshold for switching between the blind and the DD modes is critical to obtain a good overall performance; however, this is not an easy task, since it depends on several factors such as the signal constellation, the communication channel, or the signal-to-noise ratio. In this paper, we propose an equalization scheme that adaptively combines a blind and a DD equalizers running in parallel. The combination is itself adapted in a blind manner, and as a result the overall scheme can automatically switch between the component filters, avoiding the need to set the transition MSE level a priori. The performance of our proposal is illustrated both analytically and through an extensive set of simulations, where we show its advantages with respect to existing hard- and soft-switching equalization schemes.


Dr Jacob Mackiewicz, a Jewish-Polish neurologist, described the cruralis phenomenon related to injury of the femoral nerve or of the fourth lumbar root. In 1912, only one year after graduation maxima cum laude from Moscow University, the 25-year-old Dr Jacob Mackiewicz described the cruralis phenomenon, regarded in the German and Slavic medical literature as the Mackiewicz sign: 'the patient lies prone, the examiner lifts the thigh in one hand, with the other hand, bends the patient's knee slowly; this manoeuvre causes severe pain in the anterior part of the thigh and over the groin. This manoeuvre indicates a femoral nerve injury'.


BACKGROUND
The scientific literature examining effective treatments for opioid dependent adults clearly indicates that pharmacotherapy is a necessary and acceptable component of effective treatments for opioid dependence. Nevertheless, no studies have been published that systematically assess the effectiveness of the pharmacological detoxification among adolescents.

OBJECTIVES
To assess the effectiveness of any detoxification treatment alone or in combination with psychosocial intervention compared with no intervention, other pharmacological intervention or psychosocial interventions on completion of treatment, reducing the use of substances and improving health and social status.

SEARCH METHODS
We searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (2014, Issue 1), PubMed (January 1966 to January 2014), EMBASE (January 1980 to January 2014), CINHAL (January 1982 to January 2014), Web of Science (1991-January 2014) and reference lists of articles.

SELECTION CRITERIA
Randomised controlled clinical trials comparing any pharmacological interventions alone or associated with psychosocial intervention aimed at detoxification with no intervention, placebo, other pharmacological intervention or psychosocial intervention in adolescents (13 to 18 years).

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS
We used standard methodological procedures recommended by The Cochrane Collaboration

MAIN RESULTS
Two trials involving 190 participants were included. One trial compared buprenorphine with clonidine for detoxification. No difference was found for drop out: risk ratio (RR) 0.45 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.20 to 1.04) and acceptability of treatment: withdrawal score mean difference (MD): 3.97 (95% CI -1.38 to 9.32). More participants in the buprenorphine group initiated naltrexone treatment: RR 11.00 (95% CI 1.58 to 76.55), quality of evidence moderate.The other trial compared maintenance treatment versus detoxification treatment: buprenorphine-naloxone maintenance versus buprenorphine detoxification. For drop out the results were in favour of maintenance treatment: RR 2.67 (95% CI 1.85, 3.86), as well as for results at follow-up RR 1.36 [95% CI 1.05to 1.76); no differences for use of opiate, quality of evidence low.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS
It is difficult to draw conclusions on the basis of two trials with few participants. Furthermore, the two studies included did not consider the efficacy of methadone that is still the most frequent drug utilised for the treatment of opioid withdrawal. One possible reason for the lack of evidence could be the difficulty in conducting trials with young people due to practical and ethical reasons.


Low power consumption is the necessity for the integrated circuit design in CMOS technology of nanometerscale. Recent research proves that to achieve low power dissipation, implementatio n of approximate designs is the best design when compared to accurate designs. In most of the multimedia applications, DSP blocks has been used as the core blocks. Most of the video and image processing algorithms implemented by these DSP blocks, where result will be in the form of image or video for human observing. As human sense of observation is less, the output of the DSP blocks allows being numerically approximate instead of being accurate. The concession on numerical exactness allows proposing approximate analysis. In this project approximate adders,approximate compressors and multipliers are proposed. Two approximate adders namely PA1 and PA2 are proposed which are of type TGA which provides better results like PA1 comprises of 14 transistors and 2 error distance, achieves reduction in delay by 64.9 % and reduction in power by 74.33% whereas the TGA1 had 16 transistors and more power dissipation.PA2 comprises of 20 transistors and 2 error distance. Similarly PA2 achieves delay reduction by 51.43%, power gets reduced by 67.2%. PDP is reduced by 61.97 % whereas TGA2 had 22 transistors. Approximate 4-2 compressor was proposed in this project to reduce number of partial product stages. The compressor design in circuit level took 30 tr ansistor s w ith 4 er rors out of 16 co mbinations wher eas existing compressor design 1 took 38 and design 2 took 36 transistors. By using the proposed adder and compressors, approximate 4x4 multiplier is proposed. The proposed multiplier achieves delay 124.56 (ns) and power 29.332 (uW) which is reduced by 68.01 % in terms of delay and 95.97 % in terms of pow er when co mp ared to ac cur ate mu lti plier.


With hike in road traffic due to globalization, it has become a necessity to develop a transportation network which could handle the present as well as the future traffic efficiently. To do so, proper designing and analysis of various infrastructures is to be done. One such infrastructure induced in road network to increase the efficiency of intersections by reducing the delay is roundabouts. Presently, as such no robust model is available for Indian traffic conditions to determine the performance of roundabouts. So, an attempt has been made to develop a model to determine performance of roundabouts based on capacity. From the existing global models, it was observed that the geometrics of the roundabout played a crucial role in addressing the roundabout capacity. Thus, with this aspect as foundation, a model for entry capacity was developed for heterogeneity in Indian traffic. For modelling, data from various roundabout with varying geometry and flow properties were selected for including affect due to variations. In all, five geometric elements were observed to have significant impact on capacity. The degree of saturation, determined by taking ratio of the existing mean flow values and estimated capacity was considered as parameter to determine the level of service thresholds using K-means clustering. Most of the entries were found to work at capacity flows, indicating scope for better design aspects. The comparison of developed model with existing models showed that the UK and the Jordan model underestimated the capacity as compared to the developed model


Empirical evidence linking exports to economic growth has been mixed and inconclusive. This study re-examine the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis for Canada by testing for Granger causality from exports to national output growth using vector error correction models (VECM) and the augmented vector autoregressive (VAR) methodology developed in Toda and Yamamoto (1995). Application of recent developments in time series modeling and the inclusion of relevant variables omitted in previous studies help clarify the contradictory results from prior studies on the Canadian economy. The empirical results suggest that a long-run steady state exists among the model's six variables and that Granger causal flow is unidirectional from real exports to real GDP.


To explore the relation between topologic characteristics of dynamic network and performance of the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, the population of PSO is viewed as a network where each particle is represented as a node and the network structure changes dynamically as the fitness of particles varies. Moreover, in this paper, the structural changes involve adding and removing the links but the network size remains the same. Then, two kinds of simulations are conducted. The results from one kind focusing on PSO show that the dynamic network is capable of balancing exploration and exploitation so that the performance of PSO can be improved as long as the weightθis selected properly. In addition, the results from other kind concerning on topologic characteristics of dynamical network indicate the impact of network structure on algorithm behavior and the law of network evolution.


In this paper, we consider an automatic-repeat- request (ARQ) retransmission protocol signaling over a block-fading multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) channel. In particular, we consider fixed rate codes constructed over discrete complex signal constellations. We show that the optimal signal- to-noise ratio (SNR) exponent is given by a modified singleton bound, relating all the system parameters. To demonstrate the practical significance of the theoretical analysis, we present numerical results showing that practical singleton-bound-achieving maximum distance separable codes achieve the optimal SNR exponent.


Survival from out of hospital cardiac arrest is poor: fewer than 10% of patients survive to hospital discharge. It is well known that good quality immediate bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and early defibrillation using publicly located automated external defibrillators (AEDs) increase the chances of survival. Many bystanders are reluctant to help because they do not know what to do or fear causing further harm to the casualty. Medical students are often thought by friends and family to be the ones who would know what to do in an emergency. Plenty of medical students, however, will not feel well versed enough in first aid and CPR to deal with a life threatening emergency.

Several apps are available that teach various clinical skills including first aid and resuscitation skills. Although these are unlikely to be a surrogate for hands-on first aid training they do provide the opportunity to learn some basic lifesaving skills or brush up …


A central challenge in observational studies of galaxy formation is how to associate progenitor galaxies with their descendants at lower redshifts. One promising approach is to link galaxies at fixed number density rather than fixed luminosity or mass. This method is effective if stellar mass rank order is broadly conserved through cosmic time. In this paper, we use the Guo et al. semi-analytical model to analyze under what circumstances this assumption is valid in the context of a cosmological simulation. Specifically, we select progenitor galaxies at a constant number density and compare the stellar mass evolution of their descendants to the evolution at a constant number density. The median stellar mass of the descendants increases by a factor of four (0.6 dex) from z = 3 to z = 0. Constant number density selection reproduces this to within 40% (0.15 dex) over a wide range of number densities. We show that the discrepancy primarily results from scatter in the stellar mass growth rates and merging. After applying simple, observationally based corrections for these processes, the discrepancy is reduced to 12% (0.05 dex). We conclude that number density selection can be used to predict the median descendant mass of high-redshift progenitor galaxies. The main uncertainty in this study is that semi-analytical models do not reproduce the observed mass evolution of galaxies, which makes the quantitative aggregate effects of star formation, merging, and quenching on the rank order of galaxies somewhat uncertain.


Regular engagement outside may promote healthy physical and psychological development as well as a respect and appreciation for nature. This exploratory study compared biophilia and attitudes toward nature between young children living in an urban area to those in a rural area. Urban and rural areas may offer different opportunities for exposure and engagement with elements such as water, plants, and animals. A comparison between young children in these settings may determine if experience in these different environments affects their attitudes and biophilia. Thirty-six children (urban n = 27; rural n = 9) participated in one-on-one structured interviews about their attitudes toward and being in nature. Results revealed no significant difference in biophilia between children by geographical area. Common themes in children's attitudes emerged: 1) young children define nature by identifying specific elements; 2) young children are aware that their actions have consequences for the condition of the natural environment; and 3) children understood that the expectations guiding behavior in the natural environment apply to everyone. Preschool children's level of cognitive maturity and individual preferences may be better predictors of biophilia and attitude than location alone. Authors suggest implications for teachers and parents.


Background and Aim: Understanding the correlation between the development of Dysphagia and change in the cervical alignment after cervical spine surgery in patients.
 Methods: From 2017 to 2020, 198 patients were treated with anterior cervical decompression and plate fixation where 12 months examination and study follow-ups are undertaken on 172 patients. Along with, the other 154 patients underwent anterior cervical disc replacement where 12 months extensive follow-ups were commenced on 98 patients. The questionnaire was distributed among 270 patients under 12 months follow-ups to investigate the onset and time of appearance of dysphagia, symptoms, relief, treatment plan and other health issues associated, if any. After getting the detailed feedback, all the patients were divided into the dysphagia group and the control group, to determine the excessive cervical lordosis change and other risk factors were associated with the dysphagia symptom or not.
 Results: The results showed that 12.8% of patients have postoperative dysphagia in anterior cervical discectomy in fusion group and 5.1% of patients have in cervical disc replacement group. According to the regression equation, the excessive change of C2-C7 angle significantly increases the incidence rate of postoperative dysphagia. It was also observed that, the incidence rate of postoperative dysphagia was significantly greater in patients whose C2-C7 angle change more than 5 degree compare to the patients has less than 5 degree C2-C7 angle. The assessed parameters like Sex, age, BMI, operation time, blood loss, surgery approach, revision ratio, the number of surgical segments, the highest surgical segment, and C3 segment doesn't affect the occurrence of dysphagia.
 Conclusions: Development of Dysphagia symptoms are highly prevalent comorbidities after cervical spine surgery in the patients. The change in the Cervical lordosis importantly influencing promoting the occurrence of dysphagia after anterior cervical spine surgery.


This research assessing the influence of various herbs on internal organs broiler . This study using random complete the design, with four replication. Treatment of this research is P0 (Control , commercial feed without additional herbs), P1 (Commercial feed + Herbs of the tongue crocodiles), P1 (Commercial feed + noni), and P3 (Commercial feed + ginger). The subject of research is doc who are being guarded broiler after hatching, until age five weeks, then taken data research. Parameters taken on this research is body weight , the weight of the liver, the heart, gizzard, the intestines, and spleen. This research result indicates , there is a significant difference variations due to the provision of herbs on body weight and weights broiler liver ( p l 0.05), but there is no difference on empedal, the heart, the intestines, and spleen ( p g0.05 ).


This thesis investigates the proposed Web Observatory (WO) which will offer access to globally shared data and apps,delivering insights into the nature of the Web and also society-on-the-Web. Understanding how different groups conceptualise and engage with WO concepts is vital to understanding the drivers for adoption and the requirements for adoption between groups. Observations from the field and analysis of work relating to WOs are combined and compared with established theories of innovation and adoption. I argue that a purely technological definition of WO is necessary-but-not-sufficient to capture the set of complex interactions and interests that a network of Observatories at Web scale would need to reflect. A new socio-technical 'DNA' model of Web Observatories is developed combining technical and architectural definitions (D factors) with socially-embedded narratives (N factors) and group perspectives and motivations (A factors) .Visual model of D's, N's and A's and a new perspective on parallel modelling for technically- vs socially constructed models is introduced . An inductive approach, which combines case studies, content analysis and extensive interviews/ observations blends data from a broad range of sources across academia, business and government. A new WO taxonomy is established and iterative analysis refines a multi-perspective model of WOs employing a constructivist grounded theory (CGT) lens. An approach combining Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) and visual mapping techniques using a hybrid concept mapping/TRIZ approach is developed to model the findings. Social theories are considered around individual/shared meanings to enable a definition of WO to be embedded (framed) within the social context of the individuals and groups who seek to use WO to address specific problems and outcomes. This thesis has implications for how new Observatories may be designed and built and also for how existing systems and sources may be recruited into a global Observatory eco-system through a better understanding not only of how participants may join but also, critically, why they would choose to do so. The models/techniques developed here may find a wider application for the study of socio-technical systems and social machines.


Knowledge of sea turtle demographic rates is central to modeling their population dynamics, but few studies have quantitatively synthesized existing data globally. Here, we used a Bayesian hierarchical model to conduct a meta-analysis of published von Bertalanffy growth curve parameters (growth coefficient, K; asymptotic length, L∞) for chelonid sea turtles. We identified 34 studies for 5 of 6 extant chelonids that met minimum selection criteria. We implemented a suite of models that included a multivariate normal likelihood on the log-transformed values of the 2 parameters to evaluate the influence of species, population (regional management unit, RMU), parameter estimation method (mark−recapture, skeletochronology, length-frequency analysis), latitude, and sampled body size range (all sizes, no large, no small, no large or small) on growth parameter estimates. According to information criteria, the best model included a random effect of species. The second best model also included latitude as a fixed effect, but RMU, parameter estimation method, latitude, and sampled body size ultimately did not strongly influence the means or variances of K and L∞ among studies. The apparent lack of RMU effect on parameter estimates within species may be an artifact of the small number of RMUs with published growth parameter estimates. The species-specific, and in some cases RMU-specific, posterior means and standard deviations of K and L∞ from this study would be appropriate priors for future studies of growth in chelonid sea turtles or for models of population dynamics. We highlight the need for expanded study and synthesis of sea turtle somatic growth rates.


West Nile Virus (WNV) is a flavivirus involved in many human infections worldwide. This arthropod-borne virus is directly co-inoculated with mosquito saliva through the epidermis and the dermis during blood meal. WNV starts replicating in the skin before migrating to the draining lymph node, leading to widespread viremia and in some cases to neurological symptoms. Skin is a complex organ composed of different cell types that together perform essential functions such as pathogen sensing, barrier maintenance and immunity. Keratinocytes, which represent 90% of the cells of the epidermis, are the organism's first line of defense, initiating innate immune response by recognizing pathogens through their pattern recognition receptors. Although WNV was previously known to replicate in human primary keratinocytes, the induced inflammatory response remains unknown. The aim of this study was first to characterize the inflammatory response of human primary keratinocytes to WNV infection and then, to assess the potential role of co-inoculated mosquito saliva on the keratinocyte immune response and viral replication. A type I and III interferon inflammatory response associated with an increase of IRF7 but not IRF3 mRNA expression, and dependent on infectious dose, was observed during keratinocyte infection with WNV. Expression of several interferon-stimulated gene mRNA was also increased at 24 h post-infection (p.i.); they included CXCL10 and interferon-induced proteins with tetratricopeptide repeats (IFIT)-2 sustained up until 48 h p.i. Moreover, WNV infection of keratinocyte resulted in a significant increase of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNFα, IL-6) and various chemokines (CXCL1, CXCL2, CXCL8 and CCL20) expression. The addition of Aedes aegypti or Culex quinquefasciatus mosquito saliva, two vectors of WNV infection, to infected keratinocytes led to a decrease of inflammatory response at 24 h p.i. However, only Ae. Aegypti saliva adjunction induced modulation of viral replication. In conclusion, this work describes for the first time the inflammatory response of human primary keratinocytes to WNV infection and its modulation in presence of vector mosquito saliva. The effects of mosquito saliva assessed in this work could be involved in the early steps of WNV replication in skin promoting viral spread through the body.


ABSTRACT Background: Novice coaches receive little attention in the literature as many studies choose to focus on experienced and elite level coaches. Those involved in the development of coaches have a responsibility to understand how novice coaches are navigating their initial coaching experiences within higher education programs. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of novice coaches as athletes and in their current coaching roles. A secondary purpose was to explore how these experiences manifested in novice coaches' observed coach-created motivational climate. Method: Three novice coaches (2 males, 1 female) were recruited from a higher education coach education program. Two practice observations were recorded for each coach and coded via systematic observation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each participant to gather information pertaining to their athletic and coaching history, coaching philosophy, and current coaching position. Using a collective case study approach, interview data and observations were simultaneously reviewed to draw out themes related to participants' experiences. Results: Novice coaches' informal and formal learning contributed to the conceptualization of their coaching philosophies and subsequent coaching behavior, revealing examples of how novice coaches support and undermine various aspects of their coaching philosophies through engagement in empowering and disempowering behaviors. Conclusion: This study extends the knowledge of novice coaches experiences and development of coaching practice during their practicum placement in higher education. Among the discrepancies between coaches' intentions for coaching and their actual coaching, behaviors observed were dependent upon the social context.


Computer-based systems where several nodes exchange information via suitable network interconnections are today exploited in many safety-critical applications, like those belonging to the automotive field. Accurate dependability analysis of such a kind of systems is thus a major concern for designers. In this paper, we present an environment we developed in order to assess the effects of faults in CAN-based networks. We developed an IP core implementing the CAN protocol controller, and we exploited it to set-up a network composed of several nodes. Thanks to the approach we adopted, we were able to assess via simulation-based fault injection the effects of faults both in the bus used to carry information and inside each CAN controller as well. In this paper, we report a detailed description of the environment we set-up and we present some preliminary results we gathered to assess the soundness of the proposed approach.


Critical comments are made on a recent paper by Bergstein
 Schachter
 [ J. Opt. Soc. Am.54, 887 ( 1964)], which deals with the integral equations satisfied by the normal modes of laser resonators with plane-parallel end reflectors. It is pointed out that the paper lacks rigor, and that the numerical results do not agree very well with other published computations. The present state of knowledge relating to these integral equations is summarized.


Berthold Karl Hölldobler studied social insects [3] like ants in Europe and the US during the twentieth and early twenty-first century. He focused on the social behavior of ants, the evolutionary origins of social insects [3], and the way ants use chemicals to communicate with each other. Hölldobler's research reached popular audiences through his co-authored Pulitzer Prize winning book The Ants and through an award winning nature documentary called Ameisen: Die heimliche Weltmacht (Ants: Nature's Secret Power). Hölldobler researched reproductive practices in specific ant species and helped explain how reproductive practices influence, and are influenced by, social behaviors.


Mathieu functions of period $\pi$ or $2\pi$, also called elliptic cylinder functions, were introduced in 1868 by Emile Mathieu together with so-called modified Mathieu functions, in order to help understand the vibrations of an elastic membrane set in a fixed elliptical hoop. These functions still occur frequently in applications today: our interest, for instance, was stimulated by a problem of pulsatile blood flow in a blood vessel compressed into an elliptical cross-section. This paper surveys and recapitulates the historical development of the theory and methods of computation for Mathieu functions and modified Mathieu functions and identifies some gaps in current software capability, particularly to do with double eigenvalues of the Mathieu equation. We demonstrate how to compute Puiseux expansions of the Mathieu eigenvalues about such double eigenvalues, and give methods to compute the generalized eigenfunctions that arise there. In examining Mathieu's original contribution, we bring out that his use of anti-secularity predates that of Lindstedt. For interest, we also provide short biographies of some of the major mathematical researchers involved in the history of the Mathieu functions: Emile Mathieu, Sir Edmund Whittaker, Edward Ince, and Gertrude Blanch.


[1] The western Adriatic margin (eastern Mediterranean), part of the Apennine foreland, is characterized by a differentiated tectonic setting, showing high subsidence rates (up to 1 mm/yr) in the northern area and tectonic uplift (on the order of 0.3–0.5 mm/yr) in the southern part corresponding with the so-called Apulia swell. The central Adriatic marks the transition between these two areas. To calculate subsidence values, the stratigraphy of the central Adriatic has been investigated through the borehole PRAD1.2 (European project Profiles across Mediterranean Sedimentary Systems), the first continuous Quaternary marine record in the Adriatic basin (71.2 m long) reaching the top of Marine Isotope Stage 11 (MIS 11). Subsidence calculations were performed first by applying the backstripping procedure to PRAD1.2, in order to investigate the contribution of sediment load and tectonic driving forces to subsidence. Despite the large error bars, mostly caused by the uncertainties in paleowater depth reconstructions, the values obtained demonstrate that tectonics is the main driver for subsidence in this area. In order to better estimate the subsidence rates, an independent approach is introduced, based on the correlation of the present-day burial depth of past shorelines deposited during the main glacial lowstands, from MIS 2 to MIS 10. The average subsidence rate of about 0.3 mm/yr appears greater than the average sediment supply rate (0.15 mm/yr), and this fact explains the overall backstepping of the 100 kyr regressive depositional sequences on the margin. The results obtained help to improve the understanding of the regional tectonics and can be used for quantitative reconstruction of Quaternary sea level changes in the Adriatic region. In general, the paper shows that even a short (71 m) borehole across a relatively short time span (340 kyr) can be useful for subsidence calculations, provided that a high-resolution definition of its stratigraphy is available and a correlation can be drawn with the geomorphologic proxies such as paleoshoreline deposits.


We consider the problem of finding a dynamically optimal policy to process n jobs on a single machine subject to stochastic breakdowns. We study the preemptive-repeat breakdown model, i.e., if a machine breaks down during the processing of a job, the work done on the job prior to the breakdown is lost and the job will have to be started over again. Our study is built on a general setting, which allows: 1) the uptimes and downtimes of the machine to follow general probability distributions, not necessarily independent of each other; 2) the breakdown process to depend upon the job being processed; and 3) the processing times of the jobs to be random variables following arbitrary distributions. We consider two possible cases for the processing time of a job interrupted by a breakdown: a) it is resampled according to its probability distribution or b) it is the same random variable as that before the breakdown. We introduce the concept of occupying time and find its Laplace and integral transforms. For the problem with resampled processing times, we establish a general optimality equation on the optimal dynamic policy under a unified objective measure. We deduce from the optimality equation the optimal dynamic policies for several problems with well-known criteria, including weighted discounted reward, weighted flowtime, truncated cost, number of tardy jobs under stochastic order, and maximum holding cost. For the problem with same random processing time, we develop the optimal dynamic policy via the theory of bandit process. A set of Gittins indices are derived that give the optimal dynamic policies under the criteria of weighted discounted reward and weighted flowtime. Note to Practitioners-It is common in practice that a machine is subject to breakdowns, which may severely interrupt the job it is processing. In such a situation, there may be limited information on the breakdown patterns of the machine and the processing requirements of the jobs. A great challenge faced by the decision-maker is how to utilize the information available to make a right decision. Stochastic scheduling considering stochastic machine breakdowns aims to determine the optimal policies in these situations. In this paper, we study the problem within the preemptive-repeat breakdown framework, to address the practical situations where a job will have to be re-started again if a machine breakdown occurs when it is being processed. Problems of such can be found in many industrial applications. Examples include refining metal in a refinery factory, running a program on a computer, performing a reliability test on a facility, etc. Generally, if a job must be continuously processed with no interruption until it is totally completed, then the preemptive-repeat breakdown formulation should be used. Our research in this paper focuses on optimal dynamic policies, which aim to utilize real-time information to dynamically adjust/improve a decision. We consider two types of models, depending on whether the processing time of the job interrupted by a breakdown must be resampled or not. For the problem with resampled processing times, we establish a general optimality equation under a unified objective measure. We further deduce the optimal dynamic policies under a number of well-known criteria. For the problem without resampled processing times, we develop the optimal dynamic policies, under the criteria of weighted discounted reward and weighted flowtime. Broadly speaking, our findings can be applied in any situations where it is desirable to derive the best dynamic decisions to tackle the problem with stochastic machine breakdowns and preemptive-repeat jobs.


The role of dysfunction of the gastrointestinal tract in the pathogenesis of multiple organ failure (MOF) complicating the course of critically ill patients has been suspected for more than 40 years. However, several hypotheses have been proposed and sometimes refuted to establish a link. This review summarizes the current knowledge on gastrointestinal physiology and recapitulates existing evidence on the link between gastrointestinal dysfunction and MOF. The gastrointestinal tract has various functions apart from digestion. It produces hormones with local and systemic effects, plays a major role in immunological function, and serves as a barrier against antigens within its lumen. Gastrointestinal dysfunction or gut failure is frequently encountered in critical care patients and is associated with bacterial translocation, which can lead to the development of sepsis, initiation of a cytokine-mediated systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), and death. The aim of this manuscript is to define gut failure, to review physiopathological mechanisms and clinical implications, and, finally, to suggest preventive measures.


FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source Software) has taken the world by storm in the last decade. The emergence of FLOSS has been exemplified by the rapid rise of the GNU/Linux operating system, which has made inroads in computer systems ranging from supercomputers to handheld devices and mobile phones. FLOSS technologies have been embraced by almost all major computing vendors, who are putting substantial efforts and leveraging these technologies.A number of Indian Information Technology Service Companies have been providing solutions based on the certain FLOSS technologies to their customers and also using it internally, mostly on an ad-hoc basis. There is often no formal policy in place, nor a roadmap on how to go forward in this fast emerging, rule changing, arena.We propose an overarching strategy — the "Foundation and Four Pillars" view that will enable the Indian Software Services Companies to truly leverage FLOSS while moving forward.


This paper suggests how natural disasters may serve as the final propulsion for changes already taking place within a society. While focusing on shifts in human–non-human animal relations, this text also discusses their embedding in broader transformations of human–environment relations and the underlying economic and cultural change. It carves out interspecific dependencies that constitute an agro-ecosystem and follows their demise as the agricultural species are switched to market economic production in a post-disaster context. It thereby suggests that the human-facilitated semiotic fitting of the agricultural species is replaced by human-imposed fitting in which the species composition is largely determined by the market prices. At the same time, the paper draws attention to the cessation and transformation of human–non-human communication as a marker, but also an experiential corollary, of modernization and market economy. As a case study, it focuses on the 2010 Mt. Merapi eruption in Indonesia and its aftermath in the villages on its slope. The study analyses how the shift from using plough buffalo to utilizing market economic cattle farming reflects not just an economic, but also an affective and semiotic change stemming from a shift in the intensity and kind of human–animal relations.


Background. Biome depletion, or loss of biodiversity from the ecosystem of the human body, is a major "evolutionary mismatch" underlying a variety of inflammatory diseases in Western populations. Enhancing biodiversity via exposure to helminths has effectively treated immune diseases in a variety of experimental animal models and in a few published studies involving human subjects. Purpose. This study probes another untapped resource for helminthic therapy: the methods and outcomes reported by individuals currently self-treating with helminths. Procedures. Helminth providers were interviewed, surveys were collected from self-treaters, and publically available information was compiled. Results. More than 250 anecdotal experiences of self-treatment were assessed, and the total number of individuals worldwide currently self-treating was estimated at between 6,000 and 7,000. A wide range of inflammation- related diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, and autoimmunity, were effectively treated. Conclusions. This study finds that the therapy is being refined through experience and is now expanding to treat widespread neuropsychiatric problems such as depression, anxiety, migraine headaches, bipolar disorder, and perhaps Parkinson's disease.


Abstract The first specimen of the new sauropod Erketu ellisoni, from the Lower Cretaceous of the eastern Gobi of Dornogov, Mongolia, is described here. The specimen comprises a well-preserved articulated anterior cervical series, an articulated lower hindlimb, and a sternal plate. This sauropod displays a unique combination of features including low, bifid neural spines, elongate cervical centra, and crescent-shaped sternal plates. Computed tomography imaging reveals the vertebrae were extensively invaded with pneumatic camellae. The holotype individual of Erketu was of modest mass relative to other neosauropods, but had an extremely elongate neck. Phylogenetic analysis indicates Erketu is a member of the Somphospondyli and may belong to a more exclusive clade therein.


The control of substrate salinity is important for agricultural crops and, among the methods used, is the management of electrical conductivity of the substrate solution, which can be used as an indirect measure of the amount of salts and nutrients available or not for the plants. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of EC levels on the development, concentration and accumulation of nutrients in potted (1.3 L) gerbera ( Gerbera jamesonii ). The study was conducted in a greenhouse in a randomized block design, with five treatments (EC of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 dS m-1) and four replications. The quadratic function of the applied EC was obtained for leaf number and diameter, and the linear function, for inflorescence diameter. The nutrients in plant tissue increased linearly with the increasing level of EC, except for potassium and sulfur. The decreasing order for macronutrient levels was K>N>Ca>P>Mg>S, indicating the importance of potassium. Production parameters were little affected by the concentration of the nutrient solution. Therefore, it can be concluded that, with the increase in nutrients as a function of EC elevation, a luxury uptake can occur, with no representative on qualitative aspects.


In the time-left experiment (J. Gibbon & R. M. Church, 1981), animals are said to compare an expectation of a fixed delay to food, for one choice, with a decreasing delay expectation for the other, mentally representing both upcoming time to food and the difference between current time and upcoming time (the cognitive hypothesis). The results of 2 experiments support a simpler view: that animals choose according to the immediacies of reinforcement for each response at a time signaled by available time markers (the temporal control hypothesis). It is not necessary to assume that animals can either represent or subtract representations of times to food to explain the results of the time-left experiment.


This doctoral thesis presents density functionalcalculations applied in several domains of interest in solidstate physics and materials science. Non-collinear magnetismhas been studied both in an artificial multi-layer structure,which could have technological relevance as a magnetic sensordevice, and as excitations in 3d ferromagnets. The intricatebulk crystal structure of γ-alumina has been investigated.An improved embedded cluster method is developed and applied tostudy the geometric and electronic structures and opticalabsorption energies of neutral and positively charged oxygenvacancies in α-quartz. Ab initio total energycalculations, based on the EMTO theory, have been used todetermine the elastic properties of Al1-xLixrandom alloys in the face-centered cubiccrystallographic phase. The obtained overall good agreementwith experiment demonstrates the applicability of the quantummechanics formulated within the framework of the DensityFunctional Theory for mapping the structural and mechanicalproperties of random alloys against chemical composition.


This work concerns a biologically-inspired approach to self-assembly and pattern formation in multi-robot systems. In previous work the authors have recently studied two different approaches to multi-robot control, one based upon the evolution of controllers modelled as genetic regulatory networks (GRNs), and the other based upon a model of self-organisation in aggregates of biological cells mediated by cellular adhesion molecules (CAMs). In the current work, a hybrid GRN-CAM controller is introduced, which captures the advantages, and overcomes the disadvantages, or both of the original controllers; it combines the adaptability of the evolutionary process with the robustness of an underlying self-organising dynamics. The performance of the new controller is investigated and compared with the previous ones. For example, one experiment involves the evolution of a robot cluster that can stably maintain two different spatial patterns, switching between the two upon sensing an external signal. Another experiment involves the evolution of a cluster in which individual robots develop differentiated states despite having indentical controllers (which could be used as a starting point for functional specialisation of robots within the cluster). The results show that the combined GRN-CAM controller is more flexible and robust than either the GRN controller or the CAM controller by itself, and can produce more complex spatiotemporal behaviours. The GRN-CAM controllers are also potentially portable to robotic systems other than those for which they were evolved, as long as the new system implements the underlying CAM model of self-organisation. Some technical issues regarding the implementation of the GRN and joint GRN-CAM systems are also discussed, including the use of "smart mutation" operators to improve the speed of evolution of GRNs, and evolving the rate of dynamics of the GRN controller to suit the particular task in hand.


Abstract The Zoo solution to Fermi's Paradox proposes that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) have agreed to not contact the Earth. The strength of this solution depends on the ability for ETIs to come to agreement, and establish/police treaties as part of a so-called 'Galactic Club'. These activities are principally limited by the causal connectivity of a civilization to its neighbours at its inception, i.e. whether it comes to prominence being aware of other ETIs and any treaties or agreements in place. If even one civilization is not causally connected to the other members of a treaty, then they are free to operate beyond it and contact the Earth if wished, which makes the Zoo solution 'soft'. We should therefore consider how likely this scenario is, as this will give us a sense of the Zoo solution's softness, or general validity. We implement a simple toy model of ETIs arising in a Galactic Habitable Zone, and calculate the properties of the groups of culturally connected civilizations established therein. We show that for most choices of civilization parameters, the number of culturally connected groups is >1, meaning that the Galaxy is composed of multiple Galactic Cliques rather than a single Galactic Club. We find in our models for a single Galactic Club to establish interstellar hegemony, the number of civilizations must be relatively large, the mean civilization lifetime must be several millions of years, and the inter-arrival time between civilizations must be a few million years or less.


In this dissertation, we detail the Recursive Multi-Frame Planar Parallax (RMFPP) algorithm, a recursive extension of Irani et al.'s Multi-Frame Planar Parallax (MFPP) batch algorithm that allows real-time reconstruction of distant static scenes using computer vision, with expected error that increases only linearly with depth. We present an overview and comprehensive derivation of the theoretical foundation on which the RMFPP algorithm is built, including the seminal planar-parallax work by Sawhney. We derive a recursive cost function that preserves more of the problem's nonlinearity than does the cost function in the MFPP algorithm, which allows a more accurate recursive procedure. In order to obtain a recursive algorithm, we remove the geometry-refining optimization that is present in the MFPP algorithm; however, we empirically show that our algorithm degrades gracefully in the presence of geometric error. We present results using both synthetic and real imagery that show that the RMFPP algorithm is at least as accurate as the original MFPP batch algorithm in many circumstances, is preferred to both fixed- and dynamic-baseline two-frame methods, and is suitable for real-time use.


This study assessed gender differences of Zimbabwean A-level students' perceptions about their actual and preferred biology laboratory environments in relation to cohesiveness, openness, integration between theory and laboratory work, management of laboratory work and the material environment. The Science Laboratory Environment Inventory (SLEI) was used to collect data from a total of 68 students (40 male and 28 female) attending metropolitan High Schools. Results obtained indicated that both female and male students prefer less cohesiveness than there is in current laboratory environments. Both sexes would however prefer more openness and a more conducive material environment. The situation is more pronounced for girls. Females prefer more integration and less controlled management of activities than male students.


British Politics provides an introduction to British politics with an emphasis on political science to analyse the fundamental features of British politics, and the key changes post-Brexit. Part A looks at constitutional and institutional foundations of the subject. Chapters in this part look at leadership and debating politics and law creation. The second part is about political behaviour and citizenship. Here chapters consider elections, the media, agenda setting, and political turbulence. The final part is about policy-making and delegation. The chapters in this part examine interest groups, advocacy, policy-making, governing through bureaucracy and from below, delegating upwards, and British democracy now.


This study sets out to determine whether the process of adoption and implementation of PPP policy differs between developing and developed countries. Hence, by conducting an in-depth conceptual interrogation, first of all a template is formed to determine certain dissimilarities between developing and developed countries. Then using this template, Turkey, as a developing country, and the UK, as a developed country, is examined in order to set forth the relationship between the development level of a country and its PPP policy. The findings indicate that the PPP policy of developing and developed countries differs within five aspects: (i) how the policy penetrates into the political agenda, (ii) the government"s aim in adopting PPP policy, (iii) the sectoral distribution, (iv) the form of PPP"s and (v) the regulatory framework.


This paper proposes an approach for the segmentation of human body movements measured by inertial measurement unit sensors. Using the angular velocity and linear acceleration measurements directly, without converting to joint angles, we perform segmentation by formulating the problem as a classification problem, and training a classifier to differentiate between motion end-point and within-motion points. The proposed approach is validated with experiments measuring the upper body movement during reaching tasks, demonstrating classification accuracy of over 85.8%.


In this study, the stochastic sampled-data approach is developed to deal with the H ∞ control problem for a class of linear multi-agent systems. For each agent, signals should be transmitted to the control input, including not only its own measurements, but also the output information received from the neighbour agents. The relationships of information communications between the whole multi-agents are totally reflected by a weighted directed graph with a fixed topology structure. To the addressed problem, the author's focus is to design an output feedback controller for each agent such that, for the external energy bounded disturbances, the exponential stability in the mean square sense and interference rejection ability under consideration can be guaranteed. By assuming that the sampling period of each agent switches between two values in a probabilistic way, the stochastic sampling phenomenon is well characterised in every sampling tasks. In virtue of Lyapunov theory and semi-definite programming method, sufficient conditions are derived to ensure the exponential stability as well as H ∞ performance, and the feedback controllers are also designed by solving some certain matrix inequalities. Finally, a numerical simulation is given to demonstrate the validness of the proposed control strategy.


The dynamics of either associative or hierarchical neural network can boil down to the discovery of fixed point or contraction to the already established fixed point in a discrete dynamical system, and strict mathematical calculations have already proven this point. In other words, the dynamics of all types of neural network can be analyzed and explained by using the fixed point theory in the traditional discrete dynamical system. What is equally important is that the explanation and classification of chaos can also be expressed in terms of its relationship with fixed points. This has provided an important link between chaos and neural network in the traditional discrete dynamical system, namely, the fixed point theory. Based on this idea, this paper proposes a method to combine chaos with neural network using the fixed point theory. With a view to practical application, the paper provides several examples on improving pattern recognition ability by adding chaotic noise in learning machines as well as on improving the ability of optimal solution in the large by creating a new Chaotic Hopfield Neural Network. The approach proposed by this paper is proved user friendly and universally applicable through lab experiments of pattern recognition and solution of the Traveling Salesman Problem on a set of 100 cities.


Without copyright law, authors would be unable to internalize the benefits of their writings. Copyright law reacts to this by providing authors with a period of exclusivity. The relevant legislation has a contract-like character; authors receive a period of exclusivity, and the public benefits by virtue of original writings that eventually pass into the public domain. Ideally each contract between the public and an author would be individually negotiated. Because U.S. copyright law is strictly utilitarian, authors would be "paid" the lowest amount possible to bring their works into existence. For example, popular authors may be able to internalize sufficient returns in just a few years. In other cases, a longer period of exclusivity is necessary. Huge transaction costs prohibit individual transactions and, at this writing, most works are protected for the life of the author plus 70 years.
 As an economic matter, the actual implementation of copyright law is hard to rationalize. Works with even a modicum of creativity are copyrightable. This can result in a disincentive to be creative and invites expensive legal disputes about works that are socially irrelevant. In addition, works receive levels of protection that are independent of their value to the public. In some instances Congress with the approval of the Supreme Court has extended the copyright term for works already in existence. Retroactive extension of the copyright term cannot have an impact on works in existence. Oddly, copyright law views authors as profit maximizers but also limits the value of their works by allowing heirs to terminate assignments after a set period of time. Finally, the remedy for copyright infringement is the damages suffered by the author plus all profits made by the infringer that can be traced to the infringement. It is not clear that this remedy is consistent with the goals of copyright law.


In a turbulent flow, small- and large-scale fluid motions are coupled. In this work, we investigate the small-scale response to large-scale fluctuations in turbulent flows and discuss the implications on large eddy simulation (LES) wall modelling. The interscale interaction in wall-bounded flows was previously parameterized in the predictive inner–outer (PIO) model, where the amplitude of the small scales responds linearly to the large-scale fluctuations. While this assumed linearity is valid in the viscous sublayer, it is an insufficient approximation of the true interscale interaction in wall-normal distances within the buffer layer and above. Within these regions, a piecewise linear response function (piecewise with respect to large-scale fluctuations being positive or negative) appears to be more appropriate. In addition to proposing a new response function, we relate the amplitude modulation process to the Townsend attached eddy hypothesis. This connection allows us to make theoretical predictions on the model parameters within the PIO model. We use these parameters to apply the PIO model to wall-modelled LES. Further, we present empirical evidence of amplitude modulation in isotropic turbulence. The evidence suggests that the existence of nonlinear interscale interactions in the form of amplitude modulation does not rely on the presence of a non-penetrating boundary, but on the presence of a range of viscosity-dominated scales and a range of inertial-dominated scales.


Inappropriate activation of the Wnt/beta-catenin signaling, resulting mainly from activating mutations of the beta-catenin gene, has been implicated recently in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). We have generated transgenic mice expressing an oncogenic form of beta-catenin in their hepatocytes to analyze the effect of deregulated beta-catenin signaling on liver homeostasis. These mice rapidly developed hepatomegaly soon after birth, with livers three to four times heavier than those of nontransgenic littermates. The liver cell hyperplasia resulted from increased cell proliferation without any compensatory apoptosis. Although the genes encoding c-myc and cyclin D1 are potential targets of the beta-catenin signaling pathway, neither of them was overexpressed in the hyperplastic livers of beta-catenin transgenic mice. Thus, the key target genes of the beta-catenin signaling pathway in the liver remain to be identified.


The German Centre for Mathematics Teacher Education (DZLM) together with the Ministry of Education is in charge of developing, delivering and evaluating a long-term continuing professional development program (CPD) with respect to graphics calculators (GC). In this paper we describe the design of the CPD program and two associated research studies. The studies aim at examining conditions which must be considered when designing a CPD program, and at investigating the effects caused by the CPD program on teachers' beliefs and classroom practices as well as on students' competencies. We developed a questionnaire to measure teachers' beliefs related to GC and a survey about the integration of the GC into classroom practice. Furthermore, an achievement test was constructed to measure students' competencies that focus on areas where the literature expects the GC to be relevant.


The bio-informational theory of emotion contends that pleasure and arousal reactions are organized around two universal motivational systems: an appetitive and a defensive motivational system. This paper posits that the appetitive motivation, reflected by a tight linear relation between pleasure and arousal reactions, is a structural characteristic of emotional reactions to commercial advertising. Previous research already confirmed that pleasure and arousal reactions to commercial print ads consistently reflect the appetitive motivation by showing that pleasure and arousal reactions towards a diverse set of print ads, measured by means of the SAM-scale, exhibit extremely high correlations. In the current study participants were exposed to 17 print advertisements and 18 TV commercials from various products and brands. After each exposure, we measured participants' emotional reactions by means of the SAM-scale. Results reveal highly significant positive correlations between pleasure and arousal reactions for both print ads and TV commercials. This study replicates findings from earlier studies and extends it to another type of advertising, TV commercials. These convergent findings for both types of advertising strengthen the view that the appetitive motivation is a general mechanism of commercial advertising.


Hydrocarbon-contaminated superficial sediments collected from the Harbor of Milazzo (Tirrenean Sea, northern Sicily), a zone strongly affected by anthropogenic activities, were examined for in situ biodegradative capacities. A culture-independent molecular phylogenetic approach was used to study the influence of hydrocarbon and nutrient addition on the activity and diversity of the indigenous microbiota during a microcosm evaluation. The autochthonous microbial community in non-polluted sediments was represented by eubacterial phylotypes grouped within Proteobacteria, CFB and Firmicutes. The archaeal domain was represented by members of Marine Group I of Crenarchaeota. The majority of recovered sequences was affiliated with heterotrophic genera Clostridium and Vibrio, typical members of eutrophic coastal environments. Amendments of hydrocarbons and mineral nutrients to microcosms dramatically changed the initial diversity of the microbial community. Only bacterial phylotypes affiliated with Proteobacteria and CFB division were detected. The decrease in diversity observed in several microcosms could be explained by the strong selection for microorganisms belonging to group of marine hydrocarbonoclastic gamma-Proteobacteria, namely Alcanivorax, Cycloclasticus, Marinobacter, Marinobacterium/Neptunomonas and Thalassolituus. This study demonstrated that nutrient amendment to hydrocarbon-contaminated superficial sediments enhanced the indigenous microbial biodegradation activity and that highly specialized marine hydrocarbonoclastic bacteria, representing a minor fraction in the natural microbial community, play an important role in the biodegradation of petroleum hydrocarbons accidentally entering the coastal environment.


Summary. The arts education of generalist teachers in pre-school and primary schools seems to be a matter of great importance, because it is they who mainly practice arts education in school with children up to the age of 12. The purpose of this study is to describe and evaluate the arts education offered to pre-service pre-school and primary school teachers in the departments of education of all universities in Greece. The data were collected from two sources. First, data on the characteristics of the arts courses examined were collected from university documents on the syllabus of every department in the study. Second, a questionnaire was used to collect data on what the students at the examined departments believed about the arts education they were getting. The study showed that the arts education offered in Greek departments of education has developed in a peculiar manner and has problematic aspects. Even today, it is lacking in quantity, of a lower standard than other courses, and with an orientation that either is more mechanical or more theoretical than it should be. Both the analysis of the documents and of the students' views highlight changes that seem to be necessary to qualitatively and quantitatively improve the arts education and training provided in the departments examined.


Assessment of the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies is essential to predict protection against reinfection and durability of vaccine protection. Here, we longitudinally measured Spike (S) and Nucleocapsid (N)-specific antibodies in 1,309 healthcare workers (HCW) including 393 convalescent COVID-19 and 916 COVID-19 negative HCW up to 405 days. From M1 to M7-9 after infection, SARS-CoV-2 antibodies decreased moderately in convalescent HCW in a biphasic model, with men showing a slower decay of anti-N (p=0.02), and a faster decay of anti-S (p=0.0008) than women. At M11-13, anti-N antibodies dramatically decreased (half-life: 210 days) while anti-S stabilized (half-life: 630 days) at a median of 2.41 log Arbitrary Units (AU)/mL (Interquartile Range (IQR): 2.11 -2.75). One case of reinfection was recorded in convalescent HCW (0.47 per 100 person-years) versus 50 in COVID-19 negative HCW (10.11 per 100 person-years). Correlation with live-virus neutralization assay revealed that variants D614G and B.1.1.7, but not B.1.351, were sensitive to anti-S antibodies at 2.3 log AU/mL, while IgG [≥] 3 log AU/mL neutralized all three variants. After SARS-CoV-2 vaccination, anti-S levels reached 4 logs regardless of pre-vaccination IgG levels, type of vaccine, and number of doses. Our study demonstrates a long-term persistence of anti-S IgG antibodies that may protect against reinfection. By significantly increasing cross-neutralizing antibody titers, a single-dose vaccination strengthens protection against escape mutants.


A new method based on modelling of seasonal growth increments (G SI) in total length was found useful for assessing the date of onset of annual growth for 16 fish species in a temperate fluvial lake. Model comparisons indicated that polynomial (linear or quadratic) functions provided better fits to seasonal growth and were more likely to avoid convergence problems than alternative non-linear models. There was little evidence for differences in the date of onset of growth between years, nor among age classes within individual species. The onset of growth also was to some extent synchronized among species and was concentrated within a narrow temporal window of c. 2 weeks, between 18 May and 2 June, which corresponded to mean water temperatures between 16.1 and 17.3° C. There was no apparent relationship between date of onset and species' thermal preferenda or thermal preferences. By producing a point estimate along with appropriate 95% CI, the GSI method provides useful information on the onset of growth and the uncertainty about that estimate. The GSI analyses can contribute to a better understanding of environmental influences on the onset of growth and the length of the growing season, and of thermal thresholds for growth, including their use in calculation of degree-day metrics.


Objective: To evaluate the frequency distribution of viral infections in Peruvian Breast Cancer (BC) lesions and its association with clinicopathological features. Additionally, a prospective evaluation of p16 and Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) levels were performed for developing a comprehensive analysis. Methods: Detection of high risk- human papillomavirus (HR- HPV) through qPCR was performed in 447 BC and 79 non-cancer frozen samples. Paired paraffin samples from 238 BC were stained with Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) and p16 immunohistochemistry. TIL was calculated in 397 BC cases. Results: HCMV was positive in 72.5%. HR- HPV was detected in 2.9% of BC and 1.3% of non-malignant samples. P16+ was found in 28.15% and median TIL percentage was 30. HR- HPV infection was associated with non-ductal histology (p=0.003) and p16+ (p=0.017). Positive P16+ was associated with higher T stage (p=0.022), grade (p=0.009), TIL level (p=0.002), and triple-negative phenotype (p=0.021). Conclusion: HCMV is frequent, but HR- HPV infection is unusual in Peruvian BC. P16+ is associated with HR- PVH infection, high TIL and aggressive features.


The Collaborative Filtering is the most successful algorithm in the recommender systems' field. A recommender system is an intelligent system can help users to come across interesting items. It uses data mining and information filtering techniques. The collaborative filtering creates suggestions for users based on their neighbors' preferences. But it suffers from its poor accuracy and scalability. This paper considers the users are m (m is the number of users) points in n dimensional space (n is the number of items) and represents an approach based on user clustering to produce a recommendation for active user by a new method. It uses k-means clustering algorithm to categorize users based on their interests. Then it uses a new method called voting algorithm to develop a recommendation. We evaluate the traditional collaborative filtering and the new one to compare them. Our results show the proposed algorithm is more accurate than the traditional one, besides it is less time consuming than it.


Heart diseases are leading cause of death for men, and women around the world. Traditionally, to detect heart disease, heart condition checking is a must, but this method is costly, inconvenient, and takes some time. An alternative and a simpler method is the iridology method. Iridology is a study of the human iris to determine any abnormalities that happened in the organ's functions. This study presents an implementation of computerized iridology in detecting heart disease. The system is designed with several stages such as pre-processing, segmentation region of interest, feature extraction, and classification using an Artificial Neural Network. Gray Level Co-Occurrence Matrix (GLCM) is used in feature extraction to extract the features from the segmented image while the Artificial Neural Network Backpropagation algorithm used as a classifier to create the prediction model for the system. The prediction model was evaluated using the 10-Fold Cross-Validation method. 50 patient data with 27 patients of a normal heart condition and another 23 patients of abnormal heart condition was used and the data been divided into 45 training data (90%) and 5 testing data (10%). The highest classification accuracy obtained is 95.56%.


ABSTRACT In the Devonian Bokkeveld Basin on the southwestern periphery of Gondwana, over 3,000 m of shales and sandstones were deposited as a southward-prograding clastic wedge. These rocks are organized into five thick regressive sequences that record processes on arcuate deltas along a mixed wave and tidal energy coastline. Variations between each of the upward-coarsening sequences are the result of differential preservation and transgressire marine reworking caused by uneven rates of relative sea-level rise. Each npward-coarsening sequence consists typically of shelf-prodelta, distributary mouth bar, tidal flat, and interdistributary bay deposits and is usually capped by tidal- and wave-reworked delta-front sands. The base of each sequence is represented by dark shelf-prodelta shales which grade upward through mudstones to graywackes and lithic arenites deposited as river mouth bars. This upward-coarsening deltaic package is topped by two types of intertidal and shallow subtidal sequences deposited on the delta plain: tidal-flat facies consist of sandstones, mudstones, and shales deposited in upward-fining units up to 10 m thick; bayfill deposits comprise small upward-coarsening subdelta sequences. The delta-plain deposits are extensively bioturbated and contain brackish invertebrate taxa of the Malvinokaffric Province. Reworked delta-front sands are present largely as tidal-channel and tidal-inlet deposits of abandoned distributaries. These consist of upward-fining, cross-bedded quartz arenites that occur as lenticular bodies up to 8 m thick, and that erosively overlie both the distributary-mouth-bar facies and in places the delta-plain facies. Thin, flat-bedded sheetsands which occur locally at the base of the quartz arenite units are attributed to storm washover processes. It is suggested that deposition of the entire Bokkeveld Group occurred on arcuate deltas similar to the modern Brazos and Niger deltas. Rates of relative sea-level rise were high and were punctuated by periods of decreased rates or near stillstand. The duration of these stable periods increased through time, culminating in stable shelf conditions that characterized Witteberg deposition.


Surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) with the features of subwavelength confinement and strong enhancements have sparked enormous interest. However, in the terahertz regime, due to the perfect conductivities of most metals, it is hard to realize the strong confinement of SPPs, even though the propagation loss could be sufficiently low. One main approach to circumvent this problem is to exploit spoof SPPs, which are expected to exhibit useful subwavelength confinement and relative low propagation loss at terahertz frequencies. Here we report the design, fabrication, and characterization of terahertz spoof SPP waveguides based on corrugated metal surfaces. The various waveguide components, including a straight waveguide, an S-bend waveguide, a Y-splitter, and a directional coupler, were experimentally demonstrated using scanning near-field terahertz microscopy. The proposed waveguide indeed enables propagation, bending, splitting, and coupling of terahertz SPPs and thus paves a new way for the development of flexible and compact plasmonic circuits operating at terahertz frequencies.


Fluctuations in oxygen, pH, nutrients, or other factors such as food or pharmaceuticals, may perturb the microbiota of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. This environmental variation is a cause for concern given dysbiosis of the microbiome is correlated with disease states; thereby, model organisms are utilized to study microbial communities during, after, or before shifts in microbes since intact ex vivo microbiomes have historically been challenging to utilize. The objective of this study is to culture an explant microbiome of 4 Balb/c, laboratory bred mice to develop an ex vivo tool for future microbiome studies. We cultured homogenates of the distal colon of 4 mice in three dimensional, 24 well plate culture dishes. These dishes were incubated for 24 hours in two different oxygen concentration levels, 0% and 20%. The pH of the plate was tested before and after incubation. To analyze the integrity of the microbiome, we utilized 16S sequencing. Further, we utilized 16S metagenomics to characterize fecal samples and colon samples to speculate whether future studies may utilize feces in constructing an explant microbiome to spare animal lives. We found that pH and familial relationship had a profound impact on community structure while oxygen did not have a significant influence. The feces and the colon were similar in community profiles, which lends credence to utilizing feces in future studies. In addition, our efforts successfully cultured archaea, which included difficult to culture strains such as Miscellaneous Crenarchaeota group (MCG) and Methanobacteria. Ultimately, further attempts to culture and preserve an animal's microbiome needs to control for and maintain stable pH.


To meet the demand of clustering high dimensional data efficiently, in this paper, we propose a component-wise expectation conditional maximisation (CW-ECM) algorithm and integrate it within the recent proposed splitting-while-merging framework, which is called splitting-merging awareness tactics (SMART), for the mixture of factor analysers (MFA) model. The new algorithm has two advantages: it has ability to converge to actual or close actual number of clusters by a splitting-while-merging strategy, and it avoids the local maxima effectively and efficiently. Furthermore, we improve the splitting strategy in the original SMART framework and save more computational effort. We test out algorithm in two benchmark datasets and compare it with the state-of-the-art algorithms using many validation metrics. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the compared algorithms in clustering performance with significantly less computational complexity.


Detecting unknown virus is a challenging task. Most of the current virus detection approaches, such as anti-virus tools, require precognition of virus signatures for detection, but they are hard to detect unknown virus. In this paper, we present a new immunity based virus detection approach. This approach collects arguments of process calls instead of the sequence of process, which obtain more information of process, and then utilizes them to train detectors with real-valued negative selection (RVNS) algorithm. In the stage of testing, user feedback is analyzed to adjust the threshold between normal files and viruses. We took two experiments to evaluate the performance of the approach, and the detection rate achieved is 0.7, which proved this approach could cope with unknown virus.


Multiple Rocket Launchers (MRL) have been used for an army weapon system over the past several decades. In this study, we have predicted effectiveness for MRL with a certain unguided rocket. ARTQUIK model has been used to calculate requirements of rocket with Target Location Error (TLE), lethality of warhead and target size. Needs for rocket sharply increased by about 170% with TLE. Enhancement of lethality helped to reduce amount of rocket. Especially, it rose by five times with TLE in the tiny target size of below 50m. However, a number of rocket increased by three times with TLE in the large target size of above 150m.


Objective To assess and predict reliability of an
equipment dynamically by making full use of various test informations in the development of
products. Method A new reliability growth assessment method based on army material system
analysis activity(AMSAA) model was developed.The method is composed of the AMSAA model
and test data conversion technology. Result The assessment and prediction results of a space
borne equipment conform to its expectations. Conclusion It is suggested that this method
should be further researched and popularized.


This paper reports on a study of interpreter language errors carried out in a sample of courts in Kenya between January and March 2008. Drawing from data mainly consisting of transcriptions of audio-taped discourse of official proceedings in the sample courts, the paper illustrates the most prevalent language errors made by interpreters in the course on interpreting judicial proceedings. Using a typology of interpreter language errors documented in the literature, the paper identifies and illustrates the occurrence of grammatical, lexical, omission and intrusion and distortion errors as the most frequently occurring in the sample courtrooms, as they accounted for the bulk of the interpreter errors encountered in the data. Illustration and discussion of each of this type of errors show that reveal the extent to which these errors can alter the intended meaning of the interlocutors in the court set-up, which in turn can lead to a miscarriage of justice, especially where the judicial process depends entirely on the interpreter's capacity to facilitate communication by mediating between languages.


A field experiment in a randomized complete block design with three replications was conducted at the research farm of the Institute of Agricultural Research and Training, Moor Plantation Ibadan, Southwest Nigeria in 2003 and 2004 cropping seasons. The aim of the experiment was to evaluate five cowpea cultivars; IT89KD-288, IT96D-610, IT99K 1060, IT95K-1072-57 and Ife Brown under sole, maize-based and maize-cassava based intercropping systems. There were significant differences (P < 0.05) among the five cowpea cultivars based on two-years average for 2003 and 2004 for number of pods per plant, pod length, number of seeds per pod, weight of 100 seeds and seed yield under sole cropping, maize-based and maize-cassava based intercropping systems. The results showed that IT96D-610 recorded high number of pods per plant, pod length, number of seeds per pod, weight of 100 seeds and seed yield in sole, cowpea-maize and cowpea-maize-cassava intercropping systems. The cowpea cultivar IT96D-610 recorded yield of 2.5 t/ha under cowpea sole cropping whereas 2.5 t/ha under maize intercropping system and 2.2 t/ha under maize-cassava intercropping system. From rhizosphere soil isolate (RSI), cowpea cultivar IT96D-610 was found most compatible with intercropping systems and the least was IT89KD-288. Therefore, cultivar IT96D-610 could be recommended for both sole and intercropping by small holder farmers.

 Key words: Cowpea cultivars, sole cropping, intercropping, rank summation index.


http://emergentpublications.com The context within which Spinoza once developed his theory has clearly changed. However, most of Spinoza's general approach to conceptualizing the world can still be utilized, albeit with a slight change in terminology. Spinoza's approach has many advantages as compared with the approaches of his contemporaries, such as Descartes and Leibniz. Conceptualization today also requires taking fields such as physics and mathematics explicitly into account. This is very much in the sense of Spinoza's original intention that led him to speak in his main work of an ethics to be proved in geometrical order (which actually means: according to mathematical methods). This book is about a mathematical machinery which, is based on a strict logical structure, as well as on a not so strict hermeneutic structure—and is even representable in terms of algebraic expressions of a considerable symbolic quality. Eventually, this may be capable of shedding a completely new light on the ancient problem of the relationship between human beings and the rest of nature. As the book shows, the theory of evolutionary systems is a prime candidate for a conceptualization that might be useful in order to concretely develop this new insight. NEW ETHICS PROVED IN GEOMETRICAL ORDER