ABSTRACT Some individuals manifest psychosomatic symptoms after the death of their pets. A survey was conducted at four public and commercial animal cremation service centers in Japan. In each center, a questionnaire was distributed to 100 individuals (400 in total). The questionnaire consisted of the 28-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ28), the social readjustment rating scale (SRRS) and a series of questions regarding demographic information and the circumstances of their pet's death. In total, 82 returned questionnaires were available for analysis. GHQ28 proved the existence of neurotic symptoms in 46 responses (56.1%; 95% confidence interval: 44.7%–67.0%). Analysis of the responses using the GHQ28 subscales with a Likert scoring system demonstrated more somatic dysfunction in females (GHQ-A: P=0.04). Furthermore, significant correlations were identified among the following factors: owner's age (GHQ-A: ρ=−0.60, P=0.01; GHQ-B: ρ=−0.29, P=0.01; GHQ-C: ρ=−0.32, P<0.01; GHQ-D: ρ=−0.42, P<0.01), SRRS score (GHQ-A: ρ=0.32, P<0.01; GHQ-B: ρ=0.25, P=0.02; GHQ-D: ρ=0.30, P=0.01) and animal's age (GHQ-D: ρ=−0.26, P=0.02). The death of indoor pets caused deeper depression (GHQ-D: P=0.01) than that of outdoor or visiting pets. The results revealed neurotic symptoms in almost half of the pet owners shortly after their pet's death.


This study aimed to determine the most appropriate method to assess the sunn hemp ( Crotalaria juncea L.) seed vigor in the accelerated aging test. Five seed lots from harvest 2007/2008 were evaluated for germination, vigor and seedling emergence in the field. Accelerated aging test was performed at 41°C during 48, 72 and 96 hours, with and without sodium chloride saturated solution. Then, the promising procedure was also performed for 2008/2009 and 2009/2010 harvests. In the traditional accelerated aging test, the no-uniform water acquisition by the seeds adversely affected results. Accelerated aging test with sodium chloride saturated solution is the most appropriate method to evaluate the physiological potential of sunn hemp seeds, and the combination of 41°C and 96 hours is efficient for separating of seed lots in different vigor levels.


Herein, a copper-catalyzed highly diastereoselective aerobic oxygenated [3+3] cyclization of 3-substituted indoles with C,N-cyclic azomethine imines using oxygen as the sole oxidant under mild conditions has been developed. This protocol provides a simple and convenient approach for constructing [2,3]-fused indoline O-heterocycles bearing two pharmaceutically intriguing parts, tetrahydroisoquinoline and indoline. Good yields and excellent diastereoselectivity under mild reaction conditions were observed.

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The process of establishing a geopark comprises much more than " just" setting up geotrails. On the island of Rab we have been continuously explaining and demonstrating to the public what a geopark is, and what it means for the local population and their economy. We do it through various outreach activities, with the wholehearted support of the Rab community. As the education is the foundation of the geoheritage protection, our activities have been focused mostly towards younger, traditionally more perceptive generations, who then, in turn, spontaneously inform (and educate) their elders. During the past several years, ProGEO-Croatia organized several geological workshops for schoolchildren through which they learned about rocks, fossils and the fossilization process. We have excellent cooperation with the Eco-etno group " Blue Planet" of the Ivan Rabljanin primary school in Rab, which is led by professors Jasna and Žarko Vidas. They had readily accepted the idea to participate in the Croatian Science Festival of 2007 with various self-designed activities. Among others, there were lectures and an exhibition with geological theme. The children were also led on very successful field trips, and learned about geology of their island and the mainland. All of their activities were comprehensivelly reported in media, the Novi List regional newspaper in particular, but also by the local radio station. Media coverage brought the news from Rab to much wider audience, and the children involved felt their efforts and enthusiasm were recognized and respected. We also have good cooperation with the local Mountaneering Club " Kamenjak" . Its members contributed in the first phase of setting up geotrails with celaning and repairing the existing hiking trails, and they also maintain the geotrails afterwards. More and more often we see local tourist workers informing their guests about the Geopark and geotrails, and the tourists readily and eagerly explore this new geotouristic offer. The info-centre in Lopar, which started operating this summer, provided essential information to the tourists and their hosts alike, and will also provide various educational activities for children in the future. Outreach activities are extremely important in a geopark, as well as in any area that aspires to become one. Without the support of the local community, a geopark cannot be fully utilized as a means for sustainable development. In order to have this support, the local population needs to understand and embrace the concept of the geopark, and to get a basic, general knowledge of the science behind it. Continuous and various outreach activities are the only efficient way to accomplish that, and we hope to expand our activities even more in the future, and hopefully engage young and middle-age tourist-workers in education on geopark administration and maintainance.


Over one academic year the author and a post-doctoral researcher observed the discussions around the Team Readiness Assurance Test which are part of the Team-Based Learning (TBL) teaching methodology. Students who participated in the TBL activities were invited to take part in semi-structured interviews at the end of the acemic year.
The research finds that there is a disparity between what the author and researcher observed and how the students described their experiences. The semi-structured interviews revealed that students had different ideas as to whose knowledge counts and how their identity positions them in relation to knowledge. These positions of power or disempowerment correlate with race and, to a lesser extent, gender.
The paper explores how the educational policies of the government during the students schooling may have shaped their identity and concept of what counts as knowledge and whose knowedge counts. The paper further explores institutional attitudes with further research drawingon semi-structured interviews with senior colleagues at the case-study institution.
The results of the research are grounded in the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, the work of Professor Michael Apple on knowledge and power in education and tradtion of critical race pedagogy and feminism.
The paper concludes with recommendations as to how innovative teaching methodologies like TBL can be deployed in a way which empowers all learners.


We demonstrate a ring-shaped Bessel-like photonic lattice akin to a photonic bandgap fiber with a low-index core. While the ring lattice is optically induced in a bulk crystal with a self-defocusing nonlinearity, guidance of a probe beam propagating linearly through the core is clearly observed. The possible mechanism for such guidance is also discussed.


Corrosion inhibition effect of cymbopogon nardus es sential oil (CNEO) on the mild steel in 1.0 M HCl s olution was investigated by electrochemical (potentiodynamic po larization curves, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy) and weight loss techniques. The corr osion rate of mild steel was decreased in the prese nce of CNEO. The corrosion inhibition efficiency was found to in crease with CNEO concentration to attain 90% with 1 .50 g/L at 298 K. The polarization studies showed that CNEO ac ts as mixed type inhibitor. The effect of temperatu re on the corrosion rate of mild steel in HCl solution in the absence and presence of CNEO was also studied. Val ues of corrosion inhibition efficiency calculated from wei ght loss technique were in good agreement with thos e obtained from electrochemical techniques. The results showed that the adsorption of the cymbopogon nardus essen tial oil (CNEO) on the mild steel surface obeys Langmuir iso therm. The activation parameters, apparent activati on energy (E a ), the enthalpy of activation ( A¢ÂˆÂ† H a ) and entropy of activation ( A¢ÂˆÂ† S a ) for the corrosion of mild steel in 1.0 M HCl in the absence and presence of CNEO were calculated an d discussed.


As the technology of SoC (system-on-chip) implementation has been improved, power management IC such as DC-DC converters should be also integrated into a single chip. The current-mode control DC-DC converter is preferred to the voltage-mode one because of simpler frequency compensation scheme, which makes it possible to utilize the chip with less off chip components. In order to achieve an efficient current-mode control, an elaborate current sensing technique should be incorporated to maintain conversion efficiency. In this paper, a new current sensing circuitry is proposed that compensates the offset voltage of the operational amplifier that is used in current-mirroring sensing scheme. The chip is implemented in a 0.35-mum CMOS technology.


Vascular leiomyoma arises from the muscle coat of blood vessels and is mainly seen as a solitary nodule on an extremity, usually the lower part of the leg, in middle-aged and elderly persons. 1 We report an unusual case of an 18-year-old man who had such a tumor on his right auricle. Report of a Case A 18-year-old man was referred to us for evaluation of a tumor on his right auricle. A pea-sized, skin-colored mass, first noted six years previously, had slowly increased in size and become purple. There was no history of antecedent trauma. Examination of the patient disclosed a soft, broad-based, nontender, well-circumscribed, mobile, nonpulsatile, purple mass on the right auricle (Fig 1). It measured 1.3 × 1.2 cm. Routine laboratory tests, including urinalysis, CBC count, blood chemistries, and chest roentgenogram were all within normal limits. An excisional biopsy was performed, followed by a full-thickness graft of


Theorem 4 for the mean waiting time in queue (eq. (37)) is in error. Equation (38) is valid only in the special case when an arrival occurs while the read/write head is within sector/c and there were not zero in queue when the head last passed the beginning of sector k. In the other cases w(t) = t + n ( t ) T gives the proper value. Wk is most easily calculated by application of Little's result. Thus we find Wk = (fi~/~,) T / N . (Figure 0 does not change appreciably using the correct result.) For further treatment of this type of model, see also: C. E. S K I N N E R , "Priority Queuing Systems with Server-Walking Time" lOper. Res. 15, 2 (1967)].


The nature of yield curve dynamics and the determinants of the integration order of yields are investigated using a benchmark economy in which the logarithmic expectations theory holds and the regularity condition of a limiting yield and limiting term premium is satisfied. By considering a zero-coupon yield curve with a complete term structure of maturities, a linear vector autoregressive process is constructed that provides an arbitrarily accurate moving average representation of the complete yield curve as its cross-sectional dimension (n) goes to infinity. We use this to prove the following novel results. First, any I(2) component vanishes owing to the almost sure (a.s.) convergence of the innovations to yields, νt(n), as n→∞. Second, the yield curve is stationary if and only if nνt(n) converges a.s., or equivalently the innovations to log discount bond prices converge a.s.; otherwise yields are I(1). A necessary condition for either stationarity or the absence of arbitrage is that the limiting yield is constant over time. Since the time-varying component of term premia is small in various fixed-income markets, these results provide insight into the critical determinants of the stationarity properties of the term structure.


The study of how light passes through water, known as ocean optics, is useful in determining the constituents suspended at the surface of a water body. Understanding the composition of the water over time can answer questions about how the oceans have changed with global climate change and ocean acidification. The vertical absorption coefficient in ocean waters is an indicator characterizing how deeply light penetrates the water column. Using this information, scientists can better understand and predict the amount of primary productivity occurring in the area. Here we examine the relationship between vertical absorption coefficient and Secchi disk depth to determine if the concentration of a type of calcifying phytoplankton, coccolithophores, causes the relationship to deviate from the findings of a pivotal historical study conducted in 1929 by Poole and Atkins. Data was collected during July 2018 aboard the R/V Endeavor on the EN616 "Cocco-Mix" cruise in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean. Diffuse attenuation was determined using downwelling irradiance measurements gathered from a HyperPro that measures electromagnetic energy through the water column. Diffuse attenuation values were compared with Secchi disk depth measurements taken at the same time and location as the HyperPro casts. Results will contribute to our understanding of how the relationship between light extinction and Secchi disk depth changes between water bodies. This knowledge can be used to relate light extinction and Secchi disk depth in historical studies in the Northwest Atlantic that did not have access to more modern equipment to measure light extinction.


The number of patients with cerebral infarctions increases as the population ages, despite campaigns against hypertension, the greatest risk factor. Cerebral ischemia initiates events that are presumed to defer the stage of irreversible injury. These events cause an increase of perfusion around the central ischemic zone and trigger the Bohr effect, both of which preserve tissue viability. Almost simultaneously, mitochondrial function fails, resulting in insufficient energy for the enzyme systems to control Na and K ion equilibrium. At the same time, protein synthesis slows and cellular respiratory enzymes decrease their activity, initiating an irreversible state of tissue change. Tissue fatty acids increase as a result of dissolution of cell membrane lipoprotein structure. Barbiturates reduce the extent of experimental infarction. Resperine and aminophylline are also effective, but there are no corroborative clinical trials. That ischemic brain damage may be the result of toxic substances in the ischemic tissue represents a new concept.


Objective: To present study self-care behaviours and variables associated with self-care behaviors of cancer patients treated with chemotherapy. Material and Method: This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study in cancer patients receiving chemotherapy in out-patient department of the National Regional Cancer Center in Chonburi City. Interview questionnaire was the data collection instrument for 133 purposive sampling. Results: Survey result indicated that patients were highly aware of the support provided by staff on service supports, emotional supports and informational support. The present study results also found that the top 3 patient self-care knowledge are, avoiding those who have cold when the patients have low white blood cells, eating hot (cooked well with heat) food and knowing the effects of chemotherapy on causing low red blood cells, low platelets and low white blood cells. The top 3 self-care behaviours of the patients were, always eat cooked food, inquire and understand the instructions from health personnel for self-care and always check herself/himself to maintain good health. However, patients did not usually exercise at least 15 minutes every day, select the recreational activities adequately, and not finding ways to improve their own health. Results from hypothesis testing, indicated that only knowledge variable was associated with self-care behaviours of patients treated with chemotherapy. The demographic variables such as age, marital status, education level, income were not associated with selfcare behaviours of patients treated with chemotherapy. Conclusion: Knowledge is associated with self-care behaviours of cancer patients who received chemotherapy. Providing health promotion for patients is necessary for them to have better self-care behaviours.


We investigate the dissociation and ionization equilibria of deuterium fluid over a wide range of temperatures and densities. The partition functions for molecular and atomic species are evaluated, in a statistical-mechanically consistent way, implementing recent developments in the literature and taking high-density effects into account. A new chemical model (free energy function) is introduced in which the fluid is considered as a mixture of diatomic molecules, atoms, ions, and free electrons. Intensive short range hard core repulsion is taken into account together with partial degeneracy of free electrons and Coulomb interactions among charged particles. Samples of computational results are presented as a set of isotherms for the degree of ionization, dissociated fraction of molecules, pressure, and specific internal energy for a wide range of densities and temperatures. Predictions from the present model calculations show an improved and sensible physical behavior compared to other results in the literature.


microRNAs (miRNAs) are genetic regulator RNA molecules belonging to small RNA family. Functions of miRNAs in plants range in a broad spectrum, one of which is the drought stress that is a major environmental stress factor globally affecting plant growth and development. Overexpression of a gene indicates elevated expression of a certain gene beyond its normal expression level. Studies seeking for function of plant miRNAs in response to overexpression carries significant role for agricultural improvement. Among wide variety of plant miRNAs with diverse functions, miR156 and miR171 have critical roles on plant development and stress tolerance. In the first part of our study, different Turkish tobacco cultivars were subjected to drought stress and RNA from leaf tissue of these plants was utilized for changes of gene expression levels in miR156 and miR171. In the second part of project, leaf explants of grown tobacco cultivars were transformed with Agrobacterium tumefaciens containing MIR156 and MIR171 genes of tobacco cultivars and successful overexpressed putative transgenic plants were selected. Callus tissue formed from putative transgenic and control leaf explants groups were also subjected to drought stress and drought stress response of miR156 and miR171 expression levels were analyzed by quantitative real time PCR. Scope of this study could be utilized for a better understanding of molecular mechanisms of drought stress and the roles of miRNAs.


The tensile properties of european pear (Pyrus communis L. 'Beurre Bosc') and asian pear (Pyrus pyrifolia Nakai 'Choguro') were examined using a microscope-mounted apparatus that allowed direct observation and recording of cell and tissue changes during testing. To manipulate turgor potential, tissue slices from fruit of different firmness (ripeness) were incubated in sucrose solutions of differing water potential. Solution water potentials were adjusted for individual fruit, and varied between -2.5 and 1 MPa from the water potential of the expressed juice. Fruit firmness declined from 100 to 20 N and from 60 to 25 N during ripening of european and asian pears, respectively. For both european and asian pears the relationship between fruit firmness and tensile strength of tissue soaked in isotonic solutions was sigmoidal, with the major mechanism of tissue failure being cell wall failure and cell fracture at high firmness and intercellular debonding at low firmness. In the intermediate zone, where fruit firmness and tissue tensile strength decreased simultaneously, a mixture of cell wall rupture and intercellular debonding could be observed. Tissue and cell extension at maximum force both declined similarly as fruit softened. Tensile strength of tissue from firm pears (>50 N firmness, >0.8 N tensile strength) decreased by as much as 0.6 N during incubation in solutions that were more concentrated than the cell sap (hypertonic solutions). When similar tissue slices were incubated in solutions that were less concentrated than the cell sap (hypotonic solutions), the tensile strength increased by up to 0.4 N. This is interpreted as stress-hardening of the cell wall in response to an increase in cell turgor. Tensile strength of tissue from soft pears was not affected by osmotic changes, as the mechanism of tissue failure is cell-to-cell debonding rather than cell wall failure.


PURPOSE
To describe the frequency and severity of ototoxicity in a series of pediatric patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Serial audiologic evaluations were conducted for 67 patients aged 8 months to 23 years who received platinum-based chemotherapy. Audiologic data was analyzed to determine time to hearing-loss using American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) criteria, and the effects of treatment and patient characteristics on the incidence and severity of ototoxicity.

RESULTS
Bilateral decreases in hearing were seen in 61% of patients (median time to hearing loss, 135 days). Children treated for medulloblastoma, osteosarcoma, and neuroblastoma had greater incidence and severity of hearing loss. Agreement between the usually reported National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) and ASHA criteria was inadequate.

CONCLUSION
Traditional reporting of toxicity data (CTCAE) has under-reported ototoxicity and minimized the significance of hearing loss in children. As pediatric patients experience improved survival, the effects and implications of high-frequency hearing loss with regard to academic achievement and speech and language development are important considerations, especially in patients younger than 5 years.


Lexicon schemas and their use are discussed in this paper from the perspective of lexicographers and field linguists. A variety of lexicon schemas have been developed, with goals ranging from computational lexicography (DATR) through archiving (LIFT, TEI) to standardization (LMF, FSR). A number of requirements for lexicon schemas are given. The lexicon schemas are introduced and compared to each other in terms of conversion and usability for this particular user group, using a common lexicon entry and providing examples for each schema under consideration. The formats are assessed and the final recommendation is given for the potential users, namely to request standard compliance from the developers of the tools used. This paper should foster a discussion between authors of standards, lexicographers and field linguists.


Active noise control in a headset or earplug typically attempts to lower the sound level at an error microphone located close to the ear. If the transmission path between the error microphone and the eardrum for the primary noise is different to the path for the secondary noise, a reduction at the error microphone may not lead to a reduction at the eardrum. In fact, if these paths are sufficiently different a reduction at the error microphone may actually lead to amplification at the eardrum. An example of a possible cause for differing transmission paths is the bone conduction effect that becomes noticeable in occluded ear canals. In this study, a probe microphone was inserted into the ear canal of human subjects. This microphone was used to measure the pressure near the eardrum for primary and secondary sound sources. The pressure was also measured at an error microphone of an active noise control earplug. These measurements will be presented and some of the implications for active noise control will be...


The purpose of the study was to assess the endothelial dysfunction (ED) in type 2 diabetic patients ultrasonographically and estimate the correlation of ED with glycemia and other cardio-metabolic risk factors. 171 patient (age 60.0 + 8.5 years) with diagnosed type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease (CAD) were randomly included in a cross sectional study. B-mode ultrasound system with a linear transducer of 7.5 MHz was used for evaluation of flow-mediated vasodilation in brachial artery (FMV). FMV was presented as a change of brachial artery diameter at rest and after limb ischemia, previously provoked by cuff inflation. Peripheral ED was found in 77.2% (132 patients). Multivariate logistic regression model defined: age (OR 1.071, 95% CI 1.003 1,143) and plasma cholesterol (OR 4.083 95% CI 1.080 17,017) as determinants for ED. Linear multivariate analysis presented duration of diabetes (Beta 0.173, Sig 0.024), and glycemia (Beta 0.132, Sig 0.044) to be associated independently with FMV value. Estimated factors influencing FMV, might be potential therapeutic targets for presented endothelial dysfunction in type 2 diabetic patients with coronary artery disease.


The National Cancer Institute (NCI), Bethesda, Md, has established a goal of reducing the cancer mortality rate in the United States by 50% by the year 2000. This means that more than 200 000 premature deaths will be prevented in that and each ensuing year. While this goal will be reached by action on a number of fronts, eg, changing dietary habits, developing new treatment techniques, and utilizing existing state-of-the-art treatment techniques, an essential element will be an accelerated rate of smoking prevention and cessation in the United States. This is particularly true if we are to become the smoke-free society envisioned by the Surgeon General. See also p 1039. Since the publication of the first Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and Health in 1964, 1 more than 30 million Americans have stopped smoking. While no one approach appears to have been preeminent as a means of stopping smoking (although


Abstract This paper investigates selected short- and mid-term effects in trade in goods between the Visegrad countries (V4: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic) and the Republic of Korea under the framework of the Free Trade Agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Korea. This Agreement is described in the "Trade for All" (2015: 9) strategy as the most ambitious trade deal ever implemented by the EU. The primary purpose of our analysis is to identify, compare, and evaluate the evolution of the technological sophistication of bilateral exports and imports. Another dimension of the paper concentrates on the developments within intra-industry trade. Moreover, these objectives are approached taking into account the context of the South Korean direct investment inflow to the V4. The evaluation of technological sophistication is based on UNCTAD's methodology, while the intensity of intra-industry trade is measured by the GL-index and identification of its subcategories (horizontal and vertical trade). The analysis covers the timespan 2001–2015. The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that the study of South Korean-V4 trade relations has not so far been carried out from this perspective. Thus this paper investigates interesting phenomena identified in the trade between the Republic of Korea (ROK) and V4 economies. The main findings imply an impact of South Korean direct investments on trade. This is represented by the trade deficit of the V4 with ROK and the structure of bilateral trade in terms of its technological sophistication. South Korean investments might also have had positive consequences for the evolution of IIT, particularly in the machinery sector. The political interpretation indicates that they may strengthen common threats associated with the middle-income trap, particularly the technological gap and the emphasis placed on lower costs of production.


Silver is an important industrial metal used in several areas such as photographic and x-ray films, jewelries, silver wares and electronic objects. Silver is used for photographic film/x-ray film because of its matchless quality as a light-sensitive material for making a photographic image. Silver is not destroyed in the photographic process and it can be reused and recovered. Results have proven that, bacterial alkaline protease can be used to extract silver in 30 min, but its activity decreases with increasing incubation period. Gelatin hydrolysis was monitored by measuring the increase in turbidity of the hydrolysate, which was accompanied by release of protein and hydroxyproline. The protease of the culture filtrate used was 97 U/ml after 30 min, but it decreased to 86.5U/ml after 60 min. After 90 min, it reached 85 U/ml. A great inactivation was recorded after 120 min; it got to 39.5 and 36.5% (U/ml) after 180 min. Gelatin layer was stripped completely within 30 min with 97 U ml-1 protease at 50°C and pH 8. At the end of the treatment, gelatin layer was completely removed and the polyester film was left clean. In addition, silver was recovered in the hydrolysate, both of which can be reused.

 Key words: Silver recovery, x-ray films, gelatin, alkaline protease, Bacillus subtilis.


ABSTRACT The aims of this study were to (1) provide a general description of the hooded seal's integument; (2) diagnose hair follicle activity stages and develop a chronology for the annual moult within the different sex and age classes; (3) examine the population characteristics of the moult haul-out; and (4) seek possible correlations between these events and the hooded seal's annual cycle. Skin samples were collected from 68 moulting hooded seals out of 868 taken in the Denmark Strait for population studies during June and July 1972. The microstructure of the integument of this species is described. It varies little from what is known from other northern phocids. However, they appear to be one to two "intermediate" guard hair follicles within up to seven underfur follicles; these are smaller than the main guard hair follicle in each hair follicle complex. The hair follicles in the skin of most hooded seals of both sexes and all ages sampled between 21 June and 11 July 1972 were at early to middle stages of activity, suggesting that hair growth starts somewhat earlier than mid-June and ends later than mid-July. It appears that female moult haul-out numbers started to decline about four to five days earlier than the males, but when the haul-out began or ended could not be determined. The brevity, synchronicity and precision of the moult (and breeding season) suggest that its timing is controlled by an environmental factor such as day length at the high northern latitudes inhabited by hooded seals.


Oxygen radicals occlusion / release behavior of nanoporous aluminosilicate, Ca12Al14-XSiXO33+0.5X (0≦X≦4), synthesized under different condition was examined by the temperature programmed reduction (TPR) in an atmosphere of hydrogen in the temperature range of 200-1000°C and temperature programmed oxidation (TPO) measurement at 800°C. From the TPR results of Ca12Al14O33 (X=0) and Ca12Al10Si4O35 (X=4), it was found that there were three oxygen release peaks, denoted as α, β and γ, on each sample and the peaks appeared in the temperature range 300-420°C, 420-600°C, and 600-750°C, respectively. The oxygen contents of α and γ of samples were almost the same. However, the oxygen content of β in the sample with x = 4 was much larger, almost double, compared to that in x = 0. From the TPR, TPO results and catalytic performance, it was concluded that the oxygen content of β peak strongly influenced the catalytic activity of the nanoporous aluminosilicate in the propylene combustion.


Rate-zonal centrifugation of pea ( Pisum sativum var. Alaska) stem microsomal membranes on a linear Renografln gradient separated Golgi secretory vesicles from dictyosomes. Secretory vesicles possessed high levels of xyloglucan fucosyl transferase activity, which effects the final decoration of stem xyloglucan side-chains, but lacked substantial xyloglucan xylosyl transferase activity, which is required for the synthesis of the xyloglucan backbone. In contrast, total dictyosomal membranes possessed both fucosyl and xylosyl transferase activities. Isopycnic centrifugation of a homogenized dictyosome-enriched membrane preparation on a shallower Renografln gradient indicated that lighter dictyosomal membranes possessed xylosyl transferase but relatively little fucosyl transferase activity. The bulk of the dictyosomal membranes formed a denser peak in which xylosyl and fucosyl transferase activities codistributed. Thus a differential localization of function in the Golgi apparatus during biosynthesis of xyloglucan is indicated. A tentative mechanism is suggested in which the elaboration of the glucose-xylose backbone is initiated in lighter dictyosomal membranes, backbone synthesis is concluded and fucosylation begun in denser dictyosomal membranes, and fucosylation completed in Golgi secretory vesicles during transport of xyloglucan to the cell wall.


Software's, programs are valuable assets to developer companies. However, the source code of programs can be theft and JavaScript programs whose code is easily available which is a serious threat to the industry. There are techniques like watermarking which prove the ownership of the program but it can be defaced and encryption which changes source code but it may decrypted and also it cannot avoid the source code being copied. In this paper, we use a new technique, software birthmark, to help detect code theft of software or program. A birthmark is a unique characteristic of a program which is used to identify the program. We extract the birthmark of software from the run-time heap by using frequent sub graph mining and search the same in suspected program.


An apparently novel 1,3-β-glucan synthase from the oomycete Saprolegnia monoica has been characterized. The enzyme exhibits properties that differ markedly from those of the enzyme previously described [Fèvre, M. & Dumas, C. (1977). J Gen Microbiol 103, 297-306] as it is active at alkaline pH, stimulated by the divalent cations Ca2+, Mg2+ and Mn2+, and appears to be located mainly in the apical part of the hypha. Taking into consideration the differences in pH optimum and effect of divalent ions, each enzyme activity could be assayed in the presence of the other. The insoluble polymeric product of the enzyme with alkaline pH optimum was characterized as a linear 1,3-β-glucan. Comparisons of the general properties of 1,3-β-glucan synthases suggest that enzymes from the oomycetes are more closely related to enzymes from higher plants than to those of true fungi, reflecting the fact that the oomycetes are highly divergent from chitinous fungi.


Pioneer Electric Company has developed a new generation 40-inch rear projection SD-P40 television, a revolutionary, new television that realizes white peak brightness of 300 ft-I and high contrast. The combination of high brightness and high contrast is made possible primarily by newly developed optical-coupling technology that utilizes newly developed concepts. This new optical coupling technology cools the CRT quite efficiently, making it possible to greatly increase the CRT power input to obtain high brightness and at the same time provides greater reliability than direct view televisions. The new optical-coupling technology also makes it possible to almost completely eliminate the reflectance at the boundaries between the CRT and the lens and air, which gives much higher contrast than previous televisions. Not only does this optical-coupling technology provide high performance, in addition since the liquid coolant it employs functions as a liquid lens, the coupling lens can be designed to a uniform thinness and a small aperture. This greatly reduces the cost of the lens. Our newly developed optical-coupling technology is the ultimate form of cooling for the CRT tubes of projection televisions and coupling with the lens and will become the mainstream technology in the future. It is forecast that other manufacturers will also adopt this type of technology. The optical lens section, which is the heart of a projection television, is a hybrid structure with three aspherical plastic lenses and one glass spherical lens. It has higher performance image formation and greater temperature stability than previous televisions. The plastic lenses are all finished with multi-coating to hold down light loss and maximize transparency. This con-tributes greatly to increasing the brightness for a projection television. Previous 3-tube type projection televisions were bothered by low color uniformity, color shift, and low color rela-tive illumination. This model uses three bends in the optical path to lengthen the optical path and reduce the R, G, and B lens pitch angle, so these problems can be virtually ignored. In particular, the special design of the lenticular lens screen greatly. suppresses color shift. The rear surface of the screen is printed with black stripes to hold down. reflectance from outside light sources and minimize the reduction of contrast in bright rooms. In addition, the opti-mal design of the fresnel lens keeps the hot band from being too noticeable. A variety of steps were taken in the design of the bends in the optical path to prevent ghosts.


We propose a unified framework to address a family of classical mixed-integer optimization problems with logically constrained decision variables, including network design, facility location, unit commitment, sparse portfolio selection, binary quadratic optimization, sparse principal analysis and sparse learning problems. These problems exhibit logical relationships between continuous and discrete variables, which are usually reformulated linearly using a big-M formulation. In this work, we challenge this longstanding modeling practice and express the logical constraints in a non-linear way. By imposing a regularization condition, we reformulate these problems as convex binary optimization problems, which are solvable using an outer-approximation procedure. In numerical experiments, we establish that a general-purpose numerical strategy, which combines cutting-plane, first-order and local search methods, solves these problems faster and at a larger scale than state-of-the-art mixed-integer linear or second-order cone methods. Our approach successfully solves network design problems with 100s of nodes and provides solutions up to 40\% better than the state-of-the-art; sparse portfolio selection problems with up to 3,200 securities compared with 400 securities for previous attempts; and sparse regression problems with up to 100,000 covariates.


BACKGROUND/AIMS
Showing "similar efficacy" of a less intensive treatment typically requires a non-inferiority trial. Yet such trials may be challenging to design and conduct. In acute promyelocytic leukemia, great progress has been achieved with the introduction of targeted therapies, but toxicity remains a major clinical issue. There is a pressing need to show the favorable benefit/risk of less intensive treatment regimens.

METHODS
We designed a clinical trial that uses generalized pairwise comparisons of five prioritized outcomes (alive and event-free at 2 years, grade 3/4 documented infections, differentiation syndrome, hepatotoxicity, and neuropathy) to confirm a favorable benefit/risk of a less intensive treatment regimen. We conducted simulations based on historical data and assumptions about the differences expected between the standard of care and the less intensive treatment regimen to calculate the sample size required to have high power to show a positive Net Treatment Benefit in favor of the less intensive treatment regimen.

RESULTS
Across 10,000 simulations, average sample sizes of 260 to 300 patients are required for a trial using generalized pairwise comparisons to detect typical Net Treatment Benefits of 0.19 (interquartile range 0.14-0.23 for a sample size of 280). The Net Treatment Benefit is interpreted as a difference between the probability of doing better on the less intensive treatment regimen than on the standard of care, minus the probability of the opposite situation. A Net Treatment Benefit of 0.19 translates to a number needed to treat of about 5.3 patients (1/0.19 ≃ 5.3).

CONCLUSION
Generalized pairwise comparisons allow for simultaneous assessment of efficacy and safety, with priority given to the former. The sample size required would be of the order of 300 patients, as compared with more than 700 patients for a non-inferiority trial using a margin of 4% against the less intensive treatment regimen for the absolute difference in event-free survival at 2 years, as considered here.


The last disruption experiments in JET with plasma facing components (PFC) based on carbon-fibre composite tiles have been carried out using either Massive Gas Injection or a constant gas puff. These studies provided new data and increased the database on disruption generated runaway electrons (RE) at JET. Temporal and spatial dynamics of RE beams have been studied using inverse reconstruction of the measured hard and soft X-rays emission during RE plateaux. Energy of RE have been measured up to 15 MeV. An analysis of plasma geometry spatial dynamics and RE generation at current quench (CQ) has shown that large decrease of RE generation rate could be achieved if plasma performs fast horizontal and/or vertical motions at CQ. Analysis of the experimental data and modelling of the interaction of RE beams with PFC in JET has shown that secondary RE could be generated during the interaction of the existing RE with PFC. First operations of JET with ITERlike Wall (ILW) have shown that the new all-metal environment did not favour to RE generation at disruptions.


Current security regimens are grounded in the advancement of liberal peace. All inter-governmental organizations, most states and most donor agencies more or less accept as common sense the self-evident virtuosity and truth of the liberal peace project. However, there is a profound contradiction within this project in Africa in that while this security regimen might reflect the impulses of a neoliberal hegemony, the very basic foundations of a domestic hegemonic project are in the main wholly absent. Equally, the nature of underdevelopment and dependency in the continent continues to undermine even basic autonomous state formation. These disjunctures mean that there is a distinct contradiction in promoting the current dominant security regimen in post-conflict scenarios in Africa. Instead, the liberal peace needs to be understood as a transnational project aimed at opening up African spaces for continued foreign penetration and exploitation.


Background: Development of lesions in the oral cavity is strongly linked with smoking and alcohol consumption. Non neoplastic lesions are mainly inflammatory conditions. It has been seen that the benign lesions are more common than malignant. Materials and methods: This was a retrospective study carried out in the Department of Histopathology of Helping Hands Community Hospital during a period of one and a half years from January 2009 to June 2010. The study included 21 cases of oral cavity lesions. Results: The most common site was lip with 9 cases (42.8%) followed by buccal cavity with 5 cases (23.8%). Out of the 21 cases of oral cavity lesions, 20 cases (95.2%) were benign and 1 case (4.8%) was malignant. The malignant lesion was a case of squamous cell carcinoma of soft palate. Conclusion: Any oral cavity lesion should have a tissue diagnosis for rational management of the case and to avoid mutilating surgery. Keywords: Oral cavity; Fibroma; Mucocele DOI: 10.3126/jpn.v1i1.4452 Journal of Pathology of Nepal (2011) Vol.1, 49-51


This paper presents a multi-scale friction model for largescale forming simulations. A friction framework has been developed including the effect of surface changes due to normal loading and straining the underlying bulk material. A fast and
efficient translation from micro to macro modeling, based on stochastic methods, is incorporated to reduce the computational effort. Adhesion and ploughing effects have been accounted for to characterize friction conditions on the micro scale. A discrete model has been adopted which accounts for the formation of contact patches ploughing through the contacting material. To simulate metal forming processes a coupling has been made with an implicit Finite Element code. Simulations on a typical metal formed product shows a distribution of friction values.
The modest increase in simulation time, compared to a standard Coulomb-based FE simulation, proves the numerical feasibility of the proposed method.


In state of Acre, most anuran research has been carried out in areas of terra firme, whereas alluvial forests remain relatively unexplored. We document the richness, breeding environments and calling season of the anurans of the Lower Moa River in the Alto Jurua (state of Acre), a region considered to harbor high biodiversity. Sampling was conducted in two main areas with different forest typologies (Terra firme forest and Alluvial forest), totaling 256 ha. The diversity of anurans was analyzed using the Shannon-Wiener index, evenness and Berger - Parker dominance. The anurans were sampled from October 2008 to September 2009, using the following sampling methods: sampling at breeding sites, pitfall traps, time constrained visual search during the day (TCVSD); at night (NVTCS) and active search (AS). Fifty anuran species, belonging to eight families, were recorded: Aromobatidae (2), Bufonidae (5), Hemiphractidae (1), Hylidae (25), Leptodactylidae (9), Microhylidae (4), Ranidae (1) and Craugastoridae (3). Pitfall traps totaling 1440 day-buckets in the year. DVTCS had a total sampling effort 72 hours/person/year; NVTCS - 72 hours/person/year and AS - 24 hours/person/year. Greater richness (35 species) was recorded in the alluvial forest, low diversity index and high dominance (H' = 1.69, J' = 0.51, d = 0.62). Most likely, these values were influenced by the high relative abundance of Rhinella margaritifera in this area. The richness of the alluvial forest may be associated with environmental heterogeneity according with the theory of intermediate disturbances. The breeding activity of most species occurred in lentic environments (lakes and temporary ponds) and during the rainy season. When sampling anurans in the Amazon it is important to use two or more sampling method and to consider the different forest typologies of this biome for a better characterization of its richness.


This paper considers the flow and heat transfer characteristics of dusty nanofluid over a moving plate in the presence of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) with convective boundary condition. Two types of nanofluid namely CuO-water and Al2O3-water permeated with dust particles are considered. The governing partial differential equations are converted into a system of non-linear ordinary differential equations using similarity transformation, then the non-linear ordinary differential equations are solved using shooting method with fourth-fifth order Runge-Kutta Fehlberg method (RKF45). The influence of non-dimensional governing parameters such as velocity ratio parameter, magnetic field parameter, volume fraction of the nanoparticle, volume fraction of the dust particle, mass concentration of the dust particle, fluid particle interaction parameter for velocity, fluid particle interaction parameter for temperature and Biot number on the velocity and temperature profiles for fluid and dust phases of CuO-water and Al2O3-water dusty nanofluids are discussed and presented through graphs. The skin friction coefficient and Nusselt number are discussed and presented in tabular form.


Amidst XIX century, Principality of Serbia was still a country of small
landowners with 73% of territory dedicated to agriculture, divided into
fiefs up to 5 hectars in size. Owing to her geographic position, Serbia was
simultaneously a transit area for trade caravans coming from South and Central Balkans as well as for those travelling from outhwest via N. Pazar. Therefore, trade has always played a rather important, vital role in development of the Principality of Serbia. hence, thriving and ever richer class of merchants quickly supported passing the Trade Bill for Principality of Serbia with authorisation of "Milos Obrenovic the First Serbian Principal along with agreement of the Council following proposal of the National Assembly" 26th of January 1860 A. D. The fact that this bill had been passed three years ahead of the Austrian and full fifteen years before hungarian Trade Bill is definitely noteworthy (Niketic, 1923, pp. 147). Serbian Trade Bill strongly drew from
the French Code Commerce, especially in articles regarding establishment and day to day functioning of business entities, but also from the Civil Code of the Principality of Serbia (brought about 1844) whose author was Jovan Hadžic (Đorđevic, 2008, pp. 62-84).
The very passing of the Trade Bill for the Proncipality of Serbia indicated
gradual build-up of political atmosphere which enabled breakthrough of fresh ideas in all aspects of social life. So, for instance, backed by §38 of the Trade Bill, in February 1869 Ministry of Finance issued licence for founding the first private money fund in Serbia. The First Serbian Bank was projected to start with capital of one million ducats. Nevertheless, once opened for business, on the 2nd of October 1869, it turned out that it's IPO managed to amass only 120,000 ducats (1,440,000 French francs at the time) [Mitrovic, 2004, pp. 33]. As it happened, legislation in the Trade Bill was insufficient for establishment
of such complex business entities. Therefore, already in 1871 not only its
shareholders went bankrupt, but also its creditors and the state itself - demise having been speeded up by the bank's attempt to act both as a comercial bank and engage in a purely speculative investment.
Bankrupcy of the First Serbian Bank was an important if stressful financial
experience for the young Serbian state. The downfall of Prva Srpska bank was an important financial experience for young Serbian State. That is supported by the fact that in 1871 during incorporation of first joint-stock banks with domestic capital (Beogradski kreditni zavod, Smederevska kreditna banka i Pozarevacka banka) the State decided to enact special decrees, specifying their activities, as well as their rights and responsibilities. Given that in number
of existing provisions of Serbian commercial law relating to incorporation of public companies (31-38, 41 and 44) there had been no provisions sanctioning unconscionable business dealings, it was decided that a special Decree on trading of banks dated 24 September 1871 will in its first provision state that 'false creation as well as imitation of any document which the mentioned
institutions would issue, will be punishable equally as false creation or imitation of public documents. During following years, until creation of Privilegovana Narodna banka 1884, apart from the mentioned three, only four additional (mainly local) banks were formed with the total founding capital of modest 3.2 million dinars.
On the other hand, until the beginning of the 1880s, Serbia did not have
either a private or a public financial institution for poorest classes of tradesmen and craftsmen. The only source of loan capital was loanshark capital from rich city tradesmen and high public servants. As well as Serbian peasants, small tradesmen and craftsmen used to paid yearly interest to loansharks between 24% and 50%, with lower amounts on short term carrying a yearly interest of
up to 120%. The Serbian authorities on number of occasions attempted to create publicly managed funds to address the issues of lending and loansharking,
mostly without success. The more serious attempt of the State to secure lending
capital for public was the creation of the Funds Directorate at the Ministry of Finance, in 1862 commencing with work in 1864. Funds Directorate provided long term loans with 6% annual interest by taking a mortgage over up to 50% of estimated value of immovable property. Tradesmen and craftsmen could grant a mortgage over their houses and land, which meant that loans were
available only to relatively better off tradesmen and public servants.
Newspaper "Belgrade Daily" ("Beogradski dnevnik") wrote in 1882: "It
is known to every Belgrader that money is very scarce. however, our people,
as everywhere else, often need money. What happens? Richer tradesmen and
capitalists easily help themselves, as in case of need, on their land and on their signatures, they secure money with moderate interest. What happens when a poorer tradesman, craftsman or a public servant gets into the financial need?
What? Let's be honest and say the truth: less well-off class can only turn to loansharks, who, seeing him in the need, fleece his skin off, charging 20, 30, 40, often 50% interest. What is the consequence of that? That class becomes overindebted and goes under" (Aleksic, 2012, pp. 108-133).


This document summarizes the work done in our three-year LDRD project titled 'Physics of Intense, High Energy Radiation Effects.' This LDRD is focused on electrical effects of ionizing radiation at high dose-rates. One major thrust throughout the project has been the radiation-induced conductivity (RIC) produced by the ionizing radiation. Another important consideration has been the electrical effect of dose-enhanced radiation. This transient effect can produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). The unifying theme of the project has been the dielectric function. This quantity contains much of the physics covered in this project. For example, the work on transient electrical effects in radiation-induced conductivity (RIC) has been a key focus for the work on the EMP effects. This physics in contained in the dielectric function, which can also be expressed as a conductivity. The transient defects created during a radiation event are also contained, in principle. The energy loss lead the hot electrons and holes is given by the stopping power of ionizing radiation. This information is given by the inverse dielectric function. Finally, the short time atomistic phenomena caused by ionizing radiation can also be considered to be contained within the dielectric function. During the LDRD, meetings about the work were more » held every week. These discussions involved theorists, experimentalists and engineers. These discussions branched out into the work done in other projects. For example, the work on EMP effects had influence on another project focused on such phenomena in gases. Furthermore, the physics of radiation detectors and radiation dosimeters was often discussed, and these discussions had impact on related projects. Some LDRD-related documents are now stored on a sharepoint site (https://sharepoint.sandia.gov/sites/LDRD-REMS/default.aspx). In the remainder of this document the work is described in catergories but there is much overlap between the atomistic calculations, the continuum calculations and the experiments. « less


Foodborne pathogenic bacteria are causing diseases with a significant effect on human health and the economy. The four most common bacterial foodborne pathogens were isolated from different fermented meat products and characterized molecularly in the current study. A total of 20 random samples of fermented meat products, including Hotdog, pepperoni, salami, sausage, and luncheon (4 from each), were collected from different markets to be examined bacteriologically for detection of foodborne pathogenic bacteria. The samples were tested by culture for the presence of bacteria. PCR was used as a diagnostic tool for the proper identification of foodborne pathogenic bacteria. So, the pure isolates were identified and confirmed by PCR- based method using specific primers for each genus. The isolated pathogenic bacteria were identified as Escherichia coli 0157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella sp. and Staphylococcus aureus. Out of 20 samples, only one sample contains E. coli 0157:H7. Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella spp. were isolated from two samples. At the same time, S. aureus was found in 6 samples, one of which was mecA positive. The results revealed the presence of foodborne pathogenic bacteria in fermented meat samples. So, to decrease the human hazard risk and a major public health threat associated with foodborne pathogenic bacteria and their toxins, a greater emphasis should be applied in control and prevention of contamination during processing and manipulation.


ABSTRACT Motorcycles represent an increasing proportion of traffic fatalities in the United States, accounting for more than 12.7% of the total traffic casualties within 2005–2014. Specifically, in North Carolina, motorcycles comprise less than 1% of vehicles involved in crashes but account for more than 7% of total fatalities, representing a top state in the United States. This study tries to investigate the motorcycle crashes in North Carolina more in depth. In doing so, five years' (2009–2013) worth of crash data was obtained from the Federal Highway Administration's Highway Safety Information System database. A partial proportional odds (PPO) logistic regression model was developed to examine the influence of the explanatory variable on the ordered dependent variable, that is, injury severity. Moreover, two other popular ordered-response models, that is, proportional odds and non-proportional odds models, as well as one similar unordered-response model, that is, multinomial logit model, were also developed to evaluate their performances compared to the PPO model. Older riders, DUI riding, not wearing helmets, crashes during summer and weekends, darkness, crashes with fixed objects, reckless riding, and speeding were found to increase the severity of injuries. In contrast, younger riders, winter season, adverse weather condition, and wet surface were associated with lower injury severities. Furthermore, crashes in rural areas, overturn/rollover, and crashes happened while negotiating a curve showed fluctuating effects of injury severity. According to two information criteria calculated for all three developed models fitted to the same data, the PPO model was found to outperform the other models and provide more reliable results. Based on the obtained average direct pseudo-elasticities, this study determines the effect of the various identified variables and develops several safety countermeasures as a resource for policy-makers to prevent or mitigate the severity of motorcycle crashes in North Carolina.


The Nobel Peace Prize can be viewed as an instrument of international moral suasion. This article asks how much, if at all, the Prize encourages authoritarian regimes to liberalize when awarded to dissident democratic activists. Using comparative case analysis of Burma and East Timor, it studies patterns in media coverage and in sanctions and aid policies imposed on the two countries' regimes by important international actors. The Prize awards seem not to have encouraged political liberalization in any obvious way. They did raise international awareness of the two countries' situations, but did not clearly increase outside pressures on the regimes. Key Words: Nobel Peace Prize; Moral suasion; Liberalization; Democratization; Burma; Myanmar; East Timor; Timor-Leste. Democratization has often been considered a largely internal affair. But in a world in which state boundaries appear increasingly permeable, international influences on democratization seem more significant than ever. This article examines one potential international influence on democratic development: the awarding to dissident democratic activists of the Nobel Peace Prize. Studies of international influences on democratic development have increased in recent years. For the most part, however, such studies have focused on how states or international organizations have used particular democracy promotion policies (Carothers 1999; Burnell 2000; Crawford 2000; Youngs 2001; Crawford 2003a, 2003b; Ethier 2003; Bjorlund 2004) or direct assistance funds (Crawford 2001; Burnell 2004; Knack 2004) to try to push regimes toward greater democratic rule. This article considers the possible effects of moral suasion, a less commonly studied international influence on democratic development. The Nobel Peace Prize can be considered an instrument of moral suasion to the degree that its commemoration of people who have promoted ideals of peace, social justice, and democracy contributes to some practical political change. This article aims to gauge the practical effects of Peace Prize awards by examining two recent cases in which the Prize was awarded to people struggling to transform the dictatorships under which they live into democratic regimes. The Peace Prize is justly celebrated for promoting the ideals that it does. But we should be willing to ask what practical effects it has had on specific ongoing struggles led by its laureates. The Prize sometimes is awarded to honor a successfully completed struggle, but it more often is awarded to people or organizations engaged in ongoing ones. Most people probably assume that the awarding of the Prize changes the dynamics of such struggles, making peaceful, just, or democratic resolutions more likely. This assumption is likely reinforced by the rhetoric of politicians whose personal beliefs or calculations of self-interest lead them to express hope in the Prize's practical effects. But researchers have made surprisingly little effort to put the assumption to the test.1 Among the ongoing political and social struggles undertaken by Nobel Peace Prize laureates, the only ones considered here are those aimed at transforming the governments of particular countries from dictatorships into democracies. But democratic regimes are complex, as are the processes needed to create them. While it is theoretically possible that the influence of the Prize could be traced clearly through various processes of political and social change to the many components of newly constructed democratic regimes, such tracing is not practically possible given that so little prior work has been done on the subject. A more realistic first step toward evaluating the effect the Prize has on struggles for democratic change is to gauge how much it contributes to political liberalization. When regimes liberalize, they reduce at least some of the constraints they have imposed on their populations, in a process that may or may not ultimately lead to full-fledged democratic rule. …


A large fraction of organic aerosol particles are formed as secondary organic aerosol (SOA) resulting from the condensation of partially oxidized biogenic and anthropogenic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with gas phase oxidants such as O3, OH, NOx, and NO3. An additional pathway for SOA formation is by the photochemical aqueous processing of VOC occurring inside cloud and fog droplets, followed by droplet evaporation. Once formed, SOA can age through heterogeneous oxidation and fog photochemical processes involving the hydroxyl radical (OH) as well as various other oxidants in the atmosphere. In addition to condensed phase oxidation, SOA can also age in the atmosphere upon exposure to radiation, for many of these organic compounds are photolabile and can degrade through direct photolysis, wherein the compounds absorb radiation and break into products, and indirect photolysis, wherein absorption of solar radiation initiates chemistry through the production of non-selective oxidants such as OH. These photochemical aging processes have the potential to be on time scales that are comparable to the typical lifetimes of droplets (hours) and particles (days), making them relevant to study further for both climate and health reasons. This dissertation presents a systematic investigation of the optical properties, molecular composition, and the extent of photochemical processing in different types of SOA from various biogenic and anthropogenic VOC precursors. Chamber- or flowtube-generated SOA is made and then analyzed using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS) to observe the extent of change in the molecular level composition of the material before and after aqueous photolysis. Significant differences in the molecular composition between biogenic and anthropogenic SOA were observed, while the composition further evolved during photolysis. To study the optical properties and lifetimes of organic aerosol, spectroscopy tools such as UV-Vis is utilized. Results of this study suggest that the condensed phase photolysis of SOA can occur with effective lifetimes ranging from minutes to hours, and therefore represents a potentially important aging mechanism for SOA. The outcome of this dissertation will be improved understanding of the role of condensed-phase photochemistry in chemical aging of aerosol particles and cloud droplets.


Breast cancer is one of the main causes of women's death. Early detection of tumors increases the chances of overcoming this disease. There are several diagnostic methods for detecting tumors, each of which has its own limitations. Recently, Ultra Wideband (UWB) imaging has gained wide acceptance for several good features such as its specificity and lack of ionizing radiation. The confocal method has been the dominant technique in this area based on homogeneous breast tissues and prior knowledge of tissue permittivity. Hence it is impractical and difficult to be implemented clinically. This thesis has focused on development of a complete non-confocal system for breast tumor detection using Neural Network (NN)-based Ultra Wideband (UWB) imaging considering both homogeneous and heterogeneous tissues. The work has been done in two phases: i) Simulation and ii) Experiment. At the simulation stage, a feed-forward NN model was developed to identify the existence, size, and location of tumors in a breast model. Spherical tumors were created and placed at arbitrary locations in a hemispherical breast model using the Computer Simulation Technology (CST) software as an Electromagnetic (EM) simulator. The UWB signals were transmitted and received through breast phantoms. The transmitter and receiver were rotated 360° to detect tumor existence, size, and location in a two-dimensional breast slice using the best-complement rule. A modified Principle Feature Analysis (PFA) method was implemented to reduce the feature vector size and extract the most informative features. We have found that the most informative features occur at the maxima and minima of the signals. The extracted features from the received UWB signals were fed into the NN model to train, validate, and test it first and then to detect the presence, size, and location of possible breast tumors. After simulation proof, a system was developed for experimental tumor detection. The system consisted of commercial UWB transceivers, a developed NN model, and breast phantoms for homogenous and heterogeneous tissues. The breast phantoms and tumor were constructed using available low cost materials and their mixtures with minimal effort. The materials and their mixtures were chosen according to the ratio of the dielectric properties of the breast tissues. A Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) of the received signals was used to construct the feature vector to train the NN model. Finally, the system was trained to distinguish between malignant and benign tumors. Tumors as small as 0.1 mm and 0.5 mm (diameter) have been successfully detected through simulation and experimental investigation respectively. The tumor existence, size, and location detection rate are about (i) 100%, 93%, and 93.3% and (ii) 100%, 95.8%, and 94.3% through simulation and experimental system respectively. Possible differentiation between malignant and benign tumor was also achieved. The method utilizes the power of neural networks and demonstrates a new direction in this field. This gives assurance of breast tumor detection and the practical usefulness of the developed system in the near future.


Marketing budgeting is one of the most important aspects of management and of highly relevance for business success. Due to rising competitive pressure and a considerable increase in marketing investments the importance of this subject has additionally grown in the last years. For this reason, marketing budgeting receives a huge amount of attention by research and practitioners alike. Accordingly, it is stated in the CMO Council Report of 2007: "The number-one challenge for most chief marketing officers is to quantify, measure, and improve the value of marketing investments and resource allocations". The Marketing Science Instituteset this issue as top research priority for the time period 2010-2012: "How should firms determine the absolute level of marketing spending and how should spending be allocated at the strategic level - that is, across products, customer groups, and geographies?"
The academic literature has been dealing with questions regarding the marketing budget process for a long time and therefore this issue has been discussed and analyzed in multiple ways. The focus of this literature has been on the allocation of budgets as previous research has shown that profit improvement from better allocation is much higher than from improving the overall budget. To give an overview of the existing literature we may distinguish between two main research streams: (1) the descriptive and (2) the normative analysis of marketing budgeting.
Descriptive literature discusses the status quo of the marketing budgeting process in companies, i.e. it identifies how marketing budgets are actually determined and allocated by managers. Two types of descriptive studies have emerged in the literature. The first type covers a broad range of manager surveys about budgeting behavior. They indicate that budget decisions are mainly based on the application of some simple budgeting rules, such as the "Percentage of Sales" or "Competitive Parity" method, which are easy to apply and therefore be preferred by manager. But these studies ignore for the high complexity of the budgeting process and are exposed to several biases of survey studies. Therefore insights on the budgeting process based on survey results are quite limited. The second type of descriptive studies try to explain budgeting behavior by estimating the impact of relevant factors on the observable size and allocation of the marketing budget to identify determinants of budget setting. But as all of these studies apply highly different approaches in model design results across studies about the impact of determinants on budgeting are characterized by high heterogeneity. So in summary, literature may only provide a fuzzy and fragmented picture on how manager determine their marketing budget.
Normative literature discusses how the marketing budget should be determined. A large body of work assists practitioners by developing diverse approaches for allocation optimization, covering several aspects of resource allocation. All of these solutions offer important general insights into the budgeting problem but generally are not implemented in the marketing practice as they cover only some aspects of the budget allocation problem and/or give suggestions on budget allocation which are not understood and therefore are not accepted by manager. For this reason, researcher developed several heuristics or decision calculus models which address the problem that optimization models cannot be well implemented in companies and offer easy to understand and close to optimum solutions for the complex allocation problem. But while all of the heuristics are focused on short-term profit maximization and thus ignore for dynamic effects which are highly important for budget allocation, the decision calculus models may only give imprecise implications for budget allocation. This explains why the application of scientific models for resource allocation by practitioners is quite rare.
The objective of this dissertation is to offer a comprehensive analysis of marketing budgeting. Therefore this work contributes to descriptive as well as normative research by addressing two main research gaps which exist in the literature. In terms of descriptive analysis the existing literature provides only a fragmented picture about influential factors in the budgeting process. In terms of normative literature no method has been developed which address the complexity of the budget allocation task for a multi-country, multi product-firm as well as the need of practitioners for simple allocation rules.
The first two papers of this dissertation address the descriptive analysis issues by (1) reviewing and structuring the fragmented literature of marketing budgeting behavior, and (2) developing an innovative approach to analyze empirically the application of budgeting methods in pharmaceutical companies. The last two papers of this dissertation address the normative analysis issues by (3) introducing and implementing an innovative solution to the dynamic marketing allocation budget problem for multi-product, multi-country firms, and (4) analyzing and comparing the performance of different allocation rules by simulation analysis. In summary, the dissertation's focus is to understand how marketing budgets are set by practitioners, and how the allocation decision process can be improved.


: A disinfectant policy should provide information on all types of disinfectants and on procedures for their use. Requirements for chemical disinfection are mainly limited to cleaning areas of contaminated spillage, decontamination of certain heat-labile instruments e.g. fiberscopes, and disinfection of the skin. Antibiotic policies are necessary to ensure rationalization of therapy, to prevent the emergence of resistance, to limit or control the use of toxic agents and avoid the unnecessary use of costly agents. Hospitals should provide a list of freely available antibiotics and introduce varying restrictions on others. A short guide to therapy, especially prophylaxis, should be provided for the medical staff.


A domain-decomposition/reciprocity procedure is presented which allows the radiation patterns of microstrip patch antennas mounted on arbitrarily-shaped three-dimensional perfectly electric conducting (PEC) platforms to be computed accurately as well as efficiently. The utility of this technique is demonstrated by considering an example consisting of a nine-element conformal array of microstrip patch antennas mounted axially along a finite-length PEC circular cylinder. It is shown that the elements close to the ends of the cylinder have significantly different patterns than those close to the center of the cylinder. The results from this example suggest that the common practice where all the individual element patterns are assumed identical is not always valid and, in fact, can lead to significant performance degradation in the design of conformal phased arrays. This observation is supported by the fact that an attempt to steer the main beam of the nine-element conformal array to an angle /spl theta//sub 0/=60/spl deg/ using a standard uniform progressive phase shifting technique proves unsuccessful. Next a genetic algorithm (GA) synthesis procedure is introduced that is capable of determining the optimal set of element excitation phases required to yield a desired or specified far-field radiation pattern. The results of this GA phase-only optimization are shown to yield the desired main beam steered to the correct angle for this nine-element linear array mounted on a circularly cylindrical platform. The GA radiation pattern synthesis procedure introduced appears to be a highly effective means of correcting for platform effects on the individual element patterns of a conformal phased array.


Abstract. Data assimilation (DA) aims at optimally merging observational data and model outputs to create a coherent statistical and dynamical picture of the system under investigation. Indeed, DA aims at minimizing the effect of observational and model error, and at distilling the correct ingredients of its dynamics. DA is of critical importance for the analysis of systems featuring sensitive dependence on the initial conditions, as chaos wins over any finitely accurate knowledge of the state of the system, even in absence of model error. Clearly, the skill of DA is guided by the properties of dynamical system under investigation, as merging optimally observational data and model outputs is harder when strong instabilities are present. In this paper we reverse the usual angle on the problem and show that it is indeed possible to use the skill of DA to infer some basic properties of the tangent space of the system, which may be hard to compute in very high-dimensional systems. Here, we focus our attention on the first Lyapunov exponent and the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy, and perform numerical experiments on the Vissio-Lucarini 2020 model, a recently proposed generalisation of the Lorenz 1996 model that is able to describe in a simple yet meaningful way the interplay between dynamical and thermodynamical variables.


In recent years we have observed an escalation of cybersecurity attacks, which are becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect as they use more advanced evasion techniques and encrypted communications. The research community has often proposed the use of machine learning techniques to overcome the limitations of traditional cybersecurity approaches based on rules and signatures, which are hard to maintain, require constant updates, and do not solve the problems of zero-day attacks. Unfortunately, machine learning is not the holy grail of cybersecurity: machine learning-based techniques are hard to develop due to the lack of annotated data, are often computationally intensive, they can be target of hard to detect adversarial attacks, and more importantly are often not able to provide explanations for the predicted outcomes. In this paper, we describe a novel approach to cybersecurity detection leveraging on the concept of security score. Our approach demonstrates that extracting signals via deep packet inspections paves the way for efficient detection using traffic analysis. This work has been validated against various traffic datasets containing network attacks, showing that it can effectively detect network threats without the complexity of machine learning-based solutions.


How do children decide how best to try and get their own way? Despite extensive studies of children's influence strategies there has been little research into understanding why children utilise given influence strategies i.e. "the underlying motivations of strategy usage" (Palan and Wilkes 1997, p.167). The motivations that drive the choice of different influence strategies result from a combination of personal goals and environmental factors. The family environment provides children with some of their most important experiences about how best to compete for limited resources (e.g. time, attention, money). Choices about the allocation of income across family members' preferences are central to children's consumer socialization. In order to throw more light on the motivations for children's choice of particular strategies in their family environment (Cotte and Wood 2004), we investigate the family environments in which the influence strategies are played out; and how far the family environment has a moderating effect on the types of influence strategies that children use. Our contribution is thus twofold. Firstly we seek to better understand the family environments in which children reside; and secondly, to identify the implications that the different family environments may have in relation to each child's choice of influence strategies within their family setting. Our study responds to Cotte and Wood's (2004) and Flurry's (2007) call for research that explores further the purchase influence of children in families, specifically by exploring how the family environment affects the influence strategies that children employ.


Emerging data increasingly point towards the duodenum as a key region underlying the pathophysiology of functional dyspepsia (FD), one of the most prevalent functional GI disorders. The duodenum plays a major role in the control and coordination of gastroduodenal function. Impaired duodenal mucosal integrity and low-grade inflammation have been associated with altered neuronal signalling and systemic immune activation, and these alterations may ultimately lead to dyspeptic symptoms. Likely luminal candidates inducing the duodenal barrier defect include acid, bile, the microbiota and food antigens although no causal association with symptoms has been convincingly demonstrated. Recognition of duodenal pathology in FD will hopefully lead to the discovery of new biomarkers and therapeutic targets, allowing biologically targeted rather than symptom-based therapy. In this review, we summarise the recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of FD with a focus on the duodenum.


Numerical analysis is performed to find flow and heat transfer characteristics for coiled heat exchanger. Location of inlet and outlet ports is one of the important design parameters of the coiled heat exchanger. 3-D numerical predictions are carried out for the coiled heat exchanger system with forced convection flow. For the analysis, three different connection types of inlet and outlet ports are selected with Reynolds number varying in the range of 2,000 and 200,000. From the prediction, pressure drop, flow rate and heat transfer coefficient are analyzed. Among three different connection types of inlet and outlet ports, middle location case is found to yield better characteristics than others. It is also found that characteristics of pressure drop and heat transfer generally follow well proportional variations of Rem for the wide range of Reynolds number considered in this study.


Only a small minority of Library and Information Science (LIS) schools now schedule courses with a historical focus, and LIS faculty whose research specialty is history seem to be a vanishing breed. Yet some educators are committed to finding ways to preserve historical perspectives in the master's degree curriculum. At the 2004 conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) the Historical Perspectives Special Interest Group (SIG) discussed strategies and subsequently carried on the debate in an online forum. Theoretical justifications for including history in the curriculum appealed to both generalist and specific rationales that argued for "history as story" as well as "history as process," while practical suggestions included focusing on the preservation of documents, adopting the principles and methods of public history, and creating stronger avenues for collaboration among all historians of libraries and information science, no matter what their disciplinary affiliation. Overall, participants felt that in the current economic climate modestly scaled efforts stood the best chance of success.


Underweight and specific nutrient deficiencies are frequent in adult patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In addition, a significant number of children with IBD, particularly Crohn's disease (CD) have impaired linear growth. Nutritional support is important in patients with IBD and nutritional problems. Enteral nutrition (EN) can reduce CD activity and maintain remission in both adults and children. Given that the ultimate goal in the treatment of CD is mucosal healing, this advantage of EN over corticosteroid treatment is valuable in therapeutic decision-making. EN is indicated in active CD, in cases of steroid intolerance, in patient's refusal of steroids, in combination with steroids in undernourished individuals, and in patients with inflammatory stenosis of the small intestine. EN should be the first choice compared to total parenteral nutrition. However, EN does not have a primary therapeutic role in ulcerative colitis. In conclusion, it appears that the role of nutrition as supportive care in patients with IBD should not be underestimated. The aim of this comprehensive review is to provide the reader with an update on the role of nutritional support in IBD patients.


The aim of this study was to describe the educational experiences shaping the teaching and learning beliefs held by a group of beginning lecturers in higher education at various tertiary institutions in the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). A total of sixty three essays written by participants in an online course on teaching in higher education comprised the data for the study. A modified version of narrative analysis was used. This is a powerful methodology in qualitative research that can provide remarkable insights into individuals' beliefs. The critical experiences that were thought to shape their beliefs in teaching and learning were identified and discussed in the light of relevant literature. The participants described a range of influences that shaped their beliefs about teaching and learning including realisation about the need to work harder and know more, the importance of independence, support systems, curriculum, qualities of a teacher, teaching and learning process, teaching and learning strategies, and learning environments. This information was useful in teaching these students and for further courses.


Community Question Answering (CQA) services enable their users to exchange knowledge in the form of questions and answers. These communities thrive as a result of a small number of highly active users, typically called experts, who provide a large number of high-quality useful answers. Expert identification techniques enable community managers to take measures to retain the experts in the community. There is further value in identifying the experts during the first few weeks of their participation as it would allow measures to nurture and retain them. In this article we address two problems: (a) How to identify current experts in CQA? and (b) How to identify users who have potential of becoming experts in future (potential experts)? In particular, we propose a probabilistic model that captures the selection preferences of users based on the questions they choose for answering. The probabilistic model allows us to run machine learning methods for identifying experts and potential experts. Our results over several popular CQA datasets indicate that experts differ considerably from ordinary users in their selection preferences; enabling us to predict experts with higher accuracy over several baseline models. We show that selection preferences can be combined with baseline measures to improve the predictive performance even further.


In order to provide a better understanding of rotating universe models, and in particular the Godel universe, we discuss the relationship between cosmic rotation and perfect inertial dragging. In this connection, the concept of causal mass is defined in a cosmological context, and discussed in relation to the cosmic inertial dragging effect. Then, we calculate the mass inside the particle horizon of the flat ΛCDM-model integrated along the past light cone. The calculation shows that the Schwarzschild radius of this mass is around three times the radius of the particle horizon. This indicates that there is close to perfect inertial dragging in our universe. Hence, the calculation provides an explanation for the observation that the swinging plane of a Foucault pendulum follows the stars.


This paper critically assesses research that examines the link between participatory institutions and political trust in the context of developing countries, with a focus on Latin America. A significant limitation in the systematic accumulation of knowledge in this field is inattention to identifying a clear causal chain through which citizen participation shapes political, economic, and attitudinal outcomes such as political trust. This is particularly important in the Latin American case where constitutionally stated objectives of participatory governance include the improvement of citizen welfare as well as strengthening of political trust in public institutions. Future work should concentrate in providing clear and testable models of the complex relationship between participatory mechanisms, policy, governance, and trust, with particular attention to what mediates and moderates this relationship. Additionally, empirical work done of the Latin America case should move away from a predominantly case-study based and macro-level perspective in the study of participatory institutions to micro-level studies from the citizens point of view. A new frontier for the study of participatory governance in Latin America lies in understanding how citizens experiences with and expectations of participatory institutions as well as the policy outcomes delivered by these institutions shape political trust.


An account is given of the discovery of the classical Cys(2)His(2) zinc finger, arising from the interpretation of biochemical studies on the interaction of the Xenopus protein transcription factor IIIA with 5S RNA, and of structural studies on its structure and its interaction with DNA. The finger is a self-contained domain stabilized by a zinc ion ligated to a pair of cysteines and a pair of histidines, and by an inner hydrophobic core. This discovery showed not only a new protein fold but also a novel principle of DNA recognition. Whereas other DNA binding proteins generally make use of the two-fold symmetry of the double helix, zinc fingers can be linked linearly in tandem to recognize nucleic acid sequences of varying lengths. This modular design offers a large number of combinatorial possibilities for the specific recognition of DNA (or RNA). It is therefore not surprising that the zinc finger is found widespread in nature, including 3% of the genes of the human genome. The zinc finger design is ideally suited for engineering proteins to target specific genes. In the first example of their application in 1994, a three-finger protein was constructed to block the expression of an oncogene transformed into a mouse cell line. In addition, a reporter gene was activated by targeting an inserted zinc finger promoter. Thus, by fusing zinc finger peptides to repression or activation domains, genes can be selectively switched off or on. It was also suggested that by combining zinc fingers with other effector domains, e.g., from nucleases or integrases, to form chimeric proteins, genomes could be manipulated or modified. Several applications of such engineered zinc finger proteins are described here, including some of therapeutic importance.


Summary Data from a national representative sample of 1023 elderly and near-elderly Taiwanese were used to explore whether allostatic load is associated with health outcomes and mediates the association between socioeconomic status and health in a non-Western population. The information collected included: demographic characteristics; allostatic load scores; socioeconomic status, measured by education and income; health behaviours; health-related variables, including self-rated health, basic activities of daily living difficulties, instrumental activities of daily living difficulties, and physical activity difficulties. The adjusted prevalent odds ratios of higher allostatic load level were 1·25 (95% CI: 1·00, 1·56) for reporting one level worse in self-rated health and 1·43 (95% CI: 1·14, 1·82) for reporting one more physical activity difficulty. There were significant associations of lower education or less income with worse self-rated health and more difficulties with physical functioning. The associations between education, income and health status are not mediated by the conventional ten-point measure of allostatic load in older Taiwanese adults.


Efforts to improve the quality of local chickens, especially free-range chickens, are carried out by improving genetic traits, namely through a strict selection method to produce broilers with the name of Superior Local Broilers (ALPU) and laying purposes with Arab Kampung Chickens (Kamaras). This study was conducted to obtain information on the comparison of ALPU and Kamaras embryo development for genetic improvement as the basis for further research. This study used 105 ALPU hatching eggs and 105 Kamaras hatching eggs, the observations were carried out for 21 days. Eggs were collected for 7 days and then put into the incubator, then observed every day by breaking each 5 ALPU and Kamaras eggs to see 7 parameters of embryo development in the form of: body weight, body length, head circumference, neck length, beak length, wing length and leg length. The results showed that there was no significant developmental difference between ALPU and Kamaras embryos. However, the embryo weight and beak length of Kamaras tended to be larger than those of ALPU, while the head circumference and wing length of ALPU tended to be larger than that of Kamaras. In conclusion, the embryonic development between ALPU and Kamaras showed relatively similar embryo development during the hatching period.


As one of the key parts of rotating machinery, rolling bearing is the primary fault source, therefore it is urgent to research failure mechanism and its evolution process. First, the number of laden rollers of rolling bearings in different states without radial clearance and preload is summed up, and then nonlinear analytical equations and an additional equation are proposed. To some extent it will be helpful for researching the fault evolution process of rolling element bearings combined with fatigue theories. Further they will conduce to analyze and predict the remaining life of ball bearings.


Alan Higgins was born in Hanley, Staffordshire on 16 December 1936, the youngest of three children. Throughout his childhood he was fascinated by the natural history of the nearby Peak District and it was not surprising that sciences played an important part in his education at Hanley High School. In 1955, he went to the University of Sheffield to study Geology and obtained a 2(1) degree in 1958. During those early years in Sheffield, he came under the influence of the late Professor Leslie Moore and, on graduation, was encouraged by him to undertake research on Namurian conodonts. At that time, little was known of the true potential of conodonts and, indeed, almost nothing of their occurrence in Upper Carboniferous rocks. Alan collected samples extensively throughout the southern Pennine region, often working closely with the staff of the Geological Survey and generated the first Namurian conodont zonation for the British Isles. He exploited every opportunity to prove the value of conodont studies outside the Carboniferous Period and, in 1962, published the results of an investigation on the microfaunas found in the Durness Limestone of northwest Scotland. His PhD was completed in 1961.


This paper presents a multi-dimensional model for cross-cultural counselling based on perceptual psychology concepts. The major premise is that the effectiveness of cross-cultural counselling is mutually dependent upon the counsellor's and the client's perceptions of each other, and of the counselling process itself. In addition to offering guidelines for counselling encounters, a number of propositions are outlined, which suggest directions for future research.


Sustainable intensification of Nordic farming systems is seen as an effective adaptation and mitigation strategy. Two stakeholder workshops targeting sustainable farming under changing climate were arranged in North Savo, Finland in 2014 and 2016 with farmers and other regional agricultural stakeholder participants. Workshop outcomes are presented and discussed.The most important changes in the operational environment of farms in North Savo during past decades, identified by the participants, were related to agricultural policies and subsidy systems. They were seen strongly supporting extensification and undermining motivation for yield improvements. Long-term trends in weather patterns were not taken up by farmers. The most important obstacles for higher yields mentioned were soil fertility, particularly in relation to soil compaction and insufficient drainage, but also low motivation for improvements and lack of know-how.Workshop participants identified improving soil fertility with drainage and liming, improved crop rotations, better sowing techniques including overseeding, careful selection of cultivars and forage grass mixtures as important means for higher crop yields. Suggested solutions for improving both crop yields and farm economy were to 1) increase collaboration among farmers, 2) focus only on the most productive fields and 3) actively develop farming skills.The workshops provided important perspectives on future farming development, as well as needed developments of model-based integrated assessments which must reliably reflect the impacts of different management actions on yields, environment and farm economy. The challenge is also to correctly describe the impacts of increasing collaboration and cost sharing among farmers.


Expression of key genes involved in sugar, nitrogen, starch and terpenoid metabolism pathways were tested by regulated deficit nitrogen nutrition to study effects of different nitrogen applications on carbon and nitrogen metabolism in flue-cured tobacco. Results indicated that in sugar metabolism pathway Inv and SuS genes' expression increased when tobacco leaf became more mature while not affected by early nitrogen level. Expression of SPS gene decreased with decline of nitrogen supply at early maturing stage. GBSSI gene in starch metabolism pathway was not affected by either maturity or early nitrogen supply. GS gene expressed at lower level in maturing stage and affected by early nitrogen supply while NR gene expression was not affected. HMGR gene expression in terpenoid metabolism pathway decreased when leaf became more mature and decreased with decline of early nitrogen supply. The assimilation of nitrogen and terpenoid metabolism were significantly affected when regulated deficit of nitrogen was applied at early growing stage. Sugar and starch metabolism were affected mostly at leaf maturing stage.