Background: Each year there are about 17,000 new cases of spinal cord injury (SCI) in the United States. For individuals who suffer a SCI, the restoration of walking consistently ranks as a top priority. Currently, there is strong evidence to support the use of locomotive training for recovery of ambulation following an incomplete spinal cord injury in the sub-acute setting. The purpose of this case report is to demonstrate the application of multiple locomotive training interventions and discuss recommendations for locomotive training following a motor-incomplete SCI. Case description: The patient was a 32-year old male 4 months post motor-incomplete spinal cord injury with an ASIA C classification. His injury occurred at the spinal level C5. At baseline, he presented with a Walking Index for Spinal Cord Injury (WISCI) II score of 6 and was unable to complete the 10-meter walk test (10MWT). Interventions: In this study, multiple locomotive training interventions (Ekso GT, Zero-G dynamic body weight support, HydroWorx, and over ground training) were implemented to facilitate task-specific, massed practice gait training. These interventions were strategically employed to maximize the training dose to optimally influence ambulation recovery. Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measures used in this case were the WISCI II and the 10MWT. The secondary outcome measure used was walking distance. At discharge, the patient demonstrated clinically important improvements in all three outcomes. Discussion: This report was able to demonstrate the utilization of several locomotive training techniques and provide clinicians examples of possible gait training parameters following SCI. There is currently not enough data to synthesize gait training prescription guidelines for individuals with subacute SCI thus driving the need for additional large-scale data collection. SCI Locomotive Training


The definition and regulation of related-party transactions (RPTs) depend mainly on the conceptual framework underlying the interpretation of such a phenomenon. While the conflict of interests hypothesis focuses on opportunistic behaviours, the efficient transaction hypothesis suggests that RPTs lead to more efficient. In such a scenario, instead of providing opposite interpretations, the contingency hypothesis considers the potential risks and benefits associated with specific RPTs, i.e. other contex- tual factors and corporate governance mechanisms. Among the latter, independent di- rectors, empowered by the majority of national legislations worldwide, should play a crucial role in spotlighting opportunistic behaviours to the detriment of minorities. However, in light of the many corporate scandals that have stressed the RPTs' issues, practitioners and academics have questioned their effectiveness, especially in contexts characterized by high ownership concentration, while leaving room for the so-called minority directors, i.e. independent directors appointed by minority shareholders. On this matter, aiming to analyse the potential impact of minority directors on the level of procedural compliance for the RPTs' implementation, this empirical study, based on a data set, shows that they represent a more effective tool for the full and strict adoption of the current RPTs regulation, while independent directors fail in their monitoring role and are ineffective in bolstering corporate transparency with regard to RPTs.


The Mueller matrix elements mij representing the polarization response from a nanostructured materialis determined by the constituent materials optical properties and the superstructure. Here, we investigate how chiral structures in form of helicoidally stacked uniaxial layers determine mij as a functionof polarization state, wavelength, incidence angle and azimuthal angle of the incoming light. The studied parameters include the layer materials ordinary/extraordinary optical properties, Euler angle values, and layer thickness as well as the thickness and pitch of the helicoidal superstructure. Sub- and superstructure inhomogeneity is also introduced. From the Fresnel-based calculations, mij aswell as the degree of polarization, ellipticity and azimuth of the polarization ellipse are obtained and presented as contour and trace plots to give a complete view of the polarization behavior. The results from the calculations are compared with Mueller matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements of both natural and synthesized helicoidal structures. The measurements were performed with a dualrotating compensator system (RC2, J.A. Woollam Co., Inc.) for wavelengths in the range from 245 to 1000 nm and incident angles from 20 to 75°. For some measurements the azimuthal angle of the incident light was varied. The investigated natural chiral structures were exoskeletons from several beetles in the scarab subfamilies Cetoniinae and Rutelinae. As predicted from the calculations it isobserved that the reflection from these beetles can have a high degree of polarization and high ellipticity (near-circular polarization). Both left- and right-polarization was observed. The synthesized structures are helicoidal nanorods of Al1−xInxN grown on sapphire substrates with metal-nitride seedlayers using UHV magnetron sputtering. Due to an internal composition gradient (a variation of x) in the crystalline structure, the nanorods will tilt away from the substrate normal. Helicoidal structures can thus be obtained by rotating the substrate around its normal during deposition. Samples with different pitch and layer thickness with right-handed as well as left-handed chirality were grown. Also for these structures both left and right near-circular polarized light is observed. By combining calculations, ellipsometry measurements and scanning electron microscopy characterization we get agood input to build layered models of the natural and synthetic samples. After regression fitting agood agreement between calculated and measured optical data were obtained.


Background/Objectives: When receiving radiation treatment in form of tomotherapy, most head and neck cancer patients show symptoms of weight loss caused by stomatitis and esophagitis, and skin burns. Weight loss may lead to a closer distance between the skin and the target, causing a change in the measured skin dose. This study was conducted to analyze such changes during the radiation treatment period. Methods/Statistical Analysis: The study also analyzed whether factors such as patient gender, age, diagnosis type, and treatment regimen, including surgery or chemotherapy in addition to radiotherapy, might influence the weight changes in patients, and collected values for changes in skin dose using thermoluminescence dosimeters. Findings: The study considered 20 patients with head and neck cancer, and all of these patients showed weight loss and an increase in measured skin dose. In addition, the gender or age of the patients had no direct relationship with their weight changes. Patients who hadn't undergone surgery prior to concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy showed a substantial weight loss. In comparison, the patients who had undergone surgery prior to concurrent chemotherapy and radiation therapy displayed the least amount of weight loss. As the amount of weight loss became larger, so did the skin dose that was measured during tomotherapy (p<.05). Application/Improvements: It appeared that greater weight loss led to an increase in measured skin dose, From this study, it is implied patients with large weight loss may benefit with an adjustment of their radiotherapy parameters while maintaining their target doses.


The present study assessed the predictive value of (99m)Tc-3(poly-(ethylene glycol), PEG) 4-arginine-glycine-aspartic ((99m)Tc-3P-RGD2) single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) for the early identification of response to antiangiogenic treatment with bevacizumab in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Patients with advanced NSCLC treated with bevacizumab were prospectively studied with (99m)Tc-3P-RGD2 SPECT before and after 2 weeks from start of treatment. The tumor response was evaluated with RECIST criteria and related to observed change in the tumor to non-tumor (T/N) ratio for the largest known lesion. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used to determine T/N ratio changes with regard to predicting response to bevacizumab therapy. Change in T/N ratio was also related to progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS). Twenty-six patients were included, and 23 were finally assessable for metabolic response evaluation with (99m)Tc-3P-RGD2 SPECT. The cut-off value of T/N ratio change defined by ROC analysis was 24.4%. The sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value of (99m)Tc-3P-RGD2 SPECT for predicting tumor response were 81.8%, 91.7%, and 84.6%, respectively. Using the cut-off value defined by ROC analysis on (99m)Tc-3P-RGD2 SPECT, metabolic non-progressive disease patients (mNP) showed prolonged PFS (5.6 months versus 3.4 months; P < 0.001) and OS (17.1 months versus 8.6 months; P < 0.001) than metabolic progressive disease patients (mP). (99m)Tc-3P-RGD2 SPECT scan is a promising test to predict tumor response in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer early in the course of bevacizumab therapy.


Recent advances in micro-grid and distributed renewable energy have facilitated more efficient home energy management systems. However, due to characteristics of renewable energy such as intermittent energy generation, home energy management systems are inefficient and the recent systems therefore cannot be successfully applied to existing home. Therefore, this paper proposes intelligent cloud home energy management system (iCHEMS), considering these issues. iCHEMS assigns dynamic priority to a household appliance according to the type of appliance and its current status. In accordance with the assigned priority, the use of household appliances is scheduled considering renewable energy capability. We implemented iCHEMS in the test bed and conducted an experiment to verify the efficiency of the proposed system. The results show that the proposed system reduces the average total power consumption by up to 7.3 percent.


This book traces how the acclaimed and bestselling author Thomas Mann became one of America's most prominent anti-fascists and the spokesperson for a German cultural ideal that Nazism had perverted. Thomas Mann, winner of the 1929 Nobel Prize in literature and author of such world-renowned novels as Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain, began his self-imposed exile in the United States in 1938, having fled his native Germany in the wake of Nazi persecution and public burnings of his books. Mann embraced his role as a public intellectual, deftly using his literary reputation and his connections in an increasingly global publishing industry to refute Nazi propaganda. As the book shows, Mann undertook successful lecture tours of the country and penned widely read articles that alerted U.S. audiences and readers to the dangers of complacency in the face of Nazism's existential threat. Spanning four decades, from the eve of World War I, when Mann was first translated into English, to 1952, the year in which he left an America increasingly disfigured by McCarthyism, the book establishes Mann as a significant figure in the wartime global republic of letters.


In the last quarter century, Scottish novelists from Muriel Spark, Alasdair Gray and Allan Massie to James Kelman, Janice Galloway, A.L. Kennedy and Irvine Welsh have achieved significant international success. In The Modern Scottish Novel Cairns Craig shows how the work of such writers is constructed by a powerful national tradition in the novel, formed in the first decades of the century by writers such as John Buchan, Nan Shepherd, Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Neil Gunn, a tradition whose distinctive thematic and formal concerns have shaped a unique contribution to the novel in English. Tracing the influence of Scotland's political and social history on its novelists from the 1890s to the 1990s, Craig argues that the Scottish novel has had to develop a highly specific set of formal techniques to cope with a situation in which the dominance of the English language is challenged by the survival of the rich inheritance of Scots speech, and in which the continuing effects of Calvinism imply that all fiction is necessarily deceitful, when not actually diabolic. Craig also sets the Scottish novel in the specific traditions of Scottish intellectual life - from J.G. Frazer to John Macmurray and R.D. Laing. The Modern Scottish Novel provides the intellectual and artistic context for some of the most exciting and challenging contemporary writing in English.


Abstract. Monitoring cracks opening on concrete bridges is a key aspect for structural health assessment. Digital image processing, combined with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and photogrammetry, allows for non-contact 3D reconstruction of cracks, reducing costs and potential unsafe factors involved in manual inspections. This paper presents a flexible procedure based on UAV photogrammetry for accurate evaluation of cracks geometry, that can be implemented for periodic structural monitoring. Stereo-pair of images, acquired with UAVs close to the cracked surface, are used to build a scaled photogrammetric model through Structure-from-Motion. Cracks are detected on images by image binarization and digital image processing techniques. Thereafter, one single image is used to reconstruct crack 3D geometry, by back-projecting crack image coordinates on a 3D model of the object. This can be built from the current stereo-pair of images, or based on an existing photogrammetric model, in the case of a periodic monitoring set-up. Crack width is accurately estimated in 3D world. The procedure is tested and evaluated in a case study, obtaining millimetric accurate results, which is in line with the average ground sample distance of the images employed. Results highlight the potentials of UAVs and photogrammetry not only for bridge inspections and damages localization, but also for accurately evaluating cracks geometry and helping structural engineers to assess structure health conditions.


INTRODUCTION In the report, Health Professions Education: A Bridge to Quality, the Institutes of Medicine (IOM) has detailed a vision for preparing healthcare professionals.1 A focal point within this vision is teaching students to work in interdisciplinary teams. In a separate report, Measuring the Impact of Interprofessional Education on Collaborative Practice and Patient Outcomes, the IOM calls for an alignment of education and healthcare delivery systems.2 The Clinical Laboratory Science (CLS) education community needs to readily embrace the IOMs vision and enthusiastically answer the call with innovative educational methods such as interprofessional simulation (IP). Some CLS programs are already considering interprofessional simulation, but may not have an existing simulation infrastructure or financial support from administration. Other programs have a laboratory with instrumentation, but have not yet made the leap from simulating a "day in the lab" with CLS students to including students from professions outside the laboratory to provide comprehensive situations that more closely mimic working in a healthcare environment. This manuscript offers small scale, low resource options to help a CLS program include IP simulation as an innovative educational method to teach interprofessional communication and teamwork. Getting Started: Know the Fundamentals While high fidelity mannequins, patient rooms, and instrumentation provide an authentic environment, they are not required to offer a quality IP experience. There are, however, fundamentals that remain the same whether designing intricate scenarios for students from several professional programs or simple scenarios with students from only two professions. This includes the alignment of content knowledge between students… ABBREVIATIONS: IOM – Institutes of Medicine, CLS – Clinical laboratory scientist, IP - Interprofessional, SBAR – Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation/request, Team STEPPS - Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety, APP – Advanced practice provider, WHO – World Health Organization, CUS – Concerned, Uncomfortable, Safety issue, SP – Simulated patient, PA – Physician assistant, UAB – University of Alabama at Birmingham


The application of two kinds of ventilatory interoceptive influences with opposite effects on the acid-base balance (hyperventilation and breath holding) results in appearance of late nonspecific after-effects in human EEG, which do not disappear until the 30th min after the stimulation. They consist in local and spatial synchronizing processes in the alpha and beta EEG spectrum, being most pronounced in the beta-2 range (23-36 Hz). These changes are considered as a sign of a development of readjustment in the functional state of the central nervous system in the direction of its improvement. The triggering of this readjustment is largely determined by the considerable changes in the internal medium, leading to intensified interoceptive signalization (mechanical, chemical and proprioceptive), as well as to the development of a brief cerebral hypoxy, followed by improved brain blood flow.


Abstract In this paper, a decentralized control approach for a class of large-scale interconnected systems is proposed. A set of local decentralized controllers is constructed to guarantee the stability of the global system utilizing the notion of superstability. The control scheme and design are based on local state information and model knowledge of the adjacent subsystems. The approach leads to a computationally efficient method where the design procedure is performed on the subsystem level using linear programming. The solutions have been optimized and it is shown that the scheme has some useful features such as monotonic convergence and robustness under interval matrix uncertainty.


A novel affine combination of two adaptive filters is proposed to enhance the performance of a generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) in smart antenna array processing. The proposed method exploits a mixing vector, rather than a scalar as considered in current studies, to weight the coefficients of each component filter in such a way that the overall performances, such as convergence speed and the steady-state performance, of conventional GSC are improved. Attributing to more degrees of freedom (DOFs) offered by the mixing vector, the combined GSC presents significant performance improvement over current approaches. The optimal design as well as adaptive implementation of the overall combined GSC filter is developed with detailed theoretical analysis on the convergence rate and the steady-state excess mean-square error. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by simulation studies.


Author(s): Cole, William Thomas Shaw | Advisor(s): Saykally, Richard J | Abstract: The work presented in this thesis comprised two major projects. The first, a spectroscopic study of water clusters in the Terahertz vibrational region revealed a dramatic enhancement of tunneling motions involved in breaking and reforming hydrogen bonds. The second project involved constructing a second harmonic scattering (SHS) experiment which was used to probe buried interfaces. The study of water clusters provides a useful route towards unraveling the many body terms of the water potential. High-resolution vibrational-rotational-tunneling (VRT) spectroscopy is a particular sensitive measure of the repulsive walls of the water potential. While this method is extremely powerful, the major challenge is assigning the complex spectra that is output from the experiment. To that end, the major contribution of this thesis is an automated pattern matching algorithm based on the symmetric-top, rigid rotor model. Using this algorithm, transitions of the water dimer, pentamer, hexamer, and octamer were identified and assigned from a back log of experimental data. These assignments revealed a dramatic enhancement of tunneling motions in the librational (300 – 600 cm-1) region. These enhancements were most dramatic for motions involved in breaking and reforming the hydrogen bond in the clusters, adding to the evidence that understanding this region is essential to understanding hydrogen bond breaking dynamics. The use of 2nd order, nonlinear spectroscopy to probe surfaces is a well-established technique. Employing second harmonic generation in a scattering geometry enables probing buried interfaces in colloidal samples; these samples provide an appealing path forward towards studying real world polymers such as water purification membranes. We show that SHS can be used to probe resonant and non-resonant molecules at a polymer interface, and we extract free energies of adsorption from a variety of organic molecules. In the future, we plan to extend this technique to ionic species to supplement our existing studies of ion adsorption via sum frequency generation in reflection geometry.


The term "performance portability" has been informally used in computing to refer to a variety of notions which generally include: 1) the ability to run one application across multiple hardware platforms; and 2) achieving some notional level of performance on these platforms. However, there has been a noticeable lack of consensus on the precise meaning of the term, and authors' conclusions regarding their success (or failure) to achieve performance portability have thus been subjective. Comparing one approach to performance portability with another has generally been marked with vague claims and verbose, qualitative explanation of the comparison. This paper presents a concise definition for performance portability, along with a simple metric that accurately captures the performance and portability of an application across different platforms. The utility of this metric is then demonstrated with a retroactive application to previous work.


Software engineering faces the challenge of developing and maintaining systems that are highly variable in space (concurrent variations of the system at a single point in time) and time (sequential variations of the system due to its evolution). Recent research aims to address this need by managing variability in space and time simultaneously. However, such research often relies on nonuniform terminologies and a varying understanding of concepts, as it originates from different communities: software product-line engineering and software configuration management. These issues complicate the communication and comprehension of the concepts involved, impeding the development of techniques to unify variability in space and time. To tackle this problem, we performed an iterative, expert-driven analysis of existing tools to derive the first conceptual model that integrates and unifies terminologies and concepts of both dimensions of variability. In this paper, we present the unification process of concepts for variability in space and time, and the resulting conceptual model itself. We show that the conceptual model achieves high coverage and that its concepts are of appropriate granularity with respect to the tools for managing variability in space, time, or both that we considered. The conceptual model provides a well-defined, uniform terminology that empowers researchers and developers to compare their work, clarifies communication, and prevents redundant developments.


We study the problem of learning conditional average treatment effects (CATE) from observational data with unobserved confounders. The CATE function maps baseline covariates to individual causal effect predictions and is key for personalized assessments. Recent work has focused on how to learn CATE under unconfoundedness, i.e., when there are no unobserved confounders. Since CATE may not be identified when unconfoundedness is violated, we develop a functional interval estimator that predicts bounds on the individual causal effects under realistic violations of unconfoundedness. Our estimator takes the form of a weighted kernel estimator with weights that vary adversarially. We prove that our estimator is sharp in that it converges exactly to the tightest bounds possible on CATE when there may be unobserved confounders. Further, we study personalized decision rules derived from our estimator and prove that they achieve optimal minimax regret asymptotically. We assess our approach in a simulation study as well as demonstrate its application in the case of hormone replacement therapy by comparing conclusions from a real observational study and clinical trial.


Nodal marginal zone lymphoma (NMZL) is a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In this report, we describe a similar condition affecting female 53-year-old presented with generalized lymphadenopathy and high LDH level. The patient underwent excision of cervical lymph node and bone marrow biopsy. Histopathological examination of the excised lymph node revealed florid infiltrate by epithelioid histiocytes, which greatly underscores the neoplastic process directing the diagnosis towards reactive lesions such as toxoplasmosis, marginal zone hyperplasia or monocytoid B-cell hyperplasia. Careful histopathological examination of interfollicular and parafollicular regions helped in recognition of the pale monomorphic neoplastic cells that showed immunoreactivity for CD20 and Bcl-2 and lacked expression for CD5, CD10 and CD23. The involvement of bone marrow by the same type of cells has excluded the possibility for reactive conditions. The recognition of NMZL is sometimes difficult when benign components predominate such as the presence follicular hyperplasia and epithelioid cell clusters. However, full clinical data including LDH level and asking for bone marrow biopsy were greatly helpful in identifying the correct lesion.


Transferring learned knowledge from one environment to another is an important step towards practical reinforcement learning (RL). In this paper, we investigate the problem of transfer learning across environments with different dynamics while accomplishing the same task in the continuous control domain. We start by illustrating the limitations of policy-centric methods (policy gradient, actorcritic, etc.) when transferring knowledge across environments. We then propose a general model-based value-centric (MVC) framework for continuous RL. MVC learns a dynamics approximator and a value approximator simultaneously in the source domain, and makes decision based on both of them. We evaluate MVC against popular baselines on 5 benchmark control tasks in a training from scratch setting and a transfer learning setting. Our experiments demonstrate MVC achieves comparable performance with the baselines when it is trained from scratch, while it significantly surpasses them when it is used in the transfer setting.


In the last decades much attention has turned towards centrality measures on graphs. The Wiener index and the total distance are key tools to investigate the median vertices, the distance-balanced property and the opportunity index of a graph. This interest has recently been addressed to graphs obtained via classical graph products like the Cartesian, the direct, the strong and the lexicographic product. We extend this study to a relatively new graph product, that is, the wreath product. In this paper, we compute the total distance for the vertices of an arbitrary wreath product graph $G\wr H$ in terms of the total distances in $H$ and of some distance-based indices of $G$. We explicitly compute these indices for the star graph $S_n$, providing a closed formula for the total distances in $S_n\wr H$ when $H$ is complete or a star. As a consequence, we obtain the Wiener index of these graphs, we characterize the median and the central vertices, and finally we give an upper and a lower bound for the opportunity index of $S_n\wr S_m$ in terms of tail conditional expectations of an associated binomial distribution.


Plant growth is strongly influenced by the presence of neighbors that compete for light resources. In response to vegetational shading shade-intolerant plants such as Arabidopsis display a suite of developmental responses known as the shade-avoidance syndrome (SAS). The phytochrome B (phyB) photoreceptor is the major light sensor to mediate this adaptive response. Control of the SAS occurs in part with phyB, which controls protein abundance of phytochrome-interacting factors 4 and 5 (PIF4 and PIF5) directly. The shade-avoidance response also requires rapid biosynthesis of auxin and its transport to promote elongation growth. The identification of genome-wide PIF5-binding sites during shade avoidance revealed that this bHLH transcription factor regulates the expression of a subset of previously identified SAS genes. Moreover our study suggests that PIF4 and PIF5 regulate elongation growth by controlling directly the expression of genes that code for auxin biosynthesis and auxin signaling components.


Ollier disease is a rare skeletal dysplasia characterized by the formation of multiple enchondromas (enchondromatosis), typically in the long bones of the extremities. These tumors are benign but can become complicated by the development of pathologic fractures, limb deformity, and malignant transformation to chondrosarcoma. Ollier disease has a highly variable presentation and is associated with a range of presenting findings; however, the most common presentation is a pathologic fracture. Surgical options include curettage and grafting of the enchondromas and, when displaced, fracture reduction and fixation. Of note, these fractures will heal without surgery. Regardless, all patients must be routinely monitored with yearly radiographs in order to detect malignant transformation as early as possible. In this report, we describe the case of an 11-year-old female who presented to her physician with pain and swelling of her right ring and small fingers after playing in a swimming pool with no obvious mechanism of trauma. A routine, plain radiographic evaluation of her hand revealed the presence of multiple enchondromatosis. We hope to use this case to highlight the surgical management options for young patients with Ollier disease and discuss circumstances in which surgical management may not be indicated.


The possibility of dynamic chaos in the spin motion of minor natural planetary satellites is studied numerically and analytically. A satellite is modelled as a tri-axial rigid body in a fixed elliptic orbit. The Lyapunov characteristic exponents (LCEs) are used as indicators of the degree of chaos of the motion. For a set of real satellites (i.e. satellites with actual values of inertial and orbital parameters), the full Lyapunov spectra of the chaotic rotation are computed by the HQR-method of von Bremen et al. (1997). A more traditional " shadow trajectory " method for the computation of maximum LCEs is also used. Numerical LCEs obtained in the spatial and planar cases of chaotic rotation are compared to analytical estimates obtained by the separatrix map theory in the model of nonlinear resonance (here: synchronous spin-orbit resonance) as a perturbed nonlinear pendulum (Shevchenko 2000a, 2002). Further evidence is given that the agreement of the numerical data with the separatrix map theory in the planar case is very good. It is shown that the theory developed for the planar case is most probably still applicable in the case of spatial rotation, if the dynamical asymmetry of the satellite is sufficiently small or/and the orbital eccentricity is relatively large (but, for the dynamical model to be valid, not too large). The theoretical implications are discussed, and simple statistical dependences of the components of the LCE spectrum on the parameters of the problem are derived.


We thank the discussants for their insightful commentary and questions. In our rejoinder, we extend our analysis to additional settings, control strategies, and sources of bias relevant to how case‐crossover is often used in practice, as suggested by multiple discussants. In particular, we consider: control exposures that follow occurrence of events, settings with shared exposure trajectories (which are common in case‐crossover studies of effects of air pollution), bias due to non‐transient treatment effects, removing bias due to time trends in treatment using control subjects, and extending our results to the continuous time setting. We also take the opportunity to clarify an easily misinterpreted comment we made about collapsibility, which we thank Andersen and Martinussen for highlighting. Throughout, in the spirit of the discussants. contributions, we iterate between general bias formulas and simulations and numerical studies from illustrative simplified scenarios to build insight.


Behind every economic policy initiative lies a narrative justifying that course of action: immigration increases unemployment; public debt is unsustainable; manufacturing is interminably declining; city growth is out of control. We have many "narrators" driving these discussions of economics – the media, political parties, public sector bodies, business and indeed universities – each with their own set of interests and values. Unfortunately, among these claimants, the voice of economic history has remained largely silent or selectively galvanised to prosecute a triumphalist or doomsayer interpretation: "the clever country's many successes in policy and business"; or "the lucky country's history has been a series of fortuitous events now running out of steam". According to the recent review of the national curriculum, our ignorance of economic history begins early. Three times the report chastises the lack of economic history in our schools. The teaching of economic history in universities has become the victim of organisational pressures pushing out small disciplines and intellectual trends on either edge towards econometrics and cultural history. The seriousness of the recent global financial crisis for many nations jolted economic history from its slumber. In its aftermath, The Economist asked a group of leading economists whether the crisis would affect the teaching of economics. Their overwhelming response was to reinstate economic history in the curriculum.


Our previous studies of anti-DNA antibodies in SLE have demonstrated a preferential use of V kappa I and V lambda II gene families to encode light chains of antibodies that express the anti-DNA-associated 3I and 8.12 idiotypes, respectively. In this study, we employed PCR to obtain V kappa I and V lambda II germline genes from lupus patients in order to compare the germline genes to genes encoding expressed V kappa I and V lambda II light chains and to analyze the extent of somatic mutation among autoantibodies that derive from these light chain families. Our analysis shows that the germline repertoire among all persons (autoimmune and healthy) is comparable and that somatic mutation is used to diversify autoantibodies as well as anti-microbial antibodies. We have observed that autoantibodies encoded by V kappa I and V lambda II genes have a higher number of amino acid replacements in CDRs than autoantibodies encoded by other VL gene families. In addition, there may be subtle differences in V gene usage that distinguish the V kappa I-encoded light chains from other expressed V kappa light chains.


Corpora, thing-editions, are a central epistemic instrument of knowledge generation for archaeology. Due to digitisation attention has turned once more to various strategies and the politics of representation, and in the course of the debate on (post-)factualism and cultures of knowledge and data we are striving to render the production of knowledge more visible and comprehensible. Following B. Latour's concept of circulating reference, editions are products of a praxeological connection between the world and representations. This is a report on the ongoing discussion of central questions and objectives for digital corpora and research data management following the FAIR (findable, accessible, inter-operable, re-usable) principle.


BACKGROUND In this study we compared the perceived diameter of the vocal tract's oropharyngeal part with the diameter that was determined endoscopically. METHODS 28 singers (13 male, 15 female) were examined with transnasal fiberscopic pharyngoscopy while singing the vowels /a/, /i/ and /u/ in 4 different timbres (normal, opened, covered, dumpled) and 3 different pitches (chest/modal register, subjective comfortable pitch for singing, head/falsetto register). The tactile-kinesthetic and auditive rating of the singers, the auditive rating of a singing teacher and the visual-endoscopic analysis of three laryngologists were compared. RESULTS The tactile-kinesthetic and auditory self-perception of the singers was quite different from the auditive perception of a singing teacher and visual endoscopic findings of the laryngologists. The singers had the impression that the different singing timbres (normal, opened, covered, dumpled) influence oropharyngeal vocal tract space during singing. They judged the vowel itself and the pitch as having very little influence. Based on his auditory perception, the singing teacher also rated that the timbre plays an important role for the oropharyngeal vocal tract space but he found vowels to be the parameter with the greatest impact. Via visual endoscopic examination we found that, among the three parameters (vowel, timbre, pitch), the different vowels are most influential on the oropharyngeal vocal tract space. Analysis of video sequences revealed that pitch and timbre are less important. CONCLUSION Subjective tactile-kinesthetic and auditory perception of the singers differs from auditory perception of the singing teacher as well as from endoscopic findings. The endoscopically determined oropharyngeal vocal tract space during singing the vowels /i/ or /u/ tends to be larger compared to the oropharyngeal vocal tract space while singing the vowel /a/.


Phenobarbital (PB) is one of the most important antiseizure drugs (ASDs) to treat canine idiopathic epilepsy (IE). The effect of PB on the taxonomic changes in gastrointestinal microbiota (GIM) and their functions is less known, which may explain parts of its pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties, especially its antiseizure effect and drug responsiveness or drug resistance as well as its effect on behavioral comorbidities. Fecal samples of 12 dogs with IE were collected prior to the initiation of PB treatment and 90 days after oral PB treatment. The fecal samples were analyzed using shallow DNA shotgun sequencing, real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based dysbiosis index (DI), and quantification of short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). Behavioral comorbidities were evaluated using standardized online questionnaires, namely, a canine behavioral assessment and research questionnaire (cBARQ), canine cognitive dysfunction rating scale (CCDR), and an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) questionnaire. The results revealed no significant changes in alpha and beta diversity or in the DI, whereas only the abundance of Clostridiales was significantly decreased after PB treatment. Fecal SCFA measurement showed a significant increase in total fecal SCFA concentration and the concentrations of propionate and butyrate, while acetate concentrations revealed an upward trend after 90 days of treatment. In addition, the PB-Responder (PB-R) group had significantly higher butyrate levels compared to the PB-Non-Responder (PB-NR) group. Metagenomics of functional pathway genes demonstrated a significant increase in genes in trehalose biosynthesis, ribosomal synthesis, and gluconeogenesis, but a decrease in V-ATPase-related oxidative phosphorylation. For behavioral assessment, cBARQ analysis showed improvement in stranger-directed fear, non-social fear, and trainability, while there were no differences in ADHD-like behavior and canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD) scores after 90 days of PB treatment. While only very minor shifts in bacterial taxonomy were detected, the higher SCFA concentrations after PB treatment could be one of the key differences between PB-R and PB-NR. These results suggest functional changes in GIM in canine IE treatment.


An algorithm to route packets in rectangular SW-banyans is described. A packet-switching scheme is modeled on single-sided and double-sided SW-banyans. Effects of queue lengths and processor configurations on performance are studied. Prevention of deadlocks in the network is discussed. Simulation results suggest a scheme with varying queue lengths for different levels of the network to optimize performance, and that the length be limited. The algorithm presented is able to take advantage of the network traffic information stored at a node and dynamically route a packet through a shortest path which has the least load.<<ETX>>


Under condition of mass customization collaborative logistics chain for optimized configuration, taking quality, cost, time and collaboration degree as evaluation index systems, and aggregative value minimum of evaluation indices as object, an optimal model of mass customization collaborative logistics chain was established firstly. Secondly, based on genetic algorithm and ant colony algorithm, an improved mixed genetic-ant colony algorithm was proposed, which was suitable to solve the problem, and the solution process was explained. Finally, an example and comparison were presented to prove the feasibility and validity of the proposed algorithm. The method provides reference model and solution algorithm for mass customization collaboration logistics chain optimization.


Macronutrients of pulses or cereals are stored in the cotyledon or endosperm cells with protection from intact cell walls. However, pulses and cereals are generally processed into fine particles during food production. For example, after milling, the macronutrients enclosed in the intact cells are released and are easily accessible to digestive enzymes in the gastrointestinal tract, leading to high metabolic responses. Therefore, studies on the health effects of intact cells and developing an alternative ingredient with a higher proportion of intact cells are areas of emerging interest. In this review, we highlighted the smallest unit of whole grain, an individual cell, as "nutritional capsules" and elucidated the structure-function of the nutritional capsules, followed by isolation techniques, as a potential novel functional ingredient and food. The polysaccharides' monomeric composition, secondary structure, and interactions determine the cell wall properties including the cell detachment during isolation and isolated cell properties. The intact cellular structure is retained after mild food processing and digestion, thereby, contributing to a lower extent/rate of digestion of entrapped macronutrients. Furthermore, the excursed intact capsules in the colonic environment modulate the population and diversity of microbiota, favouring the increased production of the short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The structural schematic model of Type-I and Type-II cells is developed together with the schematics of the cell wall isolation process. The review provides a critical summary of the recent trends in intact plant cells as a functional-nutritional food. It paves the way for the industrial production of intact cells as a novel food ingredient.


The study aimed at investigating how the interbank market affects the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Malawi. To achieve that, the study analysed the nature of the relationship between excess reserves and the interbank market rate and tried to discuss other possible factors that affect the interbank market rates in Malawi and limit the effectiveness of the central bank's efforts that aim at influencing important interest rates in the economy. The study further analysed the strength and speed at which the interbank market rate affects other money market rates, specifically the lending rate. Using financial markets monthly data for the period 2010:1 to 2018:6, the study applied Ordinary Least Square methods for estimation using Error Correction Model. From the results of the study, it is concluded that the interbank market is the right platform through which the central bank can influence money market rates in the process of monetary policy implementation. Interbank market rates respond to levels of banking system liquidity at a speed that makes sense for monetary policy and they are able to send significant signals to other relevant market rates like lending rates. Drawing from these outcomes, the study recommends continued forecasting and controlling of banking system liquidity by the central bank and establishment of additional factors that affect the interbank market rate and hence limit the central bank's efforts. For further improvement in the monetary policy transmission mechanism, the study recommends increased knowledge on interbank pricing models for individual commercial banks and research on the informal sector's reaction to central bank's policy actions. Interbank Market and effectIveness of Monetary PolIcy In MalawIa 1


PURPOSE
This study was planned to assess the application of three-dimensional (3D) cardiac modeling in preoperative evaluation for complex congenital heart surgeries.

METHODS
From July 2015 to September 2019, 18 children diagnosed with complex congenital heart diseases (CHDs) were enrolled in this study (double outlet right ventricle in nine patients, complex types of transposition of the great arteries in six patients, congenitally corrected transposition of the great arteries in two patients, and univentricular heart in one patient). The patients' age ranged from 7 months to 19 years (median age, 14 months). Before the operation, 3D patient-specific cardiac models were created based on computed tomography (CT) data. Using each patient's data, a virtual computer model (3D mesh) and stereolithographic (SLA) file that would be printed as a 3D model were generated. These 3D cardiac models were used to gather additional data about cardiac anatomy for presurgical decision-making.

RESULTS
All 18 patients successfully underwent surgeries, and there were no mortalities. The 3D patient-specific cardiac models led to a change from the initial surgical plans in 6 of 18 cases (33%), and biventricular repair was considered feasible. Moreover, the models helped to modify the planned biventricular repair in five cases, for left ventricular outflow tract obstruction removal and ventricular septal defect enlargement. 3D cardiac models enable pediatric cardiologists to better understand the spatial relationships between the ventricular septal defect and great vessels, and they help surgeons identify risk structures more clearly for detailed planning of surgery. There was a strong correlation between the models of the patients and the anatomy encountered during the operation.

CONCLUSION
3D cardiac models accurately reveal the patient's anatomy in detail and are therefore beneficial for planning surgery in patients with complex intracardiac anatomy.


The number of companies that buys standard systems instead of developing their own has increased over the past few years. The main problem with the standardised systems is that they are not adapted specifically to the customers business and thus some adaptation work is required for both the system as well as the business.The purpose of this report is to find the view of two system package implementers consid-ering business development. In order to find the answer to this we have asked the follow-ing four questions.Do the implementers consider that it is they who should adapt their systems to their cus-tomer or should their customers adapt to the system? Should the responsibility for the in-tegration of the system be put on the customer or implementer, or should it be a joined re-sponsibility? Do the implementers consider it to be better if the customer works with more standardised processes instead of adapting the system? In what way do the implementers contribute to their customers business development?Since our purpose is to find the implementers opinions and attitudes on business develop-ment we have chosen to conduct a qualitative study based on interviews. The reason we chose a qualitative method is because we intend to study the implementers view on their own role in the development work. Interviews where chosen since we wished to gain a natural contact with our responder and from that be able to interpret their views and atti-tudes.To analyze our empirical findings we compared the collected information from the two implementers with theories about how business development should be conducted. We also compared the view of the two implementers to see if there where any significant dif-ferences.Through the analysis we concluded that the two implementers did not differ significantly amongst each other. We could also see that they both worked relatively in line with the theories we have discussed in the report.


The combination of georeferenced colour aerial photos and limited field measurements of individual trees was used to determine tree stand biomass in forests of prevailing Norway spruce. The technique was carried out in two localities – small catchments of natural lakes in the Bohemian Forest (56 and 76 ha in size, respectively). This method is not so expansive as the inventory based on sample plots, namely in the terrain of high dynamics in the mountains. Tree crown diameters were determined semi-automatically on the basis of orthophotos. The catchment of Plesne jezero Lake can be described by these average values: crown diameter 4.5 ± 1.35 m, mean tree height varying between 19.6 and 30.2 m depending on altitude (tree average and standard deviation are 25.5 ± 3.9 m), tree density 154 ± 67.7 ha and stand biomass 197 t/ha. The Certovo jezero Lake catchment shows somewhat different values: crown diameter 4.9 ± 1.35 m, mean tree height varying between 20.9 and 25.1 m (dependence on altitude is weak; tree average and standard deviation are 25.6 ± 2.0 m), tree density 200 ± 65.7 ha (all parameters for Norway spruce only), and stand biomass 156 t/ha (Norway spruce) + 17 t/ha (European beech). Some features are common to both catchments: a regular to random tree pattern prevails. Tree clumping is typical of the most extreme stands. Minimum tree density occurs in the zone of the altitudes 1,200–1,250 m a.s.l. The crown diameter to dbh ratio is independent of altitude. Tree height decreases linearly with altitude. The distribution of trees according to crown diameter is skewed to higher values.


Our paper proposes a novel method for fire detection in riot videos acquired with handheld cameras and smart-phones. This is a typical example of computer vision in the wild, where we have no control over the data acquisition process, and the quality of the video data varies considerably. We propose a novel spatial model for fire, based on Gaussian mixtures and on color adjacency in the visible spectrum of incandescence. We demonstrate that using this spatial model in concert with motion cues leads to highly accurate results for fire detection in noisy, complex scenes of violent crowds.


The purpose of this project was to decide the best time to sell calves on the Gow Ranch in Roseburg, Oregon. The two options are directly off the cow at 550 pounds in October or at 850 pounds in June. The revenues and costs from selling calves at these two times were collected for the last five years. This data was put into an excel spreadsheet to show profit and loss from each year. Both selling prices and costs were examined to show at what point to sell would have made the best profit. Using figures from this spreadsheet it was determined that selling calves at 850 pounds in June would be the most feasible for the Gow Ranch.


Fine-grained and coarse-grained Ti3SiC2 materials were synthesized by hot pressing using TiC0.67 and Si powders as starting materials. The oxidation between 900 and 1100oC in air resulted in the formation of an outer TiO2 (rutile) layer and an inner mixed layer of TiO2 and amorphous SiO2, accompanying the liberation of carbon into the air. Fine-grained Ti3SiC2 displayed better oxidation resistance than coarse-grained one, with activation energies of 376.5~380 kJ/mol for oxidation.


This study was aimed at investigating the social representations of families and users of mental health services regarding their participation in the treatment of persons with severe mental disease. The study was based on the Theory of Social Representations. Data collection was carried out through the application of a free association of words test and an interview with a script with relatives and users of two day-hospitals in Fortaleza, State of Ceará. The results showed that the subjects of the research consider the care in this kind of service beneficial and think that family support is essential for progress in the treatment of persons with mental disease.


A loving parent faces peer pressure to reject routine vaccination of her children. She begins researching immunizations to make a well-informed health care decision in the best interests of her children. Misleading and frightening information is readily accessible. She simply cannot find answers to her questions and concerns about vaccines. Her poor choice made in ignorance and fear results in her 1-year-old daughter contracting spinal meningitis. Once her daughter is in a pediatric intensive care isolation room suffering from this deadly disease, the mom gains access to accurate information regarding immunizations. All her questions regarding vaccine production, testing, safety, and ethics are answered. She wants accurate information readily available to all parents.


The four countries studied show the classical symptoms of ageing societies in so far as they have experienced a significant decline in fertility and a considerable increase in life-expectancy. Consequently all countries analyzed are well on their way in their transition from young to increasingly older societies. The exercise found considerable gender discrepancies in all aspects, such as health, economic security, educational attainment and living arrangements. While men generally seem to be working longer years and also seem to have easier access to pension schemes, elderly women are more often found dependent on family support and government welfare programmes.


: The in vitro antibacterial activity of pefloxacin was evaluated against 310 gram-negative and 315 gram-positive aerobes, freshly isolated from clinical material. Reference antibiotics were: ofloxacin, ciprofloxacin, teicoplanin, vancomycin, rifampin, and methicillin for gram-positive cocci, and norfloxacin, nalidixic acid, ceftazidime, cefotaxime, piperacillin, netilmicin, gentamicin, amikacin, and aztreonam, for gram-negative bacilli. Gram-positive cocci were inhibited by 0.5 mg/l of teicoplanin, 1 mg/l of ciprofloxacin, 4 mg/l of both pefloxacin and ofloxacin, and 8 mg/l of vancomycin or rifampicin. Against gram-negative bacteria pefloxacin showed excellent activity, inhibiting 90% of all enterobacterial strains and 70% of other gram-negative aerobes at concentrations ranging between 0.03 and 4 mg/l. The same percentage of bacteria were inhibited by the other drugs at concentrations which resulted from two to fourfold higher than those of pefloxacin. MBCs and timed-kill tests indicated that this new agent is rapidly bactericidal against these isolates, and there were no significant differences in the rate of killing of both gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria. Inoculum size and pH did not change significantly the MIC values of pefloxacin.


Prenatal maternal smoking is a risk factor for lower birth weight. We performed epigenome-wide association analyses of placental DNA methylation (DNAm) at 720077 Cytosine-phosphate-Guanine-sites (CpGs) and prenatal maternal smoking among 441 mother-infant pairs (2010-2014) and evaluated if DNAm mediates the association between smoking and birth weight using mediation analysis. Mean (SD) birth weight was 3443 grams (423) and 38 mothers (8.6%) reported smoking at a mean of 9.4 weeks of gestation. Prenatal maternal smoking was associated with a 175-gram lower birth weight (95% CI: -305.5, -44.8) and with differential DNAm of 71 CpGs in placenta robust to latent-factor adjustment reflecting cell-types (Bonferroni-P<6.94x10-8). Of the 71 CpGs, seven mediated the association between prenatal smoking and birth weight (MDS2, PBX1, CYP1A2, VPRBP, WBP1L, CD28 and CDK6 genes) and prenatal smoking by DNAm interactions on birthweight were observed for five CpGs. The strongest mediator, cg22638236, was annotated the PBX1 gene body involved in skeletal patterning and programming with a mediated effect of 301-gram lower birth weight (95% CI: -543, -86) among smokers but no mediated effect for non-smokers (β= -38-gram; 95% CI: -88, 9). Prenatal maternal smoking might interact with placental DNAm at specific loci mediating the association with lower infant birth weight.


Ventricular fibrillation was induced by the injection of magnesium chloride in isolated canine hearts as well as in intact animals. Ventricular magnesium tolerance was greatly reduced during hypothermia. Defibrillation was achieved by intracoronary injection of tetraethylammonium chloride and electrical shock, even at temperatures as low as 21�C, where it could not be achieved by other means.


There is and has been continued change in organisms causing infection in the hospital. In the past few years, although Gram-negative bacteria have remained a major cause of mortality, Gram-positive bacteria and fungi have become increasingly important. This has caused organisms such as methicillin-resistant staphylococci, enterococci, Xanthomonas maltophilia and multiply resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa to be common pathogens. Can this difficult state of affairs be changed by better antimicrobial prescribing practices? Yes and no. Virtually any agent will select MRSA and MRSE since the chromosomal location of the resistance of multiple-antibiotics makes such selection common and explains the rapid rate of the fluoroquinolones as therapy of MRSA. Restriction of oral vancomycin will markedly reduce the pressure to select Enterococcus faecium and thus limit the spread of the organisms and delay transmission of glycopeptide resistance to S. aureus. Judicious use of antibiotics in the intensive care environment will be major factor in "saving" antibiotics for other patients since the ICU patient goes to other parts of the hospital carrying with him/her the baggage of resistant Staphylococcus haemolyticus, klebsiella, P. aeruginosa, acinetobacter, enterobacter, xanthomonas and Pseudomonas cepacia. All of these organisms have the potential to become resistant to the agents heretofore used to treat them and are common in ICU patients.


OBJECTIVES
The objectives of the study were to determine the incidence, maternal and foetal outcome of twin delivery in Jos, Nigeria.

METHODOLOGY
All consecutive twin deliveries between August 2003 and November 2004 were studied. Data obtained at the time of delivery included maternal age, parity, gestational age at the time of delivery, foetal Apgar scores at birth, gender/sex and foetal weights.

RESULTS
A total of 3,420 deliveries were conducted and 75 were twin deliveries constituting 2.3%, or 1 in 43 deliveries. The mean age and parity of mothers were 28.96 and 3.20 respectively. Male infants constituted 54.7% of the twins with a sex ratio of 1.206 boys to 1.0 girls. Among the twin deliveries, presentation of cephalic-cephalic for the first and second twins was the most common, (48.0%). Male-male twin pair occurred in 33.3%, male-female twins in 22.7%, female-female in 24%, while female-male twins occurred in 20.0%. Males were first twin in 56.0% and second twin in 53.4%; while females were first twin in 44.0% and second twin in 46.6% of the cases. Caesarean section rate was 41.3% in the overall twin pregnancies. Perinatal mortality was 91 per 1000 deliveries.

CONCLUSION
The incidence of twin pregnancy in Jos is high. The commonest maternal morbidity was preterm labour and delivery. Foetal low birth weight was present in about three quarters of the infants. Perinatal mortality rate was expectedly increased in the study. Close antenatal and perinatal assessment and care need be given to mothers of twin pregnancies in order to reduce the maternal and foetal complications.


Computer terminology is studied by unit, professional computer knowledge and lexical features, etc. in this paper. An effective game-based learning pattern is generated combined with the characteristics of computer English terms. The computer-assisted English learning system is studied to help students memorize terminology. This learning system could also examine the learning effect after study. The relevant question bank is available to users for game-based examination. The examination result and the statistic score could be kept in the question bank for analysis of the learning effect.


In a Health Information Technology (HIT) regulatory context in which the usability of this technology is more and more a critical issue, there is an increasing need for evidence based usability practice. However, a clear definition of evidence based usability practice and how to achieve it is still lacking. This paper underlines the need for evidence based HIT design and provides a definition of evidence based usability practice as the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions in design of interactive systems in health by applying usability engineering and usability design principles that have proven their value in practice. Current issues that hamper evidence based usability practice are highlighted and steps needed to achieve evidence are presented.


This paper presents an experimental technique that allows the determination of both reactance and equivalent series resistance (ESR) intrinsic values of aluminum electrolytic capacitors. The ESR is one of the most critical problems of static converters that operate near the resonance frequency of electrolytic capacitors. An increased ESR value leads to a significant increase in the alternate component of the output voltage, requiring constant action of the control system. In addition, manufacturers usually do not give the ESR value, but do give the maximum dissipation factor (DF), at the operating frequency of 120 Hz. From the DF, it is possible to determine the maximum ESR value at 120 Hz. Since the ESR value changes with frequency, and static converters operate at much higher ranges, designers need to compute its value at the operating frequency of these converters to reach the best design proposal. Moreover, almost all capacitor manufacturers give the capacitance value with a tolerance of 20%, whereas the proposed technique permits computation of its value with higher accuracy. Additionally, at low frequencies, if the ESR value of the capacitor is known, through its comparison with the maximum value given by the manufacturer, it is possible to estimate its condition. To validate the proposed technique and to demonstrate its applicability, some experimental results are presented and compared with the ones obtained with an impedance gain-phase analyzer and the manufacturers' specifications for four different capacitors.


In the recent years, abnormal spatial pattern recognition has received a great deal of attention from both industry and academia, and has become an important branch of data mining. Abnormal spatial patterns, or spatial outliers, are those observations whose characteristics are markedly different from their spatial neighbors. The identification of spatial outliers can be used to reveal hidden but valuable knowledge in many applications. For example, it can help locate extreme meteorological events such as tornadoes and hurricanes, identify aberrant genes or tumor cells, discover highway traffic congestion points, pinpoint military targets in satellite images, determine possible locations of oil reservoirs, and detect water pollution incidents. Numerous traditional outlier detection methods have been developed, but they cannot be directly applied to spatial data in order to extract abnormal patterns. Traditional outlier detection mainly focuses on "global comparison" and identifies deviations from the remainder of the entire data set. In contrast, spatial outlier detection concentrates on discovering neighborhood instabilities that break the spatial continuity. In recent years, a number of techniques have been proposed for spatial outlier detection. However, they have the following limitations. First, most of them focus primarily on single-attribute outlier detection. Second, they may not accurately locate outliers when multiple outliers exist in a cluster and correlate with each other. Third, the existing algorithms tend to abstract spatial objects as isolated points and do not consider their geometrical and topological properties, which may lead to inexact results. This dissertation reports a study of the problem of abnormal spatial pattern recognition, and proposes a suite of novel algorithms. Contributions include: (1) formal definitions of various spatial outliers, including single-attribute outliers, multi-attribute outliers, and region outliers; (2) a set of algorithms for the accurate detection of single-attribute spatial outliers; (3) a systematic approach to identifying and tracking region outliers in continuous meteorological data sequences; (4) a novel Mahalanobis-distance-based algorithm to detect outliers with multiple attributes; (5) a set of graph-based algorithms to identify point outliers and region outliers; and (6) extensive analysis of experiments on several spatial data sets (e.g., West Nile virus data and NOAA meteorological data) to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms.


Direct-marketing and agri-tourism businesses have recently begun to promote their businesses using stand-alone websites allowing them to tap into a larger customer base. This has created a need for direct farm markets to identify the products and services consumers are demanding from online sources. This project proposes to conduct an online survey of consumer preferences in buying direct from the farmer vs. the types of products consumers are seeking on the Internet. Our hypothesis is that the use of stand-alone web sites limit the number of consumers that farm marketers are reaching due to the time and expense involved in keeping them updated. This online survey will collect information useful in describing how farm marketers can use the Internet to increase their customer base and individual profits.


Abstract. Oxidation flow reactors (OFRs) or environmental chambers can be used to estimate secondary aerosol formation potential of different emission sources. Emissions from anthropogenic sources, such as vehicles, often vary on short timescales. For example, to identify the vehicle driving conditions that lead to high potential secondary aerosol emissions, rapid oxidation of exhaust is needed. However, the residence times in environmental chambers and in most oxidation flow reactors are too long to study these transient effects ( ∼  100 s in flow reactors and several hours in environmental chambers). Here, we present a new oxidation flow reactor, TSAR (TUT Secondary Aerosol Reactor), which has a short residence time ( ∼  40 s) and near-laminar flow conditions. These improvements are achieved by reducing the reactor radius and volume. This allows studying, for example, the effect of vehicle driving conditions on the secondary aerosol formation potential of the exhaust. We show that the flow pattern in TSAR is nearly laminar and particle losses are negligible. The secondary organic aerosol (SOA) produced in TSAR has a similar mass spectrum to the SOA produced in the state-of-the-art reactor, PAM (potential aerosol mass). Both reactors produce the same amount of mass, but TSAR has a higher time resolution. We also show that TSAR is capable of measuring the secondary aerosol formation potential of a vehicle during a transient driving cycle and that the fast response of TSAR reveals how different driving conditions affect the amount of formed secondary aerosol. Thus, TSAR can be used to study rapidly changing emission sources, especially the vehicular emissions during transient driving.


This paper presents tracking performance of a simple algorithm for adaptation of complex base band weights of the transmit antenna in a fading channel. The transmit antenna at the base station updates its weights on the basis of feedback from the mobile to converge to its optimal weights. The first feedback consists of a bit that indicates which of the two normalized perturbed weights sent along with the pilot signal from the base station delivered more power to the mobile. The second is sent when the power difference between the powers delivered by the two normalized perturbed weights decreases as compared to the previous minimum. It makes a coarse stochastic gradient algorithm and converges to those weights that maximize the power delivered to the receiver. Simulations in slow and fast fading channels of this algorithm show improved performance as compared to gradient sign feedback algorithm.


Our aim was to assess step by step the evolution of the herbaceous plant community in reclaimed landfill areas by network analysis techniques. We examined the network of interactions among the members of the plant community at two levels; global and local. The experiment was conducted at one landfill that contained three reclaimed sites of different ages after closure (2 years [R2], 9 years [R9] and 13 years [R13]), plus a neighbor seminatural grazed grassland (SM-NAT). In R2 and R9 sites, the plant community consisted of almost 20 species; among them legumes like Melitotus albus and strong competitors like the exotic Solanum elaeagnifolium. The high heterogeneity of the interspecific relationships, the limited number of influential species and the moderate network centrality, recorded in R2 and R9 sites, were signs of competition for habitat exploitation. In contrast, the higher number of species (around 30), the relatively low heterogeneity of interspecific relationships and the even distribution of influence among many species in R13 and SM-NAT sites indicated moderation of competition. The global network metrics in sites R13 and SM-NAT appeared to converge although the composition of the community did not. The local scale analysis revealed the coexistence of two separate and well organized faction/communities within the same site (Mediterranean and widespread species), while within most factions the analysis distinguished further sub-categories like those formed by species of poor habitats and species of disturbed habitats. The identification of critical scales provides powerful theoretical and practical means for conservation and restoration practices.


Spontaneous variations in urinary flow and electrolyte excretion are well known to occur both in man and in the non-human primate. Data on these spontaneous variations is scarce in the dog, an animal which is widely used in physiological investigations. Our study was designed to characterize the spontaneous pattern of renal hemodynamics, urine flow and electrolyte excretion in the awake dog both under conditions of minimal surgical stress (group I), and after routine preparatory surgery (group II). Our results show significant spontaneous variation for urine flow and urinary excretion of Na, K, Cl, HCO3, Ca, PO4 and Mg for both groups of dogs. Urinary excretion of Na, K, PO4 and Mg was significantly higher for group II than for group I (p less than 0.05). Glomerular filtration rate and effective renal plasma flow (estimated from the clearance of p-aminohippurate) were measured in group II and showed no spontaneous variation. Our study shows that there is diurnal urinary electrolyte excretion variation in the dog which is exaggerated by small changes in the experimental protocol. These variations need to be considered when evaluating experimental maneuvers that induce changes in the renal handling of electrolytes in the dog.


Environmental trace element composition can have an important impact on ecosystem and population health as well individual fitness. Therefore, carefully assessing bioaccumulation of trace elements is central to studies investigating the ecological impact of pollution. Colonial birds are important bioindicators since non‐invasive sampling can easily be achieved through sampling of chick feathers, which controls for some confounding factors of variability (age and environmental heterogeneity). However, an additional confounding factor, external contamination (ExCo), which remains even after washing feathers, has frequently been overlooked in the literature. We developed a new method to reliably interpret bioaccumulation of 10 trace elements (As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Se, Sn and Zn) in feathers using chicks of a colonial species: the Greater Flamingo, Phoenicopterus roseus. First, only shafts were used to remove ExCo retained in vanes. Secondly, we applied a thorough washing procedure. Thirdly, we applied a new analytical method to control for ExCo, which assumes that ExCo is mainly due to adhered sediment particles and that the relative concentration of each trace element will be similar to the sediment geochemical composition of sampling sites. We validated this new methodology by comparing trace element composition and particle composition (by scanning electron microscopy and mass spectrometry) of washed and unwashed feathers. The washing procedure removed >99% of K indicating that most of the ExCo from salt was removed. Scanning electron microscopy and mass spectrometry revealed that some sediment particles remained after washing, especially clays which are likely to severely bias bioaccumulation interpretation. We successfully controlled for ExCo by calculating the ratio of ExCo due to sediment using the geochemical fingerprint of sediment samples. Our methodology leads to conservative estimates of bioaccumulation for As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, Se, Sn and Zn. We have validated a new more reliable method of analysing trace element concentrations in feathers, which effectively controls for ExCo, if geochemical sediment data can be meaningfully compared to ExCo of feathers. We have demonstrated that overlooking ExCo leads to potentially erroneous conclusions, and we urge that the method applied in this study be considered in future studies.


Aim: To compare participants' lifestyle-related risk factors for periodontal disease between urban and rural population.
Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study consisting of a structured questionnaire on health practice index (HPI), oral health-related behavior, and personal habits as well as sociodemographic variables was conducted on 800 subjects aged 20 to 50 years attending dental outreach centers of Manipal College of Dental Sciences in urban and rural areas of Udupi District. Clinical examination for periodontal status was done by using community periodontal index, simplified oral hygiene index, and gingival index. Statistical analysis of the data was done using chi-square.
Results: It was found that except the number of hours of work/day (p = 0.02) urban participants had significantly better occupations, higher education, more income, better oral health care behaviors like dental visits, device of cleaning, frequency of cleaning, method of cleaning, healthier personal habits like tobacco chewing, pan chewing (< 0.001 respectively), physical exercise, mental stress levels and healthier overall lifestyles (p < 0.001 respectively) than the rural participants. It was also found that more number of urban participants had better oral hygiene status (p < 0.001), gingival status (p < 0.001), and healthier periodontium (p = 0.002) than the rural counterparts.
Conclusion: These findings suggest that rural participants had more lifestyle-related risk factors for periodontitis as well as less healthy periodontium than the urban participants. Patient's involvement in self-care by promoting healthy lifestyles is needed especially in rural areas where adequate treatment facilities are lacking.


There exist graph/hypergraph partitioning-based row/column reordering methods for encoding either spatial or temporal locality for sparse matrix-vector multiplication (SpMV) operations. Spatial and temporal hypergraph models in these methods are extended to encapsulate both spatial and temporal localities based on cut/uncut net categorization obtained from vertex partitioning. These extensions of spatial and temporal hypergraph models encode the spatial locality primarily and the temporal locality secondarily, and vice-versa, respectively. However, the literature lacks models that simultaneously encode both spatial and temporal localities utilizing only vertex partitioning for further improving the performance of SpMV on shared-memory architectures. In order to fill this gap, we propose a novel spatiotemporal hypergraph model that leads to a one-phase spatiotemporal reordering method which encodes both types of locality simultaneously. We also propose a framework for spatiotemporal methods which encodes both types of locality in two dependent phases and two separate phases. The validity of the proposed spatiotemporal models and methods are tested on a wide range of sparse matrices and the experiments are performed on both a 60-core Intel Xeon Phi processor and a Xeon processor. Results show the validity of the methods via almost doubling the Gflop/s performance through enhancing data locality in parallel SpMV operations.


The aim of this study was to assess the way used by nurses for evaluate the family care and the caregiver. The method used was a quali-quantitative one. A semi- structure interview was the instrument chosen to collect data. It was applied to 20(twenty) nurses from a University Hospital within the months of April and May, 1996. Data analysis was based on the Bardin's Content Analysis Technique (1994). The results demonstrated that nurses are not systematic in evaluating family care and the caregiver, but they use their intuition, based on momentaneous decisions. This reveal a difficulty of integration between the formal and the informal care caused by lack of interaction or effective valorization of the family care process.


Objective To observe the effects of millimeter wave combined with 60 Co γ ray radiation on human tongue squamous cell carcinoma cell(Tca8113). Methods Using mm wave combined with 60 Co γ ray to irradiate Tca8113 cell suspensions. The colony forming inhibition efficiency was observed three weeks later. 24 hours after radiation, the samples were observed under electron microscope. Results The study showed that the radiation could result in significant decrease of the colony forming efficiency ( P 0.001). The inhibition efficiency was higher when the samples were exposed to high power density mm wave or for a long duration ( P 0.05 or P 0.01). The inhibiting effect in combined groups was more obvious than in singly radiated group ( P 0.001 or P 0.05). There was no difference between 'R+HL' group and 'HL+R' group ( P 0.05). Electron microscopy showed the cells' suprastructures had some injuries and regressive changes. And more serious changes existed in 'H' group.Conclusion It could be concluded that mm wave radiation could efficiently inhibit the colony forming capability of Tca8113 cell. And mm wave radiation could lead to morphological changes of exterior or interior ultrastructures of Tca8113 cell. [


Tubarial glands or tubarial salivary glands are recently reported as a pair of macroscopic salivary glands in the nasopharynx. The remote location of the glands, the rarity of major pathologies involved, and non recognized functional significance might have been the reason for the non-inclusion before. There are about 500-1000 minor salivary glands in the body, and most of them are located in the oral cavity or oropharynx. They are small and embedded in the aero-digestive tract entrance of the head and neck region. Minor salivary glands located in the nasopharynx are relatively less in number and the major pathologies associated with these glands are rare. This review is on the overall current literature of the minor salivary glands and tubarial glands-the new entity in question-along with their potential pathologies. Nasopharyngeal glandular origin diseases were reported in general as case reports or as small series. This brief review is meant to open up interest in these structures, their pathologies and encourage further characterization of diseases of the nasopharynx especially the diseases of salivary gland origin.


The Directorate wishes to advise to ships navigating in Ebola infected areas to take note of useful information issued by the World Health Organization (WHO). The information may be accessed on www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en. The Ebola virus is considered as rare and easily transferred through contact with blood or body fluids of an infected person or by contact with contaminated objects. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, muscle pain, headache and sore throat followed by vomiting, diarrhea, skin rash, and in some cases, bleeding. It is highly recommended to avoid all contact with blood and body fluids of infected people or animals, and not to handle items that may have come in contact with an infected person's blood or body fluids. It is also recommended that persons who have visited areas where Ebola cases have been reported to seek medical attention in case such person experiences any of the aforementioned symptoms. To this effect, the Masters and crew of ships operating or that might operate to ports where EBOLA cases have been reported, should be aware of the risks and how to reduce the risk of infection. It is important to ensure at all times that unauthorised personnel do not board the vessel throughout the duration of the vessel's port call and shore leave should be kept to the minimum when in impacted ports. In the event of a suspected diagnosis of Ebola virus disease on a ship, immediate expert medical advice should be sought and the case shall be immediately reported to the competent authority at the next port of call. It is strongly recommended that all necessary precautions advised by WHO are implemented in case any passengers or seafarers experience symptoms compatible with the Ebola virus disease. Furthermore, the ship owners and operators should avoid making crew changes in impacted ports.


Kidney transplantation is the optimal therapy for end-stage kidney disease but requires lifelong immunosuppression. Despite improvements in immunosuppression regimens that have reduced rates of acute transplant rejection, long-term allograft survival remains suboptimal. More than 50% of transplanted kidneys from deceased donors fail within 10 years. In order to improve long-term outcomes, physicians need to better understand mechanisms underlying transplant rejection and tolerance in humans. They also need biomarkers that differentiate patients likely to maintain excellent and stable allograft function from recipients at risk of losing their transplants. By studying kidney transplant recipients at high risk for graft loss and rare, spontaneously tolerant kidney transplant recipients, researchers reporting in 3 papers in this issue of the JCI shed new light on these topics.


By exploiting multi-radio multi-channel technology, wireless mesh networks can effectively provide wireless broadband access to the Internet for mobile users. Due to the limited number of orthogonal channels, overlapping channel assignment is one of the main factors that greatly affect the network capacity. However, current results in this area are not so satisfying. In this paper, we first propose a model for measuring achieved network capacity in MR-WMNs. Then we prove that finding an optimal overlapping channel assignment in a given MR-WMN with odd number of channels, is equivalent to finding an optimal assignment by only using its orthogonal channels. This theory allows us to use fewer channels to solve complicated channel assignment problems. Third, we prove that in 802.11b/g MR-WMN the simplified optimization problem is a Max-3-Cut problem. Although this problem is NP-hard, it has an efficient approximation algorithm that achieves approximation ratio of 1.19616 probabilistically by using the algorithm for Max-Cut whose approximation ratio is 1.1383 probabilistically. Based on the algorithm for Max-Cut, this paper proposes Max-Cut based channel assignment (MCCA) which uses a heuristic method to adjust the result produced by the Max-Cut algorithm to achieve an even better result. Finally, we perform extensive simulations to compare the MCCA with a state-of-the-art Tabu-Search based algorithm. The results show that the Max-Cut based overlapping channel assignment algorithm effectively and efficiently improves on the network capacity compared with existing algorithms.


Plastics are an important commodity of our daily life. And although their majority is still based on fossil feedstocks, numerous efforts are made to stem the environmental consequences related to their production.
One approach is the use of renewable materials (biomass) to produce today's conventional plastics. Though a considerable part of the development linked to this approach is still in an emerging state, there is a need to assess the environmental impact of these plastics in order to increase knowledge about the environmental advantages and disadvantages of conventional biomass-based plastics.

The aims of this thesis are:

1. To investigate the environmental impact of producing conventional plastics from biomass-based monomers - using low density polyethylene (LDPE) as test case.

2. To investigate the potential of using process simulation for life cycle assessments (LCA) of emerging technologies.

3. To develop a framework that facilitates simplified LCAs for the production of conventional, biomass-based plastics from different types of biomass and via different conversion processes.

The results for greenhouse gas emissions from LDPE based on sugarcane ethanol are uncertain due to uncertainties in data and methodology for emissions from land use change, in particular from indirect land use change (ILUC). Sugarcane LDPE can be better than the fossil alternative, as was found when using a low estimate for ILUC emissions. However, its potential global warming impact can become similar to that of the fossil LDPE, when using a high estimate for ILUC emissions. For other environmental impacts (acidification, photochemical ozone creation, eutrophication) the fossil and the sugarcane alternative showed similar values, with transport being a key contributor. The LDPE based on sawmill chips ethanol was found to have, at its current state of development, an in general higher environmental impact than the sugarcane and the fossil alternative. The key contributor is off-site enzyme production.

For the emerging technology part of the renewable life cycles data is scarce. Process simulation was therefore used to verify and supply data (ethylene production step for both assessments respectively ethanol production step for sawmill chips case). It has been shown to complement the life cycle inventory and with this allowed the assessment of the two biomass cases.

The environmental key contributors (dominant life cycle activities) identified in the above work, together with key contributors found during literature screening, were combined to a framework. Its purpose is to enable simplified LCAs, which can be used to guide further investigations.

Viewed from the current state, renewable routes for the production of conventional plastics like LDPE will need technical improvements, as well as careful decisions regarding biomass choices. Simplified assessments can support these needs in the way that they enable a comparably fast supply of data, which is needed at the screening stage of a project.

Key words: renewable LDPE; LCA and process simulation; simplified LCA for conventional, biomass-based plastics


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to compare the quality and efficiency of five methods for solving the path planning problem of industrial robots in complex environments.Design/methodology/approach – In total, five methods are presented for solving the path planning problem and certain working parameters have been monitored using each method. These working parameters are the distance travelled by the robot and the computational time needed to find a solution. A comparison of results has been analyzed.Findings – After this study, it could be easy to know which of the proposed methods is most suitable for application in each case, depending on the parameter the user wants to optimize. The findings have been summarized in the conclusion section.Research limitations/implications – The five techniques which have been developed yield good results in general.Practical implications – The algorithms introduced are able to solve the path planning problem for any industrial robot working with obstacles.Social ...


The on-going Duke storage ring upgrades and the development of a new booster synchrotron injector require more than 100 units of high performance unipolar and bipolar trim power supplies in the current range of - 15 A to + 15 A. However, most of the trim power supplies on the market do not deliver two critical performance features simultaneously: a high current stability and a low current noise. An in-house trim power supply development program has been put in force to design, fabricate, and test low cost linear power supplies with current stability about 100 ppm and current ripples less than 100 ppm in a broad band. A set of unipolar power supplies (0-12 A) have been designed, fabricated and successfully tested. Since August, 2004 they have been used in storage ring operation with excellent performance. The prototype of bipolar power supplies (±15 A) has been designed and tested as well. The main design principles and the performance results of both unipolar and bipolar supplies have been presented in this paper.


Classification trees were used to identify subgroups of respondents with higher error rates when reporting total acres operated on the 2002 Census of Agriculture. Separate trees were grown for operations exhibiting total acres summation errors, missing data, and nonequivalent sums of reported total acres. Terminal tree nodes demonstrating the greatest frequency of total acres operated errors identify characteristics of respondents and or operations that are more likely to make errors, suggest possible reasons for errors, identify content for future tests of alternative questionnaires and suggest ways to appropriately edit these items. Advantages of using classification trees over other analytic methods are also discussed.


AIM
Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS), for years used in the therapy of low-moderate bronchial asthma, reduce the rate of asthmatic attack with improved pulmonary functioning and quality of life. Clinical trials have been addressed mainly to study the efficacy rather than the safety of drugs, so that the side effects of these drugs have not yet been accurately defined. Clinical experience shows that growth delay appears in the first months of therapy with ICS. The aim of the study was to evaluate the influence of the therapy with spacer-administered inhaled corticosteroid on short-term auxological development in prepubertal children.

METHODS
In a group of children with low asthma, height and weight have been evaluated before and after six months of inhaled therapy with dipropionate fluticasone at a dose of 100 microg per day.

RESULTS
Twenty-five patients (19 males and 6 females; age 5.5+/-1.6 years; range: 2.6-7.8 years) showed a regular growth during the six months of therapy (mean height 0.8 standard deviation score [SDS] before therapy and 0.8 SDS after therapy), while 21 (17 males and 4 females; age 10.0+/-1.5 years; range 8.0-12.7 years) showed an increment of growth rate (mean height from 0.5 SDS to 0.7 SDS, respectively).

CONCLUSION
Spacer-administered low dose fluticasone does not negatively influence short-term growth rate, regardless of the age of the patients.


The increasing penetration of new renewable sources of electrical energy reduces the overall mechanical inertia available in power grids. This raises a number of issues regarding grid stability over short to medium time scales. A number of approaches have been proposed to compensate for this inertia reduction by deploying substitution inertia in the form of synchronous condensers, flywheels or power-electronic-based synthetic inertia. These resources are limited and expensive; therefore, a key issue is to determine how to optimally place them in the power grid, for instance, to mitigate voltage angle and frequency disturbances following an abrupt power loss. Performance measures in the form of ${\mathcal{ H}}_{2}-$ norms have recently been introduced to evaluate the overall magnitude of such disturbances. However, despite the mathematical convenience of these measures, analytical results can only be obtained under rather unrealistic assumptions of a uniform damping-to-inertia ratio or a homogeneous distribution of the inertia and/or primary control. Here, we introduce and apply matrix perturbation theory to obtain analytical results for an optimal inertia and primary control placement in the case where both are heterogeneous. This powerful method allows us to construct two simple algorithms that independently optimize the geographical distribution of the inertia and primary control. The algorithms are then implemented for a numerical model of the synchronous transmission grid of continental Europe with different initial configurations. We find that an inertia redistribution has little effect on the grid performance but that the primary control should be redistributed on the slow modes of the network, where the intrinsic grid dynamic requires more time to damp frequency disturbances. For a budget-constraint optimization, we show that increasing the amount of primary control in the periphery of the grid, without changing the inertia distribution, achieves 90 % or more of the maximal possible optimization, already for relatively moderate budgets.


The link between climate change and conflict has been discussed intensively in academic literature during the past decade. This review aims to provide a clearer picture of what the research community currently has to say with regard to this nexus. It finds that the literature has not detected a robust and general effect linking climate to conflict onset. Substantial agreement exists that climatic changes contribute to conflict under some conditions and through certain pathways. In particular, the literature shows that climatic conditions breed conflict in fertile grounds: in regions dependent on agriculture and in combination and interaction with other socioeconomic and political factors such as a low level of economic development and political marginalization. Future research should continue to investigate how climatic changes interact with and/or are conditioned by socioeconomic, political, and demographic settings to cause conflict and uncover the causal mechanisms that link these two phenomena.


Moutan Cortex is one kind of famous medicinal materials. The dry root bark of Paeonia ostii which is a genuine medicinal material produced in Tongling,Anhui province,and later was introduced to Heze,Shandong province and Bozhou,Anhui province.Dangshan county is located at the northern end of Anhui province and adjacent to Shandong province. Its medicinal seedlings were came from Heze,Shandong province. At present,there is a lack of scientific investigation on the planting area of P. ostii in north China plain. On the basis of field investigation and remote sensing technology,through the data source provided by the remote sensing image of " Resources 3"( ZY-3),combined with the biological characteristics of P. ostii,the planting area of P. ostii in Dangshan county was extracted by field investigation and supervisory classification. The supervise classification method with the highest interpretation accuracy so far,the overall accuracy was 97. 81%,Kappa coefficient 0. 96. The results showed that the remote sensing classification method based on the maximum likelihood classification could extract P. ostii plots in the study area effectively. This study provides a scientific basis for the protection and rational utilization of traditional Chinese medicine resources,the development policy of traditional Chinese medicine industry and the long-term development plan in Dangshan county,and provides technical support for the poverty alleviation of traditional Chinese medicine industry in Dangshan county. It provides scientific reference for the application of remote sensing technology to investigate the planting area of P. ostii in in north China plain.