This paper describes some progress made in helping a young aphasic man (MD) to overcome what had appeared to be intractable written language expression difficulties, which continued to be significant for him. Traditional therapy methods based on cognitive neuropsychological assessment had failed to help MD to generalize improvement in his spelling particularly, but not exclusively, of longer and irregular words. Both a splint which allowed him to use his dominant hand for writing directly onto a computer screen and a simple word-processing programme with synthesized auditory feedback and lexical and grammatical prediction (Write:OutLoud and Co:Writer) enabled him to produce more normal written output (increased quantity and more normal quality). The discussion also focuses on how effectiveness of language therapy can be measured in this man with chronic aphasia.


The 'women's liberation' of the global 1960s did not entail a full range of women's rights, feminist politics and sexual freedoms in Turkey. On the contrary, the Turkish 1960s were characterised by a patriarchal heteronormative order that imprisoned women in a passive and essentially asexual identity and denied them control over their bodies. In Turkey, women's emancipation was postponed. At the same time, the 1960s offered a juncture of literary renewal in women's writing and representation, embracing the dictum 'the personal is political'. This article focuses on three works by Sevgi Soysal (1936–1976), a key name of this period whose writing is concerned with the problematisation of what Judith Butler calls 'the compulsory order of sex/gender/desire'. Relying on queer theory, we examine how Soysal's Tutkulu Perçem (The Passionate Forelock, 1962), Tante Rosa (Aunt Rosa, 1968) and Yürümek (Walking, 1970) represent female characters' growing awareness of their rich spectrum of gender performances, as they embrace their desires, transformations and confusions. In this way, Soysal's works not only take the female body 'out of the closet' but also explore its multitude of desires and fluid possibilities.


Air conditioning contributes significantly to building energy consumption in hot climate regions. In addition to greater cooling requirements in hot climates, cooling equipment efficiency decreases with increasing outdoor temperature. Therefore, it is advantageous to develop improved technologies that can achieve higher efficiency at high ambient conditions. In this paper, two novel compression technologies are investigated for application in high ambient temperature air conditioning via numerical simulation. These technologies are liquid flooded compression with regeneration and vapor injected compression with economizing. The systems are modeled using the EES software (Klein, 2012) and compared with a baseline conventional vapor-compression cycle that utilizes R410A as the refrigerant. The cycle enhancements are considered for a number of refrigerant alternatives, including R410A, propane (R290), R32, and R1234yf. Parametric studies are conducted for air conditioning design conditions to predict the improvements in coefficient of performance (COP) for both system configurations with the various refrigerants. The simulation results show that the two novel technologies provide improvements in air conditioner performance and lower compressor discharge temperatures at high ambient temperatures. With respect to compressor discharge temperature, the vapor injection technology is superior to the oil flooding concept for the investigated working fluids. The COP comparisons indicate that oil flooding only improves the system performance when using the refrigerant R1234yf with a 14% increase in COP, whereas the vapor injection leads to significant improvements for all refrigerants with a maximum improvement of 21.5% for the refrigerant R410A.


Introduction There are few data regarding ZAC1 expression in clinically non-functioning pituitary adenomas (NFPA). Because somatotropinomas and NFPA behave differently with respect to tumor shrinkage during somatostatin analogs (SA) therapy, we sought to compare the ZAC1 and somatostatin receptor (sstr) types 1, 2, 3 and 5 mRNA expression in these two pituitary adenoma subtypes and in normal human pituitaries. Methods ZAC1 and SSTR mRNA expression levels were evaluated using real-time RT-PCR (TaqMan) in 20 NFPA and compared with the expression levels in 23 somatotropinomas and five normal pituitaries. The NFPA invasiveness was evaluated using magnetic resonance imaging with Hardy's modified criteria. Ki-67 and p53 were evaluated using immunohistochemistry. Results A total of 20 patients with NFPA [6 males, median age 56 years (range: 30-78)], 23 with acromegaly [12 males, median age 43 years (range: 24–57)] and five normal pituitaries [4 males, median age 48 years (range: 36–54)] were included. Four of the patients (20%) had Hardy's grade 2 tumors; all of the others had Hardy's grade 3 tumors. The Ki-67 median expression was 2.35 (range: 0.2–9.23), and only four of the tumors (20%) were positive for p53. The ZAC1 mRNA expression was significantly lower in NFPA than in somatotropinomas and in normal pituitaries (p<0.001 for both), as well as the SSTR2 (p=0.001 and 0.01, respectively). The SSTR3 expression was higher in the NFPA than in the somatotropinomas and in the normal pituitaries (p=0.03 and 0.02, respectively). No correlation was found between the ZAC1 mRNA expression and the tumor invasiveness, Ki-67 and p53. Conclusion ZAC1 and SSTR2 are underexpressed and SSTR3 is overexpressed in NFPA compared to those in somatotropinomas and in normal pituitaries, which might explain the lack of tumor shrinkage that is observed in response to commercially available SA therapy in patients with NFPA.


This paper addresses e-portfolio pedagogy with a twofold purpose: in the local context, it aims to develop a research model that would facilitate the collection of data and a deeper understanding of the effects of the transition to a technology-enhanced learning environment. Within a more general context, it aims to contribute an analysis model of student learning in the digital era. At both levels, students are considered as digital natives that are increasingly aware of and concerned with developing skills and strategies meant to facilitate a more efficient integration on the current dynamic job market.
The study continues an almost decade long preoccupation with finding ways of embedding transversal and job-related skills in teaching English for specific academic purposes in Babes-Bolyai University and with facilitating students' reflective practice and peer learning. The introduction of the e-portfolio as a collection of digital artifacts is related to the learning process and final outcomes in the area of information processing. Answers are expected to questions such as: do students see e-portfolios as efficient tools in developing their transversal and job-related skills? Does student engagement with the course increase during the process of building the e-portfolios? By following the process steps (managing their own learning), do students develop their self-directed skills and autonomy?
To find out the answers, a quantitative analysis was performed on complex data collected from students' work, learning outcomes and a final survey. A selection of data is also used to illustrate the potential of this instrument to help students become autonomous, independent learners, eager to participate actively in the learning process and capable to identify opportunities for self-improvement and a rich learning experience. The results are expected to offer important evidence on the fact that the sense of property and control over learning can be a high motivator in the learning process. The findings could also contribute to re(de)fining a de-centered perspective in pedagogy, where teacher and students work together to find solutions to develop and permanently adjust their competences to the academic and job market environments.


The quality of human resources is one of the important factors to maintain the sustainability of a company, therefore it is essential for the company to evaluate performance of its employees. With the recent rapid development of computer technology, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, many problems can now be effectively addressed with the help of computer. The purpose of this research is to design an expert system for hard skill competencies-based employee performance evaluation. The system is expected to be able to give accurate recommendations on decision making process of several human resources' issues such as recruitment, training, transfer, and promotion in the filling plant division. This research uses descriptive analysis, prototyping, gap analysis and Analytical Network Process (ANP) to build a system which will function like an expert in evaluating the performance of employees. This system contains knowledge domain in 7 position levels of SMART's filling plant employees. Critical factors of this system are mastery of basic work health and safety, ability on operating filling plant machines, ability on machine maintenance and mastery in quality management system. Results of the system test show that the proposed expert system had been running well in accordance with the rules in the decision table and had been considered to be able to meet human expert representation.


Summary In Wireless networks, energy saving is a very important research issue to increase the life time of these networks. In this paper, we propose ES-MAC, a collision free energy efficient MAC protocol for wireless networks. ES-MAC is based on IEEE 802.11. ES-MAC uses power saving mechanism of IEEE 802.11 to save energy consumption. IEEE 802.11 squanders energy and increases latency because of overhearing, over-transmission and packet collisions. IEEE 802.11 does not eliminate the hidden and the exposed terminal problems in multi-hop environment which causes energy consumption and throughput degradation. ES-MAC eliminates these problems by informing, all nodes having logical 2-hop distance from the receiver node, about the data transmission. The receiver centric logical 2-hop message passing mechanism in ES-MAC eradicates the hidden terminal and the exposed terminal problems, which is a key advantage of ES-MAC.


Working necessarily with Likert scales to measure Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) outcomes has the advantage of unification, but also presents difficulty in reducing the rating from 1 to 5, especially when the research is qualitative and thus includes the use of words and expressions, as well as observations and perceptions. What exactly does a score of 2 or 3 mean with regard to the NOC Health beliefs? In this paper, we make a number of different proposals for operationalizing concepts and transforming them to numbers; however, it should be noted that such proposals always end in a quantitative analysis. Thus, we propose the use of emic/etic qualitative observations for psychosocial and cultural indicators, following ethnographic principles. Basic and applied research on nursing languages must have correct methodological foundations and seek to satisfy the same criteria of methodological suitability as any other research.


Home-based HIV testing and counseling (HBHTC) has emerged as a promising approach to meet the Kenyan government's challenge -- that 80 percent of all Kenyans to know their HIV status by the end of 2013. By using rapid tests HIV programs are able to offer HTC services to individuals and families within the privacy and convenience of their own homes. Furthermore HBHTC provides an entry point at the community level for referrals and integration of other health messages such as family planning tuberculosis screening and malaria prevention. This case study provides program planners implementers and decision makers with examples of strategies and approaches for ensuring quality in HBHTC.


We developed a new strategy of polyglutamate nanorod preparation based on supramolecular polymers stabilized with hydrophobic drugs. Using this strategy, we prepared a family of star-shaped polyglutamates (star-PGAs) with benzenetricarboxamide (BTA)-based cores of different hydrophobicity. We then studied the self-assembly of the resulting polymers in aqueous solutions containing a physiological level of salt using fluorescence spectroscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). We discovered that star-PGAs behave as classical polyelectrolytes in very dilute solutions; however, compounds with hydrophobic cores assembled into one dimensional-nanorods upon an increase in concentration due to supramolecular interactions in the core. Small hydrophobic drugs, such as doxorubicin and irinotecan, stabilized the nanorods and inhibited their disassembly at concentrations below the critical aggregation concentration (CAC). We anticipate that this simple nanorod preparation strategy from star-PGAs will enable the development of new nanomedicines with unique biodistribution profiles and biological activity.


Decentralization of government with property tax financing is the standard recipe for public sector reform. Fiscal competition is assumed to stimulate efficiency and hold down the tax level. Property taxation offers additional incentives for efficiency. We study the incentive mechanisms involved using data for decentralized governments and in a setting where they can choose to have property taxation or not. The empirical analysis addresses whether fiscal competition and political control problems influence the choice of having property taxation. The results indicate that both incentive mechanisms are relevant and consequently support the standard advice. Fiscal competition generates a distinct geographic pattern in local taxation and political fragmentation seems to motivate property taxation to control common pool problems. The main methodological challenge handled concerns spatial interaction with discrete choice.


The process by which active pulmonary tuberculosis (TB) is detected can be tediously slow in rural and often roadless Alaska, where several hundred air or boat miles can separate a patient from a chest x-ray and/or sputum collection. Additionally, the only TB reference lab in the state is many hundreds of air miles away, albeit centrally located in Anchorage. Under such conditions, it may take up to a week to process serial sputum AFB smears. This can result in either delayed onset of treatment or unnecessary empiric treatment, all while safety for the community is being considered. This dilemma often results in precautionary hospital isolation of a patient who might otherwise have been able to travel home by air. This article proposes a roadmap for remote health care settings that might bridge our current TB diagnostic ability to a better way in the future.Current TB diagnostic guidelines in our area (Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta) were reviewed for integration of the Xpert MTB/ RIF assay with the purpose of improving TB health care while emphasizing patient benefits and cost savings.A clinical guideline that integrates the rapid TB assay into the current TB diagnostic algorithms for adults and adolescents is proposed. Crude cost savings at our hospital resulting from this guideline are estimated to be $316,000 per year.The proven utility of a new rapid TB diagnostic, the Xpert MTB/RIF assay, offers the promise of more efficient TB medical care, improved patient human rights and improved hospital and community environmental safety, all with likely huge reduced health care costs in remote Alaska.


Author(s): Schack, Trevor Malcolm | Advisor(s): Gruesz, Kirsten S | Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to highlight the discursive connection of three of these novels. John Rollin Ridge's Joaquin Murieta: The Celebrated California Bandit (1854), Edward Wheeler's Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road; or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills (1877) and W.B. Lawson's Dashing Diamond Dick; or, The Tigers of Tombstone (1898) develop a genre that portrays a type of character I call the "Renegade Hero."The first chapter of this study examines Ridge's Joaquin Murieta as a text that creates a set of thematic elements that will become integral to the construction of both Deadwood Dick and Diamond Dick. These discursive features include the renegade hero's "naming" of himself, and female characters whose gender is obscured because they dress in drag. I also argue that Ridge's authorship of Joaquin Murieta affects the novel in such a way that it can become a precursor text to Deadwood Dick and Diamond Dick because of the way that Ridge separates his text from the sensationalist novels that precede it.In the second chapter, I build on my established discursive framework to analyze the development of thematic elements in Deadwood Dick. I discuss a scene from Deadwood Dick that seems to directly cite Joaquin Murieta; additionally, I compare the author of Deadwood Dick, Edward Wheeler, to John Rollin Ridge as another way to show that the discursive elements in Deadwood Dick do not seem to be an independent discovery based on Wheeler's life experience. The final chapter is meant to demonstrate how Diamond Dick continues the development of the renegade hero. It focuses on the re-appropriation of the discursive elements from Deadwood Dick and how the dime novel fits into the renegade hero subgenre. This chapter also attempts to demonstrate how the thematic focus throughout the course of the novels shifts from the renegade hero's "naming" of himself, to the gender obscuration of a primary character in the novel.


Our presentation gives an outlook on some of the main results of a strategic European study entitled "EP2010 – The Future of Electronic Publishing Towards 2010". The paper puts forward the thesis that, driven by the emerging knowledge economy, "traditional" publishing industries will have to face the technological and economic challenges of knowledgeenhanced publishing: Novel publishing objects will provide different information layers (adapters) including an underlying knowledge structure to enable value adding (in a very broad sense) along various steps in the publishing workflow. We introduce the concept of "smart content" to define, along the digital content value chain, the major technological challenges and market scenarios for the future of the electronic publishing sector in the knowledge economy. Smart content objects will, among other properties, be personalised, adaptable, evolvable, unobtrusive, interoperable and ubiquitous. A proposed research map including foundational research, application-oriented research on the publishing and knowledge management workflow and integrative research, e.g. on semantic interoperability, reflects the needs of the publishing industries regarding the paradigm change from traditional "canned" publishing towards knowledge based publishing in 2010.


Vaccination is an essential component in controlling infectious bursal disease (IBD), however, there is a lack of information on the genetic characteristics of a recent infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) that was isolated from IBD vaccinated commercial flocks in Malaysia. The present study investigated 11 IBDV isolates that were isolated from commercial poultry farms. The isolates were detected using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) targeting the hypervariable region (HVR) of VP2. Based on the HVR sequences, five isolates (IBS536/2017, IBS624/2017, UPM766/2018, UPM1056/2018, and UPM1432/2019) were selected for whole-genome sequencing using the MiSeq platform. The nucleotide and amino acid (aa) sequences were compared with the previously characterized IBDV strains. Deduced aa sequences of VP2HVR revealed seven isolates with 94–99% aa identity to very virulent strains (genogroup 3), two isolates with 97–100% aa identity to variant strains (genogroup 2), and two strains with 100% identity to the vaccine strain (genogroup 1) of IBDV. The phylogenetic analysis also showed that the isolates formed clusters with the respective genogroups. The characteristic motifs 222T, 249K, 286I, and 318D are typical of the variant strain and were observed for UPM1219/2019 and UPM1432/2019. In comparison, very virulent residues such as 222A, 249Q, 286T, and 318G were found for the vvIBDV, except for the UPM1056/2018 strain with a A222T substitution. In addition, the isolate has aa substitutions such as D213N, G254D, S315T, S317R, and A321E that are not commonly found in previously reported vvIBDV strains. Unlike the other vvIBDVs characterized in this study, UPM766/2018 lacks the MLSL aa residues in VP5. The aa tripeptides 145/146/147 (TDN) of VP1 were conserved for the vvIBDV, while a different motif, NED, was observed for the Malaysian variant strain. The phylogenetic tree showed that the IBDV variant clustered with the American and Chinese variant viruses and are highly comparable to the novel Chinese variants, with 99.9% identity. Based on the sequences and phylogenetic analyses, this is the first identification of an IBDV variant being reported in Malaysia. Further research is required to determine the pathogenicity of the IBDV variant and the protective efficacy of the current IBD vaccines being used against the virus.


Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a highly curable form of cancer, and current treatment regimens are focused on improving treatment efficacy while decreasing the risk of late effects of treatment. The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) for pediatric HL provide recommendations on the workup, diagnostic evaluation, and treatment of classic HL, including principles of pathology, imaging, staging, systemic therapy, and radiation therapy. This portion of the NCCN Guidelines focuses on the management of pediatric classic HL in the upfront and relapsed/refractory settings.


The objective of this work was to evaluate the most frequent causes of emergency in patients with Chagas disease. Between January 1998-January 1999, individuals with Chagas disease inside the shock-room of Santojanni Hospital in Buenos Aires city, were included in a prospective study. For the statistical analysis, X test with Yates correction has been used. From a total of 1.680 patients entered, there were 95 (6%) with reactive serology for Chagas disease. In 31 individuals the enter cause was syncope, in 28 cardiac insufficiency, in 18 acute coronary events, in 5 stroke, in 3 acute edema of hypertensive lung and in 2 acute encephalitis associated to AIDS. In conclusion, significant association has been observed between: 1) presence of cardiopathy and hospitalization, 2) cardiac insufficiency, syncope, acute encephalitis and mortality, 3) cardiopathy development and mortality and 4) origin place and mortality.


Abstract In this study, the authors have performed the variational computations for surface sensible heat fluxes over a large northern lake using observed wind, temperature gradient, and moisture gradient. In contrast with the conventional (Monin–Obukhov similarity theory) MOST-based flux-gradient method, the variational approach sufficiently utilizes observational meteorological conditions over the lake, where the conventional flux-gradient method performs poorly. Verifications using direct eddy-correlation measurements over Great Slave Lake, the fifth largest lake in North America in terms of surface area, during the open water period of 1999 demonstrate that the variational method yields good agreements between the computed and the measured sensible heat fluxes. It is also demonstrated that the variational method is more accurate than the flux-gradient method in computations of sensible heat flux across the air–water interface.


Various types of distance distributive (DD) items across natural languages received attention in recent linguistic works. As for Sign Languages (SL), the DD research is presented (among other topics) in Quer (2012), Kimmelman (2015), Kimmelman (2017) & Kuhn (2017) a.o. Following this work we focus on a specific type of reduplication in SL (reduplication on R-loci) which is claimed to be a marker of distributive quantification (i.e. by Kimmelman 2015): a "distributive reduplication" from now on. By bringing new data from Czech Sign Language(CSL) we propose a new compositional semantics for DD structures. The analysis shows that the distributive reduplication in CSL can be understood as a realization of the most general distributivity operator (Schwarzschild's Part with the cover domain), like Champolion's (2012) D but being anaphoric to the distributive key. The multiple DD marking is not a syntactic agreement, as proposed in some previous approaches but non-scopal anaphoric D operator. Both individual and occasional readings were attested. We suggest that the interpretation of both reduplications leads to the occasional reading; the vacuous/redundant distributivity over the same theta-role results in an individual distributive reading.


Robust detection of buildings is an important part of the automated aerial image interpretation problem. Automatic detection of buildings enables creation of maps, detecting changes, and monitoring urbanization. Due to the complexity and uncontrolled appearance of the scene, an intelligent fusion of different methods gives better results. In this study, we present a novel approach for building detection using multiple cues. We benefit from segmentation of aerial images using invariant color features. Besides, we use the edge and shadow information for building detection. We also determine the shape of the building by a novel method.


Nursing professionals play an extremely significant role in healthcare delivery. They are involved in multiple occupational activities, which cause stress and can lead to detrimental effects on their personal health. Nurses may often have to alter their dietary and lifestyle behaviour to meet the several urgent demands of their profession. This can put them at risk to various chronic health conditions that can further influence their occupational chores. This paper highlights the lifestyle and eating patterns, weight and health status of nurses; and the impact of these on the professional role of nurses. As very few studies are available on the dietary intakes and activity patterns of nurses, more research is needed on these aspects. An understanding of all these issues is important to plan suitable diet and lifestyle-related interventions for nurses so as to promote optimum health and productivity among them.


This study was a small part of the EURARE project concerned with the processing of eudialyte concentrates from Greenland and Norra Kärr, Sweden. Eudialyte is a potential rare earth elements (REE) primary resource due to its good solubility in acid, low radioactivity and relatively high REE content. The main challenge is avoiding the formation of silica gel, which is non-filterable when using acid to extract REE. Some methods have been studied to address this issue and, based on previous research, this paper examined a complete hydrometallurgical treatment of eudialyte concentrate to the production of REE carbonate as a preliminary product. Dry digestion with concentrated hydrochloric acid (10 M) and subsequent water leaching of the treated eudialyte concentrate resulted in high REE extraction while avoiding gel formation. Experiments were performed at a small scale to obtain the optimal parameters. After the first two stages, 88.8% REE was leached under the optimal conditions (HCl:concentrate ratio 1.25:1, digestion time 40 min, water:concentrate ratio 2:1, leaching temperature 20–25°C and leaching time 30 min). After obtaining the pregnant leach solution, preliminary removal of impurities by a precipitation method was examined as well. When adjusting the pH to ~4.0 using calcium carbonate, zirconium, aluminium and iron were removed at 99.1%, 90.0% and 53.1%, respectively, with a REE loss of 2.1%. Finally, a pilot plant test was performed to demonstrate the feasibility and recovery performance under optimal parameters. The material balance in the upscaling test was also calculated to offer some references for future industrial application. A REE carbonate containing 30.0% total REE was finally produced, with an overall REE recovery yield of 85.5%.


Introduction: The prognostic role of SCUBE1 serum levels in PTE has best of our knowledge, not been previously investigated.
Materials and Methods: The study included 49 patients diagnosed as having acute PTE. This singlecentre prospective study was conducted between Jan 2015 and 2016.The diagnosis of PTE was reached through spiral angio computed thorax tomography. Serum SCUBE1 was measured on admission. Troponin-T, cardiac enzymes, echocardiography and simplified pulmonary embolism severity index (sPESI) of all the patients were recorded.
Findings: The mean age at diagnosis was 69.4 ± 13.4 y who are 20 male and 29 female patients. The mean serum SCUBE1 level in our study was 1.79 ± 0.24 ng/ml. The serum SCUBE1 level was significantly higher in the cases with high-risk sPESI than those with low-risk sPESI (18.00 ± 0.26 ng/ml and 17.75 ± 0.17 ng/ml (p=0.001), respectively). It was also shown that there was a significant correlation between the SCUBE1 and serum albumin levels (r=-0.501) and Red Cell Distribution Width (RDW) (r=0.301) and urea (r=0.296). None of the patients passed away during hospitalization and one-month follow-up.
Conclusion: SCUBE1 can be used for predicting in patients with PTE. However, further studies are essential, and in particular should include high-risk (massive) pulmonary embolism patients.


The Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA) adopted by FAO in 2009 is a legally-binding instrument for combating illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the world. Although only three of the Southeast Asian countries (i.e. Indonesia, Myanmar and Thailand) have so far acceded to and/or ratified the PSMA, the other countries have been taking steps and making necessary preparations for ratification, notwithstanding the ongoing efforts of the countries to adopt their respective national port State measures (PSM) as means of controlling IUU fishing in their waters. In order to address some legislative gaps while some of the Southeast Asian countries are still pursuing the possible accession to and/or ratification of the PSMA, still some countries are encountering certain difficulties in implementing the PSMA. With the main objective of overcoming such constraints, this article therefore suggests possible options that could address the issues that arise from the adoption of the PSMA. Such options could include: (1) establishment and/or adjustment of specific national laws that would ensure the involvement of relevant agencies in the implementation of PSM; (2) identification of the ways and means of providing legal assistance to Southeast Asian countries to overcome certain regulatory constraints in the implementation of the PSMA; and (3) development of a model that would address the common concerns in the implementation of the PSM.


Designing accurate and efficient convolutional neural architectures for vast amount of hardware is challenging because hardware designs are complex and diverse. This paper addresses the hardware diversity challenge in Neural Architecture Search (NAS). Unlike previous approaches that apply search algorithms on a small, human-designed search space without considering hardware diversity, we propose HURRICANE that explores the automatic hardware-aware search over a much larger search space and a multistep search scheme in coordinate ascent framework, to generate tailored models for different types of hardware. Extensive experiments on ImageNet show that our algorithm consistently achieves a much lower inference latency with a similar or better accuracy than state-of-the-art NAS methods on three types of hardware. Remarkably, HURRICANE achieves a 76.63% top-1 accuracy on ImageNet with a inference latency of only 16.5 ms for DSP, which is a 3.4% higher accuracy and a 6.35× inference speedup than FBNet-iPhoneX. For VPU, HURRICANE achieves a 0.53% higher top-1 accuracy than Proxyless-mobile with a 1.49× speedup. Even for well-studied mobile CPU, HURRICANE achieves a 1.63% higher top-1 accuracy than FBNetiPhoneX with a comparable inference latency. HURRICANE also reduces the training time by 54.7% on average compared to SinglePath-Oneshot.


Objective: To study the influencing factors of extracorporeal shock lithotripsy wave (ESWL) in the treatment of urinary calculus and provide reference for the clinical practice of treating urinary calculus. Method: In the The No. 3 Affilated Hospital of Qiqihaer Medical University, 800 patients who had had urinary stones from January 2017 to February 2018 were randomly selected for follow-up investigation. Disease information and preoperative preparation information for each patient are collated. Images of the patient's physical condition are recorded and saved. The postoperative follow-up, data, and clinical symptoms or complications were analyzed. All patients were followed up 1 week after surgery and the follow-up was generally continued for 3 months. Successful treatment: calculus is completely discharged or residual stone≤3mm, and hydronephrosis is light. Failure treatment: calculus is not discharged or residual stone>3mm, hydronephrosis is not alleviated or aggravated. Statistical factors were used to analyze the factors affecting the effect of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy on urinary calculus. Result: All patients who underwent treatment were followed up for 3 months and the data were summarized. Based on the therapeutic effect, the patients were divided into a failure group and a success group. The complete discharge of calculus or residual calculus≤3mm belongs to the successful group. The calculus texture is hard, so the broken calculus or the small calculus after the crush is still large, and it is not discharged smoothly. However, in general, a partial calculus diameter > 3 mm is called a treatment failure. The X2 test was used to compare the data of the two groups of patients. Conclusion: The type of lithotripter, the age of the patient, the location of the calculus, BMI, the degree of hydronephrosis, the approach of the source of the shock, the frequency of the shock wave, and the energy during the lithotripsy are all factors that influence the therapeutic effect of the extracorporeal shock wave.


Experience of outpatient esophageal dilation using Savary-Gilliard dilators in 130 patients during a 17 month period is reported. The strictures were radiation induced (48), tumoral stenoses (40), anastomotic (16) and due to other causes (26). Both fluoroscopy and endoscopy were used in 58%, endoscopy alone in 23% and fluoroscopy alone in 19% of patients for placement of the guide wire. One hundred and twenty six stricture dilations (97%) were technically successful. Eighty one (62%) patients could be dilated to 14 mm or more. One hundred and nineteen (94%) patients were dilated in one or two sessions. Among the 109 patients who followed up, dilation was successful in providing adequate dysphagia relief in 97 patients and facilitated the performance of other therapies in 9 patients. Major complications included severe continuous chest pain (1 case), hematemesis (2), fever (4) and transient stridor (2). The patient with persistent pain and 9 patients undergoing other therapies required hospitalization. There were no perforations or death. We conclude that esophageal dilation with Savary-Gilliard dilators is safe and effective even in tumors and post-radiation strictures. It can be performed on an outpatient basis in a majority of patients.


Centralized machine learning methods are typically used to train predictive models from data that are aggregated into large central repositories. This paper describes an alternative machine learning method applicable to massive data residing in different locations and owned by different entities that could not be aggregated into a single repository due to technical and/or privacy concerns. Brisimi et al. developed a new federated algorithm the cluster Primal Dual Splitting (cPDS) algorithm for solving the large-scale sparse Support Vector Machine (sSVM) problem in a decentralized fashion. They applied this new algorithm to a dataset of de-identified Electronic Healthcare Records (EHRs) from the Boston Medical Center for predicting heart failure hospital admissions based on patients' medical history described in their distributed EHRs. The federated optimization scheme cPDS enables multiple data holders to collaborate and converge to a common predictive model, without explicitly exchanging raw data. This distributed algorithm accurately differentiates between patients that are likely or unlikely to be hospitalized within a target year. With a prediction accuracy of 0,7806 measured by the Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC), the cPDS performs better than the other methods used to solve the sSVM problem. The authors demonstrate that cPDS converges faster than both centralized methods and alternative distributed algorithm. Important features that are predictive of future hospitalizations have been discovered by the algorithm, such as age, diagnosis of heart failure in the year before the target year, admission due to heart failure or other circulatory system diagnoses one year before the target year, thus providing a way to interpret the classification results and inform prevention efforts. At a time of increasing preference for distributed querying to avoid centralizing data, this paper makes a great contribution by providing a validated approach to distributed machine learning for such architectures.


In recent years, the demands on product performance are improving, particularly in the aviation; electronics, precision instruments and other fields, the accuracy and quality have become the most important. So lapping is getting increasingly importance with its high precision, good processing quality. In this paper, the processing parameters, which have effect on processing accuracy and efficiency in the process of planar lapping, have been analyzed emphatically. The effects on surface roughness of various processing parameters have also been investigated.


This paper presents the design, fabrication, and testing of a piezoelectric parametric frequency increased generator for harvesting low-frequency non-periodic vibrations. The generator incorporates a bulk piezoelectric ceramic machined using ultrafast laser ablation. The electromechanical transducer is designed as a clamped-clamped spiral beam in order to decrease the stiffness within a limited footprint. An internal mechanism up-converts the ambient vibration frequency to a higher internal operation frequency in order to achieve better electromechanical coupling and efficiency. To gain maximum power output, the optimum width and thickness values of a spiral up-conversion unit are computed via multi-physics finite-element analysis simulations. The fabricated device generated a peak power of 100 μW and an average power of 3.25 μW from an input acceleration of 9.8 m/s2 at 10 Hz. The device operates over a frequency range of 24 Hz. The internal volume of the generator is 1.2 cm3.


Flowers are purchased for a variety of reasons ranging from expressions of love or sympathy to satisfying environmental and beautification goals. Unlike many foods where some of the attributes can be quantitatively measured such as grams of fat in meats and milligrams of cholesterol in fluid milk, these aesthetically pleasing products present an array of attributes that are closely tied to the buyer's reasons for making the purchase. Clearly the attributes are fundamentally different since the goal associated with the purchase depends on the buyer's objectives. This also implies that the demand for such products should be much more closely tied to the characteristics for the buyers and the reasons for buying. Flowers are not absolutely essential for survival and; hence, one may find a given share of the population as non-buyers or infrequent buyers. That is, there is considerable latitude with the decision to purchase or not, and again, this wider range of choices is closely tied to the demographics and occasions or periods. Knowing the latitude with the decision to purchase and the perceptions of the characteristics for products are essential to understanding the demand. Purchasing of fresh-cut flowers, potted plants, and dry/artificial flowers should be substitutable to some degree even though physically they are fundamentally different products. Yet these products have many similar attributes when considering the purpose for use. They can be used to express thanks, reflect emotions, project beauty, and show environmental concerns. Hence, even with the physical differences, consumers may easily change their buying behaviors among these types of flower products. Expenditure patterns are tied to many things, including incomes, purposes, occasions, information and perceptions, and product availability (i.e., outlets). These levels of expenditures depend on market penetration (number of buyers), frequency of transaction among buyers, and prevailing prices. Hence, anything that influences consumer entry into the marketing via more (or fewer) buyers and/or increased frequency of transactions must be measured to have a fuller grasp of the demand for flower products. Understanding demand for flowers is useful to help the flower industry to be proactive in addressing demand issues. Actionable variables such as generic and brand promotion programs, and innovative selling methods are important factors likely to influence the future direction of the industry. Hence, it is important to have a complete definitive understanding of the demand drivers for fresh-cut flowers and their substitutes including the relative importance of entry and transactions. To measure factors influencing the demand for flowers such as prices, seasonality, and demographic variables, the demand for flowers in the different forms was estimated using the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) to examine household behaviors in the U.S. flower industry. The model for fresh-cut, potted plants, and dry/artificial flowers explicitly accounted for differences in outlets, purposes, purchasing occasions, growth, income demographics, and prices. These variables were incorporated into the likelihood specification of the AIDS model, including the weight prices often referred to as the Stone Index. Note that Stone Index was not used, rather the parameters included in the weighting were part of the likelihood specification. The actual estimation was completed using the maximum likelihood function that also accounted for possible correlation in the equation residuals. The actual estimation was completed using the maximum likelihood function that also accounted for possible correlation in the equation residuals. Since flowers were made up of a wide range of varieties, references to quantities purchased had little meaning. The AIDS model was in terms of expenditures and prices and not directly the quantities. Yet an explicit demand function can be derived from the model if one can identify a meaningful quantity measure. Instead of quantities demanded the total transactions on flowers were used as a surrogate for quantities. Hence, demand is in terms of transactions per household with the transaction defined as household buyers (b) times monthly frequency (f) of purchases per household; Then, these transactions were expressed on a per household base. Given the complexity and nonlinear nature of the AIDS model, the full meaning of the coefficients cannot be seen by simply observing the coefficient values. To fully gain insight into what can be learned from the estimates, simulations and sensitivity analyses are needed. That is, using the estimated models show the responses to simulated changes in the model variables. Calculating the demand elasticities for the own prices, cross prices and expenditures can be useful for indicating both the allocations of the budget shares among the three flower types; fresh-cut flowers, potted flowering plants, and dry/artificial flowers. However, the distribution properties for each estimated elasticity depend on the distribution properties of each coefficient and actual variable values in the model. It is extremely difficult to calculate each elasticity distribution because of the nonlinear nature of the AIDS model. A useful approach to get around this problem is a bootstrap resampling approach. An application of the bootstrapping is to resample with replacement and re-estimate the elasticity over and over again and determine the distribution properties from the range of estimates. Each simulation procedure measured demand changes by adjusting one or more variables relative to the mean value of all other variables in the demand model. For illustration purposes, each continuous variable was adjusted from 50 percent of the mean level to 150 percent of the mean using increments of 10 percent. Once demand models are known their use can be extended beyond identifying what causes demand changes. They can be useful for making longer term projections and/or forecasts. In other to make projections, both the time span and some expectation about changes in each demand variable must be made. In many circumstances it is nearly impossible to know what future values of specific demand variables will be. Whereas, some variables such as the number of households and income growth can be approximated with some degree of confidence. Furthermore, temporal demand changes were captured with the proxy measure using the time variables where the time represents existing periods and can be extended out to future months. Hence, simply changing the time variables for those future periods is straight forward. Using this time line and placing a set of growth assumptions on total expenditures provide one mechanism for projecting into future periods. These are projections instead of forecast since the projections are based on a set of assumed conditions such as absolute and relative prices, outlet selection, and purpose. Even with these conditions, the projections provide considerable insight into the underlying forces embedded in the AIDS model parameters. As a result, a fresh-cut share as gift-giving was higher relative to that for self-use, while potted shares and dry/artificial shares were slightly higher for self-uses compared to gifts-giving. Monthly shares and expenditures on fresh-cut flowers and dry/artificial flowers from florists were higher than through supermarkets, while shares and expenditures on potted flowering plants from supermarkets were higher than through florists. From the projections, the fresh-cut flower industry would benefit from an overall growth in consumer spending on flower products, while both the potted flower industry and the dry/artificial flower industry lost their shares as total incomes increased for the long-run period. Demand system models provided a picture of the consumer side of the market and attempted to provide the empirical insight into what drive changes in the purchasing behavior. Demand can be assumed completely exogenous to an industry and the industry just accepts the pattern of change. The AIDS model as suggested in this research provides insight into where changes could occur and what the relative category position would appear to be in the absence of any stimulations or adjustment within the flower industry. Yet the same pattern may point to areas needing attention by various sectors within the flower industry. For example, how much gain could be realized by changing the fall drop in seasonal patterns? Who should be targeted? What is the potential gain from price competitiveness versus specific demand enhancement programs? Surprising there are few if any definitive analyses of the broad demand for flowers and this analysis should give the industry a better perspective on the demand for fresh-cut flowers relative to the other goods.


This legislative guide is prepared by UNCITRAL to promote an enabling legal environment for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The guide is based on the premise that it is in the interests of States and of MSMEs that such businesses operate in the formal economy. This guide also reflects the idea that entrepreneurs that have not yet commenced a business may be persuaded to do so in the formal economy if the requirements for formally starting their business are not considered overly burdensome, and if the advantages for doing so outweigh their interest in operating in the informal economy. The guide includes best practices from various parts of the world and 58 recommendations aiming at assisting States in streamlining their business registration procedures.


Facies evolution in continental margin sediments recovered on Leg 40 from the eastern South Atlantic reflects a progressive disappearance of stagnant conditions and a decrease of the terrigenous influx at the end of the Cretaceous. The Maestrichtian-Paleocene is characterized by the definitive installation of well-oxygenated oceanic conditions.The first upwelling phenomena off Southwest Africa occurred during the Eocene.Carbonate dissolution cycles have recurred several times since the Early Cretaceous. A tentative mean CCD curve for the South Atlantic since the Late Cretaceous is presented.Carbonate dissolution is considerably enhanced in upweiling areas, such as the easternmost Walvis Ridge and the Angola Margin, and is not comparable with that observed in adjacent oceanic basins, such as the Cape Basin. The carbonate dissolution cycles are reflected in the carbonate content of the sediments, in the degree of fragmentation of planktonic foraminifers, and in the relative abundance of benthic foraminifers and fish debris. This evidence is in general agreement with that deduced from the degree of dissolution of calcareous nannofossils (Noel and Melguen, this volume). [NOT CONTROLLED OCR]


The greeneries on city maps are usually covered in large green areas, but that does not reveal much. The important factors to be considered in relation to greenery are, for example, distance, visiting frequency and accessibility. In the current study, all of the 92 urban green spaces (UGS) of the Estonian city Tartu are explored from a health perspective along with the landscape characteristic. The main purpose is to prove statistically how the parks are influenced by landscape elements using Searles' theory (1960) and m ain aspects. The CAD maps are represented by topics and graphs illustratin g the situation in Tartu. Green room elements are found using Searles ' theory: water/stone, plants, animals and other people. The main aspects are trees/plants, peace/openness, senses and visual elem ents. The health-promoting landscape characteristics are serene, wild, rich in species, spacious, prospective, refuge, festive and cultural. The parks were assessed by an expert group in the summer of 2011. The work is unique, thanks to the fact that the information is gained from greenery – albeit can be found and felt (information from the surrounding environment and direct reflections of consciousness through the senses). Green spaces characterised by serenity have a statistical correlation (Pearson) with peace/openness (r=0.459, p<0.01) and with senses (r=0.486, p<0.01). Wilderness characteristic and trees/plants are also in correlation (r=0.423, p<0.01). According to literature, design is the least influential aspect in landscape. The author can statistically prove that design is strongly correlated with user influence through the senses (r=0.501, p<0.01), and not visual aspects, as was expected in the case of Tartu. Landscape characteristics are the attributes that landscape architects can use for design work.


The classical dynamics of M-dimensional extended objects arising from stationary points of the world volume swept out in space time is discussed from various points of view. A introduction to the Hamiltonian mechanics of bosonic compact M(em)branes is given, emphasing the diversity of the different formulations and gauge choices. For moving hypersurfaces, a graph description—including its nonlinear realization of Lorentz invariance—and hydrodynamic formulations (in light-cone coordinates as well as when choosing the time coordinate of a Lorentz observer as the dependent variable) are presented. A matrix regularization for M = 2 (existing for all topologies) is explained in detail for the 2-sphere, as well as multilinear formulations for M > 2. The recently found dynamical symmetry that exists for all M and related reconstruction algebras are covered, just as some explicit solutions of the level-set equations.


Traditionally, voice communication over the local loop has been provided by wired systems. However there has been an increased interest in the use of radio access technologies in local loops. Such systems which are now popular for their ease and low cost of installation and maintenance are called wireless in local loop (WLL) systems. Subscribers' demands for greater capacity have grown over the years especially with the advent of the Internet. Unlike WLL, wired local loops have responded to these increasing demands through the use of digital technologies such as ISDN and xDSL. Multihop communication has already been studied extensively in ad hoc network environments and has begun making forays into cellular systems as well. Multi-hop communication has been proven as one of the best ways to enhance throughput in a wireless network. We study the issues involved in multi-hop communication in a wireless local loop system and propose a novel WLL architecture called Throughput enhanced Wireless in Local Loop (TWiLL). Through a realistic simulation model we show the tremendous performance improvement achieved by TWiLL over WLL. We also propose pricing schemes which could be applied in such a multi-hop environment.


Abstract There has been a growing interest in sound symbolic patterns in natural languages, in which some sounds are associated with particular meanings. Previous corpus-based research identified some specific sound symbolic relationships in Pokémon naming patterns in Japanese (Kawahara et al. 2018b). One of the main findings was that the names of Pokémon characters are more likely to contain voiced obstruents, and are longer in terms of mora count, when the Pokémon characters undergo evolution (e.g. nyoromo → nyorozo; poppo → pijotto). The current study reports three experiments that test whether (i) these patterns are productive in the minds of general Japanese speakers, and whether (ii) the same tendency holds with English speakers. The results show that the effect of phonological length was clearly observed both with Japanese and English speakers; the effects of voiced obstruents were observed clearly with Japanese speakers, but less clearly with English speakers. Along the way, we address other general issues related to sound symbolism: (iii) to what extent the sound symbolic effects identified in Kawahara et al. (2018b) rely on familiarity with Pokémon, and (iv) whether word-initial segments invoke stronger images than word-internal segments. In addition to its research value, we emphasize that this general project on Pokémon names can be useful for undergraduate phonetics education.


Rates of synthesis, from [14C]glucose, of fatty acids (de novo lipogenesis) and glycerol (triglyceride synthesis) were measured in biopsies of adipose tissue from nutritionally depleted patients given low- or high-carbohydrate intravenous nutrition. Simultaneously, energy expenditure and whole-body lipogenesis were measured by indirect calorimetry. Rates of whole-body lipogenesis were zero on the low-carbohydrate diet and averaged 1.6 g.kg-1.day-1 on the high-carbohydrate diet. In vitro rates of triglyceride synthesis increased 3-fold going from the low to the high intake; rates of fatty acid synthesis increased approximately 80-fold. In vitro, lipogenesis accounted for less than 0.1% of triglyceride synthesis on the low intake and 4% on the high intake. On the high-carbohydrate intake, in vitro rates of triglyceride synthesis accounted for 61% of the rates of unidirectional triglyceride synthesis measured by indirect calorimetry. In vitro rates of lipogenesis accounted for 7% of whole-body lipogenesis. Discrepancies between in vitro rates of fatty acid synthesis from glucose, compared with acetate and citrate, as reported by others, suggest that in depleted patients on hypercaloric high-carbohydrate diets, adipose tissue may account for up to 40% of whole-body lipogenesis.


This essay examines how writing letters to his wife helped the Soviet illustrator Grigorii Filippovskii, who in 1938 was sentenced to five years of camp labor, to survive the Gulag. Using methods of narrative analysis, the author identifies in Filippovskii's letters (retyped by his wife Liia Nel'son for her unpublished memoir) three narratives, or stories, that allow the artist to maintain a connection with his pre-Gulag life: a limited circle of social contacts in the camp, Filippovskii's reflections on art and his career as an artist, and his love for his wife. Filippovskii thus (re)constructs in these letters a "normal," precamp everyday life (Alltagsgeschichte), while simultaneously distancing himself from the realities of the camp.


This paper describes the design and construction of a local six-electrode conductivity probe which can be used in solids-water pipe flows to simultaneously measure the local solids volume fraction and the local solids axial velocity. Using finite element analysis, the probe electrode geometry was designed so that the regions of the solids-water mixture that were interrogated by the probe were optimal for measurement of the volume fraction and for cross correlation velocity measurement. The probe was used, in conjunction with a computer controlled traversing mechanism, to obtain distributions of the local solids volume fraction and the local solids axial velocity both in vertical upward and in upward inclined solids-water flows. Such distributions can be used to validate volume fraction and velocity profiles obtained using dual-plane electrical resistance tomography systems. Experimental results indicated that the six-electrode probe can be used to estimate the local solids volume fraction in vertical upward solids-water flows with a mean absolute error of approximately 0.01. Experimental results also indicated that the six-electrode probe can be used to measure the local axial solids velocity with a mean error of 2% of the reading.


Much progress has been made in the research and development of automated planning algorithms in recent years. Though incremental improvements in algorithm design are still desirable, complementary approaches such as problem reformulation are important in tackling the high computational complexity of planning. While machine learning and adaptive techniques have been usefully applied to automated planning, these advances are often tied to a particular planner or class of planners that are coded to exploit that learned knowledge. A promising research direction is in exploiting knowledge engineering techniques such as reformulating the planning domain and/or the planning problem to make the problem easier to solve for general, state-of-the-art planners. Learning (outer) entanglements is one such technique, where relations between planning operators and initial or goal atoms are learned, and used to reformulate a domain by removing unneeded operator instances. Here we generalize this approach significantly to cover relations between atoms and pairs of operators themselves, and develop a technique for producing inner entanglements. We present methods for detecting inner entanglements and for using them to do problem reformulation. We provide a theoretical treatment of the area, and an empirical evaluation of the methods using standard planning benchmarks and state-of-the-art planners.


In 1987, the Institute for Community Inclusion (ICI) at the University of Massachusetts Boston began a series of surveys aimed at providing a longitudinal description of the characteristics and service delivery provided by Community Rehabilitation Providers (CRPs)(Domin & Butterworth, 2012). Despite direct support staff comprising one of the nation's largest labor market segments, there has been very little research into the wages and stability of that workforce (Bogenschutz, Hewitt, Nord, & Hepperlen, 2014). Additionally, most of the literature regarding employment consultants has focused on service outcomes of the individuals served. However, according to Luecking, Fabian, and Tilson (2004), "...Regardless of the job seeker's level of motivation, skill, experience, attitude, and support system, his or her ability to get a job will often depend on the effectiveness of employment specialists..."


Conventional methods of assessing antibacterial activities of macrophages by viable counting are limited by the precision of the statistics and are difficult to interpret quantitatively because of unrestrained extracellular growth of bacteria. An alternative technique based on the release of radioactive DNA from labeled bacteria has been offered as overcoming these drawbacks. To assess it for use with macrophages I have made a correlation with the conventional viable counting method using a mathematical model. Opsonized Listeria monocytogenes labeled with /sup 3/H-thymidine were exposed to rat macrophages for periods up to 4 hr. Numbers of viable bacteria determined after sonication increased exponentially in the absence of live cells and this growth rate was progressively inhibited by increasing numbers of macrophages. After a lag period of 30-60 min soluble /sup 3/H appeared in the supernatant, the amount increasing with time and numbers of macrophages. To correlate these data I developed a mathematical model that considered that changes in numbers of viable organisms were due to the difference between rates of 1) growth of extracellular bacteria and 2) killing within the macrophage. On the basis of this model curves of best fit to the viable counts data were used to predict the releasemore » of radioactivity, assuming that death of a bacterium led to the total release of its label. These predictions and the experimental data agreed well, the lag period of 30-60 min between death of the bacterium and release of radioactivity being consistent with intracellular digestion. Release of soluble radioactivity appears to be an accurate reflection of the number of bacteria killed within the macrophage.« less


We investigated the feasibility of cryopreservation of zebrafish (Danio rerio) blastomeres and primordial germ cells (PGCs) by rapid freezing of dechorionated whole embryos at the blastula, gastrula and segmentation stages. Initially we examined the glass-forming properties and embryo toxicities of 5 cryoprotectants: methanol (MeOH), ethylene glycol (EG), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), propylene glycol (PG), and 1,3-butylene glycol (1,3-BG). Embryos at the blastula and gastrula stages had high sensitivities to cryoprotectant toxicities and were fragile against mechanical damage. Thus the segmentation stage embryos, the PGCs of which were visualized by injecting green fluorescence protein-nos1 3'UTR mRNA, were frozen using solutions containing each cryoprotectant at 6 M (first trial) and 2 types of cryoprotectants at 3 M each (second trial). In the first trial, live PGCs were recovered from most of the embryos frozen with EG (about 2 cells/embryo); however, a few embryos had live PGCs when embryos were frozen with other cryoprotectants. In the second trial, a mixture of EG+PG better preserved the viability of PGCs in frozen embryos. Live PGCs were recovered from all embryos frozen with EG+PG (about 3 cells/embryo), and the survival rate of PGCs was estimated to be about 25% based on the number of live PGCs in fresh embryos (about 12 cells/embryo). The present study indicates that we can utilize rapid freezing of dechorionated whole embryos at the segmentation stage for the cryopreservation of PGCs.