INTRODUCTION Allen Fox identified fear of failure as the key psychological culprit that interferes with athletes' abilities to remain focused when competing in sport. I agree that fear of failure can be devastating to athletes for all the reasons that Dr. Fox suggests, as we have all witnessed (and even personally experienced) the severe performance decrements that can occur when this fear rears its ugly head (e.g., Greg Norman's meltdown in the 1996 US Masters or Jana Novotna's 1993 championship match choke at Wimbledon). However, I believe that fear of failure, as an inherent part of sport competition, can be harnessed and used as an important motivator for training and as a useful energy source (which requires some mental rewiring) during competition. My metaphor was intentional – fear of failure is a huge obstacle to overcome when it "rears its ugly head" – but systematic training of productive responses in pressure situations enables most athletes to manage this fear effectively. The "ugly head" is only revealed when athletes lack training and experience, or forsake their mental plans and focus strategies because they are not completely routinized or trusted. Peter Vidmar, U.S. Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics, describes his learned response to fear of failure:


Apolitics of Maupassant ; Maupassant's reputation for "Frenchness" neglects his rejection of politics for a critique based in aesthetics and the individual, which makes say an anti- Semitic reading of the "Horla" impossible.


Poverty is a serious issue that must be addressed immediately by countries in the world, including Indonesia. The Indonesian government has implemented a variety of poverty reduction projects, such as providing education and health insurance. The rising poverty rate is due to the poor quality of education and health care. On Sumatra, there are 5,83 million poor people or 22,06 percent of the total number of poor people in Indonesia. This statistic appears to be quite large, and the government should be concerned about it. Factors causing poverty such as education and health are latent variables that cannot be measured directly. The suitable statistical method used is Structural Equation Model (SEM). In SEM analysis, there are three types of model fit tests: measurement model fit with Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), overall model fit, and structural model fit. The results indicated that the model was fit or suitable for the model's tests. From the SEM model that was formed, it was found that health had a negative and significant effect on poverty and education did not have a significant effect on poverty and 77 percent of the variation in poverty could be explained by the SEM model that was formed.Keywords: poverty; education; health; SEM; CFA


This paper presents new evidence for the Netherlands on pension preferences and investor autonomy in the pension domain using a representative survey of about 1000 Dutch citizens. Our main conclusions are the following. Risk aversion is domain dependent and highest in the pension domain. The vast majority of respondents favours the currently dominant defined benefit pension system. If offered a combined defined benefit/defined contribution system, the majority would like to have a guaranteed pension income of at least 70% of their net labour income. Self-assessed risk tolerance and financial expertise are important individual explanatory variables of pension attitudes. The average respondent considers himself financially unsophisticated and is reluctant to take control of retirement savings investment, even when offered the possibility to increase expertise. Respondents who have chosen a relatively safe portfolio tend to switch to the riskier median portfolio when they are shown future income streams. This again suggests that many respondents currently lack the skills to have investor autonomy over investment for retirement.


This paper investigates the input-to-state stabilization problem of an ODE cascaded by a parabolic partial integro-differential equation (PIDE) subject to disturbances. First, the backstepping approach and the sliding mode control method are used to design the discontinuous boundary feedback control law. Then, a Galerkin approximation scheme is constructed to show the existence of solution to the closed-loop system. With the Lyapunov approach, the input-to-state stability of the closed-loop system is obtained. Finally, the simulation results are presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.


A 64-year-old man presented with difficulty in passing urine. He was found to have two benign tumours, one in the lower pole of each testis, and a carcinoma of the prostate (all confirmed histologically). He was given no treatment initially but when his prostatic cancer showed signs of progression he underwent bilateral orchidectomy. Benign scrotal tumours are relatively rare, and this might be the first case of bilateral leiomyoma in the tunica albuginea.


Bouncing motion of airplane during landing is analysed theoretically. Treating it as the nonlinear oscillation problem of the body with nose and maingears, stabity or instability of the motion is discussed. The mechanism of the bouncing motion, the influence of airplane design characteristics upon the stability of the motion, and the necessary condition for safe landing, etc., are made clear.


From April 1979 through January 1989, 71 patients with mitral insufficiency were surgically treated, 53 of them (74,6%) submitted to valvuloplasty. From this group 21 patients had associated mitral estenosis. Rheumatic fever was the major cause of the mitral lesions (79,2%). All patients, but 3, were situated in funcional class III and IV (NYHA). Anuloplasty (Carpentier ring and Gregori-IMC) were made associated to plastic procedures at the leaflet and the subvalvar set. In the postoperative period, we observed: no hospital mortality; early postoperative evolution was better in patients subjected to surgery in the period from 84 through 89, in comparison to the anterior period (79-83); reoperation index very acceptable at the late postoperative (5,7%); satisfactory clinical and hemodynamic late evolution; better evolution in the group of patients in the functional class postoperative II and III; better evolution in the group of patients with mitral insufficiency without associated stenosis.


Face-to-face human communication is a multimodal and incremental process. Humans employ  different information channels (modalities) for their communication. Since some of these modalities are more ...


GOOSE virtual terminal concept is proposed to help us to understand the way of smart substation SCD configuration. Aiming at the new features of GOOSE virtual terminal technology in smart substation, a new software test system is developed, which can not only be used to simulate the actual movement behaviors of the external protection system by importing CID (Configured IED Description) of relay-protection devices from different manufacturers, but also can test and debug the collaboration of variety of intelligent protection devices based on IEC61850 on line. GOOSE virtual terminal connection test on collaborative testing system is detailed. The feasibility and effectivity of the proposed scheme has been verified in the verification test in the integration tests of 220 kV Luding smart substation. It exhibits a broad application prospect.


Metal granule can be commonly found on insulator surface for various vacuum apparatus, producing significant impact on the durability and performance of high voltage devices. A particle-in-cell simulation model is constructed to study its influences on vacuum flashover, combined with experimental verification. A series of sizes and positions of metal granule are tested showing two competitive leverages of metal granule namely field distortion near cathode triple junction for bigger granule near cathode, and a negative charge concentration due to specific secondary electron emission characteristic, which blocks multipactor expansion and reduces surface charge accumulation for granule with smaller size positioned away from cathode. The net effect on flashover voltage is twofold and has to be analyzed considering both factors. Possible degradation of flashover threshold is proposed for granule with typical size formed by transient vacuum arc. In addition, if the negative effect with respect to flashover strength can be avoided with adequacy, a possible design regarding insulator structure can therefore be derived for a stronger electric strength on surface.


Analytical theory is used to describe the tidal constituents generat~d in suspen~ed sediment con centrations of clay, silt, and sand eroded by M 2 and S2 tidal currents. The assocIated model mvolves only the fall velocity W" the vertical dispersion coefficient E (assumed constant), and wa~er depth.D. For Ws > 10 EID particles remain close to the bed, w~ereas for W, < 0.1 I!ID ,Particles are well mIxed ve~Ically. For Ws ~ EID, deposition occurs by advective settlIng at a rate approxImatmg (l/2)W,Cz=Q wh 7 re Cz=Q IS .theconcentratl(~n. at the bed. Conversely for E » DW s settlement is more dependent on the dispers.IOn coeffiCIent ~, A ~epOSItIOn rate -aG(G depth-averaged concentration) is derived by assuming an exponentIal decay rate e ,wIth t~plcal half-lives of 1 min to 2 h for sand and from 1 to 100 d for clay. In shelf seas, the suspended se~Iment concentration is likely to be determined by the silt-clay fraction with. ~nhanced mean and MSj Co~stItuents compared to the associated diurnal and semidiumal constituents. OppOSItIOn of the .M4 and MS4 con.stItuents at neap tide may significantly reduce the anticipated quarter-diurnal component of sedIment concentratIOns.


DEVELOPING AND IMPLEMENTING A TRAINING CURRICULUM FOR PROSPECTIVE DEACONS AT FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, MONTVERDE, FLORIDA Jonathan Goforth Winningham, D.Min. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015 Faculty Supervisor: Dr. Brian J. Vickers This project sought to inform the men at First Baptist Church about what it means to serve as a deacon in the church. Chapter 1 introduces First Baptist Church of Montverde and the compelling need for this project. Chapter 2 provides the biblical and theological basis for shared leadership and examples of God's choice to join leaders together to accomplish His will. Chapter 3 identifies five essential qualities for successful shared leadership that are affirmed in writings from a spectrum of Christian traditions. Chapter 4 describes the public sermons, the curriculum, and the actual operation of the class for educating the men about what it means to serve as a deacon. Chapter 5 analyzes and evaluates the results of the project and offers both theological and personal reflection on the project.


Introduction and Aim:Immobilization of enzyme on silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is one way to improve their stability and activity and can be reused for large-scaleapplications. The present study was aimed to evaluateand characterizethetrypsin enzyme immobilized on biogenicallysynthesized silver nanoparticles.Materials and
Methods: Immobilization of trypsin enzyme was optimized with time and varying concentration of silver nanoparticles, which were greensynthesized using avocado seedextracts. The residual activity of trypsin enzyme after immobilization was estimated. The reusabilityand temperature stability of the immobilized enzyme were studied.
Results:The immobilized enzyme showed maximum activity of 1006.0 U during the time duration of 18 hr of incubation with AgNPs. Reusability of immobilized enzyme in avocado AgNPs was assessed under optimal conditions, the activity of immobilized enzyme was loss after 5 repeated cycles. The enzyme captured on AgNPswas released in the presence of anionic detergent. Temperaturestability was assessed for immobilized enzyme on AgNPs and the immobilized enzyme was stable up to55ºC and later it loss their activity.
Conclusion: The study reports a feasible method of enzyme immobilization on biogenically synthesized silver nanoparticles. The enzyme immobilized on silver nanoparticles is mainly through non-covalent forces. Further studies are required to improve the reusability of enzyme.
Keywords: Silver nanoparticles;enzyme immobilization;trypsin;temperature stability;reusability;detergent.


WITH REFERENCE TO THE RECOMMENDATIONS, WHICH WERE PUBLISHED IN 1971 BY THE FORSCHUNGSGESELLSCHAFT FUER DAS STRASSENWESEN, THE AUTHOR DISCUSSES SOME OF THE PROBLEMS INVOLVED IN PROTECTING THE WATER FROM POLLUTION FROM MATERIALS SUCH AS SLAGS USED IN ROADS.


This article develops a new method of data-driven modeling for a class of multiple-transmitter single-receiver wireless power transfer (WPT) systems. A continuous-time multiple-input single-output (MISO) model with pure time delays is used to characterize the input–output behavior of the system, where the transfer functions associated with each input channel are not constrained to have the same denominator. Moreover, the time delays are allowed to be a fraction of the sampling interval in order to account for the delay effects that stem from circuit components and wireless communication, which are, by nature, often a fraction of the sampling interval. An optimal refined instrumental variable method is proposed to estimate the parameters and time delays of the MISO model based on sampled input–output data. In contrast to the conventional circuit-theory-based modeling methods that rely on circuit parameters and result in models which are often complex, the proposed data-based method yields parsimonious models, whose parameters are directly estimated from input–output data. Due to the easy availability of sampled data in control engineering applications, the proposed method is clearly more user-friendly, having a broad prospect for efficient operation of WPT systems, such as prediction, optimization, and control. Numerical and experimental results are presented to validate the effectiveness and merit of the proposed method.


Abstract A gas chromatographic method was developed for the quantitative determination of a- and b-thiodan and thiodan sulphate on tobacco and in smoke condensate in concentrations as Iow as 0.01 parts per million. A survey was made of the thiodan and thiodan sulphate content of leaf tobacco and cigarettes. Thiodan and thiodan sulphate residues in leaf tobacco were found to amount to between 0.02 and 0.3 ppm and to between less than 0.02 and 0.05 ppm respectively. Cigarettes manufactured from Virginia tobacco were found to contain between 0.1 and 0.2 ppm of thiodan and less than 0.05 ppm of thiodan sulphate. The transfer rate of thiodan and thiodan sulphate from cigarette tobacco into the mainstream smoke ranged from 14.5 % to 16.3 %


A deteriorating items inventory model with substitution is proposed in this paper.In a finite-planning horizon,two products with different deterioration rate are replenishmented by supplier.The shortage for one product is allowed in this model and it may be replenished by the other item with the fixed substituting rate.By analyzing the properties of total cost function,the optimal replenishement policy is established.Finally, numerical examples are given to illustrate the theoretical results.


Background: Menarche is an important biological and physiological event, which occur in the lifecycle of every normal female. This is accompanied by many morphological, physiological changes in the body. The age of menarche is generally between 10-16 years. The objectives was to assess the age at menarche and menstrual complications among hostel students during menstrual period. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study in which 326 girl students staying at hostel were selected by retrospective method of recall and were evaluated. The exact date of menarche and also any complications occur during menstruation period like pre menstrual syndrome (PMS), irregular periods, painful periods etc. was noted. Results: In the present study majority of the women attain menstruation at the 14th year of their age (31.0%). The mean menarcheal age was 13.83±1.209 years. It was found that among 18.7% are getting irregular periods, 77.9% reported to have premenstrual symptoms and 31.3% students having a set of symptoms like abdominal or back pain / feeling heaviness of the body this was the major ailment suffered by most of the students.  It was reported that 53.4% are having painful periods. Conclusions: Create awareness related to reduce disease burden and poor health outcome associated with poor menstrual  complications and self care has to be  taken among this group to Promote  positive attitudes  towards the mean age at menarche and menstruation related problems among the adolescent girls is the need of the hour. Hence, we suggest that health education programs regarding PMS and other menstrual problems must be included in the curriculum of secondary schools to bring down the prevalence of such problems.


The research is entitled internal coordination influence toward employee work performance at Work Publik Service Sukabumi Regency. Based on result of beginning observation that is conducted, employee work perfomance at Work Public Service Sukabumi Regency is not optimal yet. It is caused by lack of employee internal coordination.

The research applies internal coordination teory from Arifin and Muhammmad that covers principle dimension of direct contact, emphasis coordination, feedback and work perfomance theory from Mitchell (in Sedarmayanti) that covers work quality, punctuality,
initiative, ability, and communication.

Research menthod applied survey menthod with explanation level that is associative qualitative. Sample colletion technique appled insidental sampling. The population members were 119 employees with 55 samples employee of Work Public Service Sukabumi Regency.

Based on research result, show that internal coordination has significant influence toward employee work perfomance at Work Public Service Sukabumi Regency. It is suitable with the result analysis quantitatively that is determination coefficient result as must as 54,3% and the excellence of variable x is in coordination emphasis dimension on direction unity indicator in order meanwhile the lowest dimension is in feedback dimension with employee
obedience indicator in finalizing work and excellence of variable y. There is work quality dimension on acuracy indicator in finalizing task meanwhile the lowest dimension is on communication dimension with indicator of providing internet network.

The suggestion is proposed to increase disipline and employee responsibility in duty implementation. Work Publik Service Sukabumi Regency must maximize office facility particulary internet network so that communication can run more effective.


Neuro-surgical operator can realize the brain shifting in real time, due to the real-time and dynamic feedback of intraoperative MRI(iMRI) during an operation. Comparing with routine MRI, iMRI has advantages of decreasing residual tumor, improving the ratio of gross total resection, extending the patients' live time, increasing precision of biopsy MRI in the application of neurospongoma resection, invasive pituitary resection and biopsy. With the development of morphologic and functional image fusion technology, giving consideration to the two things become possible on functional protection and neurospongoma resection in functional region. By the benefi ts of real-time navigation technology based on function MRI, the i MRI information were further expanded and gotten a clinical confi rmation in multimodal imaging technology and their corresponding parts of information in anatomy, pathology and metabolism.


We construct the Faber-Jackson correlation between velocity dispersion {sigma} and total galaxy luminosity L{sub V} separately for elliptical galaxies with and without cores. The coreless ellipticals show the well-known, steep relationship dlog {sigma}/dlog L{sub V} = 0.268 or L{sub V} {proportional_to}{sigma}{sup 3.74}. This corresponds to dlog {sigma}/dlog M = 0.203, where M is the stellar mass and we use M/L{proportional_to}L {sup 0.32}. In contrast, the velocity dispersions of core ellipticals increase much more slowly with L{sub V} and M: dlog {sigma}/dlog L{sub V} = 0.120, L{sub V} {proportional_to}{sigma}{sup 8.33}, and dlog {sigma}/dlog M = 0.091. Dissipationless major galaxy mergers are expected to preserve {sigma} according to the simplest virial-theorem arguments. However, numerical simulations show that {sigma} increases slowly in dry major mergers, with dlog {sigma}/dlog M {approx_equal} +0.15. In contrast, minor mergers cause {sigma} to decrease, with dlog {sigma}/dlog M {approx_equal} -0.05. Thus, the observed relation argues for dry major mergers as the dominant growth mode of the most massive ellipticals. This is consistent with what we know about the formation of cores. We know no viable way to explain galaxy cores except through dissipationless mergers of approximately equal-mass galaxies followed by core scouring by binary supermassive black holes. Themore » observed, shallow {sigma}{proportional_to}L{sub V}{sup +0.12} relation for core ellipticals provides further evidence that they formed in dissipationless and predominantly major mergers. Also, it explains the observation that the correlation of supermassive black hole mass with velocity dispersion, M{sub .}{proportional_to}{sigma}{sup 4}, ''saturates'' at high M{sub .} such that M{sub .} becomes almost independent of {sigma}.« less


The advent of Wikipedia as the best digital representation of cross-domain knowledge is now a reality. The DBpedia project aims at converting Wikipedia content into structured intelligence through the Linked Open Data paradigm and currently holds a vital role in the growth of the Web of Data as a multilingual interlinking kernel. However, its main classification system relies on a time-consuming manual procedure that aims at mapping Wikipedia infobox data to a common ontology. We present Airpedia, a tool that automatically generates class and property mappings for any DBpedia language chapter. We support our findings with the deployment of the Swedish, Ukrainian, and Esperanto DBpedias. Evaluations demonstrate that Airpedia is not only comparable to humans in terms of precision, but also provides a recall leap, with special regard to entities lacking infoboxes.


The American 1960s has become closely associated with moral crusades that strove for Civil Rights for the black community and protested against the conflict in Vietnam, with the peace and love gestures of the hippies to the fore, particularly in the latter part of the decade. This essay argues, however, that the seeds of a more subversive underground movement would be sown during the period and a new approach to art creation, centred on an emerging trash aesthetic, would not only challenge the psychedelic utopianism of the organised counterculture but actually leave a longer-lasting mark on left-field creative activity in the final quarter of the century. As Andy Warhol's art and film projects were re-shaped as multi-media experiences, the importance of the Velvet Underground, the rising house band at the artist's Factory headquarters, was magnified. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a performance work inspired in part by early-decade Happenings, would be unveiled in 1966, combining Warhol's underground cinema projections, light shows, dancers and the cacophonous sound of the Velvets. This radical piece of stage art was filmed by the director Ronald Nameth and his account remains a key document of the live venture. The article proposes that while Warhol and the band built on traditions from Dada to the Beats to build a form of anti-art, it was during this key time that the ideas of trash – from the Pop Art celebrations of mass cultural forms to the darker delvings of his movies, and his adopted rock group, into the decadent realms of drugs and sexual perversity – took crucial shape. This anti-aesthetic would have an enduring impact beyond the subterranean avant garde of New York City in the years that followed as music and cinema, art and literature were all shaped by this brand of expression and examples of its legacy are suggested.


Abstract : The psychomotor effects of nitrous-oxide oxygen psychosedation has been studied in medical student volunteers not undergoing any kind of treatment and in dental patients both children and adults. These studies, using nitrous oxide in concentrations of 25-35%, concluded that psychomotor impairments, as measured by the tests, were minimal at those concentrations and were rapidly reversed following a 3-5 minute post-treatment oxygenation period. Tecent attention has been directed at the effects of nitrous oxide on the dentist who may be exposed to waste gases for a prolonged period of time. Because of the absence of data on potential impairments of the psychomotor abilities of dentists who use nitrous oxide, this study investigated their psychomotor responses during the course of a treatment period in which nitrous oxide was administered to a patient. The findings for dentists in this study are essentially similar to those reported previously on the effects of nitrous oxide on psychomotor activities during and following dental treatment. One reason for the similarity may be that all of these studies involved investigation of psychomotor abilities during one treatment session. The effects of prolonged exposure to nitrous oxide requires additional study to clarify those effects if, in fact, there are any.


Abstract Structure and epitaxy of double-layered heterostructure of organic materials formed on four kinds of alkali halides were investigated. These films were fabricated by vacuum deposition. Crystallographic orientation and mutual registration of organic double layers were examined by transmission electron microscopy(TEM) and atomic force microscopy(AFM). As concluded from these observations, we found three kinds of growth modes as for the second layers depending on the combination of materials. Selective on-top growth, one of the growth modes, is important phenomenon for fabrication of organicsuperlattice. Such selectivity originates not only in lattice matching between the two layers, but also in surface topography of the layers.


Equimolar aqueous solutions of D-glucose and glycine were heated at at pH 6.7. The headspace volatiles and the ether extracts from the reaction mixture were analyzed by gas chromatography and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry using a fused silica capillary column. The major components formed were identified as diacetyl, three furfurals, two pyrroles, one furanone, two pyranones and two amides. In order to elucidate the formation mechanisms of the amides formed front amino-carbonyl reaction, two model systems were adopted. N-butylacetamide were formed as major components from diacetyl-butylamine ana glyoxal-butylamine systems, respectively. The results obtained suggest that such as 3-deoxy-D-erythro-2,3-hexodiulose and diacetyl generated in the amino-carbonyl reaction react with amino compounds, amides then being formed by cleavage of the C-C bond in the .


North East (NE) India produced 0.34 million metric tonnes (mmt) of fish from the total inland water bodies of 0.56 million hectares during 2012-13 registering a productivity of about 600 kg/ha. To bridge the supply demand gap, NE India depends on 90,000 tonnes of fish brought in from other states of India. This study examines the resources, resource use pattern and, socio-economic conditions of fish farmers in Manipur. It also examines the institutional and credit arrangement for fisheries in NE India; potential linked credit plans, projection for fisheries sector as well as refinance disbursement in the fisheries sector in NE Indian states in general and Manipur in particular. Fish production in NE Indian states ranged from 0.24 mmt in 2005 and increased to 0.36 mmt in 2013. Socio-economic analysis of fish farmers of Manipur revealed that aquaculture of Indian major carps (IMC) was an engaging economic activity among the stake holders sampled. Fish farmers identified IMC aquaculture as a safe and sustainable means of livelihood.


Purpose: To report our initial experience with intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Materials and Methods: Between May 2005 and July 2008, 58 patients underwent definitive IMRT for NPC in the Buddhist Tzu Chi General Hospital, Taipei Branch. There were 17 females and 41 males, with a median age of 51.5 (range 27-88). The disease was Stage Ⅰ in 3 (5%), Stage Ⅱ in 12 (21%), Stage Ⅲ in 29 (50%), and Stage Ⅳ in 14 (24%). IMRT was delivered using a dynamic multileaf collimator. Thirty-one patients received concomitant cisplatin and 5FU, and seventeen patients received concomitant cisplatin. Among them, thirty-one patients received adjuvant cisplatin and 5-FU chemotherapy. The prescribed dose was 66-72 Gy to the gross tumor volume and positive neck nodes, 46.8-50 Gy to the clinically negative neck. Acute and late normal tissue effects were graded according to the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) radiation morbidity scoring criteria. The local control, local-regional control, distant metastasis-free, and the overall survival rates were calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results : With a median follow-up of 19.3 months (range 7 to 41 months), there were 11 local recurrences at the primary site. Seven patients failed in the neck. Seven patients developed distant metastases; 6 of these patients died. The 2-year local control, local-regional control, and distant metastases-free rates were 78%, 74%, and 85% respectively. The 2-year overall survival was 86%. With 11 and 13 patents experiencing local and locoregional failure, only stage of disease was a significant predictor by multivariate analysis. IMRT with concomitant cisplatin and 5FU had treatment outcomes similar to IMRT with concomitant cisplatin alone, but this regimen was associated with more severe acute toxicity. At 19.3 months (median) after IMRT, 7% of the patients had Grade 3 xerostomia, 41% had Grade 2, 26% had Grade 1 and 2% had no xerostomia. Conclusion: Our preliminary results using IMRT for treatment of NPC were reported. Further study to compare concomitant cisplatin and 5FU with cisplatin alone is warranted. A larger case number and longer follow-up time were needed to confirm our preliminary results.


Embedded block coding with optimized truncation (EBCOT) is a coding algorithm used in JPEG2000. EBCOT operates on the wavelet transformed data to generate highly scalable compressed bit stream. Sub-band samples obtained from wavelet transform are partitioned into smaller blocks called code-blocks. EBCOT encoding is done on blocks to avoid error propagation through the bands and to increase robustness. Block wise encoding provides flexibility for parallel hardware implementation of EBCOT. The encoding process in JPEG2000 is divided into two phases: Tier 1 coding (Entropy encoding) and Tier 2 coding (Tag tree coding).
This thesis deals with design space exploration and implementation of parallel hardware architecture of Tier 1 encoder used in JPEG2000. Parallel capabilities of Tier-1 encoder is the motivation for exploration of high performance real time image compression architecture in hardware.
The design space covers the following investigations:
- The effect of block-size in terms of resources, speed, and compression performance,
- Computational performance.
The key computational performance parameters targeted by the architecture are
- significant speedup compared to a sequential implementation,
- minimum processing latency and,
- minimum logic resource utilization.
The proposed architecture is developed for an embedded application system, coded in VHDL and synthesized for implementation on Xilinx FPGA system.


This work investigates the relationship between structure and aromatic solvent permeability of polyurethanes based on trimethylolpropane (TMP) as a classical crosslinker and self-made hyperbranched polyesters (HBPEs) as newly developed crosslinking agents. For this purpose three groups of samples were synthesized using toluene diisocyanate, poly(tetramethylene glycol) and different pseudo-generation numbers of crosslinkers in the variable hard segment content. The results obtained from characterization tests indicate that replacing TMP by HBPE leads to an increase of crosslink density resulting in significant reduction of sorption capacity and conversely leads to an increase of the diffusion coefficient due to the lower glass transition temperature (Tg) of soft segments. In this way, the toluene permeability of hyperbranched polyurethane (HBPU) is considerably lower than that of classical polyurethane. The HBPUs with sufficient amount of hard segment have the lowest solvent uptake and diffusion coefficient leading to optimal barrier performance. By increasing the generation number of HBPE, the crosslink density of HBPU increases, but the crystallinity as well as Tg of soft segments decrease. These two contradictory changing trends of the structural characteristics cause a slight decrease in sorption coefficient of membranes and an increase of diffusivity. Therefore the barrier performance of HBPUs is weakened with increasing generation number of crosslinkers. © 2015 Society of Chemical Industry


Projects for the extension of the runway and other supporting facilities at the international airport of Lombok, Central Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara (NTB), where the implementation of the work is dominated by the use of heavy equipment to accelerate the completion of the work.The data obtained is by direct observation in the field. Analysis of the calculation of heavy equipment productivity, heavy equipment operating costs, revenue and profit were analyzed using the Bina Marga method. The heavy equipment studied in the field are excavators, dump trucks, motor graders, vibrator rollers, and water tankers.Productivity and the number of tools needed from the analysis results with those in the contract documents are appropriate, while the duration or time of work from the analysis results is more efficient. The hourly rental fee obtained from the calculation results for each heavy equipment, namely Excavator, is Rp. 694,260. Dump trucks of Rp. 753,762. Motor grader Rp. 642.188. Vibratorroller Rp. 551583.4. As for the Watertanker Rp. 384,646.04. The income and profit obtained from the use of heavy equipment on the ground work of the runway extension project at the Lombok international airport with a total of Rp. 38,279,148,142.96 and a profit of Rp. 3,469,922,558.05.


A full convection heating system for processing the new generation of super low-E products is enabling glass processors to maintain toughening capability irrespective of the glass type. This article looks at some of the advantages.


Taking an typical developed town of textile industry for example, in accordance with its situation of the year 2000 concerning economy, industry and environmental pollution, the author described series measures to solving water pollution from the views of construction adjustment of both industry and products. The town had put the series measures into practice for three years. As a result, the industry construction and products construction of the town tended to reasonable, the secondary industry and the third industry were more accordant. The GDP (gross domestic product) of whole town grew at the average rate of 22% per year, the average value of COD Cr decreased 32%~35% for three years, water and environment quality improved greatly.


The battery frame stent structure is a significant part for a commercial vehicle, which often suffers from fatigue damage. In order to solve this problem, the principle of structural vibration fatigue analysis is discussed and the vibration fatigue of the battery frame stent structure is studied in this paper. Prompting acceleration of the stent and strain time history of the dangerous points are obtained by carrying out the load collection test under specific road conditions. Through the analysis of the strain at the dangerous points, the maximum stress and weak parts are obtained, which provides a reference for the fatigue life analysis. The fatigue damage distribution of stent is got out by carrying out stent vibration fatigue analysis based on Dirlik model and acquired prompting acceleration PSD spectrum. After user feedback, the predicted position and life are more consistent with the actual situation.


Abstract Introduction  There is insufficient data regarding the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections in pregnant women. This study assessed the outcome of COVID-19-positive parturient after cesarean section, correlation of maternal mortality with COVID-19 severity, association of comorbid parturients with severe COVID-19, and number of patients requiring general anesthesia. Materials and Methods  This single-center, retrospective observational study was performed on reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction confirmed COVID-19-positive 89 parturients posted for elective or emergency cesarean section. Data was collected from medical records of our hospital regarding COVID-19 severity, maternal mortality, need for admission in intensive care unit, gestational age, maternal comorbidities, indication for cesarean section, type of anesthesia, duration of surgery, neonatal birth weight, neonatal mortality, Appearance, Pulse, Grimace, Activity and Respiration (APGAR) score, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission. Assessment of maternal outcome was the primary objective. Secondary objectives of this study were to correlate maternal outcome with COVID-19 severity, to find association of comorbid parturients with severe COVID-19 and to estimate number of patients requiring general anesthesia. Results  Out of 89 patients, 79 patients had mild COVID-19 disease were on room air and 6 patients required preoperative oxygen supplementation, and 4 patients diagnosed to have severe COVID-19 pneumonia were on mechanical ventilator preoperatively. Four cases were operated under general anesthesia and remaining 85 parturients were operated under regional anesthesia. Out of four parturients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia, three patients did not survive in postoperative period due to refractory hypoxemia. In eight patients, spinal anesthesia was repeated due to inadequate effect. Fourteen neonates (16.09%) required NICU stay after cesarean delivery. Conclusions  Parturients with severe COVID-19 disease had higher mortality. No statistically significant association was found between number of comorbidities and severity of COVID-19. The results of this study will guide us regarding further management and prognostication of COVID-19-positive parturients posted for cesarean section.


"We have moved from the era of civil rights to the era of human rights," Martin Luther King Jr. told Southern Christian Leadership Conference members in 1967 as they prepared to launch the Poor People's Campaign, "an era where we are called upon to raise certain questions about the whole society." King called for a "revolution of values" and a recognition of the interconnectedness "of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism." The goal of the campaign was economic security for all so that poor people can maintain dignity and "control their own destiny." This paper lays out advocacy strategies applicable to the struggle for immigrant rights in the United States. Consistent with King's vision and arrived at through previous ethnographic research on the politics of anti-immigrant backlash, such strategies – which include participatory action research (PAR) and grassroots political education – extend beyond the traditional focus on eliminating brutalization and encouraging "integration," moving toward what King called "a radical redistribution of economic and political power." I argue several recent developments justify this shift: massive wealth inequalities, the continued exploitation of immigrant labor, the 'de-democratizing' nature of neoliberalism, and the political tendency to racialize and scapegoat immigrants in a way that 'divides and conquers' working people. I discuss how PAR produces and disseminates knowledge with relevance to people's lives and has the capacity to create political subjects immune to elite manipulation. Grassroots political education – particularly when it focuses on issues of race and political economy – similarly prevents the misattribution of social problems and makes ordinary people aware of how race has historically kept poor people divided and thus politically weak and easily exploitable. In combination, these strategies have the potential to unite immigrants with other poor and working people, generating the political power required to make the economic demands needed to restore human dignity.


are not accompanied by sanitation, adequate re¬ porting and investigation, and public education. Microbiological standards for food, be they official, voluntary, or administrative, have been effective in promoting sanitation in many phases of the food industry. Nevertheless, there is a need for research, aimed at especially suspect foods, directed to specific organisms, processes, and stages of production, so as to develop de¬ fensible, attainable, and desirable standards, testing methods, and tolerances under authorita¬ tive auspices, as a guide to industry and as a protection for the consumer.


This article critically appraises the potential of corporate compliance systems to influence corporate behavior. The authors differentiate between the adoption of formal compliance management systems and the way compliance is managed in practice in business organizations by reference to scholarly literature and analysis of survey responses from 999 large Australian businesses about their implementation of competition and consumer protection law compliance systems. Their analysis shows that at least some elements of compliance systems can translate into good management of compliance in practice. But management commitment to compliance values, managerial oversight and planning, and organizational resources are just as important.


1. Impulses of eighteen muscle spindle afferents from finger extensor muscles were recorded from the radial nerve while subjects performed single joint finger movements of two kinds, i.e. routine and precision, which were nearly identical with regard to kinematics. 2. The firing rates of ten primary and two secondary spindle afferents were higher in the precision movements by more than 10%, although the difference reached statistical significance in only seven of them. In most cases when spindle firing was higher in precision movements the skeletomotor activity was higher as well. 3. The findings indicated that the fusimotor activity was often stronger with precision movements compared with routine movements. This result is in qualitative agreement with several studies on behaving cats, demonstrating higher fusimotor activity in more demanding motor tasks. On the other hand, the effects were much smaller in humans than in cats. Moreover, in contrast to findings from experiments in cats, no support was obtained for the hypothesis that fusimotor activity was adjusted independently of the skeletomotor activity in human finger muscles.


Provided are alloy flakes to be used as a starting material for a rare earth sintered magnet, said alloy flakes showing regulated formation of chill crystals, having a highly uniform shape of the 2-14-1 main phase and showing a highly uniform dispersion state of the R-rich phase, and a method for producing the same. The alloy flakes according to the present invention satisfy the following requirements (1) to (3) and have roll-cooled surface that is obtained by a strip casting method using cooling rolls: (1) comprising at least one member R that is selected from rare earth metal elements including Y, B and the balance M containing iron, each at a specific ratio; (2) in a microscopic image (100 magnification) of the roll-cooled surface, having 5 or more crystals that have a specific aspect ratio and a specific particle diameter, in which dendrites grow in a circular pattern around the originating point of a crystal nucleus crossing a line segment corresponding to 880 [mu]m; and (3) in a microscopic image (200 magnification) of a cross section roughly perpendicular to the roll-cooled surface, the average interval of the R-rich phase being 1 [mu]m or longer and shorter than 10 [mu]m.


A review is given of the main results of the investigation into production of resonances in hadron collisions and in deep inelastic lepton--nucleon interactions at high energies. It is shown that in all processes the dominant component among the secondary particles is resonances, which give direct information about the strong-interaction dynamics of quarks. The characteristics of hadron jets produced in hadron collisions, e/sup +/e/sup -/ annihilation, and deep inelastic interactions are discussed. In the first approximation, they are the same and do not depend on the type of interaction. The theoretical interpretation of the intense resonance production and the universality of the hadron jets is considered in the framework of the additive quark model, which satisfactorily describes the transitions of hadrons into quarks and quarks into hadrons. From this there follows the existence of two characteristic quark dimensions (r/sub N/approx.1/2m/sub ..pi../ and r/sub q/approx.1/m/sub N/) and rules of quark statistics for transitions of quarks into hadrons at large distances, where quantum chromodynamics is not valid.


There are significant factors in software project management, cost, effort, and quality. Much software engineering works have focused on these. When it comes to software quality, customer requirements are starting points for assuring quality in software development projects [3]. Currently, software engineering literature still finds effective ways to manage requirements within the entire project life cycle, but does not have a complete solution for it. Besides, some solutions are quite time consuming works for project management. At this point, tools for managing requirements help keeping specifications consistent, up-to-date and efficiently accessible. The purpose of this paper is to address the development of a new tool for requirements management with support for the evolution aspect of the grand challenges of traceability as well as making requirement specification and establishing traceability links. An approach to support the sustained evolution of traceability links is proposed and outlined. A fine-grained differencing approach on the link endpoints is used to maintain the links in a scalable manner. Details of the link model, representation and screen are given followed by the process used to evolve traceability links.


The paper explore the feasibility of cultivating the Pemaeus vannamei in fresh water in coldest districts in Xinjiang.The scientific and technical personnel of the special aquatic products research institute of experimental farm of Shihezi university consulted the relevant materials of cultivating the Pemaeus vannamei,and combined the climate characteristic of the coldest areas in Xinjiang and the cultivating condition and facilities,through the experiment research in two years.we have grasped the desalinization technology,putting it in a suitable place to breed in mode,raising and administrative skill,preventing and curing disease technology of cultivating the Pemaeus vannamei in Xinjiang.The result of the test has obtained higher output and considerable economic benefits.It not only has filled in the blanks of cultivating Pemaeus vannamei in Xinjiang,but also played the exemplary role and offered the practical technique that can be operated for its development in Xinjiang.


Deep-learning based application for digital mammography screening is limited due to lack of labeled data. Generating digital mammogram (DM) from existing labeled digitized screen-film mammogram (DFM) dataset is one approach that may alleviate the problem. Generating high resolution DMs from DFMs is a challenge due to the limitations of network capacity and lack of GPU memory. In this study, we developed a deep learning framework, Cycle-HDDM, with which high resolution DMs were generated from DFMs. Our Cycle-HDDM model first used a sliding window to crop DFMs and DMs into patches of 256 by 256 in size. Then, we divided the patches into three categories (breast, background and boundary) using breast masks. We paired patches from the DFM and DMdatasets for training with the constraint that these paired patches should be sampled from the same category of the two different image sets. We used U-Net as the generators and modified the discriminators so that the outputs of the discriminators were a two-channel image, one channel for distinguishing real and synthesized DMs, and the other for representing a probability map for breast mask. We designed a study to evaluate the usefulness of Cycle-HDDM in a segmentation task, the objective of which was to estimate the percentage of breast density (PD) on DMs using deep neural network (DNN). With IRB approval, 1651 DFMs and 813 DMs were collected. Both DFMs and DMs were normalized to a pixel size of 100μm × 100μm for the experiments. The results show that the synthesized DMs by Cycle-HDDM could significantly improve (p < 0.001) the DNN-based mammographic density segmentation.


This study explores the claim that Ju Up(principal province) and Sok Up(subsidiary province) system was formed during Taejo in Goryo dynasty and aims to prove the shortcomings of the claim. It is recorded in the Goryosa "Monograph on Geography" that Sok Up initiated in 'early Goryo' and 'Goryo in time concept.' The researchers who insist the theory of Ju Up and So Up formation construed the 'early Goryo' and 'Goryo' in this document as 'the time of King Taejo's ruling. Therefore, they claimed that Ju Up and So Up system had been established since King Teajo's reign. Some researchers view that local officials were dispatched to Ju Up during Taejo's reign, others view that Ju unit, Bu unit and some Gun units among the administrative units were arranged as Ju Up. However, in the process of proving the theory, shortcomings were found and problems arose in the methods of interpreting the historical documents regarding sample areas of Ju Up and Sok Up in Taejo era. Under Taejo's government Up Ho, names of place, had been changed. Ju Up and Sok Up had been formed after the changes of Up Ho, which means after the Taejo's reign. Therefore, Ju Up and Sok Up were not formed yet while King Taejo was ruling.


In September 1997 a report from the Dutch Governmental Programme for Sustainable Technology development was published on a new, sustainable logistic concept for commodity transport in urban areas. This new logistic concept was based on automated transport of commodities through small tube-networks between shopping areas, living areas and industrial areas but also between regions. New long term prognoses for the national economy, published at almost the same time, showed an annual growth of more than 2 percent in domestic freight transport, which probably will cause a rise of economic and social costs due to congestion and environmental problems. In the discussion started by these two reports, the question raised if new inter-modal concepts, based on rail or new dedicated infrastructures lead to consolidation of transport flows and to a reduction of social costs. This question led to a research programme funded by the national authorities. The research programme focused on the feasibility of a modal shift in domestic freight transport, created by new logistic concepts. These new logistic concepts are based on intermodality and dedicated infrastructures (road, rail or other) for freight transport within and between urban areas. The technical, logistic, economic and environmental aspects of these new concepts had to be studied. The paper describes the results of the goods flow analysis, the technical analysis and the cost-benefit analysis, which were carried out in this research programme. For the covering abstract see IRRD E101781.


Explanations provided to explain the increasing individual income inequality, particularly in the U.S.(Saez (2016)), suggest skills/education-related factors play an important role (De Gregorio and Lee(2002)). Corporate income inequality is also on the rise. The purpose of this paper is to confirm theexistence of corporate income inequality and identify specific factors that shed light on this phenomenon. Results indicate corporate income inequality parallels individual income inequality in its existence, increasing degree over recent periods, and in the association with skills-based factors. Further, corporate income inequality is increasing in firms' size suggesting an economies of scale effect. Governments can play a role in addressing both types of inequality.


This publications aims to increase awareness of potential uses for woody biomass in the southern wildland-urban interface (WUI) and to disseminate knowledge about putting bioenergy production systems in place, while addressing issues unique to WUI areas. Chapter topics include woody biomass sources in the wildland-urban interface; harvesting, preprocessing and delivery of woody biomass in the wildland-urban interface; biomass conversion to energy and fuels; the economic availability of woody biomass; economic impact analysis of woody biomass energy development; and public perceptions of using wood for fuel.


Improved catalytic process and reactor design for the production of methanol at equilibrium conditions, whereby it is formed during the methanol phase separated from the reactor liquid to the gaseous phase, without reducing the catalytic activity of the methanol catalyst. This is achieved as follows: the ratio of the boiling point or temperature of the liquid coolant is adjusted in indirect contact with the catalyst particles and to provide a specific catalyst bed volume to cooling surface area. Thus, when the methanol formed in the gaseous phase, the condensed methanol is mainly distributed in the surface of the cooling in the reactor and uniformly arranged, if any, in a very limited region of the catalyst bed.


The paper presents the application of AC electric motors with frequency regulation for paper machine drive and describes the advantages of the system in comparison with the direct current electric motor drive, from the standpoint of both lower investments and lower exploitation costs. Special advantages of this system are acquired during reconstruction of the paper machine's electric motor drive, with one-shaft central drive. Calculations, projects and reconstructions were carried out in several factories by the authors themselves. The paper shows the practical results obtained at two paper mills, in which reconstruction was done from a central into a multimotor drive with AC current motors.


The paper introduces the DCS system in power generating unit,discusses the distribution features,systematical composition,technological features and advantages and so on,analyzes common system failures,and puts forward corresponding countermeasures and solutions,with a view to avoid the failure and to ensure the unit operation safe and reliable.


A bus inverting code generating apparatus and a method for generating a bus inverting code using the same are provided to perform bit counting simply by adding more than two bits as one group when counting the bits. A bus inverting code generating apparatus includes a bit comparator(210), a bit counter(220), a register(230), an indicator(240), and an inverting determining unit(250). The bit comparator(210) compares the input data and previously input data of each bit. The bit counter(220) counts the output result of the bit comparator(210). The register(230) stores the previously input data by storing the input data. The indicator(240) toggles the output if the output result of the bit counter(220) is larger than a predetermined reference value. The inverting determining unit(250) outputs an inverting signal which indicates whether the input data is inverted or not by using the output of the bit counter(220) and the indicator(240).


The paper analyses Hermann Schulze-Delitsch's contribution to the cooperative idea and economic thought of the second half of the 19th century. Schulze-Delitsch has recently been described as a leftish liberal at the exhibition about the German Labour Movement in Mannheim's Technomuseum (2013), but was placed more centre with publications under the hospice of the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung. During his life (1808-1883) he became the founder of cooperatives in Germany and various forms of associations. Schulze-Delitsch placed the main emphasis on self-help to deflect the danger that the industrialisation posed to small and medium sized companies. It is shown that liberal ideas were the main Leitmotifs for Schulze-Delitsch's cooperatives. The paper illustrates Schulze-Delitzsch's position with regards to trade unions, wage funds and political economy.


This study aims to optimize the temperature rise during CO2 absorption process using response surface methodology (RSM). Verification experiments were performed using a pilot scale experimental set up to validate the optimization condition generated from RSM analysis. The magnitude of temperature rise was observed to increase with increase of pressure and it was especially significant with the increase of CO2 inlet concentration. However, the increase of temperature with higher CO2 inlet concentration was not very obvious after 60% of CO2 inlet concentration. The predicted values of the optimized temperature rise were generally in good agreement with the actual experimental results and this indicated that the empirical correlation generated was well suited with the experimental results.


Constructing the public cultural service system in the countryside is peasant's urgent needs for culture life,is the development need of building socialist new countryside too.This paper discussed library service of countryside public cultural system from three aspects: why the library should participate,how to participate and how to keep sustainable development.


NExSS is a research coordination network dedicated to the study of planetary habitability. A NASA cross-division initiative bringing astrophysicists, planetary scientists, Earth scientists, and heliophysicists together to bring a systems science approach to this problem. NExSS's goals being to investigate the diversity of planets, understanding how planet history, geology, and climate interact to create the conditions for life. Also, to put planets into an architectural context as stellar systems built over time by dynamical processes and sculpted by stars. Use experience from solar system (including Earth) history to identify where habitable niches are most likely to occur and which planets are most likely to be habitable. Leverage NASA investments in research and missions to accelerate discovery and characterization of potential life-bearing worlds.


The recent rise in the number of "Fintech" companies is set to transform the financial services industry on a global scale. Fintech companies create more competitive advantages in the financial market by providing faster services in the field of payment, financial consultancy, lending, and investment. Many countries have joined the bandwagon of adopters; however, little is known about the factors behind their success. Therefore, this paper attempts to investigate the key factors that underpin the success of Fintech across the various financial sectors and highlight the challenges they pose to traditional banks. Due to limited scholarly work on the subject the paper conducts a meta syntheses of ten published global survey reports conducted by consultants such as PwC (2016; 2017; 2019), Capgemini (2017), Ernst and Young (2017; 2019); KPMG (2019) etc. and relevant data from International Monetary Fund and World Bank report (2019). We identified the key enablers and disablers of Fintech and classified them into macro and micro factors. We concluded that the success of Fintech is context dependent on the political, cultural and environmental factors in the adopting nation.


Strongly localized electric fields were measured in the central cathode He plasma core region of an Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement Fusion (IECF) device by using the laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) method as well as plasma core diameter to examine their correlations. It was found that the FWHM of plasma core diameter increases slightly with the increasing ion beam perveance. Comparison of the intensity profile of the plasma core is made with that of the electric quadrupole moment (QDP) component. For the cases of potential profiles with one peak, the peak positions show good correspondence with each other, while the profiles themselves are vastly different to each other.


To the Editor. —The findings of Soumerai et al 1 lump all calcium channel blockers into one group. While no calcium channel blocker is currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration for prevention of morbidity and mortality post-MI, data from several studies have shown that verapamil can reduce morbidity and mortality in some post-MI patients. The Second Danish Verapamil Infarction Trial (DAVIT II) 2,3 randomized patients (


Thirty-three morphological and microanatomical features have been used to generate vegetative keys for the 23 acacias of the Australian Capital Territory. The same attributes have proved capable of resolving a larger sample, incorporating a further 26 species from Victoria. These and other attributes could be recorded for all the Australian species, in order to establish an automated system for generating special-purpose vegetative keys; and if conventional identificatory characters were also included, a fully comprehensive key-generating system could be achieved.


J. Casares is the first modern Spanish phraseologist, being his classification of the idioms (see three chapter of the Introduccion a la Lexicografia moderna, from 1950) the starting point of later studies by this topic. Likewise, as RAE Lexicography Seminar director (1947- 1964), his phraseological concepcion was moulded, to a great extent, in DRAE as soon in the Diccionario historico. These facts justify the dedication of a monografic work to J. Casares, an advanced linguistic of his time in relation with phraseology and others linguistic disciplines.


Funding information National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant/Award Number: 51907076 Abstract Despite becoming increasingly established as a treatment technique, the mechanism underlying the plasma treatment of onychomycosis has yet to be elucidated. Here, we focus on the interactions between the nail plate and a surface microdischarge plasma, including penetration, uptake, and chemical reactions. Results show that long‐lived gaseous species from plasma can penetrate the nail plate effectively and are primarily responsible for the instantaneous antionychomycosis effect. The amount of uptake far exceeded that of penetration. Attenuated total reflection‐ Fourier‐transform infrared spectroscopy and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy results show that antimicrobial compounds form on the nail surface. Combined with the uptake of active species in the nail plate, these antimicrobial compounds may inhibit microorganism growth, thereby promoting long‐term protection against onychomycosis.


Some typographical corrections and clarifying remarks are reported on a recent paper. I. MAIN RESULT Recently, established concepts from network realizability theory have been shown to provide very simple proofs of the monotonicity conditions for certain functions that are derived from the phase func- tion of a Hurwitz polynomial and the Schur polynomial counterparts. 1 Because of the increasing interest of such results and their relevance in recent investigations on convex directions and the growth condition on the derivative of the phase function of Hurwitz polynomials (1), the typographical errors in the above-mentioned paper are corrected below. The contents within quotation marks refer to statements or references in the above-mentioned paper. Equation (4) should be replaced by (2, p. 42)


The cylindrical, non-armoured spider genus Systaria Simon, 1897, belonging to the subfamily Systariinae DeelemanReinhold, 2001 (Clubionidae Wagner, 1887) is reported from China for the first time, its genus characters are reviewed in detail, and its taxonomic position, between the Clubionidae and Miturgidae Simon, 1886, is discussed. A new Systaria species from Hainan Island is diagnosed, described and illustrated under the name of Systaria hainanensis sp. nov. In addition, the species Itatsina mengla Song & Zhu, 1994 is transferred from Itatsina Kishida, 1930 (Liocranidae Simon, 1897) to Systaria, S. mengla (Song & Zhu, 1994) comb. nov.


Abstract Vegetation indices calculated from satellite sensor data are routinely used to map and monitor vegetated areas on regional, continental and global scales. In the Australian semi‐arid region, however, the most commonly used vegetation indices are shown to be inappropriate. In this study, a semi‐arid shrubland in western New South Wales was used to test a number of vegetation indices developed from Landsat Thematic Mapper sensor data. Vegetation cover varied from a mean of 22 per cent in mid‐summer to a mean of 78 per cent in mid‐winter. There was no significant relationship between the Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and summer vegetation cover, though there was a significant relationship with total vegetation cover in winter. The Stress Related Vegetation Index, which utilises both near and middle infrared wavelengths, related to total vegetation cover in both winter and summer. The Australian Arid Rangelands Vegetation Index related to the total cover of saltbush shrubs in winter a...


The main purpose of this article is to suggest a few brief reflections on the relationship between religion and politics in the time of secularisation, from the point of view offered by the sacralisation of politics. I will start by drawing three examples from the history of contemporary Catholicism which show such a strong connection between religion and politics that they seem to present serious problems of interpretation. I will try, then, to demonstrate that at least some of these problems can be solved with the help of the analysis of political religions. If we identify, in fact, the sacralisation of politics as one of the products of secularisation, it is easier to look at another parallel development of the contemporary age: the politicisation of religion. And the two processes have important mutual relations. I will conclude by trying to show that many of the forms assumed by the politicisation of religion can be better understood taking into account the new point of view offered by recent research on civil and political religions.


From the Publisher:
"The Age of E-Tail charts the forces reshaping consumer-driven business. The authors show how giants like Amazon.com and e-Bay dominate the e-tail space and help aspiring participants to use these lessons to create their own leadership position. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a retailer, a manufacturer, a wholesaler, a media company, an infrastructure company or service provider, The Age of E-Tail will help you to develop the strategies and tactics you need to prosper in the digital economy."--BOOK JACKET.


Abstract In a cohort of 40 consecutive patients with dystrophinopathy, 29 (72.5%) showed dystrophin gene deletions. Five (17.2%) of these deletions had two non-contiguous deletions involving proximal and central hotspot regions i.e. double deletions. Patients with double deletions tended to have superior functional grading than those with single or no deletion. Double deletions within the dystrophin gene form an interesting feature of this cohort of Indian patients. Sporadic cases amounted to 75% (30/40). Deletions in the sporadic Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients were localized to the central hotspot region. The proximal hotspot mutations were seen exclusively in the families with affected siblings. Clinical course of affected siblings was largely concordant, except for one family. One family with intrafamilial phenotypic variability is reported. The three male cousins in this family had phenotypes varying from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Becker's muscular dystrophy to cramp myalgia.


The purpose of this paper is to establish a Lusin-type approximation of functions with bounded deformation by Lipschitz or C1 functions. The main ingredients inthe proof of our result are the maximal function of the measure Eu, the 'Poincaré-type' result by Kohn and the approximate symmetric differentiability of BD functions by Ambrosio and others.


Eleven hundred and five cases of vaginal hysterectomy are analysed and their complications discussed.
More than 90% of the patients were between the ages of 31 to 60 years. The common indications for hysterectomy were prolapse (51%) and dysfunctional uterine bleeding (34.9%). In four cases abdominal approach was necessary to complete the operation. The overall incidence of major complications was 4% and the corrected mortality rate was 0.18%. The complications of vaginal hysterectomy by other authors are discussed.


Yunban (Ictalurus Nebraska), Also known as brown catfish,Genus catfish Formolidae, native to North America, is a freshwater breed of the United States.Diet is relatively broad, the meat is fresh and delicious, no muscle spines.It is a freshwater fish with high economic value..Oblique jaw (Plagognathops microlepis Bleek-Er), Cyprinidae, subfamily arinae, genus oblique jaw, middle and lower classes economic fishes, GuangzhouThe nutritional level of meat is high, and the market is well received by consumers..The internal quality of the fine-scale oblique jaw is tender and delicious, and the feeding habits are wide, and the feeding is simple and easy. As the mixed-breeding object, the yield per unit area and economic benefit can be improved without increasing the feed..The purpose of this experiment is to raise the microscaly oblique jaw by raising the polychaete Globus, in order to reduce the organic matter pollution and eutrophication degree of aquaculture water, and to reduce the water quality.


He was the founding father of modern art, the grand master who pointed painting forward on its way from Impressionism to the 20th century: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). In Paris, but above all in Provence, Cezanne quested tirelessly for "a harmony parallel to Nature"-discovering it in still lives of apples, in bathers, or in the renowned landscapes of his beloved Montagne Sainte-Victoire. This book discusses this extraordinary artist's major works and his theories of painting and colour. Every book in TASCHEN's "Basic Art" series features: a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist; approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions; and a concise biography.


The present invention in one aspect provides a method of fabricating a semiconductor device. In one embodiment, the method implements a dual injection tabs bipolar transistor. Tab of the bipolar region, upon fabrication of the MOS transistor, be injected into the tab through a separate implant mask which is also used for injection into the MOS related tabs for fabricating devices of different voltages to the non-bipolar region It is injected by.


Looking for ways to influence public-policy and decision-making processes in com-munity planning have been debated at great length (e.g., see Arnstein, 1969; Douglass, 1992; Friedmann, 1992; Socha, 1997). Recently, an approach that has gained more widespread use is citizen engagement in deliberation (Mathews and McAfee, 2002). Community deliberation is seen to build on traditional models of public participation by advancing a richer form of citizen involvement in governance processes (Lukensmeyer, 2003). In order to provide some insights into community planning, this paper runs through the following themes: What does community deliberation produce and does this product make communities more effective? And To what extent can deliberation play a role in planning for participation in community planning in Cambodia? In an-swering these questions, I will first look at the concept of deliberation. Then, I will review some theories of community participation in developed countries; and juxta-pose these with theories and practices of community participation in Cambodia to un-derstand the central issues and dilemmas in planning for participation in community planning. A conclusion, including suggestions and recommendations for future plan-ning for community development, is then drawn.


In the present study, we examined selective attention for emotional word stimuli as a function of individual differences in attachment style. Participants completed a dot-probe task in which a general threat, attachment-related threat, general positive, or attachment-related positive word was presented together with a neutral word. Results showed that attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with an attentional bias away from attachment threat words. This attentional avoidance effect was best predicted by the interaction between attachment anxiety and avoidance, and not by their unique main effects. The findings are discussed in relation to attachment theory and the general literature on attentional biases. 1 Based on Dewitte, M., Koster, E. H. W., De Houwer, J., & Buysse, A. (2007). Attentive processing of threat and adult attachment: A dot-probe study. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45, 1307-1317.


Cr8Mo2WSiV steel is characterized as less or non ledeburite steel and preferable for making wood chip cutters.The optimal heat treatment process and the properties of the steel after heat treating were systematically studied.The results show that the critical point for austenite transformation of the steel is about 840℃~850℃,and the Ms point is between 190℃~230℃,the steel shows apparent secondary hardening at about 500℃ during tempering.In accordance with the service conditions,the property requirements of wood chip cutter and the heat treatment characters of the new steel,the strengthen toughening heat treating process was optimized.Hardened at 1020℃ and twice tempered at 500℃~520℃ for 2h respectively with oil cooling to prevent tempering brittleness,the steel is of excellent combination of hardness,bending strength and impact properties,which can totally met the service demands for the cutters.Hence,steel 5Cr8Mo2WSiV is,with its easy heat treating nature and good mechanical properties,a new kind of tool steel specially for heavy duty using in wood cutting machine industry.


Password security is a significant issue for any authenticating process, and different researchers in the past have proposed techniques such as hashing, salting, honeywords to make the process most secured. We provide a self-guaranteed secure program and its access methods to mitigate the risk of illegal attacks like DDoS. This method ensures the security of a program by giving method level security that bolsters the further implemented security measures. A step-up approach is implementing the access security measures that protect against SQL injection and script attacks. Lucubration of various papers suggests that most systems are compromised at the storage of login credentials. Our solution ensures the security of such measures by obscurity. By using multiple layers of additional security procedures before storing the data decreases the risk of break-in exponentially. Our attempt to securely store passwords includes salting the passwords, encrypting them, and finally hashing them so that no patterns are visible. This paper presents a new method that involves SQLi prevention, encrypting, salting and then hashing the password. The SALT is generated dynamically using two parameters, one of which is unique, and the Salt is not stored in the database.


PURPOSE: An isolator with high separation properties and a communication device including the isolator are provided to offer high separation properties regardless of the change of the load characteristic. CONSTITUTION: A first isolator(133) includes 1 ~ 3 ports. The first isolator receives a transmission signal. A second isolator includes the 1-3 ports. The second isolator receives a phase-shifted transmission signal having phase difference of 90° with the phase of a transmission signal. A signal combiner(139) shifts the phase of a second signal to 90° through the second port of the second isolator. A signal combiner produces a combining signal from the first signal inputted through the second signal of the first isolator and the shifted second signal.


After laser ablation treatment, there are grooves on the surfaces of Ba0.5Sr0.5Co0.8Fe0.2O3δ (BSCFO) membranes. These grooves with width about 150μm and depth about 25μm increase the specific surface of these membranes. The oxygen permeation fluxes through these membranes, which sides were treatment by laser ablation, were measured. Comparing with the membrane without laser ablation treatment, the oxygen permeation fluxes through the membranes with cross grooves pattern decorated on both sides after laser ablation treatment can increase by 34.7%.


The second sentence of subsection (e) of section 6 of the John F. Kennedy Center Act (72 Stat. 1698), as amended, is amended to read as follows: "There is authorized to be appropriated to carry out this subsection not to exceed $4,000,000 for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1978, and not to exceed $4,300,000 for the fiscal year ending September 30, 1979.".


This paper aims to scrutinize in what way peri-urbanization triggers climate change vulnerabilities. By using spatial analysis techniques, the study undertakes the following tasks. First, the study demarcates Dhaka's—the capital of Bangladesh—peri-urban growth pattern that took place over the last 24-year period (1992–2016). Afterwards, it determines the conformity of ongoing peri-urban practices with Dhaka's stipulated planning documents. Then, it identifies Dhaka's specific vulnerabilities to climate change impacts—i.e., flood, and groundwater table depletion. Lastly, it maps out the socioeconomic profile of the climate change victim groups from Dhaka. The findings of the study reveal that: (a) Dhaka lacks adequate development planning, monitoring, and control mechanisms that lead to an increased and uncontrolled peri-urbanization; (b) Dhaka's explicitly undefined peri-urban growth boundary is the primary factor in misguiding the growth pockets—that are the most vulnerable locations to climate change impacts, and; (c) Dhaka's most vulnerable group to the increasing climate change impacts are the climate migrants, who have been repeatedly exposed to the climate change-triggered natural hazards. These study findings generate insights into peri-urbanization-triggered climate change vulnerabilities that aid urban policymakers, managers, and planners in their development policy, planning, monitoring and control practices.


The presence of gamma-ray background significantly reduces detection sensitivity when searching for radioactive sources in the field, particularly in mobile systems which must contend with a variable background that is not known a priori . An extensive survey of the background was performed in the San Francisco Bay Area using both sodium iodide and high-purity germanium detectors, covering a wide variety of environments that might be encountered in an operational scenario. This data was used as a basis for source injection in a moving detector scenario in order to assess the effects of the background on different detection approaches. Both imaging and spectroscopic algorithms were implemented for the sodium iodide array, and their performances are compared for a variety of source energies and stand-off distances in the presence of the measured background.


This paper describes our first participation in TRECVID. We took part in the search task and submitted two interactive runs. Both of them are of Type c, and use no ASR/MT output information: run id I_c_2_UQ1_1 uses 64-dimensional visual fea- tures and run id I_c_2_UQ2_2 uses 32-dimensional visual features for retrieval. Based on the evaluation results with the benchmark video data, we observed that there is no signifficant difference between these two runs in terms of what measured. Meanwhile, utilizing visual information only seems not easy to cap- ture the high-level semantic similarity required by the search topics of this year, so more sophisticated approaches such as multi-modality fusion are needed to improve the system performance.


Abstract The efficiency of breeding new potato cultivars may be increased by pre-breeding that is by developing parental lines, which have new traits, not present in the genetic pool available for breeders or have new combinations of genes, or have improved level of economically important traits. The use of parental lines in commercial breeding programs is expected to ensure the biological progress in the newly created cultivars of potato. At the beginning, the development of parental lines in Młochów Research Center of Plant Breeding and Acclimatization Institute - National Research Institute (IHAR-PIB) was focused on resistance to viruses and later on resistance to late blight and other pathogens. The procedures of selecting resistant parental lines are described. These procedures were initially based on purely phenotypic tests for resistance, which lately were supplemented with marker assisted selection (MAS) applying molecular markers linked with some resistance genes.


Despite its rapid growth in recent literature, risks in project management have received limited critical attention when compared to Lean principles and total quality management. The aim of this article is to examine the ongoing dialogue within health services funders and providers concerning the relationship between project management and its relationship to hard and soft environmental risk factors. The failure of high profile projects and cost to the taxpayer is on the increase. This article argues that the lack of understanding in relation to a holistic assessment of project success factors contributes to increased risk of failure. It argues that greater emphasis is needed on placing risk relative to both operational and cultural factors, as opposed to the frequent use of prescriptive mechanistic methodologies. These changes have the potential not merely to improve the success rates of healthcare management projects, but health outcomes too.


BACKGROUND
Cereal grains are substantial in the nutrition process for both humans and animals and contribute to the nutrition cycle in different ways. Chemical contaminants are important to be monitored in food due to their direct effects on human health.

OBJECTIVE
This work aimed to monitor some of the hazardous chemical contaminants i.e., Organochlorines (OCs), Pyrethroids, Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in wheat and barley grains of some common European origin during 2019.

METHODS
Samples were collected consecutively during the season and the QuEChERS technique followed by GC-MS/MS analysis was used in the extraction and cleaning up for all analyzed compounds. The method was verified, a recovery study was performed at two spiking levels 0.01 and 0.05 µg/g. RSD%, LOD and LOQ were calculated. Recovery ranged from 78.70-104.00% for all compounds at both levels at RSD 2.16-11.76%. Fat, moisture, protein and specific weight contents of both grains of all studied origins have been checked.

RESULTS
Results revealed that all detected pesticides were lower than the estimated MRLs, few congeners of PCBs and PAHs were detected in each origin in tiny amounts but no MRLs were estimated for it in cereal grains to be compared.

CONCLUSIONS
None of the analyzed OCs were detected except endosulfan-I which was detected in some wheat samples of Ukraine and Poland and some barley samples of Latvia and still lower than MRL.

HIGHLIGHTS
None of the OCs, highly toxic PCBs or the carcinogenic PAH benzo[a]pyrene were detected in all analyzed samples.


We observed the same biological specimens for comparison of the images by contact soft x‐ray microscopy with a laser plasma x‐ray source with those by confocal laser microscopy. Images of wet Leydig cells were directly comparable for organelles and showed that actin filaments and mitochondria were clearly identified in the soft x‐ray images.


Big Data has become a known buzzword to public at large which represents huge amount of data in terabytes. Processing such huge data is not possible with conventional environments. Therefore new environments came into existence with data centers and distributed file systems. Hadoop is a well known framework for processing big data using its new programming model known as MapReduce. However, later on many improvements came into existence with the help of other frameworks such as Sailfish, Haloop and AROM besides many other frameworks. In this paper we focused on the three important frameworks such as Sailfish, Haloop and AROM in terms of their performance and characteristics such as Velocity, Volume and Variety. This paper provides insights into big data processing that can help reader to have fundamental knowledge about Big Data, processing it and advantages derived from big data.


An immunization procedure is presented which enhances the immune respons to weakly immunogenic tumor‐specific cell surface antigens by coupling new helper antigens to tumor cells. Mice were immunized with lyophilized tumor cell membranes to which helper antigen was coupled. Only animals which were so primed against the helper antigen as to induce delayed hypersensitivity showed an increased in vitro immune response. This was not found in mice which were not primed or which exhibited immediate hypersensitivity.


Administrative law scholarship is deficient in scope (narrowed by an obsessive preoccupation with judicial review) and in nature (marked by a failure to re-examine the underlying assumption that reinforces the status quo). Furthermore administrative law scholars in Canadian common law jurisdictions largely ignore comparative approaches and so reject the contributions of civil lawyers. Fundamental research that challenges the assumptions and underpinnings of the law in this area is needed. Optimal changes will stem from the law schools because writings by professors are immediately influentia4 and because the classroom is an effective forum for provoking long-range alterations in the attitudes of the profession as a whole. This special issue article is available in Osgoode Hall Law Journal: http://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/ohlj/vol23/iss3/3 ADMINISTRATIVE LAW SCHOLARSHIP


To make a research into the effect of Si concentration on high-temperature oxidation of alloys,the oxidation behaviour of casting Fe-Si alloys(CA Fe-0.5Si,CA Fe-1Si and CA-3Si) was studied by Zry-2P Thermal Analyzer at 900~1 000 ℃ in pure O2.The oxidation kinetecs show that the oxidation rate of every alloy increases with increasing temperature,and that as the concentration of Si in alloys increases,the oxidation rates of all alloys are reduced.The oxide scales were examined by X-ray diffraction,SEM and EDX.The results show that all the alloys form similar complex scales like Fe2O3→Fe3O4+FeO→FeO→ FeO+SiO2,and do not form continuous layers of SiO2.


The utility of constant pressure molecular dynamics (MD) in studies of glass formation is demonstrated by choosing NaCl and ZnCl2 as examples of MX and MX2 salts. Rigid ion pair potentials have been used to model the two salts. Results of these simulations are in good agreement with general glass formation principles. The effect of the interatomic potential on the glass transition and the cooling rate on glass formation in both the salts is reported. The parameter characterizing the inertia of the borders of the MD simulation cell has a strong influence on the glass transition temperature.


The study of regional soil erosion is a part of soil erosion sciences.Based on the reviewing of the researches on regional soil erosion,the purposes,objectives,the fields of the regional soil erosion research are discussed,and the issues are identified,they include,monitoring,assessment,and prediction of regional soil erosion,impacts of soil erosion and soil conservation on environmental processes,planning of soil and water conservation,and infrastructure building for regional soil erosion researches.


Wax deposition is a serious problem during oil production in the petroleum industry. Therefore, accurate prediction of this solid deposition problem can result in increasing the efficiency of oil/gas production. In this article, a novel approach is proposed to develop a predictive model for the estimation of wax deposition. An intelligent reliable model is proposed using a robust soft computing approach, namely, least-squares support vector machine (LSSVM) modeling optimized with the coupled simulated annealing (CSA) optimization approach. Our results demonstrate that there is good agreement between predictions based on the CSA-LSSVM model and experimental data on wax deposition. Furthermore, the performance of the newly developed model is compared with the performance of neural network and multisolid models for predicting wax deposition. The results of this comparison indicate that the proposed method is superior, in terms of both accuracy and generality, to the neural network and multisolid models. Fina...


The same way that carpenter ants and termites can cause a magnificent mansion to collapse, humans can destroy Earth's delicate ecological system by abusing energy. Our civilization has been developed by harnessing energy, and it will cease to exist without usable energy. Energy is a scalar quantity that describes the amount of work that is performed by a force. The first law of thermodynamics states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Rather, it is transferred from one form to another. For example, when an automobile is propelled, it converts gasoline energy into kinetic (usable) energy and waste (unusable energy). Most energy systems waste a lot of energy when producing usable energy, for example, generating heat by burning wood in a fireplace. Substantial energy is lost when energy is stored, converted into other forms of energy, or transported. Therefore, in the design of energy systems, optimally, energy sources should be directly connected and as close as possible to the users and also become available when needed. For example, most electricity is delivered to homes from power plants through cables from a long distance away.


Data analytics is increasingly performed by non-expert analysts (e.g., casual business users). In this context, future analytics tools need easy-to-use techniques to reveal relations between columns of data in a spreadsheet or table. For example, a market analyst, may want to find if industry categories and funding amounts are related: i.e., if some industries receive amounts within distinctive intervals. Traditional filtering and script-based querying poorly support non-expert users in such explorations because they require iterative parameter adjusting and query writing until a meaningful result is found. In this paper, we focus on supporting the analysis of relationships between categorical and numerical columns. We present a novel visualization, Interver, which dynamically reveals insights as the user selects an interval within the relationship. With a concrete scenario, specific analysis tasks, and an informal evaluation, we show how Interver can help non-expert analysts self-serve and answer realistic questions.


In a proxy signature scheme,the original signer delegates its signing power to the proxy singer. Many proxy signature schemes are proposed on basis of Schnorr signature scheme. However,some proxy schemes are insecure against the original's forgery attack. In this paper,we first combine signature of zero-knowledge with proxy signature and propose a secure strong proxy signature scheme with warrants and a secure strong multi-proxy signature scheme. These schemes do not only achieve strong distinguishability and non-repudiation properties but also achieve strong unforgeability property. They are still secure against the original signer's forgery attack. The proposed technique can also be applied to other ElGamal-like proxy signature schemes in which the original signer can impersonate the proxy signer and forge the proxy signature on any message.


A review of land subsidence theory and an outline of the justification for our choice of a model to simulate the subsidence at Venice are provided. The review is essentially a search for a mathematical model that can be used to link realistically the occurrence of land subsidence to the groundwater withdrawals that are its cause. The Biot system of equations for three-dimensional consolidation offers the best approach at the theoretical level, but the large number of required parameters precludes application of the approach in practice. Approaches based on the independent solution of the diffusion equation provide a practical alternative, as long as the conditions underlying the development of the equation are recognized, and, if necessary, monitored. At Venice, we have chosen a two-step procedure to analyze the subsidence in the complex aquifer-aquitard system that exists there. First, the regional hydraulic head drawdowns are calculated in a two-dimensional vertical cross section in radial coordinates, using an idealized 10-layer representation of the geology. The computations are carried out with a model based on the diffusion equation and solved with a numerical finite element technique. The calculated head values in the aquifers are then used as time dependent boundary conditions in a set of one-dimensional vertical consolidation models solved with a finite difference technkme and applied to a more refined representation of each aquitard. This approach appears to offer the best trade off between theoretical elegance, data availability, and computer limitation. Its main disadvantage lies in the limitations imposed by the requirements of radial symmetry.


A method to diagnose damage by harmful insects includes: a step in which a harmful insect damage information server, including a harmful insect damage database built by pre-storing preventive measure information and harmful insect information about a plurality of crops, receives position information of a user terminal and an image of a crop, generated by the user terminal, from the user terminal including a camera and a communication module; a step in which the harmful insect damage information server extracts the preventive measure information and harmful insect information, corresponding to the image, from the harmful insect damage database based on the position information of the user terminal and the image; and a step in which the harmful insect damage information server provides the preventive measure information and harmful insect information to the user terminal. As such, the present invention is capable of enabling more accurate diagnosis of damage by harmful insects.


Abstr Act : The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of sex determination procedures in Day 7 to Day 8 bovine embryos of various quality. For the purposes of comparison we used high quality (HQ) as well as lower quality (LQ) embryos obtained from superovulated donors. The healthy embryonic cells isolated from HQ embryos and blastomeres protruding into the perivitelline space of LQ embryos, were analysed by polymerase chain reactions (PCR) using primers specific for the Y chromosome determinant. After microsurgical intervention and comple - tion of sex determination, the female embryos were then transferred (ET) to synchronized recipients. A total of 310 embryos of HQ were used and gender was safely determined in 275 cases (88.7%). PCR analysis of extruded cells isolated from 170 LQ embryos was carried out with certainty only in 111 embryos (65.3%, P < 0.01). After ET of 122 HQ sex defined embryos, pregnancy was established in 69 recipients (56.6%). A similar conception rate 51.9% (27/52) was found after the ET of sex defined embryos designated as LQ. The accuracy of analysis was confirmed after calving and revealed that designated female sex coincided with 95.5% and 96.2% of calves when HQ and LQ embryos were transferred, respectively. Our results clearly show that a microsurgical technique in combination with PCR method represents a rapid and reliable approach for sex determination in HQ as well as in LQ preimplantation bovine embryos and can be used in field conditions for the regulation of the sex of progeny in selected herds.


This paper presents a multi-objective order allocation planning problem with the consideration of various real-world production features. A novel hybrid intelligent optimization model, integrating a multi-objective memetic optimization process, a Monte Carlo simulation technique and a heuristic pruning technique, is proposed to handle this problem. Experiments based on industrial data are conducted to validate the proposed model. Results show that (1) the proposed model can effectively solve the investigated problem by providing effective production decision-making solutions, which outperformsan NSGA-II-based optimization process and an industrial method. Keywords—Multi-objective order allocation planning, Pareto optimization, Memetic algorithm, Mento Carlo simulation


In open network, unfamiliar web services are unavailable due to lack of effective mechanism to evaluation their performances for users. In order to help the user recognizing unknown web services, semantics understanding and reputation based evaluation mechanism is introduced into web service research. Semantics understanding based evaluation is according to the user's requirements semantics and the semantics of candidate web service's capacities. Reputation ranking method is proposed to build up a neutral and whole belief about a web service. Web service reputation is composed by two facets: time limitation and ranking delay. Finally, the experiment shows that our approach is feasible and effective.


Three Stokes and one anti-Stokes line are measured in forward and backward stimulated Raman scattering process in toluene due to its different molecular vibrational modes. Threshold, gain and spectral lineshape are studied.