BackgroundWe have developed a new measure of myocardial viability, the water-perfusable tissue index (PTI), which is calculated from transmission, C1550, and H215O positron emission tomography (PET) data sets. It is defined as the proportion of the total anatomical tissue within a given region of interest (ROI) that is capable of rapidly exchanging water and has units g (perfusable tissue)/g (total anatomical tissue). The aim of this study was to assess the prognostic value of PMI in predicting improvement in regional wall motion after successful thrombolysis for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) and to measure the myocardial blood flow to the perfusable tissue (MBFp, ml/min/g [perfusable tissue]). Furthermore, PTI was compared with 18FDG metabolic imaging in patients with old myocardial infarction (OMI). Methods and ResultsPET scans were performed in healthy volunteers (group 1, n = 8), patients with OMI (group 2, n = 15), and in patients who were successfully thrombolysed after an AMI (group 3, n = 11). Systolic wall thickening was measured by two-dimensional echocardiography within 2–4 days of AMI and after 4 months to assess contractile recovery. In the healthy volunteers, MBFp was 0.95±0.13 ml/min/g (perfusable tissue). PTI in these regions was 1.08±0.07 g (perfusable tissue)/g (total anatomical tissue), which was consistent with all normal myocardium being perfusable by water. In the OMI group, the ratio of the relative 18FDG activity to the relative MBFp defect (metabolism-flow ratio) was calculated for each asynergic segment. Regions in which the metabolism-flow ratio was ≥1.20 were considered reversibly injured, whereas those in which the ratio was < 1.20 were deemed irreversibly injured. PTI in the former group of regions (n = 9) was 0.75±0.14 g (perfusable tissue)/g (total anatomical tissue) and was significantly higher than in irreversibly injured regions (n = 6) (0.53±0.12 g [perfusable tissue]/g [total anatomical tissue], p<0.01). Values of MBFp were similar in these segments. Seven of 12 segments in the AMI patients showed improved systolic wall thickening on follow-up. PTI in these recovery segments was 0.88±0.10 g (perfusable tissue)/g (total anatomical tissue) (p = NS versus control). PTI in the nonrecovery regions was 0.53±0.11 g (perfusable tissue)/g (total anatomical tissue), which was similar to the segments in group 2 in which 18FDG uptake was absent. MBFp was similar in both the recovery and nonrecovery segments in the subacute phase. ConclusionsThese data indicate that PTI may be a good prognostic indicator for the recovery of contractile function after successful thrombolysis and show that myocardial viability may be assessed by PET without metabolic imaging.


Both independent PbII atoms in the title compound, [Pb2(C10H8NO)2(C2H3O2)2], are chelated by acetate and substituted quinolin-8-olate anions; the O atoms of the quinolin-8-olates also bridge to confer a five-coordinate status to each metal center. The geometry approximates a distorted Ψ-fac octahedron in which one of the sites is occupied by a stereochemically active lone pair.


IClIPfI'Irht 19S~. by The All'Ioebted l'tess) FT. MYERS. F1a ,. Ma rch 8 (AP)Henry Ford. 70 )"I'ar old au tomobile lP&Ilufucture r' who made a fOl'IUrw. bY stickIng to onO ideo, a nd says he IS ",\lUng to s\lE'nd his fortune to 1m. proV1\ that Iden, belleveA that th e ,,'o I1~ I. run by dissatisfied peollle. "Roosevelt m!\8IIA:Isfied" .. president R OOIlevelt Is It dls9atis· l ie<! man." euld Mr . F ord. " If he 1\'09 not diAAallst led, ho WoUld not Illlempt HerculM n e.xperlments to imRro\'~ ex isting condit ions. 1C we llad not been dillsatis(led wl lh tile tlr!!t automobiles, t hey would have been discarded alld the horse would llave taken their places. "When diRsatisfaclion leads 10 lm. provem 3nt In conditions and pro· duces a bette r ordpr of thln ga. It is a good thing. Tha t Is why I am gla;] to observe that so IDIlI1Y people arp I Congressman Is Arrested On Assault Count


Until recently, video magnifiers – closed-circuit television systems allowing magnification and colour modification – were the most effective reading aid for the visually impaired. Humanware Ltd. has developed a practical portable consumer device, myReader, incorporating a high resolution digital image sensor and document analysis software capable of understanding complex Manhattan layouts. In addition to typical video magnifier functionality, myReader can capture and analyse a full page of text and present it to the user in a more convenient format: in a single tall column, in a single long line, or one word at a time. Users in a study comparing myReader with a conventional video magnifier achieved a moderate increase in reading speed and reported a substantial increase in physical comfort when using myReader.


Social media is very trending used among teenagers to communicate. The information contained is not only in a positive form but is conveyed also in negative forms such as sexual harassment. The study's problem is to find out why teens are sexually harassed through social media. The purpose of this study was to find out the forms of sexual abuse committed by adolescents and how to overcome them. Research methods are qualitatively descriptive with critical paradigms. The informant of this study is a teenagers as perpetrators and victims of sexual abuse. Data were collected through Focus Group Discussion (FGD). The results of this study suggest that sexual harassment is highly likely to occur in public spaces, specifically through social media. Perpetrators are very easy to publish negative information with the aim of arousing martyrdom. Such information is like teasing the victim both in the comments field, sending negative images, and making video calls by showing physical forms that lead to pornographic elements. The occurrence of sexual harassment through social media certainly has an impact on high levels of fear and anxiety for victims. The recommendation in this study is that it is necessary to educate teenagers as the next generation of the nation to be smart in using social media with positive content.


Objective To investigate the preventive effect of total glucosides from Centella asiatica (TCA) in the immunosuppressive mice induced by cyclophosphamide (CTX).Methods The immuno- suppressive mice were induced with 100 mg/kg CTX by ip.Meanwhile mice were treated with three doses of TCA at 24,12,6 mg/kg by ig for 10 days except in the normal and model groups.The effects of TCA on thymus index,lien index,phagocytosis percentage of macrophage,quantitative hemolysis of cock red blood cells were observed.Results Groups of TCA at 12 and 24 mg/kg could highly increase thymus index,phagocytosis percentage of macrophage and quantitative hemolysis of cock red blood cells.TCA at 24 mg/kg could decrease lien index.Conclusion These results suggest that TCA had preventive effects in the immunosuppressive mice induced by CTX.


From May 2004 onwards, the European Union (EU) changed significantly to incorporate eight former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania,...


The article focuses on a study regarding the concept of consumer ethnic identity. According to the article, the concept of ethnic identity is considered as a popular, but complicating subject among consumer researchers. It disregards the generic heritage and focuses on the sociocultural history of the individual. It further highlights the impact of relocation to a similar culture exert on consumer ethnic identity and the impact of short term cultural contact exert on consumer ethnic identity.


This paper has the goal to describe an Instrumental English teaching experience, regarding the production of students of the second semester of a Computing Course in a federal school in Rio Grande do Sul. For the execution of the project, it was used a base tool, the software Hot Potatoes (2009) and its five applicative tools, which resulted in the production of a CD ROM with the activities of each student involved in the project.


The invention provides an optical grating displacement sensor distance measuring device based on an FPGA. The functions of the optical grating displacement sensor distance measuring device consisting of four traditional signal finely dividing circuits, a direction distinguishing counting circuit and a microprocessor are realized by utilizing the programmable logic door array technology through the programming of the hardware description language, and all circuits and the microprocessor are realized through programming and are configured into a single chip of one FPGA. Except a small number ofperipheral storage and configuration chips, all logic functions of the whole system are realized in the single chip. Thereby, the invention has the advantages of low power consumption, strong anti-jamming capability, high precision, simple circuit and high stability. The circuit can be conveniently upgraded and modified only through modifying corresponding HDL languages and the program of the microprocessor without redesigning and remanufacturing a circuit board. Thereby, the invention can be widely used in fields requiring high-precision measurement and high-precision mechanical processing in complicated environment.


The present memoir reports on recent investigations of the author and his collaborators on stability of periodic wavetrains. It includes answers to the last general questions concerning their asymptotic stability as solutions to dissipative systems. These general results both extend in many directions and unify many other contributions obtained over the last twenty years. In the end, despite a quite technical proof, even the most surprising parts of the description receive nice formal interpretations. It also describes various investigations of spectral stability assumptions, needed to apply the general theory, for roll-waves, a special kind of periodic waves that emerge as primary hydrodynamic instabilities in shallow fluid films flowing down an inclined ramp. At last, for conservative systems, it contains some spectral results that are expected to lay sound foundations for a nonlinear theory still to come.


As can be seen this was an extremely productive period with the PI and his team completing all the tasks in the original proposal. The following six pages list the work statement as it appeared in the initial proposal. Next to it is a summary of what the actual performance was. A check mark means the accomplishment was exactly as planned in the work statement. A list of key publications under each main subtask in the work statement are also listed.


Parental Inducement of Self-Regulation, Self-Concept, and Academic Achievement. The authors tested a theoretical model where parental inducement of self-regulated learning in ordinary home tasks is hypothesized to have a general significant and positive influence on their children's perceptions of competence about themselves as students, and these, in turn, on achievement obtained in different academic areas. The model was contrasted in a group of students (N= 226) from Compulsory Secondary Education using the following instruments: The Questionnaire of Parental Inducement of Self-Regulated Learning; and the Self-Description Questionnaire (SDQ-II). Academic Achievement was measured by the grades obtained by the students in different areas at the end of the academic year. The results obtained confirm the hypotheses postulated in the theoretical model, and sugg est the importance of promoting family-school interactions.


This study aimed to investigate the amount of code-switching in terms of sentential levels and initiation patterns, the discourse functions of code-switching, and the perceptions of the switchers. Accordingly, 43 students at the elementary level and four of their instructors in two EFL classrooms took part in the study. These participants were chosen through random sampling. Data were collected through observations, questionnaires to students and teachers, and interviews with a selected sample. The results of the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the triangulated data showed that students' use of code-switching was rather high. Teachers' code-switching was even higher than expected. In terms of initiation patterns, student-initiated code-switching was quite high whereas in terms of sentential levels, inter-sentential level was observed a little more than intra-sentential level. The analysis of discourse functions revealed that both the students and the teachers employed code-switching mostly for meta-language, which is a function used to talk about grammar or language tasks. The perceptions of all participants on code-switching overlapped in that they believed that it was a tool that fostered learning in beginner levels and could be used to attract attention or for jokes, yet should be abolished as the proficiency level increases.


In this paper the concept of WHausdorffness in soft bitopological spaces is introduced in three different ways by referring the definition of soft WHausdorffness introduced by Sruthi, Vijayalakshmi and Kalaichelvi [9].


Medicine reconciliation is defined as 'The process of creating and maintaining the most accurate list possible of all medications a person is taking'. Medicine reconciliation (MR) is supported by various Irish governmental agencies such as the HSE, HIQA, PSI and the State Claims Agency. In addition, Irish GPs and community pharmacists are strongly in favour of expanding the role of hospital pharmacists in MR at all transitions in care. The aim of this study are to establish the appropriateness of the current MR service in elective surgical admissions in a Dublin based hospital.

 This was a prospective interventional study that included 200 consecutive patients who met the inclusion criteria. The study was conducted between May and June 2018. All patients in the study received standard care in the control arm, followed by enhanced care in the interventional arm with errors noted and rectified after each process, this design allowed patients under standard care to act as a paired control group. Sub group analysis was performed on the following: (1) those >/= 65 years, (2) female patients, and (3) patients with a BMI > 30kg/m2. Ethical approval was obtained for this project.

 MR was found to detect a statistically significant number of errors compared to standard care (p=0.039). In the sub-group analysis, those >65 years (p=0.0237) or female (p=0.001), were at statistically higher risk of experiencing a MR error, verses obese patients (p=0.389). The Cornish classification tool was used to assess severity of the MR errors; while 37.5% of patients experienced at least one MR error, only between 1.5% - 3.5% of errors were classified as Class 3 errors.

 A full medicine reconciliation service could be of benefit to targeted patients including those aged over 65 years or female, experiencing polypharmacy, or those with communication difficulties.


In this work, we address the task of multi-instrument music generation. Notably, along with the development of artificial neural networks, deep learning has become a leading technique to accelerate the automatic music generation and is featured in many previous papers like MuseGan[1], MusicBert[2], and PopMAG[3]. However, seldom of them implement a well-designed representation of multi-instrumental music, and no model perfectly introduces a prior knowledge of music theory. In this paper, we leverage the Compound Word[4] and R-drop[5] method to work on multi-instrument music generation tasks. Objective and subjective evaluations show that the generated music has cost less training time, and achieved prominent music quality.


ABSTRACT Children and adolescents who are overweight or obese are at a heightened risk of bullying involvement. The aim of the literature review is to review empirical research on weight-based bullying published between 2006 and 2016. Extant research was categorised by the following themes: (1) prevalence of weight-based bullying and peer victimisation; (2) weight-based outcomes of bullying and peer victimisation; (3) bullying outcomes of weight gain and obesity; and (4) psychosocial distress and outcomes associated with weight-based bullying. Findings from the studies reviewed suggest that the prevalence of bullying is high in children who are overweight or obese. Moreover, longitudinal studies revealed that childhood bullying experiences can increase the risk of health problems, including weight gain and obesity. Further, children who are overweight or obese are at a heightened risk of bullying and peer victimisation. Finally, weight-based bullying experiences were found to be related to psychosocial problems, including lower motivation for physical activity, higher avoidance and emotional coping strategies, low self-esteem, and academic problems. Implications for practice are also discussed.


Purpose of this paper is to analyze the problems of Chinese Men's Basketball on the basis of the successful experience of Western Asia. Methods: watching video,using literature research,data statistics on the men's basketball competition outside groups were compared. Results: In the scoring,assists,rebounds, shooting and other indicators of significant differences with rivals. Accordingly,the author proposed structure of the Chinese basketball team of any"large"and"fast","quasi,""Spirit,"the loss of traditional style,in light weight,the external imbalance,the Chinese Basketball Team to groups with low scores,high errors fewer fast-break,assists hard reason. Conclusion: The effect of defender disadvantaged groups is the impact of China's basketball sports performance shortfall. Recommendation: the Chinese team should be changed"as the height of"the selection criteria,establishing the position of the guiding ideology of balanced development,in adherence to the"fast","quasi,""Spirit,"based on the style of traditional technologies,focusing on the unity of the height and speed,inside and outside of the combination of efforts to resolve the confrontation skilled in the use of the technology.


Rapid industrialization and urbanization severely affect our environment and water resources. Disposal of untreated wastewater to environment is a great threat to water bodies and environment. Sugarcane industry is an important industrial sector; globally it is also largest source of pollution of surface water and groundwater resources. It comprises a huge amount of chemicals and inorganic pollutants. Many treatment methods have been employed for the treatment of the sugarcane industry wastewater, such as chemical treatment, physical treatment, ion exchange, electrocoagulation and biological treatment. It is a fact that not a single treatment technique is effective for industrial effluent treatment. In this study, the physicochemical technique was used to remove the major pollutants as per Sindh Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) effluent standards that include Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD), Total Suspended Solid (TSS) and Oil & Grease content. In these techniques e.g. chemical coagulation ferric chloride (FC) and poly aluminum chloride (PAC) coupled with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), with different doses were used for achieving the optimum results. The best results were observed for COD, BOD, TSS and Oil & Grease reduction by FC and PAC dosing 180 mg/300 ml coupled with 45 mg/300 ml PVA. Further, it was also observed that the FC removal efficiency in slightly acidic to neutral medium (pH = 6–7) for COD (97.5%) and BOD (97.5%) is higher than PAC. However, PAC does perform well in slightly neutral to basic medium (pH = 7.5–8) than FC for the removal of Oil & Grease (95.3%) and TSS (97.4%) from the sugarcane effluent.


The chemical preparation and crystal data for two scandium phosphates are reported. (a) Scandium tetrametaphosphate, Sc4(P4O12)3, is cubic with a = 14.363 (5) A, and Z = 4. It is isotypic with Al4(P4O12)3. (b) Scandium polyphosphate, Sc(PO3)3, is monoclinic with a = 10.84 (1), b = 19.58 (2), c = 9.694 (5) A, β = 97.92 (5)° and Z = 12. It is isotypic with the C form of Al(PO3)3.


We read with great interest the excellent article ''The External Ear: More Attention to Detail May Aid Syndrome Diagnosis and Contribute Answers to Embryological Questions'' written by Hunter and Yotsuyanagi [2005]. The article highlights the importance of a thorough physical examination and the need for a correct and universal description of the finding in the external ear. The authors concluded thatmore attention to the specific description of ear anomalies might lead to a better appreciation of the etiology and embryology of the malformations. Our group is also interested in the external ear anomalies and we agree with the authors that much of the dysmorphology literature pays scant attention to the accurate description of the external ear. We also agree that review of the current literature on anomalies of the external ear, most of which is in the surgical journals, shows that there remains disagreement as to theprecise embryologyof the external ear. However, we would like to refer the authors to two recentarticleswrittenbyourgrouponthesubject, (not mentioned in the above article), which also emphasized the importance of external ear examination. The first article written by Grun et al. [2002], describes a computerized program especially designed for the recording of auricular mild errors of morphogenesis (MEM) in connection with nonauricular MEM's. The program is easy to use and provide at request, immediate information regarding general prevalence of each auricular MEM and percentage associations between all variables. The second article done by Bader et al. [2004] assessed the contribution of auricular MEMs as part of total MEMs in an effort to study the factors influencing the different informative value of different types of MEMs and their variability with perinatal factors. Our conclusion was that the presence, number and association of concomitance of auricular MEMs in the same neonatemight have important clinical, diagnostic, pathogenetic, screening, and therapeutic value. We agree with the conclusion that all well documented future papers in this field will create more awareness and interest in ear anomalies and will stimulate more research into this field.


BACKGROUND
Tobacco exposure (through smoking or chewing) is one of the predominant risk factors associated with the development of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Despite the growing number of patients diagnosed with OSCC, there are few circulating biomarkers for identifying individuals at a higher risk of developing the disease. Successful identification of candidate molecular markers for risk assessment could aid in the early detection of oral lesions and potentially used for community screening of high-risk populations.

OBJECTIVE
Identification of differentially expressed proteins in the serum of oral cancer patients which can serve as biomarkers for the diagnosis of the onset of oral cancer among tobacco users.

METHODS
We employed a tandem mass tag (TMT)-based quantitative proteomics approach to study alterations in the serum proteomes of OSCC patients based on their tobacco exposure habits (chewing and smoking) compared to healthy individuals with no history of using any form of tobacco or any symptoms of the disease.


Abstract : This thesis examines the effect that ROE have on the conduct of special operations in order to contribute to an increased understanding of the proper employment of elite forces. It argues that 'inappropriate' ROE can result from (1) an imbalance in the natural tension between the requirements of statecraft and military efficiency present in all military operations and (2) organizational friction resulting from inaccurate translation of broad political objectives, through various levels in the chain of command, into an inappropriate tactical ROE for a specific unit. Additionally, it argues that the nature of special operations missions, and the principles vital to their proper employment, cause them to be most sensitive to these sources of inappropriate ROE in either crisis or conflict. This thesis concludes that ROE can be used to achieve indirect political control over special operations but achieving this control is more difficult and more hazardous with special operations than with conventional forces.


Using a biopsychosocial lens, this single case study of Esther, exposes a broad contextual dimension of special needs children, those often thwarted by racism, colorism, and poverty and tainted by the low expectations of parents and teachers alike.


The teaching of semiconductor devices physics is absolutely fundamental to the development of microelectronics. However, introductory courses in this area are frequently limited to report over-simplified analytical models which allow intuitive understanding, but are unable to capture the full complexity of today's devices. On the other hand, in more advanced courses, accurate numerical models are developed, but the most intuitive view is sometimes lost. In this work, we seek to contribute in order to allow the beginner to make the connection between the two approaches (numerical vs. analytical modeling). To this end, we have developed a study on the electronic characteristics of High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs), comparing results obtained with a simplified analytical models with those provided by an accurate numerical modeling, based on the finite difference method. The results are compared with available experimental results and the validity conditions for the analytical model are established.


The Negro family has been of central interest to social workers since the inception of organized charities in this country. Many of the social problems about which social work is concerned are related to patterns of family disorganization and instability, in which Negro families are overrepresented. In spite of this relationship, however, the Negro family as a social institution has been virtually ignored in recent years not only by social workers but by social scientists as well. No major study of the Negro family has been published since 1939.2 It is becoming increasingly clear that both the problems and the creative potential growing out of the Negro experience in America are highly related to the economic, social, and psychological stability of Negro family life. This paper deals with some of the historical and contemporary social forces that have shaped the development of the Negro family and some distinctive patterns of Negro family life. The discussion will seek to highlight the bearing these factors have on the stability of family life among Negroes.


Since the first use of the robot da Vinci system for thyroid surgery in 2007, robotic thyroidectomy (RT) via a bilateral axillo-breast approach (BABA) has become a popular surgical alternative for patients who wish to avoid scars on the neck. BABA RT provides excellent cosmetic satisfaction with surgical safety and oncologic completeness. Recently, the use of BABA RT has expanded beyond benign thyroid nodules and small-sized papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) to Graves' disease, relatively large PTCs, and PTC with lateral neck metastasis. Unfortunately, there are concerns about the use of this procedure for these additional indications. This review article summarizes postoperative outcomes of BABA RT for thyroid carcinoma, including quality of life, as well as expanding indications for BABA RT.


Radio astronomy in France and in Germany started around 1950. France was then building interferometers and Germany large single dishes, so it was not unexpected that their first projects involving millimetre radio astronomy were respectively with an interferometer and a single dish. In this paper, we explain in detail how these two projects finally merged in 1979 with the formation of the Institute of Radio Astronomy at Millimetre wavelengths (IRAM), after a long process with many ups and downs. We also describe how Spain started radio astronomy by joining IRAM. Presently, IRAM is the most powerful facility worldwide for millimetre radio astronomy.


Abstract High precision stress relaxation tests (SRT) at four temperatures were conducted on T91 (9%Cr) steel after extended boiler service, and also after re-heat treatment. Relative differences in creep strength, measured over five decades in strain rate were dependent on test temperature. Using an established correlation between strain rate sensitivity and elongation at failure, intrinsic ductility values as a function of stress and test temperature were determined. The general trend of a minimum in ductility in terms of stress or strain rate was consistent with long term creep rupture data on T91, and with literature data on alloy steels. However, the precision and repeatability of the SRT analysis contrasted with the appreciable scatter and heat to heat variation in traditional testing. It is argued that the current creep strength evaluation based on the nearly constant state measurement from the SRT test is superior to the measurement of stress dependence of minimum creep rate in traditional creep rupture testing. The complexity of primary creep in laboratory testing, which may not be significant at operating stresses where loading strains may be fully recoverable (anelastic), does not apply to the SRT. Since very low strain rates are achieved in a one day test, the procedures for setting of design allowables and design analysis based on the SRT data should not be significantly different from current practice. This technique offers accelerated alloy development and optimisation for creep strength and also ductility, and hence resistance to notch sensitivity.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) research in Singapore is focused on accelerating the country's development into a Smart Nation. Specifically, AI has been employed extensively in either augmenting the intelligence of humans or in developing automated methods and systems to improve quality of life in Singapore.


We work in set-theory without choice ZF. Given a commutative field $\mathbb K$, we consider the statement $\mathbf D (\mathbb K)$: "On every non null $\mathbb K$-vector space there exists a non-null linear form." We investigate various statements which are equivalent to $\mathbf D (\mathbb K)$ in ZF. Denoting by $\mathbb Z_2$ the two-element field, we deduce that $\mathbf D (\mathbb Z_2)$ implies the axiom of choice for pairs. We also deduce that $\mathbf D (\mathbb Q)$ implies the axiom of choice for linearly ordered sets isomorphic with $\mathbb Z$.


The support including a separation element, a method for the separation of such a separating element, and a method for the manufacture of such a support. The present invention relates to a support 504 including a separation element 502 having one boundary of at least part of the boundary is attached to the support portion, in a boundary portion attached to the support are attached to the both weakened seam (506A, 506B ) it is attached by the support portion also includes at least two of the two portions (504A, 504B) of the support is at least two weakened lines so as to be separated into (51A, 512B) are connected by an attachment seam of weakening with separation elements , the support is such a weakened line to weaken when bent along the weakened line until the department attachment seams have been that each of the weakened line so that it does not completely broken. The invention also, as well as methods of separation such separation element 502 relates to a process for the preparation of such a support portion (504).


We thank Yang et al. (1) for their perspective. We are aware of the importance of coastal wetland protection for endangered migratory birds. Our paper in PNAS (2) focuses on the general representation of protected areas for endangered species (e.g., endangered birds) and ecosystem services. Thus, we did not emphasize the representation in nature reserves of coastal wetlands for endangered migratory birds. However, this representation could be evaluated using the results in our paper (2 …

[↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: gdaily{at}stanford.edu or zyouyang{at}rcees.ac.cn.

 [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1


To realize agile information system in virtual enterprise, a kind of agile information system framework of virtual enterprise based on service-oriented architecture (SOA) was studied. Firstly, the limitations of SOA application in agile information system of virtual enterprise were analyzed and its application limitations were expanded. Then the whole lifecycle of agile information system of virtual enterprise was described based on this analysis. Furthermore the framework based on SOA was presented. Finally, the related technologies in this framework were discussed.


If L is an Archimedean Riesz space and M an ideal in the order dual of L, the subset A of L is called M-equicontinuous if and only if each monotone decreasing sequence of positive elements of M is uniformly Cauchy on A.


A20 [also known as TNFAIP3 (tumour necrosis factor α-induced protein 3)] restricts and terminates inflammatory responses through modulation of the ubiquitination status of central components in NF-κB (nuclear factor κB), IRF3 (interferon regulatory factor 3) and apoptosis signalling cascades. The phenotype of mice with full or conditional A20 deletion illustrates that A20 expression is essential to prevent chronic inflammation and autoimmune pathology. In addition, polymorphisms within the A20 genomic locus have been associated with multiple inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, including SLE (systemic lupus erythaematosis), RA (rheumatoid arthritis), Crohn's disease and psoriasis. A20 has also been implicated as a tumour suppressor in several subsets of B-cell lymphomas. The present review outlines recent findings that illustrate the effect of A20 defects in disease pathogenesis and summarizes the identified A20 polymorphisms associated with different immunopathologies. Introduction The NF-κB (nuclear factor κB) family of transcription factors plays a key role in controlling inflammatory and immune responses [1]. NF-κB activation can proceed by two distinct signalling cascades. Canonical NF-κB signalling is induced in response to pro-inflammatory cytokines [e.g. TNF (tumour necrosis factor)] and microbial infection and induces the expression of mainly pro-inflammatory and survival genes, whereas non-canonical NF-κB signalling is initiated by a subset of receptors (e.g. lymphotoxin β) and mainly regulates the development of lymphoid organs and adaptive immune responses [2]. Because A20 has been described as a regulator of canonical NF-κB signalling, the focus of the present review is on this pathway. In the canonical pathway, NF-κB dimers are sequestered in the cytoplasm by binding to IκB (inhibitor of NF-κB) proteins, of which IκBα is the best known. Upon encountering an inflammatory stimulus such as TNF or LPS (lipopolysaccharide), IκBα is phosphorylated followed by its ubiquitination and proteasomal degradation, releasing NFκB for migration to the nucleus where it can drive gene expression [1]. Different receptors activate distinct NF-κB signalling pathways, which all converge at a central IKK (IκB kinase) complex composed of two related kinases, IKK1 and IKK2 (also known as IKKα and IKKβ), and a regulatory


Charles Perrault's "Bluebeard" is a culturally powerful tale that has reinforced and restated certain patriarchal values and norms ever since its late seventeenth-century publication in France. The wide appeal of this story led to its translation into Hawaiian in 1862, when a version of "Bluebeard" appeared in the Hawaiian-language newspaper Ka Nupepa Kuokoa. This article examines how perceptions and understandings of the values and norms embedded in the story change once "Bluebeard" is taken out of its own cultural context and introduced to a non-Western culture via the process of translation.


This paper presents an examination of industrial coal-fired boiler waste products. Presently the atmospheric emissions from all new boilers larger than 250 × 106 Btu/hr are controlled by existing New Source Performance Standards, and boilers smaller than 250 × 106 Btu/hr are controlled to levels required by the regulations of the particular state in which the facility is located. The 1977 Clean Air Act Amendments, however, specify categories of sources for which EPA must develop revised New Source Performance Standards. Industrial coal-fired boilers are included as one of these categories, and a relevant issue concerns the potential amount of solid waste generated as a result of tightened emission standards that require flue gas desulfurization. This paper examines the air quality and solid waste impacts of moderate and stringent emission controls for particulate and SO2 emissions from industrial coal-fired boilers. Comparisons are presented of physical and chemical characterizations of the emissions and ...


Organ transplantation is now an established treatment for patients with end-stage organ failure, yet there are spatial inequalities in access to this procedure. This paper explores the uneven geographies of kidney transplantation in London, arguing that inequalities in access to organ transplantation are created through interlocking spatialities of corporeal difference, enacted through global movements of populations, national organ transplantation protocols and the internal immunological spaces of the body. The combination of these processes, operating at different scales, has produced a distinctive configuration in the embodiment of risk in relation to kidney transplants, particularly born by London's Black and Asian communities. Two ethical dimensions to this geography of organ transplantation are explored here: the ethical responsiveness to others shaping the generous practices of organ donation, and the medical practices categorizing difference through techniques of blood typing, tissue matching and the spatial organization of organ transplantation. In concluding, I argue both are critical to understanding the links between ethics and justice in the geographies of organ exchange in London. Further, I suggest geography is central to political debate about the exchange of biological material elsewhere, for it is only through tracing the intersection of ethical, corporeal and technological practices in situ that we can fully reflect on questions of justice within the developing bioeconomy.


Monte-Carlo Tree Search and specifically the variants of the UCT algorithm have been a break-through in AI of the board game Go. However, UCT has had limited applicability to other domains. We study the limitations of some of the existing variants of UCT in a small-scale Markov decision process (MDP), and propose new variants that can reduce those limitations. Our experiments show great improvements in performance against traditional UCT and comparable performance to estabilished reinforcement learning algorithm, thus opening possibilities for applying UCT in other problem domains.


Objectives: The Bahasa Malaysia (BM) version of Depression Anxiety Stress Scales 21-item (DASS-21) has been widely used ever since the establishment of its validity. To consolidate the evidence of the BM DASS-21 validity by examining its concurrent validity. Methods: The BM DASS was administered together with the Hospital Anxiety and Depressive Scale (HADS) to a total of 246 patients at International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) Infertility Centre. Results: The anxiety domain of BM DASS-21 had good correlation with anxiety domain in HADS (0.61) but for DASS depressive domain, it had modest correlation with its respective domain in HADS (0.49). Conclusions: The results of this study further ensconced the evidence that the BM DASS-21 had relatively satisfactory psychometric properties for clinical subjects in Malaysia. ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry, Vol.12(1), Jan – June 2011: XX XX.


Some robustness questions in structural equation modeling (SEM) are introduced. Factors that affect the occurrence of nonconvergence and improper solutions are reviewed in detail. Recent research on the behaviour of estimators for parameters, standard errors and model fit, under conditions of (non)normality, is summarized. It is emphasized that both model and sample data characteristics affect the statistical behaviour of these estimators. This knowledge may be used to set guidelines for a combined choice of sample size and estimation method. It is concluded that for large models, under a variety of nonnormal conditions, (robust) maximum likelihood estimators have relatively good statistical properties compared to other estimators (GLS, ERLS, ADF or WLS). The cumulative theoretical knowledge about robust (asymptotic) estimators and corrective statistics and the availability of practical guidelines from robustness research together, may enhance statistical practice in SEM and hence lead to more sensible and solid applied research.


Trauma is the most common cause of fracture in small dogs, and can occur due to bending, torsional, shearing and compression forces, eventually resulting in oblique, wedge fragment fracture, spiral or comminuted fractures. In dog fractures are commonly seen in femur followed by tibia and radius-ulna (Harasen, 2003). Assessment of inherent stability of the fracture is important in the selection of fracture fixation method. Unstable fractures, require methods of fixation that maintains length of the bone and also counteract angular and rotational forces. Locking reconstructive plate (LRP) is lighter in weight and has notches in between the locking holes and helpful in contouring the plate in three planes which is advantageous in distal femoral fractures. Reconstructive plates are available both in locking and non-locking type. These plates are designed for easy contouring in three dimensions. However, contouring is not easy without dedicated bending pliers. Keeping in view of the above facts, the following study was undertaken to study the technique of fracture stabilization using reconstructive plate and to evaluate the efficacy of reconstructive plate for long bone fracture repair in dogs. International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 10 Number 02 (2021) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com


For publishers of Linked Open Data, providing queryable access to their dataset is costly. Those that offer a public sparql endpoint often have to sacrifice high availability; others merely provide non-queryable means of access such as data dumps. We have developed a client-side query execution approach for which servers only need to provide a lightweight triple-pattern-based interface, enabling queryable access at low cost. This paper describes the implementation of a client that can evaluate sparql queries over such triple pattern fragments of a Linked Data dataset. Graph patterns of sparql queries can be solved efficiently by using metadata in server responses. The demonstration consists of sparql client for triple pattern fragments that can run as a standalone application, browser application, or library.


This paper centers around a conceivable impact of displacement on human capital development. Emigration on a higher comes back to expertise nation gives an impetus to put resources into human capital. The level of human capital arrangement in the source nation can accordingly be emphatically corresponded with the likelihood of displacement. Unexpectedly a flood in emigration can lead the source nation out of being worked on snare. The ramifications of the model for the combination debate are likewise discussed.Preferred resettlement goals among young people reflect pictures and generalizations of different nations that persistently develop in a huge number of neighborhood and worldwide talks and from solid encounters with other countries.The results bolster the model firmly in many regards. Both wage rates and business rates in the sending and in the accepting nations affected vacillations in migration. The short-run changes were driven to a great extent by varieties in work rates while the long-run level of migration was resolved generally by the relative wage. Convenient sampling method is used in this study to collect the sample.1860 samples are recorded .The independent variables used are gender,educational qualifications,monthly income. The dependent variables prefer setting in abroad ,preference of aboard, reason for emigration.The statistics used are independent sample t,chi-square,Anova.The objective is to understand the reasons for emigration It is concluded that emigration is most major things in the world.The emigration is mainly due to higher income and good governance country


This study investigated the reliability and convergent validity of the Revised Scale for Caregiving Self-Efficacy (RSCSE) in a Spanish sample of 180 caregivers of relatives with dementia. The self-efficacy scales were examined in relation to help-seeking behaviors, behavioral problems of the relative, dysfunctional thoughts about caregiving, and depressive symptoms. Good internal consistency indices were found for the RSCSE subscales. Those caregivers with higher scores on the RSCSE reported more help-seeking behaviors, a higher frequency of behavioral problems of their relative, fewer dysfunctional thoughts about caregiving, and less depression. The clinical implications of these results are discussed.


The spiny eel, Mastacembelus armatus is one of the most common and economically important inland teleost species of Asia having high market and nutritive values. The demand for the fish is almost always exceeds its supply. Histological analysis of developmental stages of both oocytes and sperrnatocytes maturation were undertaken and dimensions of ovarian oocytes were observed to evaluate the annual reproductive condition of M. armatus during August 2012 to July 2013. Monthly sampling of adult individuals of M. armatus was done from haor region of Kishoreganj district, Bangladesh. Both the gonads were paired, elongated and of unequal in length. The colour of ovaries varied from reddish brown to light yellowish; whereas, testes varied from whitish to creamy or dull white. From the histological study, five stages of oocyte development (oogonia, chromatin nucleolar stage oocyte, perinucleolar stage oocytes, yolk vesicle oocyte, and yolk granule stage) were observed upon their changes in nucleus. Female M. armatus having immature stages of oocytes (early and late perinucleolar stage oocytes) were mostly available in the months of November and December. Yolk vesicle stage oocytes appeared during the months of January and February. Early yolk granule stage oocytes appeared during the months of March and April while late yolk granule stage oocytes were observed during the months of May and June. Oocytes and nuclei diameters were observed ranged from 12–1050 μm and 10–212 μm, respectively until ovulation. In male gonads, four stages of spermatogenesis (spermatogonia, spermatocytes, spermatids, and spermatozoa) were distinguished during the study period where spermatids were prominent in January to March and spermatozoa in April to July. From this study, the peak gonadal development of M. armatus is found in June and thus, it is clearly indicated that the fish breed during May to June. J. Bangladesh Agril. Univ. 14(2): 261-269, December 2016


【Abstract】The segmentation of target and background is an important content of SAR image segmentation. Threshold method is a kind of simple and practical method. The key problem of threshold segmentation is how to choose appropriate threshold value, and the ordinary method is utilizing grey histogram to get probability distribution density of each grey level, and then choose one or more suitable threshold value according to a certain rule to define adscription of each image pixel. This paper improves the fuzzy entropy method based on two-dimensional histogram, and puts forwards a new segmentation algorithm to seek optimum threshold value in the presence of genetic algorithm. The experimentation shows that it is an effective method for speckled SAR image to segment object and background. 【Key words】Synthetic aperture radar; Genetic algorithm; Fuzzy entropy


[Objective] The research aimed to study leaching effect of the heavy metal in sludge by A.niger.[Method] By using batch shaking culture,influences of the leaching time,sludge content,inoculum concentration,initial pH and carbon concentration on removal rate of the heavy metal in sludge were studied.[Result] A.niger was cultivated under the conditions of temperature of 30 ℃,carbon concentration of 8%,inoculum concentration of 2×106 spores/L,and sludge content of 1.0% for 12 d.Result showed that removal rates of the Zn,Cd,Cu and Pb in sludge by A.niger were respectively 83.6%,87.8%,70.4% and 75.6%.[Conclusion] Bio-leaching by A.niger could effectively remove heavy metal in sludge.


The PV fed grid connected systems have become highly relevant due to the escalating global power demand and to reduce the greenhouse effect and environmental pollution. It is desirable to use low voltage PV modules as source due to safety aspects (to prevent DC arcing) and for optimal utilization of the PV source (Distributed maximum power point tracking). If a low voltage source is used, however, a high gain, high efficiency power conversion stage is required to feed the dc-ac stage used to interface with the AC grid. Such systems, referred to as micro-inverters or module integrated inverters, have become quite popular in recent times. This paper presents a high voltage gain, high efficiency dc-dc converter suitable for micro-inverter application is proposed in this paper. The proposed converter has reduced reverse recovery and switching losses. A passive clamp circuit is used to recycle energy stored in the leakage inductor and reduce the voltage stress across the main switch. The low voltage rating switch has lower on state resistance, which reduces switch conduction loss. The reduced switching losses help to increase converter efficiency. One coupled inductor and two intermediate capacitors are used to increase the output voltage. All the analytical and simulation results pertaining to the proposed topology are included.


A sporting goods, such as a ball bat, having a sensor disposed on or within tool body. Sensor detects vibration caused by an object impact on equipment. Using the detected vibrations, determining the quality of an impact, other information about the position or impact. Visual or audible feedback elements disposed on or within devices gives information about the impact visually or audibly. .FIELD 1


ed. If review is to include large numbers of events in dayto-day practice, rather than anecdotal curiosities, good records are inevitable. Any schedule for establishing audit must include time to set up these basic logistic ingredients if they do not already exist. Yet merely generating data describing practice cannot constitute an effective audit unless it leads to appropriate change. It is often difficult enough to obtain agreement among doctors, even in a relatively small group, on what


We studied a nonlinear parabolic-elliptic system defined on a domain of R2 which comes from a chemotactic system in Biology.We proved the blow up solution of solutions to this problem in Sobolev spaces framework.Next we have the conclusion that there is a critical number which determines the occurrence of blow-up case.Finally,we gave the proof of the theorem with the help of Lyapunov function.


In hospitals, nurse rerostering psdblems are most often niggered by sudden absences of nurses. Then, schedulers should make a new roster to fu1fill the vacancy under various constraints. This paper deals with the possibility of lasting the absence more than one day and prqposes a heuristic rerostering method which implements following two phases recursively: (i)finding a nurse assigriable to the absent position, (ii)changing one of the tasks assigned to the nurse into a day-off if any constraint vialati{ms arise. Numerical experiments show the ptoposed method can generate new feasible rosters with a small number ef task re-assignmentsefficiently.


(E)-Erythro-γ,δ-unsaturated alcohols are obtained in good yields by the regio- and stereoselective addition reaction of allylboranes, generated from lithiated 2-butenyloxybenzimidazole and trialkylboranes, with aldehydes and ketones.


ABSTRACT This research aims to study techniques bioethanol production from cassava to produce ethanol from cassava and determines the quality of the bioethanol produced by analyzing the ethanol content and pH as well as knowing the yield of bioethanol produced from the process is used. The results have been known to a variety of constraints in the production process from raw material storage, fermentation and distillation that can affect the end result in obtaining bioethanol from cassava. By using 5 kg of cassava feedstock with 3 times distillation process which has produced 215 ml of ethanol to 53% ethanol content and pH 6.902; 185 ml of ethanol to 74% ethanol content and pH 6.927, and 130 ml ethanol with 49% ethanol content and pH 6.573. Keywords: Bioethanol.


We examined the impact of users' information privacy concerns on information systems (IS) effectiveness in organizations. Specifically, we investigated system users' psychological mechanisms that may involve in the relationship between privacy concerns and IS effectiveness (i.e., perceived usefulness and IS satisfaction) via information systems reactance (ISR) on systems and procedural justice (PJ) toward their Information systems. The results supported our hypotheses in that: (1) Privacy concerns were negatively related to system users' perceived usefulness and IS satisfaction, (2) Both ISR and PJ of the system users mediated the relationships between privacy concerns and IS effectiveness. We discuss the implications of the findings for theory and practice, and their limitations and the directions that future research in this area might explore.


The design of electrically large antennas can be a significant challenge for computational electromagnetics (CEM) tools, particularly during the final stages of the design process where there are strict requirements for the accuracy. In the present paper, we consider the use of a newly developed accelerated Physical Optics (Fast-PO) and show that this approach allows for a timely and accurate solution of realistic designs. Several examples, ranging from canonical tests of the scaling of the method against the wavelength to real-life applications, illustrate the performance of the approach in practice.


The Ultra-Long Wavelengths (ULW) regime of longer than 10 m (frequencies below 30 MHz), remaining as the last virtually unexplored window in radio astronomy, is presently attracting more and more attentions due to some key sciences. However, the opaqueness of the Earth's ionosphere makes ULW observations below 10 MHz by terrestrial facilities practically impossible. Furthermore, the ULW spectrum is full of artificial radio frequency interference (RFI). The feasible solution for both problems is to build an ULW space-borne telescope, it is, however, very costly and challenging in both technology and engineering. Recently, studies reveal that the period post 2020 will be an appropriate opportunity to conduct systematic ground based ULW radio observations, as the night time ionospheric cut-off frequency could be well below 10 MHz [1]. In this paper we present an experimental design of ULW radio array, which operates at the frequency range from 1 to 72 MHz. This experimental array will be applied to make the radio sky observations at the ULW regime, as well as the other astronomical radio observations beyond ULW regime.


The Gauge Technique has been applied to QED$_{2+1}$ in the quenched case with infrared subtraction. The behaviour of the fermion propagator near the threshold is then found to be \[ S(p)\to \frac{(\gamma \cdot p+m)}{(p^{2}-m^{2})}(\frac{p^{2}-m^{2}}{% 2m^{2}})^{\zeta}\exp (-\frac{\eta \varsigma}{2}), \] where $\varsigma =e^{2}/(4\pi m)$ and this is gauge invariant except the exponential factor. We also find a spectral function in the Landau and Yennie like gauge. The propagators $S(p)$ are expressed in terms of $\Phi (z,1,\varsigma)$ explicitly .The vacuum expectation value $ $ is gauge dependent . Thus dynamical mass generation does not occur.


Frequent patter mining has been around ever since the data mining domain came into popularity. However, there was an argument in this domain that one should min only closed frequent patterns instead of mining all frequent patterns. The reason being that the former gives rise to very compact and efficient result set. The drawback of most of the existing closed sequence mining algorithms is that they rely on an approach known as candidate maintenance-and-test. This approach is costly in terms of memory usage and the time taken. To overcome these drawbacks, this paper presents a new algorithm that can effectively mine closed frequent sequence patterns without the need for maintaining candidates. It also prunes search space for reducing cost and time of the operations. Extensive experiments are made with many real world datasets. The experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm and pruning techniques are efficient.


ii Acknowledgments iii List of Tables v List of Figures vi Chapter 1: Examining Human-Landscape Relationships: A Qualitative and Spatial Analysis of Sense of Place 1 Chapter 2: Habitat Use of Florida Black Bears in Florida"s Panhandle 27 Chapter 3: Examining Human-Black Bear Conflicts in the Panhandle of Florida 51 Epilogue 67 References 70


Statistical analysis on the design alteration of railway bridge and culvert was carried out,and the causes of design alteration were found.Appropriate measures were taken to reduce the design alteration to minimum,to ensure project quality,and to control the construction period and cost to anticipation.


In October 2011 the Australian comedy series 'Housos' premiered on SBSTelevision, despite vocal opposition earlier in the year from social housing tenants in Western Sydney. Housos is a satire about the daily life of tenants in a fictitious social housing estate called 'Sunnyvale', a lawless zone where people act outside of the law and common norms of society. The depictions of the social housing tenants draw on a number of caricatures and stereotypes, with the characters often portrayed as feckless individuals who shun work, survive on welfare benefits, indulge in substance abuse, routinely commit crimes and cause generalised disorder. This paper reports findings from research which forms part of a larger ARC Linkage project entitled 'Residents Voices'. The questions and methods used in this study emerged after screening of the first episode of Housos at an inner city social housing estate for an audience consisting of social housing tenants and community workers from across thegreater Sydney metropolitan area. These questions were then taken up in a tenant-led research project conducted over the 9-week season of Housos in Sydney and Adelaide.


Results Of the 113 eligible patients, 90 could be included in the study. The mean follow-up time was 6 years (range 4.6±7.6 years). H. pylori infection recurred in one patient (recurrence rate: 0.19% per patient-year; 95% con®dence interval: 0.01±1.1%). Moderate or severe symptoms were experienced before therapy by 79% of the patients and after therapy by 18% of the patients (P < 1027). Before triple therapy, 98% of the patients used H2-receptor antagonists and 54% were on maintenance treatment. After treatment, 30% used anti-dyspeptic medication and only 13% were on maintenance treatment (P < 1027).


Abstract In the case of white-light interferometry, the usual phase shifting methods cannot be used because the modulation in the interference intensity is due to both the phase variation and to the coherence envelope. We propose a practical approach in which the coherence envelope is considered as locally linear. The classical four-point calculation algorithm is adapted to a set of seven intensities which are weighted with adapted coefficients in order to compensate for the effect of the coherence envelope. The capabilities of this method are described theoretically.


The subject of automobile lacquers is handled at Mercedes-Benz in a central department. In its laboratory, the use of microscopy has been developed consistently because it permits to obtain very quickly and without much preparatory effort a reliable in formation on the reason of lacquer faults and damages


Blood is a necessary thing in life especially when in an accident, illnesses, blood disorders, surgeries, and other things. However, the lack of blood stock can be an inhibitor that causes more critical condition of patient, even causing death if the patient is late getting blood transfusion. Indonesia needs about 4.8 million bags of blood each year. Unfortunately, the blood stock in Indonesia only reaches 3.8 million per year. Indonesians who qualified as donors should be able to fulfill the needs of blood donors in Indonesia. Altruism's behavior, such as donating blood, willing to help others voluntarily can be a unique but extraordinary power to solve the problem of blood deficiency in Indonesia. In this study will be explained about the development of applications that can facilitate users to motivate each other doing voluntarily and routinely blood donors, by gamification concept. Based on the results of user acceptance test, the application can be received well by users as a whole, but it still requires some improvements in terms of functionality, as well as the display and content and gamification on the application successfully gives trigger indirectly to the user to do blood donors routinely. Users will get more enjoyable experience and make it easier to do blood donors routinely.


The competencies and outcomes of entrepreneurial activities spark the interest of many stakeholders across innovation ecosystems – governments, companies, entrepreneurs, and educational institutions alike. Typically, those of an entrepreneurial bent are sought after for their ability to create new ventures and deliver multiple forms of societal value, such as creating jobs, bolstering the economy, and translating technology into real world applications. Yet, beyond these outcomes, at the core of entrepreneurial activities is a qualitatively distinct design approach; and thus an entrepreneurial mindset has the potential to be a powerful philosophy to scaffold thinking and solve problems in any domain. However, very little has been explicitly written about how this mindset and problem-solving philosophy could map to domains in which new ventures are not a desired outcome. This paper focuses on synthesizing and distilling the design and problem-solving strategies of the entrepreneur to make them broadly applicable beyond business centric contexts. The paper reviews multiple literature streams in entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial expertise, effectuation, entrepreneurial firm design, and entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, problem-solving and decision-making using Boyer's scholarship of integration lens as a guiding approach. This approach places value on integrating insights into new language that unifies concepts often dispersed across domains. Emphasis is placed on the design (problem solving) principles of entrepreneurs and their applicability across contexts, synthesizing such principles in a proposed framework of entrepreneurship as a problem-solving philosophy. Overall, the paper complements current research streams in entrepreneurship by helping further characterize the entrepreneurial method, while simultaneously opening new research and teaching directions, thus enriching the engineering education space and related fields.


The authors propose a scheme to generate the volume/surface octree structure from range data. The scheme is similar to that of the quadtree generation algorithm. However, in this case, each node in the quadtree is a binary tree corresponding to a range data point. Consequently, the octree of the viewed object can be generated efficiently by merging the neighboring binary trees recursively. Surface normals can be computed directly from the range image. They are encoded into associated binary trees and subsequently propagated to the corresponding octree nodes during the merging process. Since 3-D information of the viewed object is available in each range image, the proposed scheme is capable of capturing the concave structures in objects, which cannot be detected from intensity model construction. Furthermore, since the algorithms developed in this research are essentially recursive tree traversal procedures, they are suitable for parallel implementation.<<ETX>>


The content of elements of Ge in Ganoderma applanatum(Pers.ex Gray.)Pat.of producing in Liaoning and its extracts got by different extracting methods was determined by spectrophotometre.The results show that the G.applanatum(Pers.ex Gray.)Pat.are rich in Ge and its different extracting methods have obvious influence.This expericent provides useful data for producing technology of Chinese medicine.


High Volume Manufacturing (HVM) environments require that equipment have high availability, low cost of ownership, and minimizes events that can cause product defects. With a scheduled proactive maintenance program for consumables, the impact to manufacturing schedules is minimized while maintaining the ability of the tool to create "good" product, and down time due to troubleshooting is reduced. In photolithography, consumable optics provide a large opportunity for instituting this type of program, since optical degradation is very well understood having known causes such as chemical contamination, manufacturing defects and physical effects. These effects can either be reversed or compensated for via optics cleaning, parts replacement or counter-measures such as optical adjustments, optical filters, or tool modifications. Traditionally the lifetime of optics in described in terms of the number of pulses through the optic. This pulse limit is based on modeling and reflects the usage of the machine. There are several disadvantages to using this method, including unnecessarily changing parts prior to failure, or alternately, premature parts failure. Performance-based modeling can solve most issues associated with usage-based models; however, there are also challenges related to performance-based modeling that must be overcome to make the model useful. These include forecasting usage rates, degradation mode signature, and determining thresholds to allow for efficient parts ordering. Nikon has developed a preliminary model to automate performance-based forecasting that takes all of these challenges into account, and with further optimization this model can be implemented successfully providing a reduction in consumables related Cost of Ownership.


The management of closed intra-articular pilon fractures has a history of significant postoperative soft tissue complications when managed with open reduction and internal fixation. The classically described early open reduction of the tibia using an anterior approach was found to have an unacceptably high complication rate. It was observed that significant pilon fractures actually involved 2 injury paradigms: one involving bone and the other involving the soft tissue envelope. This led to significant changes in the protocol for managing closed pilon fractures effectively reducing the complication rates involving both soft tissue and bone. Recognition of the soft tissue trauma led to the staging of pilon fractures to allow time for soft tissue recovery from the initial trauma. Recognition of the diversity of the bony injury through the use of computed tomography scans has led to a variety of described approaches that allow the surgeon to choose how best to manage the fracture pattern.


The President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy defines personal financial literacy as "the ability to use knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively for a lifetime of financial well-being." (2008 Annual Report to the President)


ITU-T Rec. P.835 provides a well-established listening test procedure for the auditory performance evaluation of devices containing signal processing components for noise reduction. In contrast to "classical" listening tests according to ITU-T Rec. P.800, test subjects are asked for independent votes for speech quality (S-MOS), noise intrusiveness (N-MOS) and overall/global quality (G-MOS). However, since auditory testing is time-consuming and expensive, several instrumental models for quality prediction according to ITU-T Rec. P.835 were developed and standardized in the past. These models are already commercially available and widely used in industry for many years. However, so far only narrowband and wideband speech signals were supported. As devices with a higher acoustic bandwidth (e.g., terminals supporting the EVS-codec) are currently entering the market, an extension to super-wideband and fullband mode was necessary. The new prediction model was developed in close interaction with several standardization committees. A common auditory testing framework was specified and a considerable number of auditory databases for training and validation was created. This contribution provides an overview of the final prediction model, which was recently introduced and standardized as ETSI TS 103 281. In addition, several prediction results from validation databases are presented.


This article sets out to study the characteristics of China Ming Dynasty(1368-1644)'s two laws for government officials_Official Criminal Law and Official Law,their administration their effects.It is pointed out that during the early years of Ming Dynasty,the rulers attached great importance to its government administration.It is also noted that in MingDynasty,though there were the two laws disciplining the offcials important or less,under the centralized feudal monarchy,government corruption had not been and could not be effectively controlled.


The laser power-handling performance of diffused lithium niobate planar waveguides, as limited by their development of laser-induced optical damage, is characterized in terms of the pertinent chemical process variables involved in their production. Lithium niobate waveguides are formed by the out-diffusion of lithium oxide under oxidizing conditions, by the in-diffusion of titanium, and by out-diffusion under nonoxidizing conditions. These three waveguide types, however, exhibit radically different laser power-handling capabilities. Out-diffused waveguides prepared under oxidizing conditions, as compared with equivalently prepared titanium in-diffused guides, are able to handle more than twenty times the laser power, at the same level of performance. An out-diffused waveguide propagates 1-5 mW at 632.8 nm with less than 2-6 percent steady-state output power loss. Out-diffused waveguides prepared under nonoxidizing conditions exhibit rapid power loss followed by equally rapid and full steady-state recovery. Waveguide chemistry, on the other hand, does not alter the manner in which the laser power is dispersed in the plane of the waveguide. Laser power is always scattered within the waveguide plane, to the negative c-axis side of the centrally propagating laser beam.


In order to further develop the strategy and methodology of Dynamical Analogue Prediction(DAP),the physical basis problem associated with the DAP is primarily investigated in the present study based on previous nonlinear dynamical achievements.Firstly,the relationship of "analogue prediction-low-frequency flow regimes―predictability" is fully discussed.Analyses show that such a relationship is not only suitable for statistical analogue prediction,but also for dynamical analogue prediction.Furthermore,by contrasting with initial ensemble forecast and conducting case analyses of dynamical predictions on different time scales in real atmosphere,it is primarily documented that there exists evident analogy between dynamical prediction results and their situations of prediction errors when initial values are analogical to each other.Moreover,three classes of analogy problems are further summarized and the physical basis of dynamical analogue prediction is induced: Under the circumstance that the analogy at initial states is durative,not only dynamical prediction results but also their situations of prediction errors will be analogical to each other.


Neurons in the avian auditory forebrain show strong sensitivity to the spatial configuration of two competing sources, even though there is only weak spatial dependence for any single source.


Image processing and pattern recognition have been applied to the image acquisition, image enhancement, extraction of classical structure characteristics, binary image processing, and image segmentation of synthetic minerals. They have also been used for the classification, recognition, testing, and survey of the classical structure characteristics, and with the information obtained, a complete image description can be created, from a two-dimensional image to concrete data and quantitative information on the characteristic structure. The results show that image processing and pattern recognition can be successfully applied to the analysis of classical characteristics (such as pore size, number, form, distribution, etc.) of synthetic mineral microstructures, including pore defect and characteristic mineral phase. Information on synthetic mineral microstructure characteristics can be obtained visually, qualitative, quantitatively, and automatically, producing a new research method and testing tool for pore defect research of synthetic minerals.


Leather–epoxy interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) were synthesized; these IPNs have an approximate epoxy concentration of 25 wt %. The flexural and tensile moduli of the IPNs prepared are equivalent to those of the epoxy resin. The Izod impact energy and fracture toughness measured for the IPNs, however, exceed those attained by the epoxy resin alone by at least a factor of 4. The glass transition of leather–epoxy IPNs occurs over a wide temperature range, thus indicating that the IPN is an intimate admixture of the epoxy resin throughout the collagen matrix of the hide. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 78: 1224–1232, 2000


40Ar/39Ar dating of rhyolitic ashes from the western range front of the White/Inyo Mountains provides some of the first high‐precision age controls for the late Pliocene to Pleistocene depositional and tectonic history of the region. Three categories of late Tertiary to recent sedimentary units crop out along the range front: (1) fine‐grained basin fill, (2) uplifted and incised fanglomerates, and (3) recent alluvial‐fan deposits. Seven ash samples collected from six canyons along the range front and from the basal Bishop Tuff in the Owens Valley fall into three age clusters: 0.757 ± 0.004 Ma, 2.08 ± 0.01 Ma, and 2.82 ± 0.02 Ma. The 0.757 Ma sample correlates with the Bishop Tuff and supports other recent Ar/Ar results that date the tuff at ∼0.76 Ma. The 2.82 Ma sample comes from a well‐known ash horizon within the fanglomerate deposits of Black Canyon, which previous workers had correlated with the Bishop Tuff. Because the fanglomerates overlie lacustrine deposits of the Waucoba embayment, the age of the Waucoba lake beds must be at least 2.82 Ma. Using this new age control, we develop a model of Plio‐Pleistocene tectonic events at the western margin of the Basin and Range province. The abrupt change from lacustrine to fanglomerate deposition at ∼3 Ma appears to record the birth of the White Mountains fault. The onset of range‐front faulting was part of a regional tectonic reorientation, approximately coincident with a shift in tilt polarity, from westward to eastward block tilting, of the White/Inyo Mountains and Owens Valley.


The Urban Drainage Pipe Network Information System is established to improve the management of the drainage pipe network in efficiency. And the preconditions of the system are the analysis and organization of the data about the pipe network. The paper outlines the elements of the management inside and outside the pipe network, and then suggests a project involving the organization of objects, layers and codes.


In this study, a method for an electromagnetic spectrum umbrella (ESU) is proposed. In the three-dimensional space covered by the ESU, the unlicensed user cannot normally receive the desired electromagnetic wave signal and the authorized user can receive the desired electromagnetic wave signal. The construction method of the ESU is discussed herein. The optimal three-dimensional layout of interference devices is presented. The receiver sensitivity loss of the unlicensed user receiver is analyzed. The structure of the authorized user receiver and its receiver sensitivity loss bound are presented. Finally, simulation and experimental results are provided for demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The ability to interpret the actions of others is necessary for survival and a successful social life. Human fMRI studies have consistently identified involvement of the precuneus in first- and third-person perspective taking of social situations. However, it is not clear yet whether this area plays a critical role in attributing a social meaning to the actions of others. Here we performed an fMRI study while participants were viewing controlled upright and inverted dyadic displays that had been validated in a previous behavioural experiment. Participants performed an irrelevant task while watching the biological motion of two agents acting together (social) or independently (non-social). When compared to social displays, the non-social displays elicited greater activation in the bilateral precuneus, and a group of frontal, parietal and occipital regions. When examined further, the data also demonstrated that the bilateral precuneus responded with greater activation to inverted than upright displays. Correlations between the regions of interests' activity and effective connectivity analysis showed consistent evidence of an interhemispheric asymmetry between the right and left precuneus. Based on these findings we suggest that the precuneus plays a crucial role in detecting socially meaningful interactions.


- A series of cyclic crack growth tests has been carried out on center-cracked specimens and specimens containing a yielded hole to investigate the effect of residual stresses on constant a mplitude fatigue crack growth rates. The mechanics of a crack growing through a superimposed stress field (i.e., combining the r esidual stresses around the hole and the subsequently applied cyclic stresses) is elucidated by the " Variable Stress Intensity Ratio" concept. Good correlations between theory and experiments have been obtained. NOMENCLATURE a


An unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is derived for integrating vision with inertial measurements from gyros and accelerometers sensors based on three-view geometry. The main goal of the proposed method is to provide better estimations compared to the implicit extended Kalman filter introduced by Indelman . The UKF uses a selected set of points to more accurately map the probability distribution of the measurement model than the linearization of the extended Kalman filter, leading to faster convergence from inaccurate initial conditions in estimation problems. The proposed method is validated using a statistical study based on simulated navigation and synthetic images data.


: The poetry of the greatest Ragusan humanist poet, Ilija Crijević (Aelius Lampridius Cervinus, 1463-1520), has been published in print only recently. This might prompt the conclusion that there was no particular interest in his oeuvre in the past. The survival of the voluminous autographs of Crijević in the Vatican Library seems to have resulted in the scholarly neglect of the manuscript tradition of his works that developed in his native city from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. This manuscript tradition is studied in this essay with the aim of showing that for several centuries Crijević's works were not only copied but that the text was also critically edited. Particular attention will be devoted to the labors of Ivan Marija Matijašević (1714-1791), who pioneered the systematic research on Crijević's texts, as well as to those of Antun Agić (1753-1830), who prepared a manuscript edition of his poetry. Once identified and connected, Agić's scattered manuscript papers provide an invaluable guide to the history of the reception of Crijević's texts in Dubrovnik and beyond. The essay also identifies the hitherto unknown autograph letter Crijević sent to Prince Ferdinand of Naples and establishes that the manuscript dedicated to Paolo Orsini is similarly the poet's autograph. The result of the research underpinning the essay is the list at its end, providing the most complete account so far of the surviving manuscripts of Crijević's works. This research has been supported by the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ), under the project number IP-2019-04-8566.


Purpose: The problem of reliable automatic estimation of density of corneal epithelial cells in images from confocal microscopy was addressed. The reliability of estimated densities should be comparable to that of manual cell count.

Methods: The spatial frequencies contained in epithelial images can be extracted with suitable mathematical techniques (2-dimension Discrete Fourier Transform, DFT). An algorithm for reliably identifying the spatial frequency information and for deriving from it an estimate of the cell density has been developed. A preliminary entropy-based pre-processing was carried out to extract from the whole image the ROI (region of interest) where cells are visible. A prototype of the whole algorithm was implemented in the Matlab® language and run on a personal computer. A preliminary evaluation was performed on a data set containing 24 images from normal subjects (see e.g. enclosed image), acquired with a ConfoScan 3 confocal microscope (Nidek Technologies, Italy). Reference manual counts were performed on each image by an experienced optometrist.

Results: Mean percent difference of automatic densities vs. manual ones was ?1%, with std dev 10% and range [?17% ? +18%]. Mean percent absolute difference was 9%, with std dev 4% and range [+1% ? +18%]. Running times of the prototype were in the order of 40 seconds per image.

Conclusions: A new algorithm was developed for the automatic estimation of epithelial cell density. A preliminary evaluation of the proposed technique confirmed its capability of reliably estimating corneal epithelial cell density in confocal images of normal subjects. Implementation of the algorithm with a more efficient computer language, e.g. C++, will allow execution times in the order of 2-3 seconds.


This study examines leaf retention within the South Fork Eel River. Leaf retention reflects the geomorphological and hydrological characteristics of the stream. Further leaf retention impacts the presence of macroinvertebrate functional feeding groups and thus affects the food web dynamics of a river ecosystem. The absence of leaf retention is an indicator to the consumption of predatory organisms, whether or not the source of food is terrestrial or aquatic. Release of Ginko biloba leaves upstream was used to examine leaf retention along the various tributaries of the South Fork Eel River. Comparing the drainage area of these tributaries and morphological characteristics, factors affecting leaf retention can be understood as well as the effect of retention upon organisms. Results indicate that the presence of large woody debris is a great indicator of leaf retention capabilities where as morphological characteristics of the habitat are not as strong. Retention is highly influence further by stream flow and velocity thus being affected seasonally.


Image segmentation requires large amounts of annotated data. However, collecting massive datasets with annotations is difficult since they are expensive and labor‐intensive. The unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) for image segmentation is a promising approach to address the label‐scare problem on the target domain, which enables the trained model on the source labeled domain to be adaptive to the target domain. The adversarial‐based methods encourage extracting the domain‐invariant features by training a domain discriminator to mitigate the domain gap. Existing UDA segmentation methods fail to obtain satisfied segmentation results as they only consider the global knowledge of output space while neglecting the local information of feature space. In this paper, a fusing feature and output (FFO) space method is proposed for UDA, which in the context of medical image segmentation. The proposed model is learned by training a more powerful domain discriminator, which considers features extracted from both feature space and output space. Extensive experiments carried out on several medical image datasets show the adaptation effectiveness of our approach in improving the segmentation performance.


Let k be the field with p>0 elements, and let G be a finite group. By exhibiting an E-infinity-operad action on Hom(P,k) for a complete projective resolution P of the trivial kG-module k, we obtain power operations of Dyer-Lashof type on Tate cohomology H*(G; k). Our operations agree with the usual Steenrod operations on ordinary cohomology. We show that they are compatible (in a suitable sense) with products of groups, and (in certain cases) with the Evens norm map. These theorems provide tools for explicit computations of the operations for small groups G. We also show that the operations in negative degree are non-trivial. As an application, we prove that at the prime 2 these operations can be used to determine whether a Tate cohomology class is productive (in the sense of Carlson) or not.


Problem-solving Skills and Reading-Writing Literacy are two necessary things students must have to compete in the 21st century. This study aims at determining the effectiveness of Problem-based Learning with Integrated Reading and Writing tasks to improve students' problem-solving and reading-writing literacy skills. A quantitative method using a quasi-experimental design with a non-equivalent control group was employed in this study. The sampling technique used in this study was the purposive sampling technique. The sample used in this study was 36 students divided into two groups: the control group and the experimental group. The instrument used in this study was a physics problem-solving skill test instrument and a reading-writing literacy instrument. The data analysis technique in this study was a quantitative analysis technique. The results showed that the N-gain value of the physics problem-solving skill test for the experimental group was 0.67 in the medium category, and the control group was 0.65 in the medium category. In the reading-writing literacy test, the N-gain value for the experimental group was 0.55 in the medium category and 0.29 in the low category for the control group. The Problem-based Learning model with Integrated Reading and Writing Tasks has little impact on improving students' problem-solving skills. However, it has a significant effect on increasing students' reading-writing literacy.


An interactive digitization and image processing program was developed. This program, called MAGIC (Map Analysis and Graph Interpretation Code), features two methods of digitization, a keyboard-controlled cursor and a light pen. Image processing routines include perimeter and area evaluation algorithms and an image overlay algorithm. Several output options are offered, including hardcopy generation and cassette storage of figures. MAGIC has a tutorial introduction, numerous user prompts, and a HELP command for eliciting expanded explanations of commands during program execution. The code has been verified by computing perimeters and areas of regular polygons and by finding areas of selected states. It has also been applied to determination of denuded area associated with strip mine sites in Tennessee and drought-impacted areas within California during 1976 and 1977. MAGIC is written in Microsoft/Radio Shack Level II BASIC for use in a Radio Shack TRS-80 microcomputer. The code consists of 592 statements and requires at least 32 kilobytes of random access memory in which to execute. A statement-packed version requiring reduced program storage is also presented.


The present invention relates to a method for processing an image frame, which is applied to the processing of an image frame having multiple image signals, wherein the image frame is output by an image sensor. The present invention comprises: a), an image signal region for temporary storage is provided, wherein the image signal region for temporary storage at least comprises two pieces of storage space, the capacity of any one storage space is less than one half of the total image number of the image frame and is more than or equal to the total image number of any one group of image signals; b), the image signals are respectively and orderly input in the storage space to respectively, orderly and accordingly achieve an image processing program, wherein when one group of image signals is stored in each one of the storage space in the storage space, other groups of image signals in the image frame are input in turns and cover the image signals accordingly achieving the image processing program in the image signal region for temporary storage, and the image signals are not input to the image signal region for temporary storage. The present invention reduces the storage capacity of the image signal region for temporary storage used by the processing of the image frame.


Purpose: The value of professional actors as standardized patients (SPs) was evaluated in an exercise that normally uses students for SPs. Methods: A history‐taking instructional curriculum was developed for a clinical skills exam for second‐year students. Students anonymously rated their impressions of actors versus physician assistant (PA) students as patient simulators and assessed this exercise in the terms of the history‐taking task areas described in the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA) Blueprint. Results: PA students perceived the actor SPs as more similar to real patients than peers simulating patients, developed greater confidence in history‐taking ability, and believed that they significantly enhanced their history‐taking skills. Conclusions: This study demonstrates that students value the use of professional actors to simulate patients in teaching history‐taking. Overall positive results encourage the use of professional actors as standardized patients.


The article focuses on estimating the influence of Rudyard Kipling's figure on the works of his younger contemporary, the American Frank Norris. The author comes to the conclusion that the English writer fundamentally determined his literary follower's development vector. Kipling who has become extremely popular among American readers raises Norris's interest toward neo-romantic short story. The early stage of Norris's work is noted by Kipling's powerful influence and the article reveals common plot, compositional and stylistic elements in their works. The writers are united by artistic ideals: Kipling and Norris emphasize the exotic and the criminal and treat the concept of masculinity in a similar way in their short stories. The relevance and scientific novelty of the article are determined by the fact that the article studies Norris's short stories which were previously unexplored in Russian literary criticism. The author makes an attempt to determine the significance of romanticism's legacy for Norris's work and to demonstrate its close relationship with naturalism, exploring various works by R. Kipling. The article uses the following methods: elements of the biographical method; estimation of Norris's theoretical ideas according to the principles of cultural studies; comparative analysis of the works of the two authors. The article can be used in teaching the history of foreign (in particular, American) literature in higher educational institutions.


An efficient procedure for rapid identification and differentiation of phytoplasmas was established by comparative studies of 16S rDNA and 23S rDNA PCR, heteroduplex mobility assay ( HMA), RFLP and sequence analysis of PCR-amplified products (16S rDNA) to mulberry dwarf (MD), jujube witches'-broom(JWB), wild jujube witches'-broom(WJWB), paulownia witches'-broom(PaWB) and chinaberry tree witches'-broom (CWB) phytoplasmas as well as different samples of paulownia witches'-broom and jujube witches'-broom-phytoplasmas from three different areas in China.It was demonstrated that 16S rDNA PCR-amplified product of JWB-phytoplasma produced distinct heteroduplex mobility bands with CWB, MD and PaWB while CWB, MD and PaWB were not distinguished by HMA.No obvious heteroduplex mobility band was formed between different paulownia witches'-broom and jujube witches'-broom-phytoplasma samples as well as between JWB and WJWB-phytoplasmas.However, HMA of 23S rDNA PCR products seemed to distinguish MD with PaWB.The results of sequencing and homologuous comparison with other phytoplasmas further showed that CWB shared 99.5 % with PaWB, 99.7% with MD.Thus CWB might be sorted into aster yellows group,16Sr I-B,16Sr I-B(rp-B).


Xanthophyllomyces dendrorhous β-fructofuranosidase (XdINV)is a highly glycosylated dimeric enzyme that hydrolyzes sucrose and releases fructose from various fructooligosaccharides (FOS) and fructans. It also catalyzes the synthesis of FOS, prebiotics that stimulate the growth of beneficial bacteria in human gut. In contrast to most fructosylating enzymes, XdINV produces neo-FOS, which makes it an interesting biotechnology target. We present here its three-dimensional structure, which shows the expected bimodular arrangement and also a long extension of its C terminus that together with an N-linked glycan mediate the formation of an unusual dimer. The two active sites of the dimer are connected by a long crevice, which might indicate its potential ability to accommodate branched fructans. This arrangement could be representative of a group of GH32 yeast enzymes having the traits observed in XdINV. The inactive D80A mutant was used to obtain complexes with relevant substrates and products, with their crystals structures showing at least four binding subsites at each active site. Moreover, two different positions are observed from subsite +2 depending on the substrate, and thus, a flexible loop (Glu-334–His-343) is essential in binding sucrose and β(2–1)-linked oligosaccharides. Conversely, β(2–6) and neo-type substrates are accommodated mainly by stacking to Trp-105, explaining the production of neokestose and the efficient fructosylating activity of XdINV on α-glucosides. The role of relevant residues has been investigated by mutagenesis and kinetics measurements, and a model for the transfructosylating reaction has been proposed. The plasticity of its active site makes XdINV a valuable and flexible biocatalyst to produce novel bioconjugates.


This descriptive-correlational study is aimed at determining the predictors of organizational effectiveness in state universities and colleges (SUCs) in Panay Island, Philippines as inputs to a leadership and interpersonal enhancement program. The subjects of this investigation were the 125 purposively selected academic deans from the seven SUCs. Five (5) adapted research instruments, accompanied by an information sheet, were utilized to gather data. For descriptive analysis, ranks, means, and standard deviations were used. For inferential analysis, the Mann-Whitney U Test, Spearman's rho, and Stepwise Multiple Regression Analysis set at 0.05 alpha level were employed for inferential analysis. In terms of educational leadership preference, academic deans were good at encouraging/coaching, team facilitation, and pioneering/visionary as leaders. However, they are expected to further enhance their ability to be relational/social, management/administrative, and strategic in the organization. Results also revealed that academic deans have an "excellent" level of interpersonal values, a "high" level of psychological empowerment, and a "very high" extent of practice of organizational culture. No significant difference existed with regard to organizational effectiveness when classified according to their psychological empowerment levels. However, significant differences were noted in organizational effectiveness when classified according to the levels of their educational leadership preferences, interpersonal values, and extent of practice of organizational culture. There were significant relationships among the academic deans' educational leadership preferences, interpersonal values, psychological empowerment, extent of practice of organizational culture, and organizational effectiveness. Based on the results of the study, the academic deans should sustain and maintain their levels of interpersonal values, psychological empowerment, extent of practice of organizational culture, and organizational effectiveness. As revealed in the findings, educational leadership preference and organizational culture emerged as predictors for achieving organizational effectiveness. Thus, a leadership and interpersonal enhancement program should be institutionalized by the SUCs as an offshoot of this investigation.


This paper is part of a larger study aimed to examine and enhance the role of parents in their child's learning. The work done thus far aims to understand one aspect of it - how low literate parents react to invitations of at-home engagement with their children. An ICT (Information and Communication Technology) based intervention was designed and deployed and it was found that the parents responded positively to the invitation. Nuances of the parents' responses and shortcomings of the intervention have been discussed.