In this thesis criticality theory and conformal mapping schemes are established for single and two layer water-wave systems. Models describing these systems are introduced and their basic properties, namely dispersion relation, shallow water and Boussinesq approximations, and multi-symplectic formulations are derived. The theory of uniform flows and criticality is introduced using the shallow water equations associated with each of the models. Uniform flow solutions are then represented as surfaces with the criticality regions identified. These results are then recovered using the multi-symplectic formulations of the Boussinesq and full equations of each of the water-wave Systems. In this framework uniform flows are characterised as relative equilibria. The concept of criticality is then extended to non-trivial steady states by considering periodic waves coupled to uniform flows. Criticality conditions are defined for these flows which we call secondary criticality. A conformal mapping framework is established for a single layer flow and a two layer flow with a rigid lid. Firstly, a general parameterisation of the free surface and interface is considered. The governing equations are restated in terms of the new coordinates and are shown to be Hamiltonian. A mapping is then introduced for the fluid such that the parametric forms of the governing equations stated initially are recovered. Integral boundary relations are obtained relating the real and imaginary parts of periodic analytic functions. The conformal mapping schemes are then used to compute travelling waves. This is achieved by composing two numerical schemes which distinguish between the cases of finite and infinite layer, depths.


In order to better understand the stratified combustion, the propagation of flame through stratified mixture field in laminar and turbulent flow conditions has been studied by using combined PIV/PLIF techniques. A great emphasis was placed on developing methods to improve the accuracy of local measurements of flame propagation. In particular, a new PIV approach has beendeveloped to measure the local fresh gas velocity near preheat zone of flame front. To improve the resolution of measurement, the shape of interrogation window has been continuously modified based on the local flame topology and gas expansion effect. Statistical analysis of conditioned local measurements by the local equivalence ratio of flames allows the characterization of theproperties of flame propagation subjected to the mixture stratification in laminar and turbulentflows, especially the highlight of the memory effect.


A survey is made of some current energy evaluation systems for ruminants. Estimations have shown that net energy lactation (NE l ) according to van Es and Scandinavian feed unit (SFU) according to Møller et al. seem to give the best fit when comparing predicted and observed milk yield. Despite the fact that all systems apparently have their shortcomings, it is concluded that there is still a need for an energy evaluation system for ruminants. Furthermore, there would be great practical advantages if a common system for energy evaluation in Europe could be agreed upon. For ration formulation and optimalization the various components (substrates) of the feeds will be of increasing importance.


The first lightwave communications system that provides a wide range of telecommunications services to customers has been carrying commercial traffic in the Chicago Loop area since early May, 1977. The exploratory system furnishes POTS (plain old telephone service), analog data, and digital data services from the Franklin central office (CO) to customers in the Brunswick building, over an optical cable approximately 0.6 mi long. Picturephone®meeting service, a 4-MHz video service, is delivered over an optical cable from the Wabash CO to the Franklin CO, then on to the Brunswick building, a total distance of 1.6 mi. The optical cable was placed inside a small plastic pipe, which had been installed previously along the cable route. The plastic pipe, or innerduct, was used to reduce pulling tensions and provide environmental protection. The optical cable was installed using a novel 2-way installation technique by which the two ends of each section were fed successively in opposite directions from an intermediate manhole toward the splicing manholes. The connectorized optical cable was then spliced in five manholes along the cable route. This paper describes the installation and splicing of the lightguide cable and the transmission characteristics of the installed medium. It also contains a discussion of the manner in which the various telecommunication services are provided and a performance evaluation of the lightwave transmission system to date.


Aim. The purposes of our study were to research the structure and reasons of calls psychiatric ambulance teams of somatic and multifunctional hospitals of Kazan, determinate the characteristic features of patients. Matherial and methods. Under our observation were structures of 87 calls to psychiatric ambulance teams during period since 01.12.2012 to 14.10.2014 and looking through its documentations. Results. It was found that the validity of the call psychiatric teams in health care facilities (when the occasion to call really meant to do it) is 65,51%, which is much higher than among the total number of calls to the psychiatric emergency teams (42,84%) [5], despite the fact that 60,92% of hospitalization in a psychiatric or narcological hospital was denied. Moreover, the absence of psychosomatic departments in multidisciplinary health care facilities, the algorithm to identify mental disorders in somatic hospitals, evaluation criteria indications for emergency psychiatric care and the lack of methodological support reduces the effectiveness of emergency psychiatric care in somatic hospitals.


In the present work, the full compressible Navier‐Stokes equations are solved numerically, and the flow and heat transfer around a 2‐D stack plate immerged in an acoustic standing wave are computed. Distortion of the waveform temperature are found and are explained using the results of a former nonlinear analysis. The temperature difference between the ends of the plate is investigated and compared to linear theory. The effects of the acoustic Mach number and geometrical parameters on refrigerator performance are investigated.Results reported here may explain a part of the difference between theoretical predictions and experimental results.


Based on customer perceived value theory and artificial immune systems ideas and methods,the pricing strategy of customer perceived value-oriented is proposed,and the evaluation model and evaluation method of customer perceived value in the complex environment of uncertainty cloud services are gaved.Then the algorithm of identification and extraction of customer perceived value will be design by using the sentiment orientation analysis technology.The algorithm allows for dynamic extraction and real-time data mining on the information view of the network evaluation service,and it will quantitative track customer attitudes toward trends size at any time.The method provides a new solution to solve the problem of the dynamic identification of customer perceived value and the robust optimization problem of evaluation methods.


This article offers an alternative explanation for the processes by which foreign policy is made. It does so across three different countries, across different governments, across issues that had real "blood and treasure" at stake, across different domestic and international contexts, and while holding the target of policy, the United States, constant. Available theories argue that formal political institutions or norms determine who will influence the making of policy and how they will do so. However, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile—countries with strikingly similar formal rules for making foreign policy—have been following, for decades, fundamentally different foreign policymaking processes, and they have been doing so without resorting to any normative justifications. The article contrasts the theoretical expectations of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based arguments on foreign policymaking with a logic of habit not captured by the logics of consequences or appropriateness of rational choice institutionalism and norm-based explanations. The article makes two contributions. First, it furthers the theoretical development of the concept of habit in international relations and offers a means of studying habits empirically. Second, it challenges the assumption that the power of domestic actors in foreign policy is a function of formal institutions or prevailing norms.


The nature of the squint problem in the electrically tilted phased arrays (e.g. base transceiver station antennas) is explored based on the antenna theory and array theory. The antenna elements in the horizontal, vertical, or slant polarisations are considered. It is shown that the phased arrays with vertical and horizontal polarisations do not suffer from beam squint. However, it is illustrated that the issue of the squint becomes evident when one scans the beam along the vertical plane with slant antenna elements. A solution to reduce the squint problem is proposed which reduces the squint angle by a factor of two, and also improves the symmetry of the pattern.


ODTs are becoming increasingly important in the pharmaceutical market, both for prescription and over-thecounter medications, and can significantly enhance patient compliance. As they can be swallowed without the need for water, these dosage forms are particularly convenient for children and the elderly, and they're the delivery format of choice for people who want to take their medicine 'on the go.' They are also particularly helpful for patients who have difficulty swallowing — a complication associated with a number of age-related conditions, including stroke and Parkinson's disease.


The United States may be overrating the threat of terrorism, which remains a weapon of the weak. Terrorism traces a history at least as old as the revolutionary anarchist movement that swept across Europe during the 19th century. However, only in the last decade, and particularly the last five years, has the United States prepared to focus on terrorism as a serious challenge to national security and the stability of the international system. When President Clinton addressed the United Nations in October 1998, he identified terrorism as one of Washington's chief security challenges for the 21st century and portrayed the issue as one that must "be at the very top of the world's agenda." [1] America's concern with this mode of violence is growing for three reasons. First, terrorist attacks have become more lethal and effective during the 1990s, and the number of casualties and fatalities per incident is greater than at any other time in the past. Second, the growing sophistication of modern industrial society has created a slew of cyber-based information systems that are conceivably flexible enough to provide an alternative medium of conflict for those wishing to engage in critical attacks on the infrastructure. Third, the increased incidence and severity of terrorist events within the United States has radically altered Washington's perception of the threat, which has historically been focused on risks to American nationals and facilities abroad. In spite of these developments, much of the current analysis in the country, particularly at the domestic level, is at odds with the realities of terrorist behavior and operations. Weak analysis results in poor policy-making and an inability to prioritize responses to terrorist threats. Growing Lethality During the 1970s and 1980s, analysts proclaimed with confidence that "simply killing a lot of people has seldom been a terrorist objective." [2] According to conventional wisdom, terrorism sought to change the world through highly visible but ultimately symbolic acts of political violence. Today, however, many terrorists are no longer prepared to draw the line at limited, restricted acts of violence. Instead, their actions have become progressively more extreme and bloody, with indiscriminate killing being more the rule now than the exception. [3] Three main factors account for terrorism's heightened lethality during the 1990s. First, an increase in religious extremism, resulting from the perceived failure of secular regimes and governments, has led to a proliferation of groups that uphold Manichean objectives couched in absolute terms of good and evil and regard whole segments of society as the major target of their campaigns of violence. [4] Second, developments in information technology have led to the organizational destructuring of terrorist movements, whereby members no longer recruit and act together physically but communicate through the global information grid. This has led to a relaxing of group constraints on committing mass, indiscriminate murder, with members increasingly justifying their actions on purely individual moral planes. [5] Finally, the proliferation of combat weaponry from Eastern Europe and former Cold War conflict zones has markedly escalated the violence threshold of terrorists, making attacks more lethal and sophisticated than before. [6] The increased lethality of terrorism has affected threat perception in the United States in two main ways. First, it has reinforced the notion that terrorism, far from being made obsolete by the end of the Cold War, is in fact escalating and becoming even more complex and dangerous. The increased severity of lethal attacks has given rise to concern that more U.S. citizens and facilities overseas will be targeted as terrorist organizations react with increasing violence to the United States, which both defines itself and is widely recognized as the leader of the Western world. …


This paper studies the impact of Palestinian workers' remittances from Israel on Palestinian economic growth using quarterly data over the period 2000-2016. Stationary and cointegration tests as well as a vector error correction model are applied for such purpose. Cointegration tests provide evidence of a long-run positive equilibrium relationship between remittances and output growth. Results also indicate that remittances have influence on Palestinian economic development at both short- and long-run level. https://doi.org/10.24897/acn.64.68.179


We investigate here the properties of OB relaxation of Varga iterative methods, with particular emphasis on diagonal relaxation. Generalizations of the results of Beauwens and Quenon [5] are' presented and their relations with the works of Axelsson [1] and Gustafsson [8-11] are indicated. enlarging the scope of the latter.


ABSTRACT Successful use of doxorubicin as an antitumor agent is limited by its cardiotoxicity, which takes different forms and results from multiple biochemical alterations in the cell. This study addresses the possibility to overcome these adverse effects by studying the effects of N-(2-hydroxypropyl)methacrylamide (HPMA) polymer, which contains doxorubicin attaching to it. Both time-and dose-dependent studies were conducted using DU145 cell lines. The results of this study reveal that doxorubicin attached to HPMA can be used successfully in treating cancer instead of doxorubicin alone, which may open a new gate for clinicians and scientists, leading to overcoming the resistance and side effects of the currently used antitumor agents.


Computer Aided Surgery is opening new scenarios in medicine aimed to improve the patient's care by advancing the utilisation of computer into surgical practice which have already provided practical application particularly in orthopaedics and neurosurgery. The recent developments in multimodal 3D medical imaging techniques which are providing with great accuracy and the necessary resolution a clear representation on a multiscale basis of the morphological and functional features of the internal organs and tissues constitute the necessary basis. The interdisciplinary collaboration between engineers and physicians provide new concepts and applications in this field derived from digital modelling and simulation methods for the analysis of complex systems, sensors and motion capture technologies, robotics and mechatronics. Three main phases are described in this paper. The preoperative phase where the information derived from multimodal imaging of each patient is processed by proper mathematical models and simulation techniques to identify the best way to operate (surgical planning). The intraoperative phase where the surgeon is assisted by a "virtual fusion" of the preoperative images of the internal organs of the patients with the effective position of operative instruments recorded by proper trackers. Finally the postoperative phase to evaluate the efficacy of the treatments and the patient's follow up.


In order to study the effect of modified atmosphere storage on extending shelf life of mushrooms, oyster mushroom and Shiitake were wrapped with polyethylene film (PE, ), and stored at . Mushrooms packed with conventional hardboard box (4kg) lost marketability within days due to weight loss, shrinkage, browning, spore formation and/or mycellium growth. PE-packing could prevent or retard the deterioration of the mushrooms in the aspects of appearance, texture, discoloration, and microbial contamination. This situation can be best characterized by the reduced respiration rate resulted from the elevated level of carbon dioxide and the reduced level of oxygen in the bag. Although the appearance of the oyster mushroom was maintained for one month, its shelf life was limited to 15 days because of tissue softening. Discoloration of the pileus of shiitake mushroom appears to be the most important factor to determine its marketability. For example, extension of shelf life of Dongo was limited to 15 days, principally due to the browning of the pileus. Shelf life of Hawgo whose color of the pileus changed little over the experimental period, however, could be extened to more than one month.


One of the extensively investigated issues for magnetic force microscopy is its low resolution as compared to other scanning probe techniques such as atomic force microscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. This is mainly caused by the fact that the magnetically responsive coating covers the entire body of the tip as well as the relatively large sample-tip spacing. Recently, we have developed a new type of tip which effectively has a magnetic coating only at the tip apex and at the same time can be used at a smaller sample-tip distance due to its low moment. In this paper, the superior performance of the new tip is studied theoretically using an analytical model. The analytical results are supported by the experimental data.


The Free Quality School Education (FQSE) is a critical priority policy of the Government of Sierra Leone for national transformation through education. The Government of Sierra Leone is aware of the influence and power of education in national development and, therefore, has prioritized education as its flagship program. This paper is to establish a positive effort made by the Government of Sierra Leone in its commitment to implement and bring to reality the Free Quality School Education countrywide. The paper introduced in brief the historical flashback of education in Sierra Leone, followed by the changes in the education system. The researcher viewed some problems of education in Sierra Leone over the years. In an overview, the paper went on to demonstrate the Government's effort in promoting education since independence in 1961. As a point of clarification, the paper reviewed the knowledge of Quality Education. In a clearer picture, the paper views the result and analysis of Government commitment in the Free Quality School Education. The methods used for the research were interviews, observation, discussion, and information from the internet and books (secondary data). The paper highlighted the conclusion with recommendations. Article visualizations:


This paper proposes a rehabilitation assitant system equipped with a capacitor sensor array for persons exhibiting upper-extremity motor impairments. The capacitive sensor array utilizes mutual capacitance to quantize patients' hand motions on a rehabilitation activity board. The rehabilitation board is equipped with an accelerometer to detect the slope of the activity board, since different inclinations of motions may affect the motor quality post trauma. A microcontroller – a Texas Instruments MSP430FR2633 – is used to measure capacitance. A secondary microcontroller – an ATmega 328P with the Arduino firmware – is used to retrieve capacitive sensor and accelerometer data, and transfer data via Bluetooth to a web capable edge device. The edge device hosts a webpage displaying the patients hand positions and the slope position of the activity board to enable visual feedback during and after rehabilitation sessions.


The thesis explores the diverse ways in which a new Korean Buddhist movement that calls itself the "Ch'ŏnt'ae Jong (Tiantai school)" has appropriated and deployed traditional patriarchal narratives of the Chinese Tiantai tradition to legitimize claims to succession of its modern founder, the Korean monk Sangwŏl (1922-1974). Sangwŏl began his community as early as 1945; however, at that time his community simply referred to itself as the "teaching of Sangwŏl" or "teaching of Kuinsa," after the name of his monastery. It was not until the official change of the name to Ch'ŏnt'ae in 1967 that Korean Buddhists found a comprehensive and identifiable socio-historical space for Sangwŏl and his teaching. Key to that transition was not only his adapting the historically prominent name "Ch'ŏnt'ae," but his retrospective creation of a lineage of Chinese and Korean patriarchs to whom he could trace his succession and the origin of his school. It is through this kind of historicist rhetorical maneuver that he achieved legitimation for himself and his teaching in the eyes of the Korean public. The aim of my thesis is to explore the multiple ways in which the figure of Sangwŏl has been presented as a "Tiantai patriarch" in the cultural construction of modern Tiantai Buddhist school in Korea. Those forms of presentation include crafting of hagiographies, lineage narratives that leap centuries and connect him to Chinese patriarchs, creation of rituals for celebration of patriarchal death anniversaries, construction of patriarch halls and images, sponsorship of modern scholarship and research, and even film and digital media. As "New Wine in an Old Bottle," the symbolic manipulations of modern Korean Ch'ŏnt'ae order look to strategies of religious authorization that have been used by various Buddhist groups in China and East Asia from as early as 6th century China and as recently as the Buddhist sects of Meiji Japan and the Chogye order of post-colonial Korea.


The long term management of a production asset raises several major issues among which rank the technical management of the plant, its economics and the fleet level perspective one has to adopt. Decision makers are therefore faced with the need to define long term policies (up to the end of asset operation) which take into account multiple criteria including safety (which is paramount) and performance. In this paper we first remind the reader of the EDF three-level methodology for asset management. We then focus on the knowledge model and on the software tools that implement this methodology in order to gather, preserve, share, maintain and exploit the expert knowledge needed for asset management and to allow decision makers to define, evaluate and analyze long term plant operation and maintenance policies. Lastly, as the quality of the processed plant level evaluations (operation & maintenance strategies are evaluated, at a plantlevel, through a set of technical and economic indicators) and their interpretation relies on the quality of the knowledge captured in the tools, we focus on the definition of a "adaptative" user interface — based on Electronic Structured Documents — that allows technical/strategic experts and decision makers to consult the useful pieces of knowledge in a context dependent way. Such an interface, which, in a near future, should be fully implemented in the tools will facilitate the validation of the knowledge-base content and the analysis of the processed results.© 2007 ASME


Recently reported normal values for esophageal motility obtained by high‐resolution manometry (HRM) using a system with a Unisensor catheter were significantly different from those obtained by the ManoScan®, which could result in a wrong diagnosis. To clarify whether these differences were due to system or subject differences, we compared the manometric parameter values between ManoScan and a new system with a Unisensor catheter (Starlet) in the same subjects.


Through mergers and acquisitions, health care organizations are making large bets about the future of the U.S. medical landscape and the types of organizations that can ultimately succeed in it. In particular, there's been a recent uptick in vertical integration, such as hospitals buying physician practices and insurers buying providers (1). Emblematic of these changes is the recently announced merger of CVS and Aetna, which would be among the more interesting recent turns in the reorganization of U.S. health care. CVS is a pharmacy chain, a dominant pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), and runs more than 1000 retail clinics. Aetna is a large insurer, offering health plans for Medicare beneficiaries, as well as serving the employer market. Both firms sponsor Medicare prescription drug plans. We can view their merger through 2 different but complementary lenses. First, it brings together an insurer and a PBM. This would not be the first time an insurer decided to use an internal PBM: Anthem is ending its contract with the PBM Express Scripts, and UnitedHealth Group and Humana run their own PBMs. Pharmacy benefit managers manage the prescription drug portion of health care plans with an ostensible focus on decreasing drug spending. This includes designing formularies to encourage generic (rather than brand) drug use and negotiating with pharmaceutical manufacturers for price reductions through rebates. Although these roles have theoretical benefits, recent consolidation in the PBM market gives rise to perverse incentives that harm consumers. Specifically, recent work suggests that the opaque pricing system encourages PBMs and pharmaceutical manufacturers to charge higher list prices to capture a portion of the rebates as profits (2). The other way to view the CVSAetna merger is that it marries an insurer with providers (in this case, retail clinics), mirroring moves by UnitedHealth Group, which recently announced purchase of DaVita Medical Group to join its growing roster of physicians and surgical care centers. This strategy also broadly follows more traditional provider-sponsored health plans like Kaiser Permanente and Intermountain Healthcare. These 2 types of changes provide opportunities for more integrated care and value-based insurance design. By more closely integrating pharmacy benefit management with nondrug coverage, the CVSAetna deal could benefit consumers, as suggested by studies of Medicare and Medicaid. For example, Lavetti and Simon (3) found that compared with comprehensive Medicare Advantage plans (which are responsible for the cost of drug and nondrug benefits), stand-alone drug plans require higher cost sharing for drugs likely to help patients avoid adverse health events (the cost for which those plans are not liable). Starc and Town (4) also found that Medicare's stand-alone drug plans cover drugs less generously than they otherwise would if they accounted for nondrug health care spending, increasing the cost of traditional Medicare by over $400 million per year. Dranove and colleagues (5) found that when states shift provision of Medicaid drug benefits to private organizations responsible for managing nondrug benefits too, program spending declines. Combining CVS's retail clinics with Aetna could enhance care coordination if there are value-increasing investments either firm could make independently but don't because they would only financially benefit the other firm (6). For example, to date the types of services offered at a CVS clinic are primarily those for acute conditions likely to generate additional revenue from the CVS retail pharmacy. But this may not be the best use of clinic space for an integrated provider-insurer or consumers. After the merger, CVS could increase efforts to provide care that reduces future health care use and expense, perhaps by staffing its retail clinics with a wider range of clinicians who are equipped to manage patients with more complex chronic conditions, such as diabetes and asthma. These visits may not generate additional prescriptions or other direct revenue but could decrease the rate of adverse events, such as hospitalizations. Absent integration or a complicated contract, CVS would incur the cost for such efforts, but the primary financial benefits would be for an insurer like Aetna that would avoid the costly emergency care episodes. Likewise, Aetna could use its claims data to identify patients likely to benefit from check-ups at CVS retail clinics and encourage them to do so. For that, Aetna would incur a cost it might not recoup, but CVS would benefit. Key questions raised by the CVSAetna merger are whether cost savings will actually materialize, and if so, will they be shared with consumers? It is unclear whether coordinated benefits that CVSAetna may offer would lead to lower health care costs. Evidence from the expansion of retail clinics is that they increase use (7). More convenient access to care may be what consumers want, but it may not save money. What CVS and Aetna are betting on is that a more coordinated retail clinic expansion that carefully considers the potential savings to an insurer might be cost-saving. We may also be concerned that any savings realized by the merger won't benefit customers because of a lack of competition among insurers. However, minimum loss ratio regulations included in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which require insurers to spend at least 80% to 85% of revenue on medical care, limit how much profit CVSAetna could retain. The regulation can also encourage higher health care prices because it provides a larger base from which to compute allowable profits. When an insurer owns a provider, it might increase prices precisely to make it appear as though its insurance division is earning smaller profits. The recent set of health care mergers and acquisitions in general, and CVSAetna in particular, exemplify a rapidly evolving health care landscape. In this new world, consumers will likely face more limited choices but possibly a more coordinated set of benefits, with no guarantee of savings. The question remains whether that is, on net, a beneficial tradeoff.


A great many titanium alloys have two-fold ultimate tensile strength of a commercialy pure titanium, but such alloys ate few that can be used at elevated temperature and are creep resistant.Alloys containing aluminium, haveing a considerably higher transformation range, and the presence of this element also has the important effect of increasing the strength of the & phase at elevated temperature. these alloys can be easily welded and are heat resistant. Then alloys containing aluminium can be substituted for stainless steel.In this report, the present developing investigations with reference to the properties of Ti-Al alloys in U. S. A. and our results are described.


Modern psychology and psychoanalysis tell us about the importance of desire. But what is the meaning of desire? Can it account for itself? An older tradition reminds us of the distinction between desire and what is "desirable." In some philosophical perspectives, desire and the desirable are sharply separated, leading to the dichotomies between "is and ought" or "inclination and duty." However, can something be truly desirable if it is not also somehow desired? Some philosophers have tried to build a linkage; Aristotle famously connected "orexis" and "arete." This paper turns to Nicolaus of Cusa who delineated a path of existential transformation and pedagogy: the search for truth and goodness animated by love. Two aspects are singled out: his emphasis on concrete experiential learning; and his concern with interfaith imagination as a pathway to peace.


During proteotoxic stress, a pathway known as the heat shock response (HSR) is induced to maintain protein-folding homeostasis, or proteostasis. Previously, we identified the Caenorhabditis elegans GATAD2 ortholog, dcp-66, as a novel regulator of the HSR. Here, we extend these findings to show that dcp-66 positively regulates the HSR at the cellular, molecular, and organismal levels. As GATAD2 is a subunit of the NuRD chromatin remodeling complex, we examined other NuRD subunits and found that the let-418 (CHD4) nucleosome repositioning core also regulates the HSR. However, let-418 acts as a negative regulator of the HSR, in contrast to positive regulation by dcp-66. The divergent effects of these two NuRD subunits extend to the regulation of other stress responses including oxidative, genotoxic, and ER stress. Furthermore, a transcriptomic approach reveals additional divergently regulated pathways, including innate immunity and embryogenesis. Taken together, this work establishes new insights into the role of NuRD subunits in organismal physiology. We incorporate these findings into a molecular model whereby different mechanisms of NuRD recruitment to promoters can result in the divergent effects of NuRD subunits.


The purpose of this review is to broaden the discussion by exploring the common genesis of the endeavors and the similarities in the environments in which they operate. A comparative analysis between situations in Third World and First World cities is made, under the premise that transportation needs are about the same. The principal emphasis of this review is to define the attitude that governments take toward locally generated private services.


In this paper, by presenting bi-periodic Lucas numbers as a binomial sum, we introduce the bi-periodic incomplete Lucas numbers. After that, by using the bi-periodic incomplete Lucas numbers, we derive the recurrence relation and the generating function of these numbers as well as investigated some properties over them. Additionally, as another main result of this paper, we give some relations between bi-periodic incomplete Lucas numbers and bi-periodic incomplete Fibonacci numbers.


Fire and herbivory are fundamental top‐down processes, structuring grass–tree ratios in ecosystems across a diversity of climates. Both are plant consumers that can strongly control the recruitment of woody seedlings and saplings to taller height classes. Without consumer control, many grass‐dominated ecosystems would convert into woodlands or forests. While extensively studied in savannas, few have explored the effects of these disturbance regimes on woody recruitment under temperate conditions. We exposed saplings of five common European tree species to fire and herbivory in a full factorial experiment in a savanna‐like wood‐pasture. After 3 years, we evaluated the effects of fire and herbivory on tree sapling survival and height increment. The tree species used, varying in traits and in expected response to fire and herbivory, were Scots pine Pinus sylvestris, Norway spruce Picea abies, European oak Quercus robur, Silver birch Betula pendula and Small‐leaved lime Tilia cordata. Fire and herbivory had a negative effect on sapling survival for all species except for Q. robur, which was not affected by fire. Both processes reduced height increment of B. pendula, while only herbivory reduced the height increment of P. sylvestris and Q. robur. At the same time, B. pendula and P. sylvestris had some of the highest increments, together with P. abies, which had unaffected height increment in all treatments. T. cordata, on the other hand, had a negative height increment across all treatments. Overall, the combined effect of fire and herbivory was similar to the effect of herbivory alone on both survival and height increment, indicating no additional effect of fire when herbivores were present. Synthesis. Our experiment showed how fire and herbivory can strongly affect the recruitment of European temperate tree saplings on a wood‐pasture, potentially leading to comparable consumer control described for ecosystems elsewhere (e.g. savannas). Two strategies to deal with fire and herbivory were identified: tolerance (Q. robur) and avoidance (P. sylvestris and B. pendula). We conclude that both fire and herbivory may have been important drivers of structure and species composition in open ecosystems in temperate Europe in the past.


Having recently proposed a new method for synthesizing timed automata from a set of scenarios, in this paper we propose a novel clock allocation algorithm that minimizes the number of clocks in the constructed timed automata. Scenarios, formally defined as Timed Event Sequences, together with mode graphs are used to describe partial behaviors of real-time systems. Given a set of scenarios in the form of Timed Event Sequences and a mode graph, our synthesis method constructs a minimal, deterministic, acyclic timed automaton, with a minimal num-


This chapter focuses on what seems specific to pulpit oratory in the eighteenth century, its break into sentiment and sensibility: an inclination to cherish the fifth department of ancient oratory, that of actio or pronuntiatio , while dismissing all but the most general rules on the subject. It describes how French thinking on delivery, especially in the work of Le Faucheur, was received during the eighteenth century in England, Germany and the Netherlands. Le Faucheur was the first author to successfully merge the orators delivery with notions of civility. The Traitte was to become a major influence on the British elocutionary movement, with its beginnings traced to 1702, the year in which the first English translation of Le Faucheurs manual came out. Compared to other German texts on sacred oratory, Ewalds innovations were remarkable. Keywords: England; Germany; Le Faucheur; Netherlands; pronuntiatio ; pulpit oratory; Traitte


Trends in groundwater level changes in small forest catchments located in Wielkopolska region were analysed on the basis on data collected for many years of groundwater levels observations. The observations were carried out from 2000 to 2010 hydrological year in Marianka Siemiańska and Laski forest district as well as in Puszcza Zielonka. The groundwater levels were measured in soil profiles located in different forest habitats: fresh, moist and swamp forest. Changes in groundwater level determined using the Mann-Kendall test were found to differ significantly between the catchment studied. Statistically insignificant decrease in groundwater levels was observed at all forest sites in the catchment area in Marianka Siemiańska forest district. In the catchment area of the Hutka watercourse the groundwater level showed a statistically significant decreasing tendency in Puszcza Zielonka in swamp and fresh mixed coniferous forest. It may indicate a decrease in water resources and implies the need of groundwater level monitoring. A statistically insignificant increase in groundwater level was observed in the wells in moist mixed broadleaved forest in the area of pond catchment in Laski forest district, this trend was interpreted as a result of the clearcutting made in this area.


In this paper, I develop a methodology for inferring the transmission rate and reproductive value of an epidemic based on genotype data from a sample of infected hosts. The epidemic is modeled by a birth-death process describing the transmission dynamics in combination with an infinite-allele model describing the evolution of alleles. I provide a recursive formulation for the probability of the allele frequencies in a sample of hosts, and a Bayesian framework for estimating transmission rates and reproductive values based on observed allele frequencies. Using the Bayesian method, I reanalyze tuberculosis data from the US. I estimate a net transmission rate of 0 . 19 / year [0 . 13 , 0 . 24] and a reproductive value of 1 . 02 [1 . 01 , 1 . 04]. I demonstrate that the allele frequency probability under the birth-death model does not follow the well-known Ewens' sampling formula which holds under the Kingman's coalescent.


Addresses the relationship between organizational identification and organizational commitment. Tested the following three hypotheses in relation to professional accountants: self‐image congruence has a direct effect on organizational identification; organizational identification has a direct effect on organizational commitment; and the organizational‐identification effect on commitment is moderated by attitudes of significant others, work abilities/experience, other options and alternatives, competing motives, and perception of outcomes. Four international Certified Public Accountant (CPA) firms participated in the study. A random sample of 335 CPAs within these firms was selected and a survey questionnaire was mailed to them. Results did not provide support for any of the hypotheses. Instead, the results show that self‐image congruence may have a direct effect on organizational commitment, which in turn may have a direct effect on organizational identification.


Summary
Infectivity studies have shown that the multiplication of tobacco necrosis virus can be inhibited by cycloheximide but not by chloramphenicol, and that it is likely that cycloheximide inhibits the synthesis of at least two proteins necessary for multiplication.


The PANDORA-ID-NET consortium aims to build capacity for effective outbreak response in sub-Saharan Africa. Part of this mission is to develop a real-time data sharing platform for disease outbreaks that leverages centralised data management and uses mobile technologies for data gathering and feedback. We have committed to using open-source technologies, so that the platform can be deployed on regional IT infrastructure and further developed by local staff, and collected data can be stored and processed in the region of origin. This abstract aims to describe how we identified a state of the art open-source system that fulfils these criteria, and the process of how we are extending it to function within the current infectious disease control framework in Tanzania, under our partnership with the Ifakara Health Institute (IHI).

 To find state of the art open-source systems matching our criteria, we performed a rapid review of the literature. We screened 1022 articles and found 15 candidate systems, out of which only SORMAS satisfied the criteria. SORMAS was developed jointly by the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the Nigeria CDC, and was modeled on Nigeria's successful response to the Ebola outbreak. The system can be used for case management, contact tracing, surveillance, and laboratory sample management. Data is collected and synchronised using Android mobile devices (both online and offline) and data aggregation and analysis are performed in real-time via a web application

 Having chosen SORMAS, we established a collaboration between the SORMAS developer team and the PANDORA team. IHI are guiding ongoing work on adapting SORMAS to the Tanzanian health facility geography and the country's case definition guidelines for notifiable diseases.

 Once adapted for Tanzania, SORMAS will fill an unoccupied niche in infectious disease control, improving the quality of collected case data and enabling better outbreak response

 A state of the art, mobile-based, open-source outbreak management and infectious disease surveillance system (SORMAS) is being deployed in Tanzania. We outline our experience with piloting SORMAS in Tanzania, building on the experience of our Nigerian and German partners, who rolled out this system nationally in Nigeria and other African countries.


The traditional PFC control adopts the PI algorithm of the double-loop structure, but the PI parameter designed at this time is aimed at the inductor current continuous mode (CCM). When the PFC enters a heavy or light load, the converter inevitably enters the inductor current discontinuous mode (DCM). If the control parameters of CCM are still used at this time, the system may become unstable and reduce load response speed. Therefore, an optimized predictive current control is proposed, which calculates the duty cycle in CCM and DCM separately in advance, and then adopts the corresponding optimal duty cycle according to the detected inductor current conduction mode. With this algorithm, the PFC can operate in mixed conduction mode. It has a wider load range and faster load response speed than PI. Finally, through PLECS, the algorithm is verified by simulation.


Reflects on developments in the mid to late 1980s, which saw booming trading conditions for the retailing sector, and none more so than electrical goods retailing which underwent many changes both to the structure of the industry and the way it went about its business. Describes the circumstances that led to these developments and the results that were achieved. Sets out to consider what might be learnt from the experience of electrical goods retailing in the 1980s that might be of value in the 1990s.


In this work we present a case study of geoelectric time series collected at the Mexican Pacific coast, which is a very active seismic zone linked to the Middle American tectonic trench. The analysis of the data sets is by means of two methods: The so-called natural time domain (NTD) and the detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA). The analyzed signals are of seismo electric signals (SES) type previously reported in Greece prior to earthquakes (EQs) of relevant magnitude. In our case we analyze SES likely linked to two earthquakes of M=6.6 and M=7.4 respectively. In both cases we find that the correlations contained in the signals increase prior to the EQ-occurrences and the power spectrum calculated in NTD are consistent with studies previously reported.


The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the alleviative effects of two doses (0.5 and 1.0 gm/kg body weight) of green and black tea aqueous extracts (GTE and BTE, respectively) on articular/extra-articular complications in rat adjuvant-induced arthritis (AIA). Arthritic rats received distilled water as vehicle, indomethacin (1.0 mg/kg body weight; a non-steroidal/anti-inflammatory drug), or tea aqueous extracts orally/daily for 28 days started from the day of arthritis induction (day 0). Other arthritic rats received tea aqueous extracts orally/daily for 14 days started from the day of arthritis onset (day 15). Both tea aqueous extracts significantly suppressed (but with different degrees) the arthritis severity/complications in AIA rat model especially at the high dose and when the treatment started from day 0. Only the high dose of GTE (from day 0) significantly alleviated, as indomethacin (53.32 ± 15.41 and 48.35 ± 17.09, respectively), all complications shown in arthritic rats including body weight loss, anemia, arthritic score, and synovial/hepatic tissues lipid peroxidation (P<0.05-0.001) through significantly increasing food intake (P<0.001) and cellular antioxidants (P<0.05-0.001): reduced glutathione level and catalase, glutathione peroxidase and superoxide dismutase activities. Therefore, tea (especially green tea) may be useful in the management of rheumatoid arthritis complications.


ences depend upon adequate nurturing of both body and mind. Infants may be characterized by an intense set of needs; they are eager to obtain calories, protein, and fluids in a world that is emotionally supportive in nature. Extensive studies by sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists have addressed the relationship of food intake and social behaviors from birth to death. A general conclusion is that eating behavior is fundamentally linked to the need for security.' In work with severely disturbed children, Bettelheim observed that these children frequently chose starvation when food was offered under conditions that undermined the self-respect of the individual child.' Forced feedings do not necessarily restore children to good health, and the same may be true for adults. Therefore, socially oriented food programs such as food stamps and assisted-feeding programs may fail if the psychology of eating is not adequately applied. In a fundamental study of psychology, Abraham Maslow's work with motivation and the hierarchy of needs, food is identified as one of the basic human needs, which takes priority over other needs.' At the next level of need, food may be consumed to achieve a sense of security and physical comfort, and at the third level it may provide a sense of belonging when family and social events or rituals are available. Self-esteem, at the fourth level of need, may require that children and adults adopt suitable measures in order to feed themselves. At the highest level, creative cooking and nutrition education may be attempted as ways of achieving personal fulfillment and satisfaction.


Simple Summary The bolas spider Mastophora hutchinsoni creates a small glue droplet attached to a web, called a bolas, which it flicks at a moth flying nearby. When it makes contact with the moth, the glue droplet soaks into the moth's scales and adheres the moth to the bolas and the spider holding it. Here, we use high-speed video to record the successful capture of moths so that we can understand the physics involved in this system and how the bolas works. In our videos, we found that the moth hovers next to the spider before being caught, minimizing the kinetic energy of the bolas upon impact. This makes the glue droplet's job much easier, giving it time to spread into the moth's scales. We noticed during capture that the glue droplet stretched like a spring as it was flicked and when it missed, it sprung back into the shape of a sphere. The glue droplets are incredibly elastic with the ability to stick to dirty surfaces. Studying their diversity, understanding their composition, and measuring their material properties are beneficial for understanding the evolution and creation of bioadhesives. Abstract Spiders use various combinations of silks, adhesives, and behaviors to ensnare and trap prey. A common but difficult to catch prey in most spider habitats are moths. They easily escape typical orb-webs because their bodies are covered in sacrificial scales that flake off when in contact with the web's adhesives. This defense is defeated by spiders of the sub-family of Cyrtarachninae, moth-catching specialists who combine changes in orb-web structure, predatory behavior, and chemistry of the aggregate glue placed in those webs. The most extreme changes in web structure are shown by bolas spiders, who create a solitary capture strand containing only one or two glue droplets at the end of a single thread. They prey on male moths by releasing pheromones to draw them within range of their bolas, which they flick to ensnare the moth. We used a high-speed video camera to capture the behavior of the bolas spider Mastophora hutchinsoni. We calculated the kinematics of spiders and moths in the wild to model the physical and mechanical properties of the bolas during prey capture, the behavior of the moth, and how these factors lead to successful prey capture. We created a numerical model to explain the mechanical behavior of the bolas silk during prey capture. Our kinematic analysis shows that the material properties of the aggregate glue bolas of M. hutchinsoni are distinct from that of the other previously analyzed moth-specialist, Cyrtarachne akirai. The spring-like behavior of the M. hutchinsoni bolas suggests it spins a thicker liquid.


Review(s) of: Freehand: Recent Australian drawing, by Curator Linda Michael, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 25 November 2010 - 6 March 2011.


Background:
 Hypertension is highly prevalent in underserved communities and is associated with excess cardiovascular mortality. Patient Centered Care (PCC) programs are essential to achieve adequate blood pressure control and modify CVD risk. Use of the Internet to report self measured BP is one method to achieve better BP control. However, in underserved populations, Internet access is limited. We tested whether low income and lack of home Internet access limits BP management with a telemedicine program.

 Methods:
 Inner-city, primarily African-American (AAs) patients (N=130) with uncontrolled HTN (BP>140/90 mmHg) who are followed by primary care physicians were randomized to usual care or Telemedicine plus usual care. BP, weight, BMI, blood glucose, lipids, tobacco use, and physical activity were measured at baseline and at 6 months. Income level and availability of Internet were recorded for each patient. We divided the income level in five groups: 1) $15,000-$24,999, 2) $25,000-34,999, 3) $35,000-44,999, 4) $45,000-54,999, and 5) >$55,000. We correlated each group with Internet availability at home, age, sex, race, blood pressure, smoking, and hyperlipidemia.

 Results:
 Baseline demographics include age 58±17 years, BMI 33±8 kg/m
 2
 , SBP: 152±13 mmHg, DBP: 86±11 mmHg, FBS: 112±46 mg/dL, HbA1C: 6.3±1.6%, total cholesterol: 178±47, HDL: 50±16, LDL: 99±47. Sixty eight %were African American, 19% were smokers, 32% diabetics, and 42% had hyperlipedemia. Home internet was available to 46%. 52% fell under the low income groups (1+2). When compared between the income groups, group 1 and 2 showed significant differences (p=0.004 and p=0.013) with group 5 (p=0.002) in terms of availability of Internet at home. Patients with no internet access used inter-active computerized telephone system for communication with our center.

 Conclusions:
 Many inner city patients could not utilize Internet based telemedicine to take a more active role in their own health care through self-monitoring, education, reinforcement and feedback. They were able to use telephone based communication to benefit from patient centered care.


A matching prior at level 1 – α is a prior such that an associated 1 – α credible region is also a 1 – α confidence set. We study the existence of matching priors for general families of credible regions. Our main result gives topological conditions under which matching priors for specific families of credible regions exist. Informally, we prove that, on compact parameter spaces, a matching prior exists if the so-called rejection-probability function is jointly continuous when we adopt the Wasserstein metric on priors. In light of this general result, we observe that typical families of credible regions, such as credible balls, highest-posterior density regions, quantiles, etc., fail to meet this topological condition. We show how to design approximate posterior credible balls and highest-posterior-density regions that meet these topological conditions, yielding matching priors. Finally, we evaluate a numerical scheme for computing approximately matching priors based on discretization and iteration. The proof of our main theorem uses tools from nonstandard analysis and establishes new results about the nonstandard extension of the Wasserstein metric that may be of independent interest.


Coal as a porous media,the properties of its pores will affect the enrichment and diffusion of coal bed gas directly so that it is very essential to discuss the pore characteristics of coal.By using the data from the mer-cury-injection tests and low temperature nitrogen adsorption tests,the authors analyzed the pore shape,types and distribution of the Upper Permian coal samples in western Guizhou systematically.Moreover,the geological control of the pore occurrence in the coal reservoir was discussed in the light of the coal maceral and rank.The results indicate that the porosity of the coal reservoir ranges from 1.4% to 9.5%,and decreases from the north to the south.Most types of pores are adsorption pores.In addition,semi-enclosed pores are the major ones in the high-rank coal.Comparing with the low-rank coal,the permeability and connectivity of the high-rank coal are relatively poor,but better than those in Qinshui basin generally.The coal rank is the main factor which affects the occurrence of the porosity in the coal seams.That is to say,the porosity shows the high-low-high tendency with increase of coal rank.


The non-lined and cut-lined incidents in the electric network make AC220V go up to 380 V,which lead to destroy a great deal of appliance and cause fires.This paper introduces a new design of multi-functional circuit to monitor which can prevent short-circuit and serious over current to reach overvoltage protection.It can protect and supervise regular operating of the electro-equipment effectively.


----------------------------INDICATIONS AND USAGE--------------------------TOPAMAX is indicated for:  Epilepsy: initial monotherapy in patients ≥2 years of age with partial onset or primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures (1.1); adjunctive therapy for adults and pediatric patients (2 to 16 years of age) with partial onset seizures or primary generalized tonic-clonic seizures, and for patients ≥2 years of age with seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (1.2)  Prophylaxis of migraine in patients 12 years of age and older (1.3)


Abstract : This report describes the development and evaluation of prototype hands-on equipment, job sample performance tests for a high skilled technical Military Occupation Specialty. An electronic maintenance MOS (26C20) was used as the research vehicle. The results lead to the conclusion that valid and reliable performance tests could be constructed, but that equipment, facilities, and standardization requirements reduce the feasibility of their use at other than ideal location, such as a U.S. Army school.


Previous area-based stereo matching algorithms find the disparity by first computing the sum of squared differences (SSD) between corresponding points using a rectangular window, and then searching the position of the minimum SSD within the disparity range. These algorithms generate relatively many matching errors around depth discontinuities, since the SSD function may fail to search for the minimum because of varying disparity profiles in such areas. In this paper, in order to improve the matching accuracy around the depth discontinuities, a new correlation function based on robust estimation technique is proposed for stereo matching. In addition, while previous stereo algorithms utilize a single rectangular window for computing the correlation function, the proposed matching algorithm utilizes 4-directional line masks additionally to reduce the matching errors further. It has been turned out that the proposed algorithm reduces matching errors around depth discontinuities significantly. Experimental results are presented in this paper, comparing the performance of the proposed technique with those of previous algorithms using both synthetic and real images.


Key Clinical Message When massive bleeding is anticipated during endoscopic sinonasal tumor removal, a vessel sealing device is useful for successful tumor removal.


Let X be a topological space, E a real or complex topological vector space, and C(X, E) the vector space of all bounded continuous E-valued functions on X. The notion of the strict topology on C(X, E) was first introduced by Buck (1) in 1958 in the case of X locally compact and E a locally convex space. In recent years a large number of papers have appeared in the literature concerned with extending the results contained in Buck's paper (1); see, for example, (14), (15), (3), (4), (12), (2), and (6). Most of these investigations have been concerned with generalising the space X and taking E to be the scalar field or a locally convex space.


the Christian relationship to food should be. Although the historical examination of vegetarians in the Unity Movement in the late nineteenth century contained a short exploration of why parts of the movement adopted vegetarianism on moral grounds, an overall discussion of the morality of food in Christianity is conspicuously absent. The range of topics is impressive, but the lack of moral consideration of the role of food is unfortunate as it begs the question: Are any of these attitudes to food morally preferable as a Christian? Although this is not one of the questions that the authors set out to answer, some consideration of this issue would have added depth to an otherwise excellent historical work. Overall this is a thoughtful and interesting historical look at the relationship between food and faith in Christian history, and as a historical reference work it has much to commend it.


This paper presents a novel framework to enable automatic re-training of the supervisory powertrain control strategy for hybrid electric vehicles using supervised machine learning. The aim of re-training is to customize the control strategy to a user-specific driving behavior without human intervention. The framework is designed to update the control strategy at the end of a driving task. A combination of dynamic programming and supervised machine learning is used to train the control strategy. The trained control strategy denoted as SML is compared to an online-implementable strategy based on the combination of the optimal operation line and Pontryagin's minimum principle denoted as OOL-PMP, on the basis of fuel consumption. SML consistently performed better than OOL-PMP, evaluated over five standard drive cycles. The EUDC performance was almost identical while on FTP75 the OOL-PMP consumed 14.7% more fuel than SML. Moreover, the deviation from the global benchmark obtained from dynamic programming was between 1.8% and 5.4% for SML and between 5.8% and 16.8% for OOL-PMP. Furthermore, a test-case was conducted to emulate a real-world driving scenario wherein a trained controller is exposed to a new drive cycle. It is found that the performance on the new drive cycle deviates significantly from the optimal policy; however, this performance gap is bridged with a single re-training episode for the respective test-case.


In this thesis we study a mathematical model that describes task partitioning in a colony of ants. This process of self-organization is modeled by a nonlinear coupled system of rst order autonomous ...


Several crash investigation studies recently produced opposing conclusions on the importance of abdominal injury risk to children. This paper deals with an in-depth and synthetic analysis of new accidentological data. In particular, the risk is studied by isolating parameters such as age and crash type, as well as restraining systems. The abdominal risk appears higher above 2 or 3 years old for children using poorly designed booster cushions or adult belts alone. The prevention of such a risk for protected children should be given by a pertinent restraint system assessment in frontal impact simulation. Unfortunately, the lack of biofidelity of the pelvic-abdominal segment of the current child dummies does not allow this child restraint assessment. Data for the improvement of dummy pelvises and for the definition of an abdominal criterion are provided in this paper. The authors propose the use of geometrical criteria to differentiate poor and acceptable booster cushions, as a temporary measure, until effective abdominal injury assessment becomes possible. (A) For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E203597.


In the present work, waste fish fat from fish processing industry is considered as an energy source for diesel engines. In this regard, catalytic cracking process is considered for this present study. The physical and chemical properties of biofuel are very close to diesel fuel. The experiments were conducted in a single cylinder diesel engine to study the performance, emission and combustion characteristics of biofuel. As a result, fuel undergoes good combustion and hence there is significant improvement in performance and reduction in emissions. Experimental results indicate a marginal increase in brake thermal efficiency at all loads compared to diesel fuel. The results show that despite of high NOx and CO2, the engine has lesser UHC, CO and PM than standard diesel fuel. The premixed and diffusion combustion duration is decreased with biofuel compared to diesel fuel. The engine was running smooth at all load conditions with biofuel. It is concluded that the biofuel derived from waste fish fat can be consider as a substitute for diesel fuel.Copyright © 2012 by ASME


This study expands on previous research on Spanish gas prices by investigating on the nature of the existing relationships with its main determinants and with special attention to Brent oil price relationship. The study focus on capturing the best representation of the main drivers behind SGP movements as a sensible step towards a more complex modelling exercise to explain Spanish gas pricing mechanics. In addition the analysis does also seek to better understand long-term persistence properties of SGP to obtain a view of how and to what extent those are transmitted through links with other primary energy commodities. Results from our investigation show that when comparing the different lags of Brent oil prices fitting normalized gas prices, the proxy best representing crude oil price is close to a Brent price lagging six months with validity for the next three months. Results for generic unit root tests indicate that all the series analysed are stationary in first differences logarithm what would open scope for using cointegration methods to study SGP long-run dynamics in the future.


The object of our study was to estimate Pb content in the legally-protected plant Hacquetia epipactis, as well as stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), in the nature reserves laid in the border zone between Poland and the Czech Republic. The following forms of Pb reserves in soil were determined for biotopes of these plants: pseudo-total content and speciation forms, as well as soluble and insoluble forms in dust settled on leaves. Migration of Pb was analyzed from forms directly bioavailable (exchangeable and adsorbed) and indirectly bioavailable (organically bound and carbonates) in soil in the soil-rhizome system. We also assessed the migration of Pb in settled dust system – leaves. Research shows that H. epipactis has the ability to accumulate Pb in the form of exchangeable and adsorbed Pb from the soil and soluble forms Pb in settled dust on the leaves.


The most important aim in the education system is to increase productivity and to construct permanent information. Here the basic factor is the qualification of teachers regarding the methods of instruction and materials of instruction. The teacher candidates must have the knowledge to use caricatures in worksheet papers which are mostly used as materials of instruction by teachers. The concept caricatures improve comprehension and develop profitable instruction environment. Instruction with humor is of great importance nowadays. To examine the attitudes regording instruction with caricature of teacher candidates in


EXPOSURE of the organism to stress or the administration of a toxic substance results in the elaboration of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) by the pituitary, which in turn stimulates the adrenal cortex. This phenomenon was originally postulated by Selye (1) and demonstrated more clearly by Long (1947, (2)), Sayers and Sayers (1949, (3)) and others. One of the manifestations of increased adrenocortical secretion is a decline in circulating eosinophils (Dalton and Selye, 1937, (4); and Thorn et al., 1948, (5)). In a patient with intact adrenals, the administration of ACTH causes a pronounced decline in circulating eosinophils. In the primary hypoadrenal state, however, only the injection of one of the 11-oxygen corticosteroids (compounds E and F) will produce an identical response (Hills et al, 1949, (6)). The administration of epinephrine, acting as a nonspecific stress, results in a fall in circulating eosinophils in the presence of an intact pituitary-adrenal axis. If the integrity of this system is b...


A passive 3rd harmonic RF system, being necessary for the Hefei Advanced Light Facility (HALF) storage ring under design, will be employed to lengthen the bunches for suppressing the intrabeam scattering and improving the beam lifetime. However, the transient beam loading due to the fundamental mode may significantly reduce the bunch lengthening. Since the scale of transient effects is proportional to R/Q, the effects of R/Q on bunch lengthening, in uniform fill pattern with the near-optimum condition fulfilled, are analyzed by multibunch multiparticle tracking simulation. It indicates that the passive superconducting harmonic cavity with a lower R/Q is preferred by HALF.


This paper analyzes the possible mechanisms responsible for the synergistic performances of micellar copper oxide and polymer additives on wear and friction characteristics in tribological systems. In order to evaluate the synergistic effect, a new wear-friction test apparatus was developed and used in the presented work. The sensor electronic system was designed and built for simultaneous measurements of the temperature in the lubricating zone and the normal force. These two parameters allowed estimating a healing efficiency of the viscoelastic nanolubricant. The effect of both rheological properties (both viscous and elastic properties) and the composition (concentration of nanoparticles to base liquid and a surfactant) of the metalworking nanofluids on the tribological process performances was determined.Copyright © 2005 by ASME


Farmers may adjust seeding rate across or within fields for a variety of reasons. The objectives of this study were to determine if seeding rate affected two late-season stem diseases, anthracnose stem blight (ASB) and pod and stem blight (PSB), and yield of soybean. Disease incidence, severity, and yield were collected from eight field trials in Iowa and Wisconsin during 2016 to 2018. ASB incidence exceeded 80% in most of the trials and significantly differed across years with the highest incidence in 2016 and 2018 compared with 2017, the year with the least precipitation. A similar trend across years was observed for ASB severity. The incidence and severity of PSB also differed across years, although PSB incidence and severity were always less than ASB. PSB was greatest in 2017 compared with the other two years. Seeding rate did not affect either disease. A seeding rate of 198,000 to 395,000 seeds/ha provided statistically similar yield. Weather conditions each year affected late-season stem diseases.


Individuals who are defined as having mental health problems according to the Social Work profession and the relationship with their families and groups falls not only within the area of psychiatric treatment but it is also based on many corporate structures and services outside of it. Psychosocial interventions are administered and welfare services are offered in order to improve the lives of those in the community who need to be protected and those with special needs and risk groups where a substantial proportion of the children, youth, elderly and disabled are victims of abuse or neglect. Psychosocial work has been done with marginalized minorities who are exposed to social stigmatization, gays, children pushed into crime, offenders and addicts for the past hundred years. Psychiatric social work continues to Show its effectiveness in many areas of health and social welfare through using practice methods such as individual counseling, community work, group work, social action, social planning and social policy. Extensive mental health knowledge is required in order to administer professional interventions with the groups mentioned above. Courses offered in social work education prepare graduates to practice in various areas and the comprehensiveness of the interventions brings Professional advantages in the field of mental health. This paper discusses the place of psychiatric social work in Turkey and the various aspects of the basic functions of social work profession in psychiatry.


Objective To assess the situation of sedentary behaviors on weekend and its association with overweight and obesity among junior middle school students in Yuhang district,in order to provide basis for the effective control of the overweight and obesity problems among junior middle school students. Methods Using a cluster sampling,1 139 students in three secondary schools were selected and the survey was conducted among the students and their parents. The questionnaire consisted of the basic information of the student and the family,time spent on sedentary behaviors,dietary habit,physical activity,sleeping hours and academic stress. Overweight and obesity was classified with BMI cutoff points from WGOC. Results The median of written homework time and screen entertainment time were three hours. Girls spent more time on reading and learning using computer than boys( P0.05). In a Logistic regression model,after control diet,physical activity,sleeping hours and academic stress,it was found that screen entertainment time more than 3 hours was the risk factor of boys' overweight and obesity( OR = 2.227,95%CI: 1.439-3.445),screen entertainment time more than 3 hours( OR = 1.923,95%CI: 1.034-3.577) and learning using computer more than50 minutesa( OR = 2.073,95%CI: 1.094-3.928) were the risk factors of girls' overweight and obesity.Conclusion The sedentary behavior time of Yuhang District students on weekend is too long. Screen-related behavior may increase the risk of overweight and obesity.


An electrostatically deformable membrane has been used to vary the cavity length of a Nd:YAG microchip laser, thereby tuning its optical frequency. Frequency tuning of as much as 6 GHz and tuning rates up to 20 kHz have been initially demonstrated using a 5-mm-wide membrane at a laser wavelength of 1.3 µm. Measurements on a 10-mm-wide membrane resulted in 8 µm of deflection for a 200-V voltage ramp, which indicates the potential for wavelength tuning a microchip laser > 10 nm.


ABSTRACT A group of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) (blaTEM, blaCTX-M-1, mecA, armA, qnrA, and qnrS) were analyzed by real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) in bacteriophage DNA isolated from feces from 80 healthy humans. Seventy-seven percent of the samples were positive in phage DNA for one or more ARGs. blaTEM, qnrA, and, blaCTX-M-1 were the most abundant, and armA, qnrS, and mecA were less prevalent. Free bacteriophages carrying ARGs may contribute to the mobilization of ARGs in intra- and extraintestinal environments.


Objective: In patients with solitary thyroid nodules, first approach is to confirm whether the nodule is benign or malignant. Commonly available investigations used in the evaluation include thyroid hormone assays, fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) and ultrasonography (USG) among others. These procedures are not without drawbacks. The present study was undertaken to compare the diagnostic efficacy of USG and FNAC in correlation with histopathology in euthyroid patients having solitary thyroid nodule. Study Design: A prospective study was carried out on 48 euthyroid cases of solitary thyroid nodule attending the Department of ENT, SMS Medical College & Hospital, Jaipur, during the period of March 2016 to November 2017. All patients underwent ultrasonography and fine-needle aspiration cytology. The results of FNAC and USG were correlated with post surgical histopathogical examination (HPE) of the specimens to evaluate their sensitivity and specificity by statistical methods. Results: Ultrasound was 87.5% sensitive & 92.50% specific in the detection of malignancy in solitary thyroid nodules while the fine needle aspiration cytology had a sensitivity of 87.50% & specificity of 100% in the same regard. Conclusion: It was found that FNAC is a safe, reliable and cost effective diagnostic modality with a high sensitivity and specificity and is the single best investigation for preoperative evaluation of solitary thyroid nodule to differentiate between benign and malignancy nodules.


ABSTRACT Background: The use of arts, literature and reflective writing has becoming increasingly popular in health professionals education. However, research examining its contribution as an educational strategy to promote narrative reasoning capabilities is limited, particularly from the students' perspective. Aim of the study: This study aimed to explore the final year physiotherapy students' perspectives about the contribution of arts, literature and reflective writing in facilitating narrative reasoning capabilities. Methods: Three focus group meetings using a semi-structured interview schedule were carried out to collect data. Focus group sessions were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to conduct the study and analyze the transcripts. Findings: Three themes emerged: (1) developmental understanding of the patients' experiences; (2) developmental understanding about the self; and (3) embedding reflection in clinical practice. Students emphasized an increasing capability to be sensitive and vicariously experience the patient's experience. Through reflective writing, students reported they became more capable of thinking critically about their practice and learning needs for continuous professional development. Finally, students highlighted the contribution of these strategies in making reflection part of their practice. Conclusions: Final year physiotherapy students reported enhanced skills of narrative reasoning. The findings support the inclusion of these strategies within the undergraduate physiotherapy curricula.


A sag section is a road segment on an expressway in which the vertical slope increases at a small but constant rate. Sag sections are the main traffic bottlenecks on Japanese expressways. Variations in individual car-following behavior are generally recognized as the key cause of traffic breakdown. This research was conducted to develop a quantitative description of variations in individual car-following behavior by obtaining car-following model parameter values from actual trajectories. A simple and reliable model calibration framework considering the effect of sag section is presented. Analysis of the parameter values obtained showed that 48.87% of drivers are affected by the vertical slope change. The parameter values were found to be concentrated in certain ranges rather than being evenly distributed. The dynamic performance of car-following behavior was also analyzed. The results were compared with the results of experiments conducted with a commercial Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) system. Of the drivers in the analyzed trajectories, 28.83% were found to outperform the commercial ACC system in preventing perturbation in the leading vehicle's motion from being amplified in the vehicle platoon. The distribution of the parameter values for these drivers was analyzed to identify potential improvements to the ACC system.


Frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radars are an important class of radar systems, and they are quite popular because of their simpler architecture and lower cost. A fundamental problem in FMCW radars is the nonlinearity of the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO), which results in a range of measurement errors, problems in multitarget detection, and degradation in synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. In this paper, we first introduce a novel upsampling theory, then propose new algorithms to improve range accuracy and multitarget detection capability. These improvements are demonstrated both by simulations and actual lab experiments on a 2.4 GHz radar system. There are several techniques reported in the literature for VCO nonlinearity correction, but what makes the proposed approach different is that we focus on real-time processing on low-cost hardware and optimize the design subject to this constraint. We first developed an optimal upsampling theory which is based on almost-causal finite impulse response (FIR) filters. Compared to the sinc-based noncausal interpolation-based upsamplers, the proposed approach is based on using interpolation filters with few number of coefficients. Furthermore, interpolators are trained for a specific class of signals rather than a highly general signal set. Therefore, the proposed approach can be implemented on lower-cost hardware and perform quite well compared to more expensive systems.


Discloses a method comprising forming two-layer polymeric film, the bilayer film comprising a polymer film oriented polypropylene and metallocene - catalyzed polypropylene film, wherein the metallocene - catalysed polypropylene film seal initiation temperature of 80-130 ℃. Also disclosed is a laminate which comprises a biaxially oriented polypropylene film, a metallocene - catalyst in the biaxially oriented polypropylene film provided - catalysed polypropylene film and a substrate, wherein the metallocene between the polypropylene film and the substrate.


Valuing young and innovative companies is a challenging task. Still, determining their economic value is one of the most important issues for investors and entrepreneurs engaged in venture capital financing. We analyze how venture capitalists determine enterprise values of their portfolio firms. We find that the anticipated magnitude of agency risk is a major value driver for young and innovative firms. However, even taking into account agency risks, accounting information and observable firm characteristics remain important value drivers. As a result we provide a valuation framework in which venture capital backed firms may be valued as precise as publicly traded firms. This shows that valuation of venture capital backed firms is not a guess. JEL classification: G24, G32


If Ω ⊂ Rn is an open set with the sufficiently regular boundary, then the Hardy inequality ∫ Ω |u|p%−p ≤ C ∫ Ω |∇u|p holds for u ∈ C∞ 0 (Ω) and 1 < p < ∞, where %(x) = dist(x, ∂Ω). The main result of the paper is a pointwise inequality |u| ≤ %M2%|∇u|, where on the right hand side there is a kind of maximal function. The pointwise inequality combined with the Hardy– Littlewood maximal theorem implies the Hardy inequality. This generalizes some recent results of Lewis and Wannebo.


The increasing need of the population of our country for the orthopedic dental help obliges specialists to pay much attention to improvement of quality of the carried-out orthopedic treatment. Optimum restoration of the lost functions of a dentoalveolar system at a full or partial secondary edentia is one of relevant problems of orthopedic stomatology. In the last decades a large amount of the main and auxiliary materials for production removable the plastinochnykh of artificial limbs appeared. This article presents a literature review of modern basic polymers for the manufacture of removable prostheses. Dentists are among the first in medicine began to use polymeric materials (early XX century). Many dentists today understand that without a thorough approach to the study of the properties of basic materials used in dentistry, it is difficult to provide quality dental care, which results in functional usefulness, aesthetics and durability. Most of the bases of dentures, today, are made of acrylic plastics, as evidenced by numerous scientific studies. In addition, modern requirements to the quality of the main chemical components of modern polymers are increasing. In this regard, the domestic manufacturer of CJSC Experimental Experimental Plant VLAD-MiVa has produced a whole line of non-cursor plastics. Currently, there is an active study of new materials. Comparison of physicomechanical properties of materials for production of the individual spoons for molding teeth applied at


Peak power gain greater than 15 was obtained with a current charged transmission line and an optically activated semiconductor opening switch. The optical pulse used for activating the switch is generated by a Nd:glass laser emitting at 1. 054 pm. It has a slow rise-time (''--''2OO uS) and a fast fall-time (s1O uS). In the experiment a 2 kV output voltage pulse was achieved with a 5 mm cube GaAs p-i-n diode sitch at 500 V charging voltage.


In the Rocky Mountains of the USA, abundances and distributions of grizzly bear Ursus arctos and gray wolf Canis lupus have increased (Bangs et al., 2001; Nicholson & Hendricks, 2018). This has led to increased predation of livestock in areas where livestock producers have not needed to implement conflict prevention methods in recent history. Lethal removal of carnivores that kill livestock remains a common source of carnivore mortalities (Woodroffe, 2001; Broekhuis, Cushman & Elliot, 2017). In the USA, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services (USDA-WS) is often asked by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or a State's wildlife management agency to lethally remove large carnivores that depredate livestock. Where possible, conservation practitioners favor increased use of non-lethal tools to replace lethal methods aimed at preventing depredation of livestock. Conservation groups often dispute management actions for large carnivores, sometimes resulting in lawsuits. It is often challenging to look beyond these differences and note that the ultimate goal of these diverse groups is typically some variation on the same theme: to increase coexistence by reducing conflicts between humans and carnivores. Non-lethal tools that reduce livestock depredation could facilitate coexistence; however, scientists note a distinct lack of experimental studies that adequately evaluate the efficacy of non-lethal tools (Eklund et al., 2017; van Eeden et al., 2018). A call for more research is warranted, but the time and resource requirements associated with research are often mismatched to the immediate needs of protecting livestock, large carnivores, and the livelihoods of livestock producers. One non-lethal tool available to reduce depredation of livestock by wolves is fladry. Fladry consists of strands of flags, measuring approximately 50-cm long by 10-cm wide, sewn onto nylon rope at 45-cm intervals. Fladry acts as a primary repellent by taking advantage of the fact that wolves are neophobic and relies on producing a flight response to deter them (Shivik, 2006). When the flags are hung just above the ground, their motion in the wind creates a novel, visually frightening stimulus and can exclude canids from the protected area for 60–75 days (Musiani & Visalberghi, 2001; Musiani et al., 2003; Mettler & Shivik, 2007; Davidson-Nelson & Gehring, 2010). Modifications to fladry have prolonged its effectiveness by incorporating an aversive stimulus, electricity; often referred to as turbo fladry. For turbo fladry, the nylon twine that supports the flagging is replaced by an electrified polywire that emits a non-harmful, but painful, shock when an animal touches it (Lance et al., 2010). Because of its reported efficacy for up to ~75 days, it is best used during periods when livestock would be most vulnerable to depredation, such as the calving and lambing seasons. Although research has been conducted on fladry, there remain limitations on our understanding of its efficacy and whether it can be useful on a working landscape. Without this knowledge, livestock producers remain hesitant to invest in purchasing turbo fladry supplies, which cost several thousand US dollars per pasture, and the time needed to install and maintain turbo fladry. Therefore, Wildlife Service (WS)Montana formed a partnership with a non-profit conservation organization (i.e. Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC) to identify livestock producers willing to use turbo fladry. This partnership allowed all of us on their properties to assist with the installation and monitoring during birthing season. The National Wildlife Research Center, the research branch of USDA-WS, was brought into the collaboration after the first year to bolster protocols and ensure relevant data were collected along the way. Similar to many agricultural communities in other parts of the USA, USDA-WS has a good relationship with most livestock producers in Montana. Most hesitation by producers to implement non-lethal tools is typically a result of skepticism about their efficacy or a reluctance to partner with non-profit organizations. Thus, we focused on our shared goal of reducing conflicts between humans and carnivores and collaborated to


This work is concerned with the machinability of a glass fibre reinforced epoxy composite when subjected to drilling at distinct cutting speeds and feed rates using high speed steel and tungsten carbide drills with similar geometries. The influence of tool material and machining parameters on tool wear and delamination were the principal aspects investigated. The results indicated that the high speed steel drill presented severe wear rates, which resulted in larger delamination areas after drilling 1000 holes, whereas the wear observed on the cemented carbide tool was negligible. Furthermore, the combination of tool wear with high cutting speed and low feed rate values resulted in an increase in the damaged area.


The present invention relates to a paper sheet handling apparatus and a control method thereof, wherein the paper making unit (230) and the paper sheet discriminating unit (230) for determining the authenticity of paper sheets inserted into and out of the paper sheets are inserted into the paper sheet. In the case of the first storage 260 temporarily storing the true winding in the case and the second storage different from the first storage, if the paper sheet is a second winding, the second storage ( 240 and a third storage compartment different from the first storage compartment and the second storage compartment, the third storage compartment 250 storing the right garment in the case of a questionable right case in which the paper sheet is a true right or a high right. When the return instruction from the user is detected, the handling of the right to be provided with conveying means (270, 272) for conveying the true right in the first storage and the right in the third storage to the entry and exit port is detected. Capacity or storage capacity Eliminating the group, provides a technique to achieve a reduction of the effort to determine the authenticity of the uigwon.


This paper analyzes the actions of the Russian army in the final year of the fightings on the Eastern Front of the First World War. This paper demonstrates that the Russian army in 1917 was undergoing violent internal processes, caused by the desire of various political forces to seize and retain power. The army involvement in the political struggle was steadily increasing and by autumn 1917 it had become an influential political force capable to play independently a decisive role in changing society (the Kornilov affair, the October Revolution in big cities and small communities). The paper concludes that the leadership of the Russian army was unable to achieve success at the front, even with a numerical superiority over the enemy's troops and at the cost of huge losses. At the same time, pacifist sentiments and the desire to end the war by any mean spreadamong the Russian soldiers. These moods were one of the most important factors contributing to the success of the October Revolution in November 1917 and the rapid conclusion of the Brest Peace in March 1918.


In two experiments the relation between cell size, ploidy level and nitrate concentration of genotypes of lettuce (Lactuca saliva L.) was investigated. Artificial increase of cell size by application of gibberellic acid to young plants decreased the percentage dry weight and the concentration of organic acids in the plant sap and increased the nitrate concentration of the shoot. Application of chlormequat chloride caused the opposite effects. Tetraploid genotypes of lettuce had larger cells, a lower nitrate concentration and a higher concentration of organic solutes than diploid genotypes. Genotypical differences in nitrate concentration could not be explained by differences in cell size, but were consistently related to differences in concentration of organic acids in plant sap. The percentage dry weight of genotypes was positively correlated with the concentration of organic acids in plant sap. However, differences in nitrate concentration were also found among genotypes with comparable dry matter content. These differences could be caused by differences in partitioning of photosynthates over structural components and organic acids in the vacuoles. Mono-saccharides seem to be less important than organic acids for explaining genotypical differences in nitrate level, because the concentration of monosaccharides was much lower than that of organic acids and because a negative relation between the concentration of monosaccharides and of nitrate was not found in every case. Genotypical differences in nitrate accumulation were not related to differences in osmolarity.


Two butadiene polymers were used in this investigation, one with 98.5% cis-1,4 units and the other with an approximately equibinary mixture of cis and trans units. Elastomeric networks prepared from these polymers were studied in elongation, in both the swollen and unswollen states over the temperature range −30 to 95°C. There is evidence for crystallization in these networks, particularly as manifested by marked increases in birefringence at relatively low elongations and at temperatures as high as 40°C. As expected, the birefringence and related quantities were found to be more sensitive to crystallization than the force, with the optical-configuration parameter and the stress-optical coefficient showing the greatest sensitivity. In the case of the cis–trans copolymer, the crystallization involves trans sequences, which are of relatively high melting point, and thus occurs at a temperature higher than for the lower melting cis sequences in the high-cis networks. The results which were free from the effects of network crystallization were used to calculate values of the temperature coefficient of the unperturbed dimensions of the chains, and values of the optical-configuration parameter. These configuration-dependent properties were found to be in satisfactory agreement with previously published theoretical results based on a rotational isomeric state model of these chain molecules.


This article presents a 0.9/1.23/2.4/3.5 GHz quad‐channel diplexer by using a C‐section impedance matching circuit to cascade two dual‐band bandpass filters (DB‐BPFs). Due to the virtual grounds, the canceling effect of mixed electric and magnetic coupling, and the cross coupling, there are six transmission zeros around two passbands, which result in sharp skirts property of DB‐BPF. Synthesized step‐to‐step design process is given to guide the quad‐channel diplexer design. Compact circuit area of 0.03396λg12, low insertion loss of 1.2/0.9/1.2/0.9 dB, sharp skirts and better than 32 dB high port‐to‐port isolation are also achieved in the proposed quad‐channel diplexer design.


In order to find out the relationship between dynamic changes of endogenous hormones and the flowering of Cornus wilsoniana,a measurement about the dynamic variations of contents of IAA,GA3,ZR and ABA from both flowering and non-flowering plants during the process of flower bud differentiation was made.The research results showed that the whole process could be divided into five stages,including undifferentiation stage,inflorescence differentiation stage,calyx differentiation stage,petal differentiation stage and pistil and stamen differentiation stage,in which the inflorescence differentiation stage could be divided into prophase and anaphase.In the stage of flower bud differentiation,IAA and GA3 were in relatively steady low level,ABA was in a higher level with fluctuation change,ZR was in a relatively low level at first and increased gradually along with the development of flower.ABA/IAA of high level was beneficial to flower bud differentiation,and ZR/GA3 of low level was advantageous to flower bud induction.It was suggested that the dynamic changes of endogenous hormones contents were related with the flowering process.


MOOC( Massive Open Online Course) is a hotspot in global open education resource( OER). This paper analyzes the characteristics of courses on Courser,which is one of the main MOOC platforms,introduces the two MOOC modes and compares the typical MOOC curriculums with MIT ' s open course wares and Chinese national excellent courses. Six enlightenments on two aspects of both the learner centered excellent courses design and promotion on the combination traditional classroom with network school,are listed as references for the teaching reform of Chinese university courses.


Microphone arrays methods are useful for determining the location and magnitude of rotating acoustic sources. This work presents an approach to calculating a discrete directivity pattern of a rotating sound source using inverse microphone array methods. The proposed method is divided into three consecutive steps. Firstly, a virtual rotating array method that compensates for motion of the source is employed in order to calculate the cross-spectral matrix. Secondly, the source locations are determined by a covariance matrix fitting approach. Finally, the sound source directivity is calculated using the inverse method SODIX on a reduced focus grid. Experimental validation and synthetic data from a simulation are used for the verification of the method. For this purpose, a rotating parametric loudspeaker array with a controllable steering pattern is designed. Five different directivity patterns of the rotating source are compared. The proposed method compensates for source motion and is able to reconstruct the location as well the directivity pattern of the rotating beam source.


We review the various VLSI architectures that have been proposed for the finite impulse response filter problem. In addition, new architectures are proposed and improved designs for some of the earlier architectures are developed.


A new species of Peleopodidae, Scythropiodes sungsookimi Sohn et Wu, sp. n., is described on the basis of six specimens from Korea and Taiwan. External and genital features of the new species are illustrated. Holotype of new species