Soil organic matter in the dry valleys of the McMurdo Sound Region sustains a unique terrestrial microbial community in one of the most extreme climates on earth. The origin of this organic material has long been in question, given the absence of higher plants in this arid ecosystem. We examined the sources and distribution of organic matter from six elevational transects extending along a 30-km section of Taylor Valley (163? E, 77.35? S), from the head of the valley to the Ross Sea. The 813C and 685N of soil were determined both to identify potential sources of soil organic matter (i.e., marine, lacustrine, and/or terrestrial) and to map C and N source distribution in the valley. Results suggest that the primary source for soil organic matter is not the wind transport of organic material from modern aquatic systems (a long-held hypothesis). Instead, our data indicate that modern distributional patterns of low-elevation ( 150 m a.s.l.) have isotopic signatures similar to those of autotrophs currently inhabiting nearby cryptoendolithic communities, sug- gesting that similar autotrophic activity may be occurring in these soils and that long- term primary productivity in dry valley soils contributes to organic matter accumulations. Taken together, these findings support a new "legacy" model for soil organic matter origins and fluxes in the dry valley ecosystem.


The main topic of this thesis concerns t-SNE, a dimensionality reduction technique that has gained much popularity for showing great capability of preserving well-separated clusters from a high-dim ...


Objective:To explore the possibility of the transfection of MyoD gene induced bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells(MSCs) to differentiate into myoblasts in vitro.Methods:The eukaryotic expression plasmid vector pIRES2-EGRP-MyoD was transfected into MSCs with lipotransfection method,and the positive cells were selected by G418;The expression of MyoD was detected in the transfected MSCs with RT-PCR and the amplified,purified product was identified by sequencing;The reporter gene enhanced green fluorescence protein(EGFP)was observed in the transfected cells under a fluorescent and a laser confocal microscopes;Immunohistochemical methods was used to examine the expressions of MyoD,myogenin,myosin,myoglobin and desmin in the differentiated,cells.The ultrastructure changes of the cells before and after transfection were observed with electron microscopy.Results:The expression of MyoD was detected in the transfected MSCs with RT-PCR and the amplified,purified product was as same in sequence as thwat from Genbank;Green fluorescence was observed in the transfected cells under a fluorescent and a laser confocal microscopes;Immunohistochemical methods indicated that MyoD,myogenin,myosin,myoglobin and desmin were expressed in the transfected cells;The transfected cells showed the morphologcal characteristics of matrue cells with filaments in their cytoplasm.Conclusion:MyoD gene can induce cultured MSCs to successfully differentiate into myoblasts,probably providing an experimental foundation for trauma repair.


Purpose - Legislators legislate, but how feasible and effective the implementation and enforcement of these laws are and how congruent with the countries characteristics, is under doubt. The paper seeks to argue that the Greek law on corporate governance (CG) had no effect on the fundamental elements of the corporate environment. Design/methodology/approach - Seven hypotheses are tested using three different econometric methodologies (panel data, probit, and ordinal probit regression). Findings - The paper pinpoints the legal disarrays and their impact on the firm and argues that there is a need for a new set of principles and laws that focus on the real issues of CG rather than the size, structure and leadership of the administrating bodies or the disclosure mechanisms. Research limitations/implications - The data used have been collected from the annual reports and not from questionnaires. Furthermore, there is no methodology to integrate all seven models to a structured or nested model. Practical implications - The study provides evidence that there is a need for a different set of provisions than the ones in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Originality/value - The paper uses a variety of methodologies and tests seven hypotheses. It takes a more holistic approach.


The presented work reports a study performed to introduce relativistic chemistry in basic (introductory) college chemistry classrooms. The study involved fifty students. It was verified that exploring the previous (high school) knowledge on special relativity, and introducing a simple equation, it is possible to explain the unexpected variations in covalent radius observed for groups 11, 12 and 18 heaviest elements.


Objectives To update cost effectiveness estimates for the four dose (3+1) schedule of the seven valent pneumococcal conjugated vaccine (PCV-7) in the Netherlands and to explore the impact on cost effectiveness of reduced dose schedules and implementation of 10 valent and 13 valent pneumococcal vaccines (PCV-10 and PCV-13). Design Economic evaluation comparing PCV-7, PCV-10, and PCV-13 with no vaccination using a decision tree analytic model built from data in previous studies. Setting The Netherlands. Population A cohort of 180 000 newborns followed until 5 years of age. Main outcome measures Costs; gains in life years and quality adjusted life years (QALYs); and incremental cost effectiveness ratios. Results Under base case assumptions—that is, assuming a five year protective period of the vaccine and no assumed net indirect effects (herd protection minus serotype replacement) among children aged over 5 years—vaccination with PVC-7 in a four dose (3+1) schedule was estimated to prevent 71 and 5778 cases of invasive and non-invasive pneumococcal disease, respectively, in children aged up to 5 years. This corresponds with a total net gain of 173 life years or 277 QALYs. The incremental cost effectiveness ratio of PCV-7 was estimated at €113 891 (£98 300; $145 000) per QALY, well over the ratio of €50 000 per QALY required for PCV-7 to be regarded as potentially cost effective. A three dose (2+1) schedule of PCV-7 reduced the incremental cost effectiveness ratio to €82 975 per QALY. For various assumptions and including 10% of the maximum net indirect effects among individuals aged 5 years and over, PCV-10 and PCV-13 had incremental cost effectiveness ratios ranging from €31 250 to €52 947 per QALY. Conclusions The current Dutch infant vaccination programme of four doses of PCV-7 is not cost effective because of increases in invasive disease caused by non-vaccine serotypes, which reduces the overall direct effects of vaccination and offsets potential positive herd protection benefits in unvaccinated individuals. The 10 valent and 13 valent pneumococcal vaccines could have better net health benefits than PCV-7 through less replacement disease and increased herd protection. Both these effects could substantially reduce the incremental cost effectiveness ratio to possibly acceptable levels, if total programme costs can be lowered by reduced schedules, reductions in vaccine prices, or both.


In the bit stream transport board of digital television, digital television bit streams are transported to the STB as low voltage differential signaling (LVDS) signals in order to solve the data transmission between high-rate and low-voltage, and data transmission with high rate is implemented with no certain supplied voltage. In this paper, the voltage transformation from TTL to LVDS is implemented based on the chip of DS90c031, and the project is feasible. The outputting bit-rate is from 3 Mb/s to 30 Mb/s, and the bit streams are continuous and have no failure bits.


Pondok Pesantren is one of the Islamic religious education institutions in Indonesia. The number of criticisms regarding the pattern of pondok pesantren leadership that cannot keep up with the times is the reason for this study being conducted. This study examines the leadership model of pondok pesantren in Banten Province. The approach used is a qualitative approach with a descriptive-analytical method. The stages of data collection, processing, and analysis are then described narratively. The research was carried out in four pondok pesantren representing Banten Province regions. The study results show that the leadership model of pondok pesantren leaders in Banten Province is still charismatic-authoritative. This model is hereditary. The effectiveness of the leadership of Pondok Pesantren varies. Some are effective, and some are not.


Non-thermal technologies allow for the nutritional and sensory properties of foods to be preserved, something that consumers demand. Combining their use with antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) provides potential methods for food preservation that could have advantages over the use of chemical preservatives and thermal technologies. The aim of this review was to discuss the advances in the application of non-thermal technologies in combination with AMPs as a method for microbial inactivation. Published papers reporting studies on the combined use of power ultrasound (US), pulsed electrical fields (PEF), and high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) with AMPs were reviewed. All three technologies show a possibility of being combined with AMPs, generally demonstrating higher efficiency than the application of US, PEF, HHP, and AMPs separately. The most studied AMP used in combination with the three technologies was nisin, probably due to the fact that it is already officially regulated. However, the combination of these non-thermal technologies with other AMPs also shows promising results for microbial inactivation, as does the combination of AMPs with other novel non-thermal technologies. The effectiveness of the combined treatment depends on several factors; in particular, the characteristics of the food matrix, the conditions of the non-thermal treatment, and the conditions of AMP application.


A simple two-step method to produce N'%3 in high yield from semicarbazide hydrochloride has been defined. A free-flowing material with bulk density1 , 0.' 1 . 0.9 g/ml hai been ptw'lucr.d by stirr.ed aqueous recrystallisation; surfactants were ineffective n altering cry.sml habit. Impact sensitiveness of NTO was higher than expected el'hough apparent propagation abioty is low. Ignitability under thermal and electrostatic stimuli is substantially lower than RDX Experimental firings were conducted to assess explosive performance for charges pressed to about 90 %TMD; velocity of detonation at 12.7 mm and 15.9 mm diameter was determined while detonation pressure (plate dent) and critical diameter were estimated. Performance at these diameters is somewhat lower than RDX. Moulding powders for 95:5 NTO/binder formulations were prepared from three commercial EVA resins and a flame retardant polyphosphlzene. All three NTOtEVA formulations were ins.ensitive tV. impact. Recommendations for &ontinuwing studies on insensitive booster formulations have been made. Arceslon For HITIS CRA&Wi DTIC TAB U lanowlted 0


On July 7, 2011, the French Competition Authority (hereinafter the "Authority") issued a decision whereby it accepts settlement of an investigation and makes mandatory the commitments proposed by…


An approach to discuss the difference between reliability of base-isolated buildings and that of non base-isolated buildings is presented. The fragility analysis method in PRA procedure established before for nuclear power plants is used to quantitatively examine the difference. Several factors representing uncertainty and randomness are examined and compared. Using these factors, several parametric study are undergoing to make clear the bound that is superior to the other with respect to seismic reliability.


Allergic conjunctivitis is an eye inflammation that involves the infiltration of immune cells into the conjunctiva via cell surface‐adhesion receptors, such as integrin α4β1. These receptors interact with adhesion molecules expressed on the conjunctival endothelium and may be a target to treat this disease. We synthesized DS‐70, a novel α/β‐peptidomimetic α4 integrin antagonist, to prevent the conjunctival infiltration of immune cells and clinical symptoms in a model of allergic conjunctivitis.


Since the introduction by Jones and Zimmerman (I 959, I 96 I) of a reliable histological scheme for the separate recognition of each of the three major categories of corneal stromal dystrophy, the way has been open for precise characterization of the nature of the lesions in each of these conditions. This has been largely accomplished for the macular and lattice dystrophies, the former having been shown to be an acid polysaccharide complex (Klintworth and Vogel, I964; Morgan, I966; Garner, i969b), and the latter to consist largely of amyloid (Seitelberger and Nemetz, I96I; Klintworth, 1967; Garner, 1969a). Relatively little is known, however, about granular dystrophy, and the several electron microscopical studies which have been reported in recent years have, on account of the widely differing descriptions, not been conspicuously successful in resolving the problem. Thus McTigue (I965, i967) described dense homogeneous masses which could not be resolved at magnifications of up to 71,000; workers in Japan (Kuwahara, Akiya, and Obazawa, I967; Matsuo, Fujiwara, and Ofuchi, I967) described rod-shaped structures; Sornson (I965) found both granular and fibrillar material; and Teng (I967) observed fine banded filamentous structures which he regarded as representing precollagen. Apart from the study of two cases of probable granular dystrophy, which were unusual in that the lesions were limited to the subepithelial region, by Goslar and Seitz (I96I) and Seitz and Goslar (I963, I965), there is a dearth of detailed histochemical information in this condition and it was for this reason that the present investigation was undertaken.


The contribution of different food sources in the food web of a shallow-water hydrothermal ecosystem was estimated using fatty acids as markers. The markers were selected based on the results of analyzing the fatty acid composition of potential food sources in Kraternaya Right, Yankich Island, Kurile Islands. Most animals had markers characteristic of diatoms: the 16:0/16:1m? ratio close to 1 and a high 20:503 content. We assume that the bivalves Macoma calcared and Macoma lukini, polychaetes Amphitrite cirrata and Pectinaria hyperborea, and holothurians Eupentacta pseudoquinquesemita and Psolus sp. feed mainly on diatoms. Fatty a c ~ d s pecific to bacteria branched, odd and 18:lw7 -were found in considerable amounts in the bivalve Ax~nopsida orbiculata, as well as in E pseudoquinquesernita, Psolus sp and P. hyperborea; hence we concluded that there was a substantial bacterial input into the food of these species. A high concentrat~on of C,, and PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids), suggested to be an indicator of brown algae, was detected merely in the gastropod Littorina kurila. Although bactena are more important as a food source in Kraternaya Bight than In typical coastal ecosystems, the major food source for animals here is photosynthetic organisms, rather than chernosynthetic symbionts as is the case with deep-sea hydrothermal vents.


Abstract The objective of this study was to develop a low-cost automated drying system and test its effectiveness in the drying process of cocoa beans through a case study. Thus, an electronic system was designed, composed of an Esp8266-12E microcontroller, which had Internet connection, humidity and temperature sensors, and a relay. A computer software system was used, which was responsible for storing the collected data. We developed an application called Data Silo for smartphones, and a case study was conducted. Data Silo was able to draw data from the sensors and trigger the centrifugal fan in real time. The captured and stored data exhibited consistency in the function of the sensors during the drying process. The case study attested to the reliability of the drying process and indicated that higher air speeds during drying at 40 °C shortened the drying time and altered the drying kinetics in the proposed system. Therefore, it was concluded that the automatic drying system was effective for drying cocoa beans. The Data Silo software, sketch, and user guide are available at GitHub https://github.com/Wagnereng/A-low-cost-automatization-for-cocoa-drying.


Severs et al., Characterization of PEGylated factor VIII molecules This patent is Subject to a terminal disabstract, Blood, 108:11-12, 2006. Ca10. Written Opinion of the International Searching Authority, PCT/ US2007/007560, European Patent Office, mailed Sep. 18, 2007. 21) Appl. No.: 11/729,625 (21) ppl. No 9 Abuchowski, A., et al.: Cancer Biochem Biophys; "Cancer Therapy 1-1. With Chemically Modified Enzymes. I. Antitumor Properties of (22) Filed: Mar. 29, 2007 Polyethylene Glycol-Asparaginase Conjugates'; vol. 7: pp. 175-186


Increasing popularity of security prompted interests in person identification using face recognition. However, many 2D (image-based) face recognition methods appear to be sensitive to illumination conditions, head-pose and scale. In this paper, we propose a new 3D face recognition system using 3D face shapes obtained from stereo pair face images. The 3D shapes are rendered under various illumination conditions, head-pose, scale and occlusion. The effectiveness of our system is demonstrated by the experimental results.


Turbulence on global scales provides cloud support, while at the same time, it can promote local collapse. Stellar birth is thus intimately linked to the dynamical behaviour of the parental gas cloud. A slow, inneficient, isolated star formation is a hallmark of turbulent support, whereas fast, efficient and clustered star formation occurs in its absence. The dynamical evolution of a nascent cluster strongly influences the stellar mass spectrum and the equation of state plays a pivotal role on the fragmentation process. Under typical cloud conditions, massive stars form as part of dense clusters. However, for gas with an effective polytropic index > 1, star formation becomes bias towards isolated massive stars, which may be of relevance for Pop III stars.


The purpose of the Finnish Companies Act 2006 was to increase operating freedom of Finnish companies limited by shares and to ensure that Finland has internationally competitive regulatory framework. One of the new opportunities brought by the new Act was the share issue to the company itself without payment. The aim of this article is to scrutinize what kind of advantages the new procedure and the use of shares registered in it will give and what kind of risks they might cause to the companies and their shareholders and creditors. Themes dealt with in this article are the procedure for the share issue to the company without payment, use of shares issued in that type of share issue, the compatibility of the EU Capital Directive with share issues without payment, the use of treasury shares from tax law perspective and, finally, the questions that the share issue to the company and use of shares created in it may raise from the viewpoint of shareholders and creditors.
In a share issue to itself, a company can create 'genuine' treasury shares which can later be transferred to the shareholders or other subscribers in a new share issue. The main objective behind this new opportunity was to make it easier to use treasury shares as a payment method in mergers and acquisitions. However, genuine treasury shares can be used for many purposes in the same manner than 'ordinary' repurchased treasury shares.
From a minority shareholder's point of view, the share issue to the company seems to be a safe procedure. New shares registered in a share issue to the company are governed by the provisions on treasury shares. Decision-making concerning the allotment of these shares in a share issue is similar than the decision-making process of a fresh issue of new shares. In most cases the treasury shares will not have any impact on the position of shareholders before the transfer of those shares in a share issue. That is why the regulations concerning the share issues in general are more significant from the viewpoint of shareholder protection than the provisions concerning the share issue to the company. However, in some rare situations it might be possible that the share issue to the company itself has some effect on the value of the existing shareholdings. From creditor's standpoint it is remarkable that the subscription price paid for allotted treasury shares will be credited to the distributable assets of the company. Besides some other factors this gives reason to take a critical approach to the effectiveness of creditor protection through the solvency test adopted in the Finnish Limited Liability Companies Act 2006.


The controlled growth of single-crystalline (InxGa1-x)2O3-based materials with high indium contents is still a big challenge due to the large solid-phase miscibility gap, unclear growth mechanism, and the lack of...


In this investigation, an optimal approach for energy management is predicted under various operating conditions. This approach is considered as a pervasive computing solution to the energy problem in mobile devices. Its pervasiveness arises from the fact that communication is used and viewed as an opportunity to save energy, under all the operating conditions are outsourced from the mobile device on which they are executing, to a surrogate server machine with an infinite power source. As can be concluded, outsourcing code implies that the data involved in the computation will have to be transferred to and from the surrogate. This approach deviates from the traditional view of communication as a drain on the battery of a mobile device. The solution presented here is a compile-time solution and optimization, augmented by the necessary run-time support. The high-level source code is augmented by additional high-level code to intelligently (at run-time) allow the application running on the mobile device to outsource basic program blocks to a server. Both client and server applications are a byproduct of our approach, as the original source code is transformed into a client/server application where the client is installed on the mobile device and the server is stored on a surrogate machine. This approach uses a methodology from the domain of real-time systems to determine the number of loop iterations, and that facilitates a compile-time computing of executing each loop. also gathered the necessary information about the size of the data involved in each loop. This allows for determining the cost for outsourcing each loop (in terms of the cost for communicating the data to the surrogate). Once both metrics (computation energy cost, and communication energy cost) have been determined, It can easily generate a code that allows the application to make the run-time decision of whether outsourcing is beneficial.


This paper considers the mechanics of rock boulders impacting on granular strata. The study is aimed at improving the numerical methods devoted both to describing boulder trajectories along slopes and designing preventive structures in mountain regions. The problem is analysed by using a simplified approach inspired by the lumped mass method. This is based on (a) the macro-element concept, (b) the definition of generalised stresses and displacements, and (c) delayed plasticity theory. Both vertical and inclined impacts on horizontal strata and vertical impacts on inclined slopes are discussed. The numerical results are obtained by using a finite difference numerical discretisation to integrate, over time, a coupled system of two-dimensional differential equations. Most of the input data requested by the model are basic and geotechnically meaningful, and comparison of the numerical results with the experimental data seems to be quite promising.


This paper is concerned with the scalar conservation laws with the discontinuous flux.By using small disturbance method,it discusses the generalized Riemann in the equation.It also draws attention to the interaction of the elementary waves when the initial data are in three piecewise constant states and obtains the Rankine-Hugoniot condition at the static shock and the exact Riemann solutions.


Abstract
University–industry technology transfer is growing at a rapid rate in China, involving both multinational and domestic companies. This chapter describes unique characteristics of Chinese National Technology Transfer Centers (NTTCs) and examines whether they can function as an effective policy instrument in promoting the commercialization of university research findings. Our qualitative and quantitative study finds that NTTCs are not by themselves an effective policy tool in accelerating the commercialization of university inventions. We found that universities without NTTCs can achieve the same or even greater success than those with NTTCs. We suggest that Chinese universities should mimic the Western approach by providing an attractive reward system and autonomy to technology management programs that stimulate their efforts in marketing patented technology.


The construction of teaching staff plays a vital role in the survival and development of vocational colleges.However,there exist some problems in the process of construction: without obvious characteristics of higher vocational education,but with incomplete training plan and imperfect examination system,and many other problems.The solutions are as follows: formulate the recruitment standards which are suitable for higher vocational education,refine the training program,establish and perfect assessment system.


Mannich bases of norfloxacin were synthesized by reacting them with formaldehyde and several isatin derivatives. The compounds were evaluated in vitro against Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv at 12.5 µg/ml in BACTEC 12B medium using the BACTEC radiometric system. Among the compounds tested, S-10 showed promising activity, with 100% inhibition at a concentration lower than 6.25 µg/ml.


A large and growing body of management research examines new product development (NPD) in technology- intensive firms. Much of that work has been directed towards the organizational environment of medium and large organizations. Likewise, there is a large and growing body of research examining the formation, financing, growth, and success factors of new technology ventures (NTVs). However, there is a relative paucity of research into NPD at small NTVs. This paper describes the findings of an exploratory multiple case study of three NPD projects at small university spin-off (USO) ventures from a Canadian University. Emergent results are compared and contrasted with extant research. We find that NPD was inextricably coupled with new venture financing. NPD milestones had both technical and financial aspects. We observed significant heterogeneity with respect to NPD practices, technological sophistication of the product offering, and sophistication of the NPD environment. We propose that these observed differences are related to founder backgrounds.


Many listeners have probably been intrigued by ways in which composers evoke place. After all, any number of musical works explicitly attempt to do so, such as Pines of Rome, Nights in the Gardens of Spain, El salón México, and other chestnuts. To be sure, such music is sometimes rather disparagingly labeled "travel music" or "picture-postcard music." Tainted by the travel industry, with its attendant connotations of commodification, these works presumably lack the transcendence of "absolute" music, said to shun extramusical references. Also interwoven into many musicological reflections on place is nationalism—Richard Taruskin has referred to it as "tourist nationalism"—and its attendant polemics over central and peripheral countries.1 Another common trope is exoticism, as found in operas such as François-Adrien Boieldieu's Le calife de Bagdad (1800), reflecting Orientalist fantasies. Place music may also be associated with memory—philosopher Edward S. Casey has even identified the phenomenon of "place memory."2 Long a topic of interest in ethnomusicology, memory has recently begun to engage historical musicologists;3 indeed, given the growing proximity of the two disciplines, it is perhaps not surprising that place has been explored from both perspectives, as in Martin Stokes's Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place, which treats subjects as diverse as Chopin and national anthems, Australian aboriginal traditions, and the "Liverpool" sound in relation to place.4 In one way or another, these perspectives call forth a few fundamental questions. Can we dismiss extramusical references (geographical or otherwise situating) that more often than not constitute the very essence of these place-conscious works? Are at least some of these works implicitly nationalistic? What do place pieces prompt us to remember, thus influencing our understanding of music and memory? How should we confront the question of representation, one that has dogged composers and critics at various points in the history of music and that has found its way into the theoretical framework of much recent musicology? All these matters present themselves, directly or indirectly, to the reader of Denise Von Glahn's The Sounds of Place: Music and the American Cultural Landscape.


In this paper, a robust multiple observation likelihood ratio test (MOLRT) based voice activity detection (VAD) method is proposed. At the beginning of this paper, we introduce the Wiener filter to the observed signal in time domain which can help mitigating some noise. The reason why we use the Wiener filter for VAD is that the performance of the VAD is always better in high signal to noise ratio (SNR) range than in low SNR range. Then, some ideas are proposed to improve the performance of the MOLRT based VAD method. As we all know, a conventional MOLRT based method including three modules named likelihood ratio (LR) estimation, threshold setting and hangover technique. To improve the estimation accuracy of LR, we adopt the unbiased minimum mean-square error (MMSE) algorithm for noise power spectrum estimation in every frame, which is very effective for LR estimation in MOLRT-based VAD method. That is because the LR is a function of a prior and a posterior SNR and unbiased MMSE algorithm is very useful for noise estimation. In addition, to make our VAD method more robust, a dynamic threshold setting technique is proposed in our method, which is related to the minimum noise power spectrum. That is because minimum noise power spectrum can help us updating the value of threshold to a suitable level according to the denoised signal. Last but most important, a novel hangover algorithm is introduced in this paper comparing to the conventional HMM based hangover algorithm. In the novel hangover algorithm, the current frame is determined by the statistical result of the following speech/non-speech detections based on the likelihood ratio test. And the evaluation results reveal that proposed method significantly outperform the baseline result of LRT as regards VAD accuracy in both noise variations and low SNR conditions.


Pregnancy has been identified as a window for childhood obesity prevention. Although lifestyle interventions in pregnancy can prevent excessive gestational weight gain (GWG), little is known whether such interventions also affect infant growth and body composition.


Agritourism has become a way for consumers to experience agriculture and for the industry to increase agricultural awareness. This 4-page document will help guide you toward selecting the right type of educational experience for your agritourism operation. Written by Joy N. Rumble, Kathryn Stofer, and Hoda Manafian Ghahfarokhi and published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication, May 2018.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wc304


Abstract Objective: The adaptation of the brain to aging is subject to the impact of psychological and environmental factors and possibly climacteric symptomatology. We aimed to determine the association of climacteric symptomatology with different aspects of episodic memory in a sample of Greek menopausal women. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 39 postmenopausal women with subjective memory complaints. Memory performance was evaluated using the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT) and the revised Brief Visuospatial Memory Test (BVMT), assessing verbal and visuospatial episodic memory, respectively. We evaluated general cognitive status using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Clock Drawing Test. Menopausal symptoms were assessed using Greene's Climacteric scale. Results: In the multivariate approach, vasomotor symptoms predicted independently HVLT (retained percentage and delayed recall: b-coefficient = −0.568, p = 0.009 and b-coefficient = −0.563, p = 0.012, respectively). Psychological symptoms predicted independently MMSE (b-coefficient = −0.391, p = 0.024); and in combination with free estrogens (logFEI), psychological symptoms predicted BVMT (total and delayed recall: b-coefficient = −0.558, p = 0.001 and b-coefficient = −0.474, p = 0.005) and HVLT discrimination index (b-coefficient = −0.390, p = 0.023). Combined symptomatology predicted independently MMSE (b-coefficient = −0.457, p = 0.006) and HVLT total (b-coefficient = −0.557, p = 0.034); combined symptomatology predicted in combination with logFEI scores of BVMT total (b-coefficient = −0.593, p < 0.001), BVMT delayed recall (b-coefficient = −0.492, p = 0.002). Conclusion: The intensity of psychological, vasomotor and combined climacteric symptoms predicted cognitive performance in this sample of postmenopausal women. A differential contribution of vasomotor symptoms to episodic memory is described, with the negative impact being more pronounced in visuospatial rather than verbal episodic memory.


This document contains the proceedings of the first Global Trade Conference on Aquaculture, held in Qingdao, China from 29 to 31 May 2007 and includes the full papers and abstracts of presentations. The conference was organized by the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Department in cooperation with FISHINFONetwork and was hosted by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture with the support of its Bureau of Fisheries and the Society of Fisheries. The Conference, organized in five sessions, examined the many facets of the aquaculture sector: on aquaculture's growing strengths, on current and future challenges, advantages and opportunities, a special focus on China, and a look at future developments for the aquaculture sector.


We study whether technology gains in sectors related to Information and Communications Technology (ICT) increase productivity in the rest of the economy. To separate exogenous gains in ICT from other technological progress, we use the relative price of ICT goods and services in a structural VAR with medium-run restrictions. Using local projections to estimate the effect of ICT-related technology gains on sectoral technology (TFP), we find two sets of results. First, since the mid-2000s there have been positive and persistent technology spillovers to sectors intensively using ICT. Second, neglecting leasing activity leads to an overestimation of the TFP response for all sectors except the leasing sector, where it is strongly underestimated.


The assessment results of the state-funded prekindergarten programs in America has shown that the programs can remarkably improve children's language,literacy,and math skills,that is to say,these programs can improve the abilities of children's school readiness.What's more,the effects on children from low income families are more remarkable.Some correlative studies in China also show that the abilities of children's school readiness have significant and meaningful effects on their future developments of other abilities.Consequently,the government should invest more money to improve the abilities of children's school readiness whose families are in a devil of a hole,and to build the first line to guarantee the equity of education.


a holomorphic function of λ. We consider the family V = {(x, y, λ) ∈ (S) × C | f(x, y, λ) = 0} of curves and the projection p : V → C. Let g > 0 be a fixed integer and denote by B = B(g) the subset of all points b ∈ C such that the genus of the curve Vb = p−1(b) is equal to g. Let A(x, y, λ) = (ak(x, y, λ) dx), k = 1, . . . , g, be a vector of 1-forms on V holomorphic with respect to λ and such that A(x, y, b) is a vector of basis differentials of the first kind on Vb for any b ∈ B. Let V◦ be the family of curves V◦b = Vb\(∞) with a puncture at infinity. Let A∗(x, y, λ) = (ak(x, y, λ) dx), k = 1, . . . , g, be a vector of 1-forms on V◦ holomorphic with respect to λ and such that D(x, y, b) = (A(x, y, b), A∗(x, y, b)) is a vector of basis holomorphic differentials on V◦b for any b ∈ B. Lemma 1. For an arbitrary vector field l = ∑d i=1 li(λ)∂λi , where li(λ) are meromorphic functions, there is a unique matrix Γl(λ) such that the differential l(D(x, y, b)) + Γl(b) D(x, y, b) is exact on V◦b for any b ∈ B.


The last circle includes words that cooccur in more than a fourth of the texts. Beyond these circles are words that appear often in the texts-words like "sociology"-but that are not linked to other words in at least a fourth ofthe texts. These words identi@ more individual, less commonly shared reasons for the decision to go into anthropology. 1992. UClNET IV Version l .O. Columbia, SC. Analytic Technologies.


A series of numerical simulations on typical forming and springback MPSF processes were carried out on the aircraft body panels.The thickness of elastic cushion and curvature of object surface are important factors to affect the formed precision of formed parts,and they need to study in depth.The results show that the thicker the elastic cushion is,the more the springback value and increase of shape error will be.The smaller curvature radius of cylindrical parts is,the more the springback value and increase of shape error will be.The larger of R values of toroidal surface parts,the larger springback value and the larger the effect on shape error of formed parts will be.The effect on springback of single-curved formed parts is more than double-curved formed parts.


Background:IBD is common among Western populations and the socioeconomic burden of the disease is significant. In 2008, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) selected 10 categories of conditions that were deemed as HACs, ranging from falls to vascular catheter-associated infection. Costs related to HACs are not reimbursed as they are considered to be preventable. The effect of this change in reimbursement on the incidence of HACs among patients hospitalized with IBD is unknown. Methods:This was a cross-sectional study using data from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS, 2007–2011). IBD hospitalizations and HACs were identified using appropriate ICD-9-CM codes. We excluded patients under the age of 19 and those who carried the diagnoses of both UC and CD. We excluded HACs that were related to surgical procedures. The presence of HAC was defined as having at least one qualifying complications as listed by the CMS. HAC incidence in patients with UC or CD was evaluated according to health insurance. All analyses were conducted with SAS, version 9.3, Cary, NC. Results:From 2007 to 2011, there were a total of 347,577 discharges related to CD; of those, 1,222 experienced at least 1 HAC. The overall HAC incidence rate for CD patients was 0.35%. There has been a slow upward trend in the incidence of HACs since 2007 from 0.18% to 0.42% in 2011 (P ⩽ 0.0001). This trend was significant in Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance patients alike. HACs disproportionately affected Medicare patients during the time period compared with Medicaid or private patients (incidence 0.74% versus 0.24% or 0.21%, respectively). However, on multivariate analysis, there was no significant difference between the groups. During the time period, there were 188,125 UC discharges with 1,068 patients experiencing HACs and an incidence rate of 0.57%. There was an overall increase in incidence of HACs from 2007 to 2011 (P = 0.0027). UC patients on Medicare had higher rates of HACs compared with Medicaid or private patients (1.25% versus 0.46% and 0.21%, respectively). After adjusting for confounders, the odds ratio for experiencing HACs was 2.91 for Medicare patients and 2.56 for Medicaid patients, compared with private insurance holders (P < 0.0001). Conclusions:There was no appreciable decline in the incidence of HACs across U.S. hospitals in the years following implementation of the CMS non-reimbursement policies. In fact, there has been increased reporting of HAC occurrences over the examined period. IBD, especially UC, patients on Medicare have the highest risk of experiencing a hospital-acquired complication, which may be related to older age. Heightened awareness is required to understand and address this disparity.


By studying journal articles, the current study has benefited in assessing numerous significant issues, research trends, and breakthroughs in the supply chain management industry. The journals from renowned publishers, e.g. Emerald, Taylor and Francis, Elsevier, Wiley, and Cambridge, were considered for review purposes. All the articles included in this review were conducted in developing countries only. Articles published between 2019 and 2022 by the above publishers were considered for this review. For this review, only articles written in English were included; no articles written in other languages were considered. It is clear from the selected publications that many research areas remain unexplored, and the area is still in its early phases. Moreover, despite the articles' stated objectives and future directions, just a few studies attempted to fill the gaps. The notion of the supply chain has grown in relevance in developing nations and industrialized countries, and its popularity and awareness have increased in recent years. It has been embraced in developing countries due to increased outsourcing and its applicability across various industries. There are certain advantages to using SCM, such as the fact that it may be used in practically any industry sector. Adopting is critical for nations involved primarily in exporting to maintain international quality standards.


Engaging directly with your staff and people in other companies can be the platform to grow your business through a downturn.


Many image recognition tasks are well-suited to parallel processing. The most obvious example is that many imaging tasks require the analysis of multiple images. From this standpoint, then, parallel processing need be no more complicated than assigning individual images to individual processors. However, there are three less trivial categories of parallel processing that will be considered in this paper: parallel processing (1) by task; (2) by image region; and (3) by meta-algorithm. Parallel processing by task allows the assignment of multiple workflows-as diverse as optical character recognition [OCR], document classification and barcode reading-to parallel pipelines. This can substantially decrease time to completion for the document tasks. For this approach, each parallel pipeline is generally performing a different task. Parallel processing by image region allows a larger imaging task to be sub-divided into a set of parallel pipelines, each performing the same task but on a different data set. This type of image analysis is readily addressed by a map-reduce approach. Examples include document skew detection and multiple face detection and tracking. Finally, parallel processing by meta-algorithm allows different algorithms to be deployed on the same image simultaneously. This approach may result in improved accuracy.


People have paid more attention to biometrics based personal authentication recently. A single modality has its limitation in performance, such as universality and accuracy. The use of multiple modalities can get higher accuracy and winder universality. An improved ENN (Nearest-Neighbor with class Exemplars) method is proposed in this paper to fuse fingerprint and voiceprint. Compared with the traditional ENN and KNN (K-Nearest-Neighbor) , the proposed method obtains further improvement of verification rates. The proposed method is also compared with the Bayesian fusion method. Performance of these two types of systems is given. Experimental results verify the validity of the proposed algorithm.


This research aimed to find the effect of implementing quipper school e-learning to student's independent learning and to find the student's perception about quipper school was used in learning process at senior high school . the hypothesis in this research is "there is positive effect between the implementing of quipper school in student's independent learning". This research used the purposive sampling consist of 36 students. This research used pre-experimental method type one group pretest-posttest design. The questionnaire instrument which consist of 36 items was used in this research. To find out effect between implementing quipper school and student's independent learning it used a t-test, then it showed tvalue=9,77 eith a=5%. Which means. H0 is rejected or there is effect of implemnting quipper school e-learning to student's independent learning. The research showed the effect size was 1,70 (high). Based on the normalized gain, that there was an increase in student's independent learning, about 0,22 student's perception about using quipper school are quipper school is a tool to develop material that can help student's critical thinking very useful on practising it helps in manitain learning time efficiently it helps the students doing the task everywhere and anytime


Video service in mobile network generates massive Internet traffic and consumes a large share of bandwidth. Nowadays, more and more video portals have upgraded their service to a comprehensive one-stop solution, providing UGC, VoD and Live streaming at the same time. Understanding the characteristics of such service is crucial for the network traffic engineering and the sustainable development of service. In this paper we present the first characterization work in mobile network on a leading comprehensive online video service in China, Youku. Our study is based on large-scale datasets containing 16 billion network traffic traces and long-term crawling data (over 1 month). We examine the user activity in both temporal and spacial dimensions and reveal the relatively fixed service usage. We demonstrate the strong correlations between users, which is reflected by the small-world phenomenon. We also investigate the static properties of Youku mobile videos and observe noticeably differences from other UGC videos. Eventually, we study the distribution of view count and find out four growth patterns for the new published videos. Our analysis result provides a insight into how Youku is utilized by mobile users and demonstrates promising practical applications for both network operators and service providers.


Depth estimation from light field (LF) images is a fundamental step for numerous applications. Recently, learning-based methods have achieved higher accuracy and efficiency than the traditional methods. However, it is costly to obtain sufficient depth labels for supervised training. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised framework to estimate depth from LF images. First, we design a disparity estimation network (DispNet) with a coarse-to-fine structure to predict disparity maps from different view combinations. It explicitly performs multi-view feature matching to learn the correspondences effectively. As occlusions may cause the violation of photo-consistency, we introduce an occlusion prediction network (OccNet) to predict the occlusion maps, which are used as the element-wise weights of photometric loss to solve the occlusion issue and assist the disparity learning. With the disparity maps estimated by multiple input combinations, we then propose a disparity fusion strategy based on the estimated errors with effective occlusion handling to obtain the final disparity map with higher accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves superior performance on both the dense and sparse LF images, and also shows better robustness and generalization on the real-world LF images compared to the other methods.


Acidity controlled Pt/ZSM-22 catalysts for n-dodecane hydroisomerization were explored through a simple and efficient post-treatment with different NaOH concentrations, and then the resulting samples were characterized using acid measurement, XRD, SEM, TEM, XRF and XPS. It appeared that the high crystallinity, uniform morphology and textural structure almost remained even after the alkaline-treatment of the parent zeolite with a low Si/Al ratio (∼20). However, the distribution of acid sites, and in particular the Bronsted acidity, changed which then affected the catalytic performance. This originates from the Bronsted acid sites of the parent catalyst being partially blocked. With the acid sites optimized using the alkali treatment, the selectivity for isomers increased from 59.5% (parent sample) to 87.3% (treated sample) with the yield increasing from 43.3% to 69.8%. Thus, such an ordinary alkaline treatment proved to be promising in the n-paraffin hydroisomerization for the cleaner production of lubricating oil based stocks.


The prognosis of most patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is excellent despite some cases of tumor progression or relapse. The present study was designed to reveal possible prognostic risk indicators for PTC. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) extracted from 4 Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohorts were subjected to functional enrichment analyses by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genome (KEGG) pathway analysis. A dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) was obtained to filter and validate significant genes using cytoHubba, followed by analysis of their association with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis. In total, 240 DEGs were identified after data preprocessing. These DEGs were enriched in 'intracellular redox equilibrium', 'release of exosome', 'cell adhesion', 'regulation of extracellular matrix', 'collagen binding' and 'energy metabolism' based on GO analysis which including cellular component, molecular function and biological process. KEGG pathway analysis revealed that the DEGs were enriched in thyroid hormone synthesis, pathways in cancer, focal adhesion, metabolic pathways, apoptosis, PPAR signaling pathway and PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. Using cytoHubba, the following hub genes were identified: Apolipoprotein E (APOE); hemoglobin subunit α1 (HBA1); angiotensin II receptor 1 (AGTR1); collagen I α1 (COL1A1); galectin 3 (LGALS3) and TIMP metallopeptidase inhibitor 1 (TIMP1). The expression of these genes was found to be consistent in TCGA datasets. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that APOE was significantly associated with overall survival (P=0.00067) and disease free survival (P=0.00220). Additionally, low expression of APOE was significantly associated with older age (P<0.001) and higher TNM stage (P<0.001) compared with the high expression group. Therefore, APOE may function as a predictive risk indicator for progression as well as prognosis of PTC.


Myitkyina is the capital of Kachin State, on the northern part of Myanmar, and it is located on the western bank of the Ayeyarwady River. The bank's plain is Kachin State, which shares borders with China. The average elevation of the study area is 476 feet above sea level. At the present time, the area of Myitkyina is 104.82 sq.-kilometers. Mode of transportation, which connect Myitkyina to other towns of Myanmar, consists of roadways, railways and airways. The total population of Myitkyina was 2,341,087. Market places form an important urban land use pattern, and hence, this paper revolves around a case study of market distribution in Myitkyina. The study area consists of 3 permanent markets and 16 morning markets. In the case study, markets distribution and structure were analyzed by: (1) distribution patterns of markets places, (2) differences in size and function of markets, and (3) major controlling factors of marketplace in Myitkyina. Finally, analysis indicates that distribution of marketplaces and their functions depend on location, population and other factors.


Sustainable development is of great importance in today's society. An important aspect of this is the conserving of finite resources. The materials used in the manufacture of asphalt: aggregate and bitumen, are both finite resources. However, the two are highly recyclable. The rock material can be introduced without major issues since it is not significantly affected when an asphalt coating is in use. Bitumen, on the other hand tend to age during use and loses its adhesive power. For this reason, bitumen should be treated before being reintroduced in a new coating mass to insure a good quality. The most common technique for recovering bitumen is the mixing of soft bitumen. This is being done to compensate the brittle state of the aged bitumen. However, recently the development and the use of products that restores the aged binders' properties has begun, this in hope of improving the outcome of the end product. These products are known as rejuvenators, and it is these that this thesis has evaluated and tested. Four different rejuvenators have been chosen, all from different suppliers and countries. All tests have been performed on Peab's laboratory in Gothenburg by a trained and experienced staff. The main interest has been on how the softening point in an aged bitumen is changing and whether the rejuvenator is capable of withstand the heat in an asphalt plant. In addition to these tests low-temperature characteristics, penetration and viscosity has been tested. The results show a clear effect of rejuvenation and with the correct rate of incorporation the rejuvenator can restore an aged bitumen properties to a level that can be assimilated to a new bitumen. Following this there should then be a theoretical possibility of 100 % recovery of asphalt. Both the aggregate and bitumen can be recovered fully. Keywords: Bitumen, Rejuvenation, Recycling, Asphalt, Reuse (Less)


Various primary, secondary, and tertiary alcohols and phenols are highly efficiently converted to their corresponding methoxymethyl ethers under optimized reaction conditions.


To the Editor.— In the age of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, physicians responsible for the initial treatment of victims of sexual assault would do well to reevaluate and update treatment procedures for female victims of rape. Historically, victims of sexual assault have been specifically instructed not to wash or douche prior to examination by a physician. Such examinations routinely include a history, examination for injuries, collection of evidence, and counseling. With concern for the possible transmission of HIV, those caring for rape victims should consider topical treatment with nonoxynol 9, 1:10 vinegar solution, or similar anti-HIV substances (B. Voeller, personal communication, September 1988). 1,2 Much as been written in recent years of the efficacy of nonoxynol 9 in inactivation of sexually transmitted disease pathogens including HIV. 1-3 We submit that a treatment revision for victims of sexual assault should include the early administration of nonoxynol 9 as a potential


ABSTRACT Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of aphakic Artisan–Verysise intraocular lens (IOL) primarily implanted for complicated cataract surgery. Methods: A retrospective analysis of 49 eyes that underwent primary aphakic Artisan IOL implantation for complicated cataract surgery. Pre- and postoperative uncorrected visual acuity (UCVA), best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), and spherical equivalents (SE) were compared. Results: The mean age of the participants was 68 ± 12.7 years, and the mean follow-up time was 30.7 ± 14.8 months. The mean BCVA improved significantly from 0.58 ± 0.4 at baseline to 0.44 ± 0.41 after the operation (P = 0.008). The spherical equivalent changed insignificantly from -0.13 ± 1.55 preoperatively to -0.6 ± 1.88 (P = 0.724) at the last visit. Postoperative complications were transient pigmented precipitates in five cases and raised intraocular pressure in one case. Conclusion: Aphakic Artisan IOLs are attractive alternatives in complicated cataract surgery without sufficient capsular bag support.


Five years from the time Australian Prime Minister John Howard took an active interest with policies of mainstreaming of services for Aboriginal people, he has not done anything about the position of Aboriginal affairs which seems to be going backwards. Some Aboriginal children are from generations of dispossessed, angry and unemployed people, and dealing with the root causes - poverty, disadvantage, disengagement and despair seems to be the only way that violence, family dysfunction and disintegration will be eradicated.


There have been at least two articles maintaining that Othello's marriage was not consummated. Pierre Janton speaks of "Othello's libidinous aggressivity, unable to express itself through the channel of his weak function, ...for Desdemona lay still a virgin in death ...." (50). The quotations that Janton uses to reach his conclusion require a narrow interpretation of the phrasing. True, Othello, having learned too late that Desdemona was innocent, refers to her chastity (V.2.276). But chastity, while a condition of virginity, means only that there has been no unlawful intercourse. Thus, all that Othello is saying is that Desdemona has been faithful. IT thefruits are to ensue (11.3.9), as Janton quotes (48), the very plural suggests that the fruits are of more than one night, and no one need conclude that no fruit has materialized previously. (Additional interpretations are suggested below.) And if Othello hath not yet made wanton the night with her (11.3.16-17), surely a single consummation would not wanton an entire night! All that the line says is that more sex is expected to follow. One of the phrases Janton quotes, the young effects/ In me defunct (47) (1.3.263-4), indicates no more than that Othello has lost his youthful passion. Iago's reference to Othello's weak function (11.3.348) probably refers to Desdemona's ability to weaken his mental faculties. (0 ED, s. v. function ...sb...3...b.... The phrase from Othello is quoted under this definition.) But if/unction is assumed to refer to sexual capability, note that Iago does not doubt Othello's capability with Desdemona:


In 1982, Mashhour et al [1], defined a new version of nearly open sets, which is a significant notion to the field of general topology, which are called preopen sets. In 1983, Abd.El-Monsef [2], introduced the notion of β-open sets in topological space. In 1986, Andrijevic [3], defined and investigated semipre-open sets which are equivalent to β-open sets. In 2003, Noiri [12] introduced the concept of sp-θ-open sets.


A concrete interface treating agent in the form of dried powder is proportionally prepared from powdered coal ash, sand, cement, trigger, latex powder, water-preserving agent, and defoaming agent through sequential mixing while stirring, and stirring for a certain time. It can increase the adhesion of concrete interface.


We study the two stage classification approach using Hidden Markov Models and Bayesian Network to natural hand gesture classification. We analyze 22 natural gestures with three sets of sensors (finger bend, accelerometers and pitch/roll), classifying each of them separately, and then combining the results using Bayesian classifier. This method achieves significant improvement over single stage classifier trained on the whole multisensor sequences.


Introduction: Branched-chain organic acidurias include maple syrup urine disease (MSUD), isovaleric acidemia (IVA), propionic acidemia (PA), and methylmalonic acidemia (MMA). Long term management requires diets of adequate energy and protein with restriction of the offending amino acids. Standard commercial formulas are expensive and unaffordable to patients of low socio-economic status. Methods: This study aimed to develop food products for branched-chain organic acidurias children aged 4-15 years using locally available raw materials in Thailand. Fish maw (Pangasius hypophthalmus) and roasted sunflower kernel (Helianthus annuus) were selected as protein sources due to their low leucine contents. Five formulations were developed, namely (i) powder (low leucine, isoleucine, and valine for MSUD) for tube feeding preparation, (ii) – (v) rice sprinkle powder, bouillon cube, instant cocoa drink, and snack bar, respectively with low leucine for IVA; low valine, isoleucine, methionine and threonine for PA and MMA. Results: All five formulated products provide 500-600 kcal/100 g, adequate protein in which the offending amino acids were controlled at non-harmful levels. These products were shelf stable at room temperature (Aw = 0.3-0.5). Conclusion: The products that were formulated from fish maw and roasted sunflower kernel provide proteins of appropriate quality and quantity for long-term management of branched-chain organic acidurias. The developed products should be further tested for efficacy among patients in accordance with an adequately powered study design.


Compound of the general formula (1) wherein R in the 4- or 8-position is disposed, and A is the moiety represents, and the salts thereof.


To the layman navigation may sometimes appear as an old lady whose fads have acquired the sanctity of tradition. In every tradition, however, there is something venerable; and we would be very wrong to laugh at the traditions of the sea, for they are a legacy we have inherited from all our seafaring ancestors since the days of Noah. The core of this inheritance is the notion of freedom. For centuries the freedom of the seas was absolute and unconditional; all men were free to use the sea, for no man can plant his flag on its restless immensities; and all were free to choose their routes and navigate as they pleased, for encounters at sea were so infrequent that it would be only a most uncommon stroke of ill-luck that produced a collision between two vessels in the vast emptiness of the oceans.


By including credible data extracted from the Twitter social networking service, the study of earthquakes and tsunamis is legitimately transformed into a Big Data Analytics problem. The challenge of establishing geophysically credible tweets is considered first through a combination of graph analytics and knowledge representation, and subsequently via Machine Learning. Although there remains cause for optimism in augmenting scientific data with that derived from social networking, further research is required to provide utility in practice. The motivation for success remains strong, as establishing a causal relationship between earthquakes and tsunamis remains problematical, and this in turn complicates any ability to deliver timely messaging that could prove life-critical.


Background and Aim:  Functional gastrointestinal symptoms are common and their management is often a difficult clinical problem. The link between food intake and symptom induction is recognized. This review aims to describe the evidence base for restricting rapidly fermentable, short‐chain carbohydrates (FODMAPs) in controlling such symptoms.


Some discussions about the The Unity of the Book of Genesis stress that the book is a human work of literature, while others insist on the peculiar character of the book, its claim to truth and its theological aspect. This chapter shows that this is an old question, as old as Ibn Ezra at least. It starts with Ibn Ezra who has been particularly influential, especially when we consider Spinoza's use of his insights. Then, the chapter takes us to the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, where we look at Richard Simon, Astruc, Eichhorn, and Ilgen. Next, it examines how each of these authors endeavored to read Genesis from a critical and "human" point of view. The chapter also shows that real progress in the exegesis of Genesis depends on the answer given to the question of whether Genesis can be read "as any other book" or not. Keywords:Astruc; Book of Genesis ; Eichhorn; Ibn Ezra; Ilgen; Richard Simon


This paper presents a rational polynomial approximation method to estimate modal parameters of wind excited structures using incomplete noisy measurements of structural responses and partial measurements of wind velocities only. A stochastic model of the excitation wind force acting on the structure...


A station for measuring fault gas CO\-2 was located in the yard of Shuimogou, Xinjiang, deformation station in Sept. 2000, and a new method-Rapid CO\-2 Determining Method is used at this station. Before the Hutubi M\-S3.9 earthquake occurred on July 4, 2001, obvious short-term and imminent anomaly had been observed at the station.


Some principle trends in the erosion study are outlined; the results of investigations and new challenges in soil-conservation farming are discussed.


Gift exchange has been studied mainly by anthropologists. The work of Malinowski and Sahlins suggests a relationship between the closeness of social relationships and the purity of the gift (the extent to which it is given as an expression of sympathy and without concrete expectations of returns). This article examines gift giving in Western society. An emotional hierarchy of different social relationships was constructed on the basis of an analysis of feelings accompanying gift giving. The results suggest that friendships are emotionally more important than ties to extended kin. Key Words: family, friendship relationships, gift giving. Gift giving is the cement of social relationships. A range of feelings may be involved in gift giving. A gift, for instance, may be inspired by sympathetic feelings or feelings of being involved in someone else's life. In other cases, feelings of being morally obliged to another person may play a role. One feels indebted toward this person because he or she has done us a favor, rendered us a service, or given us a gift. Gift exchange has mainly been studied in the context of non-Western cultures. Anthropologists like Malinowski (1922), Levi-Strauss (1949/ 1969), and Sahlins (1972) emphasized that gift exchange fulfills important functions in the development and continuity of society and culture. They pointed to feelings of moral obligation involved in gift giving (do ut des or I give so that you give in return), and they demonstrated how obligations may lead to patterns of reciprocity in gift exchange. Sociologists have contributed to theories of gift exchange, too. Gouldner (1973a, 1973b), for example, made a distinction between two different norms of gift exchange-one oriented to reciprocity and another, more altruistic norm. Underlying these theoretical approaches is the relative share of "pure" gift giving, characterized by the absence or vagueness of expectations of return gifts, versus gift giving based on clear-cut expectations of reciprocity or feelings of mutual obligation. For example, Malinowski and Sahlins assume that the nearer the social relationship, the less a gift resembles an economic or quid pro quo transaction and the purer the feelings accompanying these gifts. Malinowski mentions as examples gifts that parents give to their offspring and gifts given by marriage partners to each other. The greater the emotional distance, the less pure the concomitant feelings of disinterestedness, sympathy, or involvement, and the stronger the feelings of reciprocal obligation and quid pro quo. In this article, we examine the extent to which the relation suggested by anthropologists between the purity of the gift and the degree of distance of the social relationships involved holds for a Dutch sample, who responded to a questionnaire about gift giving in the Netherlands in 1992 (Komter & Schuyt, 1993). Gift giving might be considered a good indicator of emotional involvement in family and friends because it is such a tangible and concrete and, therefore, measurable expression of feeling toward other people. Are different types of feelings involved in giving gifts to family and friends? Have friendship networks taken over some of the function and meaning of family ties? THE GIFT Theoretical and Empirical Backgrounds In Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), Malinowski offers a detailed description of the pattern of ceremonial gift exchange among the population of the Trobriand archipelago. He proposes that a continuum of feelings are involved in gift giving. Pure gifts, altruistic gifts for which nothing is expected in return, and gifts that can be characterized as barter or forms of exchange where personal profit is the dominant motive are the exceptions. Most typical are motives that lie between these extremes. More or less equivalent reciprocity, characterized by clear expectations of returns, is the general rule underlying gift exchange. …


The exposition always allows us to 'see' and 'know' as much as it explains through the installation how to 'interact' and 'make signify' its combinatory. It invites the visitor to venture into a process-based experience of constant scavenge into the depths of the meaning to finally lead him, throughout the meeting, to discover its semantic code. The exhibition is, therefore, perceived as a spatial-media engineering work; a spatial rhetoric where the communication's efficiency is reliant on the attractive and expressive performance of the processes and mediums, by which, it condenses its statements, forges its phrases and includes its visitor-reader. Speech setting, course setting, editing games, articulation, situations, signification and interaction, evocation and provocation, etc., will thus be perceived as instruments and materials of a particular language as well as tools of spatial-media strategies.
Keywords: Exhibition, complexity, design process, spatio-media, enunciation.


User mobility management is one of the important components of mobile multimedia environments. That is, mobile users should obtain network resources after handoff for seamless service supports. So, an adaptive handoff scheme has been proposed to minimize the connection dropping probability for handoff connections. This paper shows the comparative performance analysis for the adaptive QoS handoff mechanism with existing solutions such as non-priority scheme (NPS) and guard-channel scheme (GCS). It has been shown from the performance evaluations that the adaptive QoS mechanism provides lower dropping and blocking probability than existing schemes.


Haskew-Layton et al. (1) reported that subtoxic doses of H2O2 fails to activate nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2) in astrocytes and triggers Nrf2-independent responses that protect cocultured neurons. Contrary to this, we show that mild oxidative insults, including subtoxic H2O2, strongly activate astrocytic Nrf2/antioxidant response element (ARE)-dependent gene expression, which, moreover, contributes to neuroprotective ischemic preconditioning.


1 Insects using olfactory stimuli to forage for prey/hosts are proposed to encounter a 'reliability–detectability problem', where the usability of a stimulus depends on its reliability as an indicator of herbivore presence and its detectability.


The problem of urinary retention after hysterectomy for benign disease is extensively evaluated by authors from Ghent. Their interesting results show that it is associated with the de‐afferentiation of the bladder wall and with Fowler's syndrome. These findings help our understanding of a troublesome condition.


Foreword by Alicia Karas. Preface. Acknowledgements. List of Contributors. Chapter 1: Anesthesia Equipment. Chapter 2: Monitoring. Chapter 3: Ventilation. Chapter 4: Preoperative Preparation. Chapter 5: Premedicants. Chapter 6 Induction Agents and Total Intravenous Anesthesia. Chapter 7: Inhalant Anesthetics. Chapter 8: Local Anesthetic and Analgesic Techniques. Chapter 9 Analgesia. Chapter 10: Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs. Chapter 11: Support. Chapter 12: Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation. Chapter 13: Anesthesia for Patients with Special Concerns. Chapter 14: Physical Medicine and Its Role in Recovery. Chapter 15: Clinical Techniques for Anesthesia. Appendices. 1: Recommended Resources. 2: Blood Transfusions. Index.


The work purports to discussion of a rarely explored method of answering questions – looking within, where answers might not be "correct" as in the scientific sense, but atleast, they are not answers that promote violence and hatred. The discussions elucidate key points as well as a formulation of asking questions within us and finding the answers.


A fast algorithm is proposed to tackle the constrained total generalised variation (TGV)-based image-restoration and reconstruction problems. The proposed algorithm proceeds by splitting: the non-smooth constrained TGV model is first decomposed into several sub-problems easier to solve, and then the linear gradient or proximity operators, including projections and shrinkages, of the sub-problems are individually called without inner iteration. The algorithm is highly parallel since most of its steps can be executed simultaneously. Image-restoration and reconstruction experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms several state-of-the-art TV-based methods both in accuracy and high-speed efficiency. Besides, the proposed method efficiently suppresses staircase effects and presents better visual impression.


Objective To explore the effect of PTEN on NF-kappa B transcript activation in the RAW264.7 cells treated with LPS. Methods The wild-type PTEN plasmid, mutant PTEN plasmids as well as control empty plasmid were cotransfected with the recombinated NF-κB plasmids containing LUC reporter gene into the macropha-ges cell line from mice( RAW264.7) using LipofectamineTM2000 respectively. Transfected cells were left untreated or stimulated with 1μg/ml LPS for 6 hours. Then, the cells were lysed in 100μl of 1×passive Lysis Buffer( Pro-mega) . Luciferase activity was measured using Dual-Luciferase Reporter Assay System( Promega). Results The activity of LUC in RAW264.7 cells treated with LPS in the over-expressed wild-type PTEN group increased markedly than the other groups. No significant effect was found in mutant PTEN groups and control group. Conclusion PTEN plays an important role in the activation of NF-κB in the macrophages. Thus,it may be involved in the inflammation induced by the LPS.


A retrospective study was made of trau- matic humeral shaft fractures in adults that were trea- ted between 1990 and 1999. Pathological fractures and patients under 15 years were excluded. In 155 cases, epidemiological factors, etiology, AO classification of the fracture, associated injuries, treatment, results, and complications were analyzed. Traffic accidents were significantly more frequent in young patients and acci- dental falls were significantly more frequent in adults. Open fractures were significantly more frequent in traffic accidents than in accidental falls. The most fre- quent fractures were B1, A1 and A3, in this order. A1 and B1 occurred most often after accidental falls than other causes, although the differences were not signifi- cant. The patients treated orthopaedically had a shor- ter hospital stay and longer immobilization time than the patients treated surgically, with significant diffe- rences. Consolidation times were similar for both groups. The frequency of initial radial paralysis was 8.3%, with no difference in frequency in relation to ty- pe of fracture or fracture location. Delayed consolida- tion and non-union occurred in 19% and 9%, respecti- vely, and showed no significant difference with respect to type of fracture or treatment.


We describe the Kondo resonance in quantum dots employing the atomic model. We calculate approximate Green's functions of the impurity Anderson model employing the exact solution of the system with a conduction band with zero width, and we use the completeness condition to choose the position of that band. At low temperatures, there are two solutions close to the chemical potential µ, satisfying this condition, and we choose the one with minimum Helmholtz free energy, considering that this corresponds to the Kondo solution. At high temperatures, this solution no longer exist, corresponding to the disappearance of the Kondo peak. We present curves of density of states that characterize the Kondo peak structure problem. As a simple application we calculate the conductance of a side-coupled quantum dot and we obtain good agreement with recent experimental results.


In this paper we tried to apply the failure assessment diagram method on an API X60 pipeline under two pressures 70 and 90 bar, this work will be divided into two parts; the first part will be devoted to modeling and simulation of a pipeline under pressure 70/90 bar. With abaqus software to determine the stress intensity factor of several ratios, The second part will focus on the exploitation of these results in order to draw the diagram of evaluation of the failure (FAD), once finished, We can pronounce on the vulnerability of the cracks which can cause the ruin of the pipeline to study, on mode of ruin and proposed safety factors.


The invention discloses a thermal shock tester comprising a container filled with thermal shock medium with set depth, the bottom of the container is provided with a valve permitting a thermal shock material to pass, and the valve is controlled to be switched on and off by a valve control unit; and the thermal shock material falls from the set height right above the thermal shock material in a free-falling body mode to pass through the thermal shock medium and fall out of the container from the valve. The invention controls time for the thermal shock material to pass through the thermal shockmedium by controlling the falling height of the thermal shock material and the depth of the thermal shock medium. The invention has the advantages of large thermal shock time span, convenient operation, simple structure and the like.


In this paper, we study different edge de tection techniques, edge detection is one of the mo st commonly used operations in image analysis, and the re are probably more algorithms in the literature f or enhancing and detecting edges than any other single subject. The goal of edge detection process in a d igital image is to determine the frontiers of all represen t d objects based on automatic processing of the co lour or gray level information in each present pixel. An ed ge is the boundary between an object and the backgr ound, and indicates the boundary between overlapping obje cts. This means that if the edges in an image can b e identified accurately, all of the objects can be lo cated and basic properties such as area, perimeter, and shape can be measured. Since computer vision involves the identification and classification of objects in an image, edge detections is an essential tool. Key Terms: Edges; gradient, canny; Sobel; prewitt


The LNG terminal tank integrity management evaluation system are established to evaluate and estimate the risk in LNG tank running and management.Based on established system of tank integrity management,the evaluation technology process of LNG tank in integrity management and key factors in evaluation including risk analysis,database running style,tank detection are analyzed in details.It can be concluded that the integrity management evaluation system is key factor for guaranty safe running of LNG tank in lifecycle.


E7070 is a novel chloroindolyl sulphonamide being developed as an anti-cancer agent for the treatment of solid tumours. E7070 arrests cell cycle progression in the G1 phase and induces apoptosis. In various in vitro and in vivo models, E7070 appeared to be highly active. Four phase I dose-escalation studies have been conducted to identify the dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs) and the maximum tolerated dose. Adult patients with advanced solid tumours resistant or not amenable to conventional therapy received E7070 at four different treatment schedules: 1) 1 h i.v. infusion (doses 50–1000 mg m−2), 2) daily times five 1 h i.v. infusion (d×5) (10–200 mg m−2 day−1), 3) weekly times four 1 h infusion (40–500 mg m−2 week−1), 4) 120 h continuous i.v. infusion (civ) (6–200 mg m−2 day−1). DLTs were haematological in all studies. Pharmacokinetic (PK) sampling was performed in 143 patients (corresponding numbers of patients were 40, 35, 43 and 25) during the first cycle. In this study we investigated the PK and its relationship with the pharmacodynamics for all studies. A population PK model was developed to describe the combined data of the four studies. E7070 showed non-linear PK at higher dose levels. Therefore, a basic 3-compartmental model was extended with saturable transport to one of the peripheral compartments and parallel linear and a non-linear pathways of elimination from the central compartment. The model adequately described the data. A validation using a bootstrap procedure indicated that the model was robust. Total clearance (CL) of E7070 was highly dependent on the plasma concentration; shortly after infusion, at the higher concentrations (i.e. 10–200 mg l−1), CL was 0.5 l h−1 and gradually increased to 5.5 l h−1 at the lower concentrations (0.1–0.01 mg l−1). For each individual, Bayesian estimates of AUC (area under the plasma concentration time curve) were obtained using the PK model. The percentage decreases in neutrophils (ANC) and thrombocytes (THR) were plotted against dose, dose level and AUC for each study. In general, AUC was a better predictor for haematological toxicity than dose and dose level, as variability was reduced when related to AUC. The relationship between % decrease in ANC and THR and AUC could be described using a maximum effect (Emax) model. A maximum % decrease in ANC and THR of approximately 95% was reached with all four schedules.

In conclusion, the non-linear PK of E7070 in all treatment schedules was adequately described using the population PK model. The dose-limiting, haematological toxicity of E7070 is related to the total exposure, expressed as AUC.


Between 8th – 9th October 2013 Oxford Archaeology East conducted an evaluation on land to the rear of The Walkdens, Ashwell, Hertfordshire. The site was approximately 0.5 ha in size and the evaluation comprised six trenches totalling 180m. Geophysics had previously been carried out at the site and had identified a Bronze Age barrow, approximately 25m in diameter, which is one of three located within the field. Trench 1 was positioned across the diameter of the barrow; in both excavated sections the ring-ditch was shallow, measuring a maximum of 0.2m deep. As a result, Trench 6 was opened, to determine whether the ditch was a similar depth to the east. Surprisingly, the ring-ditch was deeper in Trench 6, measuring 0.5m deep. No burial or human remains were identified, either within, or associated with, the barrow. A small undated pit or hollow was excavated inside the area of the barrow, close to its southern edge. Nearby, a similar feature was only partially exposed and remained unexcavated. The only other features encountered during the evaluation were two tree throws in Trenches 2 and 4.
Finds were rare, totalling two small fragments of animal bone (one cattle tooth and one pig tooth, 32g), a small heavily patinated flint blade of Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic date, which had broken in antiquity (1g) and a single tiny sherd of pot (1g), all from the barrow ring-ditch in Trench 6. Three bulk samples were taken to assess the quality of preservation of plant remains and their potential to provide useful data. Plant remains are sparse and are preserved by carbonization (charring) caused by exposure to fire. The better preserved grains can be tentatively identified as a prehistoric hulled wheat, either emmer or spelt.


Object tracking has become the cornerstone of many computer vision applications. Numerous object tracking methods have surfaced in the research community which are intended for high level applications such as automatic data analysis for activity recognition. Most of the methods are either too constrained in the context of the given application or they are costly in terms of computations to meet the real-time requirements. For example, Mean-Shift (MS) has rose to prominence due to its ease of implementation and robustness to various deformations however it fails to track objects with small sizes, fast motion and full occlusion. On the other hand, Particle Filter (PF) is known for its efficiency, accuracy and robustness to small sizes, fast object motion and full occlusion however it is heavily influenced by the number of particles, besides the sample degeneracy and impoverishment problems. Decoupling the disadvantages of both the methods gave birth to a new era of modern trackers known as hybrid systems that are more efficient, accurate and robust to the aforementioned constraints. A few survey papers on object tracking has been published in the scientific circles during the last decade however we feel that this popular integration of MS and PF is still unregistered.


Summary form only given. The confluence of modern genetic manipulation techniques, powerful measurement technologies, and advanced analysis methods is enabling a new area of research in which systems and control notions are used for regulating cellular processes at the gene level. This presentation describes novel analytical and experimental work that demonstrates how de novo control systems can be interfaced with living cells and used to control their dynamic behavior. The feedback systems can either be realized on a computer (in silico control) using optogenetics or through genetically encoded parts (in vivo control). We compare and contrast both approaches and describe the theoretical and experimental opportunities and challenges in each. Applications in biotechnology and therapeutics will also be described.


In this paper, infrared distance sensors are compared regarding technology, environmental, and practical aspects. Different methods for obtaining lateral resolution and covering the required detection range are presented for both sensor technologies. Possible positions for sensor installation at the test vehicle have been tested. Experimental results regarding cleaning devices and other environmental problems are presented. Finally, future aspects, e.g. speed over ground measurements or technological steps are discussed.


The paper presents an approach to generate test cases from UML sequence diagrams. We make use of the UML sequence diagrams with OCL from which integrate the information specified in class and statechart diagrams in-to sequence diagrams and represent the information as constraints attached to proper locations of the object lifelines in the sequence diagrams. First, we provide a method for checking completeness, correctness and consistency of the se-quence diagrams. Secondly, we derive test specifications and event series from the sequence diagrams. Finally, ac-cording to test criterion, we create test cases via the well-known Category-Partition Method. Additionally, the paper applies the approach to address a simplified DHCP protocol, and explains every step in the method and its feasibility.


PURPOSE: To obtain the acid-sensitized photoresist composition comprising an acid generation photoinitiator and a polymer binder and/or a polymerizable compound and an acid responsive group and being accelerated in photochemical reaction velocity. CONSTITUTION: This acid-initiation photoresist composition to be used comprises the acid generation photoinitiator and the polymer binder and/or a matrix, the acid responsive group capable of patternizing the composition by an acid initiation chemical reaction, and a sufficient amount of a hydroxyaromatic compound for accelerating a reaction velocity of the photoresist composition during irradiation for image formation, and the photoreaction velocity is remarkably enhanced by adding this hydroxyaromatic compound to the photoresist composition in a amount of 1-5weight%. COPYRIGHT: (C)1992,JPO


Rippling failure occurring on rollers and gears is well known as one of the phenomena resulting from plastic flow of the surface layer caused by repeated sliding-rolling contact. In the previous paper, the authors reported on rippling failure occurring on gear tooth surfaces under slow speed and heavy load operations. In the case of gears, rippling failure may be influenced by factors such as the load distribution, dynamic load, and the sliding velocity and specific sliding which change with the meshing position on the gear tooth. Therefore, the rippling test by rollers was carried out as basic research for clarification of rippling failure by using the Amsler type abrasion testing machine. In the present paper, the progress and limit of rippling failure occurring on case-hardened roller surfaces are clarified.


High demand of electrical power receives challenging feedback due to the lack of natural resources and high impact of the global warming. This paper describes one applicable method to optimize the electrical power consumption using Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensor. A simple adjuster based on the sensor reading was developed and tested to one small room with two Light Emitting Diode (LED). Two LDR sensors to measure and analyze the surroundings light intensity were allocated for one LED bulb. The LDR sensors interface with each other, and the necessary intensity required by the bulb will be calculated and the bulbs will provide the required lumen for the surrounding/workspace. This system is tested during the day time. The output would affected by surroundings light sources. Hence, the LED bulbs light intensity will be reduced causing a directly proportional effect to the power consumption. This system can provide optimized light intensity for the surrounding and reduces the electrical power consumption during daytime.


Miser is a semi-leafless, yellow cotyledon field pea (Pisum sativum L.) cultivar with powdery mildew resistance and good yield. It was developed by Agriculture and Agri- Food Canada, Morden Research Station, Morden, Manitoba. It has small seeds acceptable to the yellow field pea market. Miser was issued registration number 5627 2003 Apr. 09 by the Variety Section, Plant Health and Plant Products Division, Canadian Food In spection Agency. Key words: Field pea, Pisum sativum L., powdery mildew resistance, seed size


It has been highlighted in the constitution that the Constitutional Court has one obligation to give verdict on the House of Representatives' (DPR) opinion regarding the impeachment of the president and/or the vice president. Obligation given by  this constitution is about to prove that Indonesia is a law state. Even though the Constitutional Court has become part of the dismissal process of president and vice president, the independence of its obligation is doubted by public because of the recruitment factors of the Constitutional Court judges. Even though these judges successfully give verdict because the president or the vice president is proven to break the law, it does not mean that its verdict absolutey ties the authority of the House of Assembly (MPR).


Research in the Social Cure tradition shows that groups can reduce members' stress by providing support to cope with challenges, but has yet to consider how this applies to the anxiety occasioned by outgroups. Research on intergroup contact has extensively examined how reducing intergroup anxiety improves attitudes towards outgroups, but has yet to examine the role of intragroup support processes in facilitating this. The present paper takes the case of residential contact, in which the impact of diversification upon neighbourhood cohesion is hotly debated, but the role of neighbourhood identification and social support from neighbours in facilitating residential mixing has been largely ignored. Our surveys of two geographically-bounded communities in England (n=310; n=94) and one in Northern Ireland (n=206) show that neighbourhood identification predicts both wellbeing and more positive feelings towards outgroups, with both effects occurring via increased intragroup support. In studies 2 and 3, we show that this positive effect on feelings towards the outgroup occurs independently of that of intergroup contact and is further explained by the effect of neighbourhood support in reducing intergroup anxiety. This suggests that Social Cure processes can improve intergroup attitudes by supporting group members to deal with the stress of intergroup interactions.


A small, open macro model with new transmission channels is developed to account for the post-crisis structural changes and to evaluate various policy rules for inflation targeting. Given significant changes in transmission channels and the lingering fragility in the financial sector, policy response itself can seriously accentuate the endogenous financial accelerator effect. Under the prevailing policy constraints, various forms of inflation targeting with emphasis on long-term inflation expectations, output changes, and the asset price channels are compared using simulation results based on a newly constructed model. It turns out that successful outcome is obtained by adhering to forward-looking simple rules in favor of backward-looking comprehensive policy rules. Above all, even with the dominant role of financial vulnerability in emerging market developments, simulation studies reveal that price as well as output stability that can be better achieved under a certain type of policy rules by helping to keep the financial accelerator from being activated. A further caveat for implementing inflation targeting in emerging economies is to use it as a unifying policy framework in which the environment for long-term capital market development can be promoted.


With 35% of Japanese National Railways routes subject to snow problems such as power failures, derailments and line blockages, JNR has developed numerous solutions. Described are slide prevention installations, snow fences, switch heaters, snow melting installations, and various types of snow plows. JNR also has standardized criteria for operation to prevent lines from being blocked by stalled trains.


Abstract Multiple zonal jets are investigated with a two-level primitive equation model on the sphere in which both baroclinicity and planetary radius are varied. As in the case for a two-layer quasigeostrophic model on a β-plane channel, it is found both that the Rhines scale successfully predicts the meridional scale of the multiple zonal jets, and that these jets are maintained in part by an eddy momentum flux divergence associated with slow baroclinic waves at the interjet minimum. A scaling analysis suggests that njets∝ (a/θm)1/2, with the constraints ζe ≡ 8 sin2f (θm/▵θ ) > 1 and njets ≥ 1, where njets is the number of the jets, a the planetary radius, θm one-half of the pole-to-equator potential temperature difference, ξe the supercriticality of the two-layer Phillips model, Δθ the potential temperature difference between the two levels, and ϕ the latitude. The number of jets simulated by the model agrees with this scaling, provided that Ljet ≤ a, where Ljet is the jet scale. In model runs with a l...


Subsequent to the previous work, the stabilizing effect of polyhydric alcohols and sugars on the alkaline degradation of methylhexabital J. P. (hexobarbital I. P.) was studied with respect to dielectric constant of the medium and following conclusions were drawn : 1) The magnitude of retardation of the reaction rate by ethylene glycol and glycerol was as large as or slightly larger than that by alcohols, but activation energy markedly decreased as the dielectric constant decreased. This proves that the stabilizing activity of these substances cannot be attributed only to the decrease of dielectric constant of the medium. 2) Sugars retarded degradation much more than was expected from the change of dielectric constant. The effect of glucose was particularly distinct. 3) The retardation of degradation by polyhydric alcohols and sugars would be attributed to the binding of hydroxyl ion to metal complex ion consisting of alkaline metal ion, hydroxyl ion, and polyhydric alcohol or sugar. Distinct retardation by glucose may be attributed to its relatively large value of pK.