The work value systems of 1,058 workers were assessed to investigate differences in values between younger workers and older workers. Both education and age were found to strongly influence such va...


Beam position design is a key technique in top design for spaceborne phased array SAR.The basic theory of beam position design is introduced.Several aspects which constrain beam position design,especially the ambiguity of phased array SAR,are analyzed.The relation between ambiguity and system parameters is confirmed.The adaptive beam position design algorithm for spaceborne phased array SAR is presented,which is used to spend less time designing SAR satellite system and gain a better effect.An example of beam position design for spaceborne strip map phased array SAR is given,which proves that this algorithm is valid.


Diabetes mellitus, a non-communicable disease that can affect men and women, can be classified as type I or type II. This disease is in the 4 th position in numbers of deaths in Brazil, and therefore, involves attention, both from the government, as the patients and family. The aims of this study is describe the lifestyle in relation to diet, foot care and proper medication, and the point of view of patients with diabetes mellitus type II, on the importance of the practice of physical exercise, coordinated and programmed. We performed a study using Questionnaire of Self-Care Activities with Diabetes (QAD) and a second questionnaire with questions related to the importance of exercise for patients with diabetes mellitus type II. Questionnaires were applied in 20 patients with the disease (08 men and 12 women), living in the city of Palmas, Tocantins, Brazil. Result: We noticed that even with the recommendations of healthcare professionals, most patients with diabetes mellitus type 2 has not adapted verification of blood glucose, proper nutrition and foot care. Moreover, despite the interviewees know the importance of performing regular physical activity, we noticed that these do not know how much of weekly days in which they must get physical exercise in order to control the disease. Most interviewees adopt just walk as the physical activity, and we have not verified from the answers of patients, if they know what the most beneficial exercises to control this disease.


Broadly that contain any of the elements of a court judge forcing law enforcement agencies to dispose of criminal proceedings. On the Code of Criminal Procedure, except that the disposition of evidence on consultation with the light of the forced disposal of general sense. Depending on the target for the disposal of human force and for the disposal of physical force. Warrant attention exception of the forced disposal of the court, law enforcement agencies are forced disposal. In this paper, we want to examine through theory and case law requirements and procedures, including the contents of the normal arrest, arrested red-handed, arested on.


It is known that for a given p ∈ [1,∞) and a given strictly stationary sequence of random variables, the p-norms of the partial sums are bounded if and only if the sequence consists of successive differences from another strictly stationary sequence with finite p-norm. Here this is generalized to random fields, and the assumption of stationarity is relaxed. The index p =∞ is included. 2000 Mathematics subject classification: primary 60G60, 60G10.


Reasonable exploitation and utilization of rainwater resources is one of the effective ways to resolve the water scarcity for the production,living and zoology in Karst region.The significance and gist of exploitation and utilization of rainwater in Karst region of Guizhou province are introduced in this paper.Furthermore,several available ways,such as gathering water through infiltration,gathering water from slope,multiple uses of rainwater and gathering rainwater from roofs,are suggested to resolve the water scarcity for production and living in Karst region of Guizhou Province.


There is a growing interest in supported self-care across a range of long-term conditions because of the opportunity it provides for high quality care to be achieved while optimizing effective use of health care resources. Clearly, this requires patient training to improve understanding of the medical condition and its management. This lies at the heart of personcentered care, which also includes additional components such as treating individuals with dignity, compassion, and respect. These concepts are reviewed in a recent report from the Health Foundation (1). Of course, practitioners of peritoneal dialysis (PD) have long recognized the contribution that patient education makes to the delivery of high quality health care. In this issue of Peritoneal Dialysis International, Deepika Jain and colleagues, from Pittsburgh, present a small study of patients on PD in which they investigate health literacy (HL), defined as "the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions" (2). Using the Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Medicine questionnaire at initiation of therapy, they identified 6 of 32 patients with scores compatible with limited HL. During 1 year of follow-up, no association was identified between HL and the occurrence of PD-related infections or hospitalization. The authors observe that their results differ from a large study using the same questionnaire in center-based hemodialysis patients, where low HL was associated with poorer outcomes (3). The Pittsburgh investigators hypothesize that the difference lies in the impact of the rigorous 5-day training program that their PD patients receive. Of course, as the authors readily admit, their study was small and statistically underpowered. The potential for patient education to increase HL and improve outcomes needs to be explored in larger studies. A tangible example of the value of this approach comes from a study previously published in this journal demonstrating the impact of targeted patient training to reduce the frequency of peritonitis (4). This is also the subject of the ongoing Prevention of Peritonitis in Peritoneal dialysis study (PEPS) (NCT01293799, Chief Investigator Dr. Susanne Ljungman (Sweden)). The International Society for Peritoneal Dialysis (ISPD, www.ispd.org) is mandated to enhance the knowledge of PD amongst nephrology practitioners, trainees, and patients worldwide through its education committee. The ISPD website hosts important materials including an online course entitled "Teaching nurses to teach peritoneal dialysis training," developed with the University of Pittsburgh. Although structured patient education is the norm in PD, this is not consistently the case in many long-term conditions. Its routine incorporation into health care requires significant cultural change for health care professionals and patients alike, underlining the importance of the work that the ISPD is doing.


Objective To establish the three-dimensional finite element model libraries for mandibular bilateral distal-extension prosthesis. Methods Models for bilateral mandibular free-end edentulous (765 567) and parametric prosthetic models were combined to establish the three-dimensional finite element model libraries by means of HyperMesh 7.0,UG 5.0 and Abaqus 6.5 softwares. Results The established finite element model libraries worked well with Abaqus 6.5 software,with no information loss. The models had satisfactory geometric configuration. Conclusion The three-dimensional finite element model libraries for bilateral mandibular free-end edentulous and mandibular bilateral distal-extension prosthesis have been rapidly established.


The team of Siberian sociologists which I have been leading for the last few years is making a study of the development of rural areas. As far as I know it is the only Soviet scientific team which consistently bases the study of a complex social system upon the methodology of systems analysis.

The primary target of our team was to investigate the reasons for rural-to-urban migration and to look for policies which would discourage out-migration and therefore provide rural areas with the needed labor force.


For many years confusion has existed regarding two species of the Hysteriales occurring on stems of Smilax in North America, so similar in macroscopic appearance, particularly in their early stages of development, that the distinction between them has not been clearly recognized. Both of these fungi have been referred to Hysteriurm Slmilacis Schw. One is a species of Gloniopsis, called Gloniopsis Smilacis (Schw.) Underw. & Earle, or Hysterographiurm Smilacis (Schw.) Ellis & Ev.; the second a Hypodermataceous fungus generally known as Hypoderma Smilacis (Schw.) Rehm, although it would appear to belong more properly in the genus Hypodermopsis. In well developed material the Gloniopsis can be distinguished by its superficial fruiting bodies as contrasted with those of the Hypodermopsis, which remain beneath the epidermis even when mature. The most evident difference is in the character of the spores, which are hyaline and muriform in the former, brown and 3-septate in the latter. The superficial resemblance of these two species and their growth on the same host has led to mixed collections, apothecia of both fungi being sometimes present on the same stem, only a few centimeters apart. It is apparent from the literature that the original Schweinitz specimen must have been such a mixed collection, and that some of the authors who examined his specimen found and described the one, some the other of the two species. An added source of confusion is the fact that some descriptions appear to combine characters of both fungi under a single name.


PURPOSE: A color-based sorting apparatus for leaflet is provided to discriminate good and inferior goods accurately using a CCD camera capturing chromatics of the leaflet. CONSTITUTION: A color-based sorting apparatus for leaflet comprises a circular reflective chamber(5), light sources(8,9), a circular reflecting surface(10), a transparent glass(12), an ejector(14), and a slit(15). The circular reflective chamber with a large inner diameter is formed along the length of a long frame. The light sources are installed on top and bottom of the circular reflective chamber to emit light to the circular reflective chamber. The circular reflecting surface is formed on the circular reflective chamber surface to transmit and reflect light. The transparent glass is installed in the longitudinally front side of the circular reflection chamber. The ejector is installed in the longitudinal direction in the frame part of the transparent glass. The slit is formed in the longitudinally rear side of the circular reflection chamber. The light source comprises LED array in which red LEDs and blue LEDs are alternately installed.


Objective: To evaluate the effects of shoe lift to the unaffected limb on hemiplegic gait after stroke. Method: Three dimensional gait analysis was performed in 20 chronic hemiplegic patients with shoe lifts (5, 10, 15 mm) to the unaffected limb. The order of experimental series was randomized among subjects. Temporal gait parameters were measured and compired according to the height of shoe lifts in the affected and unaffected limbs. Results: The stride time of both limbs and step time of the affected limb were decreased, and stride length of both limbs and step length of unaffected limb were increased after shoe lift apply (p


A study on natural heating and cooling system in a wooden experimental house is as follows. First, we made a floor cooling experiment with the rainwater cooled by underground heat in summer. Next, we made a floor heating experiment with the rainwater warmed by solar heat in winter. As a result, in summer the temperature on the floor fell by about 2 degrees and in winter rose by about 10 degrees.


been partially characterized by GC-MSanalysis.1) Because of further interest in the structure and activity of these unknown compounds, we conducted a large-scale experiment, resulting in the isolation of a new br.assinosteroid. Herein, its isolation, structure and biological activity are reported. The ethyl acetate-soluble neutral fraction obtained from a large amount (136kg) of immature seed of P. vulgaris was purified by silica gel chromatography and repeated Sephadex LH-20 chromatography.3) For further purification, charcoal chromatography (an elution solvent of mixtures of methanolchloroform) was attempted, resulting in the effective enrichment of biological activity in only one fraction (about a half gram) as indicated by the rice lamina inclination test.40 Successive reversed-phase HPLC(twice) gave rise to tens of biologically active fractions. One of the major fractions was purified twice by silica gel (Aquasil) HPLC, affording a new


Suicide is a major public health concern worldwide and its rates are alarming very high. In North-eastern part of India, Meghalaya ranks third in suicide death rates and more deaths are of youths, which makes it today's epidemic. Research has shown that the presence of meaning in life is positively associated with happiness and well-being and the absence of meaning in life is linked with anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideations. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the role of meaning in life in prevention of suicidal ideations among the college and university going students(N=90) at Shillong, Meghalaya between the age range of 18-24 years. The exploratory research design, and both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Meaning in life questionnaire and suicidal behaviour questionnaire revised were distributed to 90 students by simple random sampling and 20 samples were selected by purposive sampling for the in-depth interview. The results showed that suicidal ideations were common and some of the reasons were: family pressure and difficulty reaching family expectations; mental, physical health illness; and romantic relationship issues.


Background: The older inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) population is challenging to treat because of heterogeneity in characteristics related to frailty. The authors aimed to study factors contributing to the difference in treatment between older and younger patients with IBD and the relation between frailty and therapy goals, from the perspectives of both professionals and patients with IBD.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews in 15 IBD professionals and 15 IBD patients aged ≥65 years.

Results: Professionals had 1–20 years of experience, and three practiced in an academic hospital. Patients were aged 67–94 years and had a disease duration between 2 years and 62 years. The authors found that professionals aimed more often for clinical remission and less often for endoscopic remission in older compared with younger patients. Older patients also aimed for clinical remission, but valued objective confirmation of remission as a reassurance. Professionals sometimes opted for surgery earlier in the treatment course, while older patients aimed to prevent surgery. Professionals' opinion on corticosteroids in older patients differed, while patients preferred to avoid corticosteroids. In professionals and patients, there was a shift towards goals related to frailty in patients with frailty. However, professionals did not assess frailty systematically, but judged frailty status by applying a clinical view.

Conclusions: Many therapy goals differed between older and younger patients, in both professionals and patients. Professionals did not assess frailty systematically, yet aspects of frailty influenced therapy goals. This underlines the need for clinically applicable evidence on frailty in IBD, which could aid tailored treatment.


The overexpression of P-glycoprotein is thought to be responsible for resistance to chemotherapy in some non-responsive cancers. The mechanism by which P-glycoprotein is overexpressed in human tumors is poorly understood. However, several lines of evidence suggest that the major regulatory mechanism of P-glycoprotein overexpression in human tumors is at the transcriptional level. During tumor progression one of the most commonly observed alterations is mutation of the p53 tumor-suppressor gene. It has been shown that the p53 protein plays a role in transcriptional regulation. To gain insight into the effect p53 protein may have on P-glycoprotein promoter activity, we transiently co-transfected plasmids containing the hamster pgp1 or human mdr1 promoter linked to the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) reporter gene with plasmids encoding either wild-type or mutant p53 protein into Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells. In this report, we show that wild-type p53 protein represses P-glycoprotein promoter activity, while mutant forms of p53 protein enhance P-glycoprotein promoter activity. Furthermore, we present data which indicate that the transcriptional regulatory effects of p53 are mediated through interactions with pgp1/mdr1 core promoter sequences. These findings have implications for our understanding of the molecular mechanism(s) by which p53 protein functions as a transcriptional regulator of gene expression. In addition, our results suggest a mechanism by which P-glycoprotein may be overexpressed in human cancers that also express mutant forms of p53 protein.


CT imaging has proved to be an effective tool in evaluating COPD patients. The development of photon-counting detectors has offered better spatial resolution and reduced image noise, overcoming one major limitation of conventional scanners. However, this promising technology needs to be compared against conventional scanners and carefully optimized for its specific application. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential benefits of PCCT in the context of COPD imaging. Our analysis demonstrated that PCCT achieved more accurate results compared to conventional scanners and that lower dose levels, sharp kernels, and thicker reconstruction slices would negatively affect the accuracy.


There are three contradictions which harass trust business supervision and restrict the trust financial function: developing and regulating; separated supervision and mixed operation; the conflict between different aims. The key is the absence of idea of economic law in related rules. The idea of modern economic law should be introduced into and guide the trust business supervision law on three respects: following market adjusting and sparkpluging adjustable-supervision; basing on trust's mixed business and advocating functional-supervision; protecting beneficiary right and proposing defendable-supervision.


This paper discusses the well-publicized labor shortages in the building trades, reviews the causes for the deficiencies, and presents prescriptions for how career counselors and schools can play a critical role in encouraging young adults to consider construction occupations.,Using data from government agencies, trade organizations, and scholarly publications, this paper describes the categories of the building trades as well as their employment trends and compensation prospects. It also reviews the personal and environmental factors that could lead to the "construction of a construction career.",This article documents the reasons for the labor shortages in the construction industry and then offers recommendation on how younger adults could be encouraged to consider the building trades as viable career alternatives.,Labor shortages in the construction industry have a direct and indirect deleterious effect on the economic well-being of every country. This article provides suggestions on how to inspire young adults to consider the building trades as worthwhile career pursuits.,There is a limited amount of scholarly attention given to career decision making related to occupations that do not require a college degree, including the building trades. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on the individual characteristics and environmental factors that might prompt consideration of a career in the building trades. It also describes the educational, governmental, and corporate initiatives that work to encourage individuals, working in conjunction with their career counselors, to consider careers in the construction industry.


The complexane-type chelating agents were derived from aza-crown ethers either by N-carboxymethylation or N-phosphonomethylation. The macrocyclic complexanes obtained (crown complexanes) interacted in aqueous media with various metal ions with an uncommon selectivity. The metal ions are incorporated in the crown ether ring on complexation.


Although information and communication technology (ICT) literacy is a key competence for students in the 21st century, most scholars only focus on ICT literacy in higher education and vocational education, while neglecting to discuss this competence on primary education. Given that it is not clear how various level factors affect primary school students' ICT literacy, this study conducted a multilevel analysis to examine the possible factors influencing primary school students' ICT literacy. The data was released by Taiwan's administrative department in 2013, and the valid sample number is 943 students (including one of their parents) and 89 school deans. The results showed that: 1) The variables at student-level including gender, self-efficacy, ICT application in spare time and family salary income were significantly related to students' ICT literacy; 2) At the school-level, the larger the school size was, the higher the students' ICT literacy was.


Regional culture has been regarded as the historical record of human activities and the carrier of the cultural inheritance of a particular region during the past decades. The unique regional culture of Shanxi had influenced the landscape construction of Xiurong Academy. In this paper, research of the regional cultural perspective on the overall layout of Xiurong Academy, the creation and analysis of characteristic regional landscapes, and the cultural and garden landscapes of the academy has been conducted through literature research, field research, and other methods. The results show that Xiurong Academy has high reference value in the layout of the academy, historical culture, architectural characteristics, and landscape features of the academy in northern Shanxi. The landscape construction of Xiurong Academy conforms to the regional characteristics of its location. Its unique detailed design is reflected in the architecture, courtyard layout, and plant construction of Xiurong academy. It is valuable to provide some reference for the scientific protection and utilization of Xiurong Academy, even for other similar landscape research through our research to uncover and illustrate its building structure and plant landscape.


This letter reports a 71–77-GHz E-band single-chip front end (SCFE) monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) designed and implemented in a 0.13-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> gallium nitride (GaN) high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) process. The SCFE successfully integrates a four-stage power amplifier (PA), a five-stage low noise amplifier (LNA), and a single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch in a single chip, which operates over the 71–77-GHz bandwidth. In the transmitting mode, the measured small-signal gain is 19.0–20.2 dB and the saturated output power is 30.6–31.5 dBm. In the receiving mode, the measured gain and noise figure are 18.0–20.0 and 4.7–5.5 dB, respectively. The chip size is <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4.3\times2.5$ </tex-math></inline-formula> mm2. To the best of the author's knowledge, it is the first published report on the E-band GaN-based SCFE, which achieves more than 1-W output power.


A superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) module is commonly used for a high-energy accelerator; its purpose is to provide energy to the particle beam. Because of the low power dissipation and smaller impedance of a higher-order mode for this module, it can provide more power to the particle beam with better stability through decreasing the couple bunch instability. A RF coupler is necessary to transfer the high power from a RF generator to the cavity. A coupler of coaxial type is a common choice. With high-power operation, it might suffer from multipacting, which is a resonance phenomenon due to re-emission of secondary electrons. Applying a bias voltage between inner and outer conductors of the coaxial coupler might increase or decrease the strength of the multipacting effect. We studied the effect of a bias voltage on multipacting using numerical simulation to track the motion of the electrons. The simulation results and an application for SRF operation with a large beam current are presented in this paper.


Helpful resources for applying The Chicago Manual of Style standards to in-text citations, works cited pages, and formatting. Examples of in-text citations and bibliographic entries for CMS Notes & Bibliography citation style.


The main aim of the paper is determination of residual stresses in explosively welded steel-titanium bimetal. The analysis considers two bimetallic specimens: before and after the heat treatment. In residual stress determination the hole drilling method along with finite element analysis were applied. The results show different residual stress states depending on the heat treatment. The obtained results are confirmed by thermal stress calculation.


In Re-collection, Richard Rinehart and Jon Ippolito argue that the vulnerability of new media art illustrates a larger crisis for social memory. They describe a variable media approach to rescuing new media, distributed across producers and consumers who can choose appropriate strategies for each endangered work. Hailey Maxwell isn't quite convinced, and would like to have seen more in-depth analysis of the themes.


Deep, high-resolution I-band images of 24 BL Lac objects between z = 0.3 and 1.3 taken with the NOT and the ESO-NTT and VLT telescopes are discussed. In 17/24 (71%) of the BL Lac objects, we detected an underlying nebulosity, in 11/17 the host of the BL Lac in the redshift range z = 0.3-1 (< z > = 0.6). The host galaxies are luminous (MI = −25.2±0.8) and large (re = 10.5±7 kpc). They are on average about 0.6 mag brighter than BL Lac host galaxies at z ∼ 0.3 indicative of evolution, whereas their half-light radii are similar. By combining our data with literature data at low-redshift and applying evolutionary models to them, we find that the properties of the host galaxies of BL Lac objects up to z ∼ 1 are compatible with passively evolving elliptical galaxies formed at a redshift of z ≥ 2. Host galaxies of low-luminosity radio-loud AGN (BL Lac/FR I) have very similar properties to the hosts of radio-quiet QSOs and high-luminosity radio-loud AGN (radio-loud QSO/FR II) over a wide redshift range. This supports the picture of the "Grand Unification", in which AGN activity is a transient phenomenon in galaxy evolution.To search for other articles by the author(s) go to: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abstract_service.html


Conservation and management of the ecology of natural areas has become a prerequisite for mining companies in South Africa. Systematic conservation planning provides a useful tool for land-use planning and impact assessment, particularly in the mining industry. A study was therefore undertaken to provide sufficient, spatially explicit biodiversity and veld condition information to aid in the development and establishment of an official conservation plan for the leased mining area of Impala Platinum. By identifying areas with high plant diversity or endemism and by assessing veld conditions as well as grazing and browsing capacities, recommendations could be made towards management strategies and potential future land-use practices. The licensed mining area, north of Rustenburg, covers 29334 ha and includes 14 operational shafts. The area was stratified into three main categories based on landscape types namely: norite koppies; thornveld and rehabilitated areas. The Braun Blanquet approach was followed to sample 139 stratified random releves. Additional computer software packages were used for capturing, processing and presentation of the phytosociological data (TURBOVEG) as well as a visual editor for phytosociological tables (MEGATAB). Ordinations were subsequently performed to confirm the plant communities and illustrate possible environmental gradients, using multivariate statistic analyses (CANOCO). Four plant communities with two subcommunities were identified and described in both the norite koppies and thornveld respectively while three plant communities with three sub-communities were identified in the rehabilitated areas. Specific environmental factors that influence plant community structure and composition in the norite koppies were the aspect and percentage of soil surface rockiness while soil types proved to be the distinguishing factor in the thornveld. The distribution of plant communities in the rehabilitated areas is mainly due to anthropogenic influences rather than any environmental factors. The Fixed Point Monitoring of Vegetation MethodologyFIXMOVE was then used to sample 32 stratified random survey plots in four selected plant communities in order to quantify and compare veld conditions as well as grazing and browsing capacities. The determination of landscape functionality served to support these quantitative results. The Landscape Function Analysis (LFA) method was used for this purpose. Multivariate statistic analyses (CANOCO) were used to indicate possible degradation gradients between the plant communities. Conclusions regarding conservation and management units were reached by interpreting the quantitative data in accordance with the phytosociological results and recommendations could then be made. All the norite koppies plant communities were recommended as areas for


We consider a full-duplex bi-directional communication system between two nodes that suffer from self-interference, where the nodes are equipped with multiple antennas and instantaneous channel state information (CSI) at the nodes is imperfect. We focus on the effect of the residual self-interference due to channel estimation errors and limited dynamic ranges of the transmitters and receivers. We consider the transmit filter design for Weighted Sum-Rate (WSR) maximization problem subject to total power constraint of the full-duplex system. Based on the relationship between WSR and Weighted Minimum Mean Square Error (WMMSE) problems for bi-directional full-duplex systems, we propose a low complexity alternating algorithm which converges to a local WSR optimum point. This algorithm exploits both spatial and temporal freedoms of the source co-variance matrices of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) links between the nodes to achieve higher WSR.


This report summarizes a four-year study on the impacts of highway construction and operation on water quality and quantity of stormwater runoff. Monitoring of water quality in one of the creeks below a highway construction site indicates that even an extensive system of temporary controls is not sufficient to prevent large amounts of suspended sediment from entering receiving waters. Parameters commonly used to characterize geotextile fabrics were found to have little relevance for estimating their sediment removal abilities or hydraulic characteristics under field conditions. The quality of highway runoff was determined by monitoring the quality of storm water runoff from three sites along the MoPac Expressway in Austin, Texas. The quality of the runoff was similar to that reported in other highway studies across the United States. The concentrations of pollutants appeared to be affected by changes in traffic volume, rainfall intensity, and other factors. A computer model was developed that will predict the quality of runoff from operating highways in the Austin, Texas, area. The majority of the variation observed in highway stormwater loading could be explained by causal variables measured during the storm event, the antecedent dry period, and the previous storm event. Structural controls built on the new highway segments to protect the Edwards Aquifer from stormwater runoff have not performed effectively. The hydraulic performance of the vertical sand filters has been uneven, resulting in little apparent improvement in runoff quality. A grassy swale was found to be effective for reducing runoff volumes and pollutant concentrations.


In view of the problems existing in variable speed system of wagon tipper of Huaneng Beijing Thermal Power Plant regarding poor safety, low working efficiency and large energy consumption, reformation of VVVF are carried out, so that the safety and reliability of wagon tipper operation greatly improved, percentage of variable speed system failure number in overall failure ones are reduced from 55% in the year of 2001 to 2% in 2002, unloading period of each wagon tipper are shortened form the original 200s to 180s, energy saving every year is about 150000kWh.


This paper,direct from the pixel element,treated by methods of small wave analysis and triangulation etc,the satellite cloud atlas information can be turned into the basic data needed in hydrology model calculation such as elevation,slop and so on.This analysis showed that using the satellite cloud atlas to simulate and calculate the hydrologic model can effectively improve the hydrologic forecast.


To solve the problems existing in modeling,simulation,analysis and verification of system,especially large and complex real-time systems,friendly and effective tool support is essential.A Matlab toolbox for time Petri nets was developed by fully utilizing the powerful capabilities of matrix operations and data analysis of Matlab.Graphical edition,dynamical simulation,and timing analysis functions of the toolbox were implemented.This work is undoubtedly a good try in the tool development of time Petri nets.


Properties of goat's milk casein, secreted from virgin goat by injection of Euvestin (one of the Follikel hormon, Stilbene derivatives, made in. Japan. Takeda medicine Co.) are generally identical in comparison with normal gale's milk casein.Injection of CaCl2 ints goat's neck venous accumulates alcium in mamma particulady in thirty minutes after injection.


Background: Many insurance companies in the United States rely on the Schnur sliding scale to predict resection weights to determine medical necessity for breast reduction surgery. Accurate methods to predict resection weights are needed to avoid insurance denials. The authors compared the accuracy of formulas such as the Schnur, Appel, Descamps, and Galveston scales in predicting resection weights, and assessed whether they influence insurance coverage decision. Methods: A retrospective review of bilateral reduction mammaplasty procedures from June of 2017 to June of 2019 was performed at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester. Oncoplastic reduction operations were excluded. The accuracy of each formula-based estimate was evaluated with linear regression analysis. Results: One hundred fifty-four patients (308 breasts) were reviewed. The Schnur scale had low correlation with actual resection weight (r2 = 0.381; b1 = 1.153; p < 0.001). The Appel scale was the most accurate (r2 = 0.642; b1 = 1.01; p < 0.001), followed by the Descamps (r2 = 0.572, b1 = 0.934, p < 0.001) and Galveston (r2 = 0.672; b1 = 0.654; p < 0.001) scales. The Appel, Descamps, and Galveston scales were more accurate for resection weights of 500 g or greater, body mass index greater than 30 kg/m², and patients younger than 50 years. For resection weights of 500 g or greater, the median difference between the estimated and actual resection weight for the Schnur, Appel, Descamps, and Galveston scales was −211.4 ± 272.3, −17.5 ± 272.3, −9.6 ± 229.5, and −99.2 ± 238.5 g, respectively. No scale was accurate for resection weights less than 500 g. Insurance reimbursement was denied in 15.56 percent of patients; of these, 23 percent had resection weights less than 500 g. The Schnur scale overestimated the resection weights in 28.9 percent of patients. Conclusions: The Schnur scale is a poor predictor of breast resection weight. The Appel scale is the most accurate estimator, especially in the young and obese population with larger resections. CLINICAL QUESTION/LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Diagnostic, I.


Chitosan acts as an elicitor in many plant species. It not only activates the immune system of plants, but also increases the crop yields. A study was planned to investigate the effect of foliar application of chitosan on morphological, growth and reproductive characters and its consequence on fruit yield of summer tomato. The experiment comprised five levels of chitosan concentrations viz., 0 (control), 25, 50, 75 and 100 mg L-1. The chitosan was sprayed two times, 25 and 35 days after transplanting. Foliar application of chitosan at early growth stages increased plant height, number of branches and leaf area plant-1 and nitrate reductase activity in leaves, resulting increased total dry mass plant-1 and absolute growth rate. Reproductive parameters (number of effective flower clusters and flowers plant-1, and reproductive efficiency) also increased in chitosan applied plants and thereby increased the prime yield component, number of fruits plant-1 of summer tomato. The higher fruit yield was recorded in 50 and 75 mg L-1 of chitosan in summer tomato with being the highest in 75 mg L-1 (35.61 t ha-1). Therefore, foliar application of chitosan at 75 mg L-1 may be used at early growth stage for getting maximum fruit yield of summer tomato under sub-tropical condition.


Digital images can be easily tampered with image editing tools. The detection of tampering operations is of great importance. Passive digital image tampering detection aims at verifying the authenticity of digital images without any a prior knowledge on the original images. There are various methods proposed in this filed in recent years. In this paper, we present an overview of these methods in the first part, various image forgery detection techniques are classified and then an overview of passive image authentication is presented and the existing blind forgery detection techniques are reviewed.


Ultra-thin films of para-hexaphenyl (6P) were prepared on freshly cleaved and on sputter amorphized mica(001) by physical vapor deposition (PVD). Ex-situ atomic force microscopy (AFM) revealed a bimodal island size distribution for the films on both surfaces. On freshly cleaved mica long needle like islands exist, which are surrounded by small crystallites. On the sputter amorphized substrates, large dendritic islands exist which are again surrounded by small, compact islands. We could prove by thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS), that the small islands are the result of adsorbate induced subsequent nucleation, when the films were exposed to air. In case of the freshly cleaved mica, islands grow on a wetting layer in vacuum. This layer dewets and forms the small islands upon venting, due to the adsorption of water. In case of the amorphous mica substrate an equilibrium exists between the islands and a 2D gas phase in the sub-monolayer regime. Again, the latter phase nucleates after venting. In a particular coverage range, islands due to nucleation during deposition and subsequent nucleation coexist on the substrate, leading to the bimodal island size distribution. Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations were performed to model the nucleation process after venting on the sputter modified mica substrate. The density of the subsequently nucleated islands just depends on the initial coverage and the critical island size. A critical cluster size of i = 7 molecules was determined for 6P on amorphized mica, by comparing the KMC results with the AFM images in case of adsorbate induced nucleation. Furthermore, the experimentally obtained island size distributions could be well reproduced by KMC simulations.


Moral as a kind of capital,actually exists in economy running.Moral capital is familiar in theory and people's feelings.Material is concealed in moral.The society's economy running will be serous without moral.Therefore,it is the most important for current China's economic development to pu emphasis on moral capital and increase invest on moral capital.


Tuesday 5 June saw the 20th anniversary of the first published account of the disease which would come to be known as HIV/AIDS. The story of its rapid and devastating global spread since then will be familiar to most people. In Britain and much of Western Europe, the disease is no longer the great cause for concern it once was. In the UK there have only been a few tens of thousands of HIV infections, and the panic of the early years of the epidemic has been replaced by complacency, as a result of which infection rates are increasing again after several years of decline. Yet elsewhere the epidemic rages unabated.


In this paper we introduce a new fuzzy decision making model that unifies induced aggregation operators and distance measures in the same formulation. We develop the fuzzy induced generalized ordered weighted averaging distance (FIGOWAD) operator. The main advantage of this operator is that it provides a parameterized family of aggregation operators between the minimum and the maximum and a wide range of special cases. Another advantage is that it is able to deal with the fuzzy environment where the information is very imprecise and can be assessed with interval numbers. Moreover, it uses induced aggregation operators that provide a more general representation of the attitudinal character of the decision-maker. We study some families of the FIGOWAD operators. We end the paper with an application of the new approach in a business decision-making problem about the selection of strategies.


Social capital highlights intangible elements in a society, such as trust, reciprocity norm and social networks. It is now handled and discussed by many scholars in different disciplines. Economists have started to analyze social capital in applied and theoretical studies since 1990s. While some of these scholars accept it as a new capital type, others do not. Thus, it can be said that it has a disputable place in economics discipline. However, economists especially examine its impact on countries' economic development levels and generally accept its importance and contributions to development. In this study, we examine the relationship between economic development and social trust by using spatial econometrics method in a sample of 27 European countries over a time span from 1999 to 2009. The findings suggest that a country's social trust level has positive impacts on economic development.


Photovoltaic (PV) industry has been rapidly grown over the past decades. PV modules are the component of the PV systems that is easily susceptible to rigorous working conditions, which can result in a variety of defects affecting the system's performance and lifespan if not diagnosed in time. Thus, it is necessary to understand the characterization of each fault and principles of every diagnosis method. This paper provides a comprehensive review of common faults within the context of the PV arrays, addressing the faults type, causes, and their effects on the I-V curve performance. In the previous studies, the main focus of overview is the efficiency and reliability of the direct diagnosis methods. As an important control method, the application of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) has become more and more extensive. This review also presents the latest MPPT-based techniques for diagnosing PV faults. Then techniques for PV diagnosing proposed in recent literature are analyzed and compared to point out their differences, the advantages and limitations and so on. This review will be of more interest to researchers and engineers working on PV power systems.


The invention discloses an emulsion drag reducing agent for increasing yield of a shale oil-gas field and a preparation method thereof. The emulsion drag reducing agent is prepared from the following raw materials in percentage by weight: 0.5-0.7% of sodium carboxymethylcellulose, 7-9% of polyurethane, 4-6% of an emulsifying agent, 8-12% of an organic solvent and balance of water. The preparation method of the emulsion drag reducing agent comprises the following steps: (1) adding water into a reaction kettle, heating to 55-60 DEG C, slowly adding the polyurethane, and stirring until the polyurethane is completely dissolved; (2) cooling the obtained polyurethane solution until temperature is not higher than 30 DEG C, then adding the emulsifying agent and the organic solvent, stirring, and uniformly mixing; and (3) finally slowly adding sodium carboxymethylcellulose, and stirring until the sodium carboxymethylcellulose is completely dissolved, so that the product emulsion drag reducing agent is obtained. The emulsion drag reducing agent disclosed by the invention has the beneficial effects that firstly the emulsion drag reducing agent can effectively reduce frictional resistance of fluid; and secondly compatibility between the emulsion drag reducing agent and a fracturing fluid additive is good.


Most digital cameras have in-cam era-processors that are composed with numbers of parameters, to efficiently reproduce original scenes. Brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and sharpness are the most important parameters used. Among them, brightness and contrast are directly related to the light and the shade of final images. They also have direct effects on the preference and the impression of the images. In this study, numbers of experiments has been done to find optimal values in brightness and contrast in order to enhance user's general preferences. Measuring the JND(Just Noticeable Differences) of skin tones, which are highly sensitive to changes, has been carried out, detecting and comparing level changes in brightness and contrast. Based on the results, we have derived best values and levels of each parameter and the best match or mix of the values. A male and a female has participated through the process to classify gender difference in preference cognition.


The proper categories of supplement and their amounts were optimized to prepare compound tablet with the extracts of Cynomorium songaria and Spirulina as main materials by orthogonal test and ANOVA method. The product has the characteristics of less than 9% water, more than 50% protein, more than 14 mg/g total polysaccharides, less than 1.0 mg/kg Se, less than 0.3 mg/kg Hg, and less than 2.0 mg/kg Pb.


Metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors with atomic layer deposited (ALD) various Al2O3 thicknesses are investigated for radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) applications. For 20 nm Al2O3, the fabricated capacitor exhibits a high capacitance density of 3850 pF/mm2 and acceptable voltage coefficients of capacitance (VCCs) of 681 ppm/V2 and 134 ppm/V at 1 MHz. An outstanding VCCs of 74 ppm/V2 and 55 ppm/V is obtained by 100 nm thickness Al2O3 MIM capacitors. The impact of various dielectric thicknesses on RF characteristics such as Q factors and resonance frequency is also investigated. Moreover, a simplified small signal model of the MIM capacitors is described. Excellent agreement between measured and simulated data demonstrates the validity of this model.


We analyze the choice between public and private equity financing of a unique, hand-collected sample of privately held firms that have indicated their willingness to raise outside equity. We document that these firms are remarkably similar at the time of the announcement, yet 71% complete an IPO, 18% sell equity privately, and the remaining firms do not raise capital at all. To understand what determines the ultimate outcome, we follow these firms over time and record what they might learn up to their final decision. We identify the marginal conditions that favor raising outside equity, and those that determine the choice between public and private equity. Our results show that firms react systematically to changes in market conditions, such as equity returns and the cost of capital, that occur after the announcement, controlling for capital constraints, ownership structure, and the motivation for raising outside capital.


Today, international academic cooperation of universities is going through a tough period due to political and economic challenges. The authors consider the main causes of this and show how the situation could be improved through the development of local academic programs, such as LEADER Project. This joint educational project, focused on entrepreneurship and management skills, is arranged by Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario (Canada). The program has 11 years of positive experience at Baikal State University in Irkutsk and it has proved to be successful and viable. The article provides analysis of the projects strengths and the main components of its success. Attention is also drawn to the specific features and potential advantages of using the case method as a modern teaching procedure, as well as to the innovative format of the project and its mutually beneficial character. The authors analyze the results of a feedback survey of the participants and instructors in order to find out their takeaways from the project, its possible drawbacks and future development prospects. The key conclusions refer to the importance of retaining international academic contacts.


2D freestanding nanocrystal superlattices represent a new class of advanced metamaterials in that they can integrate mechanical flexibility with novel optical, electrical, plasmonic, and magnetic properties into one multifunctional system. The freestanding 2D superlattices reported to date are typically constructed from symmetrical constituent building blocks, which have identical structural and functional properties on both sides. Here, a general ligand symmetry‐breaking strategy is reported to grow 2D Janus gold nanocrystal superlattice sheets with nanocube morphology on one side yet with nanostar on the opposite side. Such asymmetric metallic structures lead to distinct wetting and optical properties as well as surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) effects. In particular, the SERS enhancement of the nanocube side is about 20‐fold of that of the nanostar side, likely due to the combined "hot spot + lightening‐rod" effects. This is nearly 700‐fold of SERS enhancement as compared with the symmetric nanocube superlattices without Janus structures.


Oven-dried, midshoot leaves were available from the 1947 experiments on nutrient balance of tung (10). These one year old seedlings had been grown in sand culture in a factorial experiment with three levels of Mg and ? (0.5, 2, and 4 millimoles/1.) and three ratios of nitrate ? to ammonium ? (all N03; f N03 to I NH4; \ N03 to \ NH4). In a supplementary experiment, the highest levels of ? and Mg of the main experiment were supplied with three levels of calcium (0.4, 2, and 5.7 millimoles/1.) in an all nitrate solution, and also in a \ N03 to \ NH4 solution. Thus the material represented plants grown under a wide range of cations and of forms of nitrogen supply.


German media repeatedly discuss the thesis, that residents in East Germany are dissatisfied with their life situation in comparison to those in West Germany. Therefore East Germans tend to moan. One intention of this essay is to answer the question, whether the East Germans are in fact dissatisfied with their life situation. Due to empirical evidence the question posed is to be answered with yes. The second intention is to examine the reasons for the discontent of residents in East Germany. For this purpose the analysis bases at first on classical economic indicators like the gros domestic product and the income. Secondly socio-economic operating figures like the development of life expectancy and the body size are considered. Third the social capital of a society as a welfare-affecting factor rounds off the analysis.


Investigations of wollastonite and calcium phosphate biocoatings with Zn-and Cu-incorporation produced by a microarc oxidation method were presented. Dependences of coating properties on the microarc oxidation parameters were revealed. A variation of the process parameters allowed us to produce wollastonite-calcium phosphate coatings with a plate-like structure, thickness of 25–30 μm, roughness of 2.5–5.0 μm, and enhanced strength properties. Coatings based on substituted hydroxyapatite deposited under voltages of 200–250 V have an X-ray amorphous structure. An increase of oxidation voltage to 300 V leads to the formation of crystalline phases in the coating, such as CaHPO4 and β-Ca2P2O7. The maximum content of 0.4 at% zinc and 0.1 at% copper was obtained for coatings based on Zn-and Cu-substituted hydroxyapatites, consequently, deposited under oxidation voltage of 250 V.


Fractional-order time-delay system is thought to be a kind of oscillatory complex system which could not be controlled efficaciously so far because it does not have an analytical solution when using inverse Laplace transform. In this paper, a type of fractional-order controller based on numerical inverse Laplace transform algorithm INVLAP was proposed for the mentioned systems by searching for the optimal controller parameters with the objective function of ITAE index due to the verified nature that fractional-order controllers were the best means of controlling fractional-order systems. Simulations of step unit tracking and load-disturbance responses of the proposed fractional-order optimal controller (FOPID) and corresponding conventional optimal PID (OPID) controller have been done on three typical kinds of fractional time-delay system with different ratio between time delay () and time constant () and a complex high-order fractional time delay system to verify the availability of the presented control method.


The wall occupies the largest area in all envelop structure,so wall energy-saving is an crucial aspect that couldn't be neglected.Six influencing factors of the Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems (EIFS) are analyzed,proposing the current problems,explaining the relevant principles,and providing solution and suggestion for the EIFS design,which are available for providing reference to design and develop new high-efficient EIFS.Consequently,it aims to provide theoretical basis for further development of exterior wall insulation tech-nology.


The invention discloses a test stand and a method for ultra-deep mine hoisting systems. The test stand comprises four variable-frequency motors (1), four hoist drums (2), horizontal guide rails (3), a hoisting container (4), a pose angle sensor (5), tension sensors (6), servo hydraulic cylinders (7), steel wire ropes (8), pulleys (9), a variable-frequency motor controller (10), wire and strand breakage detectors (11) for the steel wire ropes, a servo hydraulic cylinder controller (12), a pose monitoring device (13), a tension wheel (14), a tension spring (15) and universal wheels (16). The four hoist drums (2) correspond to the four variable-frequency motors (1). The test stand and the method have the advantages that vertical hoisting working conditions under actual working conditions can be replaced by motor horizontal dragging modes which can be easily implemented by the motors of the test stands, accordingly, the test stand is simple in operation and easy to maintain, and various functions can be simulated by the aid of the test stand.


In recent years, hydropiercing technique has been used widely. In this work, its special type of hydropiercing-bend is simulated using Rice and Tracey ductile criterion based on VUMAT of ABAQUS/Explicit and verified by experiments. Hydropiercing-bend processes with different slope angles of chamfer are discussed to predict the ultimate quality. It is shown that the angle of chamfer should be less than 70º for this kind of material and technical condition in order to make the slug attached with the tube blank.


Prior studies find a positive relationship between a firm's cash flow and investment, but researchers disagree over whether this finding can be attributed to financial constraints. In this paper we introduce two new ways to segment firms to test for differences in cash–investment relationships. Our findings suggest that relationships between internal cash and investment are more complex than prior studies assume. Internal liquidity plays a more important role in the investment process in some industries than in others. Attempts to generalize a theory for investment decisions based on internal cash holdings must account for differences in both industry and internal cash constraints.


Novel chiral AIE compounds bearing a tartaric acid group were synthesized. They selectively aggregated with one enantiomer of a number of chiral amines, such that one enantiomer led to strong fluorescence and another enantiomer showed no or only weak fluorescence. This was used for the quantitative analysis of enantiomeric composition.


The experimental study of pulp's swelling kinetic was carried out. Identified steps of impregnation and swelling. Given a thermodynamic explanation of the process.


Most research in real-time scheduling theory assumes idealized system conditions. The issues that can arise in applying the theory to real-world applications remain largely unaddressed, which are the focus of this thesis. In particular, we develop practical approaches for hard and probabilistic deadline guarantees in the presence of real-time operating system (RTOS) unpredictability, such as timer interval and task execution time variations. Our target application domain is open-architecture machine tool controllers.
Rate-monotonic (RM) has been proven to be an optimal fixed-priority scheduling algorithm for periodic hard real-time tasks. However, given RTOS unpredictability, the periodicity model of the original RM scheduling theory is no longer true. In order to provide hard deadline guarantees, we introduce an empirical task schedulability model, called Rate-Monotonic in the presence of Timing Unpredictability (RMTU) to augment the RM theory to handle RTOS unpredictability. The model parameters can be determined systematically and empirically. Our experimental measurements confirm the validity of RMTU.
While hard real-time tasks require absolute deadline guarantees, others may be able to tolerate some deadline misses. For non-hard real-time tasks that still require a certain level of performance, we develop a practical framework for probabilistic deadline guarantees. The first component of this framework is the Probabilistic Real-Time Constraint Model (PRTCM), with which the tolerance of application task deadline misses can be specified in terms of completion probability. The second component consists of two classes of new scheduling algorithms: completion-probability-cognizant and CPU-utilization-cognizant heuristics. Our comparative study of these heuristics and scheduling algorithms RM, earliest-deadline-first, and first-in-first-out demonstrates the superior performance of some new heuristics under certain load conditions.
The last component of the framework is the Measurement-Based Simulation Technique (MBST). It uses individual application task execution times (measured in isolation) as inputs, models task interaction and system overhead, and generates task completion time distributions to determine whether probabilistic deadline guarantees can be made. Applying MBST to our prototype open-architecture milling machine controllers, MBST is shown to produce simulation results that match very well the actual measurements. It can also be used to predict the performance of tasks that have not yet been fully implemented.
Finally, we evaluate real-time application development strategies to minimize the impact of RTOS unpredictability. We build a prototype modular controller for a milling machine in the University of Michigan Open-Architecture Controller (UMOAC) testbed. To improve its performance, we experiment with the strategy that tunes the computer system environment for the given application, as well as the strategy that attempts to optimize the structure of the application software itself. Our measurement data show that, while both strategies are effective, the latter produces better results.


The personal narrative or relationship episode has recently been described by Luborsky, Barber, and Diguer (1992) as a "basic data unit in psychotherapy sessions" (p. 287). To determine if the inte...


In the initial employment and technology applications,practice teaching is the key to train students whose major is Mold Designing and Manufacturing.To students,the theoretical foundation is the long-term basis for sustainable development.In students' vocational carrier,not only theory teaching but also practice teaching are all important.Practice teaching and theory teaching are complementary.In practice teaching,students can deepen the understanding and mastery of theoretical knowledge,and further simulate students'interest in studying the theoretical knowledge.In the end,students can consolidate the basic theory knowledge,master the basic method,have the capability of adaptability and the sense of innovation.


Diapause and cold tolerance are essential for temperate insects to pass the winter, with the mechanisms controlling these two traits varying considerably among insects. In the present study, diapause and cold tolerance are compared among three Leptopilina species: Leptopilina japonica Novković & Kimura, Leptopilina victoriae Nordlander and Leptopilina ryukyuensis Novković & Kimura, all larval parasitoids of frugivorous drosophilid flies, with the aim of understanding their climatic adaptations. The first species is divided into the temperate (Leptopilina japonica japonica) and subtropical subspecies (Leptopilina japonica formosana), and the latter two species are distributed in the tropical and subtropical regions. The temperate subspecies of L. japonica enters prepupal diapause at low temperatures (15 or 18 °C), irrespective of photoperiod, and some individuals enter diapause when exposed to 0 °C for 1 or 2 day(s) or when placed at low humidity. Leptopilina victoriae also shows signs of diapause initiation at 15 °C, although L. ryukyuensis and L. j. formosana from the subtropical regions do not. Preimaginal viability at low temperature (13, 14 or 15 °C) is usually lower in L. victoriae from the tropical regions compared with L. japonica or L. ryukyuensis from the temperate or subtropical regions. Diapausing prepupae of the temperate subspecies appear to be cold tolerant. However, the cold tolerance of nondiapausing prepupae, pupae and adult females varies little among the tropical, subtropical and temperate species or subspecies, and adult males of the temperate subspecies of L. japonica are less cold tolerant than those of the tropical or subtropical species or subspecies. Cold tolerance may be unnecessary, except for diapausing individuals of the temperate species, because nondiapausing individuals appear in warmer seasons.


Local basis function networks are a useful category of classifiers, with known variations developed in neural networks, machine learning and statistics communities. The localized range of activation of the hidden units have many similarities with rule-based representations. Neurofuzzy systems are a common example of a framework that explicitly integrates these approaches. Following this concept, we study alternatives for the development of hybrid rule-neural systems with the purpose of inducing robust and interpretable classifiers. Local fitting of parameters is done by a gradient descent optimization that modifies the covering produced by a rule induction algorithm. Two tasks are accomplished: how to select a small number of rules and how to improve precision. The use of this architecture is better suited when one wants to achieve a good compromise between classification performance and simplicity.


Background: Living in a disadvantaged neighborhood (reflecting neighborhood-level social determinants of health) is associated with poor health outcomes. BMT survivors remain at a high risk of long-term and late-occurring chronic health conditions that require anticipatory management. We hypothesized that neighborhood disadvantage would be associated with poor health status as reported by the BMT survivors, as well as poor utilization of the healthcare system.
 Methods: We leveraged data from BMTSS - a retrospective cohort study examining long-term outcomes among individuals who survived ≥2y following BMT performed at three institutions between 1974 and 2014. Participants in this analysis underwent a single BMT and completed the BMTSS survey, which captures sociodemographic characteristics and chronic health conditions. We graded chronic health conditions using CTCAE v5.0, and calculated a summative index that takes into account the number and grades of the conditions, where a higher score indicates more/worse conditions. The survey also captured self-reported health status ("In general would you say your health is: excellent, very good, good, fair or poor?") and healthcare utilization ("When was your most recent routine check-up? <1y ago, 1-2y ago, 2-5y ago, ≥5y ago, never"). Neighborhood disadvantage was measured using the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a validated composite indicator based on 17 US Census measures and percentiled as 0 (least deprived) to 100 (most deprived). BMT survivors were linked to ADI via census block group using home address at survey completion. Using multivariable ordered logit regression, we modeled the association between ADI and the odds of worse self-reported health or a longer time since a routine healthcare visit. Models were adjusted for available clinical factors (primary cancer diagnosis, donor source, conditioning intensity, chronic health conditions, chronic graft vs. host disease (GvHD), time from BMT) and individual-level sociodemographic characteristics (age at survey, sex, payor, race/ethnicity, education, income, marital status).
 Results: The cohort included 2,893 BMT survivors; median age at BMT was 47y (IQR: 30-58); median follow-up time was 9y (IQR: 5-16). Table 1 summarizes patient characteristics. Median ADI ranged from 14.0 in patients rating their health as excellent to 28.5 in those rating their health as poor, and from 21.0 in patients with visits <1y ago to 34.0 in patients reporting no visits [Fig 1]. In multivariable analyses, the odds of reporting worse health were higher for patients residing in more disadvantaged neighborhoods (OR per_unit_higher_ADI=1.005, p=0.003). Thus, for our cohort, a patient living in the most disadvantaged neighborhood (ADI=100) had 1.65 times the odds of reporting poor health compared to a patient living in the least disadvantaged neighborhood (ADI=1). Further, the odds of a longer time since the last routine physician visit were higher for patients living in more disadvantaged neighborhoods (OR per_unit_higher_ADI=1.007, p<0.001). Thus, a patient living in the most disadvantaged neighborhood had twice the odds (OR=2.06) of reporting no visits compared to a patient living in the least disadvantaged neighborhood.
 Conclusions: Conditional on surviving 2 or more years after BMT, living in a disadvantaged neighborhood was associated with poorer self-reported health and a longer time interval since a routine healthcare visit, after adjusting for self-reported individual socioeconomic indicators and chronic health conditions. The significant association between area deprivation and poorer self-reported health persisted after controlling for prior health care utilization. Our findings suggest that health status and access to healthcare are associated with characteristics of the built and social environment and deserve detailed examination in order to inform multi-level interventions that include policy.
 Figure 1 Figure 1.

 Arora: Syndax: Research Funding; Kadmom: Research Funding; Pharmacyclics: Research Funding.


The well known Indian women novelist Jaishree Misra has written eight novels and has also edited an anthology of writings on motherhood to save Indian children. In her various novels she represents the conflict and suffering of the educated women of modern India who struggle between values, tradition and modernity as well as struggling for their own identity and independence. The final note in her novels is the glint of hope. Where all the distinctions of gender are reconciled and man treats woman, not as his bitter half but as his best half. Feminism is an expression which denotes a movement for securing equality between the sexes in all walks of life, social, economic and political. It aims to ensuring womanhood freedom in all aspects. In her novels, she projects the heroine struggle from teenage to marital life, women struggle for their own identity, mother-daughter relationship, love, patriarchy and feministic views etc.


This article discusses the nature of the literary genre known as Children's literature and emphasizes three aspects: the presence of folkloric elements, the conflict between reality and fantasy and the objective or aim of children's texts. Cuentos de mi Tía Panchita serves as an illustrative literary text that facilitates the exploration of such themes.


More than 30 years ago, Weiss has postulated the existence of two different magnetic fcc‐Fe states [high‐spin (HS)/high atomic volume or low‐spin (LS)/low atomic volume] in order to explain the Invar effect in fcc‐Fe alloys. Such metastable states may be stabilized by epitaxial growth of ultrathin Fe films on Cu(001) under suitable conditions which depend on film thickness and growth temperature. In situ conversion‐electron Mossbauer spectroscopy, combined with low‐energy electron diffraction, reflection high‐energy electron diffraction, and Auger electron spectroscopy, on ∼3‐ and ∼7‐ML‐thick 57Fe films grown in ultrahigh vacuum at 300 K reveals a thickness‐dependent transition from a HS ferromagnetic (FM) state with an anisotropically expanded fcc (fct‐like) structure (c/a≳1) to a LS antiferromagnetic (AFM) isotropic fcc state. In contrast, the stability of the HS fct‐like phase is extended to at least 7 ML in films grown at low T (90 K) and annealed to 300 K. The HS‐FM phase in 7 ML films is rather stab...


Video-based person re-identification has received increasing attention recently, as it plays an important role within surveillance video analysis. Video-based Re-Id is an expansion of earlier image-based re-identification methods by learning features from a video via multiple image frames for each person. Most contemporary video Re-ID methods utilise complex CNN-based network architectures using 3D convolution or multi-branch networks to extract spatial-temporal video features. By contrast, in this paper, we illustrate superior performance from a simple single stream 2D convolution network leveraging the ResNet50-IBN architecture to extract frame-level features followed by temporal attention for clip level features. These clip level features can be generalised to extract video level features by averaging without any significant additional cost. Our approach uses best video Re-Id practice and transfer learning between datasets to outperform existing state-of-the-art approaches on the MARS, PRID2011 and iLIDS-VID datasets with 89.62%, 97.75%, 97.33% rank-1 accuracy respectively and with 84.61% mAP for MARS, without reliance on complex and memory intensive 3D convolutions or multi-stream networks architectures as found in other contemporary work. Conversely, our work shows that global features extracted by the 2D convolution network are a sufficient representation for robust state of the art video Re-ID.


The Alphavirus genus consists of positive-sense single stranded RNA viruses which cause millions of annual infections, and are classified as arthritogenic (Sindbis (SINV) and Chikungunya virus (CHIKV)) or encephalitic (Venezuelan (VEEV) and eastern equine encephalitis viruses (EEEV)) based on disease phenotype. The nature, severity and outcome of disease following infection by a particular alphavirus are primarily dependent on evasion of or resistance to the Interferon-α/β (IFN-α/β) upregulated antiviral state. In mice, induced serum IFN-α/β levels are highest following VEEV infection, lower following SINV infection, and negligible after EEEV or CHIKV infection. SINV or CHIKV cause a self-limiting, non-fatal infection in mice with functional IFN α/β responses, suggesting limited antagonism of the IFN-α/β response, while infection with EEEV or VEEV is lethal. Whereas EEEV avoids both IFN-α/β and antiviral state induction via suppression of myeloid cell replication and lymphoid tissue dissemination, VEEV infection is associated with extensive systemic replication that occurs despite rapid induction of serum IFN-α/β, suggesting successful replication despite upregulation of antiviral effectors. However, viral determinants of this differential sensitivity of various alphaviruses to IFN-α/β are unknown.
In this study I have investigated the relative sensitivity of SINV, CHIKV, EEEV and VEEV to the IFN-α/β induced antiviral state, and found that VEEV is most resistant to the activities of antiviral effectors expressed either collectively or individually. I mapped this activity to the nonstructural protein-expressing region of the genome, and determined that VEEV nonstructural protein 2 (nsP2) induced translation shutoff is critical for the antiviral state resistance of VEEV. I definitively separated virus induced transcription and translation shutoff as independent activities, and identified the viral proteins mediating these activities for multiple alphaviruses. Furthermore, I demonstrated that expression of nsP2 alone is sufficient to block Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 1 (STAT1) phosphorylation, and that viral infection induces proteasome-mediated degradation of Janus Kinase 1 (JAK1). Additionally, I demonstrate the role of IRF7 in host antiviral response induction following alphavirus infection. Overall, I have delineated the interactions of multiple alphaviruses with host antiviral mechanisms, and illustrated the different strategies that closely related alphaviruses can use to successfully overcome the IFN-α/β response.


Abstract This article reviews the role of the signal transduction enzyme protein kinase C in the regulation of growth of malignant gliomas, and describes how targetting this enzyme clinically can provide a novel approach to glioma therapy.


A variant for solving the task for template localization in a greater image, using invariant moments is presented in the paper. Template and image are represented by specially extracted sets of points. Mutual spatial location of both subsets gives opportunity parameters of image transformation to be approximately derived.


Phonemes are the smallest distinguishable unit of speech signal. Formant frequency of a phoneme, the most fundamental concept in speech processing, differentiate one phoneme from another. Range of formant frequency of a particular phoneme can be used as a priori knowledge in various speech processing application. This paper describes a work done for estimating the formant frequencies of all consonant phonemes of Assamese language, which is a phonetically distinct language of North East India. The work uses the concept of pole or formant location determination from the linear prediction model of vocal tract. A discrete wavelet filter is used to segment phoneme from some typical Assamese word. The formant range thus estimated was later used in classification of Assamese phoneme family with the help of a Recurrent Neural Network.


50 kgf/mm2-class high-tensile steel plate produced by newly developed TMCP (thermo-mechanical control process) is superior to conventional rolled steel plate in weldability (resistance to low-temperature cracking) as well as in toughness of HAZ of the high heat-input welded joint.However, HAZ of high heat-input welded joint softens because of the low carbon equivalent.The authors investigated the tensile strength of the welded joint with soft HAZ in ship hull and other heavy steel structures.As a result, it was found that even with the maximum heat-input welding process prevalently in use in most of the domestic ship-yards, the tensile strength of the welded joint thereby produced in wide plate would be 50 kgf/mm2 or more and approximate that of the base metal when Ceq. _≥0.23%.


Taku Glacier, Alaska, which until around 1950 calved icebergs into tidewater, has advanced 7.3 km since 1890, although all other valley glaciers in the immediate area have retreated. This anomalous...


As the proportion of people living in urban areas continues to grow (United Nations et al., 2019), it becomes increasingly important to understand urban resilience in the face of both chronic and acute, endogenous, and exogenous stressors. Indeed, there is a growing literature on urban resilience, which includes several recent frameworks to operationalize and assess the concept and its indicators. Inherent in this literature, though rarely explicitly, is the psychology of the people comprising urban environments. The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of urban resilience and psychological resilience by viewing both in the context of complex adaptive systems theory. Arising from this juncture is a more robust and dynamic understanding of resilience, a psycho-social-ecological resilience. The discussion will draw from this notion of resilience a more thorough framework for understanding the reciprocal relationships among urban dwelling people and their total environments. Areas for future research and implications for our understandings of psychological resilience, urban resilience, and sustainable cities will be highlighted.


1 Department of Biochemistry, Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences and Post Graduate Research Centre, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 2 Department of Microbiology, Malla Reddy Medical College for Women, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 3 Department of Pharmacology, Malla Reddy Medical College for Women, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 4 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences and Post Graduate Research Centre, Hyderabad, Telangana, India 5 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Shadan Institute of Medical Sciences and Post Graduate Research Centre. Hyderabad, Telangana, India *Corresponding author


Monotonic four-point bending tests were conducted using tee pipe specimens having local wall thinning. The effects of local wall thinning on the failure behaviors of tee pipes were investigated. Local wall thinning was machined on the inside of pipes in order to simulate erosion/corrosion metal loss. The configurations of the eroded area were l = 100 mm in eroded axial length, d/t = 0.5 and 0.8 in eroded ratio, and 2θ = 90° and 180° in eroded angle. The area undergoing local wall thinning was subjected to tensile stress. It was found that fracture type could be classified into ovalization or crack initiation, depending on eroded ratio. Three-dimensional elasto-plastic analyses were also carried out using finite element method to discuss the effects of position and geometries of wall thinning in both tee pipes and straight pipes.Copyright © 2006 by ASME


Lineage plasticity, a capacity to reprogram cell phenotypic identity under evolutionary pressure, is implicated in treatment resistance and metastasis in multiple cancers. In lung adenocarcinomas (LUADs) amenable to treatment with targeted inhibitors, transformation to an aggressive neuroendocrine (NE) carcinoma resembling small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is a recognized mechanism of acquired resistance. Defining molecular mechanisms of NE transformation in lung cancer has been limited by a paucity of well annotated pre- and post-transformation clinical samples. We hypothesized that mixed histology LUAD/SCLC tumors may capture cancer cells proximal to, and on either side of, histologic transformation. We performed detailed genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic and proteomic characterization of combined LUAD/SCLC tumors as well as pre- and post-transformation clinical samples. Our data support that NE transformation is primarily driven by transcriptional reprogramming rather than mutational events. We identify genomic contexts in which NE transformation is favored, including frequent loss of the 3p chromosome arm in pre-transformation LUADs. Consistent shifts in gene expression programs in NE transformation include induction of several stem/progenitor cell regulatory pathways, including upregulation of PRC2 and WNT signaling, and suppression of Notch pathway activity. We observe induction of PI3K/AKT and an immunosuppressive phenotype in NE transformation. Taken together our findings define a novel landscape of potential drivers and therapeutic vulnerabilities of NE transformation in lung cancer.


Recessive mutations in ALS2 (juvenile amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) are causative for early‐onset upper motor neuron diseases, including infantile ascending hereditary spastic paralysis (IAHSP). The goal of this study is to identify novel disease‐causing ALS2 mutations.


A mobile user can access mobile service anywhere and at anytime through mobile environment. However, mobile environment can be vulnerable to potential adversary because mobile service is provided in public network. To overcome these security issue, in 2017, Qi et al. proposed an efficient two-party authentication key exchange protocol for mobile environment. However, we point out that Qi et al.'s scheme cannot resist insider attack, impersonation attack and trace attack. we also demonstrate that Qi et al.'s scheme cannot provide anonymity. In order to theses security weaknesses, we propose improved and efficient two-party authentication key exchange protocol for mobile environment using secure parameter.


The main purpose of the study was to identify the level and factors influencing investments in renewable energy sources (RES) in basic local government units in rural areas. The specific objectives were to define the conditions for the development of renewable energy sources in Poland, to determine the directions of changes as well as the importance of renewable energy in Poland, to present the relationship between the level of expenditure on renewable energy and budget components in rural and rural-urban communes. The Świętokrzyskie voivodeship (Voivodship—a unit of the highest administration level in Poland, since 1990 a unit of the primary territorial division of government administration, since 1999 also a unit of local government, there were 16 voivodships in Poland), which is one of the centrally located voivodeships in Poland, was purposefully selected for the research. The research period covered the years 2016–2019. The sources of materials were the literature on the subject, as well as empirical materials obtained at the Voivodeship Statistical Office. The following methods were used for the analysis and presentation of materials: descriptive, tabular, graphical, Gini concentration coefficient, Lorenz concentration curve, Kendall's tau correlation coefficient and Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. Poland is one of the countries with quite high dependence on hard and brown coal. Changes in the structure of energy sources are slow. Investments in renewable energy are necessary. The problem in this respect is the lack of a proper law. Despite this, investments in renewable energy are being made in rural areas. In the Świętokrzyskie voivodeship, only 28% of communes made such investments. It was found that only in urban rural communes the amount of investment expenditures in renewable energy sources was related to the level of budget expenditures and property expenditures of the commune. The amount of support from the European Union aid funds was positively correlated with the level of expenditure on investments in renewable energy. Therefore, it can be concluded that without the support from EU funds, it is not possible to invest in renewable energy in local government units.


Hypothesis testing in contingency tables is usually based on asymptotic results, thereby restricting its proper use for large samples. In order to understand the effect of these tests when used in small samples, we consider the likelihood ratio test and define an accurate index, the P-value, for the well-known assumptions of homogeneity, independence and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and compare these indices with the respective ones obtained with asymptotic approximations, the p-values. We consider different sample sizes and also different table dimensions. The exact Fisher test for 2x2 tables, that drastically reduces the sample space, is also discussed in our comparisons. The Bayesian e-value index from the FBST - Full Bayesian significance test - is also obtained asymptotically and exactly using numerical procedures (non asymptotic). The main message of the paper is that, restricting the classical tests to the likelihood ratio ones, all indices have very similar behavior.


Hemborough, and to the admirable manner in which the local anaesthetic was employed by Dr. Richardson. In conclusion, a word or two as to after treatment, which, upon broad principles, should depend on the general condition of the patient, and the nature and severity of the symptoms. It is worthy of remark, that although five out of the nine cases lived for periods varying from two to eighteen days, not one died from the effects of abdominal or uterine inflammation, but from causes more or less interfering with, or taxing, the vital powers. This I conceive to be a most important fact, and one worthy of serious consideration. In the majority of the cases a supporting and cautiously stimulating system was carried out from the first with good results; so much so, that I have strong reasons to believe, and those who watched some of the cases with me have expressed similar convictions, that had this plan been carefully and systematically followed out in all the cases recorded, I should have been enabled to place before you not one, but three, successful cases.


Abstract Various mission-critical applications necessarily require a transformer in switching converters to obtain DC isolation between the converters' input and output. Since DC-DC converters are the switching devices, these are modeled as hybrid automata. We present hybrid automaton modeling of two main types of transformer isolated DC-DC converters, namely, flyback and forward converters. We have also catered the non-determinism for both. We use HyST (Hybrid Source Transformation) tool to automatically generate the models in SpaceEx format, perform reachability analysis, and then automatically convert the models into Mathworks Simulink Stateflow (SLSF) using HyST. Thus we demonstrate effectiveness of HyST tool in the model-based design process. The HyST user needs not to manually construct or modify the models thus saving significant amount of time and efforts. Category: academic Difficulty: medium


Most clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and mental health trusts have no idea how long patients with serious mental health problems are waiting for treatment, the BMA has found.

A freedom of information request, sent by the association, also revealed that some patients were waiting over a year for treatment.

The BMA asked all 207 CCGs and 54 mental health trusts in England about four talking therapies; dialectical behavioural therapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, family therapy, and dynamic psychotherapy. It …


We solved the Quantum Kinetic Equations (QKEs) for an active-sterile neutrino system in the early universe. While on the surface this may seem to be an overly simplistic system, other linear two-state systems can be mapped onto the active-sterile system. In the early universe, we find that solutions to the QKEs are well described by an adiabatic approximation where the off-diagonal terms of the density operator are constant on short (oscillation and/or scattering) timescales, but may slowly evolve on long (expansion) timescales. This "quantum kinetic equilibrium" attains as the quantum development of phase balances with the kinetic destruction of phase. In this work, we introduce and assess this equilibrium ansatz as the neutrino states evolve in the early universe with a non-zero lepton number, engendering level crossings that result in scattering-induced active-sterile neutrino transformation.


I T is particularly appropriate that the Royal Sanitary Institute should have i chosen for discussion at this Congress the subject of the slum problem. The Bill-Housing No. 2-now before Parliament, is yet another attempt to deal with this problem, and gives us hope that more rapid progress will be made in future than in the past in providing for the poorest in the community a house which gives approximately the minimum needs for healthy human life.


This article not only expounds the basic structure of bar integration but also explains if we want to develop the steel bar with stable and reliable performance, we must choose the economical, reasonable and effective welding technology.


Through reviewing the clinical and experimental researches of acupuncture combined with western medicine treatment during the recent ten years,this article unveils the current situation of this kind of treatment and its characteristic of improving effects and reducing toxicant.However,there are still some problems we have to solve such as small sample,immature designment,unclear clinical indications,incomplete observing indexes,indefinite principle and mechanism of acupuncture-medicine combination.


Furth's idea of inductor shorting to prevent current oscillations after pulse shaving for avoidance of internal cylindrical conducting shell compression after the shell magnetic-impulse extension by negative pressure forces is theoretically verified. Feasibility of the shaving impulse frequency and magnitude increase along with negative pressure gain is also shown as compared with a scheme without inductor shorting.


Patterned illumination can be used to improve lateral resolution, provide optical sectioning, and to reduce illumination dose. For example, in Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM), spatially periodic illumination patterns are used to double the resolution [1]. The use of a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM), such as a Digital Micro-mirror Device (DMD), gives full control over the illumination pattern and makes the microscope a versatile Programmable Array Microscope (PAM) [2]. Controlling the illumination through the DMD pixel by pixel, a 5-times reduction in photobleaching rates can be achieved [3]. There are essentially two ways in which the SLM can be introduced in the light path. In a single-pass architecture the SLM is used only in the illumination branch of the light path and the demodulation and image processing to obtain the final image is done in-silico on the set of acquired images. In a double-pass architecture this is partly accomplished by modulating the imaging branch with the SLM as well and capturing both the conjugate and non-conjugate image. The high switching speed of the DMD can be used to illuminate the sample with a series of patterns within the camera frame time. In this way, a double-pass architecture can provide advantages in terms of image acquisition speed, sensitivity to readout noise, and an optically sectioned image that is extracted from only two captured images rather than from a whole series. We discuss an optical architecture for a double-pass PAM using two DMDs and two cameras for capturing the conjugate and non-conjugate images. This design simplifies the optics of previous architectures using only one SLM and one camera. Several design issues are discussed, such as the autofluorescence of optics in the shared illumination-imaging branch, Scheimpflug relay optics, and diffraction effects of the DMD, both in the illumination and in the imaging branch.


Nine additional 3-letter acronyms are proposed for these angiosperm families. resumen Se proponen acrónimos adicionales de tres letras para nueve familias de angiosperma. Standardized abbreviations have been proposed for all vascular plant families (Kiger & Reveal 2000, 2009). The complete list of 3-letter acronyms is being maintained and updated by the Colorado Native Plant Society (see http://www.conps.org/pdf/Plant%20Keys/ACROS.pdf). Two recent publications have appeared that proposed new angiosperm family names (Nickrent et al. 2010; Schaéferhoff et al. 2009). Given that these acronyms are seeing wide usage among herbarium curators and others, it is important to now link each name with a unique acronym. The proposed acronyms are: Amphorogynaceae (AMP) Nanodeaceae (NAD) Cervatesiaceae (CER) Strombosiaceae (STB) Comandraceae (COM) Thesiaceae (THI) Coulaceae (COU) Ximeniaceae (XIM) Microteaceae (MCT) acknowledgments I thank Neil Snow (BISH) for encouraging me to propose the Santalales acronyms as well as for pointing out that Microteaceae also requires one. references Kiger, r.W. and J.L. reveaL. 2000. A comprehensive scheme for standardized abbreviation of usable plant-family names and type-based suprafamilial names. Huntia 11:55–84. Kiger, r.W. and J.L. reveaL. 2009. A comprehensive scheme for standardized abbreviation of usable plant-family names and type-based suprafamilial names. http://www.plantsystematics.org/reveal/pbio/fam/famabbr. html [Accessed 3 May 2010]. nicKrent, d.L. v. MaLécot, r. vidaL-russeLL, and J.P. der. 2010. A revised classification of Santalales. Taxon 59:538-558. schaëferhoff, B., K.f. MüLLer, and t. Borsch. 2009. Caryophyllales phylogenetics: disentangling the Phytolaccaceae and Molluginaceae and description of Microteaceae as a new isolated family. Willdenowia 39:209-228. JBRIT4(1)257-320L1.indd 311 6/22/10 10:35:42 AM


Some new techniques applied at present in the three new types of speed increased freight car bogies of cross-braced type, tilting type and Sheffield radial type are described.


The reaction of cadmium sulfide with 1,1-dichloro-3,3-difluoro-2-oxo-1-propylthiopropane yields difluorodithiopyruvic propionate. This reacts with morpholine to give difluorodithiopyruvic morpholide; it also undergoes a cycloaddition reaction to the carbon–sulfur double bond with dimethylbutadiene to form 2-difluoroacetyl-4,5-dimethyl-2-propylthio-3H,6H-thiopyran.


MESENCHYMAL STEM CELL MECHANICS ON OSTEOINDUCTIVE PEPTIDE NANOFIBERS Ahmet Emin Topal Ph.D. in Materials Science and Nanotechnology Advisor: Aykutlu Dâna July 2017 In this thesis, changes in Young's modulus of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were investigated during their osteogenic differentiation on bioactive peptide nanofibers that bear triple glutamic acid sequence (EEE), a non-collagenous protein sequence of some extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins (e.g. bone sialoprotein) found in bone tissue. MSCs formed spherical cell aggregates on the osteoinductive peptide nanofibers, here also called osteospheroids, of which their cells made intensive cell-cell contacts and showed osteoblast-like cell morphology. Mechanical characterization of the osteospheroids on the peptide nanofiber hydrogel was performed using atomic force microscope (AFM) where AFM probes modified with a thin film coating of octafluorocyclobutane (C4F8) were used to measure force maps of the cells at days 3, 7 and 14 of osteogenic differentiation. Hertz Cone model, same as Sneddon, was applied to approach curves of 12 force curves per cell to calculate the Young's modulus values. As a result, an increasing pattern was observed in the average Young's modulus of rMSCs on the peptide nanofibers throughout the osteogenic differentiation. Mineral deposition by the cells on the peptide nanofibers was checked by Alizarin red staining and a large amount of mineral deposition by the osteospheroids was observed, proving that an efficient osteogenic differentiation of the rMSCs happens on the osteoinductive peptide nanofibers. In the literature, a gradual decrease is shown in AFM measured average Young's modulus values of adhered MSCs throughout their osteogenic differentiation. When gelatin-coated glass was used as substrate instead of the peptide nanofibers, rMSCs showed a decreasing pattern in their Young's moduli, similarly to the literature, due to osteogenic differentiation. However, there was no significant calcium mineral deposition on the gelatin group, even until day 14 of osteogenic differentiation, indicating that a limited or a slower progression of osteogenic differentiation of rMSCs is present on the gelatin compared to rMSCs on the osteoinductive peptide nanofibers. A correlation between the observed increase in average Young's moduli of osteospheroid rMSCs and


This paper sets out to demonstrate the calculation of construction costs whilst considering key construction management parameters. Beyond a simple, deterministic method, other options for calculation are shown that rely on probability calculus. The approaches described to determine construction costs are illustrated by a building project example. The Monte-Carlo method will then be applied on the basis of the deterministic calculation mode used initially. The Monte-Carlo calculation sequence will be both described and displayed graphically. For each simulation exercise, distribution functions will be selected for the input parameters, and minimum and maximum values will be determined, as well as most likely values, as far as reasonably possible. The @RISK software will be used to carry out the simulations. The results will be shown as probability distributions for the output parameters defined in a preceding step. The results of several simulations with varying distribution functions will be compared to each other and analyzed. The comparison should show whether it is useful to apply weighted triangles as distribution functions. The influence of a reduction in the input parameter range on the probability distributions will also be determined. Such a range reduction is enabled by a more detailed knowledge of the prevailing site, management, structural and process conditions. The degree of uncertainty and fuzziness can be lowered as a result. The paper is to demonstrate and analyze the influence of the input parameter improvement on the results.


Automation, machine learning and outsourcing are changing productive interactions across sectors and countries. When an algorithm learns by itself how to exploit new arbitrage opportunities, who should be rewarded with the additional value added or net product generated? How do our current frameworks to measure productivity changes in a multisectoral economy compare to each other and in what way do they capture (if they do) this changing nature of production?