In an article that won the Journal of Marketing's Harold H. Maynard Award for significant contribution to marketing theory and thought, Manjit Yadav (2010) makes a number of observations on the publication of theoretical and conceptual papers in premier academic marketing journals. First, at the time of his writing, around 72% of the previous Maynard award winning papers had been conceptual/theoretical, and this was mirrored by papers being chosen as the winners of other major awards for marketing scholarship, including the Sheth Foundation Award, and the Paul D. Converse Award. Second, he notes that over a 30-year period, the theoretical and conceptual articles published in Journal of Marketing had disproportionately more citations than empirical work. Third, the number of conceptual and theoretical papers being published in the major marketing journals had declined significantly overtime. This does not bode well for the marketing discipline, which is in danger of becoming theory poor, despite the exhortations of noted marketing scholars (MacInnis, 2004; Stewart & Zinkhan, 2006; Webster, 2005) that conceptual articles are crucial for maintaining a discipline's long-term vitality. There are a number of plausible reasons for the decline of theoretical and conceptual work in marketing scholarship. First, most marketing scholars would agree that it is more difficult to publish conceptual work than it is to publish empirical. While most journals state that they encourage the submission of theoretical and conceptual papers, reviewers are inevitably more comfortable in reviewing papers whose contexts, methodologies, results and implications they can easily get their teeth into. As a result, rather than take the risk of working hard on a theoretical piece only to have it rejected, many marketing academic take the perceived easier road of conducting empirical research and trying to publish those results. Second, the pressures on academic publication have increased substantially. In the North American system, new academic hires encounter the stresses of the hiring and tenure processes, and inmany other countries government imposed research assessment exercises place strict requirements both on publication quantity and quality. A focus on empirical, rather than conceptual work is seen by many to be a more feasible strategy when a clock is ticking. Third, in many marketing doctoral programs nowadays the focus is on method, and not on conceptual work. Many doctoral programs no longer teach courses in theory, and doctoral students are encouraged to publish empirical rather than conceptual work. New journals have arisen to cater for the need for conceptual and theoretical work in marketing. These include Marketing Theory, and also, more recently, the Academy of Marketing Science Review, published by the Academy of Marketing Science. Despite the excellent work of the editors and editorial boards of these publications, their task is not an easy one. First, despite their publishing few conceptual papers, the premier journals in the field (such as JM, JAMS, JCR) still encourage their submission, and thus compete directly. Second, because these journals are still relatively new, they have not yet had the JOURNAL OF STRATEGIC MARKETING 2019, VOL. 27, NO. 2, 97–99 https://doi.org/10.1080/0965254X.2018.1550906


The attitude of individual investors is strongly correlated with their sentiment, so their behavior on the stock market can generate important changes in price fluctuations. The aim of our study was to provide evidence regarding the relationship between the evolution of stock market and the individual investor sentiment, proxy by the consumer confidence index. This study is conducted on the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) for a 10 year time period, starting from 2002 to 2011 and includes 120 observations. The results proved that there is a positive correlation between changes in consumer confidence and stock market returns, demonstrating that individual investor sentiment affects stock prices. However, the influence of individual investor sentiment seems to be quickly removed by the force of arbitrage. The price adjustments are realized in less than a month. Moreover, the influence of individual investor sentiment on the prices of the most 10 liquid companies from BSE is not statistically significant.


The crystal structure of EuAg{sub 4}In{sub 8} [original structure type, sp. gr. P6/mmm, a = 0.9925(6), c = 9727(5) nm] was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analysis with a DARCh-1 diffractometer and compared with structure types studied earlier. X-ray absorption L{sub III}-spectra analyses showed that, in the above compound, Eu ions are in the bivalent state, while in EuCuIn{sub 4} and EuCu{sub 6.5}In{sub 6.5} compounds, variously charged Eu ions are present. 5 refs., 2 figs., 3 tabs.


At Tekniska Verken in Linkoping AB (TVAB) there is a long time experience of handling and producing biogas from large volumes of slaughterhouse waste. Experiences from research and development and ...


This paper presents a substrate-integrated-waveguide (SIW) cavity resonator with an introduction of a microfluidic channel to achieve a non-contact sensor for chemical sensing applications. The dominant mode resonant frequency of the cavity resonator is switched by injecting a very small amount of liquid (chemical) into microfluidic channel, which further results in a change in the effective dielectric constant. Initially, the two layers of SIW resonator are constructed, and then the microfluidic channel is etched on Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) material stuck between the two SIW layers for non-contact chemical sensing applications. S-parameters of the proposed SIW resonator are simulated and measured. The dominant mode frequency of the proposed structure is successfully switched from 18.46 GHz to 14.83 GHz when ethanol is injected and the frequency becomes 14.11 GHz when DI-water is injected into the microfluidic channel. The capability of the SIW cavity resonator to function as a chemical sensor is successfully demonstrated.


Objective: To establish a real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for rubella virus (RV), a rubella virus specific PCR amplicon as external standard to analytically estimate this real time quantitative assay. Methods: Firstly, the primer and TaqMan probe concentrations, as well as reaction temperatures were optimized to establish an efficient real-time quantitative RT-PCR assay for RV RNA. Next, and a RV specific PCR amplicon was made as external standard. Results: The RV specific PCR amplicon prepared for evaluation of the assay was 503bp, and its original concentration was 2.75×10^9 copies/μl. The real time quantitative assay was shown to have good linearity (r^2=0.9986, P<0.001). Conclusion: The established quantitative RT-PCR is a simple, rapid, quantitative and accurate assay for RV RNA.


Reply to discussion by Maletz on: P. Stone & A.W.A. Rushton 2003. A late Arenig (early Yapeenian) graptolite fauna and the coeval tectonic development of the Ballantrae Complex ophiolite, SW Scotland. Scottish Journal of Geology, 39, 29–40.

We thank Dr Maletz for his comments on the graptolite fauna from the North Ballaird Borehole. In identifying the horizon as Yapeenian, we relied partly on the identification of Yutagraptusl v-deflexus. Williams & Stevens thought that their X. declinatus was, like Y.? v-deflexus, a Yapeenian fossil; they, like us, laid more weight on the presence of a supposed index for that unit than on the absence of other such local indices as Oncograptus. We agree that, if one accepts that Xiphograptus declinatus is the same as Yutagraptus? v-defiexus and that both occur in the immediately underlying Castlemainian 4 interval, our case for the presence of a Yapeenian fauna is weakened.

We are grateful to him for drawing our attention to Pseudisograptus initialis and accept the suggestion that the specimens we identified as Arienigraptus gracilis (our fig. 4) are better referred …


The invention discloses an identification system for free flow car driving tendency based on dynamic collaborative deduction of people and vehicle environment. The system is established based on following steps: analyzing micro measured driving data of a driver by a feature extracting method based on a BP (Back Propagation) nerve network in an intelligent pattern identification theory, extracting a variable which has better classifying capability to the driving tendency types, and establishing a driving tendency identification model based on the data. The identification of the tendency of the driver has significances for enhancing vehicle auxiliary driving, in particular effectiveness and accuracy of an active safe pre-warning system.


RAFT's contribution, and it is a large one, in commenting on the crisis in secondary education, is to exhort educational policy makers to address themselves &dquo;to the big issues of our era ... to formulate a broad frame of reference ...&dquo; in devising solutions to educational problems. Imagine the incredulity of a galactic interloper observing a planet housing the hardware of its own destruction, over-populating itself at a &dquo;standing room only by year 2000&dquo; pace, with part of the population enduring never-ending hunger, part of the population still involved in &dquo;civil wars,&dquo; part looking for meaning in life through alcoholic and narcotic veilsall this while over a quarter of the people in one of the planet's countries were daily engaged in a process of teaching and learning &dquo;essentials&dquo; related only slightly to the above dilemmasl The potential the schools have for helping the young to guide their destiny would justly stagger our observer from space. If only half of those involved in education spent one quarter of their hours in contemplating, examining, proposing, or defending different versions of a good life (after all, this is what social criticism


Consumption of ochratoxin A (OTA) contaminated diets by broilers results in economic losses to the poultry industry. This experiment evaluated the effects of quantity and time of exposure to dietary OTA on performance, organ weights, serum biochemistry, and renal gene expression of chicks. Determination of genes expressed in response to OTA will allow for the identification of pathways that are influenced by OTA. 180-day old male broiler chicks were randomly assigned to a 3×3 factorial arrangement of treatments (3 levels of OTA; 0, 1 and 2 mg OTA/kg diet and 3 time periods; 7, 14 and 21 days) with 4 replicate pens of 5 birds each per treatment. For RNA-sequencing analysis (RNA-Seq), kidney samples were collected weekly from 3 controls and 3 chicks fed 1 mg OTA/kg. NextGENe software was used for read alignment and transcript quantification. Birds fed 2 mg OTA/kg diet had decreased feed intake and body weight gain, and increased serum uric acid on days 14 and 21. Compared to controls, birds fed 2 mg OTA/kg ...


The effectiveness of duckweed fed monosex O.niloticus farming was assessed for 120 days from July-November, 2017 based on 35 young fish stockedin geo-membrane lined ponds ofeach 3*3 m area and 1.5m depth. Five dry diets consisting of 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% duckweed formulated at 30% crude protein were fed to young fish (25±10.6g-32±16.6g) in the form of pellets at 5% body weight twice a day each with two replications where the 0% (wheat bran and corn bran) served as control. Mortality was recorded on daily basis whileweight gain,pond water temperature, and pH were determined every fortnight. Nutritional values of the diets and carcass of fish grown on the dietswere assessed using standard laboratory procedures.Maximum percentage average growth and survivalwas demonstrated by fish grown on 50% duckweed supplemented feed followed by those fed on 25% duckweed. Growth performance and percentage survival of fish grown under different treatments as well as that between fish fed on control diet and the experimental diets were significantly different (p<0.05). Average crude protein and lipid contents of the fish grown on 25% duckweed are relatively higher as compared to those grown on the rest diets. Assessment of the crude protein of fish grown on various levels of duckweed supplemented feed indicated a weak positive correlation (r2=0.011). Thus, the results showed that a diet comprising up to 50% duckweed could be used as a complete replacement for traditional feed in the diet of O. niloticus.


Characteristics of GeoStudio and groundwater seepage analysis module SEEP/W were introduced.According to geological survey data and hydrological data,the bed dam seepage of a reservoir was Calculated with finite element simulation by use of SEEP/W modules.The results showed the cut-off wall for seepage control is reasonable and effective to meet the design requirements of the dam foundation anti-seepage.The permeability of both grout curtain and the base were similar which means the grout curtain filling in the bottom of heart wall was not obviously effective.


Recent clinical trials that have demonstrated the efficacy of vaccines to prevent bacterial otitis media have invigorated the field of vaccine development for otitis media [1,2]. Otitis media accounts for a substantial global burden of disease. Acute otitis media is the most common bacterial infection in children in developed countries and results in a significant human and economic burden [3]. Chronic suppurative otitis media is the result of an initial episode of acute otitis media and is characterized by persistent discharge from the middle ear through the tympanic membrane. Chronic suppurative otitis media is an important preventable cause of hearing loss, particularly in the developing world [4].


Abstract The purpose of this research was to determine the effect of adapted play training on motor development of students with intellectual disabilities. The statistical population of this study included all students with intellectual disability in preschool and students in grades 1, 2, and 3. The sample included 80 students (40 boys and 40 girls) who were randomly selected from three special schools in Isfahan City. Then they were randomly assigned into two groups: the experimental and control groups. The instrument used in this research was, Lincoln Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency and Adapted Games Training. The pre-test was administered to both the experimental and control groups. Then adapted play training was employed on the experimental group for 12 sessions. A post-test was administered to both groups at the end of training. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of Lincoln Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency in the experimental and the control groups in the post-test (P<0·01). Also, the results showed that there was no significant difference between girl's and boy's mean scores of Lincoln Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. The finding showed that the adapted play training could increase motor development in students with intellectual disabilities (P<0·0001).


Background: There are some variables including chamber size in irritant patch test responses. Several non-invasive bidengineering methods for quantifying and obtaining information have been developed in recent decades. Objective : Our study was done to compare the effect of chamber size and the volume effect on the irritation potential of 1% SLS solution. Methods : Patches with 1% sodium lauryl sulfate(SLS) solution were applied to the volar forearm of 14 healthy volunteers for 24 h. Finn chambers with 8mm(20ul), 12mm(60pl), 18mm(80ul, 200ul) inner diameters were used. Visual score and transepidermal water loss (TEWL) were measured at 30 min after removal of the patches, and every 24 h up to 4 days. Results : The results are summarized as follows. 1. Visual scores were 0.18+0.32(8mm), 0.75+0.33(12mm) and 0.64+0.41(18mm) at 24 h after removal of 1% SLS and were 0.11+0.29, 0.50+0.34 and 0.25+0.26 on 4 days after removal. They were inereased 30 min and 24 h after removal and decreased towards normal 4 days after removal. By chamber size, the skin response with the large Finn chamber(12mm) increased more significantly than with the small Finn chamber(8mm). However, there were no significant differences in skin response between large and extralarge Finn chambers(18mm). 2. TEWL values were 11.86+4.09, 23.05+6.1l and 22.24+7.54g/m/h at 30 min after removal and were 9.37+2.30, 1..49+3.08 and 14.56+5.00g/m/h on 4 days after removal. They were increased 30 min after removal and decreased towards normal 4 days after removal. By chamber size, their results were the same as visual scores. 3. By visual score and TEWL, the skin response with 200pl of 1% SLS increased more significantly than 80pl in the extralarge Finn chamber. Conclusion : The small Finn chamber may be too small to elicit sufficient cutaneous irritation for evaluation. The large Finn chamber having larger test areas may be suitable to yield positive reactions to certain irritants. Also, the quantity of test solution per mm skin may be of importance for the skin response. (KOr J Dermatol 1997;35(3): 424-430)


Background: Pregnant women with rheumatic diseases (RD) represent a population at a higher risk for adverse pregnancy outcomes (APO). At our unit, these patients (pts) are surveilled at a high-risk pregnancy clinic, by both rheumatologists and obstetricians. Objectives: To assess pregnancy outcomes in pts with RD surveilled at our unit over the last decade. Methods: Single-centre observational retrospective study of pregnant women with RD followed at a portuguese tertiary centre between 2009 to 2019. Results: Overall, 353 pregnancies (preg) in 295 pts with RD were managed at our unit. Table 1 summarizes clinical data and the main APO recorded. Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) was the leading diagnosis followed by spondyloarthritis (SpA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) was diagnosed in 49 (13.9%) preg. We documented 284 (78%) live births (9 twin preg), 32 (10%) miscarriages, 7 (2%) elective abortions, 2 stillbirths (0.6%) and 2 ectopic preg; 35 (10%) of the overall preg were lost to follow up before delivery. Miscarriages occurred predominantly in pts with APS (34%). Fetal growth restriction (FGR) was recorded in 6% of preg, more than 1/3 of those in pts with APS. Preeclampsia (PE) complicated a total of 10 (4%) preg, 3 of those with superimposed HELLP syndrome, with SLE and APS accounting for 60% of the cases. Preterm births (15.5%) occurred mainly in APS, SLE and juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) pts. Neonatal lupus ensued in 3 (3.8%) preg positive for anti-Ro/La antibodies. No neonatal deaths were recorded. SpA and RA represented the diseases which flared the most considering both pregnancy and the postpartum period. Conclusion: In pregnant women with RD, it is of vital importance to be aware of the increased risk for APO. In our cohort, APS and SLE were the conditions most associated with APO, while SpA and RA were responsible for most maternal flares. Nevertheless, the majority of these pts, surveilled by a multidisciplinary team, had successful gestations. Disclosure of Interests: None declared


Comparative genomic sequencing strategy (CGS) was employed to
sequence the bacterium Treponema pallidum ssp. pallidum strain
SS14. Hybridization to a dense oligonucleotide tiling array
based on sequence of Treponema pallidum ssp. pallidum strain
Nichols discovered regions of different sequence in SS14 and
sequencing array designed to reveal single nucleotide changes
in combination with dideoxy-terminator sequencing of
hypervariable regions was used to complete genome sequence of
SS14 strain. Altogether 317 SNPs, 10 deletions and 9 insertions
were found. 301 SNPs, 9 deletions and 6 insertions represented
changes in coding sequences and lead to 4 frameshifts, 1
nonsense mutation, 1 read through stop codon mutation, 35
conservative aa changes and 177 non-conservative aa changes.
35.5 kb of randomly chosen regions were sequenced to verify the
CGS output resulting in error rate 4 x 10-4. 63% SNPs affected
hypothetical genes and protein analysis showed that 66% of all
amino acid were in proteins with unknown function. Our
confirmation experiments identified phase variation in T.
pallidum population and suggested potential for identifying of
these loci by CGS. Array sequencing strategy represents a
rapid, cost effective and scalable method for sequencing of
closely related genomes.


Ray Tracing is one of the most popular graphics algorithms due to its realism. The algorithm has a high computational complexity, which makes it impossible to implement in real time until today. The Triangle/Ray intersection is an specific problem, which has several implementation options, including the barycentric transformation. The state of the art diverges respect to the efficiency of the barycentric transformation compared against other algorithms. This research addresses the problem from a theoretical implementation point of view, demonstrating an efficiency of at least 53% with the barycentric transformation, applicable for any architecture or implementation.


To optimize the extraction process of anthocyanins from purple elephant grass,response surface methodology and the design principles of Box- Benhnken were used to analyze the extraction process of anthocyanins from purple elephant grass,thereinto,the ethanol concentration,extraction temperature,extraction time and solid- liquid ratio were selected as the independent variables with the extraction amount of anthocyanins as a response value on the basis of the single- factor test. The results showed that the optimal conditions for the extraction of anthocyanins from purple elephant grass were reaction temperature of 35 ℃,reaction time of 60 min,the material- liquid ratio of 1∶20. Under these conditions,the extraction effect of anthocyanins from purple elephant grass was the best,and the extraction amount reached 1. 96 mg / g. The result indicates that it is feasible to use response surface methodology to optimize the extraction process of anthocyanins from purple elephant grass.


21 Ivermectin is a broad spectrum antiparasitic agent which interferes with glutamate-gated 22 chloride channels found in invertebrates but not in vertebrate species. Mass drug 23 administration (MDA) with ivermectin based regimes has been a mainstay of elimination 24 efforts targeting onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis for more than three decades. 25 More recently interest in the use of ivermectin to control other neglected tropical diseases 26 such as soil-transmitted helminths and scabies has grown. Interest has been further 27 stimulated by the fact that ivermectin displays endectocidal efficacy against various 28 Anopheles species capable of transmitting malaria. Therefore, there is growing interest in 29 using ivermectin mass drug administration as a tool which might aid in the control of both 30 malaria and simultaneously that of several neglected tropical diseases (NTD). 31 In this review we outline the evidence base to date on these emerging indications for 32 ivermectin mass drug administration with reference to clinical, and public health data and 33 discuss the rationale for evaluating the range of impacts of a malaria ivermectin MDA on 34 other NTDs. 35


The striking ability of impurities to significantly influence crystallization processes is a topic of paramount interest in the pharmaceutical industry. Despite being present in small quantities, impurities tend to considerably change a crystallization process as well as the final crystalline product. In the present work, the effect of two markedly different impurities 4-nitrophenol and 4′-chloroacetanilide on the solubility, nucleation, and crystallization of paracetamol is described. In the first part of this work, the fundamentals are outlined and show that, although each impurity led to a small increase in solubility of paracetamol, their effect as a nucleation inhibitor was much more pronounced. Induction time experiments were used in conjunction with the classical nucleation theory to show that the impurities did not affect the solid–liquid interfacial energy but instead significantly reduced the kinetic factor, overall resulting in reduced nucleation rates. Intriguingly, both impurities influenced ...


SummaryA series of 53 adult patients whose treatment had been started one year (or more) previously have been studied. In this group of patients 68 % were still alive after 3 months, 49 % after 6 months, 43 % after 9 months and 35 % after one year.The authors examined whether certain symptoms observed at the time of admission or 30 days after beginning the treatment could be of any pronostie value to determine the chances of recovery with streptomycin therapy.At the beginning of the treatment :One must consider as being :a) fatal : neurologic symptoms indicating focal brain lesions ;b) of poor prognosis :1° fibro-caseous pulmonary tuberculosis;2° marked modifications of spinal fluid (index 7 or above) ;c) of good prognosis :1° no lesions of the lungs detectable by × ray examination ;2° pulmonary miliary tuberculosis;3° miliary tubercules in fundus oculi ;4° no marked modification of spinal fluid.After 30 days of treatment :Persisting fever and psychic disorders are of poor prognosis; the onset of neurolog...


A health drawer model chopping board includes a chopping board, which is characterized in that: the utility model is provided with a placement frame with multi-layers drawer slideway, the upper surface of the placement frame is used as the chopping board surface, which is placedly articulated with a health upper cover, a plurality of chopping boards are inserted into each slideways of the placement frame. The utility model has the advantages of convenient and healthy operation, easy storage and avoidance of pollution.


In the last decade, oral thin films (OTFs) have been gaining widespread acceptance as a drug delivery solution amongst pharma manufacturing companies. These films have significant visual and functional differences from the other solid oral dosage forms, such as tablets and capsules, and thus provide strong product differentiation. The fact that these films disintegrate and dissolve in the mouth makes them particularly desirable for certain patient groups, such as paediatric, geriatric, dysphagic and bedridden patients. Table 1 describes some such patient populations and their specific needs. Thin films are an innovative technology platform that is amenable to a wide product range. Many molecules, across various therapeutic segments, can be developed in this form. It provides immense benefits for the intended patients, clinicians, carers and other stake holders, such as those in the supply chain. Table 2 lists the benefits of OTF technology to various stakeholders. Expert View


The multi-degree-of-freedom dynamical model for some rocket transport and loading vehicle was constructed in the present paper.The vibration responses of the vehicle were analyzed and computed under classical random road excitations.The vibration acceleration response near the rocket instrument module was measured during the transportation experiment.The experimental results and the analytical results were found essentially identical.


Continuously shrinking designs by further extension of 193nm technology lead to a much higher probability of hotspots especially for the manufacturing of advanced logic devices. The CD of these potential hotspots needs to be precisely controlled and measured on the mask. On top of that, the feature complexity increases due to high OPC load in the logic mask design which is an additional challenge for CD metrology. Therefore the hotspot measurements have been performed on WLCD from ZEISS, which provides the benefit of reduced complexity by measuring the CD in the aerial image and qualifying the printing relevant CD. This is especially of advantage for complex 2D feature measurements. Additionally, the data preparation for CD measurement becomes more critical due to the larger amount of CD measurements and the increasing feature diversity. For the data preparation this means to identify these hotspots and mark them automatically with the correct marker required to make the feature specific CD measurement successful. Currently available methods can address generic pattern but cannot deal with the pattern diversity of the hotspots. The paper will explore a method how to overcome those limitations and to enhance the time-to-result in the marking process dramatically. For the marking process the Synopsys WLCD Output Module was utilized, which is an interface between the CATS mask data prep software and the WLCD metrology tool. It translates the CATS marking directly into an executable WLCD measurement job including CD analysis. The paper will describe the utilized method and flow for the hotspot measurement. Additionally, the achieved results on hotspot measurements utilizing this method will be presented.


To provide students an alternative image of science and scientist, we developed five lesson plans that include scientists' joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure in their life. Through the 10 hour lessons with the five topics, we investigated the effect of our program on students' image change toward scientists, their science learning, and their career development in science field. Twenty high school students participated in our program and five of them were analyzed. The qualitative data included opinionnaire survey before and after the program, field note, video recording, students' worksheets, and interview. The science episode lessons that reflect the human side of scientists were designed in five steps. The first step is the one about imaging of scientists, the second step is the one about reading scientists' episode in their life, the third step is the one about investigating human side of scientists, the fourth step is the one about feeling sympathy in scientists' context, and the last step is the one about judging human side of scientists. Students participated in this program got to feel familiarity in scientists as well as confidence in science. By obtaining the alternative image of scientists after the class, it is expected that students will play roles of well-prepared supporters with scientific literacy.


We investigated the effect of and cholinergic receptor agonists on current in adult rat trigeminal ganglion neurons using whole-cell patch clamp methods. The application of acetylcholine, carbachol, and oxotremorine () produced a rapid and reversible reduction of the current by , respectively. Atropine, a muscarinic antagonist, blocked carbachol- induced current inhibition to . Norepinephrine () reduced current by , while clonidine (), an receptor agonist, inhibited current by only . Yohimbine, an receptor antagonist, did not block the inhibitory effect of norepinephrine on current, whereas prazosin, an receptor antagonist, attenuated the inhibitory effect of norepinephrine on current to . This pharmacology contrasts with receptor modulation of channels in rat sympathetic neurons, which is sensitive to clonidine and blocked by yohimbine. Our data suggest that the modulation of voltage dependent channel by norepinephrine is mediated via an α1-adrenergic receptor. Pretreatment with pertussis toxin (250 ng/ml) for 16 h greatly reduced norepinephrine- and carbachol-induced current inhibition from , respectively. These results demonstrate that norepinephrine, through an receptor, and carbachol, through a muscarinic receptor, inhibit currents in adult rat trigeminal ganglion neurons via pertussis toxin sensitive GTP-binding proteins.


The article reflects on the sixteen electoral crimes regulated by the political constitution of Colombia, Colombian criminal code and anti-corruption statute with its criminal and disciplinary implications that take place, emphasizing corruption as one of the most relevant crimes and that has disturbed the country; It reveals the three most memorable cases in recent years such as: Odebrecht case, Carousel of the contracting in Bogota and Interbolsa, giving a brief description and its form of embezzlement of the resources of each one of them together with its operation: teaches key concepts of civic and democratic values that are inculcating and working the programs we are all democracy strengthened by the National Registry of Civil Status, Embassy of Belgium of the United Kingdom, foundation (ACPO) and the Center for Studies in Democracy and Electoral Affairs (CEDAE), with the objective of strengthening the rights and duties of girls and boys of school age. For the elaboration of this article the systematic method was used, using 5 databases with a choice of twenty-one (21) base articles, four (4) Law applicable to the document and one (1) report of the Electoral Observation Mission (EOM). It is concluded that for this type of study seven key strategies to prevent and counteract electoral crimes in Colombia are identified from the analysis of the legislative context and psycho-social, for the fulfillment of the planted, diminishing the negative indices of corruption.


As the technology available on cars is increasing, a wide range of applications, from safety to entertainment, are becoming factually accessible to passengers. Many of these applications involves a one-to-many transmission model where a single car broadcasts a message that has to be forwarded, even with multiple hops, in a very short time to all the other cars located within a range of few kilometers from the source. Since the high mobility and density of a car network scenario, specific solutions need to be devised to choreograph a fast-delivery multi- hop broadcast. To this aim, we developed a practical and efficient technique that allows cars to estimate their communication range with the help of a very limited message exchange and exploit this information to reduce the number of transmissions, as well as the hops to be traversed, and hence the time, required by a broadcasted message to reach all the cars following the sender within a certain distance.


Greatly enhanced microporosity is obtained for the amorphous porous polymers produced from the AlCl 3 -mediated coupling of aromatic hydrocarbons by using dichloromethane as the reaction solvent. A polymer of average BET surface area ¼ 2435 m 2 g (cid:2) 1 was obtained reproducibly from 1,3,5-triphenylbenzene with the additional porosity being provided as ultramicroporosity as demonstrated by very high CO 2 adsorption at 273 K/1 bar.


Objective:To detect the change of cell immunity and body fluid immunity after subtotal splenectomy in portal hypertension of rat ,and preliminarily evaluate the role of subtotal splenectomy in portal hypertension.Methods:We established the rat model of hepatic cirrhosis portal hypertension. Rats were divided to five groups:normal control group(NCG); experimental control group(ECG), total splenectomy group(TSG), retain fifty percent size of normal spleen group(R50%NSG),retain the same size of normal spleen group (RNSG). Measured the Blood routine, Immunoglobulin, T lymphocyte subgroup and stained with hematoxylin and eosin (HE) at 4 weeks after surgery. Results:There were not significant different between RNSG and NCG in Blood routine, Immunogiobulin,T lymphocyte subgroup at 4 weeks after operation. ECG could be seen by light microscope that the tissue of normal hepatic lobule was destructed,and appeared pseudo-lobule.Disarrangement of regenerated hepatic cell nodus and liver cell cord, fatty degeneration in hepatic cell, thickening of spleen capsule and serious congestion of spleen parenchyma,atrophy of white pulp and shrinking of follicle and germinal center R50%NSG and RNSG could be seen that hepatic fibrosis,spleen capsule thichening and congesition of splenic parenchyma to a less extent. Conclusion:Remaining spleen of portal hypertension caused by hepatic cirrhosis has physiology functions. In some degree,splenectomy of retaining the same size of normal spleen could maintain body fluid immunity and cell immunity of organism.


Statistical modelling strategy is the key for success in data analysis. The trade-off between flexibility and parsimony plays a vital role in statistical modelling. In clustered data analysis, in order to account for the heterogeneity between the clusters, certain flexibility is necessary in the modelling, yet parsimony is also needed to guard against the complexity and account for the homogeneity among the clusters. In this paper, we propose a flexible and parsimonious modelling strategy for clustered data analysis. The strategy strikes a nice balance between flexibility and parsimony, and accounts for both heterogeneity and homogeneity well among the clusters, which often come with strong practical meanings. In fact, its usefulness has gone beyond clustered data analysis, it also sheds promising lights on transfer learning. An estimation procedure is developed for the unknowns in the resulting model, and asymptotic properties of the estimators are established. Intensive simulation studies are conducted to demonstrate how well the proposed methods work, and a real data analysis is also presented to illustrate how to apply the modelling strategy and associated estimation procedure to answer some real problems arising from real life.


Faced with the contradiction between economic growth and environmental pollution, implementing cleaner production has become a good choice for many mining companies to achieve sustainable development. This paper aims to evaluate the cleaner production for gold mines by exploring applicable decision making methods. First, the picture fuzzy numbers with four membership degrees are adopted to describe experts' assessment information under complicated fuzzy environment. Thereafter, the extended stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis and mean-squared deviation models are combined to obtain the comprehensive criteria weights. Meanwhile, a novel evaluation method, which integrates the evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) with elimination and choice translating reality (ELECTRE) module, is proposed to judge the cleaner production level. Subsequently, according to the characteristics of gold mines, an evaluation criteria system of cleaner production is constructed. Finally, a case of evaluating the cleaner production performance for four gold mines is provided to explain the application of the proposed method. Besides, a systematic comparison analysis with other existent methods is conducted to reveal the advantages of our method. Results indicate that the integrated EDAS-ELECTRE method is suitable and effective for gold mines to evaluate their cleaner production performance, and has important reference values for the cleaner production management and implementation.


Accurate and reliable measurements of piezoelectric coefficients on thin films are required to perform thin film process development and compare different manufacturing techniques and quality especially in MEMS applications. State of the art measurements are performed by double-beam laser interferometry since many years, however the variety of parameter ranges and test conditions make it difficult to compare measurement results. Films on a substrate exhibit effective piezoelectric coefficients due to substrate clamping and the coefficient also depends on feature size and substrate thickness. This was shown by FEM simulations for the case of d33J measurements by DBLI [1] and latest simulation and measurement results show that a considerable reduction of the measured d33J was obtained for small electrodes and an increase for large electrodes. The measured d33J value at large electrodes is even larger than the true d33J of the film and for small feature sizes it is lower. A feature size chosen equivalent to the substrate thickness exhibits the most exact number for the effective coefficient d33J [2]. Furthermore nonlinearity and hysteresis of ferroelectric films requires the definition of measurement parameters to obtain comparable procedures regarding hysteresis, poling conditions, and other property nonlinearities, voltage and frequency dependency of coefficients, and large and small signal responses. For easier comparison of films a large signal coefficient (d33,ls) is introduced as the average slope of a displacement vs. voltage measurement over the full operating voltage range. For thin film measurements it reflects the potential displacement in typical actuator applications in comparison to small-signal coefficients and allows better comparison of materials for actuation.


Open Newton–Cotes differential methods that possess the characteristics of multilayer symplectic structures are shown in this paper. In numerical simulation, volume-preservation plays an important role in solving the Hamiltonian system. In this regard, developing a numerical integrator that preserves the volume in the phase space of a Hamiltonian system is a great challenge to the researchers in this field. Symplectic integrators were proven to be good candidates for volume-preserving integrators (VPIs) in the past ten years. Several one-step (single-stage or multistages) symplectic integrators have been developed based on the symplectic geometric theory. However, multistep VPIs have seldom been investigated by other researchers for the lack of an advanced theory. Recently, Zhu et al. converted open Newton–Cotes differential methods into a multilayer symplectic structure so that multistep VPIs of a Hamiltonian system are obtained. Mainly, their work has concentrated on the issue of achieving both the accu...


Legionella pneumophila has been known to cause Legionnaires Disease and Pontiac fever. These bacteria live in natural waters and colonize at man-made water systems. The infection of humans occurs solely by inhalation of contaminated aerosols which can be generated by cooling towers, showers heads, ponds, hot springs, and dental devices [1]. L. pneumophila have shared the same environment with other microorganisms such as Bacillus [2]. On the other hand, it is known that there are several antimicrobial substances produced by Bacillus strains. The best-known class of such compounds is cyclic lipopeptides that are synthesized nonribosomally, including iturin, surfactin and fengycin which exhibit antibiotic and surface active properties [3].


Abstract.
 The morphology of juvenile instars of two species of lohmanniid oribatid mites, Lohmannia turcmenica Bulanova-Zachvatkina, 1960 and L. paradoxa (Haller, 1884), is described and illustrated. Known juvenile instars of this genus are compared. A new generic diagnosis of juvenile instars of Lohmannia is given.


Introduction: At present different techniques are used for the removal of carious lesions. Chemomechanical caries removal technique is a noninvasive technique that removes the infected tissue, and at the same time, maintains sound tooth structures and prevents pulpal irritation and patient discomfort. The aim of this study was to evaluate shear bond strength of a two-step self-etch adhesive to demineralized dentin after caries removal in primary molars  with Carisolv in comparison with a handpiece. Materials and Methods: In this in vitro study, 60 freshly extracted primary molars with occlusal caries were collected. The samples were divided into two groups. In each group, the teeth were cut in mesiodistal and buccolingual directions to prepare four samples. In group 1, the carious lesions were removed using Carisolv gel and in group 2, they were removed using a bur in a handpiece. Then the teeth were restored with composite resin and Clearfill SE Bond adhesive, using molds measuring 2 mm in height and 1.4 mm in diameter. The bonding interface underwent a shear strength test in a universal testing machine. Numerical values of shear bond strength (SBS) were calculated for each group , and statistical analysis was performed with t-test using SPSS software  program (α = 0.05). Results: The mean SBS values of Carisolv and handpiece groups were 19.7 ± 6.1 and 17.3 ± 5.5 MPa, respectively, with no statistically significant differences between the two techniques (p value = 0.308 ). Conclusion: Based on the results of the present study, the bond strength of Clearfil SE Bond adhesive to dentin after caries removal using the two techniques (Carisolv and handpiece) did not exhibit significant differences. Key words: Adhesives, Dental cavity preparation, Primary dentition, Shear strength


The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), in less than one year, has been causing havoc to the world's public health. With more than 35 million reported cases, more than 1 million fatalities worldwide, and the persistently growing number of infections; a resolution to this health crisis is not visualized in the short- or mid-term. Besides the pulmonary complications, the medical community has called attention to the cardiac compromise. In this brief article we review the most important aspects of COVID-19 related myocardial injury, the possible mechanisms, the prognostic implications and the possible persistent myocardial injury and physical activity restrictions in patients who recovered from the infection.


A nonlinear interferometer uses nonlinear elements as beam splitters to split and to recombine optical waves for interference. As a result, the interference fringe size has a nonlinear dependence on the intensity of the field for phase sensing and leads to an enhanced phase signal. In this paper, a practical scheme of nonlinear interferometry for precision phase measurement is analyzed with parametric amplifiers as the nonlinear beam splitters. It is found that the signal due to phase shift is enhanced by a factor of the amplification gain as compared to a linear interferometer with the same phase-sensing light intensity while the quantum noise is kept at the vacuum level, thus, effectively increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) beyond the standard quantum limit. Furthermore, the scheme is not as sensitive to the detection loss as the linear scheme with a squeezed state for noise reduction. However, losses inside the interferometer limit the enhancement factor in SNR. We apply the concept to a Michelson interferometer but with parametric amplifiers involved for gravitational-wave detection. We find that effective power is increased by the gain of the amplifiers without actually increasing the cycling power inside the interferometer. Furthermore, the full benefits with squeezed input and variational output or the combination of a quantum nondemolition interferometer for sensitivity beyond the standard quantum limit apply here with even better results. Such a nonlinear interferometer will find wide applications in precision measurements.


This paper investigates the effects of the wall mass, m w, and bonding stiffness, κ, on the thermal resistance at a solid–liquid interface. The main observation is that the mass influences the thermal resistance independently of its effects on the theoretical harmonic frequency, √κ/m w of the walls. We show that increasing the atomic mass of the solid particles significantly increases the temperature jump at the interface. Furthermore, this effect becomes continuously more important as the value of the bonding stiffness decreases. To understand this, we study the density profiles of the walls, which shed light on their oscillatory motion. Finally, we show that the thermal resistance behaves as a fifth order polynomial of log(m w κ).


PAS' announcement that it will form a new political partnership with friendly parties will transform the national political landscape. 'This means that the country will now have a second opposition bloc. Analysts expect this to benefit Barisan Nasional as voters will conclude that these opposition groups are fragile and weak. Be that as it may, Umno Vice president Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi says the party has to work three times harder and smarter


Objective To observe the effect of interventional targeting administration of Ad-p53combined with ultrasound irradiation in rabbit models of hepatic VX2tumors,as well as its impact on VEGF and MMP2.Methods Forty-two Chinchilla rabbits were collected and VX2cancer cells were injected into the left lobe of liver on the observation in rabbits.The growth of cancer was monitored by ultrasound.Thirty rabbit models were successfully made and divided into 3groups(each n=10) randomly.Fourteen days after transplantation of cancer cells,Ad-p53was administrated through hepatic artery(in Ad-p53group) or combined with ultrasound wave irradiation(in Ad-p53+US group),while the same amount of saline was given for rabbits in control group.Three days later,the tumor size was observed with ultrasound,and then all rabbits were sacrificed,the serum VEGF level was measured by ELISA,the hepatic tissue expression of p53,MMP2and VEGF were detected respectively by immunohistochemistry,and expression level of wild type p53 was measured using Western blot.Results No difference of tumor size was found between 3groups before therapy.All tumor sizes increased,but the tumors in Ad-p53+US group were relatively smaller.The efficiency of Ad-p53transfection was improved in Adp53group compared with control group,which was the highest in Ad-p53+US group.Furthermore,the serum VEGF level decreased in Ad-p53+US group,so did the expression of MMP2and VEGF in Ad-p53group and Ad-p53+US group,more obviously in Ad-p53+US group.Conclusion Ad-p53can suppress the growth of hepatic VX2tumors in rabbit models.The therapeutic efficacy of Ad-p53can be improved by interventional targeting administration combining with ultrasound irradiation.


Automated statistical part-of-speech (POS) tagging has been a very active research area for many years and is the foundation of natural language processing systems. This paper introduces and analyzes the performance of two part-of-speech taggers, namely the NLTK unigram backoff tagger and the TnT tagger, a trigram tagger. Experimental results show that the TnT tagger outperforms the NLTK unigram backoff tagger. However, the tagging accuracy of both taggers decreases almost by the same number when the taggers are tested on a corpus which differs from the one they were trained on.


has at least one complex zero x (the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra), and, typically, f(x) has n distinct zeros in C. Galois theory tells us that for n ? 5 there is no general formula such as (1.1) that expresses the zeros in terms of radicals. A natural question is how many of the roots of f(x) lie in the field R of real numbers. The answer is severely constrained by the number of terms and the signs of its coefficients. Consider a polynomial with m terms:


Summary form only given. When growing epitaxial heterostructures involving both arsenic and phosphorus based III-V semiconductors (for instance GaInAs/InP or GaAs/GaInP), the most common recipe used to reduce anion intermixing is to perform a growth interruption during which the GaInAs or GaAs surface is exposed to phosphorus before the growth of InP or GaInP. This kind of procedure then raises the question of the reactivity of an arsenide surface to a phosphorus flux in order to optimize the growth interruption. However, if some results do exist related to the behavior of a GaAs surface exposed to phosphorus, very few are reported on the reactivity of the InAs surface. In this context, we have studied the surface reactivity of Ga/sub 1-x/In/sub x/As alloys to a phosphorus flux. Samples are grown by gas source molecular beam epitaxy (GSMBE). Surface reconstruction and morphology are followed 'in-situ' by reflection high energy electron diffraction (RHEED) and 'ex-situ' by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The surface chemistry of some samples has been determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) in a vacuum chamber connected under UHV to the growth chamber.


System design centering process looks for nominal values of system designable parameters that maximize the probability of satisfying the design specifications (yield function). Statistical design centering implements a statistical analysis method such as Latin hypercube sampling (LHS) for yield function estimation and explicitly optimizes it. In this paper, we introduce a new statistical design centering technique for microwave system design. The technique combines a modified surrogate‐based derivative‐free trust region (TR) optimization algorithm and the generalized space mapping (GSM) technique. The modified TR algorithm is a derivative‐free optimization algorithm that employs quadratic surrogate models to replace the computationally expensive yield function over hyperelliptic trust regions in the optimization process. TR algorithms exhibit global convergence features irrespective the starting point setting. The new design centering approach utilizes the GSM technique to approximate the feasible region in the design parameter space with a sequence of iteratively updated space mapping (SM) surrogates. At each SM iteration, the modified TR algorithm optimizes the yield function for the current SM region approximation to get a better center. Two microwave circuit examples are used to show the effectiveness of the new design centering technique to obtain an optimal design in few SM iterations. In the design process, we employ Sonnet em for the bandstop microstrip filter design and CST Studio Suit for the ultra‐wideband (UWB) multiple‐input‐multiple‐output (MIMO) antenna.


Cryptococcus is a pathogenic fungus that can cause various infections mainly in an immunocompromised host. Cryptococcal yeasts are easily inhaled, so pulmonary infection is the most commonly encountered, but in immunocompetent status, primary cryptococcosis occurs rarely in the pharyngo-epiglottic fold. A 75-year-old male came to our clinic with the complaint of foreign body sensation in the throat that lasted for three months. Rigid laryngoscopy showed a circular mass in the pharyngo-epiglottic fold and we performed laryngeal microsurgery with CO2 laser to remove it. The patient was pathologically diagnosed as cryptococcosis. We report this case of rare, atypical cryptococcosis in the pharyngo-epiglottic fold along with a related literature review.


Looking for hard-to-find back issues of magazines, books, or other products? These dealers may be able to help you. Looking for hard-to-find back issues of magazines, books, or other products? These dealers may be able to help you.


The band structures of CrN are calculated using the quasiparticle self-consistent $GW$ approach in both the low-temperature antiferromagnetic (AFM) [$110{\mathrm{]}}_{2}\phantom{\rule{4pt}{0ex}}Pmna$ orthorhombic phase and in a hypothetical ferromagnetic phase representing the paramagnetic cubic state in a saturating magnetic field. A gap of about 1 eV is found in the AFM state, while the ferromagnetic band structure is found to be half metallic. Another hypothetical AFM-1 structure [$001{\mathrm{]}}_{1}$ is also considered and gives a smaller band gap. The orbital nature of the bands is studied and reveals a gap between Cr-$d$ states, indicating a strongly correlated behavior. Optical dielectric functions are calculated from the interband transitions and compared to experimental data.


This article examines the merger of public service unions which resulted in the creation of Unison, the largest trade union in the UK. It examines the Unison merger from the perspective of the strategic capability of union management(s) to influence the success or otherwise of the merger process. Models and frameworks arising from research into for-profit organisations are used, in particular those of Buono and Bowditch (1989). Use is also made of the more recent work of Cartwright and Cooper (1996). Both studies highlight the importance of the cultural aspects of the merger process. The article concludes that the chosen models illuminate the process and demonstrate the importance of further research to enable a better understanding of the management of trade unions.


For Generalized Reed-Muller, GRM(q, d, n), codes, the determination of the second weight is still generally insolved, it is an open question of Cherdieu Rolland [1]. In order to answer this question, we study some maximal hypersurfaces and we compute the second weight of GRM(q, d, n) codes with the restriction that q > 2d. subjclass[2000]: 11T71, 14J70, 05B25 keywords hypersurfaces, weight, Reed-Muller codes


In this paper, a new species of the genus Aphelinoidea Girault from Xinjiang is described and illustrated. A key to the 6 species in China is provided. The specimens examined are deposited in the Life Science and Technology College, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, China.


The Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a kind of physiological virus affecting the human body and causing abnormal modifications/transformations in the body which results into a compromised immune system. When the human cells are infected and transformed by high-risk HPV genotypes (i.e. HPV-transformed cells), the immune system is deviated (weakened) and further leads to Cervical Cancer (CC) progression in women. The progression of CC in women is mostly associated with persistence of HPV-related tumors. The purpose of this study is to predict which of the HPV risk factors (low-risk and high-risk) has more impact on the women's immune system and to predict their given scores to determine the level of risk. In this paper, advanced python algorithms are implemented to differentiate between women who are predicted to have weak immune system or normal immune system as a result of low-risk or high-risk HPV infection and the possibility of CC progression in future.


Effective vaccination in sub-Saharan Africa requires the use of custom-made vaccines for specific geographic localities, due to the genetic and antigenic variability of the SAT types of FMDV. Comparison of r-values (expression of antigenic relationships between viruses) determined for ZIMJ7/8312 (a west Zimbabwean strain) and KNP/19/89/2 (originating from the Kruger National Park, South Africa) in relation to isolates from the Kruger National Park, revealed much lower r-values for ZIMJ7/83/2 than the KNP strain (Esterhuysen, 1994). The serological data demonstrated therefore the closer relatedness of the KNP strains. A similar study investigating the antigenic relationships of isolates originating from northern and southern Zimbabwe, indicated these isolates to belong to antigenically different groups (Bauman & Esterhuysen, 2000). These results were confirmed genetically which clearly showed the closer gene relationships of isolates originating in the same geographical region (Vosloo et aI., 1995; Bastos et aI., 2001). Taken together, these results are indicative of the independent evolution of FMDV in different geographical regions and argue thus for the use of custom-made vaccines.


Otitis externa is an inflammation of acute and chronic ear canal caused by bacteria, it can be localized or diffuse. Factors that cause otitis externa is moisture, clogging the middle ear canal, local trauma, and allergies. Otitis externa can spread to pina, periaurikular or to the temporal bone. This is a disease of the external ear that is often found. Woman, 23 years old, complaint of earache for 2 days, followed with hearing loss, but no discharge from the left ear. Based on history, physical examination, and home visits, obtained internal factors that affect this case, among others, scraping ear habit with a cotton bud every day and less maintain hygiene. From a physical examination on the left ear obtained pain auricle movement (+), tenderness tragus (+), acoustic meatus appear edema and hyperemia. The diagnosis in this case is otitis externa. Problem solving in this case is the intervention on patients, not only in medical therapy but also in all aspects of self hygiene. [J Agromed Unila 2015; 2(1):43-46] Keywords: behavior, hygiene, otitis externa.


Superparamagnetic materials have elicited increasing interest due to their high-efficiency magnetothermal conversion. However, it is difficult to effectively manage the magnetothermal energy due to the continuous magnetothermal effect at present. In this study, we designed and synthesized a novel Fe3O4/PEG/SiO2 composite phase change material (PCM) that can simultaneously realize magnetic-to-thermal conversion and thermal energy management because of outstanding thermal energy storage ability of PCM. The composite was fabricated by in situ doping of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoclusters through a simple sol–gel method. The synthesized Fe3O4/PEG/SiO2 PCM exhibited good thermal stability, high phase change enthalpy, and excellent shape-stabilized property. This study provides an additional promising route for application of the magnetothermal effect.


The calibration studies showed that small increases in rates of fertilization tended to produce either of two kinds of response (see Figure 1). The first is an increase in yield with little or no increase in stalk nitrate concentration. The second is an increase in stalk nitrate concentration with little or no increase in yield. The first type of response indicates that supplies of available N were limiting plant growth at the end of the season; the second indicates that supplies of available N were not limiting growth during this period. In essence, therefore, use of the test enables a producer to ask the crop if it had adequate N late in the growing season.


Hakea sericeae Schrader and H. salicifolia (Vent.) B. L. Burtt. are perennials, which belong to the Proteaceae family. Native to dry tropical zones from South Australia, they became aggressive species, particulary in damaged, dried and windy areas and are now considered invaders in some places of mainland Portugal. With no natural predators, the use of chemical control is the main way to manage these plants but they both show a small foliar area, therefore usually little success has been achieved.


In a patent infringement action involving the international distribution of Microsoft's Windows software, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has interpreted 35 U.S.C. § 271(f) as extending infringement liability to foreign computers assembled with copies of software replicated abroad from a US-made master version. In Eolas Techs., Inc. v. Microsoft Corp. AT&T Corp. v. Microsoft Corp., the CAFC determined that the exportation of software code may constitute patent infringement under 271(f) if the software is deemed to be a "component of a patented invention." But it is clear that U.S, patent laws have not of what extraterritorial conduct invokes, and what conduct does not invoke, the U.S. patent infringement status. However, it is noted that the owners of U.S. patents are increasingly attempting to enforce their U.S. patents against activities carried out at least in part, if not entirely, outside the U.S.


This paper takes the example of national characteristic specialty-Thermal Energy & Power Engineering Specialty of North China Electric Power University, and introduces constructive idea, measures in teaching reform, constructive production and specialized character etc of the Thermal Energy & Power Engineering characteristic Specialty, so can provides certain reference experience for practice teaching of the related colleges and specialties.


ority scholars in their own right, and helped to promote national consciousness among non-Russian peoples. Meanwhile, the Orientologists' collaboration with minority peoples not only spearheaded revisionist strands of scholarly practice and philosophy later advanced by post-colonial thinkers, but also provided a training ground for national leaders among Buriats, Azeris, and Abkhazians who served the Soviet state in pursuit of its nationalities agenda in the 1920s. Last but not least, many of the Orientologists' minority collaborators and mentees would tragically perish during Stalin's Great Purges – a time when "NKVD investigators posthumously accused imperial Orientologists of spreading the ideology of 'bourgeois nationalism' among non-Russian ethnic minorities, allegedly with the aim of dismembering the Russian empire and the USSR" (6). It is perhaps because Tolz's analysis is so stimulating and the material she presents so fascinating that readers may feel somewhat shortchanged by the slimness of this book. In place of thick descriptions, Tolz too often delivers economical brushstrokes when describing the individual lives and personalities of the scholars whom she studies, not to mention their debates with other scholars both at home and abroad. The Orientologists appear as belonging to a parallel academic universe more often than they do as integrated into a wide variety of social and political milieus. This is all the more frustrating, for example, when Tolz does fleetingly pause to consider how these Orientologists' heritage variously shaped their self-understandings as patriotic citizen-scholars. Tolz has provided specialists with a distinctive and valuable contribution to an increasingly robust scholarship on Russian Orientology and Russian ethnography more generally. Russia's Own Orient notably enhances understanding of how Russian scholars who were professionally reared in the late tsarist period not only impacted the rationale and shape of early Soviet nationality policies, but also influenced some leaders among minority peoples who maneuvered those policies in the 1920s. It also persuasively expands the genealogies of post-colonial thought, showing how relatively little-known Russian scholars pioneered intellectual paths later taken and re-engineered by such theorists as Edward Said.


The nature of tumorigenesis of predominantly lymphocytic thymoma was examined using an animal model. Rats of the inbred BUF/Mna strain were found spontaneously to develop predominantly lymphocytic thymomas, histologically indistinguishable from their human counterparts, at an incidence of virtually 100%. Thymic rudiments of BUF/Mna rats grafted 17 months previously under the renal capsule of young athymic ACI/NMs‐rnu/rnu rats also gave rise to similar lesions. The lymphocytes in the thymomas expressed T‐cell antigens (rat Lyt‐1 and Lyt‐2.3), as in the normal case, and ACI rat specific antigen. When BUF/Mna rats of thymoma age were irradiated with a lethal dose of 12 Gy and then received a single injection of bone marrow cells (8 × 107) from BALB/c‐nu/nu mice, thymomas were re‐formed three weeks later (in 2 of 5 rats) with the replacement lymphocytes expressing mouse Thy‐1.2 antigen. These results indicate that an intrinsic thymic epithelial abnormality is responsible for the development of predominantly lymphocytic thymomas in BUF/Mna rats.


The given dissertation represents the independent completed scientific job devoted to complex research of principles, of Oral Verbal Communication, spontaneity and continuity as basic beginnings of the civil remedial right, their concepts, contents, meaning (importance) and place them in system of principles of the civil remedial right of Ukraine. The urgency of a theme dissertation of research is caused, first of all by that approaches to the concept of the remedial legislation today have changed, the new earlier unknown institutes of civil process (correspondence decision, judicial order) have appeared, has reserved the order of the appeal of the decisions of court. From the civil remedial legislation the majority of norms which was excluded concerned to execution (performance) of the judicial decisions.
The author investigates features of display of principles of Oral Verbal Communication, spontaneity and continuity in court of the first instance, appeal and Cassation manufacture, at reconsideration of the decisions, decisions entered in lawful force on the again opened and exclusive circumstances.
Taking into account process of perfection of the civil remedial legislation of Ukraine, the author judges necessity of a recognition of a continuity of judicial process by a principle of the civil remedial right. At the same time in view of record of process by means author offers to enter into civil process of the new participant of process " the technical secretary " with the right of his (its) tap (removal), and also to change the approach to fixing judicial processes fixing only those judicial processes by means where are available
The appropriate petitions of the parties for all other businesses to spend written fixing of judicial processes.
The meaning (importance) of principles of Oral Verbal Communication, spontaneity and continuity is shown that they are the basic beginnings of the civil remedial right.
On the basis of the analysis of judicial practice, rules of law the author formulates the theoretical conclusions and practical offers directed on improvement to realization of principles of Oral Verbal Communication, spontaneity and continuity in civil process.


This paper analyzes the gang crisis in El Salvador and how the policies enacted against gangs in the United States affects the gang crisis in Latin America. Th is paper observes the relationships among these transnational gangs and the ways in which their relationships have evolved over the years. This paper also explores the recent truce between the Salvadoran regime and leaders of the main gangs in El Salvador.


Objective:To investigate the effect of glycocine on acute lung injury induced by the severe acute pancreatitis in rats.Methods:The rats were randomly divided into three groups:sham operation rats(group A),severe acute pancreatitis group(group B)and SAP rats given the glycocine(group C).The SAP model was established by injecting 5% sodium taurocholate into biliopancreatic ducts with needle.The glycocine group was injected with glycocine through vena caudalis at 3h,6hbefore the SAP model induced.Rats in each group were sacrificed at 6h,12h,24hafter sham operation or SAP.The concentrations of HMGB-1were measured by ELISA,TREM-1mRNA expressions were measured by RTPCR.Results:Compared with group A,the levels of HMGB-1and the expressions of TREM-1mRNA in group B were significantly elevated(P0.05).In group C,these items were lower than that of group B(P0.05).Conclusions:Glyine can decrease the expression of TREM-1mRNA and HMGB1,then can be used for treatment of severe acute pancreatitis.


Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) have been successfully applied to communications channel equalization because of their modeling capability for nonlinear dynamic systems. Major problems of gradient-descent learning techniques commonly employed to train RNNs are slow convergence rates and long training sequences required for satisfactory performance. This paper presents decision-feedback equalizers using an RNN trained with Kalman filtering algorithms. The main features of the proposed recurrent neural equalizers, using the extended Kalman filter (EKF) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF), are fast convergence and good performance using relatively short training symbols. Experimental results for various time-varying channels are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed approaches over a conventional recurrent neural equalizer.


This article critically interrogates contemporary forms of addiction medicine that are portrayed by policy-makers as providing a 'rational' or politically neutral approach to dealing with drug use and related social problems. In particular, it examines the historical origins of the biological facts that are today understood to provide a foundation for contemporary understandings of addiction as a 'disease of the brain'. Drawing upon classic and contemporary work on 'styles of thought', it documents how, in the period between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s, such facts emerged in relation to new neurobiological styles of explaining and managing social problems associated with drug abuse, and an alliance between a relatively marginal group of researchers and American policy-makers who were launching the 'War on Drugs'. Beyond illustrating the political and material conditions necessary for the rise of addiction neuroscience, the article highlights the productivity of neurobiological thought styles, by focusing on the new biological objects, treatments and hopes that have emerged within the field of addiction studies over the last several decades.


The use of energy dissipation devices as an earthquake resistant system is an increasing area of practical application worldwide. They are used as seismic protection systems in order to enhance structural performance by increasing inherent damping, raising safety, controlling deformations and balancing asymmetric conditions among others, thus reducing ideally the overall damage potential of the structures. Few codes have been developed for the analysis and design of these structures and the existing ones are still evolving. A key parameter that requires special attention is the added damping – reduced shear base design relationship due to, in a philosophical sense, seismic protected structures should assure the assumed performance enhancement. A comprehensive study of the added damping – structural strength relationship is conducted through three stages. The first stage is focused on nonlinear single degree of freedom systems, the second is extended to nonlinear 2-DOF systems in order to consider the torsional condition, and lastly a real eight story frame is analyzed. Structural performance is estimated via fragility curves constructed through the Incremental Dynamic Analysis. Damage is estimated through the Park and Ang index which is composed of two main parameters, the first related to damage caused by ductility demand, the second related to structural hysteretic dissipated energy. An ensemble of 42 Chilean accelerograms recorded at the Mw 8.8 2010 Maule Earthquake scaled to fifteen increasing intensities is considered. An optimal plan and height distribution of damping capacities is considered for the 2-DOF system and the eight story frame respectively. The Simplified Sequential Search Algorithm is the optimization technique implemented. Besides fragility curves, an added damping – strength capacity chart is presented as a decision-making tool. Structural strength reductions should be carefully considered in order to assure an effective damage potential reduction, especially when dealing with asymmetric structures. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.


Monomeric nickel(II) thiosemicarbazone complexes are an attractive new class of homogeneous catalysts for the activation of silanes. However, their activity is limited by the formation of inactive oligo- and polymers. The pathway by which aggregation takes place was elucidated by the preparation and X-ray structural analysis of the first trimeric nickel(II) thiosemicarbazone complex. Aggregation was shown to proceed via NiONi and NiSNi bridging, giving rise to both fourfold planar and pseudooctahedral coordination of the nickel ions.


Received 12 May 2006; revised manuscript received 18 July 2006; published 19 September 2006We present a concept of terahertz oscillations in superlattices generated under conditions apparently differentfrom standard Bloch oscillations. The oscillations are induced by crossed magnetic and electric fields bothapplied to the superlattice in the in-plane direction. The frequency of these oscillations is tunable by the appliedfields.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.74.125312 PACS number s : 78.67.Pt, 75.70.Cn, 73.21.Cd, 73.50.Mx


The utility model discloses an adjustable infusion bottle fixing device. The adjustable infusion bottle fixing device comprises a fixing base part and a rotary medicine bottle fixing part, wherein the fixing base part comprises a fixing body in the shape of a square column and a rotary pivot, a fixing through hole is formed in the side wall of the fixing body, a detachable fixing and clamping ring is arranged in the fixing through hole, the medicine bottle fixing part comprises a connecting body in the shape of a square column, a round connecting groove is formed in the connecting body, and a medicine bottle clamping ring is arranged on the side wall of the connecting body. According to the adjustable infusion bottle fixing device, by means of the rotary pivot on the fixing base part, a user can adjust the position of the medicine bottle fixing part; meanwhile, by means of the detachable fixing and clamping ring, the user can adjust the extending angle of the whole fixing base part, and in this way, the user can adjust the position of the medicine bottle claming ring in any directions, the flexibility of the infusion bottle fixing device is greatly improved, and the practicability is high.


Ionosphere is the layer of the atmosphere from about 85 to 600km containing electrons and electrically charged atoms that are produced by solar radiation. Perturbations - layering affected by day and night, X-rays and high-energy protons from the solar flares, geomagnetic storms, lightning, drivers-from-below. Strategic for radio-wave transmission. This project discusses the inversion of ionosphere signals, tsunami wave amplitude and coupling parameters, which improves tsunami warning systems.


As more and more people enjoy the various brought by mobile computing, it is becoming a global trend in today's world.at the same time, securing mobile computing has been paid increasing attention. During the last decade in the size of computing machinery, coupled with the increase in their computing power has lend to the development of the concept of mobile computing. It allows mobile users versatile communication with other people and expedient notification of important events, much more flexibility them with cellular phones. The many issues to be dealt with stem from three essential properties of mobile computing: communication, mobility and portability. In this paper, we discuss the security issues in mobile computing


Thank you for reading matsuri festival japanese american celebrations and activities. As you may know, people have look hundreds times for their chosen novels like this matsuri festival japanese american celebrations and activities, but end up in malicious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of coffee in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some harmful bugs inside their laptop.


Many pregnant women in the rural United States have access only to low-resourced, low-volume hospitals. Linking such hospitals with tertiary care hospitals through telehealth services, quality-improvement aid, and transport may reduce morbidity and mortality.


Modern distributed systems should be built to anticipate performance degradation. Often requests in these systems involve ten to thousands Remote Procedure Calls, each of which can be a source of performance degradation. The PhD programme presented here intends to address this issue by providing automated instruments to effectively drive performance fault injection in distributed systems. The envisioned approach exploits multi-objective search-based techniques to automatically find small combinations of tiny performance degradations induced by specific RPCs, which have significant impacts on the user-perceived performance. Automating the search of these events will improve the ability to inject performance issues in production in order to force developers to anticipate and mitigate them.


Transportation decision-makers from government agencies play an important role in addressing the traffic network conditions, which in turn, have a major impact on the well-being of citizens. The practices, challenges, and needs of this group of practitioners are less represented in the HCI literature. We address this gap through an interview study with 19 practitioners from Transports Québec, a government agency responsible for transportation infrastructures in Québec, Canada. We found that this group of decision-makers can most benefit from research about data analysis tools and platforms that (1) provide information to support data quality awareness, (2) are interoperable with other tools in the complex workflow of the practitioners, and (3) support intuitive and customizable visual analytics. These implications can also be informative to the design of tools supporting other decision-making tasks and domains.


This paper is hinged upon a critical examination of the history of intellectuals and nation-statism in Nigeria since independence in 1960. Its point of departure is the analysis of the role of intellectuals in interrogating the post-independence integrative nation-state project in Nigeria that became immersed in crisis in the 1990's. This crisis was characterized by the re-emergence of ethnic-nationalism, ethnic militia, the legitimacy crisis of the federal government, calls for a sovereign national conference, and struggles for self-determination and local autonomy by the ethnic groups, particularly those of the Niger Delta. What factors led to the intellectualization of ethnic nationalism as a critique of the hegemonic nation-state project? How could intellectualism that was instrumental to Nigerian nationalism at independence now become instrumental to the raising of the spectre of national disintegration three decades later? This study also explores the historiography of the nexus between organic intellectuals, identity movements and politics in Nigeria, and how this has fed into the re-definition of the nationalist struggles in Nigeria in the 1990's. In the final analysis, the implications of the tensions between intellectualized "micro-nationalism" in Nigeria and the imperatives of national unity and Pan-Africanism in an era globalization come under critical review.


Background: Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in India. The important factor associated is dyslipidemia. A strong relationship has been seen in epidemiological studies between cholesterol and cardiovascular disease. The present study was planned to analyze cord blood lipid profile, apolipoproteins and atherogenic index in tribal and nontribal population and compare them gender wise. Methods: Our study group consisted of 250 healthy full-term newborn. The cord blood was collected immediately after a normal delivery. The blood was tested to determine lipid profile, apolipoproteins and atherogenic index. Results: The results showed that the levels of lipid profile, apolipoproteins and ratio (TC/HDL, TC/LDL, HDL/LDL, and LDL/HDL) were higher in non-tribal population than tribal ones. Gender wise comparison revealed higher levels in male non-tribal neonates as compared to female non-tribal neonates. The apolipoproteinB and Atherogenic index (ApoB/ApoA-1) were higher in females than male non-tribal neonates in cord blood. The trends were reversed in the tribal population. Conclusions: The result concluded that tribal and non-tribal population, also female and male neonates have genetic variation and difference in lipid metabolism.


is to analyse the influence of the loading rate on the notch toughness of cold-forming steels with higher tensile strength values and, based on this analysis, to assess a possibility of utilizing the notched-bar impact test to predict their formability at increased strain rates, which is necessitated by the practice at present. The experiments were made on hot-rolled micro-alloyed steels S 315 MC and S 460 MC with the thickness of 8 mm and on cold-rolled deep-drawing steels DC 06, H 220 B and H 220 P with the thickness of 0.8 and 1 mm. The paper analyses the influence of the strain rate with loading rates of 1.7.10 (cid:11) 5 (cid:11) 4.8 m.s (cid:11) 1 on the notch toughness of hot-rolled microalloyed steels S 315 MC and S 460 MC and cold-rolled deep-drawing steels DC 06, H 220 B and H 220 P. It discusses a possibility of utilising a modified notched-bar impact test to predict the formability of these steels at high strain rates of thin steel sheets.


Significant findings: Geostatistical analysis and sampling simulations show that sample densities greater than one per acre are inefficient. Optimal sampling intensity cannot be determined from our data, but is probably no more than one sample per 1.5 or 2 acres. Bt and IntrepidTM applied in the lab at sublethal doses to third or fourth instar larvae increased the developmental time up to 20% compared to untreated larvae. IntrepidTM caused about twice as many larvae to molt to the sixth instar and up to 29% of the larvae to go through a seventh instar compared to none for untreated larvae. Examination of PLR adult flight in 13 data sets suggest that the current WSU PLR model predicts flights too early and that application of either Bt or IntrepidTM causes later flights and greater deviation from the model predictions. Pesticide application will change virtually any model prediction of adult flight. The effect is dependent on the efficacy of the pesticide, the duration of activity and the timing with respect to stage distribution of the larvae exposed. These effects are independent of the change in developmental time caused by materials like Bt and IntrepidTM. The OBLR model is also being evaluated, but analysis is not yet completed. Five parasitoids were found attacking PLR and six attacking OBLR. The phenology of attack and best time to sample is presented in Table 4.


Introduction: It has been consistently found that Black-Caribbean patients experience disproportionate rates of compulsory hospital admission during First Episode Psychosis (FEP). Existing research can only partially explain this phenomenon, which suggests that other more comprehensive explanations must exist. This thesis aims to address this limitation and develop both an empirical and theoretical understanding that explains ethnic variation in detention rates specific to FEP.

Thesis Aim: To identify new variables that account for excessive rates of detention amongst Black-Caribbean patients during FEP, which can help develop a theoretical explanatory model.

Method: A mixed method pathways to care study was conducted consisting of two parts. In the quantitative part, a multi-ethnic cohort of FEP patients was recruited at the point of entry into an Early Intervention Service (EIS) where socio-demographic, clinical, help seeking behaviours and symptom attributions during the pathway to care were collected. In a separate qualitative design, carers' narrative accounts of the processes leading to detention were also explored, comparing and contrasting ethnic difference between Black-Caribbean and other groups.

Results: From the quantitative arm, 122 FEP patients were recruited of which 46 were White-British (37.7%), 44 Black-Caribbean (36.06%) and 32 Asian-Pakistani (26.22%). Through the logistic regression analysis conducted, eight variables were found to attenuate the association between the Black-Caribbean sample and elevated rates of compulsory detention. In the qualitative work, 17 interviews were conducted and revealed many unique features in the process of detention for Black-Caribbean patients, such as; a lack of awareness of the early signs of psychosis, the influence of patients fragment living status and the importance of a psychotic episode manifesting itself through a crisis event.

Discussion: Through an iterative process, a theory is developed that married well key explanatory finding from both arms of the study, in accounting for ethnic differences in detention rates. This theory is named the 'crisis hypothesis', and is discussed in detail within.


In the last decade, pollution and degradation of aquatic ecosystems has raised the need to develop and improve methods to enhance the transverse mixing coefficient resulting in a shorter mixing length, especially in straight open channels. In this regard, this study experimentally investigated the performance of the construction of rectangular weir and Uweir in improving water quality in an straight open channel. The experiments were performed in a 12-meter flume with a width of 80 cm. Tracer material was injected at constant rate at the upstream of weir and at different time intervals its concentration was measured simultaneously in 5 cross sections downstream of the weir at 175 nodes. In order to make the necessary calculations, the three-dimensional components of velocity were also measured. By analyzing the results and examining the transverse and longitudinal distribution of the concentration as well as the flow pattern downstream of the Uweir, it was determined that it can intensify the transverse mixing coefficient up to 12.2 times and reduce the mixing length up to 91.9% compared to the case of no weir. This is while the rectangular weir increased the transverse mixing coefficient up to 1.53 times and decreased the length of complete mixing up to 34.7% times compared to the case of no weir.


Cloud image sequence extrapolation plays an important role in ground-based remote sensing observation because allows the observation range to be extended in the spatiotemporal domain. Existing methods, primarily focus on characterizing spatial features and capturing temporal state transitions independently, ignoring the complex spatiotemporal dynamics of the real physical world, resulting in images extrapolated by them being less than expected. To break through this dilemma, we propose the Spatio-Temporal-Aware Network (STANet) for ground-based remote sensing cloud image sequence extrapolation. The method is a novel predictive neural network that deterministically and uniformly models the transient variations and cumulative trends embedded in cloud image sequences under the supervision of an attention mechanism to characterize complex spatiotemporal dynamics. The context-gated unit (CGU) is connected to the encoder and decoder, replenishing context features lost by downsampling while removing the "ghosting" effect prevalent in spatiotemporal prediction tasks. For the purpose of evaluation of the proposed method, a series of comparative experiments and ablation studies are conducted on our collected TSI-440-Sequence Dataset (TSISD) dataset. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method outperforms other existing methods.


Passive Optical Networks (PONs) are a type of fiber-optic network that use passive components, such as splitters and combiners, to distribute optical signals to multiple end-users. PONs typically consist of an Optical Line Terminal (OLT), and Optical Network Units (ONUs) or Optical Network Terminals (ONTs). PONs is also more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly than traditional networks, as they use passive components that do not require power. Overall, PONs is a cost-effective and efficient way to deliver high-speed broadband services to end-users. They offer several advantages over traditional networks and are expected to play a critical role in the deployment of next-generation broadband services. Optical code division multiple access (OCDMA) is an important candidate for implementing access control in PONs because it provides related features such as higher security and flexible on-demand bandwidth. In this context, this article presents a new method for classifying OCDMA codes using artificial neural networks, in particular Kohonen self-organizing maps (S OM), which is important for higher security of the network management system. for users, improving the quality of service (QoS). The code classification success rate was 87.5%, which justifies pattern identification methods to improve the optical code detection process.


We review some ideas and concepts on the irreversibility of
deterministic dynamical systems that have been discussed during
several years of collaboration with Ilya Prigogine and B. Misra.


Objective To explore an effective method of health education for patients with ophthalmological and otolaryngological disease.Method Sixty cases with ophthalmological and otolaryngological disease were randomly divided into an observation group(n= 30) and a control group(n=30).In the control group,regular health education was given.In the observation group,individualized health education cards were adopted.Self-made questionnaire survey was used to check patient's mastery of knowledge.Results The mastery of knowledge in the observation group was much better than those in the control group(P0.01).Conclusion The forms of health education are closely related with the patient's cognition for disease and behavioral compliance for therapy and nursing.The individualized health education cards are benefit to patients to cognize disease and comply with doctors and nurses,accordingly the method accelerate the recovery of patients.


Public Opinion Towards the Issues of European Defense and Military Intervention
This article deals with the issue of European defense from the perspective of public opinion. It begins with a brief discussion of the nature and role of public opinion in relation to defense and security issues. It then examines the evidence on the level of public support for the Europeanisation of decision-making on defense issues and for a common European security and defense policy. Having considered the question of public support in these general terms, this paper then studies the current state of public opinion on the issue of military action against Iraq, including, for comparative purposes, some evidence on public opinion in the United States. The article concludes with an assessment of the implications of public opinion for European coordination in the defense and security fields.


In this paper, a new predictive control scheme named model-free adaptive PI predictive control (MFAPIPC) is proposed for a class of an adaptive PI control algorithm and the model-free adaptive control (MFAC). In this work, the model-free is designed by pseudo-partial-derivatives (PPD) which is predicted using the multi-level recursive prediction algorithm, and PI control algorithm is extended by using general predictive control. The results of the simulation show that MFAPIPC is an excellent control scheme.


Since 2011, Brazil and Germany have been cooperating in the development of the L75 engine. First, IAE has been focusing on the design, manufacturing, and testing of subsystems while DLR provided engineering support for the review of the design, the specifications, and the development plans. Furthermore, both parties successfully performed a joint hot firing test campaign of the capacitive thrust chamber in 2016. Since then, the focus of joint activities has been on turbopump developments. An overview of Brazilian pumps and turbine test facility and the plans for the German test hardware will be the main foci of this paper next to an update of the general programmatic framework and status.


Objective To evaluate the feasibility, safety and efficacy of ACS MULTI LINK PENTA (PENTA) stent in patients with coronary artery disease.Methods From March to June 2002, thirty PENTA stents were implanted in 28 patients with 30 de novo lesions. For each patient the demographic, interventional and mean 3 month follow up informations were recorded. Results Almost two thirds of patients suffered from hypertension(61%) and half experienced unstable angina (53%). Most target lesions(67%) had unfavorable morphological characteristics (type B2 or C). No stent deployment failure occurred as well as acute or subacute stent thromobis.The major branches compromised after stenting were only in 2 patients. During floow up,no MACE occurred, except reoccurrence of chest pain in 2 patients (7%). Conclusions The PENTA stent appears to be safe and effective in treating coronary artery disease.


He J, Songfeng G, Xigui W, Jichun C, Xiufang D, Jing C, et al. Effect of soybean protein on blood pressure: a randomized, controlled trial. Ann Intern Med 2005;143:1-9.

Background: The prevalence of hypertension continues to increase dramatically in developing countries. Worldwide, an estimated 1


We read a new article written by Pompeo et al . about glowing surgical technique of single port video assisted thoracoscopic thymectomy with spontaneous ventilation for myasthenia gravis patients (1).


Combination of chemotherapeutic drugs with agents that induce cell differentiation is a possible means of improving cancer chemotherapy. To explore this approach we used 4 cell lines established from the human teratocarcinoma‐derived cell line PA‐1; 2 retinoic acid (RA)‐sensitive lines compared to 2 RA‐resistant lines transformed by an activated N‐ras oncogene. Equal numbers of colony‐forming cells were exposed for 72 hr to 10−6M RA and subsequently to a range of concentrations of cisplatinum, etoposide or bleomycin. Enhanced cytotoxicity of cisplatin and etoposide (3‐ to 5‐fold) was observed in the N‐ras‐transformed cell lines compared to the non‐transformed lines. Treatment with RA caused an increase in the cytotoxicity of all 3 drugs to the 2 RA‐sensitive cell lines. In contrast, a reduction of cytotoxicity was observed in the 2 N‐ras‐transformed lines. Our results indicate that sensitivity to cytotoxic agents can be increased by RA in RA‐sensitive cells, but the opposite effect is seen in N‐ras transformed, RA‐resistant cells. Therefore, a general rationale for combination therapy with RA and cytotoxic drugs cannot be inferred.


In this paper,the yield and its components of different wheat genotypes with six fertilization methods between years,including CK(no fertilizer),N(single nitrogen fertilizer),NP(nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer),NK(nitrogen and potassium fertilizer),PK(phosphorus and potassium fertilizer),NPK(nitrogen,phosphorus and potassium fertilizer),were analyzed.The results showed that differences and coefficient of variation(CV)of yield components between years were all influenced by the fertilization methods.Both spike number and grain number per spike of Yumai 13relatives,Linfen 7203,Zhengzhou 941and Yumai 47with the treatment of N,NP,NK, PK were greatly changed between years;both spike number of Linfen 7203and Zhengzhou 941 and grain number per spike of Yumai 7with the treatment of NPK were still greatly changed between years;1000-grain weight of all genotypes with six fertilization methods were greatly changed between years too.In addition,CV of spike number of Linfen 7203,Zhengzhou 941and Yumai 47with six fertilization methods were lower,the same phenomena in Yumai 13relatives and Zhengmai 9023with the treatment of NPK were also found;CV of grain number per spike of all genotypes with the treatment of N,NP,NK,PK were higher;CV of 1000-grain weight of Linfen 7203with the treatment of NP,Yumai 47with the treatment of NK and Zhengmai 9023with the treatment of CK,NP,NPK were slight high,the others had the lower CV.Additionally,variation trends of wheat yield with six different fertilization methods were quite similarly except Yumai 13relatives and Zhengzhou 8998,and there were large differences among the treatments with nitrogen fertilizer.