June brings vacations, greenery in full bloom, and distracting sunshine--and it also represents a median mark in the business year. Given that we're six months away from the usual winter IT prognostications, ABA Banking Journal decided to look into the emerging technologies that are, in fact, just starting to make their presence felt in the banking industry in 2005. To put together our list (see sidebar, at right), we did our own legwork, made a few judgment calls, and asked analysts to offer thoughts on what was getting actively piloted or receiving market attention now. One source was Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, which creates industry-specific Hype Cycle reports that track technologies from the pre-peak to peak phases, when they are as common as e-mail. Forrester, another technology research company, runs an Emerging Technology Conference that provides a broad view of new technologies on the scene. "Emerging" for our purposes has a broad definition, encompassing both "new" in a technological sense--impacting horizontally or vertically--and in the sense of generating market interest. On our list are open source applications; voice-based authentication; wireless data distribution; and maturing web services. These were chosen, in part, for their inherent utility as well as for their current relevance given the business agenda of the moment. New reach for open source In a recent Gartner Hype Cycle Report, Stessa Cohen, research director, identified open source architecture as playing a bigger role in banking infrastructure. "Banks want to control their costs," she says, "in creating agile computing environments; they want options." Bob Bickel, vice-president of strategy and corporate development, JBoss, Atlanta, happily agrees that open source has legs. He knew his company had hit prime time when it received a mention in a New York Times article, late in April, on the renewed flurry of venture capital interest in open source. Meanwhile, JBoss software has six million downloads to date. JBoss, formed in 2003, claims to be responsible for 90% of the infrastructure code that was developed on a non-proprietary basis for application servers and content management systems as well as caching, mail servers, and other infrastructure software segments. "Red Hat and Linux was the first wave and we are among the handful of companies that represent the second," says Bickle. "We think that open source is here to stay and won't be confined to infrastructure." So far, the technology has generated grassroots interest mainly among IT personnel on Wall Street. In that market, open source has demonstrated its worth and helped rank and file employees show more senior management that worries about open source's viability and deployment ease were, if not unfounded, then exaggerated. In short, open source doesn't have to mean that you're on your own. Bickle says that "the ordinary IT guy" has become the defacto sales and marketing staff for JBoss. "We would find out that departments had downloaded us and used us as a more affordable alternative to software from proprietary vendors for the building of certain web-based trading applications," Bickel relates, referring to the company's "low profile" market expansion. "When more senior levels of IT management realized the technology worked as effectively, they decided to leave it in and consider wider use and general support of JBoss along with the proprietary software." Andy Grolnick, vice-president of marketing, Open Logic, Broomfield, Colo., says that open source has made its early mark in infrastructure. The firm's own infrastructure management suite can "wrap" around one or more of up to 105 open source applications that the company has deemed mature and useful enough to support for business use. "We make it even easier to use tools from firms such as JBoss or Eclipse or other providers," he says. …


Studies of the levels of serum fructose and glucose, after a sucrose meal, show that in patients with arterial disease the fructose level rises more than in the controls. The rise in the glucose level


Primary dysmenorrhoea is a common, idiopathic, chronic pelvic pain syndrome, but its unknown aetiology prevents targeted treatment. Systematic reviews and randomised controlled trials have shown that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs1 2 3 4 5 and hormonal regulation through oral contraception6 are significantly more effective for pain relief than placebo and are often used for symptom control.7 8 However, some women may not always find them effective or acceptable—for example, owing to side effects in the case of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.1 Non-drug treatments, including alternative and physical therapies, are increasingly being used for dysmenorrhoea. However, their effectiveness is still being debated.

This paper is based on our review in Clinical Evidence in which we examined a number of systematic reviews and trials that looked at the effects of many treatments for primary dysmenorrhoea, identified through literature searches (from database inception until January 2010) of the Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, and bibliographic databases of the US Food and Drug Administration and the UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.9

The quality of available evidence was moderate to poor, for both drug and non-drug treatments. In particular, well designed trials comparing interventions head to head or against placebo were scarce. The meta-analyses found that drug treatments (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and combined oral contraception) were effective. Evidence on surgical treatments found that laparoscopic uterine nerve ablation was ineffective.29 30 31 For non-drug treatments the review showed substantive uncertainty, which hampers the generation of clinical guidance. The table⇓ shows the results of our examination.

View this table:

Non-drug, non-surgical treatments for primary dysmenorrhoea

### Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS)

A Cochrane review included seven very low quality randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of this physical treatment.10 Patients had greater pain relief with high frequency TENS than placebo (odds ratio 7.2, 95% confidence interval 3.1 to 16.5), but low …


Beaches are highly dynamic environments that directly respond to changes in wave climate. These changes may influence already existing erosional problems. The general objective of the present study was to describe the wave climate of the coast of Porto Seguro, eastern Brazil, to evaluate how mean and more energetic wave conditions influence local coastal dynamics, inferring possible causes of erosion focuses observed in the area. The Coastal Modeling System SMC-Brasil was used to assess mean and more energetic waves reaching the coast in order to evaluate coastal current patterns. The most frequent wave directions observed were from ESE and SE. The presence of coral reefs adjacent to the coast created zones of low wave energy and focuses of higher wave magnitude along the coast as a result of diffraction. Coral reefs and beachrock outcrops were shown to play an important role in current patterns and greatly influence the erosion focuses observed in the area, which were found to be intensified during austral autumn/winter months.


The distortion of the distortion detection loop offset by the inverse distortion of the distortion compensation loop, feed forward system distortion compensation amplifier which outputs a signal executes a control bias to the main amplifier and error amplifier in accordance with the level of the output signal. In the adaptive predistortion technique distortion-compensation amplification apparatus consisting of a bias control unit for applying a bias to the sub-amplifier, when the value entered is detected by the detector input to the controller, the controller reads the bias value corresponding to the input input values , on the basis of the read-out value and applies a bias to the amplifier section.


This report arose as a result of the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner's investigation into the sexual assault of a baby in the paediatric ward of the Royal Darwin Hospital. This report arose as a result of the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner's investigation into the sexual assault of a baby in the paediatric ward of the Royal Darwin Hospital. It focusses on the implementation of recommendations made by the Health and Community Services Complaints Commission (HCSCC) in November 2008.


Objective To prepare the tetrandrine(Tet) combined with 5-fluorouracil(5-FU) chitosan microspheres(Tet-5-FU-CS-MS),and evaluate its characteristics.Methods The microspheres were prepared by emulsion chemical crosslinking method using chitosan as carrier.Based on the result of single factor selecting experiment,the preparation methods were evaluated by orthogonal experiment method.The mean diameter,the size distribution of microspheres,the drug loading rate,the encapsulation efficiency,the reproducibility of pharmaceutical technology and the stability of optimized microspheres were all examined.Results The Tet-5-FU-CS-MS was morphological regular.The average particle size of the microspheres was(80.4 ± 1.34) μm,with 89.5% of the microspheres being in the range of 60 ~ 100 μm.The drug loading rate of 5-FU and Tet was 10.42% and 16.83% respectively.The encapsulation efficiency of 5-FU and Tet was 58.23% and 47.02 % respectively.The reproducibility and stability of pharmaceutical technology was desirable.Conclusion The optimized preparation could prepare Tet-5-FU-CS-MS of eligible quality.


Four fully dehydrated fully Rb + -exchanged zeolite A single crystals have been prepared by the reduction of all Na + ions in dehydrated Na 12 -A by rubidium vapor under various experimental conditions (220≤T≤330 o C, 2≤t≤24 h, and 0.1≤P Rb ≤1.1 Torr). Their structures were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction methods in the cubic space group Pm3m (a=12.245(5) A) at 22(1) o C


This study analyzes the types of metaphorical labels that the United States House of Representatives uses in post-September 11th resolutions to label and describe Latin American immigrants. The rhetorical philosophy of Kenneth Burke, Haig Bosmajian's The Language of Oppression , and a study conducted in 1999 by Otto Santa Ana provide the framework for analyzing the power of the dominant and secondary metaphors found in these documents. Furthermore, this paper examines the connection between metaphorical labels and social and political attitudes toward Latin American immigration in contemporary discourse.


Performance-enhancing substances (PESs) have unfortunately become ubiquitous in numerous sports; some of these substances pose a serious threat to the health and well-being of athletes. This study aimed to: assess the prevalence and determinants of PESs use among gym attenders in Makkah, Saudi Arabia Research design: a cross-sectional study. Subjects: a number of 122 adult gymnasts in Makkah city. Tool: The data was collected through an on line self-administered questionnaire. Results: This study revealed that 40% of participants using PESs, 63.8 % of them knew the chemical composition of PESs, majority of them having PESs from online shopping and fitness stores. Participants using PESs for improving appearance, sexuality and power. The duration of usage was less than six months and stop for causes other than price or side effects. The most common used PESs were creatine, alagenin and beta alanine. There were a statistical significance difference between the type of PESs used and age, gender and education while there was no statistical significance difference between the type of PESs used and marital status. Conclusion: less than half of participants using PESs for less than six months, significant differences were found between PESs and gender, age and education. Recommendations: counseling and education for gym users about the adverse effects of PESs, strict regulations should be done for screening and manipulating these substances.


In the past few years grain processors from across the world have intensified their efforts to ensure safe food and feed despite a growing number of emerging threats. Due to these threats product specifications are becoming increasingly complex. Matthias Graeber, mycotoxin expert within Bühler's Corporate Technology Group, discusses how advanced separation and optical sorting solutions can be used to manage the risk of mycotoxins and other hazardous contaminants.


In the present work, a hyperthermostable superoxide dismutase (SOD) was isolated from Thermus thermophilus HB27 using a membrane-based process after being expressed in E. coli. It was found that a two-stage ultrafiltration process using a 100 kDa MWCO regenerated cellulose (RC) membrane and a 50 kDa MWCO polyethersulfone (PES) membrane could successfully employed to isolate SOD from the crude feedstock. The effects of solution pH, ionic strength and permeate flux on the transmission of proteins were quantified using parameter scanning ultrafiltration. Under optimized conditions, the purity of SOD obtained was 96% with a sepcific activity of 1412 U/mg protein and the recovery of SOD from the feedback was close to 87%. The enzyme was highly stable at 90°C and retained 63% activity after heat treatment at 100°C for 1 h.


The ability to recognize consonants, especially voiceless plosives, is inadequate in patients with multi-channel cochlear implants. In order to establish a key for the recognition of voiceless plosives [p] [t] [k], we examined the consonant-vowel syllables [pa] [ta] [ka] and processed various syllables by computer; 1) the parts of a consonant signal were differentiated; 2) the connection of consonants and vowels in other syllables was determined; 3) the synthesis of the vowel [a] was studied in 10 repetitions of the first waveform. These processed syllables were examined by four doctors and one speech therapist.For the recognition of voiceless plosives, a signal of at least 1 msec for the voiced onset of the consonant and a spectral information, especially at high frequencies, in regard to the vowels are important factors. The recognition of a short voice onset and emphasis of high frequency power are essential for the improvement of speech perception in cochlear implant.


We introduce a supersymmetric lattice fermion model that contains both fermion pairing and the interacting Nicolai model. This model possesses a single control parameter, $g$, introduced through the anticommutator of the supersymmetry generators (supercharge), and it is shown that supersymmetry is broken in both finite and infinite systems as long as $g$ is finite. Additionally, the single-mode approximation is employed to establish an upper bound on the dispersion relation of Nambu-Goldstone (NG) fermions, demonstrating their gaplessness. Finally, it is shown, through numerical and analytic calculations, that the anticipated extensive ground-state degeneracy and a zero-energy flat band does not occur for generic values of the parameter $g$.


In the past, employment in northern Sweden has been largely dependent on natural resources. Shifting demands and price fluctuations for raw materials have caused boom periods as well as times of cr ...


Background: The implementation of the Covid 19 protocol is a form of government effort in order to prevent or break the chain of transmission of Covid 19. The government, especially the Indonesian Ministry of Health is trying to optimize the implementation of the Covid 19 protocol by considering various joints and areas of community life, both social, economic, cultural and religious. The Indonesian Ministry of Health has established the Covid 19 protocol, especially for places of worship, such as mosques for holding congregational prayers. The implementation and application of the Covid 19 protocol at the mosque received various responses from both the administrators and the congregation of the mosque, this can be influenced by various factors such as the level of knowledge, attitude and behaviorObjectives: Research To find out concrete information regarding the implementation and level of compliance with the Covid 19 protocol to the factors that can affect congregational prayers at several mosques in the Semarang Pedurungan Region, deeper observation and study is needed.Methods: The research used is descriptive, qualitative observational using a cross-sectional research design. Primary data collection in the form of observational data on the implementation of the Covid 19 protocol during congregational prayers, questionnaires and interviews with mosque administrators regarding the management and implementation of the Covid 19 protocol which were carried out during congregational prayers that were not concurrent at several Pedurungan Semarang Regional Mosques in April until June 2022. The information and data obtained were then collected, processed and analyzed statistically and in the literature to produce data. The data is then presented descriptively in the form of tables and diagrams and is discussed narrativelyResults: Based on the research results of the 3 mosques, there are differences in the level of obedience in the form of percentages. The highest presentation level of compliance was achieved by the Research Location at the Al Furqon Arya Mukti Mosque, which was 73.9% in the good category, followed by the Research Location at the At Taqwa Ganesha Mukti Mosque, which was 70.3% in the good category, and the lowest presentation was occupied by the Research Location. At Taubah Liman Mukti is 56.3% in the sufficient category in terms of implementing the Covid 19 Protocol and the attitude and behavior of worshipers when praying Friday in the mosque.Conclusion: Overall, the compliance with the application of hand washing from the respondents of the congregation of the three mosques was included in the good category with a percentage above 65% (> 61%) and the application of wearing masks from the respondents of the congregation of the three mosques was included in the good category with a percentage above 70% (> 61%).


In this study, we considered crypto-governance as a solution for critical problems in private university management: fraud avoidance diplomas, transcripts and diploma supplement. To avoid fraud, it can be done by blockchain technology by the use of University, Company, Traceability, Profit and Policy-making of crypto-governance. Crypto-governance is able to use IBM using hyperledger fabric protocol and private blockchain network. Muhammadiyah Tangerang University (UMT) saved the graduate documents storage manually by human resources. Moreover, it would be wasting time for many tasks, for example when staffs searched database, they would consume a lot of time and the graduate documents were vulnerable to damage in the disaster. Based on the problems above it would face the research questions; how did we keep the graduate documents storage secure and how it could be authentic guaranteed? Blockchain technology with distributed ledger and consensus is considered to overcome this problem. There were 5 steps taken in this research starting from discussing, literature review, analyzing, learning blockchain technology, creating system model and making a conclusion. The conclusions of this study were expected that the data of graduate students could find faster, easily and authentic guaranteed.


Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation in the framework of the BIOSPEC Project
(CGL2008-02301/CLI).
Laboratory of the Ecology and Forest Genetic of CIFOR (INIA), that conducted the foliar
analysis and colleagues from CCHS-CSIC, CEAM, University of Alcala and University of
Zaragoza that contributed to the field and laboratory works


The invention discloses a method for sharing a computer desktop. The method comprises the steps that a common of sharing the computer desktop is received; the current computer desktop is subjected to print screen and stored as a picture according to the command of sharing the computer desktop; a user receives a prompt that the computer desktop picture is stored; the stored picture is loaded and uploads the picture to a conference system, so that the computer desktop is shared; and the user receives a prompt that the computer desktop is uploaded. The invention also discloses a device for sharing the computer desktop. With the adoption of the method and the device for sharing the computer desktop disclosed by the embodiment of the invention, the requirements on safety and efficiency are met. Besides, the user can be visually prompted that the print screen to the computer desktop is finished, and the print screen picture is uploaded through two dynamic prompts.


Abstract Near-isogenic lines (NILs), carrying different combinations of Ppd-1 genes in the genetic background of an early-maturity cultivar Abukumawase were grown at two sites for two years to elucidate the effects of photoperiodic response genes on the growth and yield of early-maturity wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) in central and southwestern Japan. Photoperiod-insensitive genes, Ppd-B1a and Ppd-D1a , accelerated young spike development, and this effect was predominant with Ppd-B1 with no additive effect among them. Ppd-B1a and Ppd-D1a also advanced the jointing stage, heading, and maturity, and the effect of Ppd-B1a on the jointing stage and heading was stronger than that of Ppd-D1a. An additive effect of two genes was detected for heading. Besides, Ppd-B1a and Ppd-D1a reduced culm length and grain weight, although the reduction effect on grain weight was not significant. Meanwhile, the mean temperature from double ridge formation stage to heading was lower in NILs with photoperiod-insensitive genes than in NILs with photoperiod-sensitive gene, and there was a significant correlation between mean temperature from double ridge formation stage to terminal spikelet formation stage and spikelet number per spike as well as between mean temperature from terminal spikelet formation stage to heading and grain number per spikelet. Therefore in a genetic background of extremely early-maturity line of spring type wheat, photoperiod-insensitive genes accelerated wheat growth and reduced spikelet numbers in central and southwestern Japan, and the effect of Ppd-B1a was stronger than that of Ppd-D1a.


The purpose of present study was to formulate and evaluate glimepiride gastrobioadhesive drug delivery using Aegle Marmelos polysaccharide and synthetic polymer for prolongation of gastric residence time and reduce the dosing frequency. Glimepiride matrices were prepared by direct compression method and evaluated with an aim of presenting glimepiride as sustained release for improving the patient's compliance. A central composite design (CCD) was employed as Aegle Marmelos polysaccharide (X1) and HPMC K4M (X2) independent variables to optimize the glimepiride in terms of sustained release and gastrobioadhesive. The response (Y1) as bioadhesive strength, (Y2) percentage drug releases at 8 h and (Y3) time (t50) required to 50% drug release were measured for each trial and statistical equations with significant interaction terms were derived to predict relation. The physical properties of all formulations hardness, friability, drug content and weight variation were found within limits indicating that the prepared matrix tablets met the USP specifications. Among all the formulations, F1 formulation found to be optimized based on the criteria of attaining the maximum value of drug released Q8 of 98.58±1.12%, 18.43 g bioadhesive strength and time to 50% drug release (t50) of 6 h. An in-vitro drug release studies reveals that as concentrations of polymers increases the drug release decreases, producing sustained release of glimepiride. The release co-efficient values 'n' (˂0.3645) indicated that the drug release (F1) followed fickian diffusion mechanism kinetics. A glimepiride gastroadhesive matrix was developed to enhance its bioavailability by prolonging the gastric residence time with desirable release modulation for a once daily administration.


The importance and characters of application in researching and developing space optical instrument by means of VE technology are introduced. And application in design、analysis and manufacture of products is preliminarily described .


The emergence of group behavior has long been an interested issue for many sociologists.Individual decision-making is usually affected by its observation or expectation of others',which is called externality.Based on the study of such externality,this paper sets up utility models and researches the collective dynamics by multi-agent simulation in deferent types of complex network.The researches show that groups with low decision-making sensitivity conduct high behavior chaos,and positive externality has a "lock in" effect for binary decision that can reduce the collective behavior chaos to a certain extent.While positive external,high-sensitive decision-making factors and high social utility coefficient are the necessary conditions for collective behavior monopoly.As to the impact of different types of social network to the collective dynamics,the short average path of the SW network or hub node in the SF network can speed up the transmission of social signals in turn will strengthen the external effect.These researches above can provide a theoretical support to the national public safety and public emergency management.


This study analyzed the shot pattern through the tempo of segmented shot duration and studied the relationship with the unique emotion of the story. The structure of the story was classified into 3 chap-ters, 17 sequences, 83 scenes, 287 beats, and 1636 shots. Shot density is a method of visualizing tension in visual storytelling, and since it is a result obtained by mathematically calculating the density of div-ided shots, it can be helpful in designing tension delivered to the audience. Nine shot density patterns were extracted. The ascending(+) type was classified as A, B, C, D, 4, the descending(-) type, E, F, G, H, 4, and the maintenance(/) type, I, 1 type. Based on the spatiality of the 17 stages of Campbell's heroic narrative and McGee's story structure, the narrative level of the tree structure was proposed, and the symbolic meaning of the shot rhythm in the practical aspect of the story function was proposed to present a systematic methodology in the direction of production.


This paper proposes a new networking paradigm introducing the broker-plane above the management planes of Autonomous Systems (ASes). The brokers communicate with the manager of each AS to coordinate end-to-end resource management and path provisioning across the multi-AS networks involving multiple operators. The broker plane updates the virtual network topology, manages the resource information of inter-AS links and aggregated (abstracted) intra-AS links, and computes end-to-end routing, modulation formats, and spectrum assignment (RMSA). To improve the grade of the inter-domain connectivity service, spectrum converters can be installed in inter-domain nodes or per-AS defragmentation can be performed with a global view. In this paper, we introduce a mechanism where each AS can advertise its internal capabilities, e.g., spectrum conversion, their ability to implement spectrum defragmentation or any other network feature. The Multi-AS RMSA with Defragmentation Capability problem is presented.


Experimental life tables were constructed and analyzed for three strains of the common bed bug: a pyrethroid-susceptible laboratory strain (HS), a highly resistant field strain (RR), and a field strain with a declining level of resistance (KR). Egg to adult survival in the RR strain was 94% compared with 79% and 69% in the HS and KR strains, respectively. The RR strain also developed significantly faster from egg to adult (∼35 days) than the other two strains (∼40 days). Analysis of a survivorship and fecundity life table for the RR strain produced the following results. The average life expectancy for a newly laid egg was ∼143 days, and that of a newly molted adult was ∼127 days. Females produced an average of 0.64 daughter eggs/day with the highest weekly production during the fifth week of adult life. Analysis of daily reproductive parity showed that females produced 1–3 and 4–6 eggs on 79 and 21% of the days, respectively, when egg laying occurred. The net reproductive rate (R0) of the RR strain was ∼35, which represents a 35-fold increase in the population per generation (∼92 days). The intrinsic rate of increase, r, was 0.054 indicating that the population multiplies 1.1 times/female/day (λ) and doubles in size every 13 days. The stable age distribution (cx) was dominated by nymphs (54%), followed by eggs (34%) and adults (12%). Reproductive values (vx) for the strain increased from egg to the adult stage.


In this research, we find support for a proposed set of linkages among employee perceptions of organizational green orientation, individual green orientation, and impacts of the green movement on organizational performance in two cultures: Jamaica and the United States. The results indicate differences among male and female subjects and between different age groups in terms of employee perceptions of individual and organizational green orientation, organizational culture, impacts of the green movement, and organizational performance.


A rectangular band is a direct product of left zero semigroup and right zero semigroup. Arthur Cayley introduced Cayley graphs of groups in 1878 and Cayley graphs of semigroups are its generalizations. In this paper we describe some properties of Cayley graphs of rectangular bands. We see that, for any arbitrary non-empty finite sets I and Λ, the Cayley graph of the rectangular band S = I × Λ relative to any Green's equivalence L-class of S has a Hamiltonian decomposition consisting of |Λ| components. Furthermore we also shows, when |I| is odd, the decomposition is Eulerian.


Processing point clouds using neural network models is a relatively new approach. The first significant works in this direction date back to 2017. Point clouds are a set of vertices in threedimensional space and characterize the external surface of an object. Due to the peculiarities of such data, typical fully connected convolutional networks cannot be applied. This is due to the fact that such data should take into account not only the color component but also the entire geometric shape of the object. This paper presents a neural network model for semantic segmentation of point clouds, which are remote sensing data of the earth. The proposed model is a modification of the original DGCNN model, which is based on the graph representation of point clouds, and atrous convolution layers were used to improve the result. The training and testing of the model was carried out on the Hessigheim 3D dataset, which was obtained by scanning a suburban area. As a result of numerical experiments on model development and data set preprocessing, acceptable results were obtained for the F1 and overall accuracy metrics.


Objective To investigate the clinical phenotype and genotype in three probands with antithmmbin(AT)deficiency and their families,and to identify the molecular mechanism of AT deficiency.Methods Chromogenic substrate method and immunoturbidimetry assay was used to detect the plasma levels of AT:A and AT:Ag,respectively.Genomic DNA was extracted from the peripheral blood.All 7 exons and the flanking sequences were amplified by PCR.and the abnormal mutant genes were analyzed by direct sequencing.Western blot was used to detect the AT levels and thrombin generation tests were used to detect coagulation status.Results The plasma levels of AT:A and AT:Ag of the three probands declined by 50%.G7386C(Trp225Cys)mutation in exon 4,C2591G(Ser36stop)in exon 2 and C9819T(Arg359stop)in exon 5 were characterized in the three prebands and they could result in W(Trp)225C(Cys)missense mutation,S(Set)36X(stop)nonsense mutation and R(Arg)359X(stop)nonsense mutation respectively,The testing results of phenotype and genotype from some of their family members showed consistent with results from the probands.Western blot results indicated that the Icyels of PC:Ag were lower compared with the normal pooled plasma.The hypercoagulative status was present in the probands using thrombin generation tests.Conclusions Type Ⅰ hereditary AT deficiency was found in these three families.The 3 heterozygous mutations.W225C,S36X and R359X are genetic defects of hereditary AT deficiency.W225C and S36X have not been described before.

Key words:
Blood coagulation disorders,inherited; Pedigree;  Fibrin;  Mutation;  Genotype; Thrombosis


UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (EC 220.127.116.11) has been highly purified from the plant fraction of soybean (Glycine max L. Merr. cv Williams) nodules. The purified enzyme gave a single polypeptide band following sodium docecyl sulphate polyacryla-mide gel electrophoresis, but was resolved into three bands of activity in non-denaturing gels. The enzyme appeared to be a monomer of molecular weight between 30 and 40 kDa. UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase had optimum activity at pH 8.5 and displayed typical hyperbolic kinetics. The enzyme had a requirement for divalent metal ions, and was highly specific for the substrates pyrophosphate and UDP-glucose in the pyrophosphorolysis direction, and glucose-1-phosphate and UTP in the direction of UDP-glucose synthesis. The Km values were 0.19 mM and 0.07 mM for pyrophosphate and UDP-glucose, respectively, and 0.23 mM and 0.11 mM for glucose-1-phosphate and UTP. The maximum velocity in the pyrophosphorolysis direction was almost double that for the reverse reaction. UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase did not appear to be subject to a high degree of fine control, and activity in vivo may be regulated mainly by the availability of the substrates.


One-bath one-step cheese dyeing of polyester/cotton blended yarn with disperse/reactive dyes is introduced,and its economic benefit is analyzed.The new process is carried out at neutral conditions,and the reduction clearing after dyeing is not necessary.With this process,dyeing quality is guaranteed,dyeing time is shortened,water,electricity,steam and energy are greatly saved,sewage discharge and costs are reduced,and 2 899.12 RMB per ton yarn can be saved in total.


This paper addresses the optimization of failure-prone transfer lines with important delays for material transfer, constant demand and echelon base stock policy for production control. For this purpose, we first propose an original continuous flow model. Machines are subject to time-dependent failures and times to failure and times to repair are random variable with general distribution. Contrary to traditional continuous flow models in which material transfer from one station to another one is instantaneous, in our model, material flowing out a machine waits a period of time called delay for material transfer before arriving at its downstream buffer. The second goal of this paper is to present a simulation-based optimization method for determining optimal base stock levels in order to minimize the long run average cost including inventory holding cost and backordering cost. The optimization algorithm is based on the infinitesimal perturbation analysis (IPA) technique for estimation of gradients along the simulation


Today, the management of service quality poses a major challenge for many service providers and their business customers. We argue that the trade-off between service cost and benefit incurred by both parties is not sufficiently considered when service quality is stipulated. Up to now, neither in practice nor in academia a commonly accepted engineering approach exists to determine business-relevant performance metrics and associated cost-efficient target values to precisely identify efficient service quality. It can be expected, though, that such a systematically developed and economically well-founded Service Level Engineering approach - based on the individual economic conditions of customer and provider - can enhance the value generation in service systems formed by both these parties. In this work we lay the foundation for the field of Service Level Engineering discussing its constitutional concepts and elements. After developing a generic framework for different Service Level Engineering scenarios, we analyze one scenario - the system view - in detail as a quantitative optimization problem: In particular, we aim at the derivation of cost-efficient target values given business-relevant performance-metrics.


A rail-to-rail (R-to-R) regulating voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) is employed to generate multiple-phase clocks for clock and data recovery in a display driver IC (DDI). To achieve a low supply and ground noise sensitivity, the proposed R-to-R regulating method generates VSP and VSN as the supply and the ground of the VCO instead of VDD and VSS. By applying the proposed method, the frequency–VDD variation rate of the VCO (%−f VCO/%−VDD) changes from 3.5%−f VCO/1%−VDD to 0.0073%−f VCO/1%−VDD within the V ctrl range of 0.5–1.2 V. The DDI is fabricated in a 1P6M 0.18 μm 1.8 V CMOS technology for the interface block and in a 1.6 μm 18 V CMOS technology for the DAC. The R-to-R regulating VCO has a tuning range of 140–240 MHz with linear and small gain (K VCO) characteristics, and is suitable for the phase-locked loop used in flat-panel display interfaces that operate from 0.3 to 2 Gbits/s.


Under the leadership of Walter Murphy (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Emeritus), a distinctive approach to constitutional theory and politics has been taken at Princeton University for over two decades. In contrast to the vast swathe of scholarship in the field, the method of the 'Princeton Group' (the editors' selfappellation) is not the close textual analysis of doctrine or studies of judicial biography. Rather, a broader, more contextually-sensitive set of questions is asked: what is the nature of constitutions, why should they be obeyed, and what are the variables of institutional design and the implications thereof? The answers to such questions cannot ignore what higher courts have said, but nor need they not look beyond them. Thus, the method of the group, and hence this volume, is informed by larger normative debates and empirical analysis, as well as constitutional case law. In common with much American scholarship, it has been undertaken by both academic lawyers and political scientists. Regarding subject matter, as the sub-title suggests, our attention is trained on the creation, maintenance and amendment of constitutions.


This work proposes a dynamic study for DC-DC resonant converters operating with the most novel modulation techniques that allow to extend the zero voltage switch (ZVS) range in this type of converters. The study includes the synthesis of a suitable averaged large-signal dynamic model for each topology and the design of nonlinear feedback controllers based in the input-output linearization approach. The modeling method is based on the extended describing functions, which approximate the resonant state-variables to sinusoidal functions with slow time-varying amplitude and phases. The proposed controllers provide some outstanding features as: ZVS condition for a wide load range, fast transient response and robustness in relation to external parameter variations. The work is organized as follows: Chapter 2 presents the different modulation method that provides zero voltage switch in a wider dynamic range. Also the steady-state characteristics based on the first harmonic approximation of each resonant circuit are presented. In the chapter 3 the modeling method is applied to three resonant topologies (series, CLL-T and series-parallel LCC resonant converter) to obtain its averaged large-signal models. In order to verify the model prediction capabilities, a comparison of the resonant variables waveforms generated by the averaged models and the state space models has been carried out. Chapter 4 describes the design of nonlinear controllers for each resonant circuit and modulation technique based on the large-signal models obtained in chapter 3. The proposed controllers use linear sliding surfaces obtained by dynamic imposition, which allow the converters to follow a linear dynamic response when they are operating in closed-loop. Chapter 5 presents the results obtained with experimental prototypes which confirm the validity of the models and the proposed controllers. Finally, the conclusions of the work and the future investigation lines are presented in the chapter 6.


Septic arthritis is an inflammation of the joint space, synovial fluid, and articular cartilage. Septic arthritis may be acquired by direct inoculation into the joint space, by a continuous infection in adjacent bone, or hematogenously. In patients with hematogenous spread to the joint, previously damaged joints are more likely to be infected than normal joints. Septic arthritis in previously damaged joints following bacteremia is the most common method of hematogenous spread to joints. Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteremias occur primarily in patients with impaired host defenses (eg, febrile neutropenia). Secondary bacteremias may originate in a variety of sources from the skin and soft tissues to urinary tract infections in compromised hosts. Patients with chronic renal failure (CRF) on hemodialysis (HD) are compromised hosts. Patients with uremia are predisposed to a wide variety of infections, particularly access site infections and bacteremias. The immune defects in CRF involve quantitative and qualitative defects in various aspects of humeral and cellular immunity. The host defense defects in uremia include depressed neutrophil (PMN) function, impaired phagocytosis, decreased natural killer cell activity as well as decreased Tand B-lymphocyte function. In addition to host defense defects, patients with CRF have a high incidence skin and bone infections. Patients with CRF on HD have a high incidence of skin infections (eg, cellulitis and soft tissue infections related to repeated skin punctures associated with venous access or dialysis). Graft site infections and shunt-associated infections are not infrequent in patients with CRF on HD. Aside from cellulitis, osteomyelitis, particularly of the ribs and thorax, is a not uncommon complication of chronic HD. We present a case of P. aeruginosa septic arthritis of the knee secondary to P. aeruginosa bacteremia in an immunocompromised host due to CRF successfully treated with meropenem after failing therapy with ceftazidime and amikacin.


When someone with severe communication difficulties is agitated and distressed, it is tempting to try analgesia on the assumption that pain is common,1 but this approach is flawed.

Firstly, behavioural disturbances can have many different causes; causes such as constipation will be worsened by opioid analgesia. …


We use the local-density-approximation to the density-functional theory to determine the axial polarizabilities of fullerene tubules as a function of length and winding topologies. Specifically, we present linear polarizabilities for tubules of composition C{sub 12}H{sub 24}, C{sub 36}H{sub 24}, C{sub 40}H{sub 20} and C{sub 60}H{sub 24}. The size-dependent variation in the dipole-coupled gaps between pairs of occupied and unoccupied levels leads to enhancements in the polarizability per valence electron as the length of the tubule increases. The results are compared to recent density-functional based calculations of the linear and nonlinear polarizabilities for fullerene and benzene molecules.


Pediatrician Helene Hubbard lays out her first term if elected U.S. president with a focus on the nation's younger residents.


Amantadine derivatives have been the only drugs marketed as M2 inhibitors of influenza A for decades. The identification of pinanamine as a novel M2 inhibitor suggests that M2 ion channels can accommodate more types of hydrophobic scaffolds. Herein, we further investigated the M2 ion channels and identified camphor derivatives as new types of M2 inhibitors. Compound 18 was found to be more potent than amantadine against wild-type influenza virus. The molecular docking revealed that compound 18 occupies more space in the M2 ion channel than amantadine and thus exhibits enhanced activity.


The intention of the article is to discuss about the Haitian migration to Brazil and Mato Grosso. Focusing on the insertion of children who come with their parent to a strange country in the language, customs, culture and with the dream of finding work, better living conditions and be able to give studies for their children. The methodological theoretical perspective will be qualitative and the approach, ethnographic. The techniques to generate data are observation and interviews. About the thematic, a theoretical search reveals few researches, and specifically in Mato Grosso, we do not have record of migrant and Haitian children studies. In this text, we discuss the migration to Brazil and after specifically in Mato Grosso, focusing on the insertion of children coming from Haiti in the city of Sinop. The preliminary data lead to an insertion with difficulties in language used at the communication time with teachers, adaptation to school rules and consequently learning, even if discretely, the racial discrimination pervades the relations between the Haitian children, not Haitian and teachers.


The oceanic crust created during this first few million years of accretion in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea lies at an unusually shallow depth for its age, has a smooth upper surface, and in many places the results of multichannel seismic reflection profiling reveal that its upper layers comprise a remarkable sequence of arcuate, seaward-dipping reflectors. These have been attributed to lava flows generated during a brief period of subaerial seafloor spreading. We describe the results of inversions of digitally recorded sonobuoy measurements and two-ship expanded spread profiles collected over the oceanic crust adjacent to the Norwegian passive margin. We find that the crust of the deep Lofoten Basin is indistinguishable from normal oceanic crust in thickness and structure. Closer to the margin we observe up to a four times expansion in thickness of layers with velocities equal to those of oceanic layer 2, while the layer 3 region retains approximately the same thickness. The area over which the seaward-dipping reflectors can be observed on reflection profiles corresponds to the region of greatest expansion in "Layer 2" thickness. In the very oldest crust immediately adjacent to an escarpment that probably marks the continent-ocean boundary, we see evidence for a low velocity zone overlying an indistinct reflector that may mark the dyke-lava interface in the thick crust. Comparing the structure of the thick crust to that of eastern Iceland, we find a strong resemblance, especially in the expansion in thickness of material with layer 2 velocities. These results support the suggestion that during the earliest stages of spreading extrusive volcanism at the ridge crest was unusually voluminous, building a thick pile of lavas erupted from a subaerial spreading center.


Least squares variance analysis was conducted on sow productivity traits of three population with (1 686) litters including the Erhualian pig, the Large White and the first cross. The results indicated that mating type, parity, farrowing year, farrowing season, farrowing year × farrowing season and number born alive had highly significant effects on litter weight at birth (LW), average piglet weight at birth (APW), litter weight at 20 days (LW20), average piglet weight at 20 days (APW20), litter weight at 45 days (LW45), average piglet weight at 45 days (APW45) in sows. The fixed effects for sow productivity traits all had significant (P0.0001) least squares means. The Erhualian pigs had stronger maternal ability and slower growth rate compared with the Large White. The sows farrowed in summer had the highest LW and APW, and that in spring and winter had the highest LW20 and APW20,when farrowed in winter they had the highest LW45 and APW45. The least squares means for litter weight traits markedly increased with the increase in the number born alive, the least squares means for average piglet weight traits markedly decreased with the increase in the number born alive.


For satellite remote sensing image, ship detection is affected by factors such as cloud, weather and sea clutter, and there are problems such as high false alarm rate and missed detection rate. A deep neural network (DT-YOLO) for real-time detection of surface ships in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aerial photography is proposed. DT-YOLO firstly improves the traditional YOLOv3 algorithm by constructing a deep neural network using densely connected modules and transition modules to extract ship features and designs five different scale convolution feature maps. After upsampling, they are merged with the corresponding scale feature maps to form a multi-scale feature pyramid to perform ship prediction tasks. Then the k-means algorithm is used to cluster the target frame dimensions, determine the target frame parameters, and improve the positioning accuracy of the model; In the detection network, the non-maximum suppression algorithm (NMS) is optimized by attenuating the confidence score linearly, which effectively mitigates the problem of mutual occlusion detection of ships. Finally, the self-constructed sea surface ship dataset is established to test the performance of the algorithm in different scenes by using multi-scale training and data enhancement strategies. The results show that the proposed method improves the detection accuracy under the premise of ensuring real-time performance, especially in the detection of larger targets and mutually occluded ships.


Objective To evaluate the clinical effect and the experiences of operation in the treatment of urinary calculus encapsulated by granulation tissue with the needle form of electrode combining with ballistic lithotripsy under ureteroscope. Methods Sixty-eight patients with urinary calculus encapsulated by granulation tissue were treated by ballistic lithotripsy with the needle form of electrode under ureteroscope. 42 cases are male,26 female. The average age is 42 years-old. calculus located in medium segment is 26 cases,and the next segment was 42. Results In the 68 cases,66 cases were operated successfully and completely,the successful rate was 97.0%,2 cases occurred urine breaking. Conclusion The needle form of electrode combined with ballistic lithotripsy under ureteroscope is a better method and worth expansive application for the treatment of urinary calculus encapsulated by granulation tissue.


The use of fiber-aluminum laminates allows
substantial advantages over a fuselage skin
made of monolithic aluminum materials due
to the low fatigue, the high load tolerance
and the resistance to residual stress. This
material has already been used in the wide
body aircraft of the Airbus Group A380 on
the upper fuselage shells. However, this is
not enough: due to the further development
of the used materials and the construction
methods, very thin FML with a 50 per cent
lower skin thickness will be able to be realized
in the future compared to the state of the
art in the Airbus A380. In addition to the
above-mentioned advantages, this also results
in a weight reduction and makes this
material interesting for next generation aircrafts.
A new process chain for the automated
fuselage shell manufacturing of these thin
FML components is the focus of DLR's
research work, especially with respect to
scale 1:1.


With the shift from highly clocked, single thread processors to chips that have dozens or even hundreds of smaller processors, we are witnessing a fundamental change in the computing hardware we use. This paper describes an approach to use modern many-core-hardware to apply real time ray tracing to Virtual Reality environments. We show that current hardware can speed up real time ray tracing to interactive frame rates that make ray tracing interesting for the integration into existing industrial Virtual Reality systems.


Objective To demonstrate the compound clinical treatments of bronchiolitis mainly by Ganciclovir through the injection of vein. Methods Seventy-eight children with bronchiolitis are divided into two groups at random. The treatment of Ganciclovir was used in the observation group but Virazole was used in the control group. Both groups are as-sistant to aids by sedation, oxygen sucking,ultrasound misting,sputa reducing and cough reliefing,hydrocortisone,preventive anti-biotic and so on. Observation is particularly made to the lasting duration of symptoms and signs,effects,lab index-es such as routine blood and C-RP, X-ray examination, the tests of mycoplasma antibody, Chlamydia antigen and virus serology in each group. Results It shows that obvious differences can be found in the two groups concerning the duration of sputa easing,rales and wheeze sounds' disappearance,inpatient,also effects(ρ0.01).Conclusion Ganciclovir has an obvious and rapid effect on anti-virus and it is rektively safe for clinical treatment. In the short term it has no obvious bone marrow suppression. Moreover, Ganciclovir,10 mg/(kg·d) ,has favorable effects on virus inhabitation and offers a bright prospect for the research of virus infection treatment in the near future, so it is well worth clinical applying.


Many new construction materials utilizing recycled or bi-product waste have recently been developed to help create "greener" construction. One of these materials utilizes recycled asphalt pavement (RAP) as a replacement for a portion of the course aggregate in concrete mixes. Previous studies on these concrete mixtures has shown that the RAP inclusion considerably lowers the compressive strength of the concrete; thus limiting its usefulness. However, the inclusion of RAP in high strength concrete mixes has yet to be studied. Additionally, most of the previous studies have replaced the course aggregate only by weight and not by weight and gradation and have taken the RAP from only one source. This study considers several factors that may affect the strength of concrete mixes that utilize RAP as course aggregate replacement. First, the variability in compression strength is studied to determine if geography and environmental conditions of the RAP harvest location affects the mechanical properties. Then, six separate RAP replacement percentages are studied to determine an ideal replacement amount and the relationship between RAP replacement to compressive and tensile strength. This study also presents the results of gradated versus non-gradated RAP replacement in high strength concrete mix.


This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the en bloc recession to be used in the surgery for strabismic patients. This method was first proposed by Helveston to treat esotropic patient. Three factors, including age, the original deviation of strabismus and the axial length of eyeball, that might be related to the variation of the limbus-insertion distance of the medial and lateral rectus muscle were studied. But no correlation was found between them, although we noted that the limbus-insertion distance of the lateral rectus increased as the axial length elongated. We also noted that there was no difference between esotropic and exotropic patients. This finding did not agree with the report by Goldstein who noted that the medial rectus muscle inserted significantly closer to the limbus in cases of esotropia and suggested that might play a part in the etiology of esotropia. To eliminate the great variation of the insertion of the medial rectus muscle, Helveston suggested measuing the muscle recession from the limbus. In our opinion, the purpose of the en bloc recession is moving the conjunctiva, the Tenon's capsule and the rectus muscle posteriorily as a unit, in order to get the most effective surgical result. It did not seem important whether the muscle recession was measured from the limbus or form the original insertion. More deta is needed to prove its superiority. In all our patients, the muscle recession was measured from the original insertion. A total of 611 patients were included in this study. The average amount of correction in 250 esotropic patients receiving the en bloc recession was 3.74∆ per millimeter of recession-resection operation. This compared with a 3.07∆ correction per millimeter in 51 esotropic patients without conjunctival recession. The average amount of correction in 227 exotropic patients with the en bloc recession was 2.80∆. per millimeter of recession-resection operation. This also compared with 2.24∆ correction per millimeter in 93 exotropic patients without conjunctival recession. Both showed a significant statistical difference (p<0.05). The en bloc recession was basically a modification of limbal approach with conjunctival recession. This provided not only a easy and quick access to the muscle bed, but also the normal anatomical relationship among conjunctiva, Tenon's capsule and muscle remained undisturbed with minimal adhesion and scar formation. The augmented surgical result and excellent postoperative appearance also made the method to be recommended in all strabismus surgery when muscle recession was to be done.


The arguments given for the decline and fall of Rome are many and varied. Two in particular have dominated the lit erature. One, supported by Max Weber, A.E.R. Boak and others, contends that the transition from ancient civilization to feudalism was due to the fall in supply of slaves and the ramifications of that fall on the ability of other elements in the system to be reproduced. A.H.M. Jones, A. Bernardi, C.M. Cipolla, and others have challenged this argument and have offered an alternative which focuses on the economic limita tions of an agrarian based empire. The problem was manifest in an exceedingly oppressive system of taxation which also prevented system reproduction. These alternative arguments are synthesized in this paper by employing Marx's concept of reserve industrial army and explaining its operation with respect to various rates of exploitation. The result is a step to a more comprehensive explanation of Rome's decline and fall.


Ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are formed by the association of the mobile devices, usually capable of multi- hop communication among themselves even if there is no networking infrastructure and central administration to control its operation. Need for the ubiquitous computing lead to connect the MANETs to the fixed IP Network i.e. internet. To connect the MANET to the internet first it might discover internet gateway through which it can communicate. The discovered gateway may be the mobile node within the MANET or it may be any fixed external node outside the MANET. The gateway works as the default router for all the nodes of the MANET through which all the incoming/outgoing packets are routed between the MANET and the internet. Discovery of the efficient internet gateway is very challenging task. Although So many solutions are proposed and implemented by the different authors/researchers but still no unique and robust solution is discovered so far, therefore a deep investigation and evaluation of the existing proposal is required to investigate the robust & flexible solution. This paper discusses the fundamentals of MANET-INTERNET integration and address systematic evaluation of the current proposals with issues & challenges remains unresolved. The aim of this paper is to build the strong foundation to discover an efficient, robust and flexible internet access solution that has not been discovered so far. This review paper concludes with further points of investigation


Abstract : The tension between the operational functions, maneuver and sustainment, produces an interesting dynamic. Maneuver at the operational level of war cannot be completely addressed without a thorough discussion of sustainment. Furthermore, reality mandates that operational maneuver and sustainment are inseparable. This study attempts to explain the relationship between maneuver and sustainment with a model, the maneuver-sustainment dynamic model. The model consists of four elements: risk, concentration, genius of the commander, and initiative. These four elements are first explained in terms of supporting theory and doctrine. Next, the model and its elements are applied to three historical campaigns: Slim in Burma, Rommel in North Africa, and Eisenhower in France. Through this discussion and analysis, the model is validated using established criteria. The study concludes that the model is useful as a guide for operational thinking, as a means for the analysis of historical campaigns, and, potentially, as a tool for operational design.


Fibromyalgia is a syndrome characterized by chronic wide- spread pain at multiple tender points, joint stiffness, and. systemic symptoms (e.g., mood disorders, fatigue, cognitive. dysfunction, and insomnia) without a well-defined. underlying organic disease. A model of fibromyalgia pathogenesis has been suggested in which biological and psychosocial variables interact to influence the predisposition, triggering and aggravation of a chronic disease, but the details are unclear. Diagnosis requires the history of a typical cluster of symptoms and the exclusion of a somatic disease that sufficiently explains the symptoms by medical examination. Current evidence-based guidelines emphasize the value of multimodal treatments, which encompass both non-pharmacological and selected pharmacological treatments tailored to individual symptoms, including pain, fatigue, sleep problems and mood problems.


A Lanyard is an essential part of preparing any company or Organization's office supplies or stationery. As an ID card holder, Lanyard provides identity and respectability to different organizations. While a simple lanyard is surely practical, a printed and specialized one will undoubtfully leave an enduring effect. To get attractive, brand-relevant satin lanyards to give your company just the right kind of exposure it needs and if employees are participating in conferences and exhibitions, wearing a branded lanyard will help them increase brand awareness. The work involved the design, development, and testing of a Lanyard Printing machine which overcomes the drawback of existing costly printing machines. The design and developmental stages include the gear and chain drive along with the rack and pinion method and their generation mechanisms. Details of a simple, sturdy, and efficient gear and chain unit, financially beneficial to laborers and producers are considered. The unit can print about 80 impressions per minute compared to 30 impressions per minute of existing machines.


For the master thesis 'Thermal optimization of competitive sailing gear' research and design was done to improve the thermal comfort of sailing gear for the Dutch Olympic team. The research starts by defining the ambient conditions, target group and the basic human body heat balance. It was found that not the core temperature of a body is the result of heat drawn (cooling) or added to the body (warming) by the environment. The design is focused on single-handed dinghy sailors, as they face the most extreme conditions and exercise levels. Heat generated in the body by exercising is conducted through the skin and the suit materials to the suit surface. At the surface, heat is exchanged with the environment, particularly by evaporation of (spray) water from the surface and convection (wind). Ideas to control these heat transfer modes are applied in a range of suit concepts. A simulation model is made to evaluate the effect of a sailing suit on the body's thermal balance during a race. Using this model, concepts are evaluated and further detailed. The model is further detailed and validated, to be able to predict the properties and performance of a suit during a match. With this simulation model, the suit design is optimized for a sailing match during the 2012 Olympics in Weymouth. The result of this master thesis are a sailing suit and a simulation model for sailing gear. The suit is designed and optimized using this model, proving both the model's functionality and the suit's expected properties.


University students' perception in calamity represents the high perception level of populace,which should be of practical significance to inquire. This paper researches into students of five universities in Beijing, such as BNU, BUAA, and so on. Refers to the relative theories concerning perception in psychology and behavioral geography, establishes the evaluation criteria of students' perception in calamity, and uses surveys and statistical methods. The result suggests that: (1) students have a positive attitude to disaster reduction; (2) they are lack of disaster knowledge; (3) their acts to disaster reduction yet to be enhanced. The reason for this situation is weak college education in disaster reduction. Suggestion is given that universities should step up efforts in disaster education and to carry out relief exercises and other activities.


Along with the rapid development of economic in recent years, the level of people life and society production have been greatly improved in Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang. Its ecology environment problems, however, have been becoming more and more serious and have become the major restrictive factors for the rapid and sustainable economic development in Altay. They are as follows at present:(1)grassland degeneration;(2)forest decrease;(3)soil secondary salinization; (4)land desertification; and so on. In this paper, the main ecology environment problems existing in Altay Prefecture are discussed, and their formation causes are analyzed. It is pointed out that sustainable development is the urgent demand and necessary choice for the economic and society development in Altay Prefecture. Based on these, Some countermeasures are put forward. For examples, it is suggested to restrict population quantity and enhance people constitution, to strengthen the enforcement of environmental protection laws and build up environmental awarenees, and so on.


Generator maintenance scheduling used to prevent units aging, is important to ensure power system operating reliably. The mathematical model and algorithm of generator maintenance scheduling are summarized in this paper. In power market, system reliability and economic benefit of generating companies should be considered simultaneously in generator maintenance scheduling. Usually, generating companies first determine their maintenance scheduling separately, and then independent system operator (ISO) regulates maintenance scheduling according to system adequacy constraints. In this model, the former problem ensures economic benefit of generating companies considered as the independent economic entities; the latter guarantees power system operating securely. Generally the optimization problems are solved with help of heuristic methods, such as genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated algorithm (SA), or mathematical ones containing integer programming algorithm and Benders decomposition method.


This paper analyzes on the causes of some common faults of the boiler's valves (including the entering of foreign materials into the piston chamber, the leaking of the valve; and the no-acting of the main safety valve after the action of the pulse safety valve), and puts forward some concrete solving methods.


The minimal invasive procedure of vertebroplasty is a surgical technique to treat compression fractures of vertebral bodies. During the treatment, liquid bone cement gets injected into the affected vertebral body and therein cures to a solid. In order to investigate the treatment and the impact of injected bone cement, an integrated modelling and simulation framework has been developed. The framework includes (i) the generation of microstructural computer models based on microCT images of human cancellous bone, (ii) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations of bone cement injection into the trabecular structure and (iii) non‐linear finite element (FE) simulations of the subsequent bone cement curing. A detailed description of the material behaviour of acrylic bone cements is provided for both simulation stages. A non‐linear process‐dependent viscosity function is chosen to represent the bone cement behaviour during injection. The bone cements phase change from a highly viscous fluid to a solid is described by a non‐linear viscoelastic material model with curing dependent properties. To take into account the distinctive temperature dependence of acrylic bone cements, both material models are formulated in a thermo‐mechanically coupled manner. Moreover, the corresponding microstructural CFD‐ and FE‐simulations are performed using thermo‐mechanically coupled solvers. An application of the presented modelling and simulation framework to a sample of human cancellous bone demonstrates the capabilities of the presented approach.


An experimental-analytical technique for x-ray phase retrieval and consequent crystal structure-factor determination is tested and discussed in the cases of high- (rotating anode or synchrotron radiation) or low-flux (fixed anode x-ray tubes) radiation sources. Experimentally measurable reflectivity magnitudes, using a rotating anode or conventional x-ray tube source, affect the directly reconstructed profile of the complex crystal structure-factor. Thermal and point defect diffuse scattering contaminates the tails of the Bragg diffracted intensity. A numerical procedure developed for the regularization of the directly reconstructed complex structure-factor allows the elimination of parasitic fringes in the resulting crystal-lattice strain profiles. In addition, replacement of plus/minus infinity limits in a mathematical formalism of the reconstruction procedure by actually measured experimental values of the scattering vector in practice affects the resulting profile of the complex crystal structure factor.


Purpose – This paper aims to explore the relationship between the worldviews of leaders and their corresponding leadership styles. It also proposes a leadership development framework integrating training strategies and pertinent leadership skills.Design/methodology/approach – The paper proposes a modeling of seven leader types and illustrates the predominant worldview of each leader type. Separately, a modeling of six distinct leadership skills is used to distil the strengths and weaknesses of each leader type, from which specific training implications are discussed.Findings – First, autocratic and bureaucratic leaders tend to adopt a negative worldview which impinges on their level of power and influence. Second, charismatic and visionary leaders are well‐equipped with instrumental and creative imagination skills, reflecting their collaborative, global and transformative worldview. Third, both enabling and servant leaders display a quieter persona in terms of assertiveness, as they believe action speaks ...


The struggle for land in Swaziland is as old as the history of Swazi contacts with Europeans. Scholars have analyzed the process of dispossession in Swaziland and have shown how land alienation which began in the 1880s affected socio‐economic developments in the country. This paper is a contribution to the study of the land ' question in Swaziland and it concentrates on the period between 1938 and 1950. The paper focuses on the manner in which Britain as a colonial power responded to Swazi demands for more land to solve the problem of landlessness which became critical from the 1930s onwards. It shows that while Britain was largely responsible for transferring large potions of land from indigenous owners to concessionaires and other Europeans, the opposite process of restoring land to indigenous owners became an integral part of Britain's colonial policy in Swaziland during the course of the Second World War and after. From this premise, the paper revises the current thesis which interprets imperial land ...


The present article constitutes a description of the language used in Apiciuss culinary recipes. The goal is to analyze the ideational metafunction of language in a domain specific text, that is, the culinary domain, as Halliday and Matthiessen (2006) suggest. To characterize the culinary language, the specific register of recipes was established and the categories of figure and sequence that most appear were described.


C l i n M e d International Library Citation: Jacob J, Crotty M (2016) New Guidelines, Less Guidance, and the End of an Era: Healthcare -Associated Pneumonia in 2016. Int J Respir Pulm Med 3:063e Received: October 29, 2016: Accepted: November 24, 2016: Published: November 28, 2016 Copyright: © 2016 Jacob J, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Jacob and Crotty. Int J Respir Pulm Med 2016, 3:063e


Big data and the idea of the Internet of Everything have become popular technologies at the moment. The application of these two technologies has also promoted the development of various industries. The education and training industry is the focus of the country and the public. Piano education is the cradle of artists. The application of Internet of Things technology to the piano education industry will help to upgrade the industry teaching model. In order to investigate the current situation of online and offline hybrid teaching in piano education, this paper uses the method of questionnaire distribution to conduct a survey on teachers and students in 50 colleges of music and music training institutions. It was found that after using big data and Internet of Things technology to innovate the online and offline hybrid teaching mode of piano education, so the teaching efficiency of teachers and the learning effect of students have been greatly improved.


In order to study the dynamic response and motion response characteristics of the river-sea direct ship's structure under different conditions and waves during the navigation of the river section and the sea section, a container ship on the route from Wuhan to Yangshan was tested by using dynamic strain gauge, motion sensor and wave height gauge. The test points are arranged in the front and rear end walls of the cargo tank area, the middle section of the ship, the corner of the hatch, the intersection of the longitudinal bulkhead and the inner bottom plate and other areas that may produce high stress. The test results show that the wave environment conditions of the route area of the Yangtze River estuary are more complex, and the response components of the ship structure are more variable, which is quite different from the response of the structure in the Yangtze River Estuary; the predicted value of wave load is similar to the measured value, and the predicted bending moment is slightly larger than the measured bending moment.


The research entitled "Propioception with vestibular disc for dynamic balance in soccer players. Liga Deportiva Cantonal Chambo, 2018 ", aimed to determine the effect of proprioception worked with the vestibular disc for dynamic balance in soccer players. The focus of this research seeks to potentiate the dynamic balance of the LDCCH players.
The design is field since the data was collected in the place where this research was carried out. The type is mixed because it gathers quantitative and qualitative data. The level is descriptive because the characteristics and the state of each player are taken into account. Applicative because it applies proprioceptive exercises for dynamic equilibrium.
The technique used was observation by taking information and recording it for later analysis. As an instrument, the clinical history and for the correct evaluation of dynamic equilibrium, three tests were used. The data was processed by descriptive statistics. The population in which the investigation was applied was twenty-five footballers.
The results obtained in the investigation showed an increase in the dynamic balance of the players, this research project was carried out in the months between July and September 2018. Through the assessment that was made once the proprioceptive exercises were applied vestibular disc, a beneficial result was obtained in the three tests, data that were compared with other similar similar investigations that agree with the criterion that by potentiating dynamic equilibrium the injury index is decreased.


Analyzing complex 3D assembly models using finite element analysis software requires suppressing parts that are not likely to influence the analysis results, but may significantly improve the computational performance during the analysis. The part suppression step often depends on many factors within the context and application of the model. Currently, most analysts perform this step manually. This step can take a long time to perform on a complex model and can be tedious in nature. In this paper, we present an approach to multi-part suppression based on the specified criteria. We have developed utilities in Pro/Engineer CAD system to identify parts that meet the specified criteria and suppress them. We present several examples to illustrate the value of the proposed approach.© 2012 ASME


The present book deals with the interrelationship between society and war seen through the analytical eyes of anthropologists and archaeologists. The opening quote – spoken by an informant to Torsten Kolind and published in his thesis about discursive practices in Bosnia just after the war in 1992-95 – captures the problems we face when we study war. Archaeologists and anthropologists alike rarely possess war experiences of their own: we study past and present wars, but remain total outsiders who depend on numerous and complex discursive layers – material, written, and spoken – to bring us insight on this subject, so demanding and so necessary to deal with.


Lung cancer is one of the most common disease in India. Reason behind this disease is unawareness among people and symptoms of disease are only recognized in their posterior stages. In this study, a lung cancer detection technique using Artificial Neural Networks has been investigated. Followed by image enhancement techniques, ANN has been used for classification of lung cancer stages. Lung cancer CT images have been taken from a private hospital. Accuracy of 93.3% has been achieved which is efficient enough as compared to existing systems. In Future, Ant colony optimization can be used with ANN for better results.


To meet the detection of pulsars with low SNR, this paper presents a pulse signal recognition algorithm based on FFT. The new method could reduce the accumulation of time domain compared with the traditional method and could complete the detecting within a very short period of time First combined with the characteristics of pulsar signals ,make a theoretical description, for characteristic frequency identification method Second ,after fft ,by looking at the peak of a specific frequency ,find the characteristic frequency ,use it to estimate pulsar phase change in time domain .Third, Give the CRB(Cramer-Rao performance limit ) of characteristic frequency identification method. Use Mento-Carlo simulation for the simulation of pulsar PSRJ0007+7303. Simulation results show statistical results compared to the CRB in the same order of magnitude. Characteristic frequency identification method could achieve effective detection. The result shows Characteristic frequency identification method is an effective way for pulsar Identification and the evaluation of phase change which is directly related to the TOA parameters evaluation. Keywords--pulsar; fft; phase evaluation ;CRB; MentoCarlo


Mr. HEADLAND made somc remarks on the disease, as he considered, very inappropriately called " gonorrhceal rheumatism." It was an affection which, in many instances, baffled all our treatment, and one which had this peculiarity-namely, not being confined to those persons subject to rheumatism in its ordinary form. One of its most marked premonitory symptoms was a bloodshot appearance of the conjunctiva, followed by pains in the shoulder, elbow, or other joints, soon after the patient retired to rest. He (Mr. H.) had tried various remedies, and the one from which he thought he derived most benefit was that of the iodide of potassium, given in small doses; even this he looked upon witlh suspicion in a few cases. It is an affection which requires some monlths to get completely rid of, by whatever remedies you employ. Dr. RISDON BENNETT asked if colchicum had been tried in these cases, and he was answered in the negative. The treatment of gonorrhea next occupied the society, and it was very generally admitted that the treatment of this affection was very unsatisfactory and empirical, some using purgatives, some injections onily, while others relied entirely on n*ture, and left the disease to wear itself out, which was often followed by stricture. Mr. CLARKE said that Mr. Acton affirms hc can cure the complaint in eight days by a nitrate of silver' injection. It was necessary to use a glass syringe. The SECRETARY said he used a course of purgatives, followed by copaiba. Mr. HEADLAND spoke of the disadvantages of the ordinary mode of using copaiba, as it mostly disagrees with the patient's stomach. Mr. PROCTOR said he was a pupil of the old Abernethy school, and placed very great confidence on purgatives and the antiphlogistic plan of treatment. He often observed a very high state of fever-nay, delirium accompanying first cases of the disease; and the mother and family were generally greatly alarmed about the young gentlemen having a violent attack of fever. Some were of opinion that subsequeint cases of gonorrhlea were as violent as the primary attacks of the disease; but the feeling was generally opposed to this view, and also to the general purgation plan. Mr. HEADLAND alluded to the metallic taste that was very rapidly produced in some cases where the iodide of potassium was administered. Mr. ELLIOTT went into a very minute chemical analysis of the action of this medicine on the stomach, and alluded to the fact of its being likely to form an iodide of amadyiie, in cases where starch, or such other farinaceous ingredients, may be used in the aliment, and hence often neutralise thc views of the scientific and learned gentlemen who may have recourse to it under these circumstances. Dr. J. B. THoMrSON said, with regard to the use of the iodide of potassium, that he had seen its effects produced on the mounlt of the patient. An old gentleman with whom he had been travelling some years ago, when it was only given in the small dose of two grains, said he found this peculiar taste referred to in his mouth in about four hours after it had been given. It could hardly be supposed, then, that this rapid action could have been so soon produced through the patient's system. It would appear as if this medicine were capable of causing a local and immediate action on the salivary glands and acutely sensitive mucous tissue of the mouth and fauces. As to the use of injections, Dr. Thompson could not say anything, as far as regarded the nitrate of silver injection, never having tried it, or seen it tried ; but as far as a few cases could go, he could speak witlh some degree of confidence as to the use of creosote in rose water in the early stages of the complaint, before the inflammation had extended far into the canal of the urethra. His attention was first drawn to it by noticing its very beneficial results in other cases of morbid discharges from mucous canals aind passages, such as the nose, ear, &c. &c. As to what had been stated regarding the use of copaiba preparations generally, Dr. Thompsonl fully agreed as to how frequently they disagree; but he thought this may be very well avoided by having recourse to the extract of copaiba, which was attended with all the good effects and none of the unpleasant consequences spoken of. lt could be given in pill, and would not affect the fauces or stomach, nor be followed by the cutaneous rash wliich sometimes results from the other forms in use. Mr. DENDY and others took a part in the debate, when the society adjourned till Monday, the 28th.


Rural economic development is of the great significance to local regional economic development and Rural Revitalization Strategy. The main task of multi-scale data mining has two aspects, namely, multi-scale realization of data and multi-scale discovery of knowledge: the former belongs to data preprocessing, which can be realized by data scale division. The latter needs to improve the specific mining technology, excavate knowledge in the multi-scale representation of data, analyze and deduce the relationship between knowledge. How to find the valuable information in the mass data and the security risks in the network is one of the problems to be solved in the information processing technology. The clustering analysis method in data mining technology is to cluster the data with high similarity according to the similarity measurement standard. Therefore, the data objects in the same cluster are more similar to those in different clusters. With the prevalence of supply side reform and the implementation of Rural Revitalization Strategy, the agriculture of the primary industry takes advantage of the situation. From the perspective of urban-rural system, rural development plays an important role in the growth of cities and regions. This paper uses data mining technology to improve the level of agricultural economic development.


Currently,the ignorance of the legislation of fetus civil rights in the civil law has resulted in a lack of legal support in those cases related to the lawful rights of fetus,which is against the principal of pursuing the modern spirit of ruling by law.Therefore,the perfection of legislative protection of fetus civil rights has become a major part in the drafting of current civil law code.


A new technique for classifying all 56 different characters of the Manipuri Meetei-Mayek (MMM) is proposed herein. The characters are grouped under five categories, which are Eeyek Eepee (original alphabets), Lom Eeyek (additional letters), Cheising Eeyek (digits), Lonsum Eeyek (letters with short endings), and Cheitap Eeyek (vowel signs. Two related works proposed by previous researchers are studied for understanding the benefits claimed by the proposed deep learning approach in handwritten Manipuri Meetei-Mayek. (1) Histogram of Oriented (HOG) with SVM classifier is implemented for thoroughly understanding how HOG features can influence accuracy. (2) The handwritten samples are trained using simple Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and compared with the proposed CNN-based architecture. Significant progress has been made in the field of Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for well-known Indian languages as well as globally popular languages. Our work is novel in the sense that there is no record of work available to date that is able to classify all 56 classes of the MMM. It will also serve as a pre-cursor for developing end-to-end OCR software for translating old manuscripts, newspaper archives, books, and so on.


The present disclosure relates to a medical instrument. Medical instrument includes a shaft which constitutes the distal end portion for ablating tissue, the expandable member is positioned adjacent the distal end of the shaft. Expandable member is configured to be deployed between the folded configuration and the expanded configuration.


In his latest book, The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst, Robert Grossmark embarks on an ambitious and well-executed endeavor of theoretical integration and clinical narrative that transcends historical divisions within the field of psychoanalysis. Grossmark assembles an intricate, yet accessible, conceptual framework that brings together contributions from Freud, Contemporary Freudians, and British Object Relational theorists and grounds it in the fundamental relational tenet that the psychotherapeutic endeavor is a two-person phenomenon. His capacity to find kindred spirits in a wide array of psychoanalytic schools of thought provides the reader a reprieve from the field's historical tendency toward orthodoxy and division. Through descriptions of both individual analytic work with severely traumatized patients and group therapy work, Grossmark illustrates an innovative clinical approach grounded in a broad and sophisticated theoretical foundation. Grossmark's work offers us a quintessential example of how necessity truly is the mother of invention. This volume represents the culmination of many years of deeply engaged clinical steadfastness in the face of considerable challenges with difficult patients. While one can easily imagine that such clinical challenges could lead to a form of theoretical fixity, Grossmark instead develops and employs theoretical curiosity and flexibility to create an innovative and integrative model of contemporary practice that is likely to support and guide psychoanalysts from a wide range of theoretical backgrounds.


Images are an important part of daily life. The huge repository of digitally existing images cannot be easilycontrolled by any individual. Extensive scanning of the image database is very much essential to search a particularimage from the huge repository. In some cases, this procedure becomes very exhaustive also. As a result, if a count often thousand, lakhs or considerably more images are included in image database, then it may be transformed into atedious and never ending process. Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) is a technique, which is used for retrievingany image. This type of image retrieval procedure is centred on the actual content of image. This paper proposed amodel of hybrid feature set of Haar wavelets and Gabor features and analysed with different existing models imageretrieval. Content based image retrieval using hybrid feature set of Haar wavelets and Gabor features superiors onother models.


A classical motivation for using information provided by the local community to target social benefits in developing countries is that community members may have more current, dynamic welfare information about others than a centralized program implementer. However, there is little direct evidence supporting this claim, which mostly relies on correlations between community-provided information and survey-collected welfare metrics. To understand what information community members have and use in targeting, we conduct lab-in-the-field experiments and community meeting exercises with 300 families in Purworejo, Central Java. Participants individually ranked other community members based on specific welfare benchmarks (consumption, neediness, and assets) and also completed targeting tasks. We find that community-held welfare information is distinct from information captured using standard survey methods, and seems to reflect longer-term fixed attributes, rather than dynamic welfare information. Accordingly, community members use longer-term wealth information to predict dynamic welfare and to target social benefits. Moreover, we find that community information about more dynamic measures does not outperform simple proxy means test scores in predicting more dynamic survey welfare metrics. Finally, we find community members' information sets are fairly concordant, and rankings constructed during community meetings do not seem to more closely reflect survey-collected welfare metrics. These findings suggest that community-based targeting methods may be useful in identifying long-term poverty, but are less useful in identifying acute short-term distress. ∗Many thanks to Ethan Ligon, Jeremy Magruder, and Ted Miguel for guidance. Additional thanks to Megan Lang, Elisabeth Sadoulet, Daniel Agness, Alain de Janvry, Chris Blattman, Prachi Jain, and participants of the UC Berkeley Development Lunch Seminar, ARE Development Workshop, and CEGA Targeting Roundtable for helpful comments. Thanks to Adib (Purworejo), Angky Baskoro and our field team for field assistance and local coordination, and to Khansa Fairuz, Jaide Lin, and Drewya Prasasya for excellent research assistance. This research was approved as Protocol ID: 2020-11-13812 by the UC Berkeley Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects. CRediT Roles for the authors can be found in Appendix Section A.2.


Serial serum samples from sixteen patients with pemphigus were assayed for Clq binding activity (ClqBA) using a modified solid phase Clq binding assay. The modification included use of horseradish peroxidase instead of 125I or 131I. ClqBA was detected in six of the sixteen patients. Sequential samples from those positive patients demonstrated a decrease in ClqBA in response to steroid therapy.


Introduction: Chronic Myeloid Leukemia is a type of blood malignancy characterized mainly by the presence of the Philadelphia chromosome that


Using a survey of 352 agricultural firms in China,this paper attempts to examine:(1) the determinants of agricultural firm's usage of financial derivatives to hedge exchange rate risk,and(2) the impact of derivatives on export performance.We find that 32.4 percent of sample firms managed exchange risk by means of financial derivatives.Empirical results indicate that firm size,risk preference,number of exports markets,ratio of foreign sales,and knowledge about derivatives have a significantly positive influence on usage of derivatives,while debt-to-assets ratio and sunk cost is positively related to usage as well.On the other hand,RD expenditure is significantly negative related to usage.In addition,it is found that usage of derivatives had a significant impact on export revenue among users,and users would get greater benefits from financial derivatives than non-users.


We are investigating quasigroup functional equation classification up to parastrophic equivalence [Sokhatsky F.M.: On classification of functional equations on quasigroups, Ukrainian Math. J. 56 (2004), no. 4, 1259--1266 (in Ukrainian)]. If functional equations are parastrophically equivalent, then their functional variables can be renamed in such a way that the obtained equations are equivalent, i.e., their solution sets are equal. There exist five classes of generalized distributive-like quasigroup functional equations up to parastrophic equivalence [Sokhatsky F.M.: On classification of distributive-like functional equations, Book of Abstracts of the $8^{th}$ International Algebraic Conference in Ukraine, July 5--12 (2011), Lugansk, Ukraine, p. 79]. In the article, we find the solution sets of four generalized distributive-like quasigroup functional equations of different classes. In consequence, we solve one of the equations on topological quasigroup operations, defined on arbitrary topological space as well as on the space of real numbers with the natural topology. The fifth class contains the generalized left distributivity functional equation. V.D. Belousov [Some remarks on the functional equation of generalized distributivity, Aequationes Math. 1 (1968), no. 1--2, 54--65] described only a subset of its solution set. The set of all solutions still remains an open problem in the quasigroup theory and in the functional equation theory.


Intellectually challenged is a condition that has no cure and as the child with that affect has to cope with disability and caregivers have to accept and live with it. Social work intervention is essential to facilitate this coping process. Therefore studies could be undertaken to assess the efficacy of using specific social work method in different area of intervention such as early identification, learning disability, vocational support. This study could be compared with the caregiver of normal children under different age group and the intellectually challenged since the stress faced by parents of normal children too is equally intense and even more vulnerable at times.


Rainfall is one of the most important natural resources for human being in rainfed farming. The crop planning and it success depend upon amount and distribution of rainfall. The rainfall in Jalgaon district is very uncertain, most of the area under rainfed condition. The weekly rainfall data of 30 years (1976-2005) for Belval and Bhusawal stations was collected. The behavior of rainfall, occurrence of dry spell and critical dry spell was worked out by using initial and conditional probability methods. It can be inferred that the initial probabilities >20 mm varied between 60-70 per cent at Belval while at Bhusawal it was 75-80 per cent. The conditional probability (W/W) of both the stations varied between 80-90per cent. At >30mm rainfall initial probabilities varied between 50-60 per cent at both the stations and the conditional probability (W/W) varied between 60-70 per cent at Belval, while at Bhusawal it was in the range of 70-80 per cent. The conditional probability (W/D) varied in between 40-50per cent at Belval and Bhusawal. The dry spells were found 62 at Belval, and 44 at Bhusawal and the critical dry spells were 12 and 9 for Belval and Bhusawal respectively.


Collective dynamics is ubiquitous in various physical, biological, and social systems, where simple local interactions between individual units lead to complex global patterns. A common feature of diverse collective behaviors is that the units exhibit either convergent or divergent evolution in their behaviors, i.e. becoming increasingly similar or distinct, respectively. The associated dynamics changes across time, leading to complex consequences on a global scale. In this study, we propose a generalized Laplacian dynamics model to describe both convergent and divergent collective behaviors, where the trends of convergence and divergence compete with each other and jointly determine the evolution of global patterns. We empirically observe non-trivial phase-transition-like phenomena between the convergent and divergent evolution phases, which are controlled by local interaction properties. We also propose a conjecture regarding the underlying phase transition mechanisms and outline the main theoretical difficulties for testing this conjecture. Overall, our framework may serve as a minimal model of collective behaviors and their intricate dynamics.