Abstract Objectives: To establish the relation between new prescriptions for proton pump inhibitors and recorded upper gastrointestinal morbidity within a large computerised general practitioner database. Design: Retrospective survey of morbidity and prescribing data linked to new prescriptions for proton pump inhibitors and comparison with licensed indications between 1991 and 1995. Setting: General Practice Research Database and prescribing analysis and cost (PACT) data for the former West Midlands region. Subjects: Information for 612 700 patients in the General Practice Research Database. Anonymous PACT data for all general practitioners in West Midlands region. Main outcome measures: Diagnostic codes linked to the first prescriptions issued for proton pump inhibitors; relation between new prescriptions and licensed indications; yearly change in ratio of new to repeat prescriptions and prescribing volumes measured as defined daily doses. Results: Oesophagitis was the commonest recorded indication in 1991, accounting for 31% of new prescriptions, but was third in 1995 (14%). During the study new prescriptions increased substantially, especially for duodenal disease (780%) and non-ulcer dyspepsia (690%). In 1995 non-specific morbidity accounted for 46% of new prescriptions. The total volume of prescribing rose 10-fold between 1991 and 1995, when repeat prescribing accounted for 77% of the total. Conclusions: Changes in recorded morbidity associated with new prescriptions of proton pump inhibitors did not necessarily reflect changes in licensed indications. Although general practitioners seemed to respond to changes in licensing, particularly for duodenal and gastric disease, prescribing for unlicensed indications non-ulcer dyspepsia and non-specific abdominal pain increased. Key messages There has been much speculation about the reasons behind the substantial rise in prescribing of proton pump inhibitors, especiallytheir use for minor symptoms. We used the General Practitioner Research Database for the former West Midlands region to show that the volume of proton pump in hibitorprescribing rose 10-fold between 1992 and 1995 and repeatprescribing had risen to 77% of the volume by 1995 Prescribing for uncomplicated dyspepsia and non-specific abdominalsymptoms, which were outside the licensed indications, accounted for 46%of new prescribing by 1995 The proportion of prescribing for the licensed indication ofoesophagitis fell during the study, but that for duodenal ulcerationincreased in line with the expansion of licensed indications Analysis of PACT data showed similar prescribing trends to thosefound with the General Practitioner Research Database


Using the regional welfare financial expenditure data from 1995 to 2007,this paper measures the gap between China's provinces and municipalities in welfare expenditure with the method of Gini coefficient.Through the decomposition of the Gini coefficient and calculating its area constitutes,we find that the differences of welfare expenditures between eastern,central and western China are the main sources of the total differences.By setting up VAR model and impulse response function,we compare the regional differences of economic growth effects of Gini coefficient of financial welfare expenditure.The results show that the relationship between economic growth and the differences of public welfare on eastern and central provinces are alternating positively and negatively,but it is stably negative in western region.


The report is mainly for the use of the Finnish road accident investigation teams. Formulae for calculating precrash speeds from skid marks are presented as well as other methods for estimating speeds and locations of vehicles during different phases of the accident process. Instructions for graphic description of the precrash movements of vehicles are also presented. A method for determining the causes of the accident on the basis of accident reconstruction is suggested. (TRRL)


(57) Abstract: The present invention is a resole by the cation of the metal salt is reacted with an aldehyde of the phenolic compound under the catalytic action of readily precipitated may the metal salt as a sparingly soluble salt in an industrial process It relates to a method for manufacturing. Phenolic compounds, prior to the condensation reaction in the reaction mixture consisting of aldehyde and metal salt was added during or after dispersing agent and mixing the complexing agent after incorporation of the condensation reaction after the end and dispersing agents. The resulting resin is transparent even after neutralization with sulfuric acid.


Body organ, moving the heart, particularly, a device for a method for manipulating or holding is disclosed. The operating device comprises a sealing member, the sealing member is fixed to the organ surface when the vacuum pressure is applied to the chamber defined by the sealing member surface, comprising two or more projections. Sealing members can be constructed of substantially flexible and flexible materials. Projections, make it possible to seal members to conform to more easily irregularly shaped organs, to adapt to variations in each patient's organ size and shape, the coupling strength between the sealing member and organs increased, reducing the possibility of damage to the organ surface, and may be subjected to surgical procedures at the site of the organ.


D EOR is at once one of the shortest and most interesting and provocative of the Old English verse remains. Of its seven sections, none has produced more discussion than the third, lines 14-17, and for none has discussion been less conclusive. Longa est iniuria, longae Ambages: sed summa sequar fastigia rerum. In these notes I attempt briefly to sift and summarize the more important views of commentators on the textual problems involved, and, where necessary, offer my own interpretation. Since editors and textual critics have produced many variant readings, the lines may first be set out, without emendation and as I prefer them. We poet Mthilde monge gefrugnon: 15 wurdon grundlase Geates frige, pbEt hi sao sorglufu slp'ealle binsm. Pes ofereode, pisses swd mneg! This version is by no means generally accepted. First may be considered the problematic words of the passage. Here the points of disagreement are (1) Macehilde 14a, (2) monge 14b, and (3) grundl~ase and Geates frige 15. 1. The problem of Maihild or Hild is notorious and of long standing. The (Exeter Book) MS for line 14a reads mcea hilde, with a space between the two words. This was the reading retained by the first editor of Deor, J. J. Conybeare,' who translated line 14: "This reward


Objective To determine the epidemiological characteristics and influential factors of injuries among preschool children in urban-rural fringe areas of Ningbo.Methods A total of 891 preschool children from 8 administrative villages under Gaoqiao Town,Yinzhou district,Ningbo were surveyed using questionnaires,investigating injuries to them in the past year (from January 11 to December 31,2007 ) and the related factors.Results In the past year,the 891 children underwent 120 injury cases with an overall incidence of 13.47%.This value was 15.45% for males and 11.17% for females.The top five causes of injury were as follows in descending order:falling (55.00%),animal bites (10.00%),burns (6.67%),blunt wounds (5.83%) and traffic accidents (5.83%).The outcomes varied in the preschool children injured at different time and treated in different ways after injury.Multivariate Logistic regressions analysis revealed that older age,not attending kindergarten,absence of housemaid's care,lower maternal education level and other family environmental hazards constituted the risk factors of children injuries.Conclusion In view of the prevalence of injuries in the fringe areas that severely compromises preschool children's health,it is essential to implement interventional control measures against injuries according to the risk factors of children injuries in a timely manner.


In order to accurately evaluate the status of soil erosion in Luochuan County,this study combined with GIS,RS,USLE and CSLE quantitative analysis of soil erosion in Luochuan County. The results show that:( 1) The results of the two methods were different; the total amount of erosion based on USLE is 2 times more than CSLE. Average soil erosion modulus of USLE is7 429. 85 t /( km2·a),belonging to serious erosion; while the CSLE average soil erosion modulus is 3 412. 67 t/( km2·a),belong to moderate erosion. USLE calculated erosion intensity was big on the whole,the proportion of extremely erosion was larger,and slight erosion and moderate erosion erosion area were less than CSLEt;( 2) Calculating the county soil erosion modulus Based on the CSLE and USLE model was beneficial to water and soil conservation. RS and GIS technology was most important to soil erosion monitoring quantitative and rapid,it was a scientific,practical and convenient method.


This report examines SNAP households' geographic access to food for two groups of households: those that recently entered the program, referred to as new-entrant households, and those that had participated in SNAP for about six to seven months, referred to as six-month households.


We report a persistent increase or decrease in the two-dimensional electron density of AlAs or GaAs quantum wells flanked by AlGaAs barriers, brought about by illuminating the samples at T ~ 4 K while simultaneously applying a voltage bias between a back gate and the two-dimensional electron gas. Control of the final carrier density is achieved by tuning the back gate bias during illumination. Furthermore, the strength of the persistent photoconductivity depends on the Al mole fraction in the back Al_{x}Ga_{1-x}As barrier, and is largest at $x \simeq 0.4$.


"This comprehensive overview, presenting the views of eminent scholars and practitioners, explores in useful detail the new Latin America's changing relationships with the United States, Europe, Japan, and other regions. It is excellent and most timely".--Enrique V. Iglesias, President, Inter-American Development Bank. Lightning Print On Demand Title


Metamaterials have negative refractive index and EM waves bend negatively. This negative bending allows a variety of applications from microwaves to optical frequencies. Negative refraction can be exploited to make novel lenses having flat surfaces and focus electromagnetic waves as well as produce a real 3-D image. These flat lenses do not have unique optical axes and the aperture sizes are smaller than a square wavelength. The electromagnetic field propagation on a multilayer structure: normal-metamaterial-normal is investigated and compared with homogenous media. The numerical method, FDTD, was used for a Gaussian source and for more sinusoidal sources. The point focusing analysis of a flat lens is presented.


The thermogravimetric analysis (TG-DTG), differential thermal analysis (DTA) and oxygen bomb combustion calorimetry experiments are used to evaluate the effects of carbon black (CB), fullerene soot (FS), extracted fullerene soot (EFS) and pure C60 on the thermal decomposition characteristics of Ammonium Perchlorate (AP). The investigations show that FS can evidently improve the low temperature decomposition of AP and i ncrease the exothermic amount and detonation heat of AP.


Aimed to preview the effect of the creative stage and provide the accurate data to control the stage movement,the simulation and control system of dynamic stage set up a three-dimensional rendering and control engine to establish a three-dimensional and dynamic simulation model for the stereoscopic digital stage,based on the time-space framework.Not only can the system comprehensively present the effect of stage design,but can provide the accurate data including the state of stage and position data in the simulation process to precisely control the stage movement.By way of behavior modeling for the stereoscopic digital stage,the system conducts space analysis and calculation to the tableaux.It realizes the WYSIWYG rendering algorithm of stage design to show and evaluate the effect of the creative stage with high feasibility.According to the mechanical characteristics of the stereoscopic digital stage,the way of video editing method by projection decomposition and the way of parallel and poly-nuclear computing are adopted to realize the recombination of those video data and to produce the video files meeting the needs of stage movement.In practice,the system can effectively improve the availability,reliability and efficiency of stage design.


Velocity shear driven Kelvin–Helmholtz (K-H) instability has been investigated in an incompressible subsonic sheared dusty plasma with ion drag and dust polarization forces. A three-component dusty fluid model has been formulated in connection with thermal electrons, inertial ions and charged dust grains. Dispersion relation of K-H instability along with dust-ion two-stream instability has been analyzed for a typical astrophysical dusty plasma environment. The magnitude of the polarization force is found to be small compared to the other forces, although it significantly modifies the K-H modes. The simultaneous presence of ion drag and dust polarization forces excites the K-H instability, which in the absence of these forces, is completely suppressed. It is also observed that the dust polarization interaction parameter and the magnitude of the shear velocity increase the growth rate of the K-H instability. The present results can have significant relevance in understanding the development of velocity shear driven K-H instability in some molecular outflows [1], Saturn's rings [2] etc.


This book presents a semantic study of Chinese physical action verbs from a cognitive perspective. The study seeks to understand the cognitive basis of language by uncovering the relationship between language structure and cognitive structure, and to demonstrate "how cognitive, perceptual, or experiential facts constrain or otherwise determines the linguistic facts" (p. 230). In its semantic analysis of physical action verbs, the study illustrates the role of body parts in the semantic construction of the verbs depicting the physical actions performed by those body parts. In the discussion of relationships between language construction and human body action, the book's central argument is that the event structures of physical action verbs are constructed not arbitrarily but through systematic cognitive processes in relation to both human physical reality and concrete reality in the world. By explicating linguistic structure on the basis of human cognition and human experience, the author attempts to verify that the categorizations of language entities reveal, to a large extent, the nature of human experience and perception of physical reality. The assumption is that the nature of linguistic richness in both semantic and syntactic structures is a reflection of the development of human perception of the experiential reality.


PwC has made surveys of the economic crime since 2001. The 2011 survey finds that Romania reports low level of fraud and explains that it may be because respondents to the questionnaire are reluctant to provide answers. The chart shows indeed an overall decrease in economic crimes from 47% in 2001 to 37% in 2011, year 2005 was the peak with 45%.That is why we focused our study on the years around 2005.For many countries, Romania for example, the major security threat is the poverty which can fuel organized crime activity. Poverty can fuel the extremism and radicalism attitudes, the diminishing of the state institutions authority and efficiency, finally affecting even the social cohesion and balance. The 2009 global report of PriceWaterHouse and Coopers consulting company found that only 16% of Romanian companies suffered from economic crime in 2009. However, the global average rate was 30% while in Central and Eastern Europe, the rate was 34%. For analysts who do not know Romania, this may mean a good rate. However, appearance must not mislead us. Various indicators suggest that economic crime still remains undetected or not reported.


Air-cooled chiller systems are commonly used to provide cooling energy in commercial buildings but with considerable electricity consumption. This study demonstrates how to operate the systems with sustainable performance under climate change by applying optimal condenser fan speed control coupled with mist pre-cooling of air entering the condensers. The simulation of system performance was carried out by using EnergyPlus together with an experimentally verified chiller model capable of analyzing ir-cooled chiller ptimal condenser fan speed control ist pre-cooling imulation advanced control strategies. Weather data under three climate change scenarios in 2020, 2050 and 2080 were considered in evaluating the cooling demand and hourly electricity consumption of an air-cooled chiller system serving an office building. It is found that optimal condenser fan speed control coupled with mist pre-cooling of air-cooled condensers can help maintain a higher coefficient of performance under the warmer future climate, reducing the annual electricity consumption by 16.96–18.58% in the reference weather year and 2080. The ways to implement the sustainable control have been discussed.


The invention discloses a preparation method for an ITO electrode of an organic light emitting diode, and the method comprises the following steps: A, uniformly coating a glass substrate with an ITO film, respectively washing the glass substrate in deionized water, acetone, scouring agent and isopropyl alcohol through ultrasonic waves, and drying the glass substrate through high-purity nitrogen gas; B, processing the sample, obtained through the above steps, in plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition equipment through plasma gas N2O or N2; C, sequentially carrying out the spin coating of the surface of the ITO film with a PEDOT-PSS film layer and a P-PPV film layer; D, depositing an Al electrode on the P-PPV film layer in a vacuum room in a mode of thermal evaporation. The method carries out the plasma processing of the surface of the ITO film through N2O, reduces the manufacturing cost, irons out the CF4 defect, improves the performance of a device, improves the brightness, avoids the CF4 which are harmful to the health of a person, and improves the safety. The method can be widely used in the technical field of display.


10 GHz repetition rate soliton-like pulses with duration of 29.85 ps have been obtained in an actively mode-locked fiber ring laser. 20 GHz rational harmonic mode-locked soliton-like pulses were also observed. A piezoelectric transducer driven cavity length feedback system was employed to realize the long-term stability of the laser source.


This brief introduces a broadband double-matching (DM) solver called fast simplified real frequency technique (FSRFT). FSRFT is essentially a greatly accelerated variant of the well-known classical simplified real frequency technique (SRFT). The basic idea that turns the classical SRFT into a "fast" SRFT relies on two main approaches: the selective target data approach (STDA) and the constraint optimization approach (COA). STDA constructs an optimization target data set formed of only critically selected target data whose element number is equal to or slightly greater than the order of the system unknowns <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n$</tex-math></inline-formula> plus 1, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}+1$</tex-math></inline-formula>. In order to exhibit speed performance comparison between SRFT and FSRFT, an example design is considered. An exemplary DM problem, dealing with an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${n}=6$</tex-math></inline-formula>th order low-pass Chebyshev-type equalizer design to match the given generator and load impedances, has been solved by SRFT within 29 s using 90 target data in a typical computer—e.g., Intel 2.20-GHz i7 CPU with 8-GB RAM. On the other hand, the same problem has been solved by the newly proposed FSRFT within only 0.6 s using only <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$n+1=7$</tex-math></inline-formula> critically selected target data in the same computer. FSRFT introduced herein works in any domain, i.e., lumped, distributed, and mixed.


In this study, atlases of wave characteristics and wave energy for the Barents Sea have been generated for the years from 1996 to 2015 based on ERA-Interim datasets from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The wave power resources in the Barents Sea can be exploited with sea ice extent declining in recent years. The entire Barents Sea has been divided into multi-year sea ice zones, seasonal sea ice zones and open water zones according to the 20-year averaged sea ice concentration. In the entire domain, the spatial distributions of the annual averaged and mean monthly significant wave heights and wave energy flux are presented. For the open water zones, 15 points have been selected at different locations so as to derive and study the wave energy roses and the inter-annual wave power variation. Moreover, the correlations between the wave energy period and the significant wave height are shown in the energy and scatter diagrams. The maximum wave power occurs in the winter in the western parts of the Barents Sea with more than 60kW/m. The wave energy can therefore be exploited in the open water zones.


Friends of God and Prophets: A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints. By Elizabeth A. Johnson. New York: Continuum, 1998. xi + 306 pp. $24.50 (cloth). Elizabeth Johnson's newest effort, Friends of God and Prophets, is one of those rare must-read books which not only illustrates that a lively and living articulation of traditional doctrinal symbols is possible for the contemporary world, but which so engages readers that they will likely find their own reflections spinning off in myriad directions, living plants which grow from the seeds which this book plants. The traditional symbol treated here is that of the communion of saints. While there has been an explosion of interest in the study of the paradigmatic individual saints in recent years, there has been little work done to for vard a systematic theological treatment of the theme of the communion of saints. Johnson's work is a highly commendable response to this lacuna which not only provides grounding for much of that historical research, but places it within a broader framework which binds living and dead, rich and poor, creator and creature in a cosmic fellowship of grace. As in previous works, Johnson provides a thoughtful and critical exploration of the historical dimensions of this doctrine, its origins in the biblical traditions, its differing expressions over the last two millennia, the fragmented appearance of this symbol in contemporary religion and culture. She sifts through this material for insights that will prove meaningful within what she sees as the two defining contexts of faith experience today: contemporary postmodern spiritual agnosticism and Christian feminism. Modern empiricism so shapes contemporary religious consciousness, Johnson claims, that our encounters with God are almost inevitably characterized bv a dimension of apophatic incomprehensibility, and we confront such eschatological hopes as life after death with an inescapable agnosticism. In this context, what sense does it make to af`firm the communion of saints as a communion of the living and the dead? The second context, Christian feminism, insists that the symbol of the communion of saints be so construed that it becomes an ally in the movement for women's equal participation in church and society. Can the symbol remain grounded within the tradition and be understood to foster a discipleship of equals? Can it function to encourage ethical commitment to the just treatment of women and of all afflicted persons? If the symbol cannot address both these concerns, then it cannot serve as a living symbol within the Christian community today. Johnson makes a compelling case that it can. We are presented with an inspiring vision of the eternally verifying presence of Sophia/Spirit or Holy Wisdom moving over the face of the earth in unceasing act of creation, visible in the life of Jesus of Nazareth and incarnate in the flow of historical events, quickening the impulse for love and justice in the lives of all who are open to her blessing. …


This Special Issue takes forward themes and arguments from previous work on historical women's international thought, but it also points in a range of new research directions for this thriving interdisciplinary field. Notably, through its silences and aporia, as well as through its substantive content, the Special Issue as a whole speaks to the need to genuinely globalize our understanding of women's international thought, its international and transnational conditions of possibility, and its role in the coconstitution of gendered and racialized imaginaries of how international relations works.


Conclusions. Two patients showing two rotational axes of their positional nystagmus had canalolithiasis in bilateral posterior semicircular canals (PSCCs), leading to the diagnosis of true bilateral benign paroxysmal positional nystagmus (P-BPPN). Another 18 patients had a single rotation axis of their positional nystagmus with short time constant (TC) on one side and long TC on the other. Since canalolithiasis in the uppermost PSCC may be transient cupulolithiasis, evoking positional nystagmus with long TC, the diagnosis of the latter patients should be pseudo-bilateral P-BPPN. Objective. To differentiate the true bilateral posterior canal type of P-BPPN from pseudo-bilateral P-BPPN. Patients and methods. The rotational axis and TC of positional nystagmus were three-dimensionally analyzed in 20 patients showing geotropic torsional nystagmus on the left and right Dix-Hallpike (D-H) maneuvers. Results. Two patients showed two rotational axes of their positional nystagmus, which were perpendicular to the plane of the PSCCs. There were no differences in TCs of their positional nystagmus between bilateral D-Hs. Another 18 patients showed a single rotational axis of their positional nystagmus, which was perpendicular to the plane of either the left or right PSCC. TCs of their positional nystagmus were short on one side and long on the other.


GF is a grammar formalism that has a powerful type system and module system, permitting a high level of abstraction and division of labour in grammar writing. GF is suited both for expert linguists, who appreciate its capacity of generalizations and conciseness, and for beginners, who benefit from its static type checker and, in particular, the GF Resource Grammar Library, which currently covers 12 languages. GF has a notion of multilingual grammars, enabling code sharing, linguistic generalizations, rapid development of translation systems, and painless porting of applications to new languages.


Adapting for competitiveness versus climatic stress tolerance constitutes a primary trade-off differentiating tree life-history strategies. This tradeoff likely influences where species' range-limits occur, but such links are data-demanding to study and key mechanisms lack empirical support. Using an exceptionally rich dendroecological network, we assessed spatial variation in climate and competition effects on Picea abies and Fagus sylvatica throughout the Carpathian Ecoregion. Ring width synchrony aided in diagnosing how the prevalence of resource-limited (competition) and sink-limited (climate) growth changes with altitude and community composition. Contrasting growth patterns towards respective upper and lower range limits of Fagus and Picea reflected tradeoffs between competitive vs. cold-tolerant strategies. Fagus performance declined with altitudinal increases in climate sensitivity, but improved under interspecific competition. Picea growth increased towards the species' lower range limit, but declined under interspecific competition. Warmer temperatures likely benefit competitively stronger species at mid elevations and thus imply range reductions for alpine conifers.


Milk is the main component of the diet, especially for vulnerable groups such as infants, school children and older adults. By their physicochemical characteristics, mainly lipid solubility, milk is a means of easy contamination by external agents such as chemical type gases emitted into the atmosphere, industrial waste, drug residues, mycotoxins , pesticide residues , among others. Some of the chemicals included in the above groups are resistant to degradation, persist in the environment and can be passed to cattle, accumulate in tissues and eliminated by the mammary glands. The toxicity of these compounds, affecting the health of humans causing alterations in lipid metabolism, transport of glucose and vitamins, some are considered mutagenic, teratogenic or carcinogenic. The aim of this work was the determination of residues of organochlorine and organophosphorus pesticides in raw milk on 2 farms Quindio. For this purpose 54 samples in water, cans, liners and milk were taken. For this analysis, the extraction method is used in solid phase SPE columns of florisil using as solvent and hexane. This technique was modified by preliminary tests were conducted to find the best instrumental conditions; we have obtained recoveries of 65-70 %. For the determination of these substances a gas chromatograph equipped GC-μECD/FID, injection port split / splitless mode and manual injection was used. Resulting in the water , cans and liners do not contain pesticides detected in milk and showed that on the farm 1, the two samplings carried out in August and September traces of endosulfan sulfate and methoxychlor were detected without But do not exceed the maximum allowable limits for these compounds . In farm 2 is not detected in any sample taken for the presence of pesticide residues.


Effect of different cations to the formation of iron oxyhydroxide was studied using Mossbauer spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and BET. Redox Potential and pH were measured for the determination of the internal reaction rate, as well. The phases of iron oxyhydroxide could not be the same with each other, due to the presence of different cations in solution. Although the oxyhydroxide compound was composed of the same phases, the fraction of each phase was different from each other. The internal reaction rate was varied by the substitution of cation. It could be a cause of the different phase and particle size of oxyhydroxide compound.


The aim of the article is to represent historical and cultural information contained in family names of Tomsk district in the 17th century. Names are the "product" of a certain era and certain culture. They contain valuable information. The analysis of these names notifies the knowledge of the language of the era, when the name was formed, about cultural contacts of people that created names and about social relations and special ways of thinking. In the process of analysis of anthroponyms in the lexical field "Person" micro-fields were distinguished with the following meanings: 1. "Physical and physiological characteristics of a person"; 2. "Personal characteristics"; 3. "Mental abilities". It is important that often appellatives, which names were based on, have very many meanings. In this case different meanings may belong to different lexical fields. Words designating special features of size and form of the body (Bolsheninov, Dolgoy, Vysoky, Butusin, Kuhrbatov, Kruglyhin, Shiryaev etc.); person's parts of the body (Moklock, Glazunov, Golovin, Nosov, Ushakov, etc.); illnesses or injury (Zudov, Zhelvachihin, Krivoy, Khokhryakov etc.); eyes or skin colour ( Belogolov, Belous, Rudakov, Chernoy etc.), presence or absence of hair and its structure (Kologrivov, Kudryavtsev, Lysoy etc.) belong to the first micro field. There were 12 groups that we distinguished in "Personal characteristics" micro-field: pride (Kopylov, Lomanov, Nadutysh); laziness (Baidayev, Grizov, Kushpelev); aggression (Shabalin, Likhanov); stubbornness (Baturin, Butrimov) and others. "Mental abilities" micro-field contains two opposite groups: clever (Golovin, Sorokoum, Tanai etc.) and stupid (Bulyzhka, Gagarin, Lokasov etc.). For person's mental ability classification they use objects of flora (Doob), fauna (Baranov), birds (Gagarin), names of profession (Tolmachev) or body parts (Golovin) are also used. The general specific of these micro-fields is that mostly negative qualities of people are described: physical disadvantages, a disproportionate figure, negative character qualities, illnesses, lack of cleverness. Predominance of negative appraisal is typical for the Russian language and culture. Another specific feature of the lexical field "Person" is that there are plenty of archaic and dialectal words that are unknown in modern Russian language (Shiryaev, Khohryakov, Bunakov, Kosterin, Sozonov etc.).


The factors affecting one dimensional (1D) and two dimensional (2D) photonic crystals (PhCs) are systemically analyzed in this paper by numerical simulation. Transfer matrix method (TMM) is employed for 1D PCs, both finite difference time domain method (FDTD) and plane wave expansion method (PWE) are employed for 2D PCs. The result shows that the photonic bandgaps (PBG) are directly affected by crystal type, crystal lattice constant, modulation of refractive index and periodicity, and it is should be useful for design of different type photonic crystals with the required PBG and functional devices. Finally, as an example, a near-IR 1D PCs narrow filter was designed.


This performance review examines Alain Destandau's Antigone Viêt Nam, a Vietnamese/French, bilingual adaptation of Sophocles's play set in dynastic-era Vietnam and presented at the 2008 Hue Festival. Performed with a cast of Vietnamese and French actors, the play juxtaposes Vietnamese classical opera (Tuong) with Western performance traditions to create an aesthetic hybrid in the service of critical engagement. Such transcultural theatre productions, particularly those inhabiting the borderland between colonial nations and their former colonies, as this one does, are fraught with ethical challenges of representation. Destandau attempts to navigate these challenges by shaping the performance around two critical commentaries: the first interrogates the long history of gender inequality within Vietnamese society; the second reads the legacy of unequal power dynamics between France, the United States, and Vietnam to offer an alternate narrative for the birth of the modern Vietnamese nation. I argue that while Antigone Viêt Nam flirts with some of the common pitfalls of intercultural theatre, it ultimately manages to steer clear of them through its incisive critical commentary. This production thereby offers a useful template for artistic practitioners or critical scholars working at the intersection of intercultural performance and postcolonial hybridity.


This article examines the image of the Arctic Region as a large geopolitical actor with clear division of the zone of political influence of modern countries. The article reviews the negative aspects of lobbying for the interests of separate countries, which impact situation in the region, as well as negative consequences substantiated by the absence of standardized international legislative regulation of security regime and presence of external actors in the region. Within the framework of this study, the authors carried out a legal and economic analysis of the current geopolitical situation, as well as existing aspects of normative regulation of this branch in the region, as well as concluded on the possibility of joint development of the bottom of the Arctic shelf and realization of projects in the sphere of natural resource management of the Arctic Region. The scientific novelty consists in a brief, but in-depth substantiation of typical characteristics of the current system of international relations, as well as in the complex analysis of significance of the Arctic region on the agenda of world politics, and determination of "Arctic policy" as a separate vector in strategy of the leading countries of the world. The authors consider legal characteristics and existing approaches towards determination of legal status of the Arctic territories, which vary in different political-legal traditions. United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 1982 is the framework document that serves as the basis of national justification of claims in the Arctic Region. The main conclusion consists in the description of the existing conflict of laws, which can be overcome successfully only in terms of mutual, joint, fruitful cooperation of the key political actors that are involved or have political aspirations in the Arctic Region.


Objective To get knowledge of the spectrum of microorganisms and drugs resistance in intensive care unit(ICU) so as to provide the evidence for treatment.Method The microorganisms isolated from ICU and their drugs resistance were retrospectively analysed from January 2000 through December 2003. Results There were 460 microorganisms isolated from ICU during the past 4 years. Gram-negative bacteria (G-,57.5%) was still the main isolates in ICU ,followed by Gram-positive bacteria(G+,27.2%) and fungi(15.4%). The isolated rate of G+ was increasing yearly and that was from 20.7% in 2000 up to 28.3% in 2003. The most frequent isolates were Staphylococcus aureus(SA,13.7%), Klebsiella pneumoniae(12.6%), Escherichia coli(11.5%), Candida albicans(10.4%),Enterobacter aerogenes(9.3%) and Stenotrophomas maltophilia(SM,5.4%) in turn. The drugs susceptibility test in vitro showed that the main organisms were all in multi-drug resistance. Only vacomycin had very high sensitivity against G+.Conclusions The G- was still the most prevalence isolates in ICU. The isolated rete of G+ was increasing yearly and SA was in the first position of all isolates.So it's important to survey the characteristic of the spectrum of microorganisms and drugs resistance in your own department.


BACKGROUND
Responsive neurostimulation (RNS) is a relatively new treatment option that has been shown to be effective for patients with medically refractory focal epilepsy when resection is not possible, especially in bilateral mesial temporal onset. Robotic devices are becoming increasingly popular for use in stereotactic procedures such as stereoelectroencephalography, but have yet to be used when implanting RNS devices.

OBJECTIVE
To show that these 2 forms of advanced technology were compatible and could be used effectively in patient care.

METHODS
We implanted RNS devices in 3 patients with bilateral mesial temporal lobe epilepsy. Each patient was placed in the prone position, and electrode trajectories were planned via the robotic navigation system via a transoccipital approach. One lead was placed along each amygdalohippocampal complex. A small craniectomy was then created in the parietal region for RNS generator implantation. Actual and expected target locations and distance were calculated for each depth. There were no complications in this group.

RESULTS
RNS devices with bilateral leads were successfully implanted in all 3 patients, with bilateral mesial temporal lobe onset. Follow-up ranged from 3 to 6 mo, and there were no complications in this group. The median distance between the estimate and actual targets was 2.18 (range = 1.11-3.27) mm.

CONCLUSION
We show that implanting RNS devices with robotic assistance is feasible with excellent precision and accuracy. The advantages of using robotic assistance include higher flexibility, accuracy, precision, and consistency.


According to EWSN 2016 Dependability challenge specifications, we devise several solution candidates for the high-interference wireless sensor network environments to achieve high energy-efficiency (measured as average energy consumed per successful application layer packet transmission) and low latency. The challenge uses off-the-shelf Maxfor MTM-5000 sensor nodes, which bring some computational and memory constraints.


FinTech has become an increasingly important phenomenon around the world in recent times. This is substantiated by a growing interest from researchers, academicians, and policymakers. While the adoption of FinTech appears to be widely regarded as a strategic priority for financial institutions worldwide, the empirical evidence on the managerial challenges under FinTech is very scant, especially from the perspective of developing countries. With this in mind, this chapter aims at providing empirical evidence on the managerial challenges emanating from FinTech within the context of Zimbabwean commercial banks. The study establishes seven challenges, namely, customer retention, regulatory compliance, technology risk, increased competition, cyber-attacks, the inadequacy of IT employees, and system downtimes. The recommendations to deal with these challenges are proffered and the suggestions for further study are captured.


Rich exploratory, visual tasks foster opportunities conversations in math class. Clear mental models build the foundation for deeper conversations and foster a class culture where all voices are heard by providing opportunities to take risks and reflecting on beliefs about student ability. Teachers and students can learn the value of engaging with different perspectives. Reflecting on instruction for teachers and learning for students improves retention and understanding. A teacher's role is as facilitator and modeling behavior and communication. Professional development and frameworks are needed to adopt the competencies effectively. Researchers evaluating efficacy of rich tasks and 21st century competencies must reexamine beliefs about ability, consider the impact of societal barriers on student learning, and focus on how instruction can adapt to be more effective for all learners. More research in all of these areas is needed.


The article provides information on the requirements for the educator, and the importance of these requirements for the educator. It also details how much the educator should pay attention to the culture of speech, and the role of speech culture in human society


Background: Cardiohepatic interactions have been a focus of attention in heart failure(HF), and the model for end-stage liver disease excluding INR (MELD-XI) has been shown to be useful for predict...


The memristor, which Leon Chua discovered in 1971 and Hewlett Packard fabricated for the first time in 2008, is still facing many design and fabrication challenges. Luckily, memristor emulators using mature Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) processes are good substitutes for memristors in several applications. The common setback for these emulators is their inability to retain their internal states for long periods of time. This article presents a memristive cell that not only has the memristor's characteristics but also can retain its resistance for up to 10 years. To bring forward such a cell, a charge trap in a 1 mm2 chip is designed and fabricated using a standard 65 nm CMOS process. By characterizing the proposed trap prototype, its unexpected yet interesting behavior is revealed, such as charge tunneling that occurrs at voltages between 350 mV and 650 mV despite the process sensitivity. Next, based on the measurement results and using the VerilogAMS programming language, the charge trap to be combined with other circuits that constitute the proposed memristive cell is modeled. This model, which is partly based on previously reported models, matches the measured characteristics of the fabricated charge trap and can be easily integrated into circuit simulations.


Legal Profession; Problem Solving Workshop; Challenges of a General Counsel; Future(s) of the Large Law Firm; Globalization Lawyers and Emerging Economies; Legal Education for the Twenty-First Century: Global Perspectives on Preparing Lawyers for Global Careers; Cause Lawyers from the Left and the Right; Professional Service Firms in the Twenty First Century; Globalization and Diversity; Civil Procedure


The standard heats of formation of NaH2PO4, Na2HPO4and Na3PO4 have been determined by solution calorimetry using reaction schemes involving aqueous NaOH and aqueous H3PO4. The values obtained are: ΔH°f298 NaH2PO4(c)=–369.0±0.5 kcal mole–1, ΔH°f298 Na2HPO4(c)=–419.4±0.5 kcal mole–1, ΔH°f298 Na3PO4(c)=–459.7±0.5 kcal mole–1.


Fabrication of long period gratings and modal interferometers in air/silica microstructure optical fibers are reported. Applications of these in-fiber devices for wavelength filters, and for strain, temperature, and directional bend sensors are discussed.


Using GPUs reduces execution time of many applications but increases acquisition cost and power consumption. Furthermore, GPUs usually attain a relatively low utilization. In this context, remote GPU virtualization solutions were recently created to overcome the drawbacks of using GPUs. Currently, many different remote GPU virtualization frameworks exist, all of them presenting very different characteristics. These differences among them may lead to differences in performance. In this work we present a performance comparison among the only three CUDA remote GPU virtualization frameworks publicly available at no cost. Results show that performance greatly depends on the exact framework used, being the rCUDA virtualization solution the one that stands out among them. Furthermore, rCUDA doubles performance over CUDA for pageable memory copies.


ABSTRACT. Oedemognathus exodon, a monotypic genus and species of Amazonian apteronotid electric fishes, is based on a single specimen with uniquely externalized jaw teeth projecting from a bulbous snout. Recently, many additional specimens of Oedemognathus, all mature males, have been collected in the Amazon by trawling in channels and seining in floating vegetation mats. These new specimens were collected with many monomorphic female, male and immature specimens of Sternarchogiton nattereri, a related and similar species. On this basis we suggested a hypothesis of sexual dimorphism and conspecificity for O. exodon and S. nattereri. Although this idea has been taxonomically accepted by recent authors with treatment of O. exodon as a junior synonym of S. nattereri, the evidentiary basis for this remains unpublished. Herein we present that evidence. In addition to being associated at sexual maturity during breeding season, S. nattereri and O. exodon are closely similar in external and internal morphology, pigmentation, and mitochondrial cytochrome b sequences. Furthermore, we observe that the striking dentition, jaw and snout morphology of Oedemognathus has its developmental origin in mature males that are equal, or nearly so, in size to non-dimorphic S. nattereri.


Recent advances in Passive Coherent Location (PCL) systems make combined active and passive radar sensor networks very attractive for both military and civilian air surveillance. PCL systems seem promising as cost-effective gap fillers of active radar coverage especially in alpine terrain and also as covert early warning sensors. However, PCL systems are sensitive to changes of Transmitters of Opportunity (ToO). Many approaches for energy-efficient target detection have been proposed for active radar sensor networks. However, energy-efficiency and topology optimization of combined active-passive radar sensor networks in realistic scenarios have been poorly studied until today. We here propose an unsupervised learning approach for topology optimization and energy-efficient detection in combined active-passive radar sensor networks. The interdependence of active and passive sensors in the network and the given target scenario is naturally accounted for by our approach. Optimal power budget and detection sectors of active radars and the most useful ToOs for each PCL sensor are simultaneously learned over time. This is a critical contribution for minimizing the need for active radar power budget and PCL computational resources. The power budget of active radars is minimized in a way that the added value of PCL sensors is fully exploited. We also demonstrate how our approach dynamically relearns to achieve robust performance when changes in the ToO of PCL sensors occur. We test our approach in a simulation suite for active-passive radar sensor networks using real-world air surveillance data and ToOs under real-world topographical conditions.


In March 1997, a new rhabdovirus was isolated from moribund cultured Japanese flounder Paralichthys olivaceus in sea water tank and cage culture systems in Kyung-Nam and Chun-Nam province, Korea. At temperature the virus replicated and induced cytopathic effects (CPE), which progressed to eventual cytolysis, in susceptible cell lines, including RTG-2 and EPC. The CHES-214 cell line was refractory. Virus particles were bullet-shaped and measured to 150 nm in size. The isolate was sensitive to pH 3, to diethyl ether, and to heat ( 5 min, 1 min). Viral replication was not inhibited by M 5-iododeoxyuridine. Virus infectivity was reduced by anti-HRV (8401-H) rabbit serum, but can not reduced by antisera against infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV), chum salmon reovirus (CSV), retrovirus of salmonid (RVS) and infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV). HRV virus antigen was detected by fluorescent antibody test (FAT) in the cytoplasm of infected EPC cell. Purified isolates virions were composed of: polymerase (L), glycoprotein (G), nucleoprotein (N) and 2 matrix proteins (M1 and M2). Based upon their relative mobilities, the estimated molecular weights of the proteins were: L, 160 kDa; G, 55 kDa; N, 45 kDa; M1, 26 kDa; and M2, 22 kDa.


EEprom configuration,address mapping,configuration registers and local configuration register of PCI interface chip PLX9052 were introduced.The step of using Windriver to develop driver was given.


PURPOSE: An opening and closing apparatus for a hydraulic floodgate is provided to enable a user to easily confirm the operation state of a hydraulic motor with the naked eye. CONSTITUTION: An opening and closing apparatus for a hydraulic floodgate comprises a hydraulic motor(100), a rotating gear(200), and a rack bar(300). The hydraulic motor is installed in a floodgate(20) to be vertically moved with the floodgate. The rotating gear is installed in the floodgate and is rotated by the hydraulic motor. The rack bar is detachably arranged on a door frame in a vertical direction to be meshed with the rotating gear.


For several years the focus of our research has been product line architecture design and analysis. An important goal is to define a method for modeling software product line architecture of a distribution services platform. An essential issue is to explicitly represent variation and indicate locations for which changes are allowed in design. In this way, the diagrammatic description of the product line architecture defined by using the method helps in instantiating it for a particular product or in its evolution for future use. From the product line architecture documented diagrammatically, it is easy to detect what kind of modifications, omisABstrAct


Neural Machine Translation (NMT) is a predominant machine translation technology nowadays because of its end-to-end trainable flexibility. However, NMT still struggles to translate properly in low-resource settings specifically on distant language pairs. One way to overcome this is to use the information from other modalities if available. The idea is that despite differences in languages, both the source and target language speakers see the same thing and the visual representation of both the source and target is the same, which can positively assist the system. Multimodal information can help the NMT system to improve the translation by removing ambiguity on some phrases or words. We participate in the 8th Workshop on Asian Translation (WAT - 2021) for English-Hindi multimodal translation task and achieve 42.47 and 37.50 BLEU points for Evaluation and Challenge subset, respectively.


Summary Seismic data processing is a long, complex and iterative process implemented at Gazprom Neft. One of the stages of this process is the ground roll noise attenuation. Implementation requires the presence in the company of specialists-geophysicists with strong mathematical background, who currently solve this problem by manually selecting combinations of various predetermined filters. The company has been dealing with this task for a long time and has accumulated a representative sample of data where manual noise attenuation has been implemented. This information can be used as an automatic hypothesis test for new filtering methods. Based on this approach, we propose a method for obtaining ground roll noise masks and a method for its attenuation in the Fourier frequency domain (FK transform) based on heuristic rules.


The strapdown seeker measures the angle between the line of sight and the missile axis, so it is necessary to extract the line of sight angle rate to complete the proportional guidance (PN). In order to determine the performance requirements of navigation system, it is necessary to quantitatively analyze the influence of navigation attitude error on the extraction accuracy of line angle rate of strapdown seeker. Firstly, the relationship between navigation attitude error and line-of-sight angle rate accuracy is deduced based on two-dimensional model. Secondly, this paper takes an ammunition model with optical strapdown seeker as an example, carries out digital simulation analysis, and determines the influence of different magnitude of navigation attitude error on guidance accuracy. Finally, some considerations in the design of optical strapdown guidance law are summarized. In this paper, the relationship between navigation attitude error and extraction accuracy of line of sight angle rate of strapdown seeker is given. The simulation results show that when the navigation attitude error is 5 degrees, the guidance accuracy will not be affected. The conclusion can provide reference for the design of guidance weapon algorithm with strapdown seeker.


[Objective]The research aimed to study the adsorption ability of Pb2+、Zn2+and Cu2+in water by extracelluar polymeric sub-
stances from activated sludge in aeration pool.[Method]Extracelluar polymeric substances,extracting from activated sludge in aeration pool,were used as a biosorbent,adsorption ability of EPS for Pb2+、Zn2+and Cu2+removal under different experimental conditions was studied,which focused on the influences of adsorption time,pH,dosage of extracelluar polymeric substances,different initial metal concentration and coexistence of Pb2+、Zn2+and Cu2+.[Result]The effects of EPS adsorption time on adsorption of Pb2+、Zn2+、Cu2+of all,the removal rate were increased with time,respectively 30、60 and 20 min to reach adsorption equilibrium.The effects of pH are manifested in the acidic conditions withHincreased,decreased after removal of the first rise,when the pH=6,the removal rate reached the maximum,respectively,52.17%、39.83% and 65.45%,followed by the removal rate increased with increasing pH first decreased and then increased.With the increase in its EPS dosage effect,the removal of Pb2+was increased the first and then decreased,the adsorption was a gradual downward trend;the removal efficiency and adsorption capacity of Zn2+decreased;and the removal rate and the adsorption capacity of Cu2+increased.With the increase of initial metal ion concentration,EPS on Pb2+、Zn2+and Cu2+adsorbed increased gradually,while the removal rate decreased.Coexistence of three kinds of metal ions,EPS on the removal rate of Pb2+with the increase in EPS dosage first increased and then decreased,the removal rate of Zn2+was gradually reduced,the removal rate of Cu2+decreased first and increased with the dosage of EPS.After greater than 17 ml,the removal rate of Cu2+is much higher than Pb2+and Zn2+.[Conclusion]The study provides the theoretical basis for the wastewater treatment of containing heavy metals.


Measuring the Internet is indispensable to a better understanding of its current state and trends, but obtaining measurements is difficult both qualitatively and quantitatively. The challenges of "Internet Measurement" are manifold due to the nature of the beast, namely its complexity, distribution, and constant change. The Internet grows continuously and since it consists of many interdependent autonomous systems, there is no ground truth regarding how it looks – not even retrospectively. Nonetheless, we rely on a fundamental understanding of its state and dynamics to approach a solution. Since it is impractical to understand such complex systems at once – research on complex systems is older than the Internet itself – in this study we focus on a better understanding of the key players on the Internet by measuring Internet service providers (ISPs), Internet exchange points (IXPs), and systems running the Internet, such as routing, packet exchange, and the Domain Name System (DNS). We describe our methodology of passively measuring large amounts of network traffic data at different vantage points, and discuss the challenges, solutions, and best practices that we experienced in the course of our work. Our measurements require an understanding of the vantage points in terms of their characteristics, the systems we measure, and the data we obtain. In the course of the work, we do not exclusively rely on passive data collection and its analysis. Instead, combining our active and passive measurements helps us to improve the understanding of the data in the domain of Internet network operation. Our primary findings regard the role of IXPs in the current Internet ecosystem. We find that IXPs are understudied compared to their importance as hubs for exchanging Internet traffic, some of them handling traffic volumes comparable to major ISPs. We identify and describe different models of IXPs' operation specific to marketplaces, namely Europe and North America. We make use of different kinds of publicly available data and proprietary data collection of Internet traffic to which we have been granted access. Our measurement results show that the Internet peering complexity is higher than anticipated in previous publications, and that IXPs are the key to this unexpected complexity. This highlights the importance of IXPs and the role they play in today's Internet ecosystem. To further improve our understanding of global players' operation in the Internet, we use a DNS protocol extension (EDNS0) to reveal the mapping of users to servers for one of the early adopters of this extension. The elegance of this particular measurement is in its ability to run a global crawl from a single vantage point without the need to access proprietary data or a significant amount of infrastructure. We find it useful to examine both dominant and emerging Internet components to gain a better understanding of how the Internet changes and how it is used. It is critical to measure the Internet's driving forces, but this is a difficult task and comes with technical and legal restrictions. In order to make the best use of the data we have, it is possible and practical to combine measurement methods. As the Internet evolves constantly and rapidly, the quest to understand becomes more


Bagging and boosting are among the most popular re- sampling ensemble methods that generate and combine a diversity of classifiers using the same learning algorithm for the base-classifiers. Boosting algorithms are considered stronger than bagging on noise- free data. However, there are strong empirical indications that bagging is much more robust than boosting in noisy settings. For this reason, in this work we built an ensemble using a voting methodology of bagging and boosting ensembles with 10 sub- classifiers in each one. We performed a comparison with simple bagging and boosting ensembles with 25 sub-classifiers, as well as other well known combining methods, on standard benchmark datasets and the proposed technique was the most accurate.


Plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) processes have been developed to produce prototype barrier coatings for protection from detrimental gases. The strategy used is based on a combination of molecular precursor design and advanced plasma processing and represents a route to an effective, barrier solution. Silicon carbide room temperature deposition processes have been established on several reactor systems. The impact of process-operating factors on the structure and barrier performance has been analyzed and a wide range of tunability has been found. A metrology has been developed to estimate the optical, mechanical, and application-relevant barrier properties. In addition, coatings have been analyzed for subnanometer structural defects by positronium annihilation lifetime spectroscopy (PALS). None of the barriers present evidence of any mesopores or open porosity. Furthermore, the amount of nanostructural defects in layers has been found to depend on both plasma chemistry and power. Based on...


In this article, the authors consider tools for using Earth remote sensing data (hereinafter referred to as remote sensing) in state audit and financial control, which contribute to achieving a better audit and justification of calculations when planning government expenditures. The article highlights the data of remote sensing images on the sinking of Atbasar. The authors believe that data from remote sensing satellites can be used when conducting an electronic state audit. This paper also highlights the possibility of evaluating the effective application of international auditing standards in Kazakhstan, requiring transparency and accountability, through the criterion of using remote sensing data in audit. The necessity of developing a unified audit database with an indication of the effectiveness of the use of modern remote sensing technologies and the application of the requirements of international standards is considered. In addition, the possibilities of remote sensing data analysis for the analysis of the most risky areas prone to natural disasters and the development of insurance instruments in this direction, thereby reducing the budget burden, were considered. Since modern technologies it is possible to verify the validity of expenses and the international audit community has a global document, the authors suggest using the possibilities of technological progress to further improve the methodology of state audit. The standards of the higher audit bodies (hereinafter referred to as INTOSAI) are considered from the point of view of the methodological basis for the use of new technologies. The authors analyzed the application of standards in order to use them in Kazakhstan practice.


A new biotin derivative functionalized by a pyrrole group has been synthesized. This functionalization has allowed the preparation of the first example of a poly(pyrrole-biotin) film by oxidative polymerization. In addition, the successful copolymerization of a polypyridinyl complex of ruthenium(II) containing pyrrole groups with the biotin derivative provided redox copolymers exhibiting specific adsorption sites. The resulting copolymer electrodes were applied to the immobilization of a biotinylated glucose oxidase through an avidin bridge. An avidin-conjugated alkaline phosphatase was also immobilized by direct specific adsorption onto the biotinylated polymer. The amperometric response of the resulting biosensors to glucose and phenylphosphate has been studied.


Software development practices are carried out in a range of different contexts and there is little evidence to support the likelihood that a specific practice will be effective in a specific context. The need to understand the relationships between practice and context is pressing if we are to support industry in selecting a set of practices that will provide maximum benefit for the project. An evidence based approach requires that, for each practice, we associate a 'context profile' that describes the operating parameters for the practice. Our earlier explorations resulted in a categorisation of the huge number of terms used when describing software development context. We found that some terms could not be included in the context profile because the term described context at a high level, was vague or its meaning was ambiguous. In this position paper, we overview the findings from our explorations of context and present and critique the inadmissible terms with respect to their application to situated software practices. The cataloguing of these terms will benefit researchers by supporting discussion and thus a deeper understanding of context for situated software practices.


As a result of a higher prevalence of comorbidities, elderly adults are often underrepresented in clinical trials, and more often experience complications during percutaneous coronary intervention. Our aim was to evaluate clinical outcomes of patients older than 80 years, compared with their younger counterparts, when bioresorbable polymer biolimus A9 drug‐eluting stent is used for their treatment.


The optically nonlinear dye [E-N-dodecyl-4-(2-(4-docosyloxyphenyl)ethenyl)quinolinium]+-(octadecylsulfate-)x(bromide-)1-x forms noncentrosymmetric Langmuir–Blodgett films. The second-harmonic intensity increases quadratically with the number of layers in the range investigated, i.e., as I2ω(N)=I2ω(1)′N2 for 2≤N≤100, and shows long-term stability. Films of the dye are almost transparent, with an absorbance of 3×10-4 layer-1 at the second-harmonic wavelength, but, nonetheless, the equivalent monolayer intensity, I2ω(N)/N2, is ∼30% of the resonantly enhanced signal from monolayer films of the colored hemicyanine dye reported by Girling
 [J. Opt. Soc. Am. B4, 950 (1987)]. The second-order susceptibility, film thickness, and chromophore tilt angle relative to the normal to the substrate are χzzz(2)=26 pm V-1 at 1.064 μm, l=5.0 nm layer-1, and ϕ=30°, respectively, for x=0.5.


In this study, we investigate In composition and the carrier density dependences of radiative and nonradiative recombination lifetimes for a series of c-plane InGaN quantum well (QW) samples with different emission wavelengths (450 nm to 620 nm). The two lifetimes can be separately evaluated using photoluminescence (PL) decay time, obtained by time-resolved PL measurement, combined with the value of internal quantum efficiency (IQE) obtained by simultaneous photoacoustic and PL measurements. It is found that the decrease in IQE with increasing In composition is caused by the reduction in radiative recombination lifetime, not by the enhancement of nonradiative lifetime, which shows little dependence on In composition. In addition, it is found that the carrier density dependence of IQE is also mainly determined by the change in radiative recombination lifetime. These findings will lead to a comprehensive understanding of carrier dynamics in InGaN-QW optical devices.


The invention discloses a registration method applied to a retina fundus image, and belongs to the field of medical image processing. On the basis of an SIFT (Scale Invariant Feature Transform) method, a new feature point detection and feature description method is proposed, the detection amount and the registration precision of the feature points of the retina fundus image can be improved, and an image registration effect is better. In order to further improve registration accuracy, a mismatching fiducial point rejection strategy is introduced into registration. A great quantity of registration experiments indicates that the registration method can realize the accurate and stable registration of the retina fundus image and overcomes a defect that the SIFT method can not realize the registration in parts of retina fundus images.


The present study was carried out using artificial neural network (ANN) model for predicting the sodium hazardness, i.e., sodium adsorption ratio (SAR), percent sodium (%Na) residual, Kelly's ratio (KR), and residual sodium carbonate (RSC) in the groundwater of the Pratapgarh district of Southern Rajasthan, India. This study focuses on verifying the suitability of water for irrigational purpose, wherein more groundwater decline coupled with water quality problems compared to the other areas are observed. The southern part of the Rajasthan State is more populated as compared to the rest of the parts. The southern part of the Rajasthan is more populated as compared to the rest of the Rajasthan, which leads to the industrialization, urbanization, and evolutionary changes in the agricultural production in the southern region. Therefore, it is necessary to propose innovative methods for analyzing and predicting the water quality (WQ) for agricultural use. The study aims to develop an optimized artificial neural network (ANN) model to predict the sodium hazardness of groundwater for irrigation purposes. The ANN model was developed using 'nntool' in MATLAB software. The ANN model was trained and validated for ten years (2010–2020) of water quality data. An L-M 3-layer back propagation technique was adopted in ANN architecture to develop a reliable and accurate model for predicting the suitability of groundwater for irrigation. Furthermore, statistical performance indicators, such as RMSE, IA, R, and MBE, were used to check the consistency of ANN prediction results. The developed ANN model, i.e., ANN4 (3-12-1), ANN4 (4-15-1), ANN1 (4-5-1), and ANN4 (3-12-1), were found best suited for SAR, %Na, RSC, and KR water quality indicators for the Pratapgarh district. The performance analysis of the developed model (3-12-1) led to a correlation coefficient = 1, IA = 1, RMS = 0.14, and MBE = 0.0050. Hence, the proposed model provides a satisfactory match to the empirically generated datasets in the observed wells. This development of water quality modeling using an ANN model may help to useful for the planning of sustainable management and groundwater resources with crop suitability plans as per water quality.


The main objective of this research is to know how to make and test Electric Skateboard properly. limitation of the issues to be discussed are the Making of Electric Skateboard, the making of a skateboard using strong maple wood and impact resistance, the use of this tool is only used for games, the use of this tool is only used on a level road, the use of this tool cannot be used for freestyle. Electric Skateboard testing is conducted to determine the distance traveled by electric skateboards in 10 m with a load of 51 kg with a time of 15.22 seconds, this electric skateboard driving motor with a capacity of 12volt150 watts with a motor speed of 1450 Rpm. With a 12volt 7.2ampere battery power source. distance and time taken with a load of 51 kg with a distance of 3.2 km with 1 hour, 24 minutes until the battery runs out while no load with the distance and time taken is 34,671 km with a time of 9 hours 37 minutes with the battery running out.


The discrepancy between the NT's declaration of the believer's salvation and its affirmation of the necessity of his/her suffering reflects the problem of the inaugurated eschatology. God's reign, as believers render obedience to it which expresses itself concretely in terms of the double command of love for God and neighbour, already brings about salvation concretely in the form of individual wholeness, social shalom and ecological health. Yet Satan still reigns in sin (i.e. by instigating our self-assertive will against God and neighbour) and brings death which manifests itself in all forms of suffering. In this situation, believers' obedience to God's reign often means sacrifice and suffering for them as well as salvation for them and others. So Christians are the bearers of salvation who suffer. This is the discipleship to which Jesus has called us. Therefore preachers today must present both sides of Christian discipleship, as the means of making salvation in the Kingdom of God available already now and as the path of sacrifice in the world still under Satan's reign.


In this paper, we discuss the art of estimating the
greatest level of understanding obtained by a student based on five assessment
types ranked based on their correlation between the set maximum levels of understanding. The results show a weighting
system yields a point estimate that has a stronger correlation between the preset levels of understanding than a simple point system.


the DRACO program, has selected contractors to perform a LEO technology demonstration of Nuclear Thermal Propulsion. This demonstrates that there is interest in developing this method of propulsion in the US military, which supports the findings of our research.


Abstract This paper presents experimental parameter identification of a jet pipe electro-pneumatic servo actuator model, which represents a class of high performance fast actuation systems. Parameter identification is given including detailed representation of linear dynamics, hysteresis, and the mass flow rate characteristics of the jet pipe servo valve, besides the static friction model of the linear pneumatic cylinder. Model parameters are identified and the model formulation is validated through simulation and experimentation. The main contribution of this work is threefold. Firstly, the mass flow rate characteristics are identified using the pressure dynamic equation in one cylinder chamber without the use of a flow sensor. Secondly, a lag behaviour related to the non-modelled dynamics is found out by performing an experimental identification of the frequency response of the servo valve. Thirdly, a new experimental setup is presented to give the static friction model as a function of not only the relative velocity but also the pressures in the two cylinder chambers. The agreement between simulations and experimental data indicates that the Parameter identification methods presented are valid and constitute valuable tools, whether in the analysis and the design of actuation systems, or for use in model-based control. The modelling methodology used in this paper can be generalised to similar electro-pneumatic servo actuators.


Major obstacles in current CMOS technology, such as the interconnect bottleneck and thermal heat management, can be overcome by employing subwavelength-scaled light in plasmonic waveguides and devices. In this work, a plasmonic structure that implements the majority (MAJ) gate function is designed and thoroughly studied through simulations. The structure consists of three merging waveguides, serving as the MAJ gate inputs. The information of the logic signals is encoded in the phase of transmitted surface plasmon polaritons (SPP). SPPs are excited at all three inputs and the phase of the output SPP is determined by the MAJ of the input phases. The operating dimensions are identified and the functionality is verified for all input combinations. This is the first reported simulation of a plasmonic MAJ gate and thus contributes to the field of optical computing at the nanoscale.


Presently, heavy metal pollution of our cultivable agricultural farmlands is
increasing and is often associated with anthropogenic sources. Wetlands contaminated with
detectable levels of metal toxicants and other trace macro-elements are frequently used for
growing vegetable crops. To assess the impact of floodwater on soil of floodplain wetland
of Cross River, soil samples were taken from uppermost 0-30 ern within designated thirty
square grids and analytical determinations of cobalt (Co), lead (Pb ), manganese (Mn), nickel
(Ni), vanadilllll (V) and copper (Cu) were carried out. The results show high accillllulat:ion
of Mn (40.22±2.79 Mg g-'), Pb (22.47±0.58 Mg g-'), Cu (16.17±7.93 Mg g-') and Ni
(17.24±4.12 Mg g-') from the wetland. The exploratory data analyses for each of the heavy
metals revealed that the concentrations of the metals in the floodplain ultisols were more
effectively influenced by environmental and anthropogenic attributes.


Hydroisomerization of n-hexadecane was investigated over the bifunctional catalysts Pt/ZSM-23, as a model reaction for n-paraffin dewaxing. Effort has been made to improve the selectivity to iso-hexadecane by introducing the magnesium promoter. The catalytic performances between Pt/ZSM-23 and magnesium promoted Pt/ZSM-23 were compared in terms of the correlation between conversion and selectivity. Magnesium promoter resulted in the changes of acidity and the dispersion of Pt metal; the acid amount decreased, and the Lewis acid sites increased. The dispersion of Pt metal was also improved. Magnesium-promoted Pt/ZSM-23 showed a higher yield of iso-hexadcanes due to its Lewis type acidic properties and higher Pt dispersion.


Firms care deeply about their credit ratings, since ratings influence, for instance, firm's cost of capital (Bhojraj and Sengupta, 2003; Campbell and Taksler, 2003), bond and stock market prices (Dichev and Piotroski, 2001; Hand et al., 1992). This is also true for newly rated firms, typically smaller, in a younger stage of their life cycle and with a shorter track record compared with other issuers to show to the external financial stakeholders. In the main paper of my thesis ("Is Indebtedness always negative for Credit Ratings? Empirical evidence on Newly Rated Firms"), I test the impact of being newly rated firms on credit ratings over the period from 1985 to 2013. I report a negative but pretty low effect on rating outcome for the entire sample of newly rated firms but, surprisingly, I find a strong positive relation between highly levered firms and credit rating. I develop additional research on credit rating in the other two papers of my thesis. In the first paper ("Credit Rating Agencies: a Review of Recent Academic Studies and Key Practical Implications"), I present a systematization of the latest academic contributions on credit ratings and credit rating agencies. In the second paper ("The Dynamics of Credit Rating Standards"), I examine long-term issuer credit ratings and I focus on the time variable to study how credit rating agencies have modified their standards over years.


This work targets person re-identification (ReID) from depth sensors such as Kinect. Since depth is invariant to illumination and less sensitive than color to day-by-day appearance changes, a natural question is whether depth is an effective modality for Person ReID, especially in scenarios where individuals wear different colored clothes or over a period of several months. We explore the use of recurrent Deep Neural Networks for learning high-level shape information from low-resolution depth images. In order to tackle the small sample size problem, we introduce regularization and a hard temporal attention unit. The whole model can be trained end to end with a hybrid supervised loss. We carry out a thorough experimental evaluation of the proposed method on three person re-identification datasets, which include side views, views from the top and sequences with varying degree of partial occlusion, pose and viewpoint variations. To that end, we introduce a new dataset with RGB-D and skeleton data. In a scenario where subjects are recorded after three months with new clothes, we demonstrate large performance gains attained using Depth ReID compared to a state-of-the-art Color ReID. Finally, we show further improvements using the temporal attention unit in multi-shot setting.


The effects of reaction conditions on a novel monomer recycling method for high-temperature-vulcanized silicone rubber are described. A mixture of a methanol solution of (CH3)4NOH, diethylamine and hexane was adopted to partially depolymerize and dissolve the high-temperature-vulcanized silicone rubber under reflux. Hexane was useful to completely separate the fillers from the suspension of depolymerized products. After the removal of fillers followed by treatment of the filtrate with KOH and distillation under reduced pressure, cyclosiloxane monomers were obtained in high yields (∼78%). (CH3)4NOH adsorbed and chemically bound to the fillers was found to be pyrolyzed to (CH3)3N and CH3OH. The separated fillers were thermally treated to be reused without further purifications. The yields of recovered fillers were as high as over 95%.


This paper presents a review of the different approaches to modeling the nonsteady fluid dynamics associated with two-dimensional compressor flow fields. These models are used to predict the time development of flow field disturbances and have been found useful in both the study of rotating stall and the development of active control. The opportunity to digest the earlier investigations has now made it possible to express the modeling ideas using only a very simple mathematical treatment. Here, the emphasis is on the underlying physical processes that the models simulate and how the assumptions within the models affect predictions


Consumer needs and desires vary as a guide for any company to design the right marketing strategy in order to meet the expectations of every consumer. The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of the quality of products, promotions, and pricing of the Samsung handphone purchasing decisions. The sampling technique in this study using this type of accidental sampling method with the number of respondents as many as 100 people.
The data were analyzed using the validity test using Pearson Correlation and reliability tests with Cronbach alpha. Further tested by multiple linear regression analysis. The results of the research are: (1) The product quality has positive influence on purchase decisions. (2) Promotion of positive influence on purchase decisions. (3) Prices positive influence on purchasing decisions.

Keywords: quality of product, promotion, pricing and purchasing decisions


In conventional high-voltage live work, operators are required to work near high-voltage cables, which poses risks such as falling and getting an electric shock. To promise the worker's safety, regional breakout of power is one of the common methods that the power sector would deploy. However, with the development of society, a lot of trouble will be brought about due to the economic loss and social impact caused by regional power outages, which pose higher requirements for the power sector. Hence, it is demanding to carry out a safe and effective method for high-voltage live work without power failure. In such a context, we have developed a dual-arm collaborative robotic system for high-voltage live work. The system includes a human-computer interaction interface and a pair of Omega handles, which allow workers to operate remotely at the control center. In laboratory experiments, the system can accurately complete stripping, trimming, and wiring operations. Also, some actions are pre-programmed inside the control system to realize simple operations automatically. This dual-arm robot collaboration system with a teleoperation function can greatly reduce the labor intensity of workers and ensure their safety.


Contemporary car design must not only focus on technology supporting the driver and the driving task: it needs to create positive experiences for drivers and passengers alike. This case study, the Clique Trip, is an example of designing a positive social (i.e. relatedness) experience in the automotive context, addressing the analysis, the design, and the evaluation of the experience. The Clique Trip experience creates a feeling of closeness and relatedness among friends when being in a "motorcade". It is derived from experience reports, implemented in the car and evaluated on the road. Qualitative and quantitative results revealed its capability to create the targeted social experience.


The liquid-phase hydrogenation of toluene by dihydrogen in the presence of zeolite-included Fe II phthalocyanine has been studied, (effective energy of activation and pre-exponential factor 28 ± 2 kJ mol −1 and 10.3 × 10 5 g mol −1 s −1 , respectively) and it has been suggested that the zeolite matrix takes part in the activation of the substrate via hydrogen bonding with inner atoms of the large cavity of the zeolite.


The temperature compensation controller in solar heater is introduced. The ST6 2T15 microcomputer with higher performance is a central unit in the controller. The modularization structure is used in the soft system. The intelligence contro l is realized by using the fuzzy control technology. The system has the properti es of simple hardware circuit and multifunction. The user may use the solar heat er all the day.


This study aimed at examining the role of women's empowerment in antenatal care utilization among married women in Pakistan. The population of the study was based on secondary data from the Pakistan Demographic Health Survey 2017-18. A sample of 6,996 married women was selected, and the women reported their antenatal visits in the last five years. The descriptive, Chi-square, bivariate, and multivariate logistic regression methods were used for data analysis through SPSS. The results of the study showed that only 15% of women had adequate antenatal visits. Bivariate analysis showed that women who had higher income status, higher education, and were working in managerial positions had significantly adequate antenatal health care (P<0.05). Multivariate logistic regression results showed that women who had the power of decision making in their health care alone (OD-1.47; 95% CI1.04, 2.10), decided their mobility along with their husbands (OD-1.83; 95% CI-1.46, 2.30), had control over resources, their own mobile (OD-1.31; 95% CI-1.11, 1.55) and bank accounts (OD-1.75; 95% CI-1.37, 2.22), access to information resources—such as internet use (OD-1.84; 95% CI-1.53, 2.21), reading the newspaper (OD-1.18; 95% CI-1.00, 1.39), and watching TV (OD-1.69; 95% CI-1.38, 2.07)—and did not justify wifebeating (OD-1.42; 95% CI-1.20, 1.68) had adequate antenatal care. To enhance the maternal health of women, the government should take initiatives to formulate policies that improve women's status especially among those who had no education, had less decision-making power, lack of economic resources, and faced violence. 1 Siddique is a PhD Scholar in the Department of Gender Studies, University of Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. He is working as Lecturer in the Department of Gender Studies, Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan, Pakistan. He has presented/published 8 conference papers and 9 research papers. 2 Dr. Raana Malik is working as Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Gender Studies, University of the Punjab Lahore, Pakistan. She has a Post Doctorate in Gender Studies from the University of Oslo, Norway where she won the HEC post-doc fellowship. She has 40 peer reviewed national and international research papers and 30 conference papers. She has been awarded many international fellowships such as the American State Department Fellowship for 4 months residential stay for research and the ILO two months residency fellowship in Italy. 3 Dr. Irum Batool is working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology, Bahauddin Zakariyya University Multan, Pakistan. She completed her PhD from the University of Hull, UK, under a Faculty Development Scholarship. Her research grapples with issues pertaining to human cognition, psychological and gender issues, and problematic internet and social media use particularly in relation to its effects on psychological health. 4 Dr. Ahmed Usman is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social and Cultural Studies, University of the Punjab Lahore. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Leeds, UK. Dr. Usman has over 60 research papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals and 75 conference papers. He has been awarded several national and international awards including PHEC Postdoctoral Fellowship Award, 2017 and the Scholar-in-residence Fellowship, 2016 by the US Department of State for Arizona State University. 5 Dr. Salman Bin Naeem is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library & Information Science, the Islamia University of Bahawalpur. He has over 50 research papers in peer-reviewed national and international journals, 3 book chapters published by Springer International Publishing, and 60 conference papers. He has been awarded several national and international awards, such as PHEC Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in 2018, Best Research Paper Award by the Association of Science and Information Technology (ASIS&T), USA, and SIG-III InfoShare


Being a mum of a two-year-old toddler and trying to work from home is definitely challenging. I am lucky though to work for Cardiff University Library ...


This paper analyzes the role of the initial allocation of ownership rights in transactions where parties make relationship-specific investments and contracts are incomplete. If there is high mutual dependence in production, the initial allocation of ownership rights is irrelevant. This result contrasts with Grossman and Hart (1986), who, using a similar model, obtain that the ownership rights should be allocated to minimize ex-ante inefficiencies in production and assets should be owned by the party whose investment is most productive. The critical element behind these two different results is that while Grossman and Hart (1986) model uses the Nash bargaining solution treating status quo payoffs as disagreement points, here they are treated as outside options. The model also shows that, when relevant, asset ownership may provide disincentive to invest.


Quaternium-15 is used as an antimicrobial preservative in cosmetic products at concentration ranges from ≤0.1 to 1%. The cosmeticingredient is not absorbed through human skin in significant amounts. Animal toxicity studies indicate that Quaternium-15 is mildly to moderately toxic depending on animal species, concentration, and route of exposure. Testicular atrophy and decreased spermatogenesis in immature rabbits were reported in one subchronic dermal study. Orally administered Quaternium-15 was teratogenic in rats when given by gavage to pregnant dams in doses ≥25 mg/kg per day. No teratogenic effects were observed at doses of 5 mg/kg per day. Dermally applied Quaternium-15 did not produce maternal toxicity, fetal toxicity, or fetal abnormalities at doses up to and including 500 mg/kg per day. No testicular effects were produced by Quaternium-15 in three subsequent studies on mature rabbits. Quaternium-15 was a moderate skin irritant in test animals at concentrations above 5%. Quaternium-15 was not a significant eye irritant in rabbits. Animal sensitization studies with Quaternium-15 produced conflicting results depending on the test methodologies used. Quaternium-15 does not appear to possess significant mutagenic activity. Primary irritation studies on Quaternium-15 in inert vehicles and formulations indicate that Quaternium-15 is not a primary skin irritant in humans. Quaternium-15 in inert vehicles may be a human sensitizer in some clinical patients. The sensitization potential of the preservative was much less pronounced when cosmetic products were tested on nonclinical subjects. Quaternium-15 may exhibit cross-sensitization with formaldehyde. Quaternium-15 is not a significant photosensitizing agent. Although Quaternium-15 is a potential skin sensitizer, it is concluded that Quaternium-15 is safe as a cosmeticingredient at concentrations not exceeding those presently in use.


Indonesian education continues to develop to produce a competitive and morally upright generation. As a process, the administration of Kurikulum Merdeka continues to be developed with an independent learning curriculum as its guiding principle. In addition, it is anticipated that learning will be student-centered by prioritizing children's overall growth and development and by encouraging teachers to always be student-centered. This research seeks to collect field-based information on the implementation of Kurikulum Merdeka in Islamic senior high schools. The descriptive qualitative method with Rogers' theory of diffusion innovation was used, and data analysis was conducted through interviews and direct observations with the school dean and 27 instructors. The findings of this study indicate that the Kurikulum Merdeka not only offers new learning experiences to teachers but is also capable of unifying divisions in the learning process with results derived from both the innovation attribute and innovation development process. The subsequent research is an evaluation of the curriculum that has been implemented in Senior High Schools or Islamic Senior High Schools.Keywords: Islamic Education; Kurikulum Merdeka; Integrated Islamic School


In pediatric clinics, alimentary tract duplications are seen with an incidence of approximately 1 in 4500 [1]. Most cases are diagnosed within the first 5 years of life [2]. The condition is seen infrequently in adults. Patients usually present with constipation, diarrhea, abdominal pain, abdominal mass, and, sometimes, acute abdomen, volvulus, or perforation [3]. There are two types of colonic duplication: tubular and cystic. Diagnosis requires a careful history and detailed imaging with endoscopy, computed tomography, and in some cases barium meal study. Correct diagnosis is important not only because the symptoms decrease patients' quality of life, but also because with time patients are at increased risk of developing carcinoma [4]. The most common form of carcinoma associated with alimentary tract duplication is adenocarcinoma. A 39-year-old man without any other history of chronic disease was referred to our clinic because of chronic diarrhea. He described the watery diarrhea as having been present for 6 months and being independent of eating. He had no fever, rectal bleeding, or tenesmus. He complained of having had irregular abdominal pain since childhood. Physical examination showed no significant findings. The work-up for ruling out infectious causes, including microscopic examination for protozoa and cultures of the feces, produced negative findings. Abdominal radiography was performed but showed nothing significant, and colonoscopy was done in order to rule out inflammatory bowel disease and celiac disease. At colonoscopy, thick, band-like mucosal lesions were seen dividing the lumen into three spaces, like the Mercedes logo, with wide exudative superficial ulcers and polypoid lesions on top of and around them (●" Fig.1). Biopsy results showed lowgrade dysplasia on the malformation site (●" Fig.2), and the patient was referred for surgery. Low anterior resection was performed. The symptoms regressed after surgery and the follow-up colonoscopy after 6 months showed no significant findings. Intestinal duplications are rare gastrointestinal abnormalities in adulthood. They are defined as mucosal structures with smooth muscle lining which form another lumen (tubular duplication) or cysts (cystic duplication). The cystic form is the most commonly found [5]. Colonic duplication is one of the rarest types of duplication of the alimentary tract [6]. Its pathogenesis is still unclear, but there are several theories relating it to malformation of the embryonic gut. Some authors suggest that environmental factors may also have a role. Although the disease is usually rapidly diagnosed in infants, diagnosis can be challenging in adults. Manifestations usually include pain, obstructive symptoms, and sometimes mass lesions. With its broad range of symptoms, this abnormality can be difficult to differentiate from infections, inflammatory bowel disease, gastrointestinal bleeding, or obstruction. In our case the patient presented with chronic diarrhea. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of colonic duplication presenting with diarrhea as the main symptom. Another aspect that needs to be underlined about colonic duplication is that it can lead to carcinoma, most importantly adenocarcinoma. In a series of seven cases of colorectal duplication, one patient had high-grade dysplasia and one had lowFig.1 Endoscopic images showing colonic duplication and ulcers in a 37-year-old man.


Background: The impact of aphasia on identity is frequently acknowledged, but there have been few theoretical or research publications focusing on identity as an explanatory construct in understanding quality of life issues for persons with aphasia and their significant others. This article is abbreviated from a keynote address at the 2004 Clinical Aphasiology Conference.Aims: The purpose of this article is to review concepts from the sociocultural literature that bear upon social identity and can be applied to an understanding of short- and long-term consequences of aphasia.Main Contribution: Theoretical premises related to social identity are outlined, then applied to the life experiences of persons with aphasia and their significant others. The clinical relevance of such concepts is illustrated through specific examples. Particular attention is paid to the recognition work involved in moving on with life in the context of aphasia. The implications of the identity construct are also addressed through questions raised for both researchers and clinicians.Conclusions: An understanding of identity provides a useful lens for viewing and improving quality of life for persons touched by aphasia. In particular, clinical work and research questions can be clarified through consideration both of identity as competent and of the mediation of identity through social interaction with social others. It is important to recognise that persons with aphasia and their significant others are involved in renegotiation of identity, and the success of their recognition work may be a major predictor of adaptation to aphasia.


Clinicopathological features and prognostic factors were evaluated in 26 cases of stump carcinoma, operated on in the recent 20 years, in search of the standard surgical treatment.


The reserves of tungsten are mastered by investigation and analysing the state of exploiting and utilizing tungsten resources in 41 tungsten mines of main production provinces of our country, the exploiting and utilizing level and the problems existed are found out also. In this paper, the proposals of rational exploitation, rising the level of utilization and strengthen managment are put forwords.


This paper aims to study the use of future Supernova/Acceleration Probe data, together with the result of searches for strong gravitational lenses in future large quasar surveys to constrain the generalized Chaplygin gas (GCG) model, with equation of state p = -A/ρα, where A is a positive constant and 0 < α ≤ 1. The GCG is considered a possible unification scheme for dark matter-dark energy. It is found that both experiments should be able to place important constraints on the model, especially when both tests are used together.