Many studies have argued that watchdog journalism cannot flourish under authoritarianism. However, the effect of the democratization of previously authoritarian regimes on watchdog journalism is still poorly understood. This article aims to fill this knowledge gap by using Kompas, Indonesia's oldest daily newspaper, as a case study. Drawing on four years of ethnographic fieldwork (2013–2017) within Kompas's newsroom and one year of archival review (2020–2021), this study shows that the newspaper did not truly function as a watchdog. Instead, it developed a specific style that we conceptualize as "polite" watchdog journalism, that is, monitoring the wrongdoing of those in power in such a manner that does not hurt the feelings of those in power. This style of journalism was developed in response to the cultural and political-economic forces that intersected in and shaped its newsroom. Kompas developed close relationships with authoritarian power holders, thereby avoiding the persistent threat of bans and securing the economic advantages of their close ties with those in power. After the regime change, polite journalism continued to be practiced, both to maintain its political leverage and to preserve its economic advantage in the post-authoritarian era.


1 © Under License of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License | This article is available from: www.psychopathology.imedpub.com It is of common knowledge among researchers in the field of assessment of anxiety disorders that given the characteristics of the high-prevalent mental disorders, valid and reliable instruments to their measurement are constantly needed. Recommendations of evidence-based practice in psychology also demand that clinical tasks such as the assessment of anxiety symptomatology are fulfilled with instruments integrating the best available research evidence. Evidence-based practice reflects in the promotion of effective mental health care and enhancement of public health with the use of empirically supported principles of psychological assessment and intervention [1]. Nonetheless, as multifaceted phenomena, anxiety disorders are assessed by various different approaches and instruments [2]. Therefore, promoting evidencebased practice in the assessment of anxiety disorders requires efforts from a multimodal perspective. Clinicians, researchers, and other practitioners must consider the scientific results about assessment instruments drawn from research in the laboratory and field settings relying on a variety of designs and methodologies [1]. They can then guarantee consistent and reliable data to professionals in the fields of anxiety research and treatment and, as the ultimate goal, benefits to the individuals that suffer from the consequences of anxiety disorders.


National Institutes of Health (NIH/NRSA), Cornell University GRA, The Morris Animal Foundation/Seeing Eye, Inc., Van Sloan Fund for Canine Genetic Research, J.A. Baker Institute for Animal Health


【Objective】To research the effective method to prevent the nasopharyngeal cancer radioactive oral ulcer.【Methods】100 nasopharyngeal cancer radiotherapy patients are divided into 2 groups,the experimental group(50 people) have a cup of cordate houttuynia every day since a week before the radiotherapy,and the control group(50 people) rinse mouth with the physiological saline or Compound Borax Solution before the radiotherapy,drink the ordinary water,observe the oral pharynx and larynx mucous membrane situation strictly.【Results】The effect of preventing the radioactive oral ulcer in experimental group is better than control group obviously(P 0.01),3 people in experimental group have used the antibiotic sterilization and atomizes the inspiration treatment,no one had to stop the radiotherapy and nutrition treatment inside or outside the intestines.35 people in control group had to use the antibiotic sterilization and atomizes the inspiration treatment,20 people need stop radiotherapy and the nutrition treatment.【Conclusion】Have a cup of cordate houttuynia every day since a week before the radiotherapy can reduce the nasopharyngeal cancer radioactive oral ulcer occurrence effectively.The method is simply,convenient and cheap,and has obvious effect,worth of using it popularity in clinical.


ABSTRACT This study tried to clarify the magnitude of CO2 emissions from highway construction and maintenance in China through life cycle assessment (LCA) method. For this, 227 real highway projects constructed from the year 2000 to 2011 in Zhejiang Province, China are classified into six types by two categories of N road (62 projects without grand bridge, great bridge and tunnel) and Y road (165 projects with the same road structures) and three sub-categories of (i) newly constructed road, (ii) replacing pavement road and (iii) full rehabilitated road. Significant influential factors of LCA results were revealed through multivariate linear regression models, combined with data quality assessment and sensitivity analysis. Numerical interval of assessment results indicate that the construction emissions of N highway project are more centralized to no more than 2900 t/lane-km, while Y project have a normal upper boundary of construction CO2 emissions, about 5000 t/lane-km. The contribution of maintenance to CO2 emissions probably could exceed that of newly construction both for Y project and N project. In addition, the pavement replacing and rehabilitation could bring about large amount of CO2 emissions which even match with the CO2 emissions from cumulative traffic volume during highway's life cycle. There are common factors for six categories. Cement and steel are the top largest CO2 emissions contributors and sensitive factors for N road and Y road. The LCA results are not sensitive to the local construction materials but sensitive to the emission factor of diesel used in transportation and on-site construction.


Legged vehicles have attracted interest for many high-mobility applications, such as military troop support and logistics in rocky, steep, and forested terrain, scientific exploration of cliffs, mountains, and volcanoes on earth and other planets, and search and rescue. Humanoid robots have additional applications in homes and offices as personal assistants. But planning and controlling their motion is difficult, because dozens of joints must be coordinated to maintain balance while executing a task. It is particularly difficult in extremely uneven, steep, or cluttered terrain—precisely where legs are an advantage.
I present a legged locomotion planner that reasons with the physical and operational constraints in the vehicle's high dimensional configuration space, producing motions that are guaranteed to avoid collision and remain balanced. This planner works on a variety of terrain, ranging from flat ground to steep and rocky cliff faces, and is applied to three very different robots: NASA's six-legged lunar vehicle ATHLETE, AIST Japan's biped humanoid robot HRP-2, and Stanford's four-limbed rock climbing robot Capuchin.
The planner consists of two parts: first, a graph search to find a sequence of contacts to make and break, and second, the planning of single-step motions between successive contacts using a probabilistic roadmap planner (PRM). I prove that a "fuzzy search", where PRM planning is interleaved between candidate steps, has theoretical completeness properties, and a running time not strongly affected by configuration space dimension. The planner can also produce natural-looking motions given a small number of "motion primitives", high-quality example motions that bias the search toward similar paths. These techniques can be applied to other robot systems that make and break contact, and I present a manipulation planner that enables the Honda ASIMO humanoid robot to push objects on a table, in simulation and on the real robot.


Intrusion detection based upon machine learning is currently attracting considerable interests from the research community. One of the appealing properties of machine learning based intrusion detection systems is their ability to detect new and unknown attacks. In order to apply machine learning to intrusion detection, a large number of both attack and normal data samples need to be collected. While, it is often easier to sample benign data based on the normal behaviors of networks, intrusive data is much more scarce, therefore more difficult to collect. In this paper, we propose a novel solution to this problem by generating artificial attack data for intrusion detection based on machine learning techniques. Various machine learning techniques are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the generated data and the results show that the data set of synthetic attack data combining with normal one can help machine learning methods to achieve good performance on intrusion detection problem.


For at least 300 years, propositions on the inequality of the biological endowments of the varieties of men have been put forth in some "scientific" guise or other (Cunningham 1908). The hypotheses come and go, but they tend to cluster in time and to be associated with crises about the relations of different ethnic and/or racial groups. The first burst of contentions about the natural inferiority of a racially defined population came with the spread of the Europeans into the New World. The discovery of the American Indians, and the domination, exploitation, or extermination of them, precipitated the classic controversy between Las Casas and Sepuilveda at Valladolid in 1550-51 (Hanke 1959). Other clusters in history turn up at the time of the French Revolution, with Gobineau and the aristocrats decrying the inferiority of the less privileged; the controversy between the abolitionists and the pro-slavery elements in the American South prior to the Civil War; the rising howl at the flood tide of Eastern and Southern European immigration to the United States; and now a new burst of literature following the Supreme Court decision to abolish the legal forms of segregation and discrimination. Is this recurrent construction and reconstruction of hypotheses on the innate, natural inferiority of races of men a response to the fact that "you can't keep a good hypothesis down"? Or does the activity represent the culmination of social and political forces, rather than the scientific impulse to check out an hypothesis, to fill a gap in the orderly structure of knowledge? The questions are not easily answered. The reply depends upon clearing up some semantic confusion, getting some social and cultural as well as biological and genetic facts straight, and erecting a series of generalizations capable of explaining both the differences between human populations and the social interpretation of those differences. In the United States there is currently a growing literature by amateurs and professionals on the problems of race. Comas (1961) wonders if this marks the rise of a new "scientific" racism. This query raised by an eminent physical anthropologist is the prologue to systematic evaluation of the new assertions on race differences and their meanings. While this is a worthy, even necessary, task for physical anthropologists to undertake, it is the contention of this paper that no amount of sober scientific refutation ever stills the controversy on the meanings of race differences. The interpretation of physical and biological differences between populations is a social phenomenon, and the understanding of how that interpretation is reached and codified is a problem in social and cultural dynamics. In fact, the scientifically responsible student of race is at a distinct disadvantage in trying to confront the propositions on racial inferiority. He is in the unenviable position of trying to defend the null hypothesis, and his adversaries can manufacture plausible arguments much more easily and rapidly than he can refute them. This is not to suggest that refutation is not needed (the toppling of assertions on racial inferiority during the past 300 years has, in fact, cleared much debris from the storeroom of human knowledge), but that it is now time to wed into one conceptual system the propositions on race and the interpretations of race differences. An elementary distinction is needed. The study of race is the pursuit of knowledge about a biological phenomenon. Anthropologists and others who are involved in the description and analysis of the population dynamics of groups with differing enetic frequencies and physical features are studying race. They seek to find the scale, origins, causes, distributions, and correlates of the genetic and morphological diversity of the breeding populations called races. Along with the study of race there may exist the "ideology of race." The ideology of race is a system of ideas which interprets and defines the meanings of racial differences, real or imagined, in terms of some system of cultural values. The ideology of race is always normative: it ranks differences as better or worse, superior or inferior, desirable or undesirable, and as modifiable or unmodifiable. Like all ideologies, the ideology of race implies a call to action; it embodies a political and social program; it is a demand that something be done. The ideology of race competes in a political arena, and it is embraced or rejected by a polity, not a scientific community. The relation of the study of race to the ideology of race is only indirect. The scientific evidence or the "facts" of race only serve as ammunition in ideological warfare. If one is promoting an ideology, it is better to have most of the facts on your side, but it does not really matter, as long as some of the facts can be absorbed or be made consonant with the ideology. Ideologies are expressions or recipes for the way the world "ought to be," and the way the world in fact is, is tangentially related to the visions and hopes of what it might be made into. On these grounds, that is, the functional consequences of ideologies, no amount of evidence (even were it scientifically impeccable) will destroy an ideology, or even, perhaps, modify it. And so the ideology of race, or "racism," persistently crops up whenever the political and social circumstances make it functionally pertinent. The most recent American contribution to the ideology of race is Putnam's book, Race and Reason (1961). Lesser contributions come from Garrett (1961) and Shuey (1958). Comas (1961) has treated parts of this effort in terms of the facts of race, and since the ideology of race represents no new research efforts, no new findings on race differences, I let that confrontation stand. Race and Reason is a new interpretation of the meaning of race differences in terms of the ideology of the embattled South. Here I want to present a paradigm of the argument of Race and Reason and contrast it to the literature that grew up in the pro-slavery controversy prior to the Civil War, also taken from a single book (Jenkins 1935). This will show the bone structure of racial ideology. Next I will develop the conditions of the emergence of racial ideologies. And finally I shall enumerate the functions of racial ideologies for a social system in which there is marked conflict in the regnant system of values. MANNING NASH is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago (Illinois), U.S.A. Born in 1924 in the United States, he took his Ph.D. in anthropology ,at the University of Chicago in 1955. He has done field work with the Quiche Indians of Cantel in Guatemala, with the Tzeltal Indians of Ametenango, Chiapas, Mexico, and with Burmese peasants in Upper Burma. His publications include Machine-Age Maya. Nash's main research interests are economic and social change and newly-developing nations. This article grows out of an interest in ideological patterns.


Objective To study the influence of occupational stress to the quality of life in the workers of an enameled wire enterprise.Methods The occupational stress inventory revised edition(OSI-R) and World Health Organization quality of life questionnaire abbreviated version(WHOQOL-BREF) were employed to assess the occupational stress and quality of life among 319 workers in an enameled wire enterprise.Results Between the high and low score groups of occupational stress,the differences in each fields and the total score of quality of life were statistically significant(P0.05).Fields and total score of quality of life were negatively correlated with occupational stress reaction and its items(except responsibility),(P0.01),and positively correlated with coping resource and its items.Physical and psychological fields had a higher correlation with occupational stress than that of the social and environmental fields.Occupational task,stress reaction and coping resources had the function of prediction on physiological and psychological fields.The role insufficiency,role ambiguity,physical environment,responsibility,physical strain,psychological strain,rational/cognitive,social support,recreation and self-care were the main influencing factors on physical and psychological fields.Conclusions Occupational stress of workers in an enameled wire enterprise may influence the quality of life.The increased occupational task and strain could reduce the quality of life,while the increased resources of workers could improve the quality of life.Therefore,more attention should be paid to the role of insufficiency,role ambiguity,physical strain and psychological strain.


The horizontal organization of species can be effectively described by explaining its physical arrangement or distribution within the community which in turn can prove to be an utilitarian tool in relation to spatial patterns of a species. This physical arrangement refers to two-dimensional location of individual (e.g., latitude and longitude), analogous to the (X, Y) coordinates of the species. Knowledge of species spatial patterns might give a more noticeable command for distinguishing mechanism such as ecosystem functioning and stability, designing adequate management, recuperation, or restoration actions (Mathur 2014) and/or modification of micro-climate and biomass partitioning (Mathur and Sundaramoorthy, 2008).


Abstract This study investigates the impact of foreign banks entry on financial development in the MENA countries. We use the relative number of foreign banks as proxy for foreign banks entry, and liquid liabilities and claims on private sector as share of GDP as proxies for the financial development. We find a positive long-term and significant effect of foreign banks entry on the size and activity of financial development. We also find that the effect of foreign banks entry depends on the time period and the level of economic development. This result seems to suggest that MENA countries should not be taken as one group when studying the impact of financial sector reform on financial development. The impact of foreign bank entry is positive for the 10 richest MENA countries, while it is negative (but not statistically significant) or negligible for the group of less developed MENA countries. The last result indicates that there is a cherry picking phenomenon in less developed MENA countries. The negative effect of foreign banks cherry picking is diminished over time, since the period 2005-2014 show more positive impact of foreign bank entry on financial development, than the period 1995-2004. This result gives evidence that foreign banks need time to overcome informational disadvantage caused by geographical and cultural distance, to expand their lending into soft information borrowers, and to realize the expected positive effect of its entry on financial development in poorest MENA countries.


The advancement of information technology and research in finance have recently led to flash decision making and actions by computer algorithms in order to respond to fast events occurring in the stock markets. This new area of technology involves the implementation of high-speed trading strategies which have generated significant amount of activity and information for financial research. In this study, we proposed an improved version of a computational intelligence model using genetic algorithms (GA) for the forecasting of stock price at the microscopic level. Our empirical results show that the new version of the GA-based system is able to improve the accuracy of the prediction significantly, which shall advance the current state of research for artificial intelligence and relevant financial applications.


This text highlights some errors of approach in the Civil Code of the Republic of Moldova. Through some of the rules it establishes, the Civil Code prevents the effective protection of the fundamental rights provided equally by it and, consequently, establishes an obstacle for an evolution into a culture of justification.


This paper researches the fields of solar cell based on the data of patent literature.Besides conventional methods of information analysis such as statistic,associate and so on,this paper adopts some new methods and some conclusions that what is the main technology development trend and what the key companies are doing,are obtained which is useful for leader when they making-decisions.


Contemporary narrative poetry presents a challenge to the teacher: how to approach it from a narratological perspective and still pay attention to the details of poetic language? This essay uses a Bakhtinian approach to explore the generic experiments of five contemporary poets: Tony Harrison, Derek Walcott, Peter Reading, Ted Hughes and Anne Stevenson. DOI: 10.28998/0103-6858.2005v2n36p85-99


The concept of shifting firepower of ship to air missile weapon system is discussed, and the main factors affecting the ability of shifting firepower is analyzed.The concept of firing period,maximum and minimum firing period of ship to air missile weapon system are put forward, and a detailed analysis of these models is given.


Recently, Choi et al. proposed certificateless short signature scheme in random oracle model and the author claims that it is provably secure. Certificateless Public Key Cryptography is a new paradigm, where it allows resolving the inherent key escrow and key management problem. Attack to certificateless signature scheme are of two types as Type-I where the adversary can replace the public key of the user and cannot able to retrieve the master secret key from Key Generator Center (KGC). In Type-II, the adversary can able to obtain the master secret key and cannot replace the public key of the user. In this paper we have proven that, the proposed scheme is not secure against Type-I adversary. To prove, we solve linear Diophantine equation and obtain the partial-private key of the user.


Structural damage detection is currently a very active area of both academic and engineering application.It is an urgent task to integrate the uncertain factors with certain damage detection methods and apply it to the real complex structures.In this paper,based on the Bayesian probability dealing with uncertain meassage,the probabilistic neural network(PNN)method for complex structures damage detection is presented.The traditional PNN and adaptive PNN are respectively utilized to detect the deck of a suspension bridge to validate the presented method.It shows that effective and the adaptive PNN is superior to the traditional PNN.Moreover,the superiority of adaptive PNN is obvious with the increase of the noise level.


Anti-collision mechanisms in RFID, including current standards, are variations of Aloha and Frame Slotted Aloha (FSA). The identification process starts when the reader announces the length of a frame (in number of slots). Tags receive the information and randomly choose a slot in that cycle to transmit their identifier number. The best performance of FSA always requires working with the optimum frame-length in each cycle. However, it is not a parameter easy to adjust in real RFID readers. In this work a markovian analysis is proposed to find the optimum value of frame-length for the current readers of the market. Besides, to validate and contrast the analytical results, a real passive RFID system has been used to get experimental results: the development kit Alien 8800. The experimental results match the analysis predictions.


Here we report the AC magnetic properties of soft magnetic nanocomposites made from compaction of Fe/sub 10/Co/sub 90/ nanoparticles. The permeability is constant for low frequencies, but drops off sharply above a characteristic frequency f/sub c/. Above f/sub c/ the coercivity rises steeply and peaks. The characteristic frequency is found to increase linearly with temperature.


We introduce the concept of non-positive operators with respect to a fixed operator defined between two real normed linear spaces. Significantly, we observe that, in certain cases, it is possible to study such type of operators from a geometric point of view. As an immediate application of our study, we explicitly characterize certain classes of non-positive operators between particular pairs of real normed linear spaces. Furthermore, we present a complete characterization of smooth and strictly convex Radon planes in connection with non-positive operators.


The key aspects and features of an investigation commissioned by Heritage Victoria through heritage consultants Context Pty Ltd into the heritage values associated with Victoria's water supply systems are discussed. The study is a part of the 'Victoria's Heritage - Strengthening our communities' initiative of the Victorian government.


The purpose of the study was to examine the effects of children's literature on character development among students in Grades 6-8 using a mixed method design. Quasi-experimental design was used to compare the character development before and after students took certain education programs.  Students who studied, Thinking Education, Social Studies, Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge programs were in the control group and students who took the literature-based character education were in the experimental group. Interview technique was used to collect data from parents and teachers to enrich the findings from quantitative method. Students in Grades 6-8 studied at four middle schools in Duzce province participated in this research. Results showed that significant character development has been found in the control group (except for 7th graders) who studied literature-based character education. However, no significant character development has been found among students who took Social Studies, Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge programs. Additionally, teachers and parents stated that after the literature-based character education program, students developed positive behaviors both in and out of school related to values including: Love, respect, study, responsibility, patience, tolerance, empathy, honestly, hospitality, cleanness, communication, and observance of social rules . Those results indicate that literature-based character education program is effective in students' character development and values transfer.


The Sierra Club recently adopted a policy to challenge construction of any new power plants until stricter rules for air pollution and climate change are implemented. New coal-fired boiler permits may well be opposed and delayed by interveners. However, more and more utilities are negotiating with interveners regarding their construction permit in an attempt to avoid or resolve lawsuits. Recent deals settling contesting issues include specifying requirements for control devices and emissions limits, promoting renewable energy, offsetting carbon dioxide, and improving emission limits on several existing facilities. Crucial to these agreements is a stipulation that the environmental groups will not block the issuance of construction permits. Settlements can be cost effective and in the best interest of rate payers. 7 refs., 2 tabs.


To construct virtual city models, sufficiently detailed and variously styled building models are required. Traditional production of such models demands extensive manual work and time. This process could be automated using the procedural methods. The aim of this work is to realize a DSL for procedural building modeling. Two approaches, a MOF based from-scratch approach and UML2 profiling, are applied to define the metamodel of the intended DSL. Moving from this DSL, model-tomodel and model-to-text transformations are done using ATL and Xpand languages. Keywords-Model driven software development; Procedural modeling of buildings ; shape grammar; MOF; UML; Model-toText Transformation; Model-to-Model Transformation. ATL; openArchitectureWare Xpand.


It is known that pathophysiology is a bridging curriculum that connects basic and clinical medicine.Pathophysiology aims at not only learning medical knowledge,but also making good use of this knowledge to deal with clinical problems.Nowadays,we pay more attention to memorization than practice.How to change this teaching mode still remains to be solved.Case-based teaching mode is a valuable tool to help medical students strengthen their ability to solve practical problems,from which students can use the knowledge they have learned to figure out the questions derived from each individual medical case.As is known to all,the dominant role of medical education is to train professional doctors for clinic.To achieve this,experimental education is required as a consolidated basis.Considering the current condition of medicine,it is impossible for medical students to improve operation skills directly in patients,thus performing surgeries in animals plays a critical role in medical training process.Repeat showing and practicing enable students to set up a series of good habits in these mimic operations of patients.Meanwhile,formal equipment of operation room should be improved.Therefore,we have already equipped shadowless lamp lighting and established demonstrational system of functional medicine,which pave the way for standard training of medicine.


Fluid Physics phenomena following laser-induced breakdown are computed and compared with experimental records. Comparison of computational and experimental results give insight into the dynamics of the temperature and pressure profiles during the decay process.


The FGMOS transistor can be seen either as a MOS transistor with an analog adder circuit connected at its gate, or as an MOS transistor with an electrically tunable threshold voltage, or even as a complex nonlinear multiplier divider block. Besides the degrees of freedom the designer now has to play with increases from 3 to N + 2 for a single device, where N is the number of inputs in the FGMOS. This opens up a new range of possibilities for the designer in terms of design tradeoffs. Although this is very promising, designing becomes even more complex. This chapter has illustrated with simple examples how to obtain the benefits of the FGMOS. In addition, an overview has been given on how to foresee when the device might or might not be useful in different contexts, all of them having in common the low power constraint.


In order to investigate the pathophysiology of diabetic osteopenia, serum levels of bone γ-carboxyglutamic acid-containing protein (BGP) and bone contents of BGP were measured in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic rats. Both of Serum levels of BGP and bone contents of BGP in diabetic group were significantly decreased compared to those in control group (P<0.01). Since a relationship between serum levels of BGP and bone turnover has been previously established, the low serum BGP suggests that there is a decrease in bone turnover in diabetic rats. We postulate, therefore, that the low bone turnover is one of the pathological features of diabetic osteopenia and at least in part responsible for the occurrence of this complication in diabetes mellitus.


Objective To investigate the proliferation inhibition and apoptosis-oriented effects of small mimic-peptide on prostate cancer cells.Methods Small mimic-peptides were synthesized with solid phase peptide synthesis,whose cellular localization was then observed with laser confocal microscopy.After the prostate cancer cells were treated with peptide of different concentrations,the effects of small mimic-peptide on the proliferation and apoptosis were detected with MTT assay,Hoechst staining and flow cytometry.Results Confocal laser test showed that small mimic-peptide could enter cells,but did not show a specific aggregation of organelles.MTT chromatometry showed that the proliferation inhibition of small mimic-peptide on LNCap and PC-3 cells had concentration dependence and time dependence(high concentration small mimic-peptide).Obvious apoptosis was found in LNCap and PC-3 cells treated with high concentrations(200 μg/mL) of small mimic-peptide after 48 hours,and the same effects could be detected with flow cytometric analysis.Conclusion The proposed small mimic-peptide can efficiently induce apoptosis in prostate cancer cells,which may provide a new biological treatment for prostate cancer.


The article considers the relationship between digital entrepreneurship and digital risks, and analyzes the factors that influence digitalization on digital risks.


Cross field heat and particle transport due to the thermally excited convective cell mode is investigated both by theoretical work and by particle simulations. A parameter range exists where the heat diffusion coefficient is considerably less than the particle diffusion coefficient. This comes from the fact that high energy particles in a velocity distribution diffuse much more slowly than the low energy particles, because the fluctuating electric fields are averaged out over their finite Larmor radii. A velocity dependent diffusion coefficient is obtained by a simple theory, together with an estimate of the heat diffusion coefficient. Good agreement with the simulation results is obtained. The magnetic field scaling of heat diffusion/particle diffusion coefficients is also discussed. The results imply that ions in a thermonuclear reactor should be less affected by turbulence than are electrons, as appears to be the case.


The book review traces the history of the parallel histories of cinematic apparatus and the industry of fashion as a popular culture of urban modernity. The essay describes the concept of the cinematic apparatus in ways that can be useful for fashion design. The review analyses the significance of Haiers new approach to fashion studies and suggests that the concept of Fashion Thinking is ready to be introduced to academic and scholarly practices.
This concept was then developed in Pajaczkowska's 'Making Known' in The Handbook of Textiles Culture (eds Jefferies,J & Clark, H. London & NYC, Bloomsbury, 2015)
The concept of Fashion Thinking articulates the integration between creative practice and analysis of fashion, with adjacent disciplines of film and popular culture.


Peter Chandler describes the contents of the EU's impending Pressure Equipment Directive and what it will mean to companies supplying pressure equipment into Europe.


This paper describes the use of Meteor Scatter (also known as Meteor Burst) telemetry in hydrometeorological data collection network. The system presented is intended for the transmission of hydrometeorological data as short messages from a network of Automatic Remote Stations to a Central Data Collection Station. The Meteor Scatter telemetry uses ionized meteor trails burning in the earth's atmosphere to reflect or reradiate VHF radio signals between two points up to distances of 2000 km (1250 miles). No repeater stations are required between the two points. Advantages of the method include independence from external agencies in operation, one Central Station to cover an area with a diameter of 4000 km (2500 miles), easy network formation, low probability of data interception and automated data collection. Relevant factors in network planning and implementation are studied. These include Central and Remote Station design features. A typical Automatic Remote Data Collection Station consists of the hydrological data collection equipment, power supply, telemetry terminal and 6-element Yagi antenna. The operational experience from existing networks and test links is described. General Description of Meteor Scatter Telemetry System A Meteor Scatter telemetry system is basicly a VHF radio link capable of transmitting digitally coded information up to a distance of 2000 km. The communication range of conventional VHF links is limited to the line of sight since the electro-magnetic waves of these frequencies propagate straightforward and do not bend to areas beyond the horizon. The Meteor Scatter telemetry uses ionized meteor trails as reflectors for the transmitted radio signal. Due to the nature of meteors this communication path is usually available for very short periods at a time. Therefore the information intended to be transmitted has to be sliced into relatively small blocks. At the receiving end the complete message is reconstructed from the separate blocks. This basic property of all Meteor Scatter telemetry systems sets special requirements to the communication software in order to achieve the maximum use of available meteor trails. A typical application of Meteor Scatter telemetry is collection of environmental parameters from remote sites to a Central Station where the data is stored and analyzed. Current operating Meteor Scatter systems transmit data such as wind speed and direction, air temperature, humidity and pressure, solar radiation, water level, water temperature and water conductivity. The largest network implemented so far is SNOTEL which is owned by the United States Department of Agriculture. The SNOTEL network contains over 500 Remote Stations measuring accumulated snow, precipitation and air temperature. These parameters are collected daily. Data can be collected more frequently if needed. VAISALA has implemented a Meteor Scatter network in which four Remote Stations measuring water con-


Propellant Mass Fraction (pmf) calculation methods vary throughout the aerospace industry. While typically used as a means of comparison between competing launch vehicle designs, the actual pmf calculation method varies slightly from one entity to another. It is the purpose of this paper to present various methods used to calculate the pmf of a generic launch vehicle. This includes fundamental methods of pmf calculation which consider only the loaded propellant and the inert mass of the vehicle, more involved methods which consider the residuals and any other unusable propellant remaining in the vehicle, and other calculations which exclude large mass quantities such as the installed engine mass. Finally, a historic comparison is made between launch vehicles on the basis of the differing calculation methodologies.


Young people are stepping forward and engaging in or leading programs promoting climate action and sustainability. To optimize program outcomes, it is important to understand the nature of these programs, as well as their successes and enablers. Consequently, a scoping review was conducted across six databases, Taylor and Francis, Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, Sage and Wiley, to examine existing programs that promote climate change action amongst young people aged 12 to 25 years. The review sought to determine what is known about these programs and their outcomes by documenting what elements contribute to successful behavior changes in young people. Forty-eight articles were included in the review, with almost half of the studies from the United States. Eight elements recurred throughout the reviewed journal articles including intersecting external and internal factors contributing to reported behavior change. External factors included the social environment, place, knowledge, leadership and goal setting development that fostered internal factors that included, self-efficacy, identity, agency and action competence, and systems thinking. Learning from these programs to improve design and ensure sustainable outcomes is key to improving the capabilities of young people to continue responding to the climate challenge.


A study was conducted to investigate selected inorganic, anti-nutritional factor and pro-vitamin "A" contents of the aromatic spices of the wild Abyssinian thyme aerial parts. Different aerial parts of the plant were considered for the experiments. The mineral content, anti-nutritional and pro-vitamin"A" value of the plant parts was analyzed using AOAC (2000). Mineral contents such as iron (Fe), zinc (Zn), calcium (Ca), copper (Cu) and magnesium (Mg) were determined by Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer and Condensed tannin, total phenolic content, carotenoids, beta carotene and retinol equivalent vit "A" were determined by UV/vis Spectrophotometer and  the data were analyzed by SAS software version 9.1. The results revealed that Abyssinian thyme herb aerial parts (F, L & W) contained Zinc (9.19, 9.01 and 8.36 mg/100 g); Iron (0.022, 0.0022 and 0.012 mg/100 g), copper (0.038, 0.054 and 0.045 mg/100 g), Magnesium (2.47, 2.32 and 2.1 mg/g ) and Calcium (392, 379.5, and 355.3 mg/g), respectively.  They contained condensed tannin (0.2, 0.4 and 0.9 µg/mL), total phenolic content (0.5, 0.2 and 0.3 µg/mL) of anti-nutritional factors, respectively. Furthermore, they contained carotenoids (59.6, 68.7 and 63.0 IU), beta carotene (119.5, 137 and 126.7 IU) and retinol equivalent (239.5, 274.8 and 252 IU) of pro-vit "A", respectively. Among the minerals in Abyssinian thyme herb aerial parts calcium is the highest in the flower part and the lowest was in the whole thyme aerial parts, the least of the five minerals is the iron and copper. None  of the mineral contents were highest for the whole plant. From the wild Abyssinian thyme aerial parts the  flower had highest total phenolic content and the leaf had the lowest and data shows that the whole thyme plant had the highest condensed tannin content from the three aerial parts wild Abyssinian thyme spice. Keywords : zinc, Thyme, Iron, condensed tannin, Carotenoids


Nanomaterials are widely used in modern technologies due to their unique properties. Developing methods for their production is one of the most important scientific problems. In this review, the advantages of electrochemical methods for synthesis in molten salts of nanostructured coatings and nanomaterials for different applications were discussed. It was determined that the nanostructured Mo2C coatings on a molybdenum substrate obtained by galvanostatic electrolysis have a superior catalytic activity for the water-gas shift reaction. The corrosion-resistant and wear-resistant coatings of refractory metal carbides on steels were synthesized by the method of currentless transfer. This method also was used for the production of composite carbon fiber/refractory metal carbide materials, which are efficient electrocatalysts for the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. The possibility to synthesize GdB6 nanorods and Si and TaO nanoneedles by potentiostatic electrolysis was shown.


ABSTRACT This article explores the perspectives of 10 White British girls eligible for Free School Meals as they transfer from English primary to secondary schools. Having identified the discourses relevant to the girls at transition – good girl, girl power, hyper-femininity, authenticity, 'challenges at home', 'friends as family' and standards – the article uses Foucault to theorise these examples, reflecting on the complexity of associated power, resistance and resilience. The article continues by drawing on the multiplicity of resistance to these discourses to identify the girls' developing intrinsic strengths, and argues that these should be used both a starting point and a structure for supporting them through discourse negotiation at secondary transition and beyond.


Ramanujan is one of the prominent Indo-Anglican Poets. Some critics consider him to be one of the three great Indo-Anglican poets, the other two being Nissim Ezekiel and Kamala Das. Ramanujan's poetry is largely autobiographical and thought-provoking. The themes Ramanujan considers in his poetry are limited in scope, but some other passages of his poetry largely compensate for that inadequacy. Inversely important as a theme in Ramanujan's poetry is his Hindu heritage. Ramanujan has shown a sharp and intense textual sensitivity in his poetry. Ramanujan is one of the most competent and professed craftsmen in Indo-Anglican poetry. Among the silent features of Ramanujan's poetry is its cerebral literalism. His poetry abounds in boons of world and expression. Ramanujan generally writes in free verse without the importance of punctuation, but he does relatively frequently introduce rhyme and assonance into his poems. Another striking point of Ramanujan's poetry is the ascendance in it of irony. Irony too is a device that is employed by nearly every Indo-Anglican poet, but Ramanujan makes use of this device in nearly every poem. Ramanujan's poetry contains distinctive and distinguishable imagery from the imagery of other Indo-Anglican Poets.


Ceratocystis fimbriata is one of the most important pathogens of woody plants in the world. This fungus is also a serious pathogen of Eucalyptus species in various countries and has recently been reported from wounds on these trees in South Africa. Inoculation studies have shown that the fungus can cause disease on Eucalyptus spp. in South Africa, although trees dying in the field due to infection have never been encountered. The origin of C. fimbriata in South Africa is unknown, but there is some phylogenetic evidence that the fungus has a Latin American origin. In this study, microsatellite markers specifically designed for C. fimbriata were used to analyse the population diversity of 80 C. fimbriata isolates from Eucalyptus trees in South Africa. Analyses showed a low gene diversity (H = 0.36) and the population was found to be predomi- nantly clonal (IA = 0.95, P < 0.0001). The genotypic diversity was high (GST = 0.99) and the maximum genotypic diversity was very low (1.23%). These data provide good evidence that C. fimbriata has been introduced into South Africa.


A leishmaniasis is a group of diseases attributable to protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania. It is a potential disease mostly occurring in developing nations. Various quinoline substituted derivatives (11a-f, 12a-f, and 13a-f) were synthesized by refluxing amino quinolines with an equivalent number of different alkylaminoethyl chlorides and evaluated for their in vitro antileishmanial activity against promastigotes forms of Leishmania donovani by using MTT [3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl tetrazolium bromide] reduction assay. Compounds 11f (IC50 = 13.61μg/mL), 12f (IC50 = 11.92 μg/mL) and 13f (IC50 =10.41 μg/mL) have shown significant antileishmanial activity when compared with standard sitamaquine (IC50= 10.09 μg/mL). Furthermore, the molecular docking analysis targeting adenine phosphoribosyltransferase of Leishmania donovani exhibits significant binding interactions. In silico, ADMET predictions revealed that these compounds, i.e., 11f, 12f, and 13f, demonstrated good absorption as well as solubility characteristics with good drug-likeness and drug score values compared to the standard drug.


Automatic guided vehicle (AGV), a tool that is often used in the industrial world as an automatic vehicle to transport materials from the pick-up point to the delivery point. designing automated robots, and can be controlled remotely is a solution to simplify work in the industrial world. In this study, the AGV robot can be controlled using wireless communication and can perform task requests to the robot remotely, with tests that have been carried out the test room area is about 40 meters, although in the test there is a delay when making requests and not connecting, and it is obtained the average delay is about 1.8 seconds for remote robot control. And for the problem of localization and navigation of automated guided robots, the method of adjacency matrix representation is used to design the basis for mapping the path of the AGV robot. Then to complete the mapping task on the robot path, a radio frequency identification (RFID) Point tag is used as a robot navigation guide. From the test results, the robot can run and detect the RFID Tag point address properly.


Studies have shown that trauma in battered women might affect neural responses during emotional processing tasks. Being intimate partner violence (IPV) a major problem in Colombia nowadays, this research seeks to contribute the understanding, in a broad way, of the biological effect of violence against women. This paper describes a pilot study conducted to analyze emotional neurophysiological response in women who had experienced IPV. Participants assessed different pictures from the International Affective Pictures System (IAPS) through the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) technique. EEG data were recorded and analyzed in the frequency domain to observe interhemispheric asymmetries in the alpha and beta bands. The SAM results show differences in the arousal dimension between the two groups of women, suggesting a different interpretation in those with history of IPV. For the valence dimension the results were not conclusive. EEG signals show evidence of asymmetries, varying according to the valence dimension, especially in the frontal area, correlated with the SAM results and IAPS normative values.


MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. Attitude Measures: Communication (Thought Transfer) : *Cost Effectiveness: *Ethics: Expectation: *Feedback; Moral Values: *Psychological Studies; Questionnaires: *Research Methodology: *Student Attitudes: Volunteers Researchers and the committees established for the protection of research participants are obliged to consider the ratio of ethical costs to benefits when making decisions about whether a studN should be conducted. Preand post-questionnaires were administered to students part:cipating in reserach projects to assess their opinions concerning psychological research, researcher truthfulness, and willingness to participate as a subject in research prolects. The post-questionnaire also assessed the number of experiments in which a participant reported experiencing specified costs or benefits. Results indicated that negative opinion change was associated with being informed of deception and with suspecting deception. Demonstration of the negative impact of deception, even in a benign research environment, emphasizes the importance of minimizing unnecessary deception in research with student participants. fAuthor/CS) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDPS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH. EDUCATION a WELFARE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRODUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION ORIGINATING IT POINTS Or viE'n OR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRESENT OFFICIAL NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY /,--, 7 /7/2 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI;'s Costs and Benefits of Research and Participant Opinion Change Neill Watson College of William and Mary Richard M. Bloch College of William and Mary and Eastern State Hospital Running Head: Costs and Benefits Presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Montreal, September, 1980. Costs and Benefits 2 Costs and Benefits of Research and Participant Opinion Change In order to protect participants in reseorch from potential harm, the American Psychological Association has adopted ethical principles for the conduct of research (APA, 1973). According to these principles, every decision to conduct research with human participants involves an ethical dilemma: Do the benefits of the research outweigh, or at least equal, the costs of the research? Individual researchers and the committees established for the protection of participants are ethically obligated to consider the ratio of costs to benefits in making decisions about whether a study should be conducted. The revision of the Ethical Standards for Research with Human Subjects (APA, 1973) prompted several writers to call for empirical research on costs and benefits, considering such data an important aid in making decisions about ethical dilemmas in designing research procedures (Berscheid, Baron, Dermer, & Libman, 1973; Committee on Ethical Standards, 1971, 1972; and Gergen, 1973). The present study is concerned with identifying costs and benefits of research participation associated with opinion change of participants in a program of research conducted by a university psychology department. The results of the study could aid the department researchers and ethics committee in implementing procedures that minimize the costs and maximize the benefits of research participation. A number of previous studies have investigated costs and benefits of research participation. Among the studies that have addressed costs, the Costs and Benefits 3 cost that has received the most attention is the use of deception. Carlson (1971), Levenson, Gray, and Ingram (1976), and Seeman (1969) have found a continuing high frequency of the use of deception in research, thus highlighting the importance of assessing the effects of deception on participants. Evidence of the negative effects of deception has been found in a few experiments. Wilson and Donnerstein (1976) obtained unfavorable ratings of research procedures involving deception. Silverman, Schulman, and Wiesenthal (1970) found that participants in deception experiments tend to present themselves in a favorable manner in later experiments. Findings by Gruder, Stumpfhauser, and Wyer (1977) suggest that the use of deception may have the result that participants no longer believe what experimenters say. In contrast to the studies cited thus far, Bickman and 7arantonello (1978) found no effect of the use of deception on ratings of the harmfulness of the experiments to the participants. The finding by Straits, Wuebben, and Majka (1972) that the use of deception negatively affects personal value ratings of experiments only if the cover story is obviously false suggests that the effects of deception vary with how the deception is conducted. In a study concerned with whether debriefing will eliminate negative effects of deception, Waister, Berscheid, Abrahams, and Aronson (1967) found that false feedback about participants' personalities affected their self-ratings even after debriefing, though the effect disappeared in a few minutes. In summary, the findings suggest that the use of deception can have negative effects, and that debriefing may not eliminate negative effects. 4 Costs and Benefits 4 Invasion of privacy, another cost associated with psychological research (Kelman, 1977), has been the subject of only a little empirical research. Abramson (1977) found no negative effects o research on sexual experiences in a study that employed anonymous questionnaires and careful debriefing. Farr and Seaver (1975) found that research procedures involving invasion of privacy were rated as lest-. threatening to participants than procedures involving psychological or physical stress. There is additional evidence of negative effects of research procedures that employ psychological or physical stress. In a study of psychological stress, Glasgow, Sadowski, and Davis (1977) found that the scientific value of an experiment was a more significant factor in judgments of the ethicality of the experimental procedures when psychological stress was involved than when it was not employed. Ring, Wallston, and Corey (1970) found that debriefing reduced participants' feelings of regret in a replication of the Milgram experiment, a finding that suggests that the negative effects of psychological stress can be decreased ti-rough debriefing. In a study of physical stress, Berscheid et. al (1973) found that debriefing did not eliminate the negative effect on participants' willingness to participate when participants complied with instructions for a physically harmful procedure. The present literature review located research on only one benefit associated with research participation: the scientific value of the experiment. Glasgow et al.'s (1977) results indicate that :udgments of the ethicality of an experiment are influenced by its scientific value. The research evidence that has been reviewed has important implications Costs and Benefits 5 for estimating the significance of costs and benefits associated with psychological research. However, with the exception of the Ring et al. (1970) study, none of the research has been conducted in actual research situations. Most of the studies used descriptions of experiments or simulated participation to obtain data. Though the studies are high in internal validity, their external validity, the generalizability of the results to actual research situations, is problematic. The present study is an assessment of costs and benefits associated with participant opinion change in a large program of ongoing research. Significant results will have direct implications for changes in the conduct of this program of research. To the extent that the results of the present correlational field study corroborate the findings of previous experimental findings, we can be more confident that both types of studies have identified costs and benefits that have positive or negative effects on research participants in vivo. The work of Berscheid et al. (1973) and a preliminary survey by the authors (Bloch & Watson, Note 1) have demonstrated the utility of multiple criteria for assessing the impact of costs and benefits on participants. The current study thus employs multiple outcome criteria to investigate the relationships between several costs and benefits of research participation and opinion change in participants. As in many psychology departments, students in Introductory Psychology are encouraged to participate in experiments as part of the educational process. Students are allowed to write a short paper rather than participate in experiments if they prefer. The department in which the research was conducted attempts to follow the principles for the conduct of research set forth by the American Psychological Association 6 Costs and Benefits 6 (1973). A departmental research ethics committeE,, under the aegis of an institution-wide research ethics committee, reviews all research proposals and determines whether the research satisfies the APA's ethical guidelines. At the beginning of the spring semester, 1979, a total of 491 students in two sections of Introductory Psychology were given a questionnaire asking for their opinions of psychological research, researcher truthfulness, and for a racing of their willingness to voluntil-ily participate in research. Decreases in any of these items is a cost of research which is the ethical responsibility of investigators to minimize3 according to A.P.A. Ethical Principles. For the items on willingness to volunteer and opinion of psychological research each subject was asked to circle one of fig' possible choices for each, ranging from very willing or very high opinion to very unwi


If there is one issue that sets the agenda in architecture at the moment, it is sustainability: "green" building. The very term green building almost inevitably turns into a debate about what makes a building "green" and how you measure it. That's one of the reasons awards like this month's AfriSam-SAIA Awards for Sustainable Architecture + Innovation are so interesting and important. Since the awards' inception, the criteria have become more complex as our architectural responses to the issue have become more diverse and complex.


Objective: To compare the anti-inflammatory effects of berberine and dexamethasone in ovalbumin sensitized guinea pigs. Methods: This experimental controlled study was conducted in April, 2016 at Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lahore. Twenty- four healthy guinea pigs were selected for study. Six of these were assigned randomly in each group; normal control, ovalbumin (OVA) sensitized, berberine treated and dexamethasone treated groups. Airway inflammation was induced on day 0 and 14 by OVA injections via peritoneal route and by inhalation on 25th, 26th and 27th day in each group excluding the normal control. Berberine (1.8 mg/kg) and dexamethasone (20 mg/kg) were introduced via peritoneal route 30 minutes earlier to each trial in berberine treated and dexamethasone treated groups respectively. Results: Total leukocyte count (TLC) in blood sample of berberine treated group (9990±1346 mm3) and dexamethasone treated group (9054±1432 mm3) was significantly low than OVA sensitized group (14261±3151 mm3). TLC of broncho-alveolar lavage (BAL) fluid in berberine treated group (384±26 mm3) and dexamethasone treated group (306±86) mm3 was significantly low than OVA sensitized group (598±110 mm3). Eosinophil percentage in blood of berberine treated (21.50±3.08) and dexamethasone treated (13.33±5.65) groups were significantly low than OVA sensitized group (30.33±6.74), while eosinophil percentage in BAL fluid was 26.00±6.69 and 21.00±7.46 in berberine treated and dexamethasone treated groups respectively with significant difference from OVA sensitized group value of 40.00±7.79. Conclusion: Berberine and dexamethasone both had reduced TLC and eosinophil percentage in both blood and BAL fluid as compared to OVA sensitized group but berberine is less effective than dexamethasone. Keywords: berberine, dexamethasone, asthma, airway inflammation How to cite: Zaidi T.S., Kausar R., Malik M., Sarfraz J., Shafiq A., Chiragh S. Comparison of berberine and dexamethasone on blood and bronchial inflammatory cells of ovalbumin sensitized guinea pigs. Esculapio 202;17(01):34-38


We conducted a survey experiment to estimate how potential Democratic nominees for Vice President (Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Susan Rice, Tammy Duckworth, Keisha Lance Bottoms, Tammy Baldwin, and Val Demings) can be expected to be evaluated in the context of the 2020 general election. To do so, we randomly assigned survey respondents information about the candidates using vignettes that distill the dominant narratives (both pro- and con-) surrounding the candidate. We show that the vignettes tend to equalize favorability ratings across candidates, though in general the lesser-known candidates do not fully catch up to the more well-known candidates. In the control condition emulating standard polling methodologies, the candidates viewed most favorably are Warren and Harris, with 46/100 average favorability, followed by Abrams at 43, and the remainder at 42 or below. In the treatment condition where respondents have been exposed to information, the candidates viewed most favorably are Harris (46), Warren (45), and Bottoms (45), followed by Duckworth, Rice, and Abrams, all at 44. While we fail to find statistically significant effects of the vignettes on reported vote intention, the results for vote intention substantively agree with those for favorability.


We studied the effects of double injection by a single nozzle on fuel consumption and noise level of a single cylinder 4-stroke direct injection diesel engine. It was observed that, within a certain range of fuel quantity of pilot injection, the combustion noise was reduced considerably. This range of the fuel quantity depends on the timing of the pilot injection. In view of the fuel consumption, it was found desirable to inject pilot fuel at the end of exhaust stroke of the previous cycle or just before the main injection. Furthermore, a thermodynamic analysis was made to explain qualitatively the mechanism of the effects of pilot injection.


The academic discipline of marketing faces concerns of relevance, which scholars ignore at their peril. These concerns evolve from three sources: (1) theoretical disregard of the majority of people in favor of a narrow, affluent socioeconomic subset; (2) languages of research and practice that dehumanize people with whom marketers engage and exchange; and (3) paradigmatic constructs that eliminate systemic realities and challenges from consideration. Consequently, most theories and practices strip away people's heterogeneity in favor of simplistic ways of measuring success. In this article, the authors argue that this situation demands a new paradigm to guide public policy and marketing scholars. These new perspectives advocate the theoretical understanding of people through bioeconomic exchange and recognize that the ability to market brings societal responsibilities beyond the limited efforts to date. Furthermore, measures of success must integrate what marketing does, how it is done, and what it fails to do so that scholars and policy makers can fully comprehend its larger impact.


Continual real time data acquisition,which provides sufficient and detailed condition and fault information,is vital for condition monitoring.Based on the low-cost and steady-capability DOS(disk operation system) circumstance,two key technologies about the realization of continual real time data acquisition are introduced.One is DMA(direct memory access) and the other is two-buffer technology.Skillfully using these two technologies will enhance the coordination of CPU(center processing unit) and DMAC(DMA controller),which enables the accessibility of continual real time data acquisition in the DOS circumstance.


Theories in calculation of electromagnetic parameters of composite are introduced with the requirement, limitation,etc.And the method and formula of effective medium theory are introduced emphatically.Moreover the present research on calculation of electromagnetic parameters of composite at home and abroad is summarised and reviewed.


Most current approved or investigational immunotherapeutic approaches for head and neck squamous cell carcinoma are aimed at activating T cells. The majority of patients receiving such immunotherapy do not demonstrate durable tumor remission.


Background: The Scrub Practitioners' List of Intraoperative NonTechnical Skills (SPLINTS) system is a new tool for training and assessing scrub practitioner behaviours during surgical operations. Method: Experienced scrub practitioners (n = 34) attended a single day session where they received background training in human factors and nontechnical skills and were trained to use the SPLINTS system. They then rated the scrub practitioners' nontechnical skill performance in seven videorecorded simulated scenarios and completed a posttraining questionnaire. Results: Withingroup agreement for all three skill categories, and for six of the nine elements, was acceptable (r wg >.70). Participants could use SPLINTS to accurately score performance compared with expert ratings and were within one scale point of expert ratings in > 90% of skill categories and elements. There was good internal consistency between elements and their categories (M<.2 of a scale point) and participants reported that the system was complete. Conclusion: The SPLINTS system was deemed adequately reliable, for rating scrub practitioners' nontechnical skills, using standardized filmed scenarios. Usability of the SPLINTS system in the real operating theatre environment is still to be assessed.


In this paper the expression $(1 - \gamma + zf^{\prime \prime}(z)/f^{\ prime}(z))/(zf^{\prime}(z)/f(z))$ is investigated as a condition for starlikeness and starlikeness of order α. In that purpose two different methods are used: one based on the Jack lemma and another based on a result by Miller, Mocanu and Reade about an integral operator that preserves subordination. Results obtained by both methods together with some previous results by Silverman and Tuneski are compared in the cases of γ = 0 and γ = 1.


The last decade has seen an explosion of research in network controllability. The present article reviews some basic concepts, significant progress, important results and recent advances in the studies of the controllability of networked linear dynamical systems, regarding the relationship of the network topology, node-system dynamics, external control inputs and inner dynamical interactions with the controllability of such complex networked dynamical systems. Different approaches to analyzing the network controllability are evaluated. Some advanced topics on the selection of driver nodes, optimization of network controllability and control energy are discussed. Potential applications to real-world networked systems are also described. Finally, a near-future research outlook is highlighted.


Has been conducted isolation of essential oil from Curcuma domestica. The separation of essential oil was conducted with steam distillation. The characteristic of essential oil were tested with gas
 chromatography, and determination of the specific gravity and refractive index. Thereafter the structures were identified with mass spectrometry. The experimental result showed that the components
 of essential oil of Curcuma domestica was: alfa-felandrene, cineol, zingiberene, beta-sesquifelandren, tumeron, spiro-4,4-nona-1,6-diene.


Two plots with different slopes were selected for seed rain test in Liaotong oak (Quercus liaotungensis) forest in Dongling Mountain region of Beijing. The characteristics of seed bank and the population of rodents in the two plots were conducted from mid-Aogust. to the beginning of October. 2000. Results showed that the seed rain of Liaodong oaks continued about 40 days. The characteristics of the seed rain in two plots paralleled well and most seeds fell in mid-September, but the seed productivity were different in the two plots. Twenty-four traps above ground and twenty small plots on ground(about 0.5m~(2)) were randomly located in each plot. Significant difference in the seed crop size was found between traps in the air and on the ground in the two plots, yet no significant difference was found in number of cups and acorns inside the traps. Our results indicated that birds showed little impact on the seed bank of oak in this area, but rodents showed a heany impact on the seed bank. Four species of rodents, Apodemus peninsulae, Niviventer confucianus, Clethrionomys rufocanus and Eutamias sibiricus might contribute to the ground seed dispersal. The dominant species Apodemus peninsulae which accounts for 77.2 % of the community might have the most important impact on seed dispersal.


In this paper, a modification is made to the ductile damage model proposed by the present author in order to characterize the crack initiation in pre-cracked specimens. Two approaches are proposed in order to reflect the effect of the micro-structural characteristic size of material. The tested material is German steel StE 690. The pre-cracked three-point-bending and center cracked uni-axial tensile specimens are studied. For the former the relative crack length varies from 0.1 to 0.5 and latter from 0.65 to 0.85. According to the ductile damage theory, a characteristic parameter a is calculated for each specimen tested until the onset of crack initiation with the definite mesh size that depends on the characteristic size of the microstructure of material. The results show that the parameter a approximates to an invariable, which is independent of the geometry of the specimen and the loading type. Furthermore, the results indicate the rationality of this parameter to characterize the onset of crack initiation in a pre-cracked specimen.


We propose a closed-loop, multi-instance control algorithm for visually guided reaching based on novel learning principles. A control Lyapunov function methodology is used to design a reaching action for a complex multi-instance task in the case where full state information (poses of all potential reaching points) is available. The proposed algorithm uses monocular vision and manipulator joint angles as the input to a deep convolution neural network to predict the value of the control Lyapunov function (cLf) and corresponding velocity control. The resulting network output is used in real-time as visual control for the grasping task with the multi-instance capability emerging naturally from the design of the control Lyapunov function.We demonstrate the proposed algorithm grasping mugs (textureless and symmetric objects) on a table-top from an over-the-shoulder monocular RGB camera. The manipulator dynamically converges to the best-suited target among multiple identical instances from any random initial pose within the workspace. The system trained with only simulated data is able to achieve 90.3% grasp success rate in the real-world experiments with up to 85Hz closed-loop control on one GTX 1080Ti GPU and significantly outperforms a Pose-Based-Visual-Servo (PBVS) grasping system adapted from a state-of-the-art single shot RGB 6D pose estimation algorithm. A key contribution of the paper is the inclusion of a first-order differential constraint associated with the cLf as a regularisation term during learning, and we provide evidence that this leads to more robust and reliable reaching/grasping performance than vanilla regression on general control inputs.


Taking an international, current, changing and political point of view, this article analyses the dialectical relationship between the idea of sustained development and scientific education, conformity and novelty, ideal and practice, political education and civil education. It briefly discusses the rise of the trends of thought and the movement of life long education in the 20th century, its development, basic views, practice areas, scientific basis, technical support and implementation ways.


Software Requirements Specifications (SRS) have been used to fill the communication gap between systems analysts and the end‐users. SRSs should satisfy the needs of both systems analysts and end‐users. Non‐technical end‐users require intelligible SRSs while systems analysts need more precise, clear and concise SRSs. Object‐oriented methods cannot represent temporal relations between events precisely. However, object‐oriented principles are widely used in systems analysis and designing. Hence, there is a need for a software requirements specification language which supports object‐oriented analysis methods, represents temporal knowledge precisely and whose representation scheme resembles natural languages. The specification language presented in this paper, GSL, is designed to meet the above requirements. The language is based on First‐order Temporal Logic (FTL), which has temporal operators in addition to classical logical connectives and quantifiers. Since FTL cannot represent relative temporal knowledge and it inherits problems with point‐based time models, a new logical connective TAND and redefined AND connective are used to represent relative temporal knowledge and to solve the problems with FTL. The language employs object‐oriented principles: events, conditions, rules and activities can be represented as objects as well as attributes of an object. However, systems analysts can decide whether to use object‐oriented conceptual modeling or not. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The development of the information security system of the enterprise is under consideration. The increase of the security level of the local network in the construction of a full-featured demilitarized zone is analyzed. Deploying servers in demilitarized zone on virtual machines allows damaged virtual server is restored from the backup within a few minutes; adherence to the principle of "one virtual machine - one service" allows you to keep the serviceability of other services when one of them was attacked. The principles of building a set of firewall rules are proposed. The architecture of the firewall rules allows making changes to specific segments of the rules that solve the corresponding tasks, excluding interference in other segments of the rules.


A case of hairy-cell leukaemia was observed in a man aged 40 years. The diagnosis was based on the whole of clinical investigations and laboratory investigations, especially cytoenzymatic examination of leukaemic cells and examination of their structure in electron microscope. In treatment radiotherapy was appleid initially followed by splenectomy.


This paper aims to illustrate the effective methods of quantitative evaluation of the leakage and fire hazards in an oil tank farm, in hoping to produce better effective quantitative evaluations where atmospheric diffusion model and pool-fire model are used. As a matter of fact, crude oil and refined (or product) oil are plenty in the oil tank farms. At any unexpected accidents, it is likely to cause disastrous damage once the leakage took place in a large scale. Seeing the severe nature of the hazards, the state law in China mandates safety evaluations of the oil tank farms. In the process of safety evaluation, all kinds of likely hazards in the oil tank farm district should be identified and analyzed. Most accidents arising in the district of oil tank farm are relevant with leakage or fire hazards, which may bring about serious threatening risks to the operating personnel and equipment. It is generally agreed that various weather factors account for the atmospheric diffusion model, resulting in the basic leakage situations of the oil tank. Besides, the pool fire model can quantitatively solve a set of governing equations of the pool fire due to the oil delivery pipe or the loading-platform in the farm. Since the calculative processes are somewhat complex, many factors in the two models account for the likely risks deduced by same parameters, such as diffusion coefficients of three directions in the model of atmospheric diffusion. Then, the evaluation may help to forecast the poison substance concentration under the condition of basic leakage situation and the thermal radiation flux of pool fire in the different districts of the oil tank farm. Referring to the relative safety standards, safety regions and danger regions can be marked out. The above data can be used to report the safety evaluation and give useful instructions to minimize the accident probability and reduce the loss and damage caused by the accidents.


Ions of residual gases in vacuum tubes are responsible for oscillations. These oscillations affect the electromagnetic oscillation in those tubes. Thus both the breadth and concentration of output spectrum from crossed-field systems are of interest. The theoretical study was backed up by experimental tests.


In recent years, unconventional emergencies have occurred frequently in China, which have seriously threatened people's life and property safety. It is beneficial to analyze the scenario evolution of unconventional emergencies to grasp the focus of emergency management. In this paper, a questionnaire survey was conducted on a factory in the "5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake", and the accident was divided into four scenarios: ten minutes before the earthquake, during the earthquake and the escape process, the local self-rescue process, and the external rescue process. Social Network Analysis method is used to explore the scenario evolution law of unconventional emergencies, and relevant suggestions are made in combination with the rules.


Detection of spelling error is not so facile in Bangla. To check for real-world error in a sentence, it comes with more difficulties. In this paper, we focus on correcting homophone error in real-word error. We use N-gram Model which is used in many purposes like machine translation, speech recognition, to extract syntactic information etc. We have used a combination of Bi-gram and Tri-gram with candidate word which is going to be detected whether it is a real-word error or not. We have developed corpora which contain: (i) one of them is a collection of sets of homophone (confusing) word, (ii) another two are the collection of bigrams and trigrams using homophone word and (iii) other seven are the test sets. A candidate word extracts the set of homophone words from the corpus. In our proposed method, we create tri-gram and bigram using homophone word, then it checks the validity and takes the frequency of bi-gram or tri-gram, and finally calculates the probability for making the final decision about the candidate word. We have used around a million words to inspect our system. Our proposed method achieves more than 96% accuracy in detecting and correcting real-word errors of Bangla Text.


This work is a virtual catwalk animation based on modern urban diseases, consisting three themes: information leakage, social behavior alienation, and environmental degradation. Taking the catwalk as the form of presentation. This work aims to inspire people to focus on the Sustainable Development Goals by realizing the environmental damage.


This paper contributes to the economics of culture by introducing an instrument for individualism that is supported by economic theory. Extending a familiar model of risk sharing arrangements to incorporate optimal socialization decisions, I show that collectivist social ties are stronger in riskier environments. This result motivates the use of rainfall variation, a measure of exogenous agricultural risk, as an instrument for individualism. Using this variable and a measure of individualism from the World Values Survey, I find that rainfall variation reduces individualism. Moreover, I find that individualism has a large, statistically significant effect on economic development: a standard deviation increase in individualism causes per capita income nearly to triple. This result is robust to the inclusion of a variety of variables that control for potential correlations between rainfall variation and agricultural development, institutional quality, and cultural variation linked to religion and regional location.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
Methamphetamine (MA) is one of the most common addictive substances and has become the second most commonly used drug worldwide. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been shown to influence the effectiveness of addiction treatment, and there may be overlapping neurobiological mechanisms between OCD and addiction. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and clinical correlates of OCD among MA patients.

METHODS
A total of 457 MA patients were recruited, and clinical and demographic data were collected. The Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale was utilized for OCD symptoms, and the Obsessive-Compulsive Drug Use Scale was used for MA craving.

RESULTS
The prevalence of OCD among MA patients was 7.7%. Compared to those patients without OCD, patients with OCD had a longer length of abstinence and higher OCDUS frequency of craving subscale and total scores. Multiple regression showed that longer length of abstinence and higher MA carving were independently associated with OCD in MA patients.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
Chinese Han MA patients have a high prevalence of OCD. Some clinical parameters may be associated with OCD in MA patients.

SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE
This is the first study to examine the prevalence, sociodemographic and clinical correlates of OCD in MA patients in a Chinese Han population.


Idiopathic Condylar Resorption (ICR) has been frequently reported in patients undergoing orthodontic treatment especially in young adolescent females, so as dentists we could be the first ones to diagnose this condition. This condition represents an aggressive and fast-moving form of degenerative disease of the Temporomandibular Joint (TMJ) and the pathognomonic features of this condition include a deficit of condylar volume, furthermore reducing the ramus height and length of mandible and causing a clockwise rotation of the mandible leading to absence of anterior bite. The accurate cause of this condition is not known, however, there are multiple aetiological factors that could be contributing to this disease. ICR is a poorly understood disease and it could be a very difficult condition to treat because of its various expression and the large number of treatment options that are available. Over the past years a number of cases with ICR have been reported in the orthodontic literature. The aim of this review article is to present a compiled data to better understand the pathophysiology and aetiological factors contributing to ICR and provide an insight about the various clinical features and radiographic findings of this condition which will help us diagnose this condition better in our day-to-day practice. Various treatment modalities like splint therapy, orthognathic surgery, joint replacement have also been mentioned and discussed. A case of ICR that reported to our department with a chief complaint of progressive opening of the bite has also been included in this review article.


This type of comparative studies on the Prologue of John and the Preface of 1 John in terms of stylistic and structural analysis has not been properly paid attention to. Scholars have paid heed just to the surface level of comparison such as vocabularies and theological terms (or ideas), although not so few Johannine scholars have put much their focuses on studies of the Prologue`s structure. The value of the comparative study of both structures and styles of the Prologue and the Preface lies in 1) probably providing certain solution to the issue of authorship, 2) giving certain light upon the other part of study interactively or inter-relationally, if we can discern the specific authorial type of linguistic pattern in use, such as complex parallelism, based on the close connectivity between the Prologue and the Preface, 3) promoting the further continuous studies of the other Johannine texts besides the Prologue and the preface, grounded on the detected, specific patterns of structure or style. In this comparative study, the Prologue is determined to have certain resembled phenomena, in style and structure, with the Preface that shows the Johannine complex parallelisms, designing a stunning, poetic style of structure. Its complex chiastic structure of the Prologue, A(1-2)-B1(3-5)-C(6-8)-B2(9-11)-X(12-13)-B`2(14)-C`(15)-B`1(16-17)-A`(18), demonstrates convincingly that the text should not be interpreted simply in logical or successive order, but in complex-chiastic or inter-relational order. V. 1 needs to be interpreted in relation to v. 18, while vs. 3-5 in relation both to vs. 9-11 and vs. 16-17, v. 6-8 in relation to v. 15, and v. 14 in relation both to vs. 16-17 (or including v. 18) and to vs. 9-11, simultaneously.


Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the 4th leading cause of cancer-related death in the US, with a dismal 5-year relative survival rate of 8%, for all stages combined [1]. Surgical resection remains the mainstay of treatment but only 10-20% of the patients are candidates for curative surgery at the time of diagnosis [1,2] and 30-40% have Borderline Resectable Pancreatic Cancer or Locally advanced Pancreatic Cancer (LAPC) [2]. For resectable disease, an R0 resection is the goal of surgical extirpation, as a margin-positive resection is associated with poor prognosis [2,3]. There are restricted therapeutic options for patients with LAPC, which may include tumor ablation techniques as an adjunct to traditional chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgical resection. Such techniques may be additionally used in patients with severe comorbidities, such as cirrhosis, who are not able to tolerate major surgery [4,5]. Previous research showed that a rather new ablative modality called Irreversible Electroporation (IRE), which was performed in patients with PADC, is safe and feasible [6-8]. Moreover, IRE may be used for margin accentuation purposes in patients with LAPC who undergo resection, with promising results [9,10]. However, presently, concerns exist in relation to the complications and technical expertise and IRE is currently recommended to be performed only in the setting of clinical trials [11-13]. There is substantial variation in management preferences of LAPC, mainly on the contraindications to surgery and the propensity to consider exploration in LAPC. Of all available classifications (AHPBA/SSO/SSAT, MDACC, NCCN), NCCN seems to be superior in classifying patients as resectable and allowing the highest rates of R0 resection [14]. That is of paramount clinical importance, since recently NCCN guidelines were revised and extended the resectablity criteria in patients with LAPC in those with tumor contacting with most proximal draining jejunal branch into SMV and the unreconstructible SMV/PV due to tumor involvement or occlusion [15]. From a surgical/technical standpoint, these changes might change the surgical practice of LAPC management. A recent study from Japan showed that proximal dorsal jejunal vein involvement in patients with LAPC was not related to worse overall outcomes and actually pancreaticoduodenectomy with concomitant jejunal vein resection was not linked to worse morbidity and mortality rates (15.7 and 0.8% respectively) [16]. Of interest, the incidence of clinically remarkable jejunal congestion was very low (around 3%) [16,17]. Overall, we think that due to the advancements in neoadjuvant therapy as well as the technical advances in pancreatic surgery, the extension of the resectability criteria in LAPC is reasonable. Surgeons and medical oncologists should be aware of the recent changes in NCCN guidelines and adjust their practice accordingly.


The efficiency of ethoxy higher aliphatic amines as composite inhibitors of carbonic-acid and hydrogen-sulfide corrosion and hydrogen diffusion into carbonaceous steel in acid solutions were studied. The influence of the number of ethoxy groups (2, 5 and 14), the length of the hydrocarbon radical (R=C10–C13 and R=C17–C20), medium acidity (0.005 – 0.05 M HCl) and electrode potential was investigated.


Key Points Question What is the effect of radiation combined with immunotherapy in terms of survival in patients with non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) brain metastases after neurosurgical brain metastasis resection? Findings This comparative effectiveness study of 171 patients from a total cohort of 384 individuals with NSCLC brain metastases who had undergone neurosurgical brain metastasis resection found an association between improved median overall survival and subsequent radiation and immunotherapy compared with patients receiving radiation and platinum-based chemotherapy. Meaning These findings suggest that patients with resected NSCLC brain metastases may benefit from subsequent treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors; regular and rigorous interdisciplinary evaluation of these patients for combined radiation and immunotherapy following neurosurgical care is advised.


In this note we establish a relation between two exactly-solvable problems on circle, namely singular Coulomb and singular oscillator systems. In a recent paper [1] have constructed a series of complex mappings S 2 C → S 2 , S 4 C → S 3 and S 8 C → S 5 , which extend to spherical geometry the Levi-Civita, Kustaanheimo-Stiefel and Hurwitz transformations, well known for Euclidean space. We have shown that these transformations establish a correspondence between Coulomb and oscillator problems in classical and quantum mechanics for dimensions (2,2), (3,4) and (5,8) on the spheres. A detailed analysis of the real mapping on the curved space has been done in [2]. It was remarked that in the stereographic projection the relation between Coulomb and oscillator problems functionally coincide with the flat space Levi-Civita and Kustaanheimo-Stiefel transformations. The relation between the quasiradial Schr¨odinger equations for Coulomb and oscillator problems on the n -dimensional spheres and one- and two-sheeted hyperboloids for n ≥ 2 was found in the article [3]. The present note are devoted to two one-dimensional exactly-solvable potentials on circle


In the eleventh century, St. Anselm of Canterbury argued that the will possesses two competing affinities: an affection for what is to a person's own selfish advantage and an affection for justice. The first inclination may be stronger, but the second also matters. Equity theory, too, posits that in personal, social, and societal relationships, two concerns stand out: first, how much reward does a person reap from a given social relationship? Second, how fair and equitable is that relationship? According to equity theory, people feel most comfortable when their relationships are maximally profitable and they are giving and getting exactly what they deserve from their relationships – no more and certainly no less. In this review, we will begin by describing the classic equity paradigm and the supporting research. We will then review the history of equity research. In the 1960s and 1970s, scholars generally concentrated on testing Equity Theory's applicability to romantic, social, and business relationships. More recently, scholars have attempted to speculate about why people in almost all societies share a concern with social justice and equity. We close by predicting that the next stage in equity and social justice research, scholars will explore (1) who is to be included in the "moral community," (2) a commentary on the current political debate as to the ideal balance between personal interest and social justice, and (3) how governments, business, and social activists can best foster that ideal.


In the April 1978 issue of Pediatrics (61:534, 1978) Lewis and Lurie report the use of prostaglandin E1 (PGE,1) (Upjohn) infusion for 29 days in a small-for-gestational age, premature infant with severe tetralogy of Fallot. We have had a similar experience using an intermittent infusion of PGE1, for 18 days in a term infant with transposition of the great vessels and high pulmonary pressure after a balloon septostomy. In an effort to maintain patency of the ductus arteriosus and increased pulmonary blood flow, we began a peripheral infusion of PGE1 at a dose of 0.1 µg/kg/min (the same dose as used by Lewis and Lurie).


In contemporary ecumenism, papal encyclicals are read and assessed as ecumenical theological statements on matters of grave importance. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, released in April 2003, is penned by John Paul II and concerns itself with the Eucharist and its relationship to the Church. Since the day it was released, various initial reactions from different Christian churches have begun pouring in. Virtually all of these statements highlight what the respective denominations identify as the most critical as well as lamentable section: the pope's remarks on the longstanding ecumenical discourse on Eucharistic hospitality (or sharing). This article focuses on Ecclesia de Eucharistia for an ecumenical critique of the relevant statements around intercommunion as well as its impact on future ecumenical relations.


In recent decades, the significant contributions of small businesses to sustainable economic development of the various countries of the world have begun to receive tremendous attention from policymakers (cf. Cook & Nixson, 2000). Evidence abounds from a substantial body of literature (e.g., Ayyagari, Demirguc-Kunt, & Maksimovic, 2011; Ishengoma & Kappel, 2008) that small enterprises are the backbone of the global economy given their immense contributions to wealth creation, innovation, indigenous entrepreneurship, and all these together add up to sustainable economic development. In contrast, there is also a well-documented evidence to show that a substantial number of small businesses that operate in the global economy and particularly in emerging market-based economies are at the risk of being (completely) marginalized from the growing global marketplace as a result of their weak brand/market competitiveness (cf. Abimbola, 2001; Laukkanen et al., 2013; Osakwe, Chovancova, & Agu, 2015; Wong & Merrilees, 2005). To suggest that small businesses do not in any form engage implicitly and/or explicitly in a brand strategy would be a fallacy. However, relevant studies (e.g., Abimbola, 2001; Barbu, Ogarca, & Barbu, 2010) mention that a majority of small businesses have yet to come to the understanding of the strategic role that branding plays in today's marketplace that has increasingly become so "hyper-competitive" and commoditized. Consequently, for a small business to be able to compete and respond effectively to today's market pressure, it becomes increasingly more pertinent now than ever for a growth-aspiring small business to seek unique ways of crafting its business strategy around its brand-oriented norms and values--this is obviously the differentiating factor in today's marketplace (Aaker, 1991, 1996; Baumgarth, 2010; Kapferer, 2008). In fact, Urde (1994, 1999) in his seminal papers posits that brand orientation is a competitive strategic resource for survival in the business environment that has over the last decades or so been constantly driven by the forces of economic and social globalization indicators. Therefore, given the central role that brand orientation strategy plays in today's marketplace, the overriding goal of this study is to theorize and conceptualize a model that could be used by scholars and practitioners alike in understanding the contingent roles that certain organizational drivers and/or resources could possibly play in shaping the brand orientation strategy of small businesses, especially growth-aspiring small businesses in emerging economies. To this end, this paper explicates the critical roles that decision-making rationality, entrepreneurial capability, enterprise core values, market orientation, Internet technology orientation, and learning climate play as processual antecedents to brand orientation in the small businesses setting in light of the fact that today's marketplace has increasingly become more information-driven and "personalized" solution-oriented. Furthermore, I highlight the moderating effects of the twin foci of (limited) financial slack and structural capital in respectively attenuating and/or amplifying the relationship between the aforementioned strategic variables and the firm's brand orientation strategy. Accordingly, the research study adds significantly to our overall understanding of how brand orientation strategy can be effectively pursued by small businesses bearing in mind also that these enterprises have their own unique set-up and challenges. More so, I show through the conceptual framework, the likely outcomes of brand orientation strategy in a small business setting. Although, I do not discuss further on these likely outcomes since it is beyond the scope of the present study. Importantly, this study draws largely from previous studies, and more particularly through the theoretical lens of the resource-based theory (RBT) of the firm (Barney, 1991, Wernerfelt, 1984) along with the emergent research strand of brand orientation (see Baumgarth, 2010; Urde, 1994, 1999; Wong & Merrilees, 2005, and among others). …