more cosmopolitan society are of particular note. The theme of identity is important to understand not only people's attitudes, but also the role played by Portugal in international affairs. The reader also gets an insight to the Portuguese gender revolution paradox, where women are concomitantly the dominant figure in the household, but also a key breadwinner; in embracing the conciliation between work and family without guilt, in many ways Portuguese women have achieved what northern European women still grapple with, although this does not always signify equality. Finally, the volume identifies some of the key structural problems at the core of Portuguese development, such as a particularly poor education system and the lack of flexibility of the work force. Overall, despite its lack of coherence, this is a volume that provides for an insightful analysis of contemporary Portugal and its editor should be congratulated for presenting such as comprehensive collection. The volume is of particular use for the non-Portuguese expert, also providing access to very useful data on socio-economic indicators.


Information about the venues of research papers is useful for information retrieval and for automatic mining of the literature. Important to processing venue information is venue coreference, the task of determining which possibly dissimilar mentions of venues refer to the same underlying venue. A natural unsupervised technique for this problem is generative mixture modeling, and indeed such models have been successfully applied to paper and author coreference. But standard models perform poorly on venue strings, because venue strings exhibit greater variance than title or author strings. In this paper, we exploit the fact that venues have characteristic distributions over titles. We do this using a generative model that explicitly models a venue-specific distribution over title words. The model uses a single set of latent variables to control two disparate clustering models: a Dirichlet-multinomial model over titles, and a nonexchangeable string-edit model over venues. Incorporating title information yields a substantial improvement in performance—a 58% reduction in error over a standard Dirichlet process mixture. The model successfully disambiguates several venues that have string-identical abbreviations.


Abstract Two iron-rich concretions from the Waikato Coal Measures are described. Each has a hard iron oxide shell with a weathered outer surface. In one case there is a solid siderite-rich interior; in the other the shell encloses a void which contains a clay rattle. Concentrations of Fe, AI, Ca, K, Si, P, S, Mn, Ti, Mo, Mg, and Cu, in various parts of the concretions have been measured and the dominant minerals in these parts have been determined. The concretions are considered to represent different stages in a process which begins when iron mobilised by decomposing organic matter is pre cipitated under reducing conditions as siderite in sediments. Subsequent oxidising conditions oroduce a series of "boxes" each with a dense ferric oxide shell. The shell thickens as the enclosed ferrous ions are oxidised and eventually a void is created within the concretion. The kaolin rattle represents the weathered remnant of the host sediment.


Heterotaxy is an abnormal arrangement of viscera across the left-right axis of the body often associated with a variety of complex cardiac lesions. We present a case of left isomeric heterotaxy, a right aortic arch, and a left brachiocephalic artery arising from a left ductus arteriosus.


Background: Critical care nurses have an important role in care of vascular access difficulties' patients. Intraosseous is parenteral vascular access through the bone marrow. Aim of the study: to assess nursing care regarding post intraosseous access insertion in critical care units. Design: A descriptive exploratory design was utilized in this study. Research questions: What are the nursing care regarding intraosseous (IO) access insertion in critical care units? Setting: The study was carried out at different Critical Care units at Tanta University Hospitals, in Egypt. Sample: A sample of purposive of 40 nurses from different critical care units. The minimum 6 months of experience were included in the present study. Tools of data collection: Two tools were used to collect data; the first tool has two parts; part one is characteristics data that included gender, age, years of experience, educational level and area of work. Part two was intraosseous access knowledge questionnaire to assess knowledge regarding indication, contraindication, and nursing measures towards intraosseous access. The second tool was intraosseous observational checklist that was designed to assess nurses' practices while preparing patient and equipment, handling the physician during insertion, administering fluids and medication and removing of intraosseous access. Results: The current study findings revealed that 65% of studied nurses had unsatisfactory level of knowledge regarding intraosseous access care. While, 35% of studied nurses had satisfactory level of knowledge. Regarding nurses' level of practice, it was found that, 55% of nurses had unsatisfactory practical level. While, 45% of studied nurses had satisfactory practical level regarding intraosseous access care. Regarding intraosseous insertion. A significant correlation were existed between age and practice also between their level of knowledge and practice regarding caring of theintraosseous access. Conclusion: it can be concluded that critical care nurses have unsatisfactory level of knowledge and practice regarding nursing care post intraosseous access insertion in critical care units. Recommendations: Carrying out educational programs about nursing management of patients with vascular access difficulties especially intraosseous access. Replication of the study on a large probability of sample from different ICUs concentrated on emergency departments for benefits of emergency situations is required


The embodiment of the invention provides a terminal with a television function and a display method of the terminal. The terminal comprises a display, a first port and a special image processor, wherein the first port is used for receiving a television signal; the special image processor is connected with the display and the first port respectively, and is used for flashing TV firmware, converting the television signal received by the first port into a digital television signal, processing the digital television signal to first display data which can be displayed by the display, and instructing the display to display the first display data when an command of entering a television mode is received; and the display is used for displaying the received first display data. According to the invention, a television in a TV computer can work independently, so that stability and practicability of the terminal are improved.


Characteristics of seabed are important factors that affect low frequency propagation in shallow water. In principle,it is required to know the physical parameters at all depths in the seabed material,but this is not practical. If knowledge of the characteristics above certain depth is enough to constrain errors,characteristics of below this depth can thus be neglected. The critical depth may be viewed as the max-imum depth. Low frequency sounds can penetrate seabed as deep as several tens of meters,while relative high frequency sound only several meters. Therefore,the sound speed profile (SSP) of sea also affects the maximum depth of sound penetration,and the maximum depth is greater in the downward refracting of SSP than in the uniform region of SSP. Shear wave is another factor affecting low frequency propagation in shallow water,especially below 100Hz,which is validated by the acoustic experiment of May 2002 on the south sea of China.


A membrane‐less microbial fuel cell (ML‐MFC) is an electrochemical device that incorporates microorganisms into the design in order to produce electricity through biologically catalyzed oxidation of soluble, electron‐donating substrates. In this study, three lignocellulosic raw materials were added into the ML‐MFC whereby the sludge acted as the pseudomembrane. All three materials were used as the substrates in ML‐MFC for the production of electricity that was measured using a digital multimeter. Results showed that the ML‐MFC that contained sludge supplemented with banana peel produced the highest electricity, followed by corn bran and palm oil mill effluent (POME) at 237.1 mV (23.75 mW/m2), 176.8 mV (12.65 mW/m2), and 138 mV (22.03 mW/m2) after 138 h, 192 h, and 108 h of incubation period, respectively. For the control test (sludge only), about 162.7 mV was recorded at shorter incubation period (84 h). This showed that long‐term operation of the ML‐MFC using these complex lignocellulosic compounds as a direct substrate for electricity generation is feasible, though their degradation is slow.


Image recognition and image processing usually contain the technique of image segmentation. Excellent segmentation results can directly affect the accuracy of image recognition and processing. The essence of image segmentation is to segment each frame of a certain image or a video into multiple specific objects or regions and represent them with different labels. This paper focuses on the segmentation results obtained in image segmentation of images used for intelligent monitoring of Mandarin exams are usually visualized for image analysis. In this paper, we first investigate the performance improvement techniques for semantic segmentation in the image segmentation task for intelligent monitoring of Mandarin exams, improve the pixel classification capability by performing semantic migration, and, for the first time, extend the dataset substantially by style transformation to improve the model's recognition of advanced features. In addition, to further address the shortcomings of the dataset, this paper improves the performance of image segmentation using synthetic datasets by investigating synthetic dataset image segmentation improvement techniques that reduce the reliance on manually annotated datasets. Image segmentation techniques continue to advance, and there are even thousands of commonly used segmentation methods for image segmentation development to date. Among them, they can be broadly classified as region-based segmentation methods, threshold-based segmentation methods, edge-based segmentation methods, specific theory-based segmentation methods, and deep learning-based segmentation methods. However, the methods used in this paper have all been experimentally demonstrated to improve the effectiveness of the techniques and proved to outperform other existing methods in the same field in the publicly available datasets LSUN, Cityscapes, and GTA5 datasets, respectively.


The Evanescent Wave Coronagraph, EvWaCo, is an in-development prototype coronagraph, designed for use on the 2.4m Thai National Telescope (TNT), in the R and I-band filters. This work examines the astronomical capabilities of EvWaCo using the results from Fourier-analysis simulations. Fourier optics simulations were applied to the EvWaCo prototype to analyse its performance, combining different sources of contrast degradation that will be present in the system. The simulations used for the main analysis assume a good night at the Thai National Observatory (TNO) and include the fitting error, aliasing, measurement noise and lag, providing a radially averaged contrast curve. From the contrast curve, the detection limit, as defined by a minimum signal to noise ratio of 5 for a typical observation time, can be calculated for different primary star magnitudes. The relative fluxes of various binary stars, with a range of spectral classes and separations, were modelled allowing comparison to the EvWaCo detection curves. The photon-noise limited detection curves provide a theoretical baseline for the performance that will be achieved with EvWaCo; they, therefore, give an indication of the types of objects EvWaCo can observe. Along with a broader discussion of observable objects, a number of known binary systems are suggested for observations on the TNT using EvWaCo.


So called 'North Korean Question' not only remains unresolved but also becomes the most important source of instability in Korean Peninsula as well as Northeast Asia in the aftermath of the sinking of Chunan Ship and the artillery strike to Yunpyung Island by North Korean army. Since the end of Korean War various efforts have been made to end North-South military confrontation and to restore peace in the Korean Peninsula. Until 1994 countries concerned with resolving North Korean Question had relied on bilateralism within the framework of Hub-and-Spoke system led by the U.S. In the East Asian Hub-and-Spoke System, spoke countries can make exchange and dialogue only with the mediation of the single hub country, the U.S. For example, when the "ax brutality incident at Panmunjom" by North Korean army took place in 1976 South Korea can make dialogue with North Korea indirectly with the mediation of the U.S. forces in Korea (Cumings 2002: 167). North Korea has, too, consistently demanded direct bilateral talks with the U.S. to resolve disputes with South Korea claiming that South Korea is not the concerned country that signed truce agreement in 1953. This means that North Korea understood quite well the characteristics of the hub and spoke system in Cold War era in which communications and exchanges among spoke countries can be made only through the mediation and transmission of the U.S. After the end of Cold War, bilateralism had receded. Since 1994 the Geneva Agreed Framework had been reached and its instrument of action plan, KEDO had been created with multilateral formula, multilateralism emerged, although embryonically, as an alternative mechanism to resolve North Korean Questions, the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea in particular. Multilateralism, with regard to North Korean Question, advancedto the level of making so called "Six Party Talks," the first multilateral security institution in Northeast Asia. Alarmed with rapid nuclear development by North Korea, the U.S. asked China to prevent North Korea from developing nuclear program. As a consequence Six Party Talks was launched with the initiative of China in response to U.S. call for help. Six Party Talks (U.S., China, South Korea, North Korea, Russia, and Japan) has been the first institutionalized multilateralism in Northeast Asia.Six Party Talks, however, have produced little progress toward resolving North Korean Question except the 5th round of Six Party Talks (February 13th, 2007) in which North Korea agreed to shut down Yongbyon nuclear facilities, to dismantle nuclear program, and to refrain from transferring nuclear technologies to third parties in exchange of fuel aid, the removal of North Korea from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, and move forward to normalization of diplomatic relations with North Korea by the U.S. Yet the agreements made in the 5th round of Six Party Talks have not been kept by concerned parties, North Korea and the U.S. in particular. The U.S. and South Korea initiated to press United Nations Security Council to condemn North Korea for its failed satellite launch on April 13, 2009, North Korea responded with pulling out of Six Party Talks, resuming high-enriched uranium (HEU) nuclear program, and expelling nuclear inspectors from North Korea. Therefore the Six Party Talks as the first multilateral institution in Northeast Asia turned out to be neither a stable nor an effective mechanism for resolving security disputes and making an institutionalized peace settlement in Northeast Asia.Suppose that both bilateralism and multilateralism have been proved as an ineffective and unstable mechanism to resolve North Korean Question, what would be an innovative, feasible and stable alternative mechanism for resolving North Korean Question? Tentatively we have in mind "analytical eclecticism" as a possible alternative mechanism for resolving North Korean Question (Katzenstein and Okawara, 2001/02; Drezner, 2010; Katzenstein and Sil, 2004; Sil and Katzenstein, 2010). But what we discuss "eclecticism" in this paper is not the eclecticism of Katzenstein's sense, that is the analytical eclecticism of liberalism, realism and constructivism. What we will try to explore in this paper is an eclectic formula for resolving North Korean Question, that is, the eclectic mechanism of bilateralism and multilateralism. The only Six Party Talks that produced fruitful outcomes was the 5th round of the Talks (February 13th, 2007). The successful 5th round "multilateral" Six Part Talks could not have been possible without preparatory "bilateral," even though informal, talks made between the U.S. and North Korea. The reason why North Korean Question has been unresolved is that concerned actors have been both bilaterally and multilaterally involved in North Korean Question and, thus, a mixture of multilateral and bilateral formula is needed to resolve North Korean Question.In this paper, we will discuss, first, why North Korean Question is to be analyzed with an analytical eclecticism and what the virtues of eclecticism are in analyzing North Korean Question. Second, we will trace back how North Korean Questions have been formed and emerged as the quintessential issue in Northeast Asian security, and what are the North Korean Questions and contending approaches and alternative solutions to North Korean Questions. Third, we will trace past approaches to North Korean Questions: (1) bilateralism in the Cold War era and its demise after the Cold War; (2) The rise of multilateralism since 1994 and its demise since Bush's inauguration; (3) The abrupt emergence of unilateralism as the dominant mechanism after 9/11 and its demise under Obama presidency. Fourth and finally, we will explore a feasible future framework to resolve North Korean Question based on an eclectic approach of bilateralism and multilateralism.


Seven mesothelioma cell lines, established from patients with pleural mesothelioma, exhibited substantial heterogeneity regarding in vitro morphology and growth characteristics. Media conditioned by these cell lines and by MeT5A normal mesothelial cells were examined for (i) colony formation on human bone‐marrow cells, (ii) hematopoietic growth‐factor content and (iii) mitogenic activity on mesothelioma cells. Colony‐stimulating activity was produced only by the ZL34 cell line. Analysis of conditioned media by ELISA revealed that all mesothelioma cell lines constitutively produced IL‐6, while the MeT5A normal mesothelial cells did not; in addition, GM‐CSF and G‐CSF were detected in the supernatant of the ZL34 cell line. Using a 3H‐thymidine incorporation assay, we showed that all mesothelioma cell lines produced mitogenic activity in the culture supernatant, in contrast to the MeT5A normal mesothelial cells. The mitogenic effect of the hematopoietic growth factors detected in mesothelioma culture supernatants was tested on mesothelioma cells and on MeT5A normal mesothelial cells: IL‐6, GM‐CSF and G‐CSF did not stimulate any DNA synthesis. Our results suggest that these hematopoietic growth factors do not act as autocrine growth factors. A common feature of this panel of mesothelioma cell lines is the production of IL‐6; although the biological significance of the aberrant production of cytokines by mesotheliomas remains unclear, IL‐6 might be involved in paraneoplastic syndromes such as thrombocytosis.


The experiment was conducted to elucidate the optimum planting date and fertilization level of Aruncus dioicus var. kamtscacus HARA. Plant height was increased as the seeding date was delayed. There was no transparent difference on plant height in different fertilization level. Number of stems was remarkably increased in the fertilization 14-14-12㎏. Fresh leaf yield in the fertilization of 24-18-15㎏ was increased about 31% comparing in the fertilization of 14-14-12㎏. As a result, the optimum planing date and fertilization level was Jan. 15 and 24-18-15㎏ per 10a, respectively.


This article results from a research on the latin transmission of the Protevangelium Jacobi. It contains a critical edition and a French translation of the homily Postulatis filiae Ierusalem, composed for the feast of St. Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary. The homily combines the opening chapters of the Protevangelium (ch. 1-4) with those of the De Nativitate Mariae (ch.1-5). It is made up of three parts.. (1) a proemium (§ 1-6); (2) a story about Anne and Joachim, taken from the above-mentionned sources (§ 7-29) ; (3) a peroration (§ 30-34). In the extant manuscripts it is transmitted in various forms, more or less complete and revised. In some of them it is included as a legend in the collection of the Legenda Aurea. In most cases it belongs to liturgical books containing the office for the feast of St. Anne. In one case the homily has been transformed in lessons for the feast of Mary's Conception. The author of the homily is addressing a community of nuns who requested him to translate into Latin a « Gre...


The mathematical representations of space curve in mathematics have many forms, and the means by which to get the tangent vector varies according to the various representations. There are some mathematical representations of space curves which will probably be met in actual engineering, and this article discusses how to get the tangent vector of these space curves according to their various mathematical representations.


In 1820 Desfosses (15) discovered solanine, a basic substance in juice expressed from the berries of Solanum nigrum. He found (14) it almost insoluble in all solvents tried, except alcohol and acids. Six years later Baup reported (5) it also to be present in the potato (Solanum tuberosum), but he found much more in the sprouts than in the tubers. The chemical nature of the substance is even yet only partially known. Zwenger and Kind (51) found that it is stable when boiled with potassium hydroxide, and that it cannot reduce Fehling's solution, but (50) that it can be hydrolized by strong acids, giving rise to salts of an alkaloid (solanidine) and a solution which is able to reduce Fehling's solution. Identification of the hydrolytic products has been a gradual achievement of several investigators. It appears (24) that a molecule of solanine is composed of one molecule each of solanidine, glucose, galactose, and rhamnose ; and that three molecules of water are split out in the formation of the glucoside whose constituent groups are linked in the order in which they have been mentioned (35, 49). The empirical formula of solanidine is still a matter of disagreement (6, 35, 42, 46, 49), but it is known to be a tertiary base with a secondary alcohol group (42, 46). The glucoside is interesting for several reasons : 1. It is the only basic-reacting glucoside known (31 ).1 2. It has the foam-producing and haemolytic properties of saponins, yet contains nitrogen. 3. It frequently occurs in poisonous concentrations in market potatoes. 4. It is claimed that lesser concentrations increase intestinal absorption (28) by precipitating sterols (?). 5. It is uniquely toxic to conidiospores of Cladosporium fulvum which have been raised on glucose agar (1, 41) although spores taken directly from infected tomato leaves tolerate it better.


Kidney transplantation is the most effective method of renal replacement therapy the transplanted organ is able to take over all the functions performed by a healthy kidney. The function of the kidney after transplantation should be regularly observed in laboratory tests and imaging examinations. However, in some patients, it is necessary to perform a posttransplant biopsy in order to clearly identify the pathology that may lead to damage to the function of the kidney or transplant rejection.


With the development and maturity of 5G technology, edge networks have become more suitable for moving many low-latency cloud services to the edges of networks, thus significantly improving user service quality. Since mobile terminal users move with their location, the edge computing platform needs to seamlessly migrate services using users' mobile devices. However, the network environment of an edge network is complex, and service migration faces many challenges, such as how to overcome network delays and reduce the service interruption time. In this paper, we propose a service migration method based on Docker base image and design a compression algorithm for an adaptive network environment to compress images and other data. This method balances the multi-core processor computing power and network bandwidth resources. We implement pipeline parallel processing of each process and build a model to handle the situation. The results show that our method is more adaptable to changing network environments, and the migration time is reduced by 45.4%, on average, compared with the traditional uncompressed service switching method.


How can parents regain control of schools? Marjorie Seldon, doyenne of education voucher enthusiasts, argues that education vouchers would restore rights to parents and improve the quality of education.


After a brief review of the development of Taylorism in the us, the authors provide an account of the introduction of Taylorism into the Soviet Union under party control. They insist that Taylorism operates to dispossess workers of control in the productive process and cannot therefore, be used for socialist strategies of social and economic transformation.


This article explores the extent to which the benefits of new forms of inter-firm partnership within the European automotive industry have been shared between assemblers and component producers. It first considers the changing nature of the buyer-supplier relationship from the viewpoint of different parties and as part of a process of restructuring within the filiere. Then it documents patterns of performance, comparing samples of five European vehicle assemblers and ten component firms from 1987 to 1996. Evidence is presented on R&D and capital investment expenditures, inventory levels and work-inprogress, and profitability. It is concluded that lead- ing component manufacturers proved more resilient and adaptable than the assemblers during the early 1990s. This is explained in terms of the position of these system integrators with respect to their own suppliers, and the differing sectoral and geographical configurations of assembly and leading component firms.


Programming robots is a tedious task. So, there is growing interest in building robots which can learn by themselves. Self-improving, which involves trial and error, however, is often a slow process and could be hazardous in a hostile environment. By teaching robots how tasks can be achieved, learning time can be shortened and hazard can be minimized. This paper presents a general approach to making robots which can improve their performance from experiences as well as from being taught. Based on this proposed approach and other learning speedup techniques, a simulated learning robot was developed and could learn three moderately complex behaviors, which were then integrated in a subsumption style so that the robot could navigate and recharge itself. Interestingly, a real robot could actually use what was learned in the simulator to operate in the real world quite successfully.


This paper used the relative difference of height and radio between surface area and projection area,respectively,as the indicator to measure the relief amplitude of Guizhou Province,based on this,analyzed the spatial structure of land-use/land-cover.As the result,the control of relief to land-use/land-cover was stronger,a cross-distribution and the vertical differences of space was obvious.Because of the relief,the land-use/land-cover structure in Guizhou Province was chaos,the using was difficult,the radio of utilization was low,and the land preparation works was perplexed.


Because of the subjectivity in previous methods of drainage basin comparisons, there is a need to quantify such procedures. This is in order to be make objective comparisons and to transfer results among different studies. Quantification is best effected within the framework of a knowledge-based system. Three types of drainage basin characteristics may be identified: morphometric, biogeophysical and historical. These data exist in nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio form. Quantification of morphometric information appears to be the most straightforward and should probably play a dominant role in any similarity comparison as many processes are related to these characteristics. These variables can be analysed using a procedure which incorporates all levels of information; nominal and ordinal information are used as filters while interval and ratio information are used to calculate dissimilarity—a form of euclidean distance measure. Because much of this information is available in digital form—morphometry from digital terrain models, for example—the similarity procedure is best developed within a knowledge-based system framework. With the use of a pseudo-relational information base and search procedures formalised through artificial intelligence theory, knowledge can be stored within the system and used to effect the analysis. Thirty one characteristics are measured of 65 drainage basins in the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. Dissimilarities between the basins are calculated for both untransformed and transformed information. Because of the non-normality of variables, the tests are carried out on both sets of information to assess the robustness of the various statistical procedures. Two tests are performed:


The processing technology of Chinese water chestnut slices was studied in this article.Using 0.2 % citric acid solution as color-protector and adopting subsection temperature-changing drying method can protect products from browning in the drying processing.The subsection temperature-changing drying results shows that,after the water chestnuts are dried at 90 ℃ for 75min then at 65 ℃ for 180 min,we can get Chinese water chestnut slices with good flavor and redehydration properties.


Recent observations of the strong dominance of proton-neutron (pn) relative to pp and nn short-range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei indicate on possibility of unique new condition for asymmetric high density nuclear matter, in which the pp and nn interactions are suppressed while the pn interactions are enhanced due to tensor interaction. We demonstrate that for sufficiently asymmetric case and high densities the momentum distribution of the smaller p-component is strongly deformed with protons increasingly populating the momentum states beyond the Fermi surface. This result is obtained by extracting the probabilities of two-nucleon (2N) SRCs from the analysis of the experimental data on high momentum transfer inclusive electro-nuclear reactions. We fitted the extracted probabilities as a function of nuclear density and asymmetry and used the fit to estimate the fractions of the off-Fermi shell nucleons in the superdense nuclear matter relevant to neutron stars. Our results indicate that starting at three nuclear saturation densities the protons with fractional densities 1/9 will populate mostly the high momentum tail of the momentum distribution while only 2% of the neutrons will do so. We discuss the implications of this condition for neutron stars and emphasize that it may be characteristic to any asymmetric two component Fermi system with suppressed central and enhanced short-range tensor interactions between the two components.


The optimal concentrations of carbon,nitrogen and phosphate were determined using an orthogonal array design to be 15,2.0 mmol/L and 0.1 mmol/L for the growth of Dunaliella salina Zea1 and 15,2.0 mmol/L and 0.2 mmol/L for zeaxanthin accumulation,respectively.The effect of high(5000 lx),normal(3000 lx) and low(500 lx) light intensities on the growth and zeaxanthin accumulation of the mutant strain and its parental strain WD was investigated.Under the same light intensity,the cell number and zeaxanthin accumulation of the mutant strain were both higher than those of the original strain.High light intensity was distinctly beneficial to the growth and zeaxanthin accumulation of the mutant strain and resulted in a 7.08-fold and 1.29-fold increase in cell number and a 4.56-fold and 1.4-fold increase in zeaxanthin content compared with normal and low light intensities,respectively.


The polarization dependence of the photosensitivity (PS) of the Schottky barrier diodes based on the InGaAs/GaAs quantum well (QW) and quantum dot (QD) structures has been studied. The PS polarization dependence follows the theoretical one with good agreement. The effect of the hole state mixing in the QW on the PS polarization dependence has been studied. The asymmetry of the PS polarization dependence of the QDs in the [110] and [110] directions has been observed attributed to the effect of piezoelectric field induced by the elastic strain.


A multi-sensor system is considered where the sensors comprising it utilize the principles of human olfactory sensing and the processing of the sensor measurements is done by a fuzzy sensor fusion technique. The emphasis of the paper is on the fuzzy fusion technique used for the classification of the numerical measurements of a quality characteristic in different fuzzy quality profiles.


The growth of Ag thin films by thermal atomic layer deposition (ALD) was studied. A commercial Ag compound, Ag(fod) (PEt3), was applied with a reducing agent, dimethyl amineborane (BH3(NHMe2)). A growth rate of 0.3 A/cycle was measured for Ag at a deposition temperature of 110 °C. The purity of the particulate, polycrystalline Ag thin films was studied with time-of-flight elastic recoil detection analysis (TOF-ERDA) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). TOF-ERDA showed only small amounts of impurities in the film deposited at 110 °C, the main impurities being oxygen (1.6 at. %), hydrogen (0.8 at. %) and carbon (0.7 at. %). In addition to the conventional ALD process, the idea of activation of the amineborate inside the ALD reactor was tested. A catalytic Ru surface was utilized to convert BH3(NHMe2) into possibly even more reducing species inside the reactor without contaminating the catalysts with a growing film.


Typical different forest types in Qiannan prefecture of Guizhou province were selected to investigate the contents of aero-anion,oxygen and terpenoids chemicals in 2010 with the aim of study the hygiene factors in forest environment. The results showed that the average concentrations of aero-anion in Qiannan forest environment up to2 200 ind·cm- 3,significantly higher than non-forest area. The average oxygen concentration was 0. 26 % higher than the normal air,the oxygen concentration of coniferous and broadleaf mixed forest was higher than other forest types. There are nearly 20 kinds of terpenoids chemicals mainly including monoterpenes of alpha pinene,beta pinene and careen,and polyterpene of cyclopentadiene,isoamyl triene and longifolene terpene,with the average concentration of 0. 0128 μg·m- 3. Monoterpenes were mainly released by the coniferous forest and polyterpene were mainly released by the broadleaf forest. The air quality in most of the forest environment is A grade,reached the level of the cleanest,and the air quality in forest park is significantly higher than other forest environment. It is therefore concluded that the overall air quality in Qiannan prefecture is admirable and suitable for health tourism.


The third in a series of collected works by Angela Carter who died in 1992. This volume covers her journalistic work from the 1960s onwards, exploring new territories and overturning old ideas. She discusses topics such as film, food, feminism, science fiction, sex, Virginia Woolf baking bread and Bob Dylan making hay.


The Australian Federal Budget of 2016/17 contains a surprising number of tax changes. This paper analyses the known details of the proposals as well as reviewing those proposed by the main opposition party.


The study aims to attempt to assess the quality of the practices of the academic counseling provided to the students of the Department of Special Education, Faculty of Education, where the study sample consisted of (133) students in the Department of Special Education, including (5) specialization paths, namely: mental disability, learning difficulties, hearing disability, behavioral disorders and autism and disorders of speech and language for students enrolled in the second semester of the academic year 1434/1435 AH, with a percentage amounts to 37% of the study population. The study has relied, to achieve its goal, on construction of a tool to assess the quality of the practices of the academic counseling provided to students of the Department of Special Education, Faculty of Education based on the vision of the students themselves, composed of 49 clauses distributed on three themes, and the results showed that the overall average for the quality of the practices of the academic counseling provided to students of the Department of Special Education, Faculty of Education has reached (2.97), a low level of quality, which is less than (3). (Ahmed Salah El Din Abul Hassanand and Ra'ed Saad El Din El Khatib. The Quality of Academic Counseling Practices Provided to the Students in the Department of Special Education in the Faculty of Education. Life Sci J 2014;11(10s):642-656). (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com . 125 The recent trends in the educational process, especially in university education, are based on orientation towards quality, with what it bears of broad meanings and concepts, covering the educational process as a whole, from college student who should enjoy the quality of learning, thinking, analysis, critique and solving the problems he/ she is exposed to, through the energetic, optimistic and cheerful faculty professor, who sanctifies and respects their career, and works to prevail for its human values, and provides high quality practices in the processes of teaching and counseling to their students, and ending of with the scientific material that act on provoking of the instincts of creativity, inquiry and analysis by the student in the presence of an effective management pursue an effective consultative approach in dealing with the different components of the educational process.


Background: A great part of all projects within Swedish industry are conducted in a multiprojectenvironment, which means that several projects are performed simultaneously. The research within the ...


Ru(dppbsa)-catalyzed hydrodeoxygenation and reductive etherification of ketones and aldehydes were developed. The carbonyl substrates without β-CH functionality follow the hydrogenation-hydrogenolysis path, wherein the hydrogenolysis of the alkanol intermediates presents as...


The relationship between modernization and childlessness is examined for the 32 states of Mexico for 1970. Earlier reports are cited and present childlessness as a predominantly involuntary phenomenon in developing countries. It is hypothesized that a negative correlation exists between socioeconomic development and an ability to reproduce hence reduced childlessness. The 1970 Mexican census established the number of births. Subjects were ever married women--women who were married widowed divorced separated or living in consensual unions. 4 factors represent modernization: structural economic development; health conditions; health facilities/economic activity/railroads; and transportation. Analyzing childlessness against these criteria shows a decline in childlessness correlated with increased work force participation urbanization more widespread transportation increased educational levels and most significant an increase in health care facilties. Health conditions were the most accurate barometer of childlessness. Better health care meant reduced incidence of disease and nutritional deficiencies the 2 major causes of subfecundity. Changes in fertility which accompany modernization should be considered in the design and evaluation of a family planning program.


"A continual miracle is needed to prevent the Sun and the fixed stars from rushing together through gravity", wrote David Gregory in May 1694 in a memorandum of conversations with Newton." Since gravity is a prime source of movement in the Newtonian universe, each star in it will be tugged by every other star and so will accelerate in the direction of the resultant of all these pulls. Yet among the stars actually visible in the sky there was, in the seventeenth century, no evidence of the slightest movement; on the contrary, observations since Antiquity confirmed that the 'fixed' stars were well-named, and apparently exempt from the effects of universal gravitational attraction." In 1687 Newton, to judge by the first edition of the Principia, was oblivious of the problem; by 1694 he had reached the position he was to hold for the rest of his life. What had happened in the intervening years, and what form did God's providential action take r'


The mechanical properties of nylon 1212 toughened by a toughening system consisting of sulfonamide and a little polyacrylamide were overall investigated. The results showed that addition of about 10% elasticizer was needed to meet the requirement of brittle toughness transition. After toughened, the impact strength of nylon 1212 was increased remarkably, the elongation was also increased, and tensile strength was not decreased too much. After the elasticizer was added, the -NH 2 in the sulfonamide reacted with the -COOH on the nylon 1212 molecular chain to form hydrogen bond, which took the place of hydrogen bond between nylon 1212 molecules. Because nylon 1212 molecule had long -CH 2- chain of itself, so after the hydrogen bond was broken, the softness of the molecule was greatly improved and the toughness of nylon 1212 was increased. In addition, polyacrylamide induced a lot of silver streaks and shear bands, increasing the impact strength of nylon 1212 greatly.


Background Since the introduction of cephalic replacement for shoulder dystocia, the management of failures has not been addressed. The purpose of this report is to describe abdominal hysterotomy as an alternative approach to the resolution of shoulder dystocia. Case A 21-year-old woman, gravida 1, experienced severe shoulder dystocia following partial delivery of a 4320-g infant. Classical maneuvers as well as cephalic replacement were unsuccessful before and after general anesthesia. A low transverse hysterotomy permitted manual rotation of the anterior shoulder to the oblique diameter and further descent of the posterior shoulder. Delivery of the posterior arm was then completed without difficulty. Conclusion Persistent failed cephalic replacement, especially after general anesthesia, can be successfully resolved with a hysterotomy using a low transverse uterine incision.


................................................................................................................................................. 6 Abbreviations ......................................................................................................................................... 8 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 9 Background ....................................................................................................................................... 9 Historical remarks............................................................................................................................ 12 Epidemiology................................................................................................................................... 13 Coagulation and hemostasis .......................................................................................................... 14 Diagnosis of pulmonary embolism.................................................................................................. 15 Symptoms and signs of PE ........................................................................................................ 16 Alternative diagnoses in PE ....................................................................................................... 17 Risk factors ................................................................................................................................. 18 Pre-test probability score............................................................................................................ 19 D-dimer and other biochemical markers.................................................................................... 21 Diagnostic investigations............................................................................................................ 23 Aims of the thesis................................................................................................................................. 28 Patients and methods.......................................................................................................................... 29 Paper I......................................................................................................................................... 29 Paper II........................................................................................................................................ 30 Paper III....................................................................................................................................... 32 Paper IV ...................................................................................................................................... 32 Paper V ....................................................................................................................................... 33 Ethics considerations........................................................................................................................... 35 Results ................................................................................................................................................. 36 Paper I......................................................................................................................................... 36 Paper II........................................................................................................................................ 37 Paper III....................................................................................................................................... 40 Paper IV ...................................................................................................................................... 41 Paper V ....................................................................................................................................... 44 Statistics ............................................................................................................................................... 46 Discussion............................................................................................................................................ 47 Conclusions.......................................................................................................................................... 51 Sammanfattning på svenska............................................................................................................... 54 Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................ 56 References........................................................................................................................................... 58 Appendix, Paper I-V............................................................................................................................. 68


The article with Ningqiang ~ Qi pan-guan 5a separation type double arch tunnel construction as an example,introduced the drift of the central heading-short steps process and key operation.The successful application of this method guarantees the construction safety,shorten project,and have achieved good social and economic benefits.


Super-resolution fluorescence microscopy has become a powerful tool in cell biology to observe sub-cellular organization and molecular details below the diffraction limit of light. Super-resolution methods are generally classified into three main concepts: stimulated emission depletion (STED), single molecule localization microscopy (SMLM) and structured illumination microscopy (SIM). Here, we highlight the novel concept of modulation-enhanced localization microscopy (meLM) which we designate as the 4th super-resolution method. Recently, a series of modulation-enhanced localization microscopy methods have emerged, namely MINFLUX, SIMPLE, SIMFLUX, ModLoc and ROSE. Although meLM combines key ideas from STED, SIM and SMLM, the main concept of meLM relies on a different idea: isolated emitters are localized by measuring their modulated fluorescence intensities in a precisely shifted structured illumination pattern. To position meLM alongside state-of-the-art super-resolution methods we first highlight the basic principles of existing techniques and show which parts of these principles are utilized by the meLM method. We then present the overall novel super-resolution principle of meLM that can theoretically reach unlimited localization precision whenever illumination patterns are translated by an arbitrarily small distance.


SUMMARY TheTcell proliferative responses ofperipheral bloodlymphocytes from20patients withautoimmune thyroid disease (AITD)and20healthy controls wereanalysed toimmunoaffinity-purified thyroid peroxidase (TPO)andrecombinant antigen preparations generated inEscherichia coli asglutathiones-transferase fusion proteins. Theepitope specificity oftheTcell response wasinvestigated using a selection ofeight discrete recombinant fragments encompassing thewholeoftheextracellular region oftheTPO molecule. Significant differences intheproliferative responses between patients and controls wereobserved tothefull length, affinity-purifie d TPOmolecule (P<0002)aswell astothe recombinant fragments Rlc(residues 145-250) (P<0-001) andR2b(residues 457-589) (P<0-001) suggesting thepresence ofatleast twodistinct Tcell determinants onthis autoantigen. Oneofthese T cell epitopes, localized within theregion Rlc,hasnotpreviously beenidentified bystudies with synthetic peptides.


We study the shape of distribution F(G) for the conductance G between a point on the surface of a metal–insulator nanocomposite film and the conducting substrate. Random resistor networks with both metallic and tunneling bonds included are used to model nanocomposite films. Our simulation results show explicitly that the shape of F(G) is determined mainly by the connectivity of metal particles and the maximum tunneling distance in the composite. By applying our results to the available experimental data on granular NiFe–SiO2, we find important implications for the understanding of microscopic conduction mechanisms near the metal–insulator transition.


Background and Objective: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of sudden death. In this article, we compared patients' illness perception (IP), treatment adherence and coping mechanisms of patients undergoing percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA). Methods: In this descriptive, prospective observational study IP, treatment adherence and coping of 140 patients were evaluated pre-PTCA, at the time of hospital discharge and 1 to 3 months post-PTCA by Illness Perception Questionnaire, Morisky Treatment Adherence and Carver's brief COPE questionnaires. Results: 1 - 3 months post-PTCA, all dimensions of IP changed significantly except personal and treatment control. Adherence scores decreased simultaneously. With respect to coping mechanisms, all increased except behavioral disengagement, emotional support, instrumental support and religion which decreased significantly post-PTCA. Conclusions: In Overall, an improved IP and increased use of controllable causal attributions led to an increase in medication adherence and adaptive coping strategies. Post-treatment health behaviors are predictable by assessing patients' illness-related beliefs beforehand.


Objectives: To investigate the anti aging effect of Ginsenosides on skin. Methods: The aging mice model were established by subcutaneous administration with a dose of D galactose(1000 mg/kg·d -1 ) to female mice for 6 weeks. In the mean time,the mice received Ginsenosides(100 mg/kg·d -1 or 50 mg/kg·d -1 ) by intragastric administration. After 42 days, the SOD activity, the MDA and hydroxyproline contents in skin and the CAT and GSH Px activities in whole blood were determined. Results: The results showed that with the dosage of 100 mg/kg·d -1 Ginsenosides could significantly increase the SOD activity in skin and the CAT and GSH Px activities in whole blood,decrease the content of MDA in skin and increase the gydroxyproline content of dermal tissue in model mice. Conclusions: Ginsenosides(100 mg/kg·d -1 ) has obvious anti aging effects on aging mice's skin.


The transition to low global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants dictated by Kigali agreement along with the evolution of technology and new energy efficiency requirements are driving big changes in the market. Among them, the increasing variety of supermarket's configurations. On the one hand, semi plug-in units allow to reduce the charge of refrigerant and decrease maintenance costs, being a great option for medium-size supermarkets. On the other hand, the number of convenience stores has considerably increased in the last years, making the technological development of condensing units incredibly fast. For both of the supermarket's configurations, the use of components such as electronic expansion valve and variable speed compressor together with efficient control and supervisory systems allow to achieve great results in terms of energy efficiency, through modulation according to the cooling demand of the system. Other advantage of the continuous modulation achieved by these kinds of technologies is the stability of the different parameters that affect the shelf life of the food inside the refrigerator such as temperature and humidity of shelfs. This presentation aims to give an overview of the advantages of using modulating technology and present some research results that demonstrate the reduction of energy and increasing of the shelf life of the products for two different configurations of supermarkets: semi plug-in cabinets and condensing units.


Background: Takayasu's Arteritis (TAK) is a rare granulomatous inflammation of the large vessels. Its incidence has been reported to be 2-3 cases per million people in the United States. To our knowledge an inpatient nationwide study of TAK in the United States has not been conducted to date. The aim was to evaluate the demographic characteristics, reason for admission, procedures, mortality and resource utilization of patients with TAK using a national database. Objectives: The primary goal was to estimate the national inpatient prevalence of admissions involving patients with TAK. Secondary outcomes were top reasons for admission, mortality, morbidity, resource utilization, length of hospital stay (LOS), and total hospitalization charges and costs, adjusted for inflation using the Consumer-Price Index. Methods: All patients with a principal ICD9 diagnosis code for TAK were included using the NIS 2013 and 2014, the largest publically available inpatient database in the US. Controls were 1:1 matched using a propensity score including age, gender, and Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI). Multivariate logistic regression models were used to adjust for race, sex, patient zip code, income, CCI, hospital region, location, size and teaching status. Results: Of a total of 2,840 hospital admissions for patients with TAK, 2,680 were propensity-matched to admissions without TAK and included in the study. Mean age was 49 years, 81% were female. The inpatient prevalence of TAK was 4.6/100,000 admissions. After adjusting for confounders, patients with TAK had propensity-matched mortality odds of 1.44 (p=0.43) when compared to patients without TAK. The top reasons for admission were large vessel vasculitis, sepsis secondary to pneumonia and urinary tract infection, carotid artery stenosis/occlusion, and arthralgias. For secondary outcomes, patients with TAK displayed increased odds of stroke, aortic aneurysm, peripheral vascular disease and aortic valvulopathy when compared to patients without TAK. When CCI was evaluated it was noted that all the patients had an index lower than 4 and the great majority lower than 2 which could be related to the young age of this population. Despite the low CCI, these patients had 7.35 days of in-hospital stay which represented 2.1 days more when compared to non-TAK patients. For resource utilization, patients with TAK displayed higher odds of peripheral vascular intervention and arteriography when compared to patients without TAK. Patients with TAK displayed significantly higher adjusted total hospital costs, charges and LOS compared to patients without TAK. Conclusion: The inpatient prevalence was higher than suspected and could be related to the severity of the disease and complications associated with TAK. TAK was associated with an increased risk of stroke, aortic aneurysm, peripheral vascular disease and vascular interventions, but no increase mortality in this group of patients. The costs associated with hospitalization were substantial. References: [1] Watanabe Y, Miyata T, Tanemoto K. Current Clinical Features of New Patients With Takayasu Arteritis Observed From Cross-Country Research in Japan: Age and Sex Specificity. Circulation. 2015;132(18):1701-9. [2] Schmidt J, Kermani TA, Bacani AK, Crowson CS, Cooper LT, Matteson EL, et al. Diagnostic features, treatment, and outcomes of Takayasu arteritis in a US cohort of 126 patients. Mayo Clinic proceedings.2013;88(8):822-30. Disclosure of Interests: None declared


The changes in the lexical designation of the landscape object «river» from Old French to Modern French are considered by the author as the result of changes on the conceptual level.


Jurassic subduction initiation in the Neo‐Tethys Ocean eventually led to the collision of the Adria‐Africa and Eurasia continents and the formation of an ~6,000 km long Alpine orogen spanning from Iberia to Iran. Reconstructing the location and geometry of the plate boundaries of the now disappeared Neo‐Tethys during the initial moments of its closure is instrumental to perform more realistic plate reconstructions of this region, of ancient ocean basins in general, and on the process of subduction initiation. Neo‐Tethyan relics are preserved in an ophiolite belt distributed above the Dinaric‐Hellenic fold‐thrust belt. Here we provide the first quantitative constraints on the geometry of the spreading ridges and trenches active in the Jurassic Neo‐Tethys using a paleomagnetically based net tectonic rotation analysis of sheeted dykes and dykes from the West and East Vardar Ophiolites of Serbia (Maljen and Ibar) and Greece (Othris, Pindos, Vourinos, and Guevgueli). Based on our results and existing geological evidence, we show that initial Middle Jurassic (~175 Ma) closure of the western Neo‐Tethys was accommodated at a N‐S trending, west dipping subduction zone initiated near and parallel to the spreading ridge. The West Vardar Ophiolites formed in the forearc parallel to this new trench. Simultaneously, the East Vardar Ophiolites formed above a second N‐S to NW‐SE trending subduction zone located close to the European passive margin. We tentatively propose that this second subduction zone had been active since at least the Middle Triassic, simultaneously accommodating the closure of the Paleo‐Tethys and the back‐arc opening of Neo‐Tethys.


This paper puts forward a regrouping optimization method of dynamic alliance leaguers for agile manufacturing The shortcomings of decision-making difficulty and uniformity opinion value of traditional fuzzy method are overcome by means of the method


CSI feedback transmission method report to the serving cell, the method comprising, for a time division duplex using at least periodicity configured by the CSI CSI reference resource during a single downlink subframe defined by n-n, wherein, n being greater than or n is a positive integer equal to the minimum so that it corresponds to a valid downlink subframe, where, at least based on the number n CSI periodicity change process. Species CSI feedback report to the base station reports, the method comprising: receiving user equipment is not configured so that in addition to the CSI request CSI process has a lower index for each serving cell, serving cell arriving from one or more non-periodic of CSI request, wherein the number has a lower index of one or more CSI process to determine the number of pending based CSI report.


Background: Coronary computed tomography angiography (CTA) has recently been shown to enjoy a high negative predictive value for ruling out coronary heart disease and risk stratifying patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Hence, we assessed the 1-year outcome associated with a CTA-guided strategy in patients presenting to the emergency department with low to intermediate risk for ACS graded according to the GRACE score. Methods: In this case-series study, 77 consecutive patients (mean age = 49.7 ± 10.1 and 53.2% female) who presented to the emergency department with ischemic-type chest pain and low to intermediate risk for ACS were evaluated prospectively. The patients underwent coronary CTA after the measurement of troponin I. Those with nonobstructive plaques and mild stenoses (<50% luminal narrowing) were discharged with optimal treatment without further evaluations, those with moderate stenoses (50%–70% narrowing) were discharged with optimal treatment and close follow-ups, and those with severe stenoses (>70% narrowing) underwent coronary angiography. The discharged patients were contacted and their medical records were reviewed to determine the rates of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE)—comprising death, myocardial infarction, stroke, hospital admission, and revascularization. Results: A total of 89.6% of the patients were in the low-risk ACS group. There was no significant association between MACE and the subscales and the GRACE score (P > 0.05). There was no relationship between the GRACE score and the severity of coronary stenosis (P > 0.05) and the high-severity plaques (P > 0.05). However, the severity of stenoses in the proximal part of the left anterior descending artery (LAD) (P = 0.00), the mid part of the LAD (P = 0.004), and the first part of the obtuse marginal artery (P = 0.004) was associated with MACE. Furthermore, there were no relationships between MACE and the high-risk plaques and the risk factors (P > 0.05). Conclusions: CTA ruled out significant lesions and optimal treatment was accompanied by good prognoses in our patients. CTA may, therefore, be an optimal cost-benefit modality for the determination of the diagnosis and the therapeutic modality in patients at low to intermediate risk for ACS presenting to the emergency department.


A use case for thermoelectric coolers (TEC) in cryogenic cooling application is presented where the heat load is small and the required temperature difference between the hot and cold sides ($\Delta \mathrm{T}$) is very high. The application shown here is the cooling of image sensors used in telescopes. These sensors need to be cooled to below −90C (to improve signal to noise ratio) with a heat load of less than 1W at an ambient temperature of $20\mathrm{C}$. This has been traditionally done using liquid nitrogen, however, this method requires high maintenance in having to periodically refill nitrogen. A TEC-based solution can offer a significant benefit in terms of lower cost and maintenance. A multi-stage TEC is generally well suited for applications which require a large $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ and low heat load. In order to determine if a commercially available multistage TEC is enough to meet the $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ requirement, an experimental setup was created using a vacuum chamber containing TECs inside and a liquid cooling plate on the bottom to remove the heat load from the hot side. Different types of TEC stacks were tested under an applied heat load of 0.6W on the cold side. It was found that although there are many commercially available multi-stage TECs for cryogenic applications, it alone is not enough to achieve the required $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ of 110C. Also, adding more than 4 or 5 stages to the multistage TEC is not very effective due to the very low COP and the exponential rise of heat dissipation in the lower stages. The maximum $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ that can be achieved by one multi-stage TEC was found to be only around 90C at a heat load of 0.6W. It is shown here that in order to overcome the $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ shortfall, an additional layer of 3 single-stage TECs (in parallel) needs to be added at the bottom of the multi-stage TEC in order to increase the total $\Delta \mathrm{T}$ closer to the required value (110C).


The invention relates to a method for the synthesis of carbon nanotubes on the Surface of a material. The invention more particularly relates to a method for the synthesis of carbon nanotubes (or CNT) at the surface of a material using a carbon Source comprising acetylene and Xylene, and a catalyst con taining ferrocene. The method of the invention has the advan tage, amongst others, of enabling the continuous synthesis of nanotubes when desired. Also, the method of the invention is carried out attemperatures lower than those of known meth ods and on materials on which the growth of carbon nano tubes is difficulty reproducible and/or difficulty homogenous in terms of CNT diameter and density (number of CNT per Surface unit). Said advantages, amongst others, make the method of the invention particularly useful at the industrial level. The invention also relates to materials that can be obtained by said method and to the use thereof in all the known application fields of carbon nantubes, in particular as a reinforcement for preparing structural and functional com posite materials.


This paper studied the preparation and effects of phosphonium montmorillonites (P-MMT) on flame retardance and thermal stability of the flame retardant system consisting of polypropylene (PP) and magnesium hydroxide. P-MMT were prepared by introducing hexadecyl tributyl phosphonium bromide into sodium montmorillonite through ion-exchange method. The flame residence data indicate that the heat release rate of system can be reduced from 226.7 kW/m2 to 204.4 kW/m2 by adding P-MMT and the MHRR360 from 167.6 kW/m2 to 138.3 kW/m2. The introduction of P-MMT can effectively promote the flame retardance of the system.


A method is presented of analysing the time course of observed solute concentration in a circulating system in terms of the reaction of the solute with a stationary bed, using the laws of diffusion. Indications are that an accuracy of about 1% is achieved.


The Green River formation in Southwestern Colorado is known as one of the world's richest oil shales and is the target for several oil companies' programs aimed at developing and evaluating technology to assess and develop the resource. Petrophysical evaluation of the potential liquid hydrocarbon yield is challenging due to the complex mineralogy that includes high and variable concentrations of minerals seldom encountered in conventional reservoirs. We present a case study of the evaluation of a comprehensive wireline and core data set that included capture and inelastic spectroscopy, natural gamma and NMR logs, and many hundreds of feet of core-derived elemental and mineralogical analysis supplemented by Fischer Assays and RockEval pyrolysis measurements of the liquid hydrocarbon content. The borehole was shallow, on gauge and filled with a low salinity drilling fluid, and the logs were acquired slowly, resulting in optimum log data quality, particularly in the case of the spectroscopy logs. The dataset therefore offered an opportunity to assess the relative accuracy of the elemental yields from natural and induced spectroscopy in the most favorable conditions likely to be encountered in oilfield operations, and as such represents a valuable reference for more general use of these logs. We showed that the tools' accuracy varied considerably from element to element, and used this information to select the elements used as inputs in the detailed mineralogical analysis that followed. This volumetric compositional analysis into minerals and organic matter was used as a starting point for reproducing Fischer Assay results, the recognized standard for quantifying liquid potential. This step included transformation from liquid hydrocarbon in gallons per ton of the assay samples to the more familiar barrels per acre-foot of the gross rock volume. Finally, liquid hydrocarbon potential was estimated using simple overlays of square root conductivity against density and compressional slowness to compare the prediction accuracy achievable with a limited data set available in most regional wells against the standard obtained with the comprehensive data set used for the initial detailed evaluation. This enabled us to determine the value of the additional data acquisition in terms of the reduced prediction uncertainty obtained with the more comprehensive log and core data set and detailed analysis.


An approximation of maximum-likelihood decoding over the binary symmetric channel was introduced by Omura in 1972. This decoder employs an iterative, randomized algorithm whose behavior closely mimics that of the simplex algorithm. In this paper, we generalize Omura's decoder to operate on an arbitrary binary-input memoryless channel. Further, we prove that the probability of the generalized Omura decoder (and hence Omura's original decoder) returning a maximum-likelihood codeword approaches 1 as the number of iterations goes to infinity, a result that has hereto remained unproven.


Wheat bran is rich in bioactive components, mainly dietary fiber, micronutrients, and phytochemical contents. However, the health-promoting effects of wheat bran is restricted by the high-degree crosslinking of dietary fiber and low bioavailability of phytochemicals. The present study aims to improve the functions of wheat bran by increasing the levels of soluble fiber and free ferulic acid from optimized processing to examine the metabolic effects of consuming functionalized wheat bran (FWB) in mice.

 Control wheat bran (CWB) was processed by an optimized combination of milling, high pressure pulverization, and alkali treatment, leading to dramatic increases of soluble fiber and free ferulic acid. Three groups of male mice were fed the control AIN93G diet, and two modified AIN93G diets containing 10% of CWB and 10% FWB, respectively, for 7 days. The effects of CWB and FWB on the mouse metabolome were determined through the LC-MS based metabolomics analysis of feces, liver, serum, and urine samples.

 The processing dramatically improved the function-associated physicochemical properties of wheat bran, including the increases of soluble fiber content and viscosity by milling and high-pressure pulverization and the elevation of free ferulic acid by alkali treatment. FWB feeding elevated microbial SCFAs production, promoted the excretion of bile acids and cholesterol in feces, modified the lipidome in the liver, decreased triacylglycerols and cholesterol in serum, and increased the levels of ferulic acid and microbial metabolites in urine. On the other hand, FWB feeding resulted in the increases of free amino acids in feces and the decreases of essential amino acids, choline and its metabolites in the liver.

 The optimized processing dramatically increased the soluble fiber and free ferulic acid contents of wheat bran, resulting in improved hypocholesterolemic and antioxidant functions of FWB. However, the bioavailability of nutrients, including essential amino acids and choline, and the homeostasis of lipidome could be negatively affected by FWB diet. These double-edged metabolic effects warrant further investigations on how to achieve the balance between the functionalization of bioactive components and the disruption of nutrient bioavailability in wheat bran processing.

 NIFA project MIN-18–125.


The purpose of this research is to find  the new conclusion for the corporate tax  compliance. T his research use the meta anaylisis approach . Meta-analysis approach is expected to give the new conclusion based on previous research in the corporate tax  compliance. The on previous research in the corporate tax  compliance has many conclusion, so this research used m eta-analysis approach  to synthesize the factors that has significant influence on corporate tax  compliance. The research is using the published article as sample form 2004-2015. This research find that modernization of tax administration, sanctions, service quality, understanding of tax accounting and audit have significant influence in corporate tax  compliance.


The evolution of communications and how this is affected by social factors is addressed in an attempt to gaze beyond third generation (3G) systems. We commence by observing the origins of communications and the route we travelled to arrive at the proposed 3G systems. After speculating on what 3G networks are likely to offer and their social impact, we examine future scenarios such as soft telecommunications, high capacity networks, body wireless local area networks (B-WLAN), a myriad of interconnecting WLAN, aerial networks, maritime networks, and ad hoc networks. The discourse culminates with speculation regarding the speeding up of evolution of man to cope with the growing intelligence of our electronics and communications systems.


From antiquity to the Jin Dynasty, the thoughts of interaction between Heaven and humans experienced several changes, Shan Hai Jing or The Classics of Mountains and Seas was classifi ed as the witchcraft type in History of the Han Dynasty. Guo Pu's thoughts of interaction between Heaven and Humans could be divided into two modes:basic mode and special mode. The theoretical foundation was theories of qi, deity and Heaven or the combination of the three. There were some metaphysical thoughts his thoughts, showing that he was also a student of metaphysics. He chose the "little tradition" by abandoning the "great tradition" was due to his academic traditions and political ideals. He inherited the Confucian traditions from the Han dynasty. In spite of his evasive thoughts, he still played an active role in politics, using the theory of interaction between Heaven and humans to limit emperor s' power. He thought that he should do something benefi cial to the country and the people, so he urged Wen Qiao and Yu Liang to defend Wang Dun through divination, but ended up in losing his own life.


The electrocaloric effect was investigated in lead-free Zr doped Ba0.8Ca0.2(ZrxTi1−x)O3 (BCTZ) ceramics synthesized by a conventional sintering process. Room-temperature x-ray diffraction analysis showed that the tetragonal structure is obtained in BCTZ for x  ≤ 0.08 and a pseudo cubic phase for x > 0.08. The dielectric spectroscopy and calorimetry revealed that the Curie temperature decreases as a consequence of Zr doping and that the BCTZ exhibits a first order ferroelectric phase transition. The electrocaloric effect was determined by the calculation of the electrocaloric change of temperature (ΔT) using the Maxwell relation based on the P–E hysteresis loops measured at different temperatures. A large electrocaloric responsivity ΔT/ΔE = 0.34 × 10−6 Km/V was found for x = 0.04, which significantly exceeds of values found so far in other lead-free electrocaloric materials.


A continuum structure function (CSF) is a non-decreasing mapping from the unit hypercube to the unit interval. A B-type CSF, deflned in the text, is a CSF whose behaviour is modeled by its underlying binary structures. As the measure of importance of a system component for a B-type CSF, the structural and reliability importance of a component at a system level fi(0 < fi < 1) are deflned and their properties are deduced.


Issues addressed: To investigate whether culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Western Sydney have experienced any positive effects during the COVID19 pandemic, and if so, what these were. Methods: A cross sectional survey with ten language groups was conducted from 21st March to 9th July 2021 in Sydney, Australia. Participants were recruited through bilingual multicultural health staff and health care interpreter service staff and answered a question, In your life, have you experienced any positive effects from the COVID-19 pandemic? Differences were explored by demographic variables. Free text responses were thematically coded using the Content Analysis method. Results: 707 people completed the survey, aged 18 to >70, 49% males and 51% females. Only 161 (23%) of those surveyed reported any positive impacts. There were significant differences in the proportion of those who reported positives based on age (p=0.004), gender (p=0.013), language (p=0.003), health literacy (p=0.014), English language proficiency (p=0.003), education (p=<0.001) and whether participants had children less than 18 years at home (p=0.001). Reporting of positive impacts ranged from 12% for people aged seventy years or older to 30% for the 30-49 year age group. Reporting of positive impacts for different language groups ranged from 9% to 42%. 18% of men reported positive impacts compared to 27% of women, and 18% of people with inadequate health literacy reported positive impacts compared to 26% with adequate health literacy. Content Analysis of open ended responses showed that, of those that did report positives, the top themes were Family time (44%), Improved self care (31%) and, Greater connection with others (17%). Conclusions: From 21st March to July 9th, 2021, few surveyed participants reported finding any positives because of the COVID19 pandemic. This finding is in stark contrast to related research in Australia in a population dominated by adults with English as their first language, carried out in June 2020, in which many more people experienced positives. So what: The needs of people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds must inform future responses to community crises to facilitate an equitable effect of any collateral positives that may arise.


The purpose of hyperspectral unmixing (HU) is to obtain the spectral features of materials (endmembers) and their proportion (abundance) in a hyperspectral image (HSI). Due to the existence of spectral variabilities (SVs), it is difficult to obtain accurate spectral features. At the same time, the performance of unmixing is not only affected by SVs but also depends on the effective spectral and spatial information. To solve these problems, this study proposed an efficient attention-based convolutional neural network (EACNN) and an efficient convolution block attention module (ECBAM). The EACNN is a two-stream network, which is learned from nearly pure endmembers through an additional network, and the aggregated spectral and spatial information can be obtained effectively with the help of the ECBAM, which can reduce the influence of SVs and improve the performance. The unmixing network helps the whole network to pay attention to meaningful feature information by using efficient channel attention (ECA) and guides the unmixing process by sharing parameters. Experimental results on three HSI datasets showed that the method proposed in this study outperformed other unmixing methods.


Nursing management is a process of organizing nurses to work together to improve the quality of care as the goal.Responsibilities of nursing managers is to achieve the best level of care, full mobilization of all sectors and all the enthusiasm of staff and to the rational allocation of resources at their disposal and use in order to obtain high efficiency.Non-power influence is a natural sexual influence, is a leader in the formation of personal qualities and behavior, and can naturally affect the psychological behavior of the behavior of others, through the subtle influence of the process, become the driving force the behavior of others.Nursing care and management of the manager to do well, we should give full play to the influence of non-power role, so that subordinates psychologically convincing, respect, compliance depends on the care managers, and thereby mobilize the enthusiasm of nurses, so that the potential of every nurse In the work to be maximized.


This work deals with the psychological rehabilitation of patients with anophthalmia having eye protesis as the main role on the problem. Stages of psychological reaction after eye lost and also the difficulties of adaptation of fellows with both eyesight lost is widely discussed. In order to help practitioners, recommendations on dealing this kind of patients has been given.


This paper proposes a novel technique for iris recognition in the context of biometric identification of a person. The iris is a portion of the inner eye of an individual and contains an abstract and randomly generated texture pattern arising from orientation of complex tissues within this region. This random pattern can provide a unique identifier of a person if a mathematical model can be built to represent and compare it. In this paper the iris images are mapped to Eigen-space and a robust iris code signature is generated from different camera snapshots of the same eye to incorporate tonal and lighting variations. To enable real-time identification the signature is represented as a low dimensional feature for reducing computational overheads. It is observed to produce high recognition accuracies which highlight the reliability of the feature. Moreover the technique is seen to be robust which can work satisfactorily with noisy and partially occluded images.


ABSTRACT : Curriculum reform is an important strategy to improve the quality of education and human resources in order to increase economic development to better compete in a globalized world. This paper focuses on curriculum development in Indonesia, comparing Indonesian school curriculum to US A (United States of America) school curriculum, and analyzes several factors that strongly influenced Indonesian and American curriculum design and curriculum decision-making. Curriculum development in Indonesia , from independence in 1945 to today , is characterized by cycles of planning and revision. Currently, the goal of the new curriculum requires students to be able to appreciate and implement honesty, discipline, responsibility, compassion (tolerance and working together) and politeness, self-confidence, and effective interactions in social and natural environments. Science curriculum development in the US A schools started with private educational religious institutions. Nowadays, students are encouraged to use scientific information to make choices about issues that arise in everyday life, engage intelligently in public discourse , and debate about important issues that involve science and technology. Several aspects must be taken into account in order to reform the science education curriculum , especially in Indonesia. In designing curriculum, decision makers should involve many parties, such as higher education, researchers, politicians, scientists, teachers, parents, social and religious community leaders, and industrialists. KEY WORDS : C urriculum D evelopment ; S cience E ducation ; Indonesian and American; Curriculum Design; Curriculum Implementation. About the Authors: Risa Haridza , M.A. is an Educational Authorities of Pontianak City, Public Middle School 3 Pontianak, Jalan Kalimantan 123, Pontianak 78116, West Borneo, Indonesia. Karen E. Irving , Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education and Human Ecology OSU (Ohio State University), 1945 North High St Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA (United States of America). Corresponding author: email@example.com How to cite this article? Haridza, Risa & Karen E. Irving. (2017). "The Evolution of Indonesian and American Science Education Curriculum: A Comparison Study" in EDUCARE: International Journal for Educational Studies , Vol.9(2), February, pp.95-110. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press owned by ASPENSI, ISSN 1979-7877. Chronicle of the article: Accepted (September 8, 2016); Revised (January 15, 2017); and Published (February 27, 2017).


This paper reports on theoretical study of the compression process within balanced type vane pump for Electro-Hydraulic Power Steering(EHPS). Equations of camring profiles are derived, then displacements, velocities, accelerations, and jerks are calculated. Vane side leakages, vane slit leakages, and rotor side leakages are considered and calculated. Numerical integration of flow equation is performed using 4th Runge-Kutta method. As a result of analysis, it is found that chamber pressure depends on rotational speeds, bulk modulus of fluid, notches, camring profiles, and positions of delivery port. Especially, the variation of notch area is the most important factor that prevents pressure from rapid rising.


One known and [\vo new species of the genus Psilenchus are described from Argentina : P. hilanls Siddiqi, 1963, P. pralensis n. sp., and P. bahiablancae n. sp. P. pralensis n. sp. is a medium sized and thin species, characterized by a smooth, conical-truncate, slightly set off from body labial area; knobless stylet; lateral fields with four incisures; conical tail with clavate terminus; male spicules 25-32 fJ.m long. P. bahiablancae n. sp. is a long and thin species, characterized by a smooth and rounded, slightly set off from body labial area; knobless stylet; lateral fields with four incisures; conical rail with clavate terminus; male spicules 30-38 fJ.m long. P. pralensù n. sp. differs from P. bahiablancae n. sp. by the shape of labial area (truncate vs rounded) and by the Iength of spicules (30-38 vs 25-32 fJ.m).


In this paper we present the Active House industrial demonstrator, exhibited at the ELFACK fair (May 2011), which demonstrates the role of home/building automation systems in energy management at home. Moreover, we introduce the Active House deployment architecture in the smart grid that provides the basis for the industrial demonstrator. We discuss the demonstrator as the proof-of-concept that allows us to evaluate the applicability of the architectural solution and validate whether the Active House architecture can provide the right starting point for integrating the Active House into the grid.


Sönke Albers (2009) states in his abstract that he wants to critically evaluate our ranking of journals for economics and business; yet, that is not what he does. First and foremost, we do not develop a single ranking; instead, on the basis of four existing rankings, we construct four different meta-rankings through a methodologically sound imputation procedure, which is described in great detail in Schulze et al. (2008a, pp. 293–300). This imputation extends each base ranking to more than 2,800 journals while preserving the underlying logic of the list. It thus allows evaluating publications in journals that the original base ranking does not cover – and thus minimizes a problem that all journal lists had: they were too short! Frequently, research output could not be evaluated appropriately because a number of research outlets were not rated. Instead of imposing one list as the relevant one, we offer four different meta rankings based on two very different approaches – impact assessment and expert opinion approach – and we are very explicit about the relative advantages of both approaches, rather than criticizing just one. The user should choose the rankings knowing their relative strengths and weaknesses. Because we do not create new rankings, but impute on the basis of existing rankings, each of our imputed rankings will have the flaws and strengths of the underlying base ranking and the rankings used for imputation. Albers now claims that one of the existing rankings, i.e. the Ritzberger list and the imputed list based on Ritzberger, lacks 'face validity'. His criterion is essentially that any list should coincide very highly with the lists that he thinks are relevant (see his Table 4). He does not make any attempt to reflect critically on the weaknesses of these lists, and thus while he is very critical towards one list he is very uncritical towards others. In the light of different weaknesses of all rankings a balanced view would take the relative strengths and weaknesses into account rather than just postulating a group of lists as


The scattering of light perpendicularly incident to an electric field in a nematic liquid crystal has been investigated. At low electric field strengths, the formation of domains results in the diffraction of the scattered coherent light. This diffraction provides a convenient tool for the study of domain behavior. The formation of the domains depends on the cell thickness and applied electric field. As the electric field is increased, the liquid‐crystal domains become narrower and rotate slightly until they are parallel to the applied field. A further increase in field strength leads to the onset of dynamic scattering with the attendant disruption of domain regularity. The scattered light loses the structure of the diffraction patterns but retains a preferential scattering in the direction of the diffraction orders. No appreciable effects due to the polarization of incident radiation have been observed.


An information filtering system is described which extracts e-mail messages from on-line resources. The proposed solution applies (1) linguistic analysis to obtain consistent representations of the contents of interesting e-mails, (2) an evolutionary algorithm for prioritizing morphologically parsed messages and (3) a monitor to simulate a user's behavior.


Abbreviations: CMS = Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services COPD = chronic obstructive pulmonary disease H2H = Hospital-to-Home HF = heart failure HRRP = Hospital Re-admissions Reduction Program


The authors report the radiographic findings in two patients with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) who presented with cavitary lung disease caused by Aspergillus. Recognition of the disease in one of the patients led to successful medical therapy. Disease due to Aspergillus must be considered in HIV-positive patients with cystic or cavitary disease appearing in chest radiographs.


Deceased donation occurs at times of significant family distress and it is usually not possible to 'train' during these periods. Therefore, learning occurs either in a piecemeal fashion on the job or in classrooms, based on theory and quite removed from the real world of the intensive care environment. Simulation allows staff training and development in a safe environment while enacting real-time events. Nottingham University Hospitals Trust Donation Committee felt that simulation may be an appropriate tool for staff to develop skills in the deceased donation process. A one-day simulation pilot was planned collaboratively with the Trent Simulation and Clinical Skills Centre. This successful pilot demonstrated that simulation was an effective environment to train staff in deceased donation and had the ability to benefit both participants and faculty. A second deceased donation simulation day, unchanged in format, was delivered and the combined outline and results for both days are reported. The intention in future is to support all regional intensive care, emergency medicine and neurosurgery trainees to attend a deceased donation simulation day during their training and to package the course so that it is freely available to other interested centres.


Reading has a great importance in the development of human beings. For the man is not born complete, lacks the knowledge, understanding on certain issues, the ability to know about opine, among others. And reading as an instrument builder, complete this development. It is impossible to think of the existence of an educational process in which the reading does not do this. For without it there was no such process, and the same thread of the educational process. It is through and through, that part of the school fulfills its role, transmit knowledge to their students. It is in kindergarten that the child begins to develop their reading practice, trying to find familiar words in a text, it can establish a correlation with something known. To facilitate this process, the teacher needs to know how to create very special situations, which are productive. The process of learning to read in kindergarten becomes easier when you make use of certain strategies. To learn to read easily, the child needs to know to establish a correlation between words and images. Therefore, it is of fundamental importance that the teacher always try to provide the children pictures that represent goals related to the daily lives of children, in which they see some meaning. This article aims to show how the building is the practice of reading in kindergarten.


A survey of laboratory methods is presented for the determination of the calcium carbonate content of soils. The survey looks at (1) the accuracy obtained, (2) operator skill required, and (3) relative equipment costs, inaddition to other variables. In addition, a summary of marine carbonate materials is also presented which illustrates their various sizes, shapes, locations, porosities, and chemical constituents. The conclusion from this survey is that the pressure calcimeter method ("Karbonat-Bombe") is the best method suited for geotechnical engineering applications.


The recombinant shuttle plasmid pShuttle-P1-IRES-3C was constructed successfully after the FMDV P1 and 3C genes were linked by IRES gene.Then the recombinant shuttle plasmid was linearized by PmeⅠand then transformed to BJ5183 cells containing the pAdEasy-1 bone plasmid,The homologous recombinant plasmid was transformed to XL-10 GOLD ultracompetent cells in order to obtain this plasmid in a large scale.A sufficient amount of purified recombinant adenovirus plasmid was digest with PacⅠ, and then transfected AD-293 cells using lipsome. After viral stock was passaged,the titer TCID50 was 1010.71/ml.Obvious fluorescence was observed in the AD-293 cell stained with standard serum of FMDV serotype O by IFA,which showed that the objective genes were expressed successfully.The results lay a foundation for the study of FMDV vaccine.


Dense stellar clusters are natural sites for the origin and evolution of exotic objects such as relativistic binaries (potential gravitational wave sources) and blue stragglers. We investigate the secular dynamics of a binary system driven by the global tidal field of an axisymmetric stellar cluster in which the binary orbits. In a companion paper we developed a general Hamiltonian framework describing such systems. The effective (doubly-averaged) Hamiltonian derived there encapsulates all information about the tidal potential experienced by the binary in its orbit around the cluster in a single parameter Γ. Here we provide a thorough exploration of the phase-space of the corresponding secular problem as Γ is varied. We find that for Γ > 1/5 the phase-space structure and the evolution of binary orbital elements are qualitatively similar to the Lidov–Kozai problem. However, this is only one of four possible regimes, because the dynamics are qualitatively changed by bifurcations at Γ = 1/5, 0, −1/5. We show how the dynamics are altered in each regime and calculate characteristics such as the secular evolution time-scale and maximum possible eccentricity. We verify the predictions of our doubly-averaged formalism numerically and find it to be very accurate when its underlying assumptions are fulfilled, typically meaning that the secular time-scale should exceed the period of the binary around the cluster by ≳10–102 (depending on the cluster potential and binary orbit). Our results may be relevant for understanding the nature of a variety of exotic systems harboured by stellar clusters.


The paper seeks to determine to what extent lower national courts are influenced by higher national courts in their application of CJEU case law. In doing so, we study and compare references to CJE ...


Thank you for reading living strategy putting people at the heart of corporate purpose. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search numerous times for their favorite books like this living strategy putting people at the heart of corporate purpose, but end up in harmful downloads. Rather than reading a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they cope with some harmful bugs inside their laptop.


In the structure of the industrial building, the reinforced bar teton fitting style is more widely used, and the posts may be prefabricated earlier, and so they have to gain the specified intensity to be lifted by the crane. Checking computations are indispensable for the safety in the construction. Their bending strength must be calculated correctly, so as to determine the suspending points properly. Our ways have proved to be successful in many projects.


The purpose of this paper is to give an explicit formula for the number of non-isomorphic cluster-tilted algebras of type An, by counting the mutation class of any quiver with underlying graph An. It will also follow that if T and T ′ are cluster-tilting objects in a cluster category C, then EndC(T ) is isomorphic to EndC(T ′) if and only if T = τ iT ′. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 16G20, 16G70, 05E15, 20F55


Structural characterization at the nanometric scale of the Nautilus sp shell was carried out by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and high-angle annular dark field to understand how the organic and inorganic components are related. The inorganic phase that built the shell is made of calcium carbonate (CaCO_3), with the orthorhombic unit cell of the aragonite, in a texturized arrangement in such a way that the c -axis is always perpendicular to the shell surface. The organic material forms films through the plates. We observed for a very first time some aragonite nanocrystals embedded in the organic matrix. This observation supports the hypothesis that the proteins and other organic compounds guide the crystal growth because the organic matrixes are the places where the nanocrystals grow.