Saraca asoca (Roxb.) Willde. is a globally vulnerable tropical tree species with immense medicinal and aesthetic value. High demand for its bark in pharmacological industry resulted in severe reduction of its population in wild, thus paving way to adulteration. The declining population can only be restored and multiplied through both in situ and ex situ conservation efforts. The seeds of the species were reported with less germination. The present study was therefore an attempt to improve the seed germination of the species with mechanical, water based and chemical based presowing treatments, which significantly improved the germination as compared to no presowing treatments (55%) except with boiling water based treatments (11.6618.33%) which significantly reduced germination. Exposing the plumule by rubbing the seed coat with sand paper and soaking the seeds in hot water (70°C) for 12 h significantly enhanced germination. Chemical based presowing treatments with salicylic acid and thiourea also enhanced germination by 1.67–15% and 13.33–31.66%, respectively over control. Higher the concentration of thiourea improved germination than salicylic acid. Temperature of water and exposure time to water also influenced germination. Increasing the temperature of water from room temperature to 70°C increased germination but further increasing the temperature significantly reduced germination over control. Increasing soaking time by 12–24 h, however reduced germination. In terai region of West Bengal, for faster, higher and smoother germination of S. asoca, adaptation of presowing seed treatment may be recommended especially via soaking the seeds in hot water for 12 h.


Waste water treatment with iron salts results in sewage sludge with higher phosphorus and iron concentrations. The effect of this type of sludge on the availability of phosphorus in soils was not clear. Heavy soils differing in their phosphorus status were treated with two sludge samples with different molar Fe:P ratios (narrow 1:1.2; wide 1:0.3) or CaHPO 4 as a mineral phosphorus fertilizer. After a few weeks the orthophosphate (P i ) concentrations of soil solutions, P sorption capacity and P uptake by maize and afterwards by red clover were measured. In the case of sewage sludge with the wide Fe:P ratio, Pi concentration was reduced, P sorption was increased and P uptake by plants was significantly lower than is the case after addition of CaHPO 4 . Use of this type of sludge as a fertilizer is not recommended as high Fe concentrations in sewage sludge should be avoided.


: Empowering leadership is generally regarded as a positive leadership style. Managers play an important role in the process of implementing empowerment in organizations. However, for purposes of maintaining authorities and other reasons, it is common that managers are unwilling to authorize autonomy and provide relevant resources to their subordinates. There has been increasing scholarly interest in exploring the antecedents of leader empowering behaviors. However, extant studies remain sporadic and fragmented. The development of this line of research will be benefited from an integrated review. We find that: (1) most researchers agree that leader empowering behavior is not a steady leadership style, rather is the differentiated empowering behavior to different subordinates; (2) the antecedents of leader empowering behavior could be divided into three categories including context factors, leader factors and employee factors; (3) leader-member exchange theory, trust theory, social cognition theory and empowering risk perspective are the main theories to explain the formation mechanism of leader empowering behavior. We clarify the formation mechanism of empowering leader behavior. Finally, building on contextual leadership theory, charismatic, ideological and pragmatic (CIP) model of leadership, and followership theory, future implications are provided.


In this work we report the synthesis of the Pb(Fe$_{0.5}$Nb$_{0.5}$)O$_{3}$ (PFN) powders and sintered
ceramics. The ceramics were prepared from oxides: Fe$_2$O$_3$, Nb$_2$O$_5$ and PbO by two-stage
columbite method by calcination. PFN powders were dried and formed in samples in shape
of discs (10$\times$1) mm$^3$ and rectangular bars (26$\times$10$\times$1) mm$^3$. The samples were sintered
by conventional ceramic sintering (CCS) method at temperature of 1323 K for 2 h in air. The
density of the ceramic samples was determined to be $\rho = 8200$ kg/m$^3$. The obtained results
of investigations of electric and mechanical properties such as: Young's modulus $E$, electric
permittivity $\varepsilon$ and tangent of dielectric loss of angle tan $\delta$ of the Pb(Fe$_{0.5}$Nb$_{0.5}$)O$_3$ ceramics
obtained are presented.


In order to implement the spirit of the document awarded by the three ministries, promote the medical reform process of public hospital, promote the healthy development of the laboratory medicine, this paper expounds the significance of the study and implementation of the file, and puts forward several ideas.(Chin J Lab Med, 2013, 36: 97-99)

Key words:
Health care reform; Laboratories, hospital; Fees and charges


Crop land suitability for wheat crop is carried out in the Patan District of North Gujarat, India. There are many factors which affect the land suitability for wheat cultivation like land use, land cover, soil texture, slope, soil pH, soil salinity, soil sodicity, soil depth, soil drainage, groundwater quality and soil nutrients [nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), potassium (K)]. The land evaluation criteria were adopted from soil suitability manual of National Bureau of Soil Survey and Land Use Planning (NBSS % LUP), India and literature survey. All these factors have been assigned weightage obtained from Satty's method. The crop land evaluation results of the present study area were classified into four categories of wheat suitability (highly suitable, moderately suitable, marginally suitable, and unsuitable) as per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). These categories were arrived at by integrating the various layers with corresponding weights in Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. This study proposes a methodology for evaluation and mapping of land suitability for wheat crop using the spatial MCDM techniques. The results indicate that distribution of wheat acreage under various suitability classes was highly suitable: 34.09%, moderately suitable: 47.37%, marginally suitable: 11.76% and unsuitable: 6.76%.


This study aimed to explain the effect of usability on the attitude of repurchase the internet package, to explain the effect of ease of use on the attitude of repurchase the internet package,to explain the effect of usability on the intention to repurchase an internet package and to explain the effect of ease of use on the intention to repurchase an internet package.The number of samples used was 60 respondents who repurchased the internet package through MyTelkomsel live in Denpasar City with the sampling technique using purposive sampling method. This research use PLS (Partial Least Square) analysis technique.The results showed that (1) usability has positive and significant effect on attitude, (2) ease of use has positive and significant effect on attitude, (3) usability negatively affects the intention torepurchase, (4) ease of use has positive and significant effect on the intention to repurchase, (5) attitude has positive and significant effect on the intention to repurchase. Based on the results of mediation of usability testing has a positive and significant effect on the intention to repurchase through the full mediation attitude and ease of use has positive and significant effect on the intention to repurchase through the partial attitudes (partial mediation). The implication of the results of this study is usability can be improved by paying attention to the dimensions of improving job performance thus the intention to repurchase the internet package in MyTelkomsel is getting increase, ease of use can be increased by taking into account the easy to get the system to do what he / she wants to do intention to buy again. Internet package in MyTelkomsel is getting increase, attitudes can be increased by paying attention to the dimensions of the cognitive components thus the intention to repurchase the internet package in MyTelkomsel is getting increase, the last intention to repurchase can be increased by paying attention to the dimensions of explorative interest.


When examining the dynamic of students experience on college campuses, it is evident that
sexual harassment is an issue that has a large role in providing students with a negative college
experience. Sexual harassment hinders student performance, and subsequently the ability to
reach their full academic potential. Sexual harassment leaves those victimized in a state of fear
and intimidation, detrimentally affecting the nature in which students conduct themselves. At
present, the measures taken to increase education and awareness surrounding sexual harassment
have had poor results, as the belief in a just world continues to reinforce victim blame. In order
to find a solution, an effective method to educate individuals about sexual harassment is
pertinent. Innovative processes, such as peer-led theatre education, have demonstrated positive
success in reshaping an individual's understanding and awareness of sexual assault. As college
administration teams express discontent with the means sexual harassment has been managed on
campus, the implementation of such processes could prove to be largely beneficial.


"Women Writing the Nation: National Identity, Female Community, and the British - French Connection, 1770-1820" engages in recent discussions of the development of British nationalism during the eighteenth century and Romantic period. Leanne Maunu argues that women writers looked not to their national identity, but rather to their gender to make claims about the role of women within the British nation. Discussing texts by Frances Burney, Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, and others in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, Maunu demonstrates that women writers of this period imagined themselves as members of a fairly stable community, even if such a community was composed of many different women with many different beliefs. They appropriated the model of collectivity posed by the nation, mimicking a national imagined community. In essence, because British-French relations dominated the national imagination, women had to think about their own gender concerns in national terms as well.


Just as viral infection of the respiratory epithelium results in injury and death to the host cells, the defensive measures available to the host also damage the lung, causing injury that is not restricted to the infected cells. These host responses occur in several stages, beginning when viral infection induces the infected host cell to synthesize and to secrete type 1 IFNs and chemokines, such as IL-8 (1). The resulting influx of neutrophils, cells that are capable of neither target cell specificity nor memory, causes proteolytic and oxidative tissue damage affecting virus-infected cells and their uninfected neighbors alike. Only at a later stage does the precision of the host response improve, as viral infection stimulates both CD8+ cytotoxic T-cell responses and antibody production. The antibody response helps limit the infection by facilitating the early and specific destruction of virus-infected cells, through antibody-dependent cytotoxicity mediated by mononuclear phagocytes. Further selectivity toward infected cells comes from the adaptive immune response by CD8+ cytotoxic T cells, which recognize viral antigens expressed in concert with MHC I target host cell antigens on the epithelial cell surface. Target cell lysis occurs only if viral antigens are expressed in concert with MHC I similar to that of the effector cells (2). Thus, viral infection in an immune host initiates a race in which cytotoxic T cells compete to destroy cells supporting viral replication before the virus can spread to enough cells to irreparably damage the host (3). Unfortunately for the host, it matters little whether the destruction of vital epithelium is caused by virus, oxidative stress of products of the innate immune system, or CD8+ cytotoxic cells.


Objective To compare the characteristic of apoptosis and mitochondria membrane potential of cerebral cortex cells in aging rats induced by different methods.Methods The aging rats models were established only by peritoneal injection D–gal,only thymus gland removal and peritoneal injection D –gal combined thymus gland removal respectively.The treatment group rats were intragastric administrated with vitamin E.C.After six weeks,the serum activities of SOD and T-AOC were detected.The cerebral cortex neuronal apoptosis proportion and mitochondrial membrane potential were measured by means of chromatometry and flow cytometry.Results After six weeks,compared with those of the normal control group,the serum levels of SOD and T-AOC in three different model groups were decreased significantly(P0.05),while there were no obvious difference between the three groups.Meanwhile,the proportion of neuronal apoptosis was increased remarkably and mitochondria membrane potential of neuronal cells were reduced notably in the three model groups (P0.05).Especially,there was statistic difference in the model group induced by peritoneal injection D-gal combined thymus gland removal compared with the other model groups(P0.05).Conclusions The aging rats models induced by peritoneal injection D-gal combined thymus gland removal manifeste pathological characteristics of aging better.


Relational triples are the essential parts of knowledge graphs, which can be usually found in natural language sentences. Relational triple extraction aims to extract all entity pairs with semantic relations from sentences. Recent studies on triple extraction focus on the triple overlap problem where multiple relational triples share single entities or entity pairs in a sentence. Besides, we find sentences may contain implicit relations, and it is challenging for most existing methods to extract implicit relational triples whose relations are implicit in the sentence. In this paper, we propose a relation-guided attention mechanism (RGAM) for relational triple extraction. Firstly, we extract subjects of all possible triples from the sentence, and then identify the corresponding objects under target relations with relation guidance. We utilize relations as prior knowledge instead of regarding relations as classification labels, and apply attention mechanism to obtain fine-grained relation representations, which guide extracted subjects to find the corresponding objects. Our approach (RGAM) can not only learn multiple dependencies in each triple, but also be suitable for extracting implicit relational triples and handling the overlapping triple problem. Extensive experiments show that our model achieves state-of-the-art performance on two public datasets NYT and WebNLG, which demonstrates the effectiveness of our approach.


1. As a fundainental investigation for the study of genetical effect of zinoma.lous envirdnmerital c. onditians upon rice embryo during its development the process of normal embryogenesis has been observed histochemically as well as morphologically. Nprin No. 17, an improved paddy variety, was used here as the materialsL 2. The zygote underg:oes cleavage during" the first 3 days after fertilization. It increases abruptly its cells during the period betweeh the 3rd and the 4th day, the.number of cells counted on the 4th day being ca. 15 times as many, as that on the 3rd day. From the 5th to the 8th day the young embryo multiplies its cells rather slowly, the avetage rate, of multiplication beihg ca. 150%. It shows again a rapid cell inbrease between the 8 thL and the 9th day (ca. 300%) Frorh this time on the rate of cell tnultiplication of einbryo ss a wholebecomes lower and lower as the development p.ro ceeds. The former abrupt cell increase is carried out before any sign of cell differehtiation has been recognized both morphologically and histochemically. Th.e latter is confirmed to be due to the speedy division of ceils forming the scutellurh and theseed, Iing organs including the coleoptile, the coleorhiza, the radicule and the primordial first foliage leaf. These have, then differentiated 'already alongr with the.epithellium. In the tissue f:orming the seedling organs cell multiplidation goes on actively until the Iatter stages. The scutellum cells, however, show no active division after the 9 th day, because they have nearly come to their maximurn nurrLber already by this time. The epithellial cells continue their division rather actively throughout the develop, ment, but they are aiw-ays the least in number and contribute little to the total gain (Table 1 and Figure 1).


The utility model discloses an elasticizer repiece suction gun device which comprises a repiece suction gun, a compressed air supply source and a compressed air pipe. The repiece suction gun is provided with a silk suction outlet and a compressed air connector. The compressed air supply source is communicated with the compressed air pipe. The compressed air connector is communicated with the compressed air pipe through a first flexible pipe. The elasticizer repiece suction gun device further comprises a cloth bag connected on the silk suction outlet. The elasticizer repiece suction gun device has the advantages that the cloth bag is connected on the silk suction outlet, and waste silk can be collected. The technical effects emerged include that a silk suction draught fan is eliminated, equipment cost is reduced, running electric energy of the silk suction draught fan is saved, and machining cost is reduced.


s of the 13th Congress of ECCO – European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation S109 risk and increased severity of Crohn's disease progression. However, the biological mechanisms responsible of the underlined smoking effects on UC progression remain largely elusive. Several studies have demonstrated the anti-inflammatory action of cholinergic agonists, such as the main tobacco alkaloid nicotine. The contrasting results observed in clinical studies addressing the role of nicotine in UC opened new questions on the molecular mechanisms at the base of the intrinsic nicotinic anti-inflammatory activity and the possible involvement of other tobacco alkaloids in the observed reduced ulcerative colitis disease risk, progression and relapse rate in smokers. In the present study we aimed to investigate the potential preventive anti-inflammatory activity of a tobacco alkaloid (Alkaloid #1), structurally similar to nicotine, in a murine model of intestinal inflammation. Methods: UC-like symptoms were induced in C57BL/6 male mice (n = 14) by 3.5% DSS administration for 7 days. Mice were then treated with nicotine and Alkaloid #1 at 2 different concentrations in drinking water for a total of 21 days (14 days pre-DSS + 7 days during DSS). During the treatment animals were evaluated for progression and severity of UC symptoms. Results: Daily observations (body weight, intestinal bleeding, hematochezia, etc.) and cytokine analysis revealed a protective alkaloidrelated effect. Although no differences observed on the histological analysis of colons, alkaloid-treated mice showed a reduced body weight loss, intestinal bleeding and hematochezia. Further molecular analysis are ongoing to investigate the molecular mechanisms implicated in the disease progression and amelioration. Conclusions: Further molecular analysis are ongoing to investigate the molecular mechanisms implicated in the disease progression and amelioration. P032 has been withdrawn.


The preferences of a decision-maker who faces risk on two different dimensions depend both on the curvature of her indifference map under certainty, which is a distinctly ordinal property, and on the degree of concavity of the utility function representing preferences under risk, which is a cardinal property. The weight of these two components is shown to depend on the direction of the change in risk. Bidimensional stochastic orders accounting for risks on any possible direction are first defined by generalizing the concept of submodularity. Three different factors are shown to shape individual preferences under risk in the bidimensional case: the degree of substitutability among goods, the intensity of risk aversion on each single dimension and the degree of correlation aversion of the decision-maker. Their contributions to the amount of risk premium is assessed and a new notion of "compensated risk aversion" is introduced.


An account is given of the habits and methods of control of the more important insects attacking the hop. They are as follows. The Hop Damson Aphis; Red Spider; Strig Maggot; Flea Beetle; Shy Bug and the Common Earwig.

Reference is also made to seven species of insects which have been tested as possible vectors of Mosaic and Nettlehead.


Partial discharge(PD) is an effective method to evaluate the insulation state of power cables. Accurate detection and localization of PD signals in cables can be conducive to detect the early fault of the cables.Where to place the sensor to capture and locate the PD signals is a problem in the cable system that one end of the sheath is grounded and one end the sheath is grounded through the sheath protector. For the purpose of solving this problem, we build a ethylenepropylene rubber insulated(EPR) power cable model in ATP-EMTP and study propagation characteristics of PD signals in cables as well as the coupling effect between the conductor and the sheath of the cables. Then the cable system that one end of the sheath is grounded and one end the sheath is grounded through the sheath protector is built. And the optimal installation position of the sensor is determined by simulation. Based on the above research,the PD signals can be located by using the two-terminal location method.


Experiments were performed to perfect a process for the CO 2 laser welding of an ASTMA335 grade P22 steel for pipes operating at high temperatures. The corresponding conventional welding techniques require a rather complicated schedule that includes both pre- and post- heating to prevent cracks and martensite formations in melted and heat affected areas, and has a mean duration of several hours. Qualification of the laser-welded joints was performed according to section IX of the ASME standards. The following results were obtained: -      defect-free joints without any form of preheating; -      a post-weld subcriticai annealing process able to reduce the hardness of the melted area to 280 HVin a few minutes (the hardness of the as- welded melted zone is around 400 HV); a similar process was applied at the end of the weld pass by modulating the power density delivered to the welded joint. Correct temperature distribution during annealing was ensured by means of a control system using a two-colour optical pyrometer focussed on the joint surface, and computerised checking of the incident laser power.


enthusiastic, secondary literature on Atlantic piracy to substantiateor develop this exciting claim. Indeed, On the Account's engagement with the state of recent maritime history in general is tenuous, and Gibbs misses opportunities to link not only his specific incidents to one another but also to engage readers in some of the larger trends in the field. Perhaps it is an unfair critique to complain of theoretical limitations in a work with the primary goal of "setting aright" the over-romanticized images of pirates found in previous volumes by letting the primary documents take the foreground. Nevertheless, a deeper framework of these sources would help situate readers of all levels more completely in the documents. The book would benefit from a better understanding ofthese sources as literary artefacts ofthe era as well. Gibbs acknowledges that these sources are not only superior to the rich, and often historically dubious literature of piracy that has undergone "long periods of embellishment" [ix] but are complex and contested in their own right, yet does little to tease out those complexities for his reader. Here again, secondary scholarship could be brought to bear that focuses on the literary traditions and conventions that surrounded the production ofthese contemporary sources. Moreover, the work defines "piracy" quite widely to include nearly all sorts of violent maritime disruptions, which furthers the feeling that this is a collection of loosely grouped events rather than an aggregation of sources around one analytically precise theme. In sum, On the Account is a worthy addition to the proliferating literature on the maritime Americas in the Age of Revolution. No comparable volume of carefully authenticated and resourced documents on the topic exists, and each chapter serves as a rich cache ofprimary material ready to serve as the bedrock of a course's exploration of that topic or incident. Despite some limitations in analysis and adherence to theme, the very valuable act of bringing together these rich, varied resources for an important and understudied era of maritime violence is a valuable contribution to our expanding knowledge of piracy in and around the Americas after the end of the "golden age."


According to the urgent characteristics of casualty evacuation,this paper established a casualty evacuation mathematical model of multi-disaster places,multi-hospital and multi-patients with the goal of the shortest time.Considering the hospital resource competition of patients,Operation Table Method(OTM) was used to solve the model and realize the goal of the shortest time.The method has been realized on the provincial level information demonstration platform of emergency management,and can deal with different injury types and the patient priorities.With this platform and Geographic Information System(GIS) technology,the method is simulated and the effect is good.


The black and white of a magpie in a yellow clump of sour sob at Port Elliot in the dawn...


We develop two independent extensions of normal modal logic following the ideas proposed by McCarthy in his writings on "context." The first is: in a deductive system, to treat modalities as assumptions, just like formulas. This enables us to define a calculus for normal modal logic which allows for the deduction theorem. The second idea is to treat modalities as objects of first-order theories. We provide semantics and a complete calculus.


Dynamics of concentration fluctuation in a semidilute polymer theta-solution in the regime of entanglements is studied theoretically. A number of relaxation modes is predicted, the largest amplitude corresponding to a reptation mode with the time , where q is the wave vector, the static correlation length, R the size of a polymer coil. A mode with a "superlong" time N2q−2 is predicted for . It is shown also that fluctuations of molecular field result in a substantial decrease of macromolecular curvilinear diffusion constant. The same effect gives rise to an increase of zero-shear viscosity of the solution; the dependence of viscosity on number of links per chain, N, is much stronger than N3 in the regime of high N.


I investigate the dynamics of galaxies in refracted gravity (RG), a novel theory of modified gravity which does not resort to dark matter (DM). The DM presence is mimicked by a gravitational permittivity, a monotonic increasing function of the local mass density that depends on three, in principle, universal parameters. RG reproduces the kinematic profiles of 30 disk galaxies in the DiskMass Survey (DMS), with mass-to-light ratios in agreement with stellar population synthesis models, disk-scale heights consistent with edge-on galaxies observations, and the RG parameters from the individual galaxies in agreement with one another, suggesting their universality. RG models the radial acceleration relation of the DMS galaxies with the correct asymptotic limits but with residuals correlating with some galaxies properties and with a too large intrinsic scatter, in contrast with observations, which requires further investigation. RG also describes the velocity dispersions of stars and of blue and red globular clusters in three elliptical E0 galaxies from the SLUGGS survey with sensible mass-to-light ratios and anisotropy parameters and with the three RG parameters consistent with one another. These parameters are also in agreement with the mean RG parameters estimated from the individual DMS galaxies.


This paper extends the traditional hedonic price specification to take into account the unobserved heterogeneity of sellers, buyers and seller–buyer matches. The specification is estimated using econometric techniques for non-nested panel data models on a data set of nearly 15 million transactions occurring in French wholesale fish markets over the 2002–2007 period. Results show that unobserved heterogeneity plays a significant role in price setting. For some species, its inclusion in price regressions changes the coefficients of quality-related fish characteristics. Fish characteristics are the main factors explaining price variations for many species, but time and buyer effects also play a significant role.


Abstract : The information contained in this report is intended to assist both Navy and shipyard/contractor personnel engaged in the welding and inspection of commercially pure titanium seawater piping systems for U.S. Navy surface ships. This report provides recommendations, requirements and guidance information on quality control, materials, welding and inspection for fabrication of titanium pipe welds. The fabrication requirements contained in this report are taken from NAVSEA technical publication S9074-AR-GIB-010/278 Requirements for Fabrication Welding and Inspection, and Casting Inspection and Repair for Machinery, Piping and Pressure Vessels. The mandatory requirements, as indicated by the word "shall," are considered to be the minimum acceptable for first quality workmanship. Recommendations and guidance information is not mandatory. The contents of this report are drawn from many sources and have been selected to complement numerous NAVSEA publications without in any way modifying those documents.


Early American punk had its most explicit identity crisis in Los Angeles during the late 1970s, and the sounds created in California during this time, including San Francisco, effectively defined American punk moving forward. Punk in Los Angeles in particular reflected some of the most extreme changes of the post-war era, with substantial migration, new development, and geographic segregation. California became the major site for debates over the meaning of punk styles, with growing tensions between older punks in the downtown or "Hollywood" scene, such as X and the Screamers, and the younger punks in suburban and beach areas, such as Circle Jerks and Black Flag, and ultimately, the style of suburban hardcore punk that was forged in California came to define punk for American listeners. It was in California where punk morphed from an expression of the sixties generation into a voice for Generation X heading into the 1980s. This chapter also takes a close look at punk's relationship to violence, especially with respect to the confrontations between punks and the LAPD. The musical life of Latinx punks (and Chicano or Mexican American punks specifically) serves as a case study for further investigations of social and musical complexities in Los Angeles.


An NMR spectrograph using an electromagnet is superstabilized by a feedback loop which uses the error signal from a secondary nuclear resonance probe to control the oscillator driving frequency. Field fluctuations thus produce such frequency variations as to preserve the Larmor condition for both short and very long times. The same oscillator is used for the measurement probe and thus also the Larmor condition is preserved in the sample being measured. Means are provided for sweeping frequency to produce precalibrated spectra of high precision at various magnifications and scale shifts with a very convenient and rapid setup procedure. Frequency scales are directly related to graph paper markings. Improved temperature control of the magnet and a reproducible precycling recipe also contribute to an unusually high degree of stability and reliability of day‐to‐day operation.


This study aims to analyse the main benefits observed due to ISO 9001:2015 implementation and certification in Brazilian companies. A survey with market professionals was conducted in order to perform this analysis. The data were statistically treated. First, Cronbach's Alpha was calculated to verify the reliability of the sample and Multidimensional Scaling was performed to eliminate possible outliers. Then, Exploratory Factor Analysis was conducted to identify the variables that englobe most of information variance and allocate them into factors. It was verified that from the 12 variables analysed, 7 were allocated into two factors that explained 70.913% of the model. In Factor 1, the variables were related to improvements in the business processes quality; reduction of errors and defects; improvements in the documentation processes; customer satisfaction. In Factor 2, the variables were related to improvements in cost savings; improvements in market share; and improvements in sales volume. The findings of this research can be useful for both academics and managers, for future research, and to evaluate possible opportunities to combine different managerial approaches to enhance the potential benefits that ISO 9001 can provide, respectively.


Since the military coup of December 1983, Nigeria has had three attempts at 'democratic transition'. Two of them, associated with the despotic leaderships of Babangida and Abacha, failed woefully. The third is still running its course and if all goes well, on 29 May 1999, the Nigerian military, under the leadership of General Abdusalami Abubakar, is scheduled to hand over power to the winner of the February 27th presidential election, General Olusegun Obasanjo. In the event that President-elect Obasanjo assumes office on 29 May, Nigeria would have completed a feat that was beginning to seem impossible since the overthrow of Shagari the transfer of power from the military to an elected successor government. Is this a case of 'third time lucky'? Is Nigeria really democratising or are we witnessing the legitimation of military privileges by other means? In this Briefing, I explore some of the complexities of the recent 'democratic opening's' in Nigeria.


An electrophorctic method was used in determining neptunium(IV) complex anion formation with ethylenediaminetetraacetate ions at pH 2 to 2.5. The results were confirmed by spectrophotometric investigation. (R.V.J.)


Formation of spinel phases in ZnO–Sb2O3and ZnO–Sb2O3–Bi2O3systems is studied by the use of X-ray diffraction. The formation of nonstoichiometric Zn2.33Sb0.67O4phase is observed in both the systems at ∼900°C. However, in these systems, at higher temperatures (T≥ 1100°C), formation of the inverse spinel phase Zn7Sb2O12is observed. The study has been extended to understand the effect of CrO3doping on the stability of the different spinel phases in the previously mentioned systems. Interestingly, in both the systems, samples doped with CrO3, displayed the presence of Zn2.33Sb0.67O4phase <1200°C, indicating the stabilization of the spinel phase by CrO3.


Qingdao, which is a natural fishery village at first, was developed into a"city"by Qing Government for the coast defence construction. Due to the introduction of city planning applied by German colonizer, the starting process of Qingdao from"village"to"city"was accelerated. The Qingdao city planning and construction in early-modern time had changed many times, and was dominated by different administrative bodies. At the same time, its city planning and construction proceeded independently from the other cities. Qingdao city had become a relatively big city with the characteristics of integrity and seaport features after fifty-eight years city planning and construction from 1891 to 1949. This paper discusses the three main historical stages and seven development phases of the Qingdao city planning development in early-modern time, and analyzes the content and characteristics of Qingdao city planning in each stage based on the rich and accurate historical material.


Abstract Thiothenoyltrifluoracetone (STTA) was used for the simultaneous extraction and direct spectrophotometric determination of bismuth at microgram concentration. About 98.5 μg of bismuth was extracted as the orange-red colored complex with 10 ml of 0.001 M STTA in carbontetrachloride. The extraction was quantitative at pH 6. The system conformed to Beer's Law in the concentration range of 2.5 to 30 μg/ml of bismuth at 460 nm. The method is both sensitive and selective. The molar absorptivity was 5.6 × 103 and sensitivity was 0.037 μg/cm2. The method is selective as it is possible to accomplish extraction and colorimetrically determination of bismuth in the presence of 1:50 of several ions. Only ions such as cadmium, tin, iron, titanium and nickel interfere seriously. The overall process of extraction and determination takes hardly 30 minutes. The method is reproducible.


The design and testing of an active 190-GHz imaging system is presented. The system features two beam-scanning antennas, one of which transmits a vertical fan beam, and the other which receives a horizontal fan beam. By correlating the transmitted and received signals, an output is obtained that is proportional to the millimeter-wave reflectivity at the intersection of the two fan beams. Beam scanning is obtained by rotating a small subreflector within each antenna, allowing rapid scanning. The system has an angular resolution of 0.3 deg, a field of view of 14×14 deg, and operates at a standoff distance of 5 m.


Cross-linked sawdust bearing tertiary amine functional groups having an average capacity of 88 mEq/100 g and a strength pKb of 10 have been found to be very efficient in removing some hazardous heavy metal anions (i.e., dichromate and permanganate) from their aqueous salt solutions. It was found that for a given set of treatment conditions, the lower the pH, the smaller the exchanger particle size range, the higher the agitation speed, and the lower the material-to-liquor ratio, the greater is the rate and extent of removal of dichromate anions from the surrounding medium. On the other hand, the effective exchange capacity as well as the affinity for hazardous anions are affected by contact time, pollutant concentration as well as type of heavy metal anion, and the percent removal followed the descending order: MnO4 − > Cr2O7 2−.


Liquid-liquid equilibria Interphase mass transfer Marangoni phenomena Mass transfer coefficients, interfacial effects, and surface renewal Mixing and coalescence phenomena in liquid-liquid systems Plug flow analysis Axial dispersion Selection, design, pilot-testing, and scale-up of extraction equipment Contributors.


The Guará Campaign consisted of a series of sounding rockets that were launched from August‐October, 1994 at a new launch facility at Alcântara, Brazil, which is within one degree of the Earth's magnetic equator. The campaign consisted of focused scientific experiments designed to investigate the electrodynamics and irregularities in the equatorial ionosphere and mesosphere and to study their relationship with neutral upper atmosphere motions. In all, 13 large sounding rockets and 20 small meteorological rockets were launched as part of four different experiment groups designed to investigate: (1) the daytime equatorial electrojet, (2) very high altitude Spread‐F processes, (3) sunset electrodynamics, and (4) middle atmosphere‐thermosphere coupling at the equator. All of the experiments utilized ground‐based scientific instruments including a VHF backscatter radar interferometer, magnetometers, ionosondes, and scintillation receivers. The project was a joint undertaking of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States and the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espacias (INPE) of Brazil. The project was named the Guará Campaign after a beautiful species of bird that is native to the equatorial region of Brazil.


Seasonally dependent, spontaneous rhythmical contractions were observed in the capsule of the isolated rabbit testis. Successive changes of the bathing medium abolished the contractions. Adding the original bathing fluid to the inactive testis reestablished the contractions, Prostaglandins Ei, Eo and F^Q, but not acetylcholine, serotonin or epinephrine induced natural-appearing contractions. Extraction of the bath fluid for prostaglandins and related compounds yielded a smooth-muscle active substance.


The 2D-convex hull refers to the minimal simple polygon consisting of all the points of the planar set and is applied widely in GIS.TSP algorithm based on 2D convex hull is proposed by integrating 2D-convex hull with TSP,firstly,the convex hull of all city points,which is a circuit that some of cities cross and the rest lies inside,is constructed by using the quick algorithm for convex hull,the rest cities are inserted into the circuit and formed the new one whose incremental length is minimal until the circuit goes through all the cities.Experiment result s on TSPL IB indicated that the proposed algorithms can achieve the solution of TSP quickly.


UV/sulfite process without oxygen has been extensively explored and used for the degradation of many micro-pollutants. In the present work, a UV/sulfite process in the presence of oxygen was applied to degrade a widely used pharmaceutical compound, metformin (MET). The results showed that the oxygen-involved UV/sulfite process could efficiently degrade MET. At an initial concentration of 2.5 mg/L, 86.0% of MET was removed from the contaminated water within 180 min irradiation at a sulfite dosage of 10 mM, solution pH of 9, and UV intensity of 4,092 μW/cm2. In addition, sulfate radical (SO4•-), hydroxide radical (•OH), hydrogen atom (•H), and hydrated electron (eaq −) were found to be the dominant active species contributing to MET removal in the studied process through scavenging experiments. The increase in UV intensity, sulfite dosage, solution pH, and reaction temperature enhanced MET degradation in the investigated process to a certain extent, whereas the introduction of bicarbonate and fulvic acid slightly suppressed MET degradation. Finally, the degradation products of MET were identified. The oxygen-involved UV/sulfite process exhibited a remarkable denitrification capacity (>80%) in MET. The findings of this study may offer a novel approach for treating emerging contaminants.


The "subsolidus" phase relations at room temperature in the system CaO-B2O3-BaO are investigated. Specimens of various compositions were prepared from appropriate ratios of CaCO3, B2O3, and BaCO3, and fired from 780° to 1040°C according to their melting points. There are three ternary compounds in this system. The crystal structures of these compounds were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD). CaBa2(BO3)2 and Ca5Ba2B10O22 are monoclinic structures. The lattice constants a= 14.221 A, b= 4.569 A, c= 11.926 A, β= 99.947°, and V= 763.4 a3 for CaBa2(BO3)2 and a= 15.714 a, b= 6.184 a, c= 10.204 a, β= 93.954°, and V= 989.29 a3 for Ca5Ba2B10O22 are obtained. The third compound, CaBa2(B3O6)2, is isostructural with the high form of BaB2O4 with lattice constants a= 7.167 a and c= 35.298 a. Powder second harmonic generation efficiencies of these ternary compounds were measured using a homemade apparatus.


The "Missing Equations" for Postwar USA, UK and Japan Estimating the "Missing Equations" for Developing Countries A Quest for the "Missing Equations" in OECD Countries The NAIRU, Potential Output and the Kalman Filter: A Survey and Estimation The NAIRU, Potential Output and Okun's Law: Postwar USA, UK and Japan Finance and Growth: VARs with Cointegration for the USA, the UK and Japan Financial Structure and Economic Growth: The USA, UK and Japanese Experiences Has Growth Been Led by Investment or Exports? Prewar and Postwar USA, UK and Japan Investment, Exports and Growth: Evidence from Some Developing Countries


Viruses are particularly troublesome pathogens in transplant recipients. Viral infections enhance susceptibility to opportunistic infection both by causing tissue injury and by contributing to systemic immunosuppression.1 Such infections increase the rate of graft rejection and the risk that cancer will develop. The problem of viral infection in transplantation reflects the intricate balance between lifelong viral infection in tissues, the host's antiviral immune function, and the level of immunosuppression required to maintain graft function. The likelihood that latent viral infection will be activated is a function of the microbiologic features of the specific virus, the presence of stimuli for the activation . . .


For the sake of saving energy and reducing emissions, this paper will introduce a design of oil-saving device for the simple cylinder 250 water-cooled petrol engine. The oil-saving device is based on the principle of heat transfer and capture. By raising the heat of the oil mist up to 50 ℃, absorption and gathering the released gas from the opening valve, the engine can achieve fuel-saving purpose. The oil-saving device was made by 3D print technology. UG8.0 and ANSYS workbench were used in the design of device.


There has been extensive discussion regarding the influence of the cost of capital on the value and investment decisions of a firm. The important role thought to be played by the cost of capital has resulted in considerable academic debate as to how the cost of capital should be calculated. This study was designed to enhance the debate by an investigation into how firms, derive, interpret and use the cost of capital in practice. The study adopted a survey approach to obtain information from large UK companies. Seventy three UK companies gave detailed responses revealing interesting issues for both academics and practitioners.


We derive a simple e(cid:30)cient algorithm for Abelian periods knowing all Abelian squares in a string. An e(cid:30)cient algorithm for the latter problem was given by Cummings and Smyth in 1997. By the way we show an alternative algorithm for Abelian squares. We also obtain a linear time algorithm (cid:28)nding all (cid:16)long(cid:17) Abelian periods. The aim of the paper is a (new) reduction of the problem of all Abelian periods to that of (already solved) all Abelian squares which provides new insight into both connected problems.


A theoretical model is derived from simple postulates to describe the rates of growth and mortality of plants in populations of different densities. The growth rate is described by a modification of the logistic growth differential equation in which the increase in weight of an individual plant depends on its area, Si, rather than on its weight. The effective area for growth of a plant is reduced by an empirical function, /($,), with two terms: one term expresses the constraint imposed upon the increasing total area of plants by the limited physical area of the plot ; the other term allows for a competitive advantage or disadvantage for plants of varying sizes. Depending on the value of the parameter controlling the relative competitive advantage term, intrinsic variability between plants can be amplified or suppressed. An individual plant dies if the f(st) results in a negative growth rate for that plant. Computer simulations of the growth and survival of plants at different population densities were run. The results exhibit characteristics that appear realistic upon comparison with published data: a survival of the fittest occurring during thinning; a line of slope close to j bounding the graphs of log weight versus log density; and the occurrence of bimodality, associated with subsequent mortality, on frequency distribution of log weight.


The special session Equal Mobility and Downstream Fining in Gravel Bed Rivers held May 8, 1989, at the AGU Spring Meeting in Baltimore, Md., examined the apparent contradiction between two observations: that bed grain size in aggrading rivers decreases downstream, mainly through selective deposition of the coarse clasts, but that measurements in gravel channels and flumes indicate that all grain sizes in a mixture are transported at the same rate, when scaled according to their proportion in the bed. If all sizes are transported at equal rates, how are the coarser clasts selectively deposited during aggradation?.


Based on the analysis of the application of the paradigm in the study of history and the characteristics of information technology, this paper expounds the advantages of the paradigm in the study of history in information era. Using the methods of document analysis, content analysis and case study, this paper makes an in-depth analysis concerning the changes of historical research methods brought by information technology. It is believed that the use of information technology makes the framework of historical research more reasonable, the data analysis more accurate, and the protection and display of historical data more intuitive. In addition, the paper explores the promoting effect of the research method on historiography, and this new method is the supplement of the research paradigm of new historiography. paper also discusses the unique advantages of historical research methods such as historical digitization, film and television history, big data technology and quantitative database.


The thesis explores three research topics involving the popular approach used for representing visual content:the visual dictionaries. The first topic concerns the generalit y of visual dictionaries: does a dictionary based on one dataset generalize to another dataset? Our findings create the opportunit y to greatly alleviate the burden in generating dictionaries. The second topic is related to the importance of the spatial information of visual words in the image space for distinguishing types of scenes and objects. We propose an efficient and effective spatial pooling approach which presents promising resultsfor image retrieval. And the third topic refers to the semantic information in the visual dictionary model. We claim that a bag-of-prototypes model, where the prototypes are visual w ords carrying semantics, is promising for improving image and vi deo representations. Employing this model, we propose a semant ically enriched dictionary based on scenes, which was effectively used for video geocoding. Defended in November 29th, 2012, the th esis has already generated 6 publications, including a best pape r award. One of the proposed approaches has also obtained one of the best results in the Placing Task of MediaEval challeng e in the last two years. Keywords-visual dictionaries; computer vision; image representation; video representation; I. I NTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION Representing images based only on their content has been challenging researchers and companies for decades. Many steps towards the objective of making a machine able to understand what it sees have been successful, but many other s are still necessary. The thesis aims at contributing in smoo thing the next steps in this direction. The current advances in technology are changing the way how people live, specially considering the impact brought b y the Internet and the image capturing devices. Recently, due to the increasing computational power of digital devices, peo pl are getting in touch with systems based on powerful computer vision approaches. We can notice, for instance, the popular ity of face recognition algorithms embedded into digital camer as and the trend of mobile applications like Google Goggles 2. All those kinds of applications are dependent on representi ng image visual properties effectively. The research community has developed several different methods for representing image visual properties. Global 1This work is related to a Ph.D. Thesis. 2www.google.com/mobile/goggles/ (as of April 26th, 2013). descriptors[1], [2], for example, have the advantage of being simple to compute but they encode few local properties of images. Thus, for object recognition and more precise applications, they can be less effective. Local descriptors[3] are powerful to encode local properties, but they are computationally more expensive, generate a variable number of feature vectors per image, and are very sensitive to variati ons in objects, limiting their use to some specific applications , like copy detection. In the year of 2003, a method proposed by Sivic and Zisserman [4] introduced the idea of representing images in a similar fashion as representing text documents. As well as a text document is composed of a set of textual words, an image can be analyzed as a set of local appearances, also called visual words. A visual dictionary, often called visu al codebook, is the set of local appearances available to descr ib image content. This approach is based on the use of local descriptors, however, by using the visual dictionary, we ca n compute statistics from the visual words present in the imag e, resulting in a single feature vector per image: the popular bag of (visual) words(BoW). Another advantage of visual dictionaries is that the description is more general, elimi nating the problem of very precise representations generated by lo cal descriptors and making the BoW representations useful in a wider range of applications. Figure 1 shows the potential of the representations based on visual dictionaries. The process of generating and using the visual dictionary has several challenges and the thesis addresses some of them . A. Hypotheses and research questions The hypotheses analyzed in the thesis are the following: • Visual dictionaries generalize well from one dataset to another, and from a subset of the classes to a whole dataset. • The spatial information of visual words in the image space is important to distinguish types of scenes and objects. • The use of semantically enriched dictionaries improves the quality of image and video representations. In the following sections, we give the background for the statement of each hypothesis, show how we dealt with them and the contributions obtained.


THE origin of this note is to be found in a passage in Mr. C. N. Parkinson's Trade in the Eastern Seas (Cambridge, 1937), where, in connection with the Portuguese enterprise in the East, the suggestion is made that Asiatic seamen were deterred from rounding the Cape by want of courage rather than technical equipment. The passage is as follows (p. 6).


This study aimed to explore 6-mercaptopurine (MP)-induced children's acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) drug resistance system and leukemia hypoxanthine-guanine phosphoribosyl transferase 1 (HPRT1) protein. Based on metabonomics, drug resistance of 6MP-Reh cell line was established
 by increasing concentration administration method, and the degree of drug resistance of 6MP-Reh was verified by apoptosis test, western blotting (WB) test, and drug sensitivity test. The changes of tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase (TIMP) and thioguanosine monophosphate (TGMP) in
 drug-resistant cells were detected through liquid chromatograph (LC)/mass spectrometer (MS). The 6MP-Reh-wt cell line was established by lentivirus infection, so as to verify the correlation between HPRT1 and drug resistance mechanism. The results showed that the inhibition concentration (IC50)
 value, cell vitality (CV), apoptosis rate, and 6-MP content of 6MP-Reh were higher hugely than those of Reh (P < 0.05). The contents of HPRT1, TIMP, and TGMP in 6MP-Reh cells were lower sharply than the contents of Reh cells (P < 0.001). The IC50 value of 6MP-Reh-wt was
 also lower steeply than the value of 6MP-Reh (P < 0.001), and the concentrations of TIMP and TGMP increased obviously (P < 0.05). Therefore, it indicated that the mutation of HPRT1 in drugresistant cell lines could lead to a decrease in their viability and cause leukemia
 cells to develop resistance to 6-MP. In addition, HPRT1 gene could improve their resistance to 6-MP.


Nanotype Pd and bimetallic Pd/Au materials are produced by reductive deposition of Na2PdCl2 or Na2PdCl4/HAuCl4 with Shewanella oneidensis growing overnight in Luria—Bertani medium.


The 'so-called' Islamic State makes news. But how much do we really know about what drives it to such murderous attacks on innocent people around the world? What is the ideology that lies behind the headlines? In this blog Omar Al Ghazzi, @Omar_alghazzi, now at Sheffield University but soon to join LSE's Department of Media and Communications, gives his analysis of what they stand for.


Abstract Multi-sensor observation is very important for monitoring landslide disasters. Since various surveying techniques are currently available for detecting variational slope activities from different perspectives, studies have focused on integration of multi-source information for the analysing landslide displacements. In this study, a general multi-source data fusion scheme for landslide monitoring based on three-dimensional variation (3DVar) data assimilation was developed. The scheme was used to fuse different observations of Xishancun Landslide in Li County, Sichuan Province, China. First, the displacement observations obtained by a Global Positioning System (GPS) and Borehole Inclinometers (BIs) were assimilated for accurate evaluation of slope activities. Then, slope Stability Index (SI) was introduced to validate the assimilation results within a time interval. SIAssi values calculated using the integration model developed in the present study were compared with SIFS simulated by a physically based landslide model. The correlation coefficient between them ss 0.75, which is larger than those with SIGPS (0.45) or SIBIs (0.41) values determined by the GPS and BIs respectively. The assimilation results are thus confirmed to be more credible for slope stability simulation.


This study examined associations between level of sport participation, goal and sportspersonship orientations, and moral reasoning in sport and nonsport situations and orientation by sport participation interactions. Participants were individuals with elite (n = 176), high school (n = 183), and youth sport (n = 78) participation. When judging sport situations, individuals who participated in elite sports demonstrated poorer moral reasoning than those who participated in high school and youth sports. At low levels of sportspersonship, individuals who participated in youth sports demonstrated higher moral reasoning than those who participated in high school and elite sports. When judging nonsport situations, moral reasoning was positively related to positive sportspersonship and negatively related to ego orientation but did not differ by sport participation. Within sport, sport participation and goal and sportspersonship orientations play a critical role in moral reasoning. However, these orientations may be more important than sport participation in moral reasoning beyond the sport context.


Sulphur colors will be used at an increasing rate for dye ing fabrics for military purposes. Accelerated ageing tests have now been worked out which will enable one to determine the amount of deterioration which will take place in sulphur-dyed goods over a given period of time under ordinary storage conditions. These tests, as de scribed by John L. Crist, of Southern Dyestuff Corp., at a recent meeting of the Piedmont Section, of the American Association of Textile Chemists & Colorists, are given below.


ABSTRACT Birch (Betula platyphylla) has been widely applied in furniture, paper-making, and architecture for its special properties. One of the major problems is it has a long juvenile phase which limits the possibilities for production and application in these industries. To date, the molecular mechanism and biochemical pathways of the long juvenile phase are poorly understood. In this study, cDNA-Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (cDNA-AFLP) technique was used to analyze genes specifically expressed in the male or female inflorescence of birch. More than 7,000 TDFs (Transcript Derived Fragments) were screened by using 100 primer combinations. Of them, 168 male and 103 female inflorescence specific TDFs were isolated, subcloned and sequenced. About 54% of these TDFs were found to be similar with known genes in NCBI databases. Through GO annotation and KEGG pathway analysis, the results indicated that the male inflorescence of B. platyphylla possesses nearly two-fold more transcripts than the female inflorescence in energy production and conversion.


Triazolinediones are known as highly reactive dienophiles that can also act as electrophilic amination reagents towards enolisable C–H bonds (ionic pathway) or weak C–H bonds (free radical pathway). Here, we report that this C–H amination reactivity can be significantly extended and enhanced via gold(i)-catalysis. Under mild conditions, several alkyl-substituted aryls successfully undergo benzylic C–H aminations at room temperature. The remarkable site selectivity that is observed points towards strong electronic activation and deactivation effects, that go beyond a simple weakening of the C–H bond. The observed catalytic C–H aminations do not follow the expected trends for a free radical-type C–H amination and show complementarity to existing methods. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations and distinct experimental trends provide a clear mechanistic rationale for observed selectivity patterns, postulating a novel pathway for triazolinedione-induced aminations via a carbon-to-nitrogen hydride transfer.


This research studies the role of economic competition in the diffusion of ideas that challenged an ideological monopoly and powerful elites during the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther circulated his initial arguments for reform in 1517. We assemble data on all known books and pamphlets printed in German-speaking Europe between 1454 and 1600 and provide a new measure of religious ideas in the media. We document a dramatic shift towards Protestant ideas after 1517 in cities with competitive media markets, but not in cities with media monopolies. We find that competition in media markets mattered most for the diffusion of Protestant ideas where formal political freedom was more restricted. We study the relationship between competition and diffusion directly and using the deaths of printers to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in competition. The diffusion of Protestant ideas in the media preceded and predicts the institutionalization of the Reformation in municipal law.


This dissertation addresses the query optimization problem for object relational databases. A novel query optimization model, including an object relational algebra, equivalence rules, heuristics and cost estimation, is introduced. We believe this is the first query optimization model based on an object relational algebra. We also propose an optimizer architecture based on this model for SemanticObjects, an object relational application development platform. Two applications, namely a biological image database and a chemical structure database, have been developed to test our query optimization model.
An object relational database is powerful in modeling real world applications by adding the concept of object to a relational database. It has a broad application in areas that involve complex structures. However, query optimization is extremely important and critical, since users cannot wait for hours to get their results.


Context: Software crowdsourcing platforms typically employ extrinsic rewards such as rating or ranking systems to motivate workers. Such rating systems are noisy and only provide limited knowledge about worker's preference and performance. Goal: The objective of this study is to empirically investigate patterns and effects of worker behaviour in software crowdsourcing platform in order to improve the success and efficiency of software crowdsourcing. Method: First, we create the bipartite network of active workers based on common registration for tasks. Then, we use ClausetNewman-Moore graph clustering algorithm to identify developer clusters in the network. Finally, we conduct empirical evaluation to measure and analyze workers behaviour per identified cluster in the platform by workers' ranking. More specifically, workers behaviour is analyzed based on worker reliability, worker trustworthiness, and worker success as measures for workers' performance, worker efficiency, and worker elasticity to represent workers' preferences, and worker contest, worker confidence, and worker deceitfulness to understand workers' strategies. The empirical study is conducted on more than one year's real-world data from topcoder, one of the leading software crowdsourcing platforms. Results:We identify four clusters of activeworkers: mixed ranked, high ranked, mid ranked, and low ranked. Based on statistical analysis, this study can only support that the low ranked group associates with the highest reliable workers with average reliability of 25%, while mixed ranked group contains the most trustworthy workers with average trustworthiness of 16%. Conclusions: These findings are helpful for task requesters to understand preferences and relations among unknown resources in the platform and plan for task success in a more effective and efficient manner in software crowdsourcing platform. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from firstname.lastname@example.com. Conference'17, July 2017, Washington, DC, USA © 2021 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-7580-1/20/10. . . $15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3382494.3410689 CCS CONCEPTS • Software and its engineering→ Software development process management; • Information systems→ Data analytics.


Abstract This article interrogates simplified culturalist explanations of gendered violence, which evoke timeless 'tradition' and religiosity to locate violence in racialized places and upon 'othered' bodies. I examine structural processes that shape women's experiences of and vulnerability to intimate violence. My analysis complicates culturalist narratives, but engages critically with culture as one context within which violence is embedded. Drawing on field research within Muslim communities in Hyderabad, India, I discuss the complexities of interwoven experiences of structural, state, and intimate gender violence. I draw attention to how anti-violence organizations working in marginalized communities theorize these complexities, and practices of what I am calling 'plural resistance,' which these organizations enact through equally complex responses to such violences. Plural resistance describes community-based strategies that simultaneously reject both gender violence and other forms of systemic violence, such as poverty born of uneven development. Embodied resistance to gender violence provides a critical lens for understanding articulations between regional patriarchies, exclusionary state practices, uneven development, and Islamophobia.


Lack of the buying power of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in purchasing their raw material could hinder their competitiveness. The low buying power generally caused by the fact that SMEs purchase their raw material in small lot. Purchasing consortium offers SMEs to increase their buying power and obtain better pricing through the collective buying mechanism amongst SMEs. This paper proposes purchasing consortium mechanism using joint replenishment and vendor managed inventory. The analysis shows that SMEs gain potential cost savings in sourcing their raw material through the proposed mechanism.


While having a single cell gap array substrate having the same characteristics as the dual cell gap, and a preparation method thereof, and a liquid crystal display panel having the same are disclosed. The array substrate includes a switching element, an insulating layer, pixel electrodes, an inner reflector and the polarizer layer. The switching element is formed in the reflection area of the substrate. The insulating layer, but covers the substrate and the switching element, a hole for exposing the drain electrode of the switching element is formed. The pixel electrode is connected via a hole in the switching element and electrically. Reflection plate is formed in the reflection area while covering the pixel electrode. Inner polarizer layer is formed corresponding to the reflection plate. In this way, only By selectively forming the inner layer reflective polarizer area in the liquid crystal display panel, it is possible to secure the white brightness and the contrast ratio on the basis of a single cell gap. Liquid crystal, reflection, transmission, transflective, internal polarizer, a single cell gap


Objective. To assess the impact of infection on the development of fetal arrhythmias. Patients and methods. The study included 84 pregnant women who were divided into two groups: the study group, which consisted of 44 patients aged 20–42 years (Me 31 ± 0.93 years) with fetal arrhythmia and/or minor heart defects at 21–41 weeks' gestation (Me 37.41 ± 0.58 weeks), and the comparison group, which enrolled 40 pregnant women without fetal heart defects and with normal fetal heart rate to determine the significance of serological markers of myocarditis. Results. Significant titers of non-specific anti-myocardial antibodies to vascular smooth muscle and endothelium were detected in 14 (31.8%) and 7 (15.9%) fetuses, respectively. "Conditionally positive" titers for anti-smooth muscle antibodies were detected in 3 (6.8%) fetuses and for anti-endothelial cell antibodies in 4 (9%) fetuses. There was no significant increase in specific anti-heart antibody titers in both groups. Conclusion. Hypoxia should be considered as a trigger for fetal arrhythmias. The infectious and inflammatory processes are one of the links in the pathogenesis of fetal arrhythmias. Key words: fetal arrhythmia, intrauterine infection, minor heart defects


The objective was to compare the effect of total knee replacement (TKR) followed by a 3‐month non‐surgical treatment with the non‐surgical treatment alone in reducing pain sensitization and other pain‐related measures in patients with knee osteoarthritis.


............................................................................................................................... i Dedication .......................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iv List of Tables .................................................................................................................... xii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiii Chapter 1: The Place of Local Television News in the Community .................................. 1 A Changing Media Environment .............................................................................8 Rationale for the Study ..........................................................................................10 Research Questions ................................................................................................14 Organization of the Rest of the Study ....................................................................17 Chapter 2: Theories of Community, Political Economy, and Labor Affecting Local Television News Production and Dissemination ...............................................................21 The Role of Place in Community...........................................................................21 The role of journalism ................................................................................26 The Political Economy of the Mainstream Mass Media ........................................31 Commodification .......................................................................................31 Spatialization..............................................................................................34 Structuration ...............................................................................................36 Labor ......................................................................................................................37 Labor process theory and the division of labor ..........................................38 Audience labor ...........................................................................................40 News Work ix Chapter 3: The State of the Local Television News Business in 2017, and How It Got to be this Way ....................................................................................................................43 Regulating in the Public Interest ............................................................................43 Deregulating in the Business Interest ....................................................................46 Competition + diversity + localism = public interest? ...............................48 Competition....................................................................................48 Diversity .........................................................................................50 Localism .........................................................................................53 Equals public interest? ...................................................................55 The Place of Journalism in the Marketplace ..........................................................58 The case of Sinclair ....................................................................................58 Positive outcomes of corporate ownership on local newsrooms ...............61 Chapter 4: Research Methodology.....................................................................................63 Data Collection ......................................................................................................64 Survey ........................................................................................................65 Email distribution...........................................................................66 Social media ...................................................................................67 Interviews ...................................................................................................68 Author Background ................................................................................................69 Considerations of Confidentiality .........................................................................71 Chapter 5: Corporate Power and Its Influence on News Construction ..............................73 Filter 1: Size, Ownership, and Profit .....................................................................74 Filter 2: Advertising as a Primary Income Source .................................................76


The principle cuius regio eius religio belongs to the fundamental structures of modem German history. Juridically set at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, expanded to include Calvinists and reapplied at the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, it governed political and religious relations in the German lands until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803. Stipulating that the religion of the ruler should be the religion of the ruled, cuius regio eius religio constituted an attempt to ameliorate the vexing problems of religious coexistence, religious pluralism, and religious conflict that the Lutheran Reformation and subsequent Protestant reform movements introduced into the fabric of German society. These problems, in turn, powerfully influenced the special trajectory of German state and nation building, ensuring that the German path, more perhaps even than those of the French or English, would be marked by problems of religious, and therefore cultural, disunity. In what follows we will consider how religious division affected state building and civil society in Germany from 1555 to 1870. While historians of early modem Germany have recently devoted a considerable amount of research to this problem, suggesting complex interactions between confessional formation and the emergence of the early modern state, historians of nineteenth-century Germany have been slower to recognize the impact of religious division on nineteenth-century German society. Moreover, neither early modern historians nor their counterparts who deal with the modern era have attempted to trace the continuities and discontinuities across what has become a strict disciplinary barrier between the two periods. In this article we will consider both periods, but we will also focus on the continuities across the barrier. Such an analysis implies two sets of questions. The first concerns the creationsometimes by suasion, sometimes by force-of confessional unity: What impact did the formation of confessional homogeneity have on state structure, on the con-


Si1-yCy and Si1-x-yGexCy layers were grown by multiple energy ion implantation of Ge and C into single crystal Si followed by pulsed excimer laser induced epitaxy. The properties of the alloy layers obtained by this technique, in terms of film crystallinity, Ge and C redistribution and substitutional incorporation, strain formation and relaxation, SiC precipitation and C- induced band gap modification are demonstrated to depend strongly on both ion implantation and laser processing conditions. The growing of large area pseudomorphic epitaxial alloys of group IV semiconductor elements, using the high energy beam excimer laser (up to 1 J/cm2 per pulse over 40 cm2) developed by SOPRA for industrial applications, is described.


In the present universe, magnetic fields exist with various strengths and on various scales. One possible origin of these cosmic magnetic fields is the primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) generated in the early universe. PMFs are considered to contribute to matter density evolution via Lorentz force and the thermal history of intergalactic medium (IGM) gas due to ambipolar diffusion. Therefore, information about PMFs should be included in the temperature anisotropy of the Cosmic Microwave Background through the thermal Sunyaev–Zel'dovich (tSZ) effect in IGM. In this article, given an initial power spectrum of PMFs, we show the spatial fluctuation of mass density and temperature of the IGM and tSZ angular power spectrum created by the PMFs. Finally, we find that the tSZ angular power spectrum induced by PMFs becomes significant on small scales, even with PMFs below the observational upper limit. Therefore, we conclude that the measurement of tSZ anisotropy on small scales will provide the most stringent constraint on PMFs.


Lightweight Cryptography is a field that has been growing significantly in the recent years, mainly because of the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT). It aims to develop algorithms that can operate under low resources (memory, processing power and energy). This thesis aims to complement the state of the art by analyzing and selecting a set of lightweight ciphers and optimize them, targeting a widely used processors in IoT (ARM Cortex-M3). The analysis considered different metrics like code size, execution time and energy consumption. The selected ciphers were AES, CLEFIA, NOEKEON, PRESENT, RECTANGLE, RoadRunneR, SPARX and SPECK. Their performance was improved using techniques like table-based, bit-slicing and code optimizations (e.g.: rearrange of operations, function inlining, unrolling, etc.). The table-based optimizations were able to speedup AES and CLEFIA execution time more than 10times. For NOEKEON, an optimization proposed speed up is performance by 3.2times. and reduces his code size in 21%. The proposed optimization of RECTANGLE reduces the execution time by 1% and the code size by 10% when compared to the optimized C version of the cipher's authors. SPARX, execution time was speed up by 2.72times and the code size is 1% lower, in comparison to the optimized C version of the cipher's authors. The SPECK execution time was improved 1.4times, with only a 5% increase in code size. Finally, an analysis of the energy consumption of the block ciphers was made, using experimentally obtained results, something that has not yet been done in the state of art. Keywords-Lightweight cryptography, Block Ciphers, Internet of Things (IoT), ARM Cortex-M3 Processor, Performance Optimization, Energy Consumption


People of less affluent nations tend to perceive products of more developed and more affluent nations as superior. Having realized the consumer's attitudes towards the products with foreign brand names, Thai manufacturers tend to use English words in their strategic marketing, whether in newspapers, television, radio, billboards, signs or posters. The English brand name gives these products credibility and implies superior standards of production. (204)


Info 2021 A full-duplex non-orthogonal multiple access (FD-NOMA) systems are expected to play a significant role in fifth generation (5G) networks, addressing spectrum efficiency and massive connections. In this regard, the feasibility of FD communications to improve spectrum utilization is main consideration in term of outage performance. Specifically, we derive exact formulas of outage probability for FD-NOMA, over Nakagami-m fading channels. Extensive analysis revealed that higher quality of channel leads to better performance. We verify expressions throughout Monte-Carlo Throughput This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA


The development of new pH-sensitive fluorescent probes based on a push-pull architecture is presented with a 2- dicyanomethylene-3-cyano-4,5,5-trimethyl-2,5-dihydrofurane as strong electron acceptor group. With a small structural change, it is possible to obtain a large range of phenolic pKa from 4.8 to 8.6 with some close to neutrality, underlining the role of the electron density modulation on the acidic properties. Remarkable changes in the optical properties (both absorption and fluorescence) were observed as a function of the pH. Ratiometric imaging of intracellular pH was carried out with the most promising probes and highlighted the possibility to distinguish near-neutral minor pH fluctuations in cells.


T J. HIS is a good paper, with important data well-organized and systematically handled. My comments should not be interpreted as disparaging or in any way detracting from this judgement. I will say nothing about the ego organization index because it is a brave attempt and no one should wish to discourage courage. My first criticism refers to the hypothesis being tested, which in the Introduction of the paper refers to the experimental situation as "containing the elements of uncertainty, social isolation, low sensory input and restraint from active movement." Only one of these four is sensory deprivation per se, though two others, namely, social isolation and restraint from active movement, are almost invariably associated with sensory deprivation. Naturally, if we are studying sensory deprivation, we would like to study it apart from other contaminating variables. In our laboratory at Boston City Hospital we have recently been running experiments that attempt to focus on sensory deprivation by separating it from social isolation and immobilization, and we find the task VOL. XXIII, NO. 1, 1961 Discussion of Paper


d-Gluconate dehydrogenase isolated from Pseudomonas fluorescens was immobilized on the surfaces of carbon and gold electrodes by irreversible adsorption. The electrodes with the adsorbed enzyme produced anodic currents in solutions containing d-gluconate. The currents were attributable to the electro-enzymic oxidation (direct bioelectrocatalytic oxidation) of d-gluconate; the electrochemical system required no external redox molecules serving as mediators of electron transfer between the electrode and the adsorbed enzyme. A model of the direct bioelectrocatalysis at the enzyme-modified electrodes is presented.


The rise of deliberative democracy in the 1980s indicates that the practice of Western democracy has entered a more delicate period,which has brought about the practice upsurge in the world including Taiwan area.Citizen conference,deliberative polling,citizen jury and scenario workshop are now the major forms in practice.Moreover,Taiwan's democratic practice is of diversification in form,extensiveness in level and richness in subject.The practice of deliberative democracy helps to improve citizens' interest and capacity on policy,and clear up social conflicts and confrontations of provincial-ethnic groups in Taiwan and so on.At the same time,there are some problems and shortages such as the limited influence on policy from the common people,the disregard on disadvantaged group's viewpoint and interest because of stressing the so-called consensus too much,and the distortion into tools for policy-making or election.


It was twice up and down with the flue gas through the slurry contacts,greatly enhanced the absorptive capacity of slurry,which in large units,high-sulfur coal and high desulfurization efficiency,and had an obvious advantage.The technology was simple,stable performance,reliable operation,energy economy,adapt to a wide range,and easy to maintain.Over the years,in Europe,the United States,Japan and other developed countries,the market share of the technology continuously ranked first.In our country,it also gradually appreciated by users.Absorber was a limestone-gypsum wet FGD technology core equipment,the domestic current typical limestone-gypsum wet scrubber was a spray tower and the liquid column tower,and the liquid column tower(Double Contact Flow Scrubber) technology was mainly introduced.


An apparatus for automatically measuring two dimensional deformation of a tunnel is provided to facilitate check and repair by using a surface attachment method in which length deformation sensors are installed on a lining wall of the tunnel. An apparatus for automatically measuring two dimensional deformation of a tunnel includes a reference frame member(20), saddle plates(40), anchor plates(50), measurement point blocks, measurement units(60), and a data history recorder. The anchor plates fix the reference frame members to the bottom and the wall of the tunnel. The measurement point blocks are interposed in the reference frame members by a predetermined interval. The measurement units include a length deformation sensor making contact with the measurement point blocks to detect the deformation of the tunnel.


Accounting treatment of Research and Development (R&D) expenditures is a controversial issue since the way of taking into account these expenditures can sometimes be motivated by incentives to manage earnings. This paper aims to examine the extent to which the decision of French companies to capitalize or not the expenditures of R&D can be motivated by earnings management incentives.
The French context presents a relevant example to check our assumptions, as the GAAP in France offers the ability to choose between capitalizations and expensing R& D expenditures.
Using a logistic regression model to test the effects on the probability of capitalizing R&D expenditures of three main incentives for earnings management (earnings smoothing, the reduction of political costs and the bonus plans) and six other control variables (size of the company, industry, quality of audit, listing on US stock market, profitability and risk), the results show that the French listed companies tend to use the capitalization of the R&D expenditures in order to smooth the results, as well as, to avoid any violation of the debt's restrictive clauses.


This study presents an analysis of the distribution and organization pattern of axons originating from the substantia nigra pars reticulata and projecting to the thalamus in monkeys. Biotin dextran amine was iontophoretically injected into different parts of the substantia nigra pars reticulata of monkeys (African green monkeys and macaques). In whatever part of the substantia nigra the injection was made, numerous axonal endings were found to be distributed within different thalamic regions: the ventral anterior nucleus and mainly its magnocellular part, the most ventromedial part of the ventral lateral nucleus, and the mediodorsal and parafascicular nuclei. Moreover, the nigrothalamic projection appeared to be topographically organized. Ten anterogradely labeled axons were reconstructed from serial sections. The axons terminated in three to six terminal fields per axon located in a relatively small portion of only one thalamic region. These terminal fields were variable in size and comprised 4–43 very thin, varicose branches. They consisted either of different axonal branches of the same axon or of different axons and covered 10–31 thalamic cell bodies. These findings demonstrate that the overall morphological organization of individual nigral axons is complex and allows single axons to influence thalamic neurons via a combination of divergent, convergent, and amplification processes. J. Comp. Neurol. 447:249–260, 2002. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Abstract : As the scale factor applied in the design of wind tunnel models is reduced, many details of the configuration being simulated are customarily omitted. A series of experiments was conducted in the Aerodynamic Wind Tunnel (4T) of the Propulsion Wind Tunnel Facility at the Arnold Engineering Development Center to evaluate the effect on captive store loading of model details such as sway braces and mounting gaps existing between store and aircraft components. Six components of aerodynamic loads acting on both pylon- and rack-mounted stores in the captive position were measured, a limited number of store separation trajectories was predicted using the captive trajectory system, and a brief comparison of wind tunnel and in-flight measurements of captive loads was made. It was determined that the effects of mounting gaps or flow ventilation passages were generally small, but that sway braces can significantly influence both captive loads and separation trajectories. It was also observed that better agreement between wind tunnel and in-flight measurements of captive store loading resulted when mounting gaps and sway braces were simulated on the wind-tunnel models.


The effect of different overhead heights, pressures and water stress to determine high uniformity and water relations of wheat as well as yield and yield components under overhead floppy sprinkler was addressed in this study. The experiments and measurements were designed and implemented at the experimental farm of ElSalhia, ElSharkia Governorate, Egypt during the winter season of 2018-2019 to study. The uniformity coefficient (UC) and uniformity distribution (UD) were calculated under five levels of pressure (100, 150, 200, 250 and 300 kPa), four overhead heights (1, 2, 3 and 4 m) and water stress (20, 40, 60, 80 and 100% of evapotranspiration (ETc)). The results indicated that the highest values of UC and UD 72.14 and 58.13%, respectively were succeeded with pressure of 200 kPa and 3 m height for overhead floppy. Also, the results showed that water stress from 20 to 100% ETc with optimum operating conditions were carried out to get up high wheat production. The total yield and yield components were increased with decreased water stress. Also, the total yield was increased with increasing ETc from 20 to 100%. The grain and straw yield values were increased by 68.98, 66.55, 55.66 and 35.35% & 69.70, 64.29, 50.00 and 44.44% compared with 20% for overhead floppy. The maximum yield production and components were achieved with 100% ETc, while water use efficiency (WUE) with 20% ETc was maximum value. Finally, under the current experimental conditions, it could be concluded that the application of irrigation water 100% ETc under pressure of 200 kPa and 3 m overhead height with high UC and UD for overhead floppy sprinkler was the best system for obtaining high wheat yield production. On the other hand, using the application of irrigation water 80% ETc could be suggested to get high yield production and save water which will lead to deal with future water scarcity.


The characteristics of a new class of irregular fault-tolerant multi-stage interconnection network (MIN) called the four-tree (FT) network are analysed. A FT network can provide 'full access' capability even in the presence of multiple faults and is also cost-effective in comparison to other fault tolerant MINs. Rerouting in the presence of faults can be accomplished dynamically without resorting to backtracking. Further, for a non-uniform reference model, the network gives a larger throughput than any regular type of MIN due to smaller path lengths between a processor and its favourite memory modules. Algorithms for computing the path lengths and routing tags are developed for the proposed networks.


Background: Global evaluation of hair loss in male subjects affected by androgenetic alopecia has been proposed as a means for monitoring changes over time, including placebo‐controlled drug efficacy studies. Because of the potential impact of subjectivity (e.g. placebo effect) of clinical investigators, global photographs (GPs) have been introduced as a more objective record. Examination of paired before and after pictures and rating on a seven‐point scale (from greatly decreased −3 to greatly increased +3) have been historically introduced by United States of America (US) experts.


A method and an apparatus for storing broadcasting data are provided to remove the inconvenience of a user for individually checking and deleting corresponding programs to empty a storage space. Information about a broadcasting program to be updated and stored is input from a user and stored(S100). A broadcast program is received, and the information about the broadcast program is extracted from the broadcast program(S110,S120). The extracted information is compared with the information input from the user(S130). It is determined if a previously stored broadcast program having the same category exists if the received broadcast program is set by the user for auto update as the comparison result(S140,S150). If the previously stored broadcast program having the same category exists, it is determined if a deletion condition of the stored broadcast program is satisfied(S160). The previously stored broadcast program is deleted, and the received broadcast program is stored if the deletion condition is satisfied(S180,S170,S190).


Child abuse generally takes four forms: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. The number of cases varies over time. The authors of this study present data from a region in eastern Hungary for the 20-year period from 1963 to 1983, during which there was a trend at first toward a higher incidence of cases and then a significant decrease in child abuse. That decline has continued. There is no apparent explanation for this decline. The number of sexually abused children was significant, whereas the number of psychologically abused children was small, when compared to that in other studies. Unlike other cases in the authors' practice, child abuse occurs infrequently, which makes the use of a specialist necessary in the determination of the diagnosis.