The purpose of conducting this research is to test the growth of assets, capital structure, company size and firm value which have an impact on profitability. The company that is the subject of this research is PT. XYZ. This type of research is a quantitative technique, where the research population is taken as many as 80 employees from a research sample of 100 employees of PT. XYZ. The data collection process was carried out using library research techniques and questionnaires. Analysis of the research data was carried out using validity tests, reliability tests, normality tests and multiple linear regression tests assisted by the SPSS ver. 22. The results of this study found that asset growth, capital structure, company size, and company value have a positive effect on profitability at PT. XYZ either partially or simultaneously. The result of the coefficient value of asset growth (X1) is 0.172 (17.2%), the result of the coefficient value of capital structure (X2) is 0.218 (21.8%), the result of the coefficient value of company size (X3) is 0.689 (68.9%) , and the results of the firm value coefficient (X4) are 0.138 (13.8%).


The purpose of the present investigation was to (a) develop a reliable self‐report questionnaire that assesses women's sexual satisfaction and (b) investigate the correlates of sexual satisfaction in women. A total of 275 college‐aged women completed the Pinney Sexual Satisfaction Inventory (PSSI) and were also assessed on a variety of sexual behaviors, experiences, and attitudes. The results supported the internal reliability of the PSSI, and evidence of covergent validity was provided by strong positive correlations between the PSSI and other measures of sexual satisfaction. A factor analysis revealed two underlying dimensions of the PSSI: General Sexual Satisfaction and Satisfaction with Partner. The variables that were most highly correlated with the PSSI were relationship commitment, orgasm consistency, frequency of intercourse, and effectiveness of contraceptive device. These findings have implications for further use of the PSSI in research and clinical practice.


Abstract. The Tabanidae are a diverse family of true flies whose members have both medical and veterinary importance. Tabanid species are known to occupy a variety of habitats worldwide, including the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, an area in the Nearctic Region known to contain considerable biodiversity. This report provides detailed information about previous collections made within the Park's boundaries and brings the number of currently known tabanid species residing in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park from 37 to 56.


Owing to scholarly qualities we have come to expect from his other contributions, the article by Prof, lstvan Deak represents without question a fundamental analysis of an important aspect of the Revolution of 1848 in East-Central Europe. Well acquainted with the historical sources, especially the primary ones, and the rich, often contradictory, secondary literature, Prof. Deak, within the general context of American historiography and in connection with his projected monograph on Lajos Kossuth, has focused his attention on an analysis of the Romanian national movement as it was seen by lstvan Szechenyi, Mikl6s Wesselenyi, and Kossuth. A reading of this study brings out, in addition to the qualities already mentioned, a spirit of objectivity and a desire to discuss with the necessary scholarly evidence a problem that has often been misunderstood, erroneously treated, or reduced to simplistic formulas. The author of the present article has avoided these pitfalls because he has undertaken to elucidate the complex history of national relations with requisite scholarly discernment. For this reason, his study contains many judicious observations and conclusions based upon an analysis of the facts which we share. For example, the statement that Magyar liberal politicians, with the exception of Szechenyi, were not sufficiently modern to be able to understand the new nationalism represents a conclusion indicating a clear conception of the matter on the part of the author. It is also essential for a proper evaluation of the solutions to the national problem proposed by Magyar leaders. Deak, of course, expresses opinions which require some comment and amplification in order to provide the historian interested in the nineteenth century with as good a grounding as possible. Our commentary, therefore, will proceed in the spirit of open, friendly discussion maintained by the prestigious journal that has offered us this opportunity to express our opinions. 1. The discussion of the questions raised by Prof. Deak requires further explanation of the concept of the single Magyar nation and of the reasons advanced for its viability in the century of nationalities. We regard this concept as the expression of the aristocratic and nobiliary structure prevalent in the leadership of the Magyar revolution. It expresses in a new form the idea of the political nation current in the middle ages, now extended, of course, to the whole Magyar nation. The


The quality defects such as cells,holes,exposed steel bars and cracks of the three basement inner cores of a highrise building are surveyed by ul trasonic rebound method and core drilling method,the concrete strength of the inner cores with quality defects have been evalu ated.The components in the basement s are calculated in different concre te strength ac-cording to the tested results,the va riation of the displacement and the a xial compression ratios of the walls and columns caused by the different concrete strength a re analyzed,the consequent effects on the seismic property are also disc ussed.Based upon the mechanical properties of the basement inner cores,a treatment method and renovation to the quality defects are introduced as a reference for strengthening the quality defecs of the same kind.


In a world characterized by the growing conflation of politics and communication, where democracies are experimenting with deep changes and facing challenging innovations, the interest in the field of Political Communication is growing globally. The implications for the paradigms and the scientific research agenda, as well as for the various disciplines, have been far-reaching. The increasing number of academic departments and schools around the world—specialized in this field of study and education, with a strong interdisciplinary feature—mirrors these transformations.


Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) is a leading ubiquitous computing technology for the future. However, the rapid deployment of low-cost RFID tags in large scale raises significant personal privacy threats. Low-cost tags are extremely resource-constrained devices. Hence it is easy to corrupt a low-cost RFID tag to obtain useful information, trace its history and discover its identity. Therefore it is important to provide forward privacy for low-cost tags. Many of the forward private authentication schemes proposed to date cannot meet the demands of low-cost tags due to their expensive hardware cost. In addition, they provide limited forward privacy with the assumption that denial-of-service is not a threat. In this paper, an improved forward privacy framework is described based on the general unpredictable privacy notion. A novel low-cost forward private authentication scheme under the proposed forward privacy framework is proposed. It is composed of a LPN problem and a pseudo random number generator, both of which can be efficiently implemented. Finally, a security proof of the proposed authentication scheme is provided under the standard model.


MILD COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT: AGING TO ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE Edited by Ronald C. Petersen 2003. Oxford: Oxford University Press Price: £39.50. ISBN 0‐19‐512342‐5

This is an interesting, thought‐provoking, sometimes controversial and eminently readable book. Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) refers to the borderland between normal ageing and dementia. The term MCI has recent origins, having been introduced only in the last decade in recognition of the fact that the onset of dementia is insidious. There is a prodromal phase during which an individual functions at a lower level than normal, yet the changes in cognition are insufficient to warrant a classification of dementia. Herein lies a fundamental conceptual difference between MCI and descriptive labels that acquired prominence in earlier decades, such as 'benign senescent forgetfulness' and 'age‐associated memory impairment'. These latter terms implied changes in memory, which were thought to be largely consistent with and the product of normal ageing. MCI, by contrast, is construed as abnormal ageing and commonly thought of as the prodrome to dementia, more specifically to Alzheimer's disease.

MCI raises a variety of conceptual issues. If MCI is cognitive impairment in excess of that expected in normal ageing, what is the yardstick for defining normal ageing? Within a lifetime, a variety of adverse events, lifestyle factors and age‐related medical conditions might potentially influence cognitive function. Studies of 'normal' ageing that adopt a rigorous policy of excluding from the study sample people with any potential risk factor whatever (e.g. the presence of diabetes or a history of alcohol consumption) risk identifying a population of 'supernormals' whose performance is unrepresentative of the ageing population as a whole. The implication of an overly …


The actuator disc is the oldest representation of a rotor, screw or propeller. Performance prediction is possible by applying momentum theory, giving integrated values for power and velocity. Computational fluid dynamics has provided much more flow details, but a full potential flow solution zooming in on these flow details was still absent. With the wake boundary discretized by vortex rings, flow states for energy extracting discs have been obtained for thrust coefficients up to 0.998. Boundary conditions are met with an accuracy of a few ‰. Results from momentum theory are confirmed.

Most rotor design codes use momentum theory in annulus or differential form, assuming that the axial velocity vx at the disc is uniform. However, the absolute velocity |v| is found to be uniform, and arguments for this are presented. The non-uniformity of vx is an inherent part of the flow solution caused by, in terms of momentum theory, the pressure acting at the annuli. This makes the annuli not independent from each other as assumed in current design codes. Although this was already known, it is now confirmed up to the highest thrust coefficients.

Optimizing a rotor design should be carried out for the non-uniform distribution of vx. To enable this, an equation for the non-uniformity as function of thrust and radial position is presented, being a surface-fit to the calculated data. Qualitatively, the non-uniform distribution does the same as the Prandtl–Glauert–Shen tip correction applied to a uniform distribution. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This project was an industry sponsored project managed by the Multidisciplinary Design Program (MDP) for the duration of 2020. The sponsor for this project was Comau, an industrial automation and robotics company. Comau is constantly seeking to push technology forward and use it to improve user experiences in a variety of fields. For this project, Comau requested assistance creating an automated system for packing luggage into luggage transportation vehicles at commercial airports.


Apatite ceramics, known for their good electrical conductivities, have garnered substantial attention as an alternative electrolyte for solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). However, studies focusing on the electrochemical performances of SOFCs with apatities as electrolytes remain rare, partly due to their high sintering temperature. In this study, the effects of Mg2+, Al3+, Ga3+, and Sn4+ dopants on the characteristics of La9.5Ge6O26 ± δ are examined and their potential for use as SOFC electrolytes evaluated. The results indicate that La9.5Ge5.5Al0.5O26 is stabilized into a hexagonal structure, while the La9.5Ge5.5Sn0.5O26.25, La9.5Ge5.5Ga0.5O26, and La9.5Ge5.5Mg0.5O25.75 ceramics reveal triclinic cells accompanied with the second phase La2Sn2O7 or La2GeO5. The study further demonstrates that a high sintering temperature is needed for both the La9.5Ge5.5Mg0.5O25.75 and the La9.5Ge5.5Sn0.5O26.25 ceramics, and the worst electrical conductivity among the examined systems appears in the La9.5Ge5.5Ga0.5O26 ceramic. The La9.5Ge5.5Al0.5O26 ceramic is accordingly selected for cell evaluation due to its ability to reach densification at 1,350 °C, its good electrical conductivity of 0.026 S cm–1 at 800 °C, and its acceptable thermal expansion coefficient of 10.1 × 10–6 K–1. The maximum power densities of the NiO‐SDC/La9.5Ge5.5Al0.5O26/LSCF‐SDC single cell are found to be respectively 0.22, 0.16, 0.11, and 0.07 W cm–2 at 950, 900, 850, and 800 °C.


ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ـــ ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ Abstract: The players and ball are the most important object in soccer game videos and detected them are a challenging task because of many difficulties, such as shadow and illumination, ball size, several other objects look like a ball, often the ball overlapping with players or merged with lines, as well as the ball may be disappear which be hidden in the stadium or flying on air, and similar appearance of players, etc. The detect ball is the first step for tracking in broadcast soccer video. There are several methods of ball-tracking are based on their problem. In this paper, we have discussed different methods of object detection and tracking in the soccer videos which are available in the literature. © 2021 Al-Muthanna University. All rights reserved


The sooting process during combustion is described by a theory based on cluster kinetics. The likelihood of soot formation via soot clusters at higher temperatures is suggested from the fully kinetic calculations in which carbon vapors (C1-C5) and polyacetylenes are assumed to be as the colliding partners for cluster reactions. The predicted results of the proposed theory well explain both the bell shaped temperature dependence of soot yields and the rapid soot formation as known from shock-tube experiments. It is shown that the small clusters are mainly generated via C2H and they grow into large clusters on the reaction with carbon vapors at moderately high temperatures while they are decomposed into carbon vapors at extremely high temperatures. Furthermore, the effects of pressure and temperature history on soot formation are discussed.


Objective:To observe the effect of exercise training on oxygen metabolic equivalent and left ventricular function in patients with acute myocardial infarction after percutaneous coronary intervention(PCI).Methods:A total of 50 AMI patients after PCI were divided into two groups randomly:Twenty five patients were in exercise group and 25 patients in control group.Cardiopulmonary exercise test was undergone for all patients about 2~4 weeks after AMI onset.Individual exercise prescription was made for the patients in exercise group according to the results of cardiopulmonary exercise test and then the patients were trained according exercise prescription.Exercise prescription and training were not subjected to the patients in control group.Exercise cardiopulmonary function test and left ventricular ejection fraction was examined again for all the patients about 6 months after AMI onset.Results:The 23 patients in exercise group finished the rehabilitation exercise therapy,24 patients in control group finished cardiopulmonary exercise test.After exercise training,the METs of exercise group increased more than that in control group [(5.24±0.94)vs.(3.94±0.38),P0.001],LVEF of exercise group more than that in control group [(0.526±0.040):(0.488±0.037),P0.01].Conclusion:Individual exercise prescription and training for the patients with AMI after PCI can increase their MCTs and LVEF,deserve to extend for it.


Abstract Radical polymerization of fumaric acid derivatives, such as dialkyl fumarates, gave polymers consisting of a less-or nonflexible substituted polymethylene structure. The yield and molecular weight of the polymers produced increased as the bulkiness of the ester substituents increased. For example, when di-t-butyl fumarate was polymerized in bulk with azocyclohexanecarbonitrile (20 mmol/L) at 80°C for 6 h, polymer with M n of more than 100 000 was produced in more than 80% yield. The polymers obtained were colorless powders and did not melt before degradation at ∼250°C, but they were soluble in such organic solvents as benzene, carbon tetrachloride, tetrahydrofuran, and dioxane. A transparent brittle film or fiber was obtained from toluene solution. Some properties and possibilities for application of these polymers are described and discussed.


The tremendous data transmission between the cloud server and edge gateways accelerates the realization of the intelligent factory. However, it consumes enormous band-width resources and leads to the problem that limited factory bandwidth can not meet the large-scale high-density online data transmission. Therefore, data transmission between the cloud server and edge gateways must be reduced to enable large-scale cloud-edge interaction. To achieve this purpose, we propose a deep learning (DL) based data transmission reduction (DPTR) scheme for cloud-edge collaboration, which combines the cloud-edge characteristics to reduce the data transmission volume online while ensuring data accuracy. Meanwhile, we built a physical verification platform including sensor, edge gateway, and cloud server to collect real data and validate the DPTR scheme. Based on the physical validation platform and real data, we experimentally demonstrate that the proposed scheme can reduce the data transmission by 76.83 % while guaranteeing the relative deviation of less than 10%, even for drastically changing vibration data.


The mining industry involved, among other factors, exposure to dust, which affects workers, and also the surrounding populations. In this article, the dispersion of dust in the air environment was studied and the dust sampling was based on the French standard NFX 43 007:2008. The dust flux deposition was determined in twenty-four sampling points located inside and around the quarry. It was verified that the points with higher level of dust correspond to the operating area access, crushing plant, and a national road, with the average of 369.49 mg.m -2 .day -1 , 337.70 mg.m -2 .day -1 and 152.65 mg.m -2 .day -1, respectively. The lowest value of dust flux deposition corresponded to a point located in a limit of the quarry, with the value of 14.37 mg.m -2 .day -1 . Through this study it was concluded that the surrounding population could be affected by the dust quarry, although, the dispersion will greatly depends on the meteorological conditions, among other factors. prevailing wind direction, mainly in what concerns the storage in the open air, these circuits present a strong potential to produce dust. Another element of this system is the sand washing. However, due to the use of water, this unit is not responsible for the dust production. In this quarry there is also a decantation unit for sludge and a filter press. For exploitation activities, in a general view, there is some equipment operating on a defined place and with appropriate functions, such as: Rock / mining area / drilling and blasting Dumper / mining area – primary crushing plant / transportation of material to the crushing plant Wheel Loader / mining area and stock zones / transportation of material with different dimensions to the stock location or trucks loading Track excavator / mining area / excavation and, trucks and dumpers loading The main objective of this work was focused on the analysis of the dispersion of dust, which affect the workers and the surrounding population, by environmental air, in the neighborhood of a quarry, and the variation of dust flux deposition over time. 2 MATERIALS AND METHODS The general procedure used to achieve the main objective was based in the following tasks: to measure the total dust flux deposition in different sampling points within the quarry and its surroundings; to record the meteorological conditions during the several sampling periods in order to evaluate their influence on dust dispersion; to assess how local residents are affected by dust coming from the quarry; to study the effect of tree cover in the quarry surroundings; to compare the levels found within the quarry and its surroundings with the values obtained for the closer communication infrastructures (national road and municipal roads). 2.1 Sampling procedure Through the analysis of dust flux deposition in the quarry's surroundings, this study tried to understand the dispersion plume in the study area and thus, to assess if the workers/population are affected by particles coming from the quarry. The methodology for collecting dust samples was based on the French standard NFX 43 007:2008 Air quality – Ambient air – Determination of the mass of dry atmospheric depositions – Sampling on deposit plates Preparation and treatment, which details the placement of plates, coated with resin, the locals to analyze and subsequent treatment of the samples collected. This standard seemed to be the most suitable for the results that this study was seeking. In a first step the twenty-four sites were selected in order to evaluate the total dust flux deposition (Fig. 1). This selection was made aiming to cover four types of areas: surrounding the quarry, quarry zone, stocks zone and national road. The four groups of sites correspond to the following points: Surrounding the quarry: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 23, 24; Quarry itself: 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21; Stock zone: 14, 15, 16; National road: 22. The second step was to clean the plates with alcohol and then with dichloromethane to remove all the impurities and then, put them in an oven at 105°C for one hour. When the cleaning phase is finished, the plates should be adequately numbered and stored in separate containers for subsequent transport to the sampling site. Although the cleaning procedure is not described in the standard NFX 43 007:2008, the previous version of it, in the year 1973, it is referred that the plates should be dried in the oven at 105oC. The plates are made of stainless steel, with the dimensions of 5 x 10 cm. Figure 1. Location of sampling points within and surrounding


We consider various edge disjoint partitions of complete bipartite graphs. One case is where we decompose the edge set into edge disjoint paths of increasing lengths. A graph G is path‐perfect if there is a positive integer n such that the edge set E(G) of the graph G can be partitioned into paths of length 1,2,3,…,n. The main result of the paper is the proof of the conjecture of Fink and Straight [ 4 ]: A complete bipartite graph Ks,t on t + s vertices (t ≤ s) is path‐perfect if and only if there is a positive integer n such that the following two conditions are satisfied; $${\rm{({i})}}\; {{st}}={\rm{1}}+{\rm{2}}+{\rm{\ldots}}+ {{n}}=\left({{{{n}}+ {\rm{1}}}}\atop{{{\rm{2}}}}\right){\rm{,}} \quad {\rm{and}}\quad {\rm{(ii)}}\; {{n}}\le {\rm{2}}{{t}}.$$ . Our proof gives a linear time algorithm to find an edge disjoint partition of a complete bipartite graph into paths of lengths 1,2,3,…,n. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 55:91–111, 2007


Over 30 years ago, Jamison and Barber proposed that externally disposed glycosyl transferase (GT) activity mediates platelet adhesion and other functions. Subsequent work ruled out ecto-GT activity in nucleated cells and established the Golgi as the site of such enzymes, although no further studies examined platelets. We recently reported a platelet-associated galactosyl transferase (β4Gal-T) catalyzing galactose coupling in a β1,4 linkage to exposed N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) residues on N-linked glycans of the GPIbα subunit of the von Willebrand factor receptor complex. This activity, also present in plasma, mediates galactose transfer to GPIbα following addition of UDP-galactose (UDP-Gal) alone. Since galactosylation of GPIbα prevents clearance of chilled platelets by liver macrophages after transfusion, sufficiently active endogenous endogenous β4Gal-T could facilitate platelet cold storage after the mere addition of substrate UDP-Gal (Science301: 1531–1534, 2003). We now give evidence that human platelets contain a highly active (0.05 nmol/min) plasma membrane-associated ecto-β4Gal-T with properties of an isoform designated as type 1 (β4Gal-T1). A specific β4Gal-T1 antibody immunoprecipitates β4Gal-T1 activity from platelet lysates and the inhibition profile activity by α-lactalbumin and benzyl-β-D-GlcNAc are characteristic of β4Gal-T1. β4Gal-T1 has a transmembrane domain, and platelet β4Gal-T, although releasable by non-ionic detergent, remains cell- and membrane associated despite extensive washing. The platelet enzyme incorporates UDP-[C14]Gal into a single polypeptide with the apparent Mr of GPIbα, identifying this protein as its unique endogenous target. Nevertheless, washed platelets are as active as recombinant β4Gal-T1 in galactosylating exogenous substrates, benzyl-β-D-GlcNAc and ovalbumin. In conclusion, we have revived the concept of an ecto-glycosyl transferase on blood platelets and demonstrated that platelet β4Gal-T is probably sufficiently active to accommodate reliable enzymatic conversion of platelets by simple addition of UDP-Gal.


The aim of this study is to investigate the heat and mass transfer in magnetohydrodynamic Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid flow over a stretched domain in the presence of thermal radiation, chemical reaction, Soret and Dufour effects. In addition to this, we also considered the aligned magnetic field (i.e. the magnetic field applied at different angles) along the flow direction and dual solutions are executed for the transverse and aligned magnetic field cases. The governing system of equations is transformed as the system of ODEs with the help of suited similarity transforms. The resulting equations are solved numerically with the aid of the shooting process. The graphical and tabular results are explored to discuss the flow, thermal and concentration behavior along with the heat and mass transfer rate. Keywords: MHD, Aligned Magnetic field, Soret and Dufour effects, Radiation, Chemical reaction .


Abstract In this paper, we examine the characteristics of unaccusative 'give' constructions in Chinese, and additionally identify the pathways for their emergence in some Chinese dialects, in particular Southern Min and Mandarin varieties. In this paper, the terms dialect and variety are sometimes used interchangeably, with the term variety being the more general term that can also include variations within dialects. We distinguish between Type 1 and Type 2 unaccusative 'give' constructions, the former involving reversible 'escape'-type intransitive predicates, and the latter irreversible 'die'-type intransitive predicates. Type 1 constructions are attested in many Chinese varieties, such as Mandarin, Min, Wu, Hui, Hakka and Cantonese, whereas Type 2 constructions are more rare and thus far are mainly attested in Southern Min and some Mandarin varieties. Two major pathways in the development of unaccusative 'give' constructions are identified in this paper, namely, the causative pathway and the passive-mediated pathway. Our analysis also traces how the unaccusative 'give' construction develops into a marker of adversity and speaker affectedness. The findings of this study have implications for understanding the relationship between changes in valence (i.e., the number of core arguments that are profiled in a given construction) and speaker's subjective stance.


The research on perceived organizational justice (POJ) has always been the focus that scholar pay attention to. Previous researches about it have been done from the macroscopic viewpoints of how to realize justice in the overall society. However this paper reviews some theoretical research about the organizational justice , puts forwards different views and makes a summary of effects that each scholar research on the perceived organizational justice and concrete contents, then summarizes the perceived organizational justicepsila structure. This paper else analyses the relationship of perceived organizational justice and employee performance, draws a conclusion that organizational structure influences organizational justice perceptions and the social exchange relationships workers form with their organizations. At last this paper gives relevant management suggestions in order to improve the perceived organizational justice.


When considering the resistivity of steel towards the pitting corrosion protective properties of the oxide film are of major importance. The initiation of pitting corrosion proceeds through the adsorption of chloride ions onto the oxide film and their incorporation into the bulk of the oxide film. The addition of complexing agent such as tartaric acid may postpone the pitting corrosion initiation by adsorption and blocking the surface sites for the chloride ions adsorption. The effect of the complexing agent, tartaric acid, on the pitting initiation process on non alloyed steel was investigated by linear polarization measurements in sat. Ca(OH)2 with addition of 0.14 M NaCl. In presence of tartaric acid pitting corrosion was postponed for 650 mV up to potentials of oxygen evolution reaction. The possible explanation for such behaviour is competitive adsorption between the chloride ions and tartrate anion through the surface complex formation. The modification of the electrochemical behaviour and semiconductive properties of passive film formed on steel in saturated Ca(OH)2 was investigated in this study. Cyclic voltammetry measurements showed that presence of tartrate in the solution suppressed the oxidation and reduction peaks, lowering the current in the passive region. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy revealed that the presence of tartrate enhances the charge transfer resistance and interfacial capacitance with an enhancement of the concentration. ATR FTIR measurements confirmed presence of the adsorbed tartrate at the steel surface. Adsorption of tartrate on the oxide film hindered the formation of the outer layer of Fe2O3 but the increase of surface coverage enhanced the interfacial capacitance and charge transfer resistance. Mott-Schottky experiments were performed in order to investigate semiconducting properties of passive film formed at the potentials in the passive region (0.1 ; 0.2 ; 0.3 ; 0.4 V). The electronic character of passive film formed on steel in sat. Ca(OH)2 with and without tartrate presence was found to be n-type semiconductor which is consistent with the dominant defects being oxygen vacancies and cation interstitials. Using dielectric constant assumption, semiquantitative defect densities and flatband potentials were calculated. The defect concentration was found to be lowered with adsorption of tartrate on the oxide surface while the flatband potential was shifted towards the positive potentials. The addition of chloride ions into the solution enhanced the donor concentration and shifted the flatband potentials to negative direction. Such behaviour could be ascribed to the chloride ions adsorption onto the oxide film surface. The effect of chloride ions on the semiconductive properties of the oxide film formed in the presence of tartrate was significantly reduced due to the adsorption of tartrate ions effectively blocked the chloride adsorption.


The cryptography has a history of thousands of years, and its development can be divided into three stages, classic cryptography, neoteric cryptography and modern cryptography. Nowadays, it has been further invigorated by 20th-century technology. Previous studies lack a systematic review, so the public has a relatively shallow understanding of the issue. Thus, to increase public awareness, the encryption and decryption are introduced in a easy to understand way. Through extensive reading, generalizing and combing, this paper introduced the number theory applied in some examples of classic, neoteric, and modern cryptography. It is found out that the knowledge of congruences, arithmetic, factorization in number theory are widely utilized in cryptographic algorithms, among them, congruences are the most secure and common type. It is also found out that the number theory can help create the algorithm to encrypt and decrypt messages.


Schwarz methods are attractive parallel solution techniques for solving large-scale linear systems obtained from discretizations of partial differential equations (PDEs). Due to the iterative nature of Schwarz methods, convergence rates are an important criterion to quantify their performance. Optimized Schwarz methods (OSM) form a class of Schwarz methods that are designed to achieve faster convergence rates by employing optimized transmission conditions between subdomains. It has been shown recently that for a two-subdomain case, OSM is a natural solver for hybridizable discontinuous Galerkin (HDG) discretizations of elliptic PDEs. In this paper, we generalize the preceding result to the many-subdomain case and obtain sharp convergence rates with respect to the mesh size and polynomial degree, the subdomain diameter, and the zeroth-order term of the underlying PDE, which allows us for the first time to give precise convergence estimates for OSM used to solve parabolic problems by implicit time stepping. We illustrate our theoretical results with numerical experiments.


Eight-two benzimidazole derivatives have been prepared and tested for the ability to inhibit cytochrome P-450 mediated enzyme activity (aminopyrine N-demethylase) from phenobarbitone-induced rat hepatic microsomes. Using physicochemical parameters and multiple regression analysis, we derived a quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) that describes up to 87% of the data variance in terms of hydrophobic and electronic effects and the molar refractivity of the substituent in the 2-position of the benzimidazole ring.


Preface Acknowledgments PART I 1. Introduction 2. Class and Inequality 3. Gender and Inequality 4. Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality 5. Age and Inequality 6. Actors and Agency 7. Actors and CAGE(s) (Class, Age, Gender, Race & Ethnicity) PART II 8. CAGE(s), Families, Domestic Labour, and the Processes of Reproduction 9. CAGE(s) and Paid Work 10. CAGE(s) and Education 11. CAGE(s) and Health 12. CAGE(s) and the State 13. Conclusion: Equality, Politics, Platforms, and Policy Issues References Index


This chapter reviews ways in which improvisation has been understood by musicians and psychologists, setting out key features of different theories and considering the assumptions about improvising that inform them. The chapter defines improvisation as: creative, social, ambiguous, spontaneous, and accessible. It discusses different theoretical approaches, proposing the following distinctions: practice-based theories; cognitive theories; psychodynamic theories; neuroscience theories; and ethnomusicology theories. It outlines some problems with existing theories. These include: presuming clear demarcations in the roles and functions of the composer, performer, and improviser; a focus on the products of improvisation while neglecting process; and a focus upon the individual while neglecting group processes. There is a need to challenge current perceptions of improvisation, to get more people improvising and to widen access to improvisational activities.


Cerebral cysticercosis is one of the neurological diseases that can be commonly found in developing countries. In the past , the main treatment was only symptomatic care such as anticonvulsant therapy. Recently, two major medical advances have a review of cerebral cysticercosis.The first is the increased availability of CAT scanning , which has contributed both to a more accurate diagnosis and to a better understanding of the pathophyiology of cerebral cysticercosis. Investigators can now easily assess changes in lesions or their disappearance during treatment. The second advance is the development and experimental use of chemotherapeutic agents, such as praziquantel, in the treatment of cerebral cysticercosis. Both will be discussed in detail.


The temperature dependence of the second moment (M2) of 1H NMR absorptions was measured in solid thermochromic bis(N,N-diethylethylenediamine)Ni(II) complexes. Perchlorate and tetrafluoroborate having a thermochromic phase transition at Ttr = 383 and 367 K, respectively, showed a discontinuous M2 change at Ttr indicating that a marked change of the chelate-ring motions takes place at the transition. A small M2 value of ca. 8 G2 observed above the respective Ttr could be explained by the excitation of the chelate-ring puckering together with a large-amplitude librations of the whole complex ions. A gradual M2 decrease upon heating from 100 to 400 K was observed in bromide and iodide exhibiting continuous thermochromism. These M2 changes and the reported visible electron absorption maxima showed a quite analogous temperature dependence. This suggests that some kind of chelate-ring motion such as the puckering also takes place in the continuous thermochromism complexes.


Low back and neck pain are extremely common symptoms in modern societies. The pain may result from abnormalities occurring within the trunk muscles, the vertebrae, the intervertebral discs, the facet joints, and the ligaments and from the spinal canal and the nerve roots themselves. Pain may also be referred from distant sites—such as the abdomen—and in some cases may be functional or psychogenic in nature. Pain can be described as acute or chronic; pain present for more than 3 months is considered as chronic. This chapter describes the assessment and management of different types of back pain.


This paper presents a new voltage-mode proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller using the differential difference current conveyors as active elements. The proposed PID controller uses all-grounded passive components which is highly suitable for integrated circuit implementation. The proportional gain, the integral time constant and the derivative time constant parameters can be independently controlled. For controlling the PID controller parameters, the circuit dose not need passive component-matching condition. The PSPICE simulation results are used to confirm the characteristics of the proposed PID controller.


High resolution Laser Doppler Anenionictcr (LDA) measurements using a novel technique have rewalcd considerable new detail of the separated vortcs flow OYCI a delta wing. It has been demonstrated that at modest local Reynolds numbers Based on chord (around Re,= 100,000 for an 8 5 O delta wing) the separating shear layer can form into strong, steady local sub-voniccs. These vonex s tmctu~es explain phenomena \rhicli have previously only been observed via flow visinliwtion. These highly ordered structures are of academic interest because of their unexpected nature, and niay have practical consequences if they recur in a parallcl form at higher Reynolds number in full scale separated flows.


This work analyzes cost and profit efficiencies of Brazilian banks over the period 2003-2010 and examines the impact of the global fin ncial crisis of 2008 on bank efficiency. Moreover, this work investigates the fa ctors that determine differences between the Brazilian banks efficiency. The results obtained from the stochastic frontier analysis indicate there were distinct effe cts of financial crisis on both cost and profit efficiencies. While profit efficiency wa s negatively affected by the crisis, cost efficiency was positively affected. Th e positive effect of the crisis on the cost efficiency seems to indicate that during p eriods of crisis banks are seeking greater rationalization of cost components. On the ot r hand, the components of revenue are the most affected in these periods, bec aus they depend on factors external to the banks.


Abstract Numerous criticisms have been directed at behavior therapists including those employing token economy systems with children. Token economies are proported to make children overly dependent on external incentives which reinforces dependency behaviors. It was hypothesized that high need for approval (NAPP) children would receive more token points than low conforming children and such differentially high levels of token reinforcement for high NAPP children were believed to be an undesirable treatment effect. Twelve male and four female children in a residential treatment facility were assessed for NAPP and token earning for a two month interval. Results indicate that high NAPP did not relate to token earnings. This finding tends to support that when behavior token systems are used correctly they do not reinforce overly dependent behavior. Additional data provided by staff and peers did reveal relationships with high NAPP. Some implications for token economies with children are discussed.


According to the actual situation of related specialties in our university, based on our teaching practice and experience for years, in order to improve the teaching efficiency of environmental chemistry, as well as enhance the vocational competency of environmental science and related majors, we optimized and integrated the curriculum contents of environmental chemistry, explored various teaching methods, and put into great play of the teacher′s leading role and the students′ main role.


When thermal relativistic electrons with isotropic distribution of velocities move through a dense gas region or impinge on the surface of a cloud of dense gas, the Cerenkov effect will produce peculiar atomic or ionic emission lines, which we call the "Cerenkov linelike radiation." Besides the iron K lines in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and in the afterglow of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), explored in our previous papers, contribution of the Cerenkov linelike radiation to other observed lines may also be significant. In order to extend the application of the new line emission mechanism to the optical region, in this paper we present a corrected formula system, suitable for describing the optical Cerenkov line radiation. We point out that the Cerenkov line mechanism is unable to produce the optical high-ionization lines, e.g., C IV , O III, and N V, because the plasma oscillation in the highly ionized plasma suppresses the Cerenkov radiation significantly. However, for the hydrogen lines and other low-ionization lines, e.g., Mg II and O I, produced in the low-ionized plasma, the Cerenkov line mechanism has to be taken into account.


The likelihood of dying from preventable non-military causes (PNMD) is far greater than the likelihood of death from armed conflict of all types (labelled political mass killing and comparable to Rummel's democide). However, the allocation of resources by governments for the military overwhelms the allocation for PNMD. In the USA, the ratio of expenditures per death for the military are greater than 1,000 times that allocated for each death from currently preventable non-military causes.

The research program precipitated by these facts consists of several components. The first is the compilation of objective data on PNMD both in the USA and worldwide. The second is the development of an analytic framework in which military conflict and PNMD are compared. The framework provides substantial similarities in both motivation and organization between the direct attack represented in military conflict and the indirect attack that characterizes PNMD. The third major component is the examination of the differences between perceived and actuarial risk and the study of the psychological factors that may account for such differences.

Data are presented that illustrate the levels of death from military and non-military causes. Then the motivational and organizational characteristics of both military and non-military sources are examined. Finally, the design of research to investigate the psychological factors that may relate to differences in perceived compared to actuarial risk is presented.


The US mandates for increased use of domestically produced biofuels will help to reduce the dependence on imported oil, yet it will necessitate the increased use of our earth and ecosystem services, our 'natural capital'. Biofuels can be sustainably produced if we recognize the limits of our soil, water and air resources to provide these services. Many of the dedicated crops used for biofuels have a significant water footprint. That is, they consume water for growth and evapotranspiration, and a fraction of the agrochemicals used to obtain higher yields are leached into surface water bodies. This opinion summarizes the extent of this water footprint and explores mechanisms for reducing the resulting impacts.


donors were injected into nonthymectomized irradiated intermediate recipients. One month later, 5 X 106 (instead of 20 X 106) nucleated bone marrow cells from the intermediate recipients were injected into 20 thymectomized and 20 nonthymectomized irradiated test recipients. These recipients were given sheep RBC 60 and bled 66 days after the cell transfer. No anti-sheep RBC agglutinins could be detected in the serum of the 4 nonthymectomized and 15 thymectomized test recipients that survived.


The development of environmental control processes for the simultaneous control of nitrogen oxides (NO/sub x/) and sulfur dioxide (SO/sub 2/) emissions is one of the national priorities being pursued by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) under the Flue Gas Cleanup Program. A joint research effort has been constructed by ANL (Argonne National Laboratory) and PETC (Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center) to study the addition of sodium hydroxide (or caustic soda) to aqueous slurries of lime to enhance NO/sub x/ removal in spray-dryer absorber systems. This concept was evaluated in a 4-week field test using the 22-MWe industrial-scale spray-dryer absorber at ANL as well as the process developmental test units at PETC. This paper summarizes the individual findings on caustic addition to a lime-based spray-dryer fabric-filter system from the process development tests in the 0.75-MWe spray-dryer facility at PETC and from the 4-week full-scale industrial tests at the Argonne steam plant.


This study tests the theoretical validity of Hart's [Harvard Business Review January-February (1997) 74] typology of company environmental strategy toward sustainable society. Using the correlation matrix by LISREL 8.30 based on survey data (2000-2004) from 323 Korean manufacturing firms, we find that pollution prevention partially exerts a positive impact on firm's product stewardship through environmental technology, providing support for his framework.


without the contribution of heat from external sources. The reaction between coal and oxygen provides enough energy to support combustion without the influence of an external heat source (Onifade and Genc, 2018a). Spontaneous combustion in spoil heaps, waste dumps, highwalls, and coal shales is similar to coal oxidation. The self-heating of coal with a potential transition into endogenous fire constitutes a direct safety hazard in both underground and opencast mines, and unfavourably influences the mine environment. Most heat transfer may be by conduction, convection or radiation to the surrounding strata (Akande and Onifade, 2013; Akande, Onifade, and Aladejare, 2013). Rocks tend to be good insulators and retain heat within a coal seam or spoil heap. Selfheating as the major cause of coal shale and spoil heap fires is due to the accumulated influence of heat generating and heat dissipating mechanisms. Coal and coal shale are sedimentary rocks that contain considerable amounts of organic and inorganic constituents (Dullien, 1979; Onifade and Genc, 2018b). This renders the rock permeable to water and air, and increases its surface area, thereby making the organic particles reactive to facilitate oxidation (Dullien, 1979). Extensive research has been conducted experimentally and computationally on the self-heating of coal in both surface and underground mines (Carras and Young, 1994; Genc and Cook, 2015; Kucuk, Kadioglu, and Gulaboglu, 2003; Stracher and Taylor, 2004). However, only limited studies have been conducted towards understanding the spontaneous combustion liability of coal shales exposed to atmospheric oxygen (Onifade, Genc, and Carpede, 2018; Onifade and Genc, 2018c; Onifade and Genc, 2018b). Self-heating of coals and coal shales has been found to cause spontaneous combustion in selected bands of coal seams, highwalls, and spoil heaps (Onifade, Genc, and Carpede, 2018; Onifade and Genc, 2018c; Onifade and Genc, 2018b) (Figure 1). There is not sufficient information to evaluate and compare the spontaneous combustion liability of coal shales in relation to coals. Different intrinsic and extrinsic factors affecting self-heating are the reason for the lack of better understanding of the mechanism of spontaneous combustion. These factors have been documented in various studies to predict the spontaneous combustion liability of coal (Banerjee, 1985; Beamish and Blazak, Prediction of the spontaneous combustion liability of coals and coal shales using statistical analysis


Security has been a concern for authorities and civil society in recent years. Different substrata of society have different perceptions of security. A simple sampling of 100 abstracts published in international repositories was carried out during the period from 2019 to 2022. Seven dimensions were found: territorial, national, public, citizen, private and Internet user. The hypothesis related to the differences between the theoretical structure with respect to the empirical observations was contrasted.


In Maluku province, especially West Seram Regency (SBB) Taniwel district, has been found the snake fruit with thick fruit with dark yellow color and red dispersion, named salak merah. Buria village and Riring village are samples of breeding central red snake fruit at different altitude that allows different morphology characteristics on red snake fruit, especially on its fruit. the purpose of this research is to know the morphometrics of red snake fruit at lower altitude (Buria village) and higher altitudes (Riring village). This research is a laboratory research type with the only object being red snake fruit taken with purposive sampling. Data were analyzed descriptively. The research shows that the morphometric of red snake fruit from Buria village for length fruit parameter, fruit diameter, middle thickness, skin thickness, and fruit weight in the range of 5.33 cm, 4.66 cm, 1.72 cm, 0.1 cm, and 52.89 gr. While the morphometric of red snake fruit from Riring village was in the range of 5.15 cm, 4.45 cm, 1.47 cm, 0,1 cm, and 46.51 gr. The morphometric value of red snake fruit of Buria village is higher compared to the morphometric value of red snake fruit from Riring village. Therefore, we can conclude that the difference in the altitude of the growth spot gives a real significant difference in the morphometric value of red snake fruit, where the higher the altitude at the plant grows, the lower the morphometric value of the plant. This research is only limited to the fruit morphometric, in hope that there will be another progression on other morphometric parameters, like a leaf, stem, and flower, in addition to its environmental chemical and physical factors that giving significant influence towards the morphometric value of red snake fruit in Taniwel district, West Seram Regency (SBB).


The shared ancestral and serial transformative evol utionary relationships of the Didymodon s. lat. (Pottiaceae, Bryophyta) group of mosses is inv estigated. Decibans are used as coarse likelihoods for serial trait transformations in sequential Baye s analysis, here using morphology alone. In convergence analysis, theoretical adaptive radiatio ns and neutral but divergent transformations among the species of the data set are evaluated with esti mated deciban support for hypothetical models of serial macroevolutionary change. These are convert ed to Bayes factors. Direction of macroevolutionary transformation on a caulogram is determined by morphological cladogram position, and maximum Bayes factor (or deciban diff erential) except when an intermediate taxon may be proposed, either from the extant set or as an un k own shared ancestor that minimizes Bayes factor differences. In cases with model probability near unity, deciban range differences between models are accepted because there was little discriminatio w th Bayes factors. Estimated monophyly among the segregate genera of Didymodon s. lat. is represented by a caulogram of serial mac roevolutionary relationships annotated with Bayes factors and deci ban differentials for serial species-level transformations. The moss genus Didymodon Hedwig was used (Zander 2013: 80) to demonstrate superoptimization, which is the attempted naming of cladogram nodes using novel, advanced trait criteria for determining serial evolutionary transf ormation direction. The naming of the nodes in tha t paper was done informally and intuitively in the co ntext of informed expertise, the author having studied the family (Pottiaceae) of Didymodon for the past 40 years. Segregate genera were established through cladistic analysis and expert a bility to identify dissilience (situations of core generative species from which descendants with appa rent daptive or at least novel traits arise). The identification and description of evolutionary proc ess in such dissilient genera is the central means of identifying monophyly for these groups, and this pa per sets out what may well be the statistical basis for scientific intuition in classical identificatio n of monophyletic groups. ANALYSIS OF SEGREGATE GENERA OF DIDYMODON THROUGH DECIBAN HEURISTICS Expert opinion use of decibans is a simple way to use clues in sequential Bayes analysis. Given the assumption that we would like to have a m ore accurate and reasonable analysis of support than the informal assignment of nearly certain like lihoods as was done by Zander (2013: 80), one can now attempt a formalized heuristic analysis of mono phyly in the entire Didymodon genus complex consisting of the six segregate genera Didymodon s. str., Exobryum Zander, Fuscobryum Zander, Geheebia Schimper, Trichostomopsis Cardot, and Vinealobryum R.H. Zander. The new method uses sequential Bayes by means of decibans assigned to r adiative traits. This formalization is intended to mimic or at least explain the quick apprehension of m nophyly of expert scientific intuition. All species weighted for putative ancestral status (i.e ., basal species for a monophyletic transformation series) have similar primitive traits for the inclu sive s. lat. group. These traits include general a nd widespread distribution at least relative to the pu tative descendants, no specialized habitats, modera te size, no specialized or reduced organs, and are sex ually reproducing. Zander: Classical determination of monophyly, analysis 2 Molecular analysis for this group is presently uninformative. A molecular (ITS) analysis of many of the same species of Didymodon s. lat. was done by Werner et al. (2005). The resu lts were evolutionarily equivocal as discussed in detail by Zander (2013: 90) because neither heterophyly nor distance on the cladogram beyond that expected from hidden paraphyly or phylogenetic polyphyly were evident. Does restriction of clues to minimal values degrade analysis? Two different superoptimization analyses are done in each genus' Table, one for assignment of 1 dB (in roman typeface) for each morphological trait, as a benchm ark for results from a minimal "clue" to direction of transformation. Then, another assignment is don e with variable numbers of decibans (in bold typeface) to reflect estimation of different weight s of the clues for each trait (in Italic typeface). First, any analysis using the present method begins w th division of a large group into small working groups of one apparent ancestral species an d its evolutionarily derived species, judged by criteria discussed above. Often subgenera and sect ions indicate such evolutionarily "dissilient" groups. In this case, the infragenera of Didymodon s. lat. as promoted to generic status (Zander 2013: 93) were used successfully. Second, evaluation is done of the chance of species 1 (selected intuitively as ancestral) giving rise to each of the other species as a central hypo t esis, assuming groups previously segregated to those with only one extant or postulated generalize d ancestral species. The cladogram (Fig. 1) of Didymodon s. lat. of Zander (1998, 2013: 80) is used as a pre liminary grouping structure for the six segregate genera because it happens to group well t he classical subgenera (Fig. 1), which do have only one generalized species. A natural key (e.g., Zander 1993: 82) could just as well be used. Thes e segregates were advanced to genus status by Zander (2013: 93) based on the intuitive assignment of high probability to traits implying directionality of macroevolutionary transformation. Each of these segregate genera is here re-evaluated with sequenti al Bayes analysis first using a minimal 1 dB for al l traits, then second using varying deciban assignmen ts as to probability of macroevolutionary transformation of the specialized species away from each of the most generalized. The deciban assignments are coarse, arbitrarily using only odd numbers, 1, 3, 5 or 7, as approximately as is possible to estimate such assignments. The posteri r probabilities associated with multiple decibans can be read off Table 1 in Part 1 of this study. Third, evaluation is done of the chance of any spec ies n generating species 1 as alternative hypothesis. This is essentially 1 minus the chance that species 1 gave rise to each of the other species. A Bayes factor was calculated from the su pport values of the central hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis to summarize support for and gainst the generalized species being the ancestor. Fourth, when probabilities of descendants that are directly generated by the putative ancestor are each lower than, say, 0.95, the IRCI is figured for the chance that at least one of those species is a descendant. Inasmuch as this is a closed causal gr oup, the fact that one of the direct descendants is reliably a descendant of the ancestral taxon means that they all are. The species with highest probability is then at least tentatively the ancest ral species. Descendants can generate descendants of their own. When there are secondary derivations of two or more species from another des cendant species, only those secondarily derived species are used in IRCI calculations. An example is the posterior probabilities of the 1 dB per trai t analysis of Vinealobryum species. One of the putative descendants, V. nevadense, is eliminated as secondarily descended from another descendant. The post rior probabilities of the three putative direct descendants of V. vineale are 0.50, 0.61 and 0.61. Combining these through t he IRCI formula, Zander: Classical determination of monophyly, analysis 3 the chance of at least one of the three being a des cendant is quite high, 0.93, and thus there is a st rong chance they all are. Another example is the 1 dB p er trait analysis of Geheebia species in which the four apparently direct descendants of the putative ancestral species have posterior probabilities of 0.76, 0.72, 0.67, and 0.76, but an IRCI for these o f 0.995, such that one of these taxa are surely a descendant, and thus they all are. Fifth, with probabilities of two or more models clo se to unity (100%), Bayes factors are uninformative. Those probabilities near unity, how ever, are generated by summing evidence in the form of clues. A small difference in probability n ear unity may provide a low Bayes factor, but may incorporate a major difference in numbers or value of clues. In critical cases, differences in deciba ns may provide convincing evidence for decisions betwe n hypotheses (models). For instance, in the analysis of Vinealobryum (Table 4) with variably assigned dB values, posteri or probabilities between the most likely basal generative species 1 ( V. vineale) and species 2 ( V. brachyphyllum) are similar for models of each generating direct descendants am ong the remainder of the species. But adding the decibans for species 1 generating the first tier of descendants, i.e., species 2, 3, and 4, and also f or species 2 generating species 1, 3 and 4, the sums o f 36 dB and 20 dB reveal nearly twice the evidence or at least significance of the evidence for the fi rst hypothesis, namely 1>immediate descendants (species 2, 3 and 4). The Bayes factor associated with this difference in evidence, however, is only 1.0096. Clues are external evidence of direction of evolution based on evolutionary theory. In some treatments deciban evidence for the two most l ikely species (species 1 and 2) is the same, but positive in decibans for species 1 and negative for species 2 (e.g., analysis of Geheebia (Table 5). But the values are of different use in that these v alues do not measure the difference between the two models but between each model and an outside criter ion applicable to all the species, a separate model of trait transformation. This is a different use of the same evidential information and the distance in dB as clues is thus indeed twice the number of dB involved. Very high Bayes fa


A plant disease diagnosis method that can be implemented with the resources of a mobile phone application, that does not have to be connected to a remote server, is presented and evaluated on citrus diseases. It can be used both by amateur gardeners and by professional agriculturists for early detection of diseases. The features used are extracted from photographs of plant parts like leaves or fruits and include the color, the relative area and the number of the lesion spots. These classification features, along with additional information like weather metadata, form disease signatures that can be easily defined by the end user (e.g., an agronomist). These signatures are based on the statistical processing of a small number of representative training photographs. The extracted features of a test photograph are compared against the disease signatures in order to select the most likely disease. An important advantage of the proposed approach is that the diagnosis does not depend on the orientation, the scale or the resolution of the photograph. The experiments have been conducted under several light exposure conditions. The accuracy was experimentally measured between 70% and 99%. An acceptable accuracy higher than 90% can be achieved in most of the cases since the lesion spots can recognized interactively with high precision.


This paper aims to analyze the plastic collapse moment of circumferential cracked cylinder under pure torsion using the NSC approach and 3D FE model. The material considered in this work is assumed to be elastic-perfectly plastic. The influences of geometric parameters of crack and cylinder, such as RR� tt ⁄ , aa tt ⁄ and θθ θθ ⁄ on solution of plastic collapse load are also investigated. The analysis shows that for the case of aa tt ⁄ < 0.75, the values of limit torsion moment can be estimated by NSC analysis which provides conservative results. However, for the case of deeper crack, aa tt ⁄ ≥ 0.75, the limit load solution predicted by NSC approach may not be safe, because the distribution of stress at yielding state does not correspond to the NSC assumption. Therefore, the approximated solution of collapse torsion moment for the case of deeper crack with aa tt ⁄ ≥ 0.75 is proposed based on FE analysis.


Historically many fueloil businesses have been sold with at least a portion of the payout tied to the future delivery of gallons to the customers of the seller. This concept is usually not present in the sales of most retail businesses because future purchases by transferred customers is dependent on pricing, promotion, location, reputation, branding and other factors. In the case of fueloil, the customer is known to have a loyalty to the fueloil dealer, which in part is due to the need for service rendered to the heating equipment in the home. Periodic studies indicate customer loyalty is in the range of 8 to 10 years with the same dealer. In many markets, growth in the percentage of consumer price buyers who pay cash may be changing these loyalties. For example, in New Hampshire a recent study by the state energy office indicates that the percentage of fuel buyers who buy for cash has increased from 27.5% during the 1982-1983 heating season to 41.5% this past year. No one knows how this trend will impact on the sales of fueloil businesses via retained gallons. This article discusses the following: why customer lists should not be considered good will; underlyingmore » assumptions in sale; options of the seller; why misunderstandings occur; defining the account; definition of gallons to be counted; compatibility of policies; how much will be retained; and how to protect yourself and retention.« less


A minor drop of blood is dried on filter paper, eluted in saline, and analysed by electrophoresis into agarose-containing antibodies against transferrin (reference) and α1-antitrypsin.


Polymer dispersions were made in the laboratory with anionic and nonionic tensides. These were mixed in the mortar and the properties like air content, density, mechanical strength and water absorption were measured. It is observed that the dispersions with nonionic tensides entrain more air than the one with anionic tensides. Filmforming dispersions are more hydrophobe. Dispersions made both with styrene and methylmethacrylate monomer with anionic tensides improve the above mentioned properties of cement mortar. (Author)


The present invention provides a method of providing a more veneer shaving razor. The razor may include a biasing member, when pivoting the cartridge, the biasing member generating a progressively increasing return torque razor cartridge, forces the cartridge into the torque flat contact with the skin, and thus improve the sliding shaving closeness. In addition, the razor may include a configuration of a razor handle, said razor handle configuration during shaving razor tendency to decrease in the user's hand and to improve the maneuverability of the rolling razor cartridge.


Soft pneumatic biomimetic robotic systems excel at the specific application they are designed for, often to interact or navigate unstructured environments safely. However, redeployment to new purposes requires substantial resources, from redesign to revalidation. Despite most pneumatic artificial muscles surpassing the power and contraction performance of natural muscles, natural muscles largely remain unmatched in terms of their versatility and complex performance. This is likely due to artificial muscle's low effective strain and high radial expansion, limiting parallel operating efficiencies. To address these challenges, a class of compact versatile pneumatic actuators, called multilayer artificial muscle (MAM), that are capable of deployment to different applications through configurable modularity, is presented. The MAMs are biomimetically inspired by the sarcomere, the building block for natural muscle architecture. Similarly, MAM can extend and contract as well as be rearranged to mimic muscle‐like actions and functions, such as a caterpillar locomotion robot and an entire robotic arm. The MAMs are fabricated through multilayer, multimaterial, low‐cost additive manufacturing, which offers certain advantages such as higher extension, contraction force, and durability. MAMs have the potential to provide a crucial fundamental building block toward future versatile reconfigurable architecture.


BACKGROUND
Traditional approaches to the control of diseases of papaya fruit rely on the use of synthetic chemicals, which can cause serious human health and environmental problems. Endophytes might be used as an alternative to chemicals to effectively control diseases of harvested papaya fruit.

RESULTS
MGP1 was one of the biological control agents that was selected from the pericarp of papaya and identified as Pseudomonas putida biovar A. The bacterium was able to colonise in the lamina, leafstalk, pericarp and pulp of papaya and strongly inhibit ten kinds of phytopathogen. Positive control effects were achieved when fruits were challenged with Phytophthora nicotianae at 24 and 48 h after MGP1 treatment. The control effect of MGP1 on anthracnose of harvested papaya fruit reached 54%. The application of MGP1 at five preharvest stages of papaya significantly reduced the disease index of anthracnose, with the best control effect reaching 63% after application at the florescence stage. However, the rate of latent infection of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides was significantly reduced only after application at the fluorescence stage.

CONCLUSION
The results indicated the powerful ability of MGP1 as a biological agent.


Algorithms for dynamic detection of assertions are designed to find different types of dependences in programs based only on information collected during their execution without static analysis. Specificity of those algorithms and limited quantity of data to analyze needs to investigate the usage principle of discovered assertions for software dependability increase. This article introduces techniques for increasing usage efficiency of detected assertions through using program execution trace. Concept of trace and of an assertion with trace were defined. The work describes algorithms for reducing the number of traces, shortening traces lengths and reducing the number of observation points identifiers in traces. For several applications fault injection based experiments were conducted in order to check the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


I have selected a few theorems and will give the proofs of some of them in order that you may know how we study this geometry and just how simple it is.* I will suppose that we have started with points and regard all figures as consisting of points. I assume a relation among points which may be called the collinear relation, and define lines as well as planes and hyperplanes by means of this relation. The line is determined by two points, the plane by three points not points of one line, and the hyperplane by four points not points of one plane. The hyperplane, for example, consists of the points that we get if we take four points not points of one plane, all points collinear with any two of them, and all points collinear with any two obtained by this process. Our space is a hyperplane and geometry in a hyperplane is the ordinary solid geometry. Now in order to get a space of four dimensions it is only necessary to assume the existence of five points not in one hyperplane. Space of four dimensions consists of the points that we get if we take five points not in one hyperplane, all points collinear with any two of them, and all points collinear with any two obtained by this process. For convenience I will assume that all points lie in one space of four dimensions and call this space hyperspace.


Ultrasonic relaxation spectra in the frequency range 0.08-400 MHz of the ions Ca 2 + or Ba 2 + , interacting with the pentoses D-(-)-ribose, D-(-)-lyxose, and D-(-)-arabinose at concentrations of 0.5 M and molar ratio (pentose/metal 2 + ) = 1 at 25 °C, are reported. For Ca 2 + or Ba 2 + with D-(-)-ribose ultrasonic relaxation spectra at various concentrations up to c = 0.7 mol/dm 3 at 25 °C are also reported. The ultrasonic spectra can be interpreted by the sum of three Debye relaxation processes. The one at the lowest relaxation frequency (∼0.07-0.25 MHz) is ascribed to the 4C 1 ⇄ 1C 4 isomerization of the carbohydrates. The relaxation process at intermediate frequency (∼10-12 MHz for Ca 2 + or 50-60 MHz for Ba 2 + ) is interpreted as due to the partial desolvation of the cations by the carbohydrate. The "fast" relaxation process at 120-160 MHz is attributed to the diffusion-controlled approach and initial desolvation of the cation and carbohydrate. The two faster processes are interpreted according to the multistep Eigen-Tamm complexation mechanism: M 2 + + carbohydrate ⇄ (k 1 /k - 1 ) M 2 + ...carbohydrate ⇄ (k 2 /k - 2 )M 2 + carbohydrate.


Using thymosin beta4, including damage that is caused by damage and neurological disorders and neurodegenerative diseases that are caused by stroke or trauma, may be treated nerve damage and brain damage involving neuronal death or injury . Specifically, stroke and multiple sclerosis, are examples of conditions that can be ameliorated by treatment with thymosin beta4. Thymosin β4 may be recovered neurological tissue through several effects to some neurological parameters are improved by the administration of thymosin β4 to a subject in need of neurological tissue recovery was found . For example, thymosin β4 is axonal myelination, migration of neural progenitor cells, neural progenitor cell proliferation, neural progenitor cell differentiation into mature neurons, differentiation into mature glial of neuronal precursor cells, neuronal regeneration, and brain to improve the brain remodeling at the site of injury.


The amination of 1-bromobutane in an aqueous ammonia solution of 50wt% ammonia using a high-pressure coiled-tube flow reactor was examined. The temperature range studied was from 343 to 403K and the reaction pressure was 13MPa. The major reaction products were n-butylamine and di-n-butylamine, but higher amines, such as tri-n-butylamine, were detected only in trace amounts. Based on a second order consecutive reaction model for the formation of n-butylamine and di-n-butylamine, the reaction rate of amination of 1-bromobutane was determined. Arrhenius parameters for the rate constant of the first reaction step to form n-butylamine were found to have an activation energy of 87.9kJ/mol and pre-exponential factor of 1.03×109mol/(dm3 s), and those for the second reaction step to form di-n-butylamine were found to have the activation energy of 84.3kJ/mol and pre-exponential factor of 4.30×109mol/(dm3 s).


From the Departments of Pediatrics and Clinical Pathology, The University of Texas at Houston, M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute, Houston, Texas. * Former Fellow, Department of Pediatrics. † Associate Pediatrician and Associate Professor of Pediatrics. ‡Assistant Clinical Pathologist and Assistant Professor of Pathology. § Former Associate Pediatrician, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, and Head. Correspondence to Margaret P. Sullivan, M.D., Department of Pediatrics, M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute, 6723 Bertner, Houston, Tex. 77025. ACHILD with acute lymphocytic leuJL jL CHILD kemia and disseminated histoplasmosis (DH) in whom amphotericin B therapy seemed to arrest the infection is here reported.


The key problem of emotion recognition lie in effective electroencephalography (EEG) signal processing and feature extraction. Traditional methods mostly extract single feature or simply combine different features together, but emotion recognition based merely on a single feature may be unreliable and simple feature combination will be affected by complex feature interdependencies. To improve recognition accuracy, we propose a multi-feature emotion recognition method based on Joint Sparse Representation (JSR) to transform the simple feature fusion into an optimization problem. Specifically, sparse matrices for each individual feature are combined to obtain the JSR of these features, and three different EEG features including wavelet energy, Hurst index, and fractal dimension are employed to produce multi-feature fusion results. Due to high computational complexity and restrictions on kernel function selection of Support Vector Machine (SVM), we adopt Relevance Vector Machine (RVM) to classify emotions. Simulation results show our proposed multi-feature fusion algorithm has an average recognition accuracy of over 85%, which is 8% higher than the traditional method.


4884 Background: Human gastric cancer is characterized by a rapid progressive invasion and a high frequency of metastasis to lymph nodes. Lymph node metastasis is an important prognostic indication for patient outcome. Transforming growth factor-s (TGFs) is closely associated with the cancer cell infiltration and metastases. TGFs acts through the TGFs receptor (TGFs-R) type I and type II to Smad families. The aim of the current study is to clarify the effect of TGFs-R phosphorylation inhibitor with the anti-cancer drugs on the lymph node metastasis of human gastric cancer.
 Materials and Methods:TGFs-R inhibitor, SB-431542, inhibits phosphorylation of Smad2 of an ATP binding site of TGFs-R. Human gastric cancer cell line, OCUM-2MLN, was used in this study. The effect of TGFs or SB-431542 on the morphology was examined by a phase-contrast microscopy. In vivo gastric carcinoma models by orthotopic inoculation of OCUM-2MLN cells showed diffusely infiltrating adenocarcinoma in the stomach and developed lymph node metastasis. Four days after, SB-431542 and/or S-1 (Tegafur) was administered orally 5 times per week. We divided these mice into 4 groups, including control group, SB-431542 treated group, S-1 treated group, or SB-431542 and S-1 combination group. Mice were sacrificed 4 weeks after inoculation, and tumor size, lymphatic involvement and lymph nodes metastasis were examined.
 Results: TGFs induced the epithelial to mesenchymaltransition (EMT) of OCUM-2MLN cells, EMT was inhibited by SB-431542. SB-431542 decreased Smad2/Smad3 phosphorylation. In vivo tumor size in the stomach was decreased in SB-431542 treated group, a S-1 treated group, compared to the control group. In addition, combined administration of SB-431542 and S-1 decreased lymphatic involvement and lymph node metastasis more effectively than either alone.
 Conclusion: TGFs-R phosphorylation inhibitor, SB-431542, is useful for the treatment of lymph node metastasis of human gastric cancer in combination with anticancer agent.


A relationship requires the existence of honesty, opennes, trust and time to be together. But in long distance relationship, sometimes those needs neglected because of they can't do face to face communication everyday and it causes slanders in those couple. Therefore the aim of this research is to know the interpersonal communication for conflict management of slander in long distance relationship. The theory that used in this research is the Triangular Theory of Love, Self Disclosure Theory, and Conflict Management with descriptive qualitative type of research and phenomenological approach which define standpoint informant who has experience of slander during the dating. Research result that found from couple who has experience of slander is they talked about unimportant and important topic as a daily sharing. They do routine communication to show their intimacy, caring and sense of belonging each other. A meeting used as a time to share a longing of each other and talk a lot of things can warm up and motivating relationship. Therefor they can't meet in everyday life, there is still suspicious feeling that trigger by odd attitude like takes a long time when picking up the phone, give the convoluted answer , and often permit to go with the opposite sex. This attitude make slanders more obvious, and infidelity is the most frequently slander that showed up. This slander takes a long time when each other can't open to each other. Conflict resolution that effetive to long distance relationship couple is made through electronical mediated communication by telephone and chatting. Face to face communication isn't an right way to cope conflict because it can't be done directly and make conflict takes a long time to coped. Long distance relationship couple apologize and make promise to convince each other about wouldn't do any event that trigger slanders in the future. Self disclosure in couple can make the resolution easier because each other knows what other needs.


A good model of higher vocational education should be organized and implemented from the curriculum designation of"job-oriented process " to the "action-oriented" teaching and learning activities.This article discusses the reform of curriculum evaluation methods in such a mode.


Ledu long pepper is main variety of vegetable production east QingHai,but the long-term focus N、P and ignore K fertilizers effects the yield and quality ofpepper.potassium sulfate controlled trials on peppe production in greenhouseare conducted,the results showed applying Potassium Sulfate could enhance disease-resistance and yield,improve quality in production of pepper in greenhouse.


This study investigate to see whether the DR price equals to original stock price after adjusting for foreign exchange rate. And then we search for the factors which can explain the price differentials between them. Finally, we study any changes in price differentials between them as the financial market liberalization proceeds gradually. Results show that there exists price differential between DR and original stock. Especially DR prices have premium compared to the implied FX adjusted price. In addition to that, this price differential is time-varying. The determinants of price differential between DR and original stock price are: (1) Won-dollar exchange rate has a significant positive effect on DR premium, (2) KOSPI and MSCI world index have negative and positive effects, respectively. Firm size has a negative and a positive significant effect on ADR and GDR premium, respectively. No firm size effect, however, shows with the dataset including both ADR and GDR. Dividends has a positive effect on DR premium, DR volatility has a negative effect and trade volume in ADRs has a negative effect. Foreign ownership used as a proxy for information asymmetry has no statistical significance. Through this study we confirm the price differential between DR and original stock. And these price differentials are caused by each market investors' sentiment, different exchange venue, differences in liquidity and trade expense, different recognition and attitude toward risks, and information asymmetry. Also, these price differentials are time-varying.


This study describes the effects of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations and specific teacher-student interactions. Two physical education specialists and their classes served as subjects for the study. Graduate students (n = 30) were asked to rate 141 second, fourth, and sixth grade children from a black and white photo taken of each child. A total of 100 students, from the upper and lower thirds in each grade for both teachers, comprised the sample. Teacher expectations were determined by asking the teachers to rate students according to how they expected each to perform in terms of: (a) physical performance, (b) social relations with peers, (c) cooperative behavior in class, and (d) ability to reason. A dyadic version of Cheffers Adaptation to Flanders Interaction Analysis System was the observational tool used to describe the teacher-student behaviors. Two 2 × 2 × 3 MANOVAs showed that high attractive students were expected to do better in physical performance and to be more socially integr...


This policy and practice note describes and discusses two recent decisions by the District Court in Amsterdam regarding the applicability of YouTube's and Facebook's Community Guidelines on COVID-19 misinformation. The decisions (Café Weltschmerz /YouTube and Smart Exit/Facebook) illustrate the tense intersection between, on the one hand, the possibility to express critique on the government's policy to fight the outbreak of COVID-19 in the Netherlands, and on the other hand, the prevention of (dis)information with the potential to harm public health. The author will point out that the two decisions, although covering merely the same subject matter, differ significantly in argumentation regarding the (scope of the) application of the freedom of expression. Analysing this divergence in argumentation will show that the root of the difference can be traced back to a different valuation of the role of the online platforms regarding the dissemination of speech. A debate on this divergence is needed to prevent inconsistency in future decisions and contributes to the broader discussion on content regulation in the European Union.


Having distanced themselves from the Eastern bloc economic diplomacy in 1962-1963, Romanian leaders were looking for political leeway with the ussr. The Sino-Soviet conflict enabled them to theorize their neutrality through the Declaration of Independence of April 22, 1964. The aim of this paper is to show how the Soviets replied to Romanian claims, especially as these were accompanied by a strongly anti-Soviet campaign of popular mobilization. The riposte was on the same ground, that of nationalism, particularly through territorial pressure concerning Transylvania and Bessarabia, applied during the Romanian-Soviet talks in Moscow in July 1964. Based on newly-opened archives, this paper analyzes this crucial moment in Romania's quest for foreign policy autonomy.


This essay aims to correlate the warburguian montage in Jean-Luc Godard's The old place with the concept of epicycloid developed by Araripe Junior as a reference to the movement of cultural transformation: if, in Mnemosyne, Warburg discovers new meanings to images through their transpositions and recombinations, one can see this process as the methodology chosen by Godard to analyze the arts in his documentary, as well as an argument for Araripe Junior to affirm his critic of monroism.


Abstract : In addition to the pole series in the singularity expansion of a scatterer's response a 'possible entire function' contribution has been customarily included although considerable uncertainty surrounds the role of this reponse component. Entire functions are frequently found in the responses of circuits where they represent forced components. The results of this investigation indicate that in certain extreme system configurations, like circuits, the forced response to a time-limited excitation is an entire function. In certain less extreme configurations, like most scatterers, the forced response takes the form of a 'quasi-entire function' which is composed of highly-damped pole contributions. We demonstrate that true entire functions themselves can be represented by infinite pole series whose poles have become infinitely-damped. For many scatterers two groups of poles can be distinguished: the dominant poles and the highly-damped poles whose contributions comprise a quasi-entire function. The numerically-derived quasi-entire function components of a conducting sphere-capped cylinder and a conducting loop are determined by subtracting the dominant pole series from the total responses of these scatterers.


A procedure for the determination of low concentrations (10–4–10–5M) of the herbicide ethofumesate in aqueous solutions is described. The method is based on the hydrolysis of ethofumesate in alkaline medium at elevated temperature, azo coupling the hydrolysate with diazotised sulphanilic acid and spectrophotometric measurement of the red azo dye formed. The results obtained agree with those obtained by high-performance liquid chromatography.


We propose a new two-stage approach to estimate the central direction-of-arrival (DOA) and angular spread of locally distributed source. In contrast to earlier works, an advantage of this method is that it has decoupled the central DOA and angular spread based on the steering vector which is a Schur-Hadamard product. So the central DOA can be estimated in a preliminary stage, and then angular spread is obtained by a proposed second-order statistics with a closed-form solution. Comparing with classic earlier algorithms, it has a lower computational complexity avoiding peak-finding searching. It is shown from simulation results that the proposed approach exhibits good estimation performance.


Orthopterans are important grassland herbivores and therefore affect plant diversity. They are in turn consumed by many other animals that depend on them for survival. If a significant proportion of these orthopterans are being parasitized it could drastically change the grassland habitat. If certain species of orthopterans have high infection rates or are parasitized by particularly deadly parasite species, this could affect orthopteran species composition.


It is known that, under some configurations, the generalized frequency-division multiplexing (GFDM) pulse-shaper matrix is singular. Moreover, a GFDM pulse-shaper matrix may have unequal magnitude gains in different vector-space dimensions. This letter presents a Fourier-transform-based decomposition of the GFDM pulse-shaper matrix from which the above GFDM properties, as well as some other ones, can be readily appreciated. An upper bound on the nullity of the pulse-shaper matrix is obtained. We also show that, for some commonly conceivable designs, the nullity of the pulse-shaper matrix, if singular, is one. In the latter case, we also specify the corresponding null space. From this, GFDM signals can be designed, so that they do not fall in the null space.


Drawing on a role-based approach to followership, we investigate followers' beliefs about the co-production of leadership and examine the association of these beliefs with upward communication behaviors. We also investigate the potential moderating effects of leader consideration, leader-follower relationship quality, and autonomous work climate on the relationship between co-production beliefs and upward communication. The findings show a positive relationship between co-production beliefs and upward communication with leaders (i.e., voice and constructive resistance). Findings also show that leadership style, overall relationship quality, and autonomous work climate moderate the relationship between co-production beliefs and voice, but not constructive resistance. Interactions show that followers with weaker co-production beliefs use significantly less voice when leadership and contextual conditions were unfavorable, but that contextual conditions did not diminish the voice behaviors of those with stron...


Until recently, Zhongdian County was a little known corner of Northwest Yunnan. All that changed when it began to call itself 'Shangri-la', the mythical paradise of the Tibetan Himalayas. On 17 December 2001, after years of intense lobbying by the county government, the State Council finally granted Zhongdian permission to officially rename itself 'Shangri-la County'. This article is an account of the economic and political forces behind the campaign for Shangri-la, including discussion of the Shangri-la Arts Festival in May 2002. The paper also takes up the dynamics between official and local identities as ethnic tourism expands in this Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture. It argues that Shangri-la's new tourism could be a force for strengthening ethnic identities, even if those identities are simultaneously rooted in the development of the modern Chinese state.


N-H aziridines—those strained three-membered rings made up of two carbons and a nitrogen—are attractive targets for chemists. On their own, they have the potential to boost bioactivity in certain m...


To the Editor: Orthostatic hypotension (OH) develops in several conditions and with healthy aging. OH is defined as a drop in systolic blood pressure (BP) ≥20 mmHg, or diastolic drop of ≥10 mmHg within 3 min of standing or head-up tilt from a supine position. OH can be severe, recurrent, associated with reduced quality of life, and is an independent risk factor for falls.3–5 In the latest issue of Journal of the American Geriatric Society, Juraschek et al. report on orthostatic vital signs in 534 community-dwelling older adults, and performed a paired comparison of orthostatic BP changes during a supine-to-stand vs. sit-to-stand maneuver. Using the standard BP criteria for OH (≥20 mmHg/10 mmHg), the prevalence of OH was 15.0% when using a supine-tostand assessment, but only 2.1% with a sit-to-stand assessment (p < 0.001). Juraschek et al. concluded that in clinical practice, a seated OH protocol should not be considered a substitute for a supine OH protocol. Juraschek et al. should be congratulated for performing this large study in community-dwelling older adults focused on this important issue. However, we are not persuaded that we should dismiss the seated OH protocol so quickly. It is established that the sit-to-stand maneuver elicits a smaller BP drop in comparison to both head-up tilt testing and supine-to-stand maneuvers. To address this difference Shaw et al. identified optimal BP cutoffs in response to a sit-to-stand maneuver, and reported that a BP cutoff of ≥15/7 mmHg when performing a sit-to-stand maneuver yielded sensitivities, specificities, and positive and negative predictive values all above 80% for both systolic and diastolic BPs. Casiglia and Jordan independently validated these cutoffs within an epidemiological setting. In their unselected cohort of 2940 participants, they found no appreciable difference in OH prevalence between the supine-to-stand ≥20/10 mmHg criteria vs. the sit-to-stand ≥15/7 mmHg threshold (16.9% vs. 17.3%; p = 0.7). While the supine-to-stand maneuver is the gold standard, it cannot always be performed. OH afflicts a large number of older aged community-dwelling adults, and individuals in geriatric wards and nursing homes many of whom have comorbidities that can impact mobility. A sit-tostand maneuver offers a safer and more feasible test for patients without risking an acute fall or syncopal episode. Further, a sit-to-stand test simply requires a chair as opposed to a bed or tilt table. It may therefore be a more practical option to assess orthostatic vital signs in a variety of clinical environments (e.g., outpatient clinics) where it might currently not be done due to logistical difficulties. A sit-to-stand test, with adjusted BP cutoffs, could be used to screen patients for OH and determine the need for a gold standard supine-to-stand test, or even further autonomic testing via head-up-tilt with beat-to-beat hemodynamic monitoring. In conclusion, the study by Juraschek et al. provides interesting data in a large cohort. While a sit-to-stand test should not replace the gold standard head-up tilt or supineto-stand tests, when used with the appropriate BP reduction cutoffs, the sit-to-stand test does offer a safe, validated, and accessible means to screen for OH in a variety of clinical settings. This has important clinical implications for improving care for patients at risk of OH.


Organophosphates (OPs) react with acetylcholinesterases (AChEs) to form a covalent bond at a specific serine residue in the active gorge, thereby providing a highly precise modification of this enzyme and offering unique explorations of protein structure, function and mechanism. The long‐range goal of this study is to show how covalent modification of AChEs by chromophore‐linked OPs can be used to probe the protein and its local environment. Click chemistry was used as a key transformation method to prepare an array of chromophores linked to a reactive fluorophosphonate (FP) head group. Successfully synthesized chromophore‐FPs varying in length and chromophore structure were docked in FlexX (Sybyl 7.0) to visualize and calculate positioning of the chromophore‐FPs relative to the protein active site/gorge/peripheral site. The inhibition rates of chromophore‐FPs against rMoAChE and EEAChE were determined via colorimetric assay. In addition, the binding effects of chromophore and FP part to protein were evaluated by measuring the inhibition rates of chromophores and FP parts, respectively. Results demonstrated that the chromophore structure and the ligand length mutually affect the inhibition potency. To differentiate AChE stereoselectivity, asymmetric analogs of the chromophore‐linked phosphonates will be synthesized and tested as anti‐AChEs.


A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T RA C T Article history: Received 31 August 2017 Received in revised form 17 November 2017 Accepted 25 November 2017 Available online 01 December 2017


The circular economy is getting more and more important in recent years.The Communist Party puts forward the demand to develop circular economy in many important meetings.The paper discusses the meaning of circular economy and the practice of foreign countries,and points out that it is an important new way of new industralization in China.


The annealing process of glass bottles was calculated by means of the stress simulation according to Narayanaswamy, a finite element method coded in ANSYS. The glass characteristics were described according to the viscoelastic theory. The change of glass properties was computed with the help of the fictive temperature, which is described by the relaxation function of the glass structure. For a successful annealing process, the heating of the entire glass bottle to the annealing temperature is fundamental. The heating-up time depends strongly on the initial temperature and the wall thickness of the bottles. The maximum cooling stresses in the bottle are located at the bend between bottle wall and bottom. The residual stress depends particularly on the cooling rate in the critical cooling zone and for the smaller part on the cooling rate in the cooling-down zone. The maximum residual stress in the bottle was fitted as an exponential function of the cooling time.


An assessment of stress responses of 27 mature wapiti (Cervus elaphus canadensis) stags was conducted to test the efficacy of two methods of analgesia to reduce stress responses associated with the pain of cutting velvet antler. Analgesic methods were a Lidocaine nerve block (LIDO) and pedicle placement electrical analgesia (EA). A control group of animals (CON) was included that did not receive analgesia. Methods of assessing stress responses included heart and respiration rates, differential white blood cell counts and plasma cortisol. Assessment of stress responses also utilized infrared thermographic imaging and measurement of salivary cortisol concentrations. The latter measures were novel approaches to stress assessment in wapiti, and, as such, the study was a trial of their applicability. Measures were conducted over 2 d. Antler was harvested on day 1 and the animals were brought back to the handling facility 24 h later (day 2) for repeated measures. Heart and respiration rates were increased in re...