In the past decade, due to compelling measurements of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the large-scale matter distribution, the recent acceleration of the expansion rate of the Universe over cosmic time, and the current expansion rate (the Hubble constant), cosmology has culminated in a standard model of the Universe. By connecting this standard cosmological model with predictive theories of physics we can hope to look for signatures of these theories in the data. Along this line of inquiry we consider in this thesis: (i) the effects on CMB temperature and polarization anisotropies of spatial fluctuations of the fine-structure parameter alpha between causally disconnected regions of the Universe at the time of recombination, (ii) the suppression of the small-scale matter power spectrum due to the decay of charged matter to dark matter prior to recombination, (iii) the consequences of a neutral dark-matter particle with a nonzero electric and/or magnetic dipole moment, (iv) how charged-particles decaying in the early Universe can induce a scale-dependent or 'running' spectral index in the small-scale matter power spectrum and examples of this effect in minimal supersymmetric models in which the lightest neutralino is a viable cold-dark-matter candidate. With improved tests and cross-checks of standard-cosmological-model predictions we can search for anomalies that may reveal the character of the underlying physics. In this direction we propose in this thesis: (v) a new method for removing the effect of gravitational lensing from maps of CMB polarization anisotropies using observations of anisotropies or structures in the cosmic 21-cm radiation, (vi) that measurements of fluctuations in the absorption of CMB photons by hydrogen in the 21-cm line and deuterium in the 92-cm line during the cosmic dark ages could be used to determine the primordial deuterium abundance.


The purpose of the study is to explore the justification and the possibility of convertgent gifted education through science and arts. Because the nature of art make up the base of each discipline and the creative talents in the heart of gifted education can be achieved through arts education. In order to achieve the purpose of these studies, three aspects have been explored. First, the relevance between the ontological nature of arts and gifted education discussed in philosophical and aesthetic point of view was explored. Second, the practical possibility was confirmed through an analysis of previous studies about the science and arts for gifted education. Finally, by looking at today`s social and cultural phenomenon and future talent, it was argued that the development of convergent talent must be needed in the future. This paper will be a springboard for follow-up study to prove the feasibility of convergent gifted education through identifying factors in creative thinking process of gifted students in science and arts. And views of convergent gifted education with artistic will be expanded further and newly recognized. In addition to, it is expected that this study will help the establishment and operation Arts Gifted Education Institute in University and Science and Arts Gifted School.


Finite element methods for radiative transfer problems are developed and their implementation on parallel computer architectures is discussed. A posteriori error estimates allow for efficient grid adaptation in two and three space dimensions.


A prospective study was carried out from September 2004 to March 2005 HICARE School, 6/A Dhanmondi R/A, Dhaka-1209, with the aim to evaluate the type and degree of hearing loss and also to find out the causes of hearing loss among the deaf children in Dhaka city. The study included 100 deaf child aged 5-15 years with history of deafness. Out of 100 deaf children male was 55% and female were 45%. Highest number of children were found in 11-15 years of age group and among them majority were found in preschool (Nursery) classes. Onset of deafness was first suspected 48% before 1 years. Among the 100 deaf children positive family history were found in 32% of the patient among which consanguineous marriage of parents were found in 34.37% and majority (55%) of patient were found in lower classes. The etiology of deaf children were diverse. Regarding deafness in relation to gestation period 43% of patient were found in post natal period. Among the one hundred (100) deaf children, 92% of patient were presented with profound hearing loss and majority of deaf children (94%) hearing impairment type were found in sensorineural. In this study, among the deaf children only nin (9) patient were associated with other diseases like cataract, cerebral palsy, Deformed pinna and a few patient present with craniofacial deformity. From this series, pattern of management of deaf child were found that above 95% of patient initially treated by hearing aid of different types followed by educational training (like auditory, speech, and lip reading). It was interesting to note that five (5) children were fitted with cochlear implant.


Original Research Paper Received 27 September 2015 Accepted 21 November 2015 Available Online 23 December 2015 The flight dynamics of nine configurations of supersonic continuous deflectable nose guided missiles have been investigated. The studied configurations consist of a spherical nose tip, a tangent ogive, a set of stabilizing tail fins and a cylindrical body having mid-section flexible enough to form an arc of circle. So the cylindrical body consists of a fixed part in the vicinity of nose, middle flexible part and main body with stabilizers. The effects of fixed length and flexible length parameters on the flight dynamics of surface to surface, anti-aircraft and antimissile missiles have been studied. A code has been developed to solve full Navier-Stokes equations using finite volume and modified Baldwin-Lomax turbulence model. Further, a 3 degree of freedom code has been developed to compare planar flight dynamics of missiles. This code consists of a guidance subroutine based on pure pursuit law. The results show that even increase of fixed and flexible lengths enhance the maneuverability of the missile, but in some scenarios this can lead to increased flight time and more errors in the target engagement. Deflected nose relocates mass center away from the axis and a thrust vector torque is created. Study of surface to surface scenario shows that this torque improves accuracy of targeting and the ability of target dislocation. In air defense missiles, increase of Fix and Flex variables will extend the limits of allowable firing angle. However, a heavy nose increases the role of thrust torque and subsequently decreases the role of nose geometry.


political alignments, based on conflict between religious traditions, toward a more European pattern, in which conservative parties draw heavily from religious groups and leaders, while parties of the left are supported by more secular forces" (p. 207). As they recognize, this conclusion applies with more force to elites than to masses and does not fit some groups, notably Catholics, black Protestants, and Jews, as well as others. The strongest evidence for it, the disparity in religious commitment between contributors to Republican and Democratic political action committees in chapter 7, is also somewhat suspect. The lower mean score of Democratic contributors on a measure of "traditional religiosity" is potentially an artifact of the relatively large proportion of Jewish contributors in the Democratic camp—a group whose religious orientations are not well represented by an essentially Christian index including questions about biblical literalism and life after death. To appropriate Milton Yinger's dictum, Democratic contributors may be just as religious as their Republican counterparts but religious in a different way. Both books do a good job of challenging conventional wisdom that portrays religion as a marginal, predictable, and reactionary force in American politics. Byrnes shows, for example, that the Catholic bishops are not a monolithic force but are seriously divided between those who elevate abortion above all other issues and those who regard it as one element in a package of concerns for a "consistent ethic of life." His analysis, along with the studies of religious elites in the Guth and Green volume, demonstrates that the extent of political engagement in any particular campaign depends both on internal factors and the stimulus offered by the political system. Similarly, the studies of groups as diverse as campaign contributors, convention delegates, and voters shows that religion may support a wide variety of political positions and values. After reading these volumes, there is clearly no justification for the all too common tendency to overlook or caricature religion as a political force. But the two volumes also demonstrate a conspicuous weakness among studies of religion in electoral politics—a tendency to favor description over theorizing. Precisely because of their descriptive nature, these books are rich sources for lecture material and could profitably be incorporated in undergraduate courses. Yet it is hard to say that our efforts to build conceptual understanding of the politics of religion are much advanced by either volume. Byrnes modestly avoids calling his work a theory of elite Catholic mobilization, though there is something approaching theory lurking in his case study. I wonder, for example, whether the same forces he credits with bringing Catholic elites into the political arena might equally well explain the contemporaneous political emergence of fundamentalist Protestant clergy or even some nonreligious groups. A framework such as resource mobilization might make the results of Byrnes's research more interesting to other scholars, and using it could enable Byrnes to offer insights that transcend his case study. Similarly, the excellent studies in the Guth and Green volume tend to stick to the facts rather than connect findings to extant theories about mass political behavior. This is a pity because the studies shed valuable light on such interesting themes as group consciousness and cohesion, social identification, cultural politics, and organizational encapsulation. Unless research on religion is connected explicitly to the theoretical concerns of the larger scholarly community, it is unlikely to influence mainstream research. It would be a supreme irony if scholars of religion in American politics should build a research ghetto just as the subjects of their labor—major religious groups—have emerged to claim a place at the heart of American politics.


The classification of evacuation model was introduced and the zone grid evacuation model was established consider of building model,peoples movement and basic parameter.The formula to calculate the moving speed of people was put forward considered the trend of people's behavior and the effect to evacuation speed by density of people.The calculation program of ZGESS was developed based on MATLAB.The area to display the figure can show the distribution of people in different time according to the operation.The three buttons of parameter and calculation and display were to open the window for set the parameter and start the calculation of evacuation and open the window for display the figure.The total time needed to complete the whole process was displayed in static state text area.


The utility model relates to an air cushion for shoes, which is arranged at the bottom of the shoes. The air cushion for shoes comprises an air chamber, wherein the air chamber comprises an air chamber wall and a supporting body coated by the air chamber wall, and an air inflation space is arranged between the supporting body and the air chamber wall. The air cushion for shoes is characterized in that a phenomenon of shoe breaking or accidental injuries of people's foot can not be generated because of air leakage or fracture of the air cushion in use.


Current domestic and foreign mainstream indoor positioning technology including UWB, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, RFID they all require intensive infrastructure installation cost. Its difficult to balance in cost, accuracy, stability. Aiming at the above problems, this paper proposes an indoor fusion positioning scheme, which uses image, geomagnetic field and inertial sensor for multi-modal indoor positioning. The method from coarse to fine is adopted to make the full use of the characteristics of each modal signal to locate. Firstly, the base image is selected for image matching to determine the overall range; on this basis, the magnetic field sequence information is filtered by EMD( Empirical Mode Decomposition), and the position is accurately and fine-grained matched by inertial sensor information. This method can be located without the need of additional equipment deployment, and the data information collection is rapid, less affected by the environment, relatively stable, low operation, maintenance costs and good prospects for promotion.


Information system security for industrial plants is a topic of increasing importance. Effective and cost-efficient security solutions require some kind of industry consensus or standardization. This paper examines the interests of the various stakeholders in the industrial security field (e.g. society, plant owners, service providers, automation vendors, and consultants) and evaluates some of the more visible industrial security initiatives (ISA, NERC, IEC) with regard to stakeholder benefits and requirements. The paper then proceeds to give some details on the approach and current draft of the industrial control system security working group within IEC TC65


Provided is a liquid nitrogen spray nozzle. The spray nozzle comprises a protective cover and a spray nozzle body. The section of the spray nozzle body is an inverted trapezoid. The spray nozzle body is used for spraying liquid nitrogen. The protective cover covers outside the spray nozzle body and is used for preventing liquid nitrogen from being splattered. The spray nozzle solves the technical problems that liquid nitrogen is easily splattered while being sprayed, the spraying speed and the spraying amount are difficult to control, and fine spraying is difficult to carry out in the process of preparing an ice cream.


The microphase-separated morphology of a melt of a specific class of comb-coil diblock copolymers, consisting of an AB comb block and a linear homopolymer A block, is analyzed in the weak segregation limit. On increasing the length of the homopolymer A block, the systems go through a characteristic series of structural transitions. Starting from the pure comb copolymer, the first series of structures involve a short length scale followed by structures involving a large length scale. A maximum of two critical points exists. Furthermore, in the two parameter space characterizing the comb-coil diblock copolymer molecules considered, a nontrivial bifurcation point exists beyond which the structure factor can have two maxima (two correlation hole peaks).


This study considers the unimodular sequence train design with low central and recurrent autocorrelation sidelobes. The authors attain the design goal by minimising the integrated energy in central and recurrent autocorrelations with user-supplied weights. They devise a way to employ a fast Fourier transform in calculating both the objective function and its gradient, such that the considered design problem can be efficiently solved using the general gradient method. Numeric results indicate that the proposed method can effectively suppress the range sidelobes concerned and it can design sequence train of very large sequence length and set cardinality.


A new upper limit on the 21 cm signal power spectrum at a redshift of z ≈ 9.1 is presented, based on 141 h of data obtained with the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR). The analysis includes significant improvements in spectrally smooth gain-calibration, Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) foreground mitigation and optimally weighted power spectrum inference. Previously seen 'excess power' due to spectral structure in the gain solutions has markedly reduced but some excess power still remains with a spectral correlation distinct from thermal noise. This excess has a spectral coherence scale of 0.25–0.45 MHz and is partially correlated between nights, especially in the foreground wedge region. The correlation is stronger between nights covering similar local sidereal times. A best 2-σ upper limit of $\Delta ^2_{21} \lt (73)^2\, \mathrm{mK^2}$ at $k = 0.075\, \mathrm{h\, cMpc^{-1}}$ is found, an improvement by a factor ≈8 in power compared to the previously reported upper limit. The remaining excess power could be due to residual foreground emission from sources or diffuse emission far away from the phase centre, polarization leakage, chromatic calibration errors, ionosphere, or low-level radiofrequency interference. We discuss future improvements to the signal processing chain that can further reduce or even eliminate these causes of excess power.


The question addressed in this note is whether the growth of cities in the American metropolitan system is stable or unstable predictable or unpredictable. The data concern 144 U.S. cities and are from censuses from 1790 onward. The results indicate that the population growth of U.S. cities over time is surprisingly predictable and that "the historical population trajectory of each of the cities can best be fit by one of four simple polynomial equations which roughly approximate the normal curve. The empirical evidence simply suggests that a citys population trajectory is a simple function of age of the city." (EXCERPT)


Prior to its currently subservient position to civilian politics, the Turkish military had always had an autonomous position with a strong ideological commitment to safeguard secularism. From the 1980s to the end of the 2000s, the Turkish military played a key role in the construction of political Islam as a form of risk and in the securitization of religion both in the public sphere and within its own structure. This article examines the Turkish military's security discourse around religion and the Islamic headscarf through the experiences of women in military families, and is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2011. Looking at headscarf regulations and the everyday life on military bases, it explores how the military governed Islamism as a form of risk in culturally and sexually specific ways. Drawing on critical security studies that approach risk as a form of social governance, the article examines secular risk governance through the lived experiences of women in military families, the regulation of their daily conduct, and the representation of their bodies and sexual identities through dress. Concluding remarks examine the significance of secular risk governance in the post-2010 era.


The operating conditions of distribution system can be perceived and optimized rapidly and effectively with the help of information and communication technology. However, some potential cybersecurity risk needs to arouse enough attention. In this paper, a novel and practical cyber-attack method targeting remote terminal unit (RTU) is proposed firstly. Regarding the enormous cyber-physical devices in a distribution system and the high maintenance costs, this paper also introduces a risk index to identify the vulnerability of a distribution system to be studied under cyber-attack. A Bayesian attack graph model is applied to quantify the probability of successfully exploiting known and zero-day vulnerabilities, and the relationship between the attack behavior and the feeder automation action is further analyzed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed model and method.


Efficiency and effectiveness are fundamental parameters of management that indicate the managed system's overall viability and progress. Therefore their assessment is equally important at each of management's 3 levels – the operational, tactical and strategic one. However, methods for evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness are traditionally better developed at the lower operational level and used daily as something obligatory. Sophisticated quantitative techniques have been applied there since the times of F. W. Taylor. In contrast, the estimation of efficiency and effectiveness of strategies is a rare practice. It does hardly stretch beyond assessment of effectiveness alone based on historical analysis or growth reports that give indirect, relative or partial indication of strategic adequacy. Strategic efficiency is hardly measured at all. Efficiency and effectiveness are fundamental parameters of management that indicate the managed system's overall viability and progress. Therefore their assessment is equally important at each of management's 3 levels – the operational, tactical and strategic one. However, methods for evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness are traditionally better developed at the lower operational level and used daily as something obligatory. Sophisticated quantitative techniques have been applied there since the times of F. W. Taylor. In contrast, the estimation of efficiency and effectiveness of strategies is a rare practice. It does hardly stretch beyond assessment of effectiveness alone based on historical analysis or growth reports that give indirect, relative or partial indication of strategic adequacy. Strategic efficiency is hardly measured at all. Are strategies really subscribed to rates of success so high that make systematic and thorough assessment of their effectiveness and efficiency unnecessary? Is there a lasting guarantee that the strategic vision and objectives are reframed timely and accordingly to changing historical circumstances? If any serious doubts in this regard exist, what steps should be made? Are they worth at all? Presumably, leaders' awareness of current efficiency and effectiveness of particular strategic actions is a matter of utmost importance for securing systemic success. These are effective and efficient strategies that develop common meanings synchronizing processes within the managed system from top to bottom and thus leading to a general multiplier effect. These are effective and efficient strategies that provide those distant horizons of management that make lasting prosperity and security possible. Moreover, in an era of globalization management of big social entities such as entire countries or international economic and political megastructures cannot rely on traditional esteems of operational or even tactical efficiency. In this context, the more general a strategy, the higher the importance of its parameters are for the managed system's security, advancement and prosperity. Therefore efficiency and effectiveness particularly of grand strategies plays the most crucial role for strategic management


Soil fertility refers to the inherent capacity of a soil to supply essential nutrients to plants in adequate and right proportion for optimum growth, is one of the key component to determine soil productivity. Proper management of soil fertility demands careful identification of constraints of current nutrient deficiencies and monitoring changes in soil fertility to predict its deficiency. These deficiencies need to be alleviated through sound and proven practices of nutrients, water supply to crops and soil management, so as to sustain food production at a reasonable level to ensure continued high productivity in the future. Macronutrients (N, P, K) and micronutrients (Zn, Cu, Fe and Mn) are important soil elements that control its fertility. Keeping in view, One hundred twenty surface soil samples (0-15 cm) were collected from four blocks (Morar, Ghatigoan, Dabra and Bhitarwar) of Gwalior district. Under these, soils of Morar and Ghatigoan blocks belong to Inceptisol and Dabra and Bhitarwar blocks belong to Vertisols, Soils were studied for their status of different available nutrient (N, P, K, S, Zn, Cu, Mn and Fe).


Current work from different areas in the field points out the need for systems to be sensitive to the factuality nature of events mentioned in text; that is, to recognize whether events are presented as corresponding to real situations in the world, situations that have not happened, or situations of uncertain status. Event factuality is a necessary component for representing events in discourse, but for annotation purposes it poses a representational challenge because it is expressed through the interaction of a varied set of structural markers. Part of these factuality markers is already encoded in some of the existing corpora but always in a partial way; that is, missing an underlying model that is capable of representing the factuality value resulting from their interaction. In this paper, we present FactBank, a corpus of events annotated with factuality information which has been built on top of TimeBank. Together, TimeBank and FactBank offer a double-layered annotation of event factuality: where TimeBank encodes most of the basic structural elements expressing factuality information, FactBank adds a representation of the resulting factuality interpretation.


Based on the newly constructed overcompleteness relation of the nonlinear coherent states (NLCSs) and corresponding P-representation we derive: (1) a new antinormally ordered expansion of density matrices; and (2) the corresponding positive P-representation. Our derivation employs the technique of integration within an ordered product of nonlinear Bose operator functions. A relationship between the positive P-representation and the generalized characteristic function in the context of NLCSs is also obtained.


1 * Abstract: Unions understand the environmental agenda as a technocentric one but also believe it can function as a vehicle for renewal. It is developing slowly, with unions behaving cautiously—resources are scarce. Although popular with members, there is limited evidence that it is effective as a recruitment tool and whilst employ- ers are willing to work in partnership with unions on it, this may confer only phony insider status. Overall, the agenda has limited appeal to the types of employees and employers unions must recruit in order to grow. Identifying a clear environmental premium for members may help.


The interest and thrust for wearable ionizing radiation dosimeters are rapidly growing, stimulated by a large number of different applications impacting on humankind, spanning from medicine to civil security and space missions. Lead halide perovskites are considered one of the most promising classes of novel materials for X‐ray detectors due to their superior electronic and detection performance coupled with compatibility with solution‐based printing processes, allowing fabrication onto flexible substrates. It is reported on fully textile perovskite‐based direct X‐ray detectors, where the photoactive layer is constituted by a silk‐satin fabric functionalized with methylammonium lead bromide perovskite crystals embedded in the textile. The reliability of the proposed fabrication process, based on simple and low‐tech deposition techniques adaptable to industrial printing technologies for textiles, is assessed by realizing different detector's architectures that exhibit comparable detection performances. Sensitivity values up to (12.2 ± 0.6) µC Gy−1 cm−2 and a limit of detection down to 3 μGy s−1 are achieved, and low bias operation (down to 1 V) is demonstrated, validating wearable applications. Further, fully textile pixelated matrix X‐ray sensors are implemented and tested, providing the proof of principle for large‐area scalability.


The principles of an efficient one-pass dynamic programming whole-word pattern matching algorithm for the recognition of spoken sequences of connected words are described. Particular attention is given to the technique for keeping track of word-sequence decisions, which may be constrained by a finite-state syntax. Some extensions of the technique are discussed.


Advancements in computer hardware has led to new possibilities for rapid modeling and simulation capabilities across many scientific fields. Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) can benefit from increased use of simulation tools to guide optimization of inspection and health monitoring methods, enhance understanding of data, aid in development of defect characterization methods, and generate data sets for use with machine learning and model-assisted probability of detection. Recent work at NASA has entailed development and benchmarking of both custom simulation codes and commercial simulation tools for ultrasonic wave propagation. This paper describes recent work at NASA in modeling of guided waves in composites and other aerospace materials. Results and computational speeds for a composite benchmark case are reported for a custom finite difference Rotated Staggered Grid code and for the commercial finite element software package, Pogo. Recent progress in linking NDE models to parametric analysis tools is also discussed.


The original notion of projectification related to organizations and project management was straightforward. Activities formerly regarded or handled as normal matters or routines were transformed t ...


More than one billion people in the world don't have access to electricity. They are using kerosene, candle or butane for lighting but these lighting principles are traditional unhealthy, hazardous and expensive. The target group will be the inhabitants of small rural communes in the Rif Mountains (Morocco).The goal is to provide a better lighting system to these communes. To replace the gas laps with batteries which are much healthier and less dangerous. These batteries will be charged by means of a pedal power device. The inhabitants of the slums will have to pedal themselves for power in a recharge center during a number of minutes while socializing. Therefore the interaction between the user and the product should be playful and motivational.


Abstract This paper presents analytical and numerical results for a class of turbulence closure models called "alpha models," in which Lagrangian averaging and turbulence closure assumptions modify the Eulerian nonlinearity. The alpha models are investigated in the setting of the barotropic, double-gyre circulation in an ocean basin. Two variants of the alpha models for the barotropic vorticity (BV) equation are found to produce the correct four-gyre configuration for the mean barotropic circulation in numerical simulations performed at a resolution 4 times as coarse as that required in a resolved BV model. These are the BV-α model and the BV-Leray-α model. However, at a resolution 8 times as coarse, only the BV-α model produces the proper four-gyre configuration. Thus, the combination of modified nonlinearity and viscous dissipation (the viscosity is the same in all of the runs) in the BV-α model is found to provide a promising approach to modeling the mean effects of unresolved mesoscale (subgrid scale)...


Abrasive wear behaviour of poly sulfone (PSU), an amorphous, brittle and high temperature engineering thermoplastic material , and its composites were investigated by using pin-on-disc machine against silicon carbide (SiC) abrasive paper under multipass conditions. Abrasive wear studies were conducted under various testing conditions such as sliding distance, load, velocity , and abrasive grit size. It was observed that neat PSU showing better wear performance than glass fibre reinforced PSU in most of the experimental conditions. These results may be "to the reinforcement, greatly reducing ultimate el ongation to fracture , which in tum is key factor in abrasive wear performance. Worn sample surfaces were studied with Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). Abrasive wear, as defined by ASTMI, is due to hard particles or hard protuberances that are forced against and move along solid surface. Abrasive wear of engineering and agricultural machine components caused by abrasive particles is a major industrial problem. Polymers and their composites are being used for a number of mechanical components such as gears, cams, brakes, clutches, bearing, bushings and seals, etc. 2 Al so, polymers and their composites are extensively used in highly abrasive situation 3 . Polysulfone and their composites are used in a variety of mechanical and automoti ve applications because of their excellent property profile. However, tribological properties are not intrinsic material properties and strongly depend on the system in which the material functions 4 •


Communal farmers' perceptions were investigated at Sheshegu community in Alice, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa, under Nkonkobe local Municipality found Amatole District. The objective of the study was to assess the perceptions of communal farmers on the impact of bush encroachment on herbaceous vegetation and soil nutrient content. Structured questionnaires were used to access the perceptions of farmers in relation to vegetation changes and livestock population trends. A total number of 40 communal farmers were selected randomly and interviewed. Respondents comprised 62% females and 38% males. Ages of the majority (40%) of the respondents ranged between 35-45 years. The farmers indicated that the previous 20 years had seen their grasslands being converted into savanna vegetation called Bisho thornveld. About 89% of respondents indicated that vegetation change was attributed to unreliable rainfall, prolonged drought, poor grazing management system and fire exclusion due to insufficient fuel load. Changes in vegetation and soil nutrient composition were perceived by the farmers as important indicators of the rangeland condition. Acacia karroo was perceived to be the most invasive woody species. The increase in woody species was perceived to be favourable to goat production at the detriment of cattle and sheep production because these species rely mostly on the grass cover which is suppressed by the dominance of the woody species. Thus, goat production was the most preferable livestock production system. Farmers had different views regarding the impact of bush encroachment on their livestock and herbaceous vegetation due to fact that those who were farming with goats were favoured by high bush density. However, those who were farming with cattle and sheep regarded their rangeland as encroached. Therefore, Sheshegu communal rangeland is more suitable for goat production (browsers) than sheep and cattle production, and this was supported by the increasing trend of goats as revealed in this study.


A friendship with Lal Ramanath Cowsik: Geophysical searches for new forces in nature D.A. Mendis & G. Arrhenius: Electrodynamic control in planetesimal accretion Mark H. Thiemens & S.K. Bhattacharya: New quantum chemical isotope effects: Applications to the pre-solar nebula, planetary atmosphere and interstellar space James R. Arnold: Cosmogenic and radiogenic nuclides: What can we do with a few atoms? Helmut Moritz: The earth as a physical laboratory P. McConville & J.H. Reynolds: A trial of static Fourier transform mass spectroscopy of xenon Michel Maurette et al Multidisciplinary investigations of new collections of Greenland and Antarctica micrometeorites G. Cini Castagnoli: Cyclic behaviour of the solar-terrestrial system Bruce A. Bolt: The turbulence of geophysical time Karl K. Turekian: The parameters controlling planetary degassing based on 40 Ar systematics R.J. Poreda et al: Rare gases and hydrogen in native metals Rama - Emanation of radon from rock minerals E.M. Galimov: Several considerations on the early history of the Earth Manfred Schidlowski: Life on the early Earth: bridgehead from cosmos or autochthonous phenomenon? Tsung-Hung Peng et al: Factors controlling the distribution of 10 Be and 9 Be in the ocean P.K. Das and A.P. Dube: Asymptotes of coastal upwelling T.N. Narasimhan: Hydrogeology, A new focus Subir K. Banerjee: Geomagnetic paleointensity from quaternary sediments: Methodology, results and future prospects Peter J. Wyllie: Steps towards understanding the Earth's dynamic interior Jagannadham Akella: Application of diamond-anvil-cell technique to study f-element metals and some materials relevant to planetary interiors Shiv K. Sharma: Applications of Raman spectroscopy in earth and planetary sciences.


This article questions the specific challenges that the management of culture poses for government.2 Unlike some 'public good' policy domains, such as prisons, defence or infrastructure, or benefit provisions such as unemployment, disability or health measures, the complex area of cultural policy cannot be justified in instrumental terms as an essential - or unavoidable - policy of government. Nonetheless, the cultural lobby is an effective and indefatigable pressure on government. The area of culture is just one small component of the public agenda that governments are obliged to support. Given other pressing portfolios, why do governments continue to take an interest in culture? Moreover, recent government policies seem to be setting up problems for the future such that governments will find it hard if not impossible to extricate themselves from a problematic relationship. So, what is the hold that culture has over governments?

Traditionally, the answer seemed to be a combination of boosterism and cultural capital. Governments liked to bask in the reflected glory of cultural success believing that it contributed to their legitimacy and cultural competence. The glow of elite culture was seen to rub off onto political incumbents and their regimes. But in an age of pressures on government to justify public expenditure and meet accountability regimes, cultural support continues to appear on the funding agenda and governments continue to become embroiled in debates about competing support formulae. This relates to both the nature of 'culture' and broader definitions under the banner of 'cultural policy' as well as the nature of the sector which is, at once, elitist, institutionalized, commercial, highly specialist, niche and industry - all premised on intangible nature of 'creativity'.

Paradoxically, contrary to other trends in public policy, arts and cultural funding has reverted to forms of patronage as the centrepiece of broadly defined policies of access, equity and self-sufficiency. How has this policy portfolio managed to buck the trends of other domains of government attention? This article attempts to open some new ways of examining the question.3


The data in figure 15 were incorrectly plotted and the graph should be replaced with the following corrected version. Figure 15. Ion pressure profile peaking factor plotted against βN at the disruption of selected high performance ITB plasmas.


. The proliferation of knowledge graphs and recent advances in Artificial Intelligence have raised great expectations related to the combination of symbolic and distributional semantics in cognitive tasks. This is particularly the case of knowledge-based approaches to natural language processing as near-human symbolic understanding rely on expressive, structured knowledge representations. Engineered by humans, such knowledge graphs are frequently well curated and of high quality, but at the same time can be labor-intensive, brittle or biased. The work reported in this paper aims to address such limitations, bringing together bottom-up, corpus-based knowledge and top-down, structured knowledge graphs by capturing as embeddings in a joint space the semantics of both words and concepts from large document corpora. To evaluate our results, we perform the largest and most comprehensive empirical study around this topic that we are aware of, analyzing and comparing the quality of the resulting embeddings over competing approaches. We include a detailed ablation study on the different strategies and components our approach comprises and show that our method outperforms the previous state of the art according to standard benchmarks.


Steroids are a unique class of chemical compounds found throughout the animal and plant kingdom. This class includes sterols such as cholesterol and ergosterol, bile acids, and steroid hormones. Chemical research on steroids began with isolation and structure determination, and major research efforts focused on total synthesis and on the development of numerous reactions for modifying the steroid scaffold. Methods in microbial transformations of steroids were developed to produce large quantities of steroid starting materials at reduced costs. Research in steroid biochemistry first began with studies on the biosynthesis and metabolism of steroids, followed soon thereafter by investigations on the biochemical mechanism of action of steroids. Over the past several decades, steroid biochemistry and molecular biology have focused on steroidogenic enzymes, nuclear steroid receptors, and gene expression. The discovery of the anti-inflammatory effects of cortisone in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and the report of the contraceptive effects of estrogen and progestin preparations illustrated for the first time that steroids could be considered as medicinal agents. As a result, extensive research on the medicinal chemistry, pharmacology, and clinical studies of steroid agonists and antagonists has evolved and continues to provide new insights and new medicinal agents for therapies in many different diseases and chemoprevention strategies.

Keywords:

steroid synthesis;
steroid biosynthesis;
steroid metabolism;
steroid receptors;
cholesterol;
pregnenolone;
cortisol;
aldosterone;
progesterone;
testosterone;
estradiol


The calculation procedure for numerical solving of the problem of the swirled flow of the incompressible viscous fluid in the cylinder with rotating top and bottom is presented. Different flow regimes including those with the formation of the recirculating zones for a number of parameter values are obtained.


For low-frequency magnetic field shielding measurement of large shielded rooms, the standard methods, such as IEEE-Std-299 and MIL-Std-188-125-1, are commonly used. In this letter, three types of loop antennas are analyzed to reduce the SE variation that occurs when using the standard measurement method based on the unit test area. Simulation shows that the rhombic and long rectangular loops can reduce the SE difference due to slot position compared to a conventional circular loop. Finally, a shielded room and loop antennas are fabricated and their effects verified through experiments.


Rhizomania disease was first detected in the UK in 1987, in a single crop in Suffolk. Affected plants had pale leaves, often upright, narrow and rolled; roots were small, often with constrictions, warty outgrowths, proliferation of fibrous roots, and vascular staining. Disease occurred in strips at right angles to one another, parallel with directions of cultivation, suggesting that the previous beet crop had also been infected. Beet necrotic yellow vein virus was detected by ELISA, by electron microscopy, and by transmission to indicator species. It was sometimes associated with beet soil-borne virus. The affected crop was destroyed with herbicide. No other outbreaks were detected in subsequent surveys of crops in 1987.


The splenic bulb of the duck pancreas is an anterior round extension of the splenic lobe; its presence is necessary but sufficient to main tain a normal metabolism: total pancreatectomy produces fatal hypoglycaemia, but subtotal pancreatectomy respecting the splenic bulb induces a transient diabetes. 12 days after the operation, a near normal metabolism is restored (Mialhe 1958; Laurent and Mialhe 1976). Normal functional potencies of A, B and D cells are preserved here, this is not the case in the chemical or genetic dia betes generally studied in mammals. We thought of interest to de termine the contents and concentrations of insulin, glucagon and somatostatin in the different parts of the normal duck pancreas, with special reference to the splenic bulb, and to follow their evo lution during this transient surgical diabetes.


Background: Preference experiments are used to understand how patients and stakeholders value aspects of health care. These methods are gaining popularity in dentistry, but quality and breadth of use have not been evaluated. Objectives: To describe multiattribute stated preference experiment use in dentistry through illustration and critique of existing studies. Data Sources: Systematic literature search of PubMed, Econlit and Ovid for Medline, Embase, PsychINFO, PsychARTICLES, and All EBM Reviews, as well as gray literature. Study Eligibility: Multiattribute stated preference experiments eliciting preferences for dental service delivery, treatments, and oral health states from the perspective of patients, the public, and dental professionals. Outcomes of interest were preference weights and marginal rates of substitution. Study selection was independently performed by 2 reviewers. Appraisal: Ten-point checklist published by the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research was used for quality assessment. Synthesis: Descriptive analysis. Results: Searches identified 12 records published between 1999 and 2015, mostly in nondental academic journals. Studies were undertaken in high-income countries in Europe and the United States. The studies aimed to elicit preference for service delivery, treatment, or oral health states from the perspective of the patients, dentists, or the public via discrete choice experiment methods. The quality scores for the studies ranged from 53% to 100%. Limitations: A detailed description and critique of stated preference methods are provided, but it was not possible to provide synthesized preference data. Conclusions: Multiattribute stated preference experiments are increasingly popular, but understanding the methods and outputs is essential for designing and interpreting preference studies to improve patient care. Patient preferences highlight important considerations for decision making during treatment planning. Valuation of health states and estimation of willingness-to-pay are important for resource planning and allocation and economic evaluation. Preference estimates and relative value of attributes for interventions and service delivery inform development and selection of treatments and services (PROSPERO 21.3.17: CRD42017059859). Knowledge Transfer Statement: Understanding patient, professional, and public preferences is fundamental for evidence-based decision making and treatment delivery. Preference elicitation methods can be used to estimate the value given to health states, service delivery, individual treatments, and health outcomes. By describing and appraising the methodology and application of multiattribute stated preference experiments in dentistry, this review provides an essential first step to wider use of well-designed, high-quality preference elicitation methods.


Objective To investigate the effect of retention enema by improved method to patients of ulcerative colitis. Methods 63patients of ulcerative colitis were enrolled and divided randomly into three groups,which used traditional method( control group),partly improved method( group A) and improved method( group B). Results The maintenance of liquid medicine in intestinal tract was longer in group B than in the control group and group A( P 0. 017). There was no statistically significant difference between the control group and group A( P = 0. 477 0. 017). Conclusions For ulcerative colitis patients,the improved method of retention enema by adopting infusion method and infusion thermostat provides a better effect in the liquid medicine retention than traditional method.


The invention refers to an adhesive dispensing system and method including a pump with integrated diagnostics. Concretely, the adhesive dispensing system includes a pump and at least one sensor positioned to sense movements of a component of the pump and produce signals based on the sensed movements. The dispensing system also includes a controller operating the pump and communicating with the at least one sensor to collect information regarding operational cycles of the pump based on the signals. As a result, one or more diagnostic processes are enabled at the controller during operation of the adhesive dispensing system. These diagnostic processes may include a leak rate test for the dispensing system, an overspeed detection test for the pump, and expected life cycle monitoring of the pump or other components.


We consider valuations defined on polytopes containing the origin which have measures on the sphere as values. We show that the classical surface area measure is essentially the only such valuation which is SL(n) contravariant of degree one. Moreover, for all real $p$, an $L_p$ version of the above result is established for GL(n) contravariant valuations of degree $p$. This provides a characterization of the $L_p$ surface area measures from the $L_p$ Brunn-Minkowski theory.


In this study, marine casualties which are registered GISIS (Global Integrated Shipping Information System) in 2009-2011, result in death, injury, economic loss and environmental pollution are discussed. The studied types of ships are container, bulk carrier and tanker. The information contained in GISIS system is textual format and it is difficult to systematically analyze this information. For this reason, by creating a new data base, which is Microsoft Excel-based , ship accidents are classified according to name and type of ship, type, size and coordinates of the accidents that are evaluated by entering the GIS (Geographic Information System) system. Sea areas, which are investigated in the study accidents, are northern Europe, Mediterranean, Black Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, Southern Asia, Australia, South East Asia and the Americas where the accidents are intensively experienced. Sea areas, where the marine accidents are concentrated by using GIS, are determinated and the maps of sea accident are constituted. As a result of the study the highest risk sea areas are Northern Europe, Singapore Strait, Istanbul Strait, the Suez Canal, and Kanmon Strait and Malaca Strait.


This paper attempts to redefine Regional Culture with Shanxi province as a case.The research shows that the export-oriented economy in some regions influenced Shanxi culture.It was not until the establishment and regional transformation of Shanxi businessmen,under the double regularity of executive hierarchy and economic network,that Shanxi began to have a regional culture with Taiyuan as the capital city,the central part as its core area and other parts as subcultures.


This paper proposes a mathematical model for the Consistent Vehicle Routing Problem (ConVRP). The ConVRP is an extension of the VRP, considering customer satisfaction through consistent service. The consistency may be based on time or on the vehicle that offers the service. This paper proposes a novel mathematical model that allows solving the ConVRP for several companies for which visits to the customers need to be from the same service provider (namely, the same vehicle and driver). The efficiency of the model is tested on structured instances by changing customer distribution (uniform or clustered), depot location, and arrival time to the customer and re‐ moving certain constraints to see if they affect the performance of the objective function. The mathematical model is flexible and could be adapted to any characteristic of instances. The model was devel‐ oped in the AMPL programming language and solved with the solvers CPLEX and Gurobi. The results are promising based on the efficiency of the proposed method at solving the problem. This paper proposes a mathematical mixed‐integer linear programming model to solve the ConVRP. The proposed model can determine the total travel time of a vehicle fleet for a certain number of specific days, which routes should be taken by each vehicle per day, and the vehicles' arrival time for each customer. The mathematical model was tested on structured instances by analyzing changes to aspects such as customer distribution (uniform or clustered), depot loca‐ tion, arrival time at the customer, and removing certain constraints that affect the performance of the objective function. The model was developed in the AMPL programming language and solved with the solvers CPLEX and Gurobi. Although a mathematical model for the ConVRP at‐ tracts growing attention due to the few studies related to the problem. The mathematical struc‐ ture of the model is novel, and to the best of the author's knowledge, this is the first time a model for the ConVRP solves real and structured instances for companies that provide a consistent service over time, such as courier companies, elderly care service companies, and cleaning sec‐ tors, under realistic constraints.


To counter the problems in the English text teaching in colleges,the paper summarizes the theory and principles of the Whole Language Approach and discusses how to apply the theory to the English text teaching by putting forward three specific steps,aiming to facilitate the students' interest in learning English and hence improve their language proficiency.


Rail mandrax Huns was emerging in the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth century.Its ancestor can be traced back to Liuhu,one of the descendants of South Chanyu.Rail mandrax Huns is a mixed national Community marriaged to Xianbei,but based on Huns.Exploring the sources of its tribe will help us have a better understanding of the ethnic integration process in Northern China during the Northern and Southern Dynasties.


In recent years, developments of inorganic-organic hybrid materials on nanometer scale have been receiving significant attention due to a wide range of potential applications and high absorption in the visible part of the spectrum and high mobility of the charge carriers. Polymermetal oxide nanocomposite has excellent antimicrobial properties and potential applications in public health care and biomedical field [1]. Polyaniline (PANI) is the most attractive conducting polymer because of the presence of the reactive NH group in the polymer chain [2-4] and used in the broad applications such as batteries, sensors,electronic devices, supercapacitors and corrosion protection in the organic coatings due to its physical and chemical properties, good electrical conductivity, high environmental stability, low cost, light weight, flexibility, facile fabrication, and possibility of both chemical and electrochemical synthesis [5]. Metal and semiconducting nanostructure materials are used as stabilizers or capping agents of these conducting polymers [6]. In recent decades, several reports have been published on the synthesis of the PANI nanocomposite with the inorganic nanoscale such as TiO2, CdS [7-10], silica [11,12] CeO2 [13], Fe3O4 [14], and MnO2 [15]. This nanocomposite exhibits many new characters such as electrical, optical, antibacterial, catalytic and mechanical properties that the single material does not have. Most recently, PANI/TiO2 composite was synthesized and studied as well, but about PANI/zinc oxide (ZnO) nanocomposite especially filler with nanoparticles, there is less attention. The synthesis of the antimicrobial polymer-metallic nanocomposite including polyester/clay silver nanocomposites [16] and polymer/silver bromide composite films [17] has been tried. Maneerung et al. [18] succeeded in impregnating silver nanoparticles into bacterial cellulose with strong antibacterial activity for antimicrobial wound dressing. Recently, Suresh Kumar [19] reported the synthesis of magnetic antimicrobial nanocomposite based on bacterial cellulose and silver nanoparticles by high-speed blending using polydopamine as reducing reagent. Various methods have been widely used for the synthesis of the nanocomposite of PANI with inorganic nanoparticles such as TiO2, ZnO, CdS, Pd, and Au. Since the conducting PANI and inorganic semiconducting material ZnO in nanoform both are having a wide range of technological applications, we got motivated to make a composite of PANI and ZnO and believed to get novel properties resulting from the molecular level interaction of these two dissimilar chemical components. Various physical and chemical methods have been reported for the preparation of these composite. Here, we used simple chemical oxidation polymerization methods for the preparation of PANI/ZnO nanocomposite (Figure 1).


Twenty-five hundred tons of coal per hour feed huge 2.6-million-kilowatt facility near Cheshire, Ohio, from two mines located 10 and 15 miles away, respectively. The 15 mile conveyor system consists of a five-mile unit connecting the company's two new deep mines and a 10-mile stretch to carry washed coal from both mines to the power plant. The inter-mine system comprises a pair of 2 1/2 mile conveyors while the 10-mile system employs two five-mile flights over rolling terrain. Conveyor design, belting and drives, as well as the equipment operation are described.


Civil Integrated Management (CIM) is the technology-enabled collection, organization, managed accessibility, and use of accurate data and information throughout the life cycle of a transportation asset. By combining multiple emerging technologies with an emphasis on digital practices with the concept of integrated management, CIM has the potential to take project delivery and asset management to the next level by taking a holistic approach to project design, construction, operation, and maintenance. This article looks at the history of CIM and how states are putting CIM technologies to work on their projects.


Many hurdred years ago,the popcorn has been introduced in China.As a idle food for commercial company that it is not spreaded.The scientific investigation,production and development of popeorn has been comprehended in this paper.Meanwhile,the improvement germplasm and the tecnique for plant breeding of popcorn also has been evaluated.Finally,we must lay emphasis on the nice quality that was considering a natural kind characteristics of popcon.So that,the excellent mouth feel and flavour shall be outline in improving.


Transl Lung Cancer Res 2021;10(12):4322-4327 | https://dx.doi.org/10.21037/tlcr-21-882 According to the latest estimations, approximately one out of three patients with a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) diagnosis presents a localized disease (stage I–IIIA), for which a surgical procedure can be envisaged as the best treatment option (1). While the role of perioperative radiotherapy is still discussed, (neo)adjuvant, platinumbased chemotherapy is part of the treatment strategy depending on the precise disease stage, given the potential development of metastatic disease growing from micrometastatic sites. Several strategies have been envisaged in the later years with agents other than chemotherapy [i.e., anti-angiogenic drugs, vaccines, early-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) in unselected or in EGFRmutant patients populations, tailored chemotherapy regimens] (2-5). Nevertheless, the standard of care of (neo)adjuvant chemotherapy has not changed, with an improvement of 5% in the 5-year survival rate compared to surgery alone (6). Considering the relative benefit and the toxicity related to platinum-based chemotherapy, potential predictive biomarkers have been proposed to address the clinical decision in this setting (7,8), but none has been validated. Improving the outcomes of early NSCLC is a capital mission of current oncology. Two main aspects concur to defining this aim as pivotal. First, it is likely that the widespread introduction of lung cancer screening will provide an increase in NSCLC diagnosed at early stages. Second, NSCLC patients who undergo surgery for localized disease are the ones for which a curative intent can be envisaged, and increasing the performance of perioperative systemic treatment translates into augmenting the chances of providing a cure. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs; anti-PD-1/PD-L1) have revolutionized the treatment landscape of NSCLC (9). Following a classical drug development in advanced disease, after being shown active and effective in later therapy lines, they have been proven superior to chemotherapy in the second/third line and then have moved into the firstline setting, alone or in combination with chemotherapy according to PD-L1 expression levels. Given the substantial clinical benefit observed in advanced NSCLC, clinical trials have envisaged the role of ICIs in locally advanced disease, and the anti-PD-L1 durvalumab is now recommended and approved after definitive chemo-radiotherapy for nonsurgical stage III NSCLC patients with PD-L1 ≥1%. Therefore, the ultimate step is represented by the incorporation of ICIs in the treatment armamentarium in early, localized NSCLC suitable for surgical treatment. The survival rates observed with ICIs in advanced, pretreated NSCLC, inconceivable in the pre-immunotherapy era, established the concept of cure even in metastatic disease. The initial clinical trials results of perioperative NSCLC patients strongly support the role of ICI in early disease. We have read with interest the expert consensus on perioperative immunotherapy provided by Qiu et al. (10), and we are delighted to comment on it for several reasons. Editorial


Intercultural competence, while a goal of many language classes, is difficult to achieve when the sole representative of the target culture is the teacher. Authentic communication and frequent contact with others from the target culture would be a great advantage. In intercultural online sister class exchanges, students gain insight to the target culture based on online discussion that takes place with students from that culture. Many exchanges have gone well, with students gaining insight and expressing satisfaction. Others have gone badly, with open confrontations occurring and students developing negative attitudes towards the target people and cultures they are interacting with. Through examining case studies of exchanges, underlying reasons for the successes and the failures become apparent. By looking at the details of four prominent case studies, the parameters that exist within these exchanges can be explored, and guidelines for planning successful exchanges can be constructed.


Introduction: Adult Onset Still´s Disease (AOSD) is a rare systemic inflammatory disease of unclear etiology, with low incidence and prevalence among the general population. AOSD is a common cause of fever of unknown origin (FUO) in up to 20% of cases. Due to the scarce knowledge about this disease and its diagnosis, it is usually unrecognized in the differential diagnoses, worsening the prognosis and increasing complications in some patients. Case presentation: This is the case of a 32-year-old female patient with prolonged febrile illness, who did not respond to the antimicrobial treatments previously established. She was diagnosed with AOSD according to the Yamaguchi criteria after an extensive exclusion process. She was treated with first-line treatment with corticosteroids, achieving satisfactory results. Conclusions: The diagnosis of AOSD is an exhaustive process. Regardless of the availability of cutting-edge diagnostic tools, the medical history of the patient and an adequate physical examination are the most important aspects to consider.


Ecology is emerging as the central science in national and global environmentalism. Historically, studies in this science have looked at relatively small-scale plots for relatively short durations. For example, from 1980 to 1987, 50 percent of all ecological studies were done on plots less than one meter in diameter. In 1989, 40 percent of ecological experiments lasted less than a year, and only 7 percent lasted five or more years. Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating through the 1970s and 1980s, the science began to embrace larger and larger geographic and biological units of research. Stimulated by National Science Foundation programs and growing international cooperation among scientists, the profession has begun to shift from a totally academic enterprise to a solid applied science. Nevertheless, as it stands, far more is expected of ecology than it can deliver. The strength of ecology, however, is increasing and will depend heavily on data collection through direct and remote sensing, and on massive manipulation of databases. Mathematical modeling and quantitative tools are, and will continue to be, more widely used by ecologists. At the most applied level, there is a growing interest in agro-ecology, the central concept here being to treat farms and forests as ecological systems. That managed and semi-managed systems are embraced in the framework of ecology is a conceptual breakthrough. The most significant development stimulating broad public support for ecology is the rise of the sustainability movement. Sustainability is for environmentalism the first significant positive unifying and overarching framework. Sustainability is broad enough and elastic enough to embrace a wide range of concepts and goals and their constituents; yet, it has the public policy magic of being difficult to object to. Insofar as sustainability emerges as the axial concept in environmentalism, it more or less automatically promotes ecology as its scientific core. Genetic manipulation will to some extent present new threats to the environment, although the scientific consensus is not particularly fearful. More important, the ability to genetically manipulate organisms to introduce transgenic species into managed and open environments, will, for example, increase the variability of fish in the ocean and streams, and the survivability of mammals on land. The internationalization of environmental concerns, particularly those framed around biodiversity, is a further impetus to support ecology as a broad-sweeping, practical and applied science. …


Visibility and seeing, to a greater extent, are gestural and embodied in classical Indian performance traditions. Seeing is not only a physical act and visibility and presence are not conceived strictly as material conditions of perception. The Natyasastra, in many ways, proposes the idea that the actor's body is 'optical mechanism' capable of generating and delivering embodied visuality in a performance. The visual field of a classical Indian performance, therefore, depends greatly on the physical presence and the performance of the actor's body. The performance, therefore, is a means to structure the act of spectator's seeing as well as what is being seen.


Cell adhesion, proliferation and differentiation in vivo is significantly controlled by the cells' local surrounding, the extracellular matrix (ECM), formed from a complex combination of proteins, glycoproteins, and proteoglycans. Hence implant-coating materials, mimicking ECM, are a promising research focus today. However, the especially well-known fibronectin-derived peptides (e.g., RGD, REDV) are not selective as they bind to integrins, present on many cell types. In this context, we investigated the establishment of an ECM-mimetic implant coating using genetically engineered elastin-like-proteins (ELP), whose cell-selectivity is adaptable by the integration of bioactive sequences.


The present invention provides a long-term stability of the crystalline structure exhibits excellent excellent battery performance lithium secondary battery. The positive electrode of a lithium secondary battery provided by the present invention, represented by general formula contains: a lithium-containing phosphate compound as a main component LixM [P (1-y) Ay] O4 positive electrode active material represented. Formula, M is selected from Ni, or two or more kinds of elements Mn, Fe and Co in one kind, A is a pentavalent metal element. Further, x and y are the condition 0


We introduce a novel type of electro-optic modulation method using bulk PLZT material based on subwavelength surface electrodes. Due to the small periodicity, the operating voltage can be dramatically reduced. In addition, only the zeroth diffraction order is the propagating order and therefore, the device does not suffer from losses due to diffraction.


Preliminary data indicates that the use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in people with AIDS may prolong remission of CMV retinitis by causing the CD4+ cells to rise above 100. This increase in CD4+ cells creates a natural protection against CMV in most cases, allowing patients to discontinue maintenance therapy for CMV retinitis. In eight subjects, HAART took between 4 and 12 months to raise CD4+ counts over 100. No participant had a recurrence of retinitis during the study, which lasted 1 year. This increase in CD4+ cells, and cessation of maintenance therapy, seemed effective only with patients who had retinal pigment epithelial(RPE) scarring, rather than retinal whitening or cloudy borders.


Abstract This study on different days old (55,85,115,145) castrated male mink shows that: The 55 days old castrated male mink's body weight and length was belower than the entire male mink's when it was slaughted for pelt (p0.01); The pelt quality of castrated male mink was slightly increased,whereas pelt length of castrated male mink at 55 days old was shorted signifiantly (p0.05) From the result we suggestted that it isn't suitable to castrate male mink before 85 days old.


1. Introduction, 2. Pre-Classical Economic Thought, 3. Classical Political Economy, 4. Neoclassical Economics, 5. Historical Schools and Institutionalism, 6. Monetary Macroeconomics, 7. Orthodoxy and Change


Indium-lead solder has been shown by others to ex- hibit much better fatigue resistance and have much less scaveng- ing effect than tin-lead solder. In this project, lead-indium-gold multilayer composite solder is developed for bonding electronic devices without the use of flux. The composite is deposited dirrctly on GaAs wafers in high vacuum to inhibit indium oxidation. The gold layer on the composite further protects the indium layer from oxidation in atmosphere. Using the composite solder without flux, GaAs dies have been successfully bonded to alumina substrates at a process temperature of 250'C. Nearly perfect joints are achieved as verified by a scanning acoustic microscope (SAM). SEM and EDX results indicate that the joint consists of AuIn2 grains embedded in an In-Pb solid solution phase, as predicted from the Au-In-Pb phase diagram. Thermal shock as well as shear tests confirm that high quality bonding is obtained with the lead-indium-gold composite.


The concept of configuration was first introduced to give a condition for the amenability of groups. Then the concept of two-sided configuration was suggested to provide \enquote{normality} to study the group structures more efficiently. We show that if $G$ and $H$ have the same two-sided configuration sets and $N$ is a normal subgroup of $G$ with polycyclic quotient, then there is a normal subgroup $\mathfrak N$ of $H$ such that $G/N\cong H/ \mathfrak N$. Using two-sided configuration equivalence, we prove that being two-sided configuration equivalent to a group $G$ which has a normal sub-series, each of its factor is polycyclic, leads to isomorphism. To show this, we first prove the statement for polycyclic groups. In particular, for the class of nilpotent or FC, the notions of two-sided configuration equivalence and isomorphism are coincided.


With increasing number of processing elements on a single chip, the size of the Network-on-Chip connecting the processing elements increases accordingly. This leads to new challenges for components such as fault diagnosis and routing because they do not scale with the size of the Network-on-Chip, e.g. regarding the required communication overhead or their implementation costs. A measure to avoid these scaling problems is to organize future Networks-on-Chip hierarchically. This paper presents a fault tolerant routing for Networks-on-Chip organized into hierarchical units where each unit manages its own routing. In case of link faults or failure of switches, the proposed approach enables the online adaptation of routing locally within each unit while deadlock freedom is globally ensured in the network. Experimental results of our approach for a 16x16 network show a speedup of three for routing reconfiguration compared to state-of-the-art approach. At the same time our approach achieves a memory reduction for routing tables by a factor of seven compared to flat network tables.


In the last decade, most research has tended to focus on developing an economical biofuels production process. Much emphasis is being given to the production of hydrogen from lignocellulosic biomass. Among the agricultural crop residues, wheat straw is the largest biomass feedstock in Europe and the second largest in the world after rice straw (Kim and Dale, 2004). Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is the world's most widely grown crop, cultivated in over 115 nations under a wide range of environmental conditions. About 21% of the world's food depends on the wheat crop and its global production needs to be increased to satisfy the growing demand of human consumption (Ortiz et al., 2008) therefore, wheat straw would serve as a great potential feedstock for production of hydrogen in future. The recent study was done with the aim of selection of popular wheat varieties mostly grown in northern and central India which has not been studied before with respect to hydrogen production potential. Characterization of the wheat varieties on the basis of fibre, sugar content and other chemical constituents, showed it as a potential feedstock for hydrogen production. Pretreatment is considered the most important step in determining the cost and success of the process of enzymatic saccharification of lignocellulosic biomass. The effectiveness of pretreatment using microwave assisted dilute acid to produce maximum fermentable sugars in terms of total soluble sugar from the straw was investigated. The results showed that microwave assisted acid pretreatment is a promising approach to enhance fermentable sugar yields. The wheat variety HD 2967 was found to be the best followed by WR 544, C 306 and K 68 with respect to the release of soluble sugars. HD 2967 had significantly higher value in terms of sugar than other varieties. The temperature 160 C and time period 10 min was best for sugar recovery from wheat straw.


EDITOR—The and colleagues' description of decision making for patients with severe dementia who have difficulties in eating and drinking, raises several troubling issues.1

Firstly, they implicitly consider tube feeding to be life sustaining. In fact, no credible data show that tube feeding prolongs life in advanced dementia.2–5 An honest summary of the data is, "We have no good evidence …


Background : Tobacco smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death and disease worldwide. Digital interventions delivered through smartphones offer a promising alternative to traditional methods, but little is known about their effectiveness. Objective: Our objective was to test the effectiveness of Quit Genius, a novel digital therapeutic intervention for smoking cessation. Methods: A two-arm, single-blinded, parallel-group randomized controlled trial design was used. Participants were recruited via referrals from primary care practices and social media advertisements in the UK. 556 Adult smokers (aged ≥18 years), smoking at least five cigarettes a day for the past year were recruited. 530 were included for the final analysis. Participants were randomized to one of two interventions. Treatment consisted of a digital therapeutic intervention for smoking cessation consisting of a smartphone application delivering cognitive behavioral therapy content, one-to-one coaching, craving tools and tracking capabilities. The control intervention was Very Brief Advice along the Ask, Advise, Act model. All participants were offered nicotine replacement therapy for three months. A random half of each arm was assigned a carbon monoxide (CO) device for biochemical verification. Outcomes were self-reported via phone or online. The primary outcome was self-reported 7-day point prevalence abstinence at 4-weeks post quit date. Results : 556 participants were randomized (treatment n=277, control n=279). The intention-to-treat analysis included 530 participants (n=265 in each arm; 11 excluded for randomization before trial registration, and 15 for protocol violations at baseline visit). By the quit date (an average 16 days after randomization) 89% (236/265) of those in the treatment arm were still actively engaged. At the time of primary outcome, 74% (196) of participants were still engaging with the app. At 4-weeks post-quit date, 45% (118) of participants in the treatment arm had not smoked in the preceding 7-days, compared to 29% (76) in control (risk ratio 1.55, 1.23-1.96, P = .0002; intention-to-treat, N=530). Self-reported 7-day abstinence agreed with CO measurement (CO <10 ppm) in 96% of cases (80/83) where CO readings were available. No harmful effects of the intervention were observed. Conclusions : The Quit Genius digital therapeutic intervention is a superior treatment in achieving smoking cessation four weeks post quit date compared to very brief advice. Trial Registration: The trial was registered in the ISRCTN database on December 18, 2018 (https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN65853476).


As contiguous entities to each other, Tibet and China have maintained the relationship, both for good or ill. The first half of the 18th century was a turning point in terms of politics for two entities. This was the period when Qing dynasty took an expansionist policy over the western frontiers of China proper after the victory over the Chinese mainland, and Tibet was one of the main targets of the assimilation. Pho-Iha-nas bsod-nams-stobs-rgyas( , 1689~1747) was a preeminent politician who played an important role in the relationship with Qing China in this period, and this is attested by Qing records pertaining to him. In the corresponding parts from the Veritable Records of Qing dynasty, Pho-lha-nas had been depicted as a pro-Qing loyalist all the way. Since he could represent whole Tibet by his political status, we can say that those Qing narratives reflect the facets of the general Qing viewpoint over Tibet as a whole. And such a viewpoint has seemed to be inherited even to the scholars in China of our own time. However, through analyzing other sources such as mi-dbang-rtogs-brjod( ), we can be aware of the fact that the Qing narratives were predicated on a biased point of view. On the Tibetan Civil War(1727~1728), Qing records described it as a confrontation between pro- and anti-Qing powers, but through Tibetan sources, we can find that this is not the case. The shrewd Qing policy for elimination of the Lhasa based vested interests may be the reason for the transformation of the historical fact. After the civil war, this policy had been embodied through Pho-Iha-nas and the potential power which could be represented by Dai Lama had been excluded from the political scene. In this period, Pho-Iha-nas had received continuous extolments from the Qing government and he actually gratified the demands of Qing. Based on such Qing records, many Chinese scholars regard Pho-Iha-nas as both a loyalist and a patriot of China. But in his biography, mi-dbang-rtogs-brjod, many incidents indicate that this is not the case either: The dissension concerning the problem of the sects in Tibetan Buddhism sometimes brought about his strong hostility against the Qing government; Ambans and Qing military forces stationed in Lhasa was another source which made Pho-Iha-nas and Tibentans feel offended. All these could be the evidence which could disprove the historical status of Tibet and its people in Qing records. In conclusion, the narratives in the Qing veritable records only represent the interests of Qing and those contents are far from being the objective historical narratives. Making a comparison between the Qing veritable records and Tibetan sources, we could discover the other side of Qing policies, which was aggressive and elaborate rather than merely opportunistic. As for Pho-Iha-nas, the appreciation of his political merits should be conducted based on the viewpoint that he rendered great services just for Tibet and its people, not much for Qing or China.


The remarkable nonviolent campaign led by Gandhi against British colonialism in India opened the way for, and inspired, a spate of mass nonviolent campaigns throughout the world during the second half of the 20th century. This book deals with a cross-section of them from various countries. Some of the campaigns succeeded, others did not, but all have left examples that beneŽ t nonviolent campaigners by throwing light on the political, cultural, and other factors that can impede or enhance nonviolent resistance. It is a timely book because, as the editors point out, violence reached both its apex and nadir during the 20th century, with the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and such weaponry sophistication that now nobody falls outside the range of nuclear missiles. Yet the century also saw a great deal of organized nonviolent activity, often in response to local or national repression such as that dealt out by the Philippines' President Marcos until 'People Power' ousted him in 1986. Covering nonviolent struggles in the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and North America, the book provides sufŽ cient context for some interesting comparisons, although these are not always made overtly. For instance, the Intifada appeared to break out suddenly in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although of course it needs to be understood in the context of the preceding 21 years of Israeli occupation, as Souad Dajam, the author of the relevant chapter, points out. It was very much a struggle rooted in the people and in their direct experience of oppression. By contrast, transnational social movement organizations discussed later in the book facilitated effective use of nonviolence by people in Latin America but were conceptualized in First World countries with a view to supporting Latin American struggles for justice but within a nonviolent framework. This was the result of long and painstaking collaboration. Whereas the philosophies for such organizations migrated from rich to poor countries, the plight of the Palestinian people, especially as given publicity through the Intifada, saw philosophies and concern extend outwards from the oppressed to the First World. Yet both of these examples stress that, in this age, resistance can seldom be conŽ ned. This is one of the particularly useful insights offered by the book. It points that that, since the sources of oppression are intercontinental, with regimes propped up by other powers and multinational corporations whose interests are linked with the continuation of repression, there is a need for resistance to also become global. International resistance to the Multilateral Agreement on Investment and international solidarity with resistance to apartheid in South Africa are probably the best-known examples of how nonviolent action can work effectively across borders. This book presents another important case study in the chapter of the Ogoni community in Nigeria. A major part of their struggle was to bring their plight to the attention of potentially sympathetic groups around the world. This eventually led to widespread publicity for their cause, but only after vast lobbying and persistent efforts to gain the support of environmental and human rights organizations. Indeed the movement is an impressive example of a nonviolent movement that seeks to link the issues of environmental rights, human rights, and indigenous rights. The other notable success of the Ogoni organization is that it has focused on local and international strategies simultaneously. Although the book is schematically ordered to look at struggles in different continents, it also looks at women's involvement and initiatives in nonviolent action, a vast area that is well known in some respects yet often overlooked in overall analyses of nonviolent struggle. Women, with less enculturation into militarism, often feel more comfortable with nonviolent action as opposed to violent


Gallium arsenide crystals were grown from Ga‐rich solutions having initial compositions near the 900°C isotherm of the Ga‐As‐Zn ternary phase diagram. They were grown over the temperature range from 900° to 700°C. The concentration of Zn in appears to vary linearly with the Zn atomic fraction in the liquid at lower doping levels and with the square root of the atomic fraction of Zn in the liquid at higher doping levels. In fitting the experimental data to the theoretical expression for the solid solubility, the intrinsic carrier concentration of was found to be about . The corresponding temperature has been estimated to be 825°–850°C.


Although floatplanes were not popular during the war years, new types have made their appearance since, and presumably, for certain classes of work, more will be seen in the future. With this in mind, this paper is presented in the hope that it may help in assessing the float weights on any new designs that are contemplated. Some suggestions are included concerning geometry and design which, if adopted, may help to show a higher weight efficiency than existing practice. The paper is based upon an analysis of the weight and geometrical data relating to a large number of floats, although since the number built during recent years is small, a certain amount of data, which might possibly be considered old by some standards, has been incorporated. As will be seen by the curves, recent practice shows no radical departure from earlier years and the inclusion of the early data to establish design trends would appear to be warranted.


We report both transport measurements and spectroscopic data of polymer/fullerene blend photovoltaics using a small library of fullerene esters to correlate device properties with a range of functionality and structural diversity of the ester substituent. We observe that minor structural changes can lead to significant differences in device efficiency and lifetime. Surprisingly, we have found that isomeric R-groups in the fullerene ester-based devices we have studied have very different efficiencies. The characteristic lifetimes derived from both transport and spectroscopic measurements are generally comparable, however some more rapid effects in specific fullerene esters are not observed spectroscopically. Our results support using a library approach for optimizing device performance in these systems.


EDITOR,--William Rosenberg and Anna Donald examine some of the disadvantages of evidence based medicine but, for each "threat," argue that an overall "opportunity" to improve existing practice ensues (with the implication that the debate is more polarised than perhaps it is).1 One important disadvantage is not addressed, though it is encapsulated in another context earlier in the article where the effectiveness of evidence based medicine is considered: "the approach is difficult to evaluate … since many [outcomes] are difficult to …


Faced with the difficulty to foresee and control the rumors about emergency events, it usually causes psychological panic and inappropriate behavior in people crowd. With the appearance of new media for rumor spreading, for example cell phones, which has something to do with the relations of people, the interpersonal relationship network of rumor spreading is becoming more and more international and complicated. In this paper, some social psychology research related with earthquake rumors in recent years is summarized. Following these achievements, we propose a global interpersonal relationship network model based on the preferential attachments and preferential strengthening mechanism between local characteristic groups. The topological properties of rumor spreading is investigated in the social individual level, and its rationality is also analyzed to well describe the statistical results of rumor spreading on the interpersonal relationship network.


In this paper, the A. attempt to show that person-number suppletive replacements follow language-specific alternation patterns, or templates, which mark the positions of stem alternations often shared by several verbs. These paradigmatic frameworks are stored in the lexicon with their verb forms and guide verbal restructuring processes by serving as the base configuration for suppletive replacements. The relative strength of a pattern is directly related to the number of verbs associated with it such that the most productive template is represented by completely rule-driven patterns, the template of lowest productivity encompasses only one verb, and all intermediate stages of productivity are represented by templates shared by various numbers of verbs


5 atom % of zirconium in amorphous Zr 65 Al 7.5 Cu 27.5 alloy was replaced with various M (Pd, Ni, In, Mn, Cr, Ti, Nb, and Zr), to evaluate the effects of alloying elements, M, on the surface composition and anodic polarization behavior of the alloy. The surface oxide of the Zr-M-Al-Cu alloys generated in a deaerated phosphate-buffered saline solution, PBS(-), was characterized using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Also, the alloy was anodically polarized in deaerated PBS(-) to determine open-circuit potential, E open , polarization resistance. R p , and pitting potential, E pit . M was incorporated into the surface oxide film with the increase in the oxygen affinity of M, and the relative concentration of Zr to Al. [Zr]/[Zr + Al], was varied. The R p at E open increased and E pit decreased with the increase in [Zr]/[Zr + Al]. Therefore, the high value of R p with the large ratio of [Zr]/[Zr + Al] seems to be caused by the high resistance of Zr-containing oxide to general corrosion and/or the preferential dissolution of Al. Zr-containing oxide is susceptible to pitting corrosion Eventually, the R p values of Pd-, Ni-, and Nb-containing alloys were high. The E pit values of Pd-, and In-, Zr-containing alloys were high.


Abstract : The purpose of this research was to evaluate the appropriateness of using non-parametric estimators, specifically the Chao1, ACES, and Jackknife methods, for estimation of the number of unique species comprising a population. This research consisted of creating diverse populations, with a known number of species, and applying the aforementioned methods to samples drawn from the constructed populations. The analysis of the non-parametric methods was followed by the parametric fitting of several different distributions to the sample data, including the lognormal, gamma, and Weibull. These results were analyzed as well. Both types of methodologies were then applied to sample data from constructed wetlands, where little is known about the population size and composition. This research did not attempt to identify the underlying population distribution of the wetlands, but rather focused upon demonstrating that the use of parametric methods are more apt to provide better results in estimating the number of species in a natural population. This research discovered the use of the non-parametric methods is not an appropriate for species estimation. The use of these methods resulted in lower bounds, which were several standard deviations away from the true number of species, for the contrived populations. A parametric method was more accurate in representing the truth. Recommendations for further research are provided in this thesis.


The system has two classes of member: active and passive. The active members are drivers who have spare space in their vehicles during journeys. The passive members have journeys to make but have no vehicle or do not wish to use their own. The active members inform the central computer of their identity destination and position, via mobile phone or radio. The computer matches the data with passive members' requirements. If there is a match, both members are informed, and the passive member is picked up by the active member and taken to his destination or to a point where another active member will pick him up to continue the journey. The passive member will be charged a fee, which will be transferred to the active member, after deductions for operational and administrative costs.


This paper constitutes an interim report on the development of a macroeconometric disequilibrium model. Despite several caveats the model as it stands can be used already for two purposes. First, it is possible to investigate the models forecasting abilities. While the estimation period of the model ends in 1989, the forecast is made for the time period 1990 to 1993: This time period includes two events which form a real challenge to every macroeconometric model, namely German unification and the most severe recession afterwards. Secondly, the model is used to quantify selected impacts of unification on some macroeconomic variables with an exclusive emphasis on the goods and labor market. By and large, the results are in line with intuition. West Germany benefitted from unification by experiencing higher output and employment and so did major trade partners.


Dissolution accelerator suitable for forming a redox system with peroxides, comprising a compound of Cu (I), a transition metal selected from cobalt and titanium, a phosphorus-containing compound, a base containing nitrogen and a solvent with hydroxy functionality.


Maintaining or improving the characteristics of the semiconductor integrated circuit device, and at the same time Sikkim kkoehanda miniaturization. Of the plane it is disposed corresponding to the electrode pads of the plurality on the principal surface of the semiconductor substrate, and a plurality of pads and the semiconductor substrate arranged in accordance with the univariate of the semiconductor substrate on the principal surface of the semiconductor substrate squares multiple input and output cells and, as to the plurality of input-output cell than inside the internal circuit forming portion disposed on the on the main surface of the semiconductor substrate, a power supply wiring for the internal circuit for supplying a potential to the forming section the internal circuit, disposed on the inner side than the plurality of input-output cells It has a power supply wiring for the internal circuit, The plurality of input and output cell comprises a power cell for cell Shin Hoyong, and an internal circuit, It said plurality of pads has the arrangement in response to the Shin Hoyong cells, and also the power supply for and a Shin Hoyong pad connected with the Shin Hoyong cell and electrically, the internal circuits disposed corresponding to the power cell also power the cell and the internal circuit for the internal circuitry for includes a power supply pad connected to the internal circuit and electrical wiring, Power supply pad for the internal circuit is disposed near the power supply wiring for the internal circuit than the Shin Hoyong power supply pad. IO cells, Shin Hoyong cells, power cells, the stud bumps, the anisotropic conductive resin, and the power supply pad


SYSTEMS WITH MULTIPLE RIGHT HAND SIDES V. SIMONCINI AND E. GALLOPOULOSy Abstract. We propose a method for the solution of sparse linear, nonsymmetric systems AX = B where A is a sparse and nonsymmetric matrix of order n whileB is an arbitrary rectangular matrix of order n swith s of moderate size. The method uses a single Krylov subspace per step as a generator of approximations, a projection process, and a Richardson acceleration technique. It thus combines the advantages of recent hybrid methods with those for solving symmetric systems with multiple right hand sides. Numerical experiments indicate that provided hybrid techniques are applicable, the method has significantly lower memory requirements and better practical performance than block versions of nonsymmetric solvers such as GMRES. Unlike block BCG it does not require the use of the transpose, it is not sensitive to the right hand sides and it can be used even when not all the elements ofB are simultaneously available.