In September 2020, the Corona crisis offered us an opportunity to develop and test a blended real and virtual interdisciplinary field mapping class, as well as revealing the need for, and stimulating development of new web-based tools for structural interpretation.

Universität Mainz’ usual Master’s advanced field mapping, and Universität Tübingen’s usual Bachelor’s mapping classes were replaced with combinations of (i) virtual field mapping of Jurassic-Cretaceous sedimentary units at Molinos, Teruel Province, Spain, and (ii) field mapping of metamorphic rocks in the Mittelrhein Gorge and the Arh Valley, and outcrops of sedimentary rocks near Tübingen, Germany, which the students were mostly able to access on day trips using public transport or by bicycle.

For the Molinos part of the exercise both groups were offered hand specimens containing distinctive fossils, linked to locations (and pseudo-locations) by google .kmz files, a variety of structural measurements also linked via .kmz files, and detailed satellite imagery within which mappable geological units display distinct characteristics. Introductions to the stratigraphy were made in three virtual outcrop sections examined in Google Street View from within Google Earth, and via web-based photogrammetric 3D outcrop models made available on the V3Geo virtual 3D geoscience platform. The students then extrapolated this stratigraphy based on the satellite imagery and .kmz file information.

Our perception, validated by student feedback, is that the real parts of both field excursions were very important since they allowed us to teach and refine mapping and compass methodology and best demonstrate how to analyze 3D geometries of geological structures. Universität Mainz students particularly benefited from being able to visit locations where we had already made 3D outcrop models and offered a digital excursion, in the Ahr Valley (Rhenish Massif). They were able to compare real structural measurements with those derived from the precisely georeferenced 3D models, which enhanced their ability to subsequently obtain such information solely from the models. Although final student maps were of comparable quality to those produced in the field, structural interpretations were hampered by a lack of field measurements. In many cases, the Google Earth DEM is of too low resolution and ways should be found to include higher-resolution DEMs in web-based data sets.

Overall, we think there were advantages compared to traditional field mapping, such as (i) enhanced evidence that methods like ‘structure contouring’ were used in all mapping, (ii) we were stimulated to teach the students to use digital methods to acquire field data, such as StraboSpot and Stereonet11 Apps. We observed these tools, and others we were unaware of, being used in combination with traditional paper and compass during the real mapping exercise. We hope to continue to employ this blended teaching approach even when the Corona crisis passes. This will be facilitated by our development of further 3D outcrop models, .kmz files with key information about outcrops in the Mittelrhein, and especially, web-based (rather than PC-based) tools to extract structural data such as plane and line orientations from 3D outcrop models and enable collaborative work on one data set.


Pharmacological doses of glucocorticoids inhibit TSH release both in vivo and in vitro and since the circadian rhythms of TSH and cortisol show a reciprocal relationship, the hypothesis has been advanced that changes in cortisol levels may be a primary determinant of circadian TSH changes. We have tested this hypothesis by studying the relationship between circadian cortisol and TSH rhythms in subjects before and during blockade with metyrapone. Seven patients were studied during their routine post‐operative assessment following selective transethmoidal adenomectomy for microprolactinomas. PRL levels were restored to normal (<420 mU/l) in all patients by surgery (pre‐op: 930–2752 mU/1, post‐op: 33–376 mU/1) and the patients also had normal pituitary function in other respects. Blood was sampled hourly for 24 h before and on the third day of treatment with metyrapone (250 mg, 2 hourly). In order to compare circadian rhythms, hormonal data were subjected to cosinor analysis which involved fitting of the data with a cosine function using the method of least squares. The 6% cross reactivity of the Cortisol antibody with 11‐deoxycortisol was taken into account during the calculation of results. All subjects showed a normal Cortisol rhythm which was strikingly blunted during metyrapone treatment. Group mean (± SD) TSH mesors, amplitudes and acrophases for control and metyrapone treated subjects were 1.5 ± 0.26, 1.29 ± 0.48; 0.46 ± 0.26, 0.23 ± 0.13 and −49°± 9.8°; −62°± 2.7° respectively. Based on paired t‐testing of these data there was a small but significant reduction in the amplitude (P<0.05) and acrophase (P<0.05) of the TSH rhythm during metyrapone administration but no alteration in the circadian pattern of change. The normal circadian change in PRL levels which we observed in these patients was not altered by metyrapone treatment. It appears therefore that variation in endogenous cortisol is not the sole factor involved in the determination of the circadian TSH rhythm and that it does not influence circadian PRL changes in this group of subjects.


INTRODUCTION AND AIM Smoking cessation (SC) service in our country is carried out substantially by SC clinic doctors. Varenicline, bupropion and nicotin replacement therapies are administred as SC supporters. On the other hand, behavioral-cognitive methods(sport tending, taking up a new hobby, coping techniques, etc.) and motivational techniques are also used. However, smokers use different methods from those methods. Today, those advices spread out by means of the Internet and peer teaching. The aim of our study is to reveal non-evidence based advices (non-EBA) available on internet. MATERIALS AND METHODS Entries and reviews found on search engine (google) with keyword "cigarette" in Turkish between the dates 2nd April 2018 and 20th April 2018 evaluated. Those advices are collected under three headings as EBAs, controversial advices and non-EBAs according to cochrane library. Limitation of the study is to be conducted only online search. RESULTS 10 out of 46 advices found are out of range because they are pharmacological treatments and concomitant behavioral-cognitive methods. 4 out of those 36 advices left are at the level of controversial evidence such as hypnotherapy-hypnosis, acupuncture, bioresonance, electronic cigarette. Non-EBAs are as follows: fast smoking, electric stimulation therapy, blowing cigarette to face, smoking stale cigarette, smoking and breath holding, psychodrama, smart phone applications, queasy medicines, changing cigarette brand, herbal methods, gum with clove, bitter chocolate, gargle with carbonated water, cigarette butt smoking, smelling wet ashtray, extinguishing cigarette on body, collecting cigarette butts in water bottle, eating cigarette, uneasily smoking during illnesses, visiting people having chest diseases, use overdose antidepressants, putting head in a cage, uneasily smoking in the night, seeing dirt on white cloth after blowing, drinking boiled tobacco juice, using wrapped tobacco, eating peppermint, letting insults to yourself during smoking, eating bad foods(cat-dog food, etc.) when s/he wants cigarette, making a bet on quit smoking, starting hookah. DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Psychodrama and smart phone application usages are among the techniques starting to be corraborated. Some of them(e.g. using overdose antidepresssant) can be dangerous to life threatening levels. Suggestions including chocolate, water, carbonated water are more innocent and they are regarded as treatment complement methods applied after a lot of scientific studies. Many of advices in findings aim to disgust cigarette. The number of advices, aiming at disgusting cigarette, make us think about possible malfunctions of pharmacological treatment usage and behavirol-cognitive methods usage. FUNDING There is no conflict of interest with any institutions.


A process delayed coker comprising: (a) heating a feed of oil residue in a first heating zone at a temperature below the temperature of coking but at a temperature at which the residue is a liquid pumpable; (B) driving said residue heated to a second heating zone wherein it is heated at temperatures coking, (c) conducting said petroleum residuum heated from said second heating zone to a region coding where some products are collected vaporous by top and a spherical coke product which is substantially free flowing is formed; and (d) introducing into said petroleum residue 300 to 3,000 wppm of at least one polymeric additive selected from a poly (oxyethylene) poly (oxypropylene), a poly (oxyethylene) -poly (oxypropylene) a ethylenediamine tetra alkoxylated alcohol of a poly (oxyethylene) alcohol, ethylenediamine tetra alkoxylated alcohol of a poly (oxypropylene) alcohol, an alkoxylated ethylenediamine tetra alcohol of a poly (oxypropylene) -poly (oxyethylene) alcohols, and having a weight molecular of 1,000 to 30,000, in an amount which is effective for the formation of a spherical coke is substantially free-flowing, wherein said polymeric additive is introduced into said waste oil at a location upstream of the second heating zone, between said second heating zone and said zone coker or in both places.


Coronal holes are large scale regions of magnetically open fields which are easily observed in solar soft X-ray images. The boundaries of coronal holes are separatrices between large scale regions of open and closed magnetic fields where one might expect to observe evidence of solar magnetic reconnection. Previous studies by Nolte and colleagues using Skylab X-ray images established that large scale (greater than or equal to 9 x 10(4) km) changes in coronal hole boundaries were due to coronal processes, i.e., magnetic reconnection, rather than to photospheric motions. Those studies were limited to time scales of about one day, and no conclusion could be drawn about the size and time scales of the reconnection process at hole boundaries. Sequences of appropriate Skylab X-ray images were used with a time resolution of about 90 min during times of the central meridian passages of the coronal hole labelled Coronal Hole 1 to search for hole boundary changes which can yield the spatial and temporal scales of coronal magnetic reconnection. It was found that 29 of 32 observed boundary changes could be associated with bright points. The appearance of the bright point may be the signature of reconnection between small scale and large scale magnetic fields. The observed boundary changes contributed to the quasi-rigid rotation of Coronal Hole 1.


West Sumatra and its surrounding waters get a significant influence from the Indian Ocean water mass that undergoes changes both in oceanography conditions and the level of primary productivity in them. This study aims to determine the oceanography characteristics of the waters as well as their relation to pelagic fish density in the Republic of Indonesia National Fisheries Management Area (WPP-NRI). while other parameter data is obtained in situ from BPRL through CTD assistance. The highest pelagic fish density is in the area of West Sumatra Province with a range of 313.3-391.6 mg/m3 with the highest sea surface temperature composition which is 29.7°C −30.40°C. It was noted that the area also had the highest interpretation of the value of chlorophyll-a as well as the lowest salinity value around 31.03 PSU −31.83 PSU. Pelagic fish catches in this study occurred in the transition season II.


This article presents a low-latency, online speaker diarization system ("who is speaking now?") based on the repeated execution of a GPU-optimized, highly efficient offline diarization system ("who spoke when"). The system fulfills all requirements of the diarization task, i.e., it does not require any a priori information about the input, including specific speaker models. In contrast to earlier attempts at online diarization, the system achieves similar accuracy to the underlying offline system and does not require explicit detection of new speakers. Using GPUs, online diarization has become a side-effect of offline diarization, obsoleting the requirement for specialized online diarization systems.


The dynamic equations of EDT(Electrodynamic Tether)attitude libration are nonlinear and EDT operation in orbit is affected by attitude libration states.Governing equations of EDT in an inclined circular orbit are derived based on dumbbell tether model and a dipole model for the Earth magnetic field.The procedure of using a numeric method combining perturbation method and stationary point iteration method to seek periodic solutions for nonlinear equations is presented and a corresponding method of determining the stability of periodic solution is put forward.A feedback control strategy is presented to stabilize non-stable periodic solutions.The portraits of periodic solutions for attitude libration are got through numerical simulation.This validates the periodic solution algorithm and verifies that the control law stabilizes the unstable periodic solutions.


Economists generally suggest that economic instruments for environmental protection are more efficient than alternative instruments. However, despite the prescriptions of economists, in practice environmental policies have overwhelmingly preferred administrative solutions such as the imposition of environmental standards. Economic instruments have generally been applied only as a source of fiscal revenue. This has mostly negated the incentive aspects of such charges. This article analyzes why traditional command and control regulation is more attractive for politicians and polluters and shows some practical drawbacks of market oriented solutions. At the same time, from practical experience with emission charges in the Czech Republic, the paper derives some assumptions which must be fulfilled if a system of economic instruments is to work successfully. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.


A pulse magnetic field and electrodynamics forces that act on a thin cylindrical shell placed in a coil are analyzed with similarity criterions. A first-approximation mathematical model and a new similarity criterion are utilized, the criterion values specified for efficient magnetic pulse compression and expansion of the shell.


Skill's obsolescence is a phenomenon that people can cope with during their professional life. It is defined as an important loss of a part of their knowledge and/or an inappropriate updating of it.
The threat of professional obsolescence is impending in the careers of those working in rapidly changing fields of knowledge. Over time, it is most likely that knowledge and skills that turned out to be relevant in the past are no longer imminent with the evolution of new ways of doing things. In short, the age of information has an impact on both the organization and employed people. Thus, new requirements should be taken into account; they should keep updating their knowledge in order to maintain a moral balance. Obsolescence should be the concern of technical professionals, managers and human resources specialists of any organization. If it is neglected, it can have destructive consequences on both the moral and the career of the individual, and if it is apprehended it offers new perspective of development. However, studies in this field are still rare.


Built-in-test (BIT) false alarm indications have been a challenge for the F/A-18D (RC) Advanced Tactical Air Reconnaissance (ATARS) program throughout development and production. Numerous software updates and hardware changes have reduced the frequency of BIT false alarm indications. These improvements have boosted the confidence of maintenance personnel to believe in BIT for use in troubleshooting and repair. However, improvement is still needed to reduce the frequency of false alarms. Experience has shown that BIT false alarm performance is best expressed as Mean Flight-Hour Between False BIT Indication (MFHBFBI) vice BIT false alarm rate.


This study aims to explore the teacher's role in the process of implementing the Independent Curriculum which has been implemented nationally through central government policies. In its implementation, the independent curriculum requires various adjustments to the social system and institutional support. This research uses a qualitative approach with a case study type. The results of the study show that the role of teacher competence is very important in the implementation of the independent curriculum, especially in achieving the expected educational goals and ideals. In addition, teachers as professional educators have a good role to play in guiding, motivating, and teaching students according to the needs and demands of the industrial revolution 4.0.


Based on the discussion on the technology of Liquefied natural power generation,the development direction of using the Liquefied national power generation and the design ideology and principle of Liquefied natural evaporation station were pointed out.


China's responses to the shocks of the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC) and its endeavours to rectify market order have led to significant reforms and developments in the financial industry. In or around 1996, the banking industry faced problems related to a high ratio of nonperforming loans (NPL). Further, the stock, bond and insurance markets were underdeveloped and in a chaotic state. During this time, many authoritative international media commentators denigrated China's financial sector, claiming that China's commercial banks were technically insolvent and that this would stall economic growth. To promote stable and sustained economic development, China has striven vigorously to reform its financial system. In doing so, profound changes have been made to the financial sector.


Noncross‐linked acrylamide (AA)‐N‐isopropylacrylamide (IPAAm) copolymers have been used as a buffer additive in capillary electrophoretic separation of structurally similar small solutes. Seven kinds of barbiturates and five kinds of dansylated (Dns) amino acids, which have different hydrophobic side chains, were separated on poly(AA‐co‐IPAAm)‐filled columns and on AA polymerfilled columns under the condition of totally eliminating the contribution of electroosmotic flow (EOF). It is known that the copolymer containing IPAAm has thermosensitive properties, and the hydrophobicity of its surface changes with surrounding temperature. In this investigation, therefore, the effects of an isopropyl group in the copolymer on the electrophoretic separation of the small solutes were studied by comparing the two polymer‐filled columns at ambient temperature and at elevated temperature. Although slight differences in migration behavior were observed at ambient temperature between the columns filled with these two polymer solutions, obvious differences in the separation of the solutes were observed at elevated temperature. The observed changes on the migration behavior might be caused by the interaction between copolymer chains exhibiting hydrophobic property and the solute.


TITLE: Innovation and Diffusion from South to North: Evidence from Mobile Banking By Paul van der Boor, Dept. of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, and CATÓLICA-LISBON School of Business and Economics. firstname.lastname@example.com Year of Enrollment: 2009. Expected Final Date: Fall 2013. Existing state-of-the-art: Traditional growth theory has assumed that innovations are first introduced in advanced countries (North) and later diffuse through imitation to the developing world (South) (see e.g., Krugman [1979], Grossman and Helpman [1991]). The situation may have started changing with the advent of the digital technology age. Comin, Hobijn and Rovito [2008] found that many developing countries lag the U.S. and other advanced countries much less in the use of ?digital age? recent technologies, such as cell phones or the internet than in older technologies such as electricity or cars. Research gap: Endogenous growth theory offers at least two major reasons that would in principle lead us to expect innovations to often happen first in the South and subsequently diffuse to the North rather than vice versa. First, many developing countries have large and diverse populations, which should trigger the well-known scale effect on the supply side (Romer [1990], Jones [1995]). Second, consumers? needs (and hence, other things equal, their willingness to pay) are often more urgent than in developed countries. Main theoretical arguments: A string of recent literature suggests that larger market size should also lead to more innovations (e.g., Acemoglu and Lin [2004], Desmet and Parente [2010]). Our model is in the spirit of this latter strand of the literature as it also focuses on the role played by demand. More specifically, we start from the assumption that digital-age knowledge capital is more or less equally accessible to developed and at least some developing countries. Large potential market size (including willingness to pay more) for alternatives to traditional products and services then makes it more profitable to introduce important innovations in developing markets first. Method and Data: In this paper, we offer a stylized endogenous growth model designed to conceptualize this new possibility, and we examine the mobile banking industry to see if newly emerging empirical patterns are consistent with the theory. In the model, developing countries play the role of ground-breakers whose accumulated know-how leads to global adoption of innovation, reversing the roles traditionally assigned in the literature to ?Northern? and ?Southern? countries. We take the theory to the data, employing a unique hand-collected data set on the history of mobile banking worldwide. The data include all firm entry into mobile banking since the beginning of the industry. We use data on firm entry and firm growth, tracking subscriber numbers and total volume transacted in dollars over time as well as firm histories and service deployments. This led to a rich dataset that is comprised of 138 firm entries by 93 different firms in 76 different countries. The list includes the first mobile banking product that was launched in 1997 and goes until May 2012. During this period, firm entry happened with 20 unique mobile banking products which were classified using GSMA data; these services were introduced the total of 412 times. The mobile banking data was complemented with financial access indicators which were used to get a proxy for latent demand. We also used firm histories to supplement the data. As a measure of the significance of the mobile banking innovations originating in emerging countries, we looked at whether they diffused to OECD countries. Preliminary results: We find patterns that are consistent with the theory and suggesting that ?South? could play even more the role of global leader in digital-age innovations in the future. We found that at least 13 of the 16 innovations that originated in the developing world have already diffused to one or more OECD countries. Not only did most of the services in our sample emerge in non-OECD countries, they diffused primarily to developing regions. Market demand appears to play an important role on innovation and firm entry. We find a negative correlation, that is, the less the fraction of populations with accounts in formal institutions, the greater the number of services in mobile banking service providers? portfolios.


Apple is subtropical plant that well adapted in several regions in Indonesia. One of them is Batu city in East Java province. Nowadays, Batu city has a problem due to decreasing of apple area land, more than 16 % in the last decade. There are many factors, two of them are plant age and soil condition. Therefore, it was required a research to evaluate soil chemistry and implement apple rejuvenation technology on dry land. This research was conducted from May to December 2015 at five apple areas; Bumiaji, Tulungrejo, Sumbergondo, Punten and Bulukerto. A survey method was done to address first purpose. Soil sample was taken by purposive sampling method and was analyzed in laboratory to measure soil characteristics. Laboratory analysis showed soil metal content very low and under critical value. However, soil pH and organic matter content were not under ideal condition, strong to medium acid and 30 % of area were low organic content (< 2%). Second studied was implementation apple rejuvenation technologies on dry land; high quality seed, simple drip irrigation and soil amelioration.


Hsu B‐G, Ho G‐J, Lee C‐J, Yang Y‐C, Chen Y‐C, Shih M‐H, Lee M‐C. Inverse association of serum long‐acting natriuretic peptide and bone mineral density in renal transplant recipients.
Clin Transplant 2011 DOI: 10.1111/j.1399‐0012.2011.01575.x.
© 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.


Monitoring is a dynamic technique that observes executions of programs and detects errors at runtime. The key issue in monitoring is performance overhead: if the overhead is too high, then monitoring takes too long to terminate or runs out of system resources. This thesis investigates aspects of monitoring for bug detection, seeking implementations that identify errors precisely and that have overheads acceptable for use with testing. These concerns are addressed by instantiating monitoring analyses for the problems of memory leaks and disclosure of confidential information, and using experimentation to investigate incurred overheads. A generalisation is then provided over primitives identified during the instantiations. This enables monitoring via abstract specifications aimed at reducing the cost of developing monitoring analysis from scratch. First, this thesis presents an approach to memory leak detection. The key issue addressed by the author's technique is detection of locations where the leaked memory was lost. Leak detection is enabled by tracking each allocated memory block and computing the dereference of the block's address space. This represents reachability of the memory block with respect to program variables. Unreachable blocks that have not been de-allocated by the program are reported as memory leaks at the end of execution. The locations of leakage are given by the locations where blocks were last reachable. The results of experimentation with the prototype implementation for C programs indicate that, for monitoring test suites of UNIX utilities and programs selected from the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) CPU datasets, the overheads of the present approach compare favourably to the results produced by the Valgrind memory debugger. This thesis also describes an approach to preventing leakage of sensitive information used by a program. The technique analyses values and has the ability to identify whether a disclosed value represents an information leak with respect to the values considered secret at runtime. This is enabled by tracking secret values and checking whether assignments transfer secret values to publicly observable locations. A prototype implementation for C programs was used to analyse security-oriented UNIX utilities and programs chosen from the SPEC CPU datasets. The results of the experiments indicate that the overhead required to detect password disclosure in real


The ever-growing complexity of Intel® CPUs, together with shortened time-to-market requirements, poses significant challenges for pre-silicon logic verification. To address the increasing verification gap, major improvements to verification practices are required. In Merom, the Intel® Core^{TM} 2 Duo microprocessor, we integrated Formal Verification (FV) with Dynamic Verification (DV) such that FV was also practiced by non-FV experts and replaced some traditional, simulation-based verification activities. This led to both higher productivity and better quality compared to previous projects. In this paper we report on the integration we used, including two examples, results, and future directions.


by Herbert Fleigl and Grover Maxwell, pp. 231-72. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. DANIEL, GLYN. I967. The origins and growth of archaeology. Baltimore: Penguin. FRITZ, JOHN, AND FRED PLOG. 1970. The nature of archaeological explanation. American Antiquity 35:405-12. HEMPEL, CARL G. I96 2. "Deductive-nomological versus statistical explanation," in Scientific explanation, space, and time. Edited by Herbert Fleigl and Grover Maxwell, pp. 98-I69. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


A young man studying at drama school in New York City in the early '70s receives a free ticket to a concert given by the Atlantic City Steel Pier Band. He goes and finds himself the youngest person there. He observes his fellow concert-goers: most of them much older, arriving in taxis, being helped down the aisles, using canes and walkers—unable to walk unassisted. As the band begins to play music of the '30s and '40s, he sees throughout the audience heads nodding in time, then shoulders beginning to keep the beat as well. Pretty soon, feet are tapping, bodies swaying. By intermission, those same people who could not walk unassisted discard their walkers and canes and are up and dancing together in the aisles. It is as if they have rediscovered their youth. What caused this reversal? Was it, as many poets and philosophers have noted, the " power of music " ? Or was there something else happening? How does a body that feels creaky and stiff with age and rheumatism suddenly find the springing step of youth? The answer, it turns out, can be found in the body's natural energy sources. Arthur Lessac, renowned voice and movement specialist , has been studying the body's natural energy resources and their effects on health and wellness for the past 70 years. He pioneered new ways of improving vocal and physical performance through the study and application of the body's natural energy qualities to every area of human endeavor. In Lessac voice and movement training in the theatre, we work with " feeling " —not the emotional meaning of the word, but feeling as a sensation. For example, close your eyes and focus inward for just a moment. Do you feel motion in your body? You can feel your heartbeat, your breathing, or the gentle, almost imperceptible, swaying of your body as it works to keep balance. These are all moving actions of the body, and as such, can be felt, or sensed. What if you could not only feel inner sensation, but you could learn to utilize it to promote better health in yourself, both physically and emotionally? If you could teach yourself to feel love, trust, and happiness rather than hate, anger, and depression, wouldn't you do it? Consider this: you are living and functioning in two different environments. On the one hand, there is the huge outer …


The paper presents a methodical approach to the assessment of agricultural sector transformation in the conditions of intensive penetration of digital technologies into the economy sector. The authors offer a schematic diagram of data collecting and processing in the start-to-finish automated production-and-marketing chain of activity within the agricultural sector. The achievement of these goals will allow increasing the agricultural sector contribution into russian economy, to boost export revenue, and to schedule and aggregate data streams for creation of start-to-finish chains and technologies, from the agricultural production stage to consumption, with a deep integration into allied industries of digital economy.


In a 2-yr study, residues of diquat were spectrophotometrically determined in lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) seed and straw/chaff following preharvest treatment using 0.56 kg ha−1 at three crop growth stages. Diquat residues ranged from 12.9 to 17.3 mg kg−1 in the lentil straw/chaff one day after application and decreased to 1.1 to 6.0 mg kg−1 2 wk later. Diquat residues in the seed were in the order of 0.05 mg kg−1 or less regardless of time of sampling after spraying or growth stage of the crop at application. The limit of quantification of the analytical method was 0.04 mg kg−1, and recoveries of diquat from fortified seed and straw were in the order of 70%. Key words: Diquat, lentil, residues, spectrophotometric determination


years, and may present for the first time with advanced liver disease. It has been associated with leukocytoclastic vasculitis, cryoglobulinemia, lichen planus, porphyria cutanea tarda, erythema nodosum, erythema multiforme, urticaria, pruritus, malakoplakia, polyarteritis nodosa, and recently with NAE. NAE differs from other necrolytic erythemas in its acral distribution and universal association with HCV infection, remaining a cutaneous marker for HCV infection, being a clinical clue for the diagnosis of HCV infection. However, the physiological reason why NAE presents in patients with HCV infection remains unknown. Three cases associated with zinc deficiency have been reported until now and, even when empiric, responses of NAE to zinc therapy suggest association between zinc deficiency and NAE. A low zinc level and the response to oral zinc may suggest an association between zinc deficiency and NAE, and also a physiological basis for classifying NAE among necrolytic erythemas. Previous cases of NAE that responded to empiric zinc therapy despite normal plasma zinc levels may have resulted from physiological zinc deficiency. It has been proposed that overtly decreased serum zinc levels are a late sign of zinc deficiency, and that skin manifestations of zinc deficiency may occur despite normal plasma zinc levels. Even with its limitations, determination of serum zinc levels must be warranted for these patients. Moreover, even when plasma zinc level is normal, treatment with oral zinc should be considered as a therapeutic option for patients with NAE.


The concepts of angiotropism and extravascular migratory metastasis (EVMM) are now recognized by the international scientific community as a key subject of cancer research. In EVMM, tumor cells migrate along vessels (angiotropic EVMM) or along other anatomical tracks, such as nerves (neurotropic EVMM). Angiotropism has been shown to be a prognostic factor for melanoma metastasis, as well as a microscopic marker of EVMM. For some time, analogies of EVMM with neural crest cell migration and vasculogenesis/angiogenesis have been recognized. Finally, a recent gene microarray analysis has led to the detection of genes potentially involved in EVMM. This article will review our current understanding of EVMM, and new perspectives on this promising field of investigation.


Objective: To study the ratationship between selenium with gestational diabeter mellitus.Methods: The selenium of the maternal blood ,newborn blood and placental tissue in pregnancy women and in women with gestational diabeter mellitus were measured.Results:The selenium of maternal blood ,newborn blood and placental tissue of in women with gestational diabeter mellitus were all significantly lower than pregnancy women.Conclusion: The lower level of selenium is possible interrelated gestational diabeter mellitus.


It is well known that a linearly separable set of classes is ideal for a pattern recognition task. The majority of pattern recognition research has been devoted to achieve linear separability of classes by nonlinear input-output mapping. We develop a novel idea of class label separation by projecting each element of the feature vector onto a manifold. The functional characteristics of the manifold associated with each feature type are learnt iteratively from the class label distribution under an optimization criterion. This process attempts to transform an n-dimensional nonlinearly separable feature classification task to an n-dimensional linearly separable problem. The burden of classifying features that are associated with multiple class labels is handled by projections of other discriminating features. This enables fast learning of the classification task by the second stage network which accepts the projected output as its input. If the classification task is modified by an addition of a feature element, the system requires iterative learning of the manifold associated with this new unit only and does not require learning of the whole set of features as seen in conventional neural networks. This iterative knowledge aggregation permits ease of fine tuning and selection of an optimal set of parameters for a given task. The above concept is demonstrated on a set of classification tasks.


Development of democracy and civil society connected with contemporary information technology and communications, increase in activities of social movements for protecting the rights of different groups - these are the reasons that enterprises are forced to verify the view on the profit maximization as the only aim of business activity. The belief that companies should participate in eliminating the civilization threats to which they contribute, becomes widely spread. This involves taking responsibility for the quality of life for present and future generations. The legitimacy of such requests is mainly due to the scale and scope of business activities within the supply chains and the impact they have on local communities' life, the environment and the progress of civilization. The concept of triple bottom line (TBL) – one of the fundament of social business responsibility, is based on finding a balance between three dimensions - economy, ecology and ethics. TBL concept results from the paradigm of the sustainable development discussed in this article from the axiological and quality point of view. The subject of considerations will be sustainable development and its impact on logistics management.


A fast numerical method for evaluating the minority-carrier current injected into arbitrarily doped semiconductor regions is presented. The method is based on an efficient regional approach and is very easy to implement.


China has a vast territory, so the type and performance requirements of rice combine harvesters in the North, South, Central and Western regions are different. There are lots of mountains and hills in the Southern part of China. The fields are small with dispersed heights, making the work environment unfit for large-size combine harvesters. Research has been carried out to develop new agricultural machines and also improve on certain models of mini combine harvesters as well as develop different models to fit various conditions in the field. This research aimed at discussing the development of these machines, present a detailed structure of the 4LZ – 0.8 model combine harvester, and give a detailed description of how the various systems in the combine harvester work together in order to ensure full functionality of the machine. The problems leading to the design of particular mini combine models in China were also discussed. Some of the problems that were discovered, leading to the development of the various models of mini combine harvesters were; hilly and mountainous fields, with small land areas, few contiguous patches, deep mud feet, large gaps between fields, which makes it difficult for large scale use of large combine harvesters. This led to the design and development of small agricultural machines which can help in solving these problems, especially the 4LZ – 0.8, 4LZ 1.0Q, 4L110, 4LZG-3.0 and 4LZZ-1.0 mini combine harvesters, together with other models. The different systems in the 4LZ – 0.8 mini combine harvester, the structural composition, the operation principle of the various systems, a comprehensive assessment and advantages of the 4LZ – 0.8 model combine harvester have also been discussed in this research. Keywords; Mini combine harvester; Agricultural machines; Agricultural engineering; Threshing system; Cleaning system, Separation device, Harvesting system.


This paper explores the importance of the scientific enterprise incubator for the growing up of central China taking Wuhan city as example,such as to foster the shaping of enterprise,to promote the increasing of economy,to drive the developing of the other fields of the growing up of central China.The conclusion can be got that the scientific enterprise incubator is one of the breakthrough points beyond routine development of central China,which is also the important support of the growing up of central China.


Stocks in the Shanghai market that hit upper price limits typically exhibit three characteristics: high returns, high volumes, and news coverage. We show that these price limit events attract investors' attention. Attention-grabbing events lead active individual investors to buy stocks they have not previously owned. Consistent with lowering investor search costs, events that affect a few (many) stocks lead to increased (decreased) buying. Upper price limit events coincide with initial price increases followed by statistically significant price mean reversion over the following week. Rational traders (statistical arbitrageurs) profit in response to attention-based buying. Smart traders accumulate shares on date t, sell shares on date t+1, and earn a daily average profit of 1.16%. We show the amount they invest predicts the degree of attention-based buying by individual investors. We end by decomposing individual investor trades in order to estimate losses attributable to behavioral biases. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


This paper deals with automatic modulation classification of communication signals. A new scheme of automatic modulation classification using wavelet analysis and wavelet support vector machine (WSVM) is proposed. Further, a new way of training for wavelet features is carried out to adapt to signals which are non-stable and varied in a wide range of signal-to-noise rates (SNR). Through such training, a single classifier can classify modulation types with high accuracy without knowing signals' SNR if only the SNR is in a certain range. Computer simulation shows that the classifier can separate ten modulation types, i.e. 2ASK, 4ASK, 2FSK, 4FSK, 2PSK, 4PSK, 16QAM, TFM, pi/4QPSK, OQPSK and success rates are over 96.5% when SNR is not lower than 3 dB. Accuracy and efficiency of the proposed scheme are obviously improved


The future of Open and Distance Education (ODE) in developing countries will benefit from a critical analysis of its operational environment due to the belief that it might contribute substantially to poverty reduction if its potentials are recognized. It is however, observed that the demand of ODE is increasing due to the associated potentials for new innovations and use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) that results to the increased demand of knowledge to both literate and illiterate.


The invention provides a dynamic password card. The dynamic password card comprises a parsing module, a button, an OTP (one time password) generating module and a dispaly screen, wherein the parsing module is used for parsing a received challenge code to obtain recognizable deal information, and outputting the deal information to the display screen; when the deal information displayed by the display screen is correct, the button receives a first confirmation instruction which is then output to the OTP generating module; the OTP generating module generates a dynamic password according to the first confirmation instruction of the button and the challenge code and outputs the dynamic password to the display screen; and the display screen is used for displaying the deal information output from the parsing module and the dynamic password generated by the OTP generating module. The dynamic password card provided by the invention can parse the key deal information (such as an account number and an amount of money) and display the information to users according to the input challenge code when detecting that the challenge code is input, so that the users can master the specific conditions of deal, and the dynamic password is prevented from being misused to cause the insecurity of capital accounts of the users.


Arglabin was studied for the effect on the system of peroxide oxidation of lipids (POL), antioxidant protection (AOP) and oxidation modification of proteins (OMP) in the blood of patients with locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) when administered prior to a pre-surgery radiation therapy (RT). RT was found to contribute to the preservation of high lipoperoxidation rate in LABC patients, induces the formation and accumulation of dinitrophenyl hydrasones both of basic and neutral nature. Administration of Arglabin prior to RT has a positive effect on POL and AOP system on the whole which is seen in the reduction of the accumulation rate of dienone conjugates to 1.3 times, ketodienes to 1.5 times, average weight molecules to 1.3 times in blood erythrocytes and lipoperoxidation coefficient to 1.5 times. Arglabin contributes to the expressed decrease of AOP indices in the blood of the patients after finishing RT in the pre-surgery period.


Humans exhibit regularities in almost everything they do. We describe a Markov model derived from the behavior patterns of an agent, which is used to determine strategies by predicting which action a user is likely to execute next. We evaluate the predictive accuracy of this approach on a large dataset collected from sample Wumpus World games. We demonstrate from this approach that, the model can correctly predict the user's next action with minimal computation and memory resources. Such predictions can then be used to imitate player strategies in a variety of games and other strategic domains.


Quantitative analysis of the content of tannins in the rhizomes of great burnet (Sanguisorba
offici-
nalis L.) was performed using Leventhal's permanganometric method, its Kursanov's modification, and
spectrophotometry. Advantages and disadvantages of the methods used were discussed to determine the
quantitative content of tannins in the active parts of different plants. New locations of S.
officinalis
populations in various regions of the Republic of Tatarstan were detected. The discovered
populations
differ in terms of habitat conditions. It was revealed that S. officinalis at the territory of the
Republic of Tatarstan can be both light and shade demanding. The quantitative characteristics of
tannins in
the active parts of S. officinalis from two populations were investigated. The methods used to
determine the content of tannins gave different results. It was found that the populations of S.
officinalis differ in time when they reach the maximum content of tannins, which depends on the
phase of vegetation and
the dynamics of accumulation of tannins.


Although this topic pops up in the press from time to time, surprisingly few people are aware that there is a WWI ammunition dump site off the Belgian coastal town of Heist. The figures are perplexing: at least 35,000 tonnes of German ammunition, at least a third of which are chemical shells, located at only a couple of kilometres from the esplanade! Yet there s till are many gaps in our knowledge and it turns out that these are not easy to fill.


impact. The products are liquids or solids, depending on their ester groups structures (R 1 , R 2 , R 3 = ALKYL or/ and ARIL) and amino components. The solubility of these products in water or in different common solvents is also a condition of their molecular structures. The substances are characterized by a high chemical stability to storing, solar radiation, and atmospheric oxygen etc. Also, the products are chemically stable in conditioning compositions and in direct contact to protected materials. The product is insoluble in water but is soluble in different organic solvents. After washing the objects or wetting the surfaces by spraying, the product makes a residual layer with disinfectant properties for a long period of time. The mixtures of compounds (I) and (II) are characterized by a strong microbiological activity developed, even at low levels of concentration (0.07% - 0.2 %), on a wide spectrum with bactericide, fungicide, algaecide effects etc., having at the same time a repellent and insecticide action. Laboratory tests proved the effectiveness of these products for positive- gram bacteria and also for negative-gram bacteria. These substances are characterized through a low toxicity for mammals and human subjects, feature that doesn't impose specific measures in labor protection during preparation, conditioning, handling or use. Even more, when contacted with STL or toxins, these substances usually decompose into non-toxic compounds. By proper conditioning, products with multiple decontaminant effects can be obtained. The Alkyl-phosphate 2005 product can be used with very good results also as a decontaminant against bio-terrorism attacks.


This paper examines the root causes of recent attempts by central and eastern European (CEE) Roma to seek asylum in the European Union (EU) and considers their future migration potential and its implications for EU enlargement. While a westbound Roma migration is not favoured by current member states, instruments designed to discourage it will have but short‐term effect as after EU enlargement CEE Roma will have the right of free movement within the EU. Any attempt to prevent migration will then be illegal; accepting such a migration is however likely to prove unpopular. The article shows that two instruments that ought to resolve the problem, the 'Copenhagen Criteria' and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, are unlikely to do so and goes on to conclude by suggesting that Roma communities have as much a part to play in seizing the window of opportunity for integration, as do majority societies and governments in providing it.


This short review summarizes and links classical works with recent publications to give an overview about the main processes of fragmentation of the lowland Atlantic Forest of Pernambuco since colonial times and to show how this process continued during the agricultural revolution up to the present. The lowland Atlantic Forest of Pernambuco is an extremely endangered endemism centre and many of its biota are at the rim of extinction. Sugarcane has always been the main economic factor in the forest zone and so up to now sugarcane fields dominate this area. The broad river valleys were the first to be used for sugarcane cultivation. Since the availability of industrially produced fertilizers, the large but nutrient-poor tablelands or tabuleiros were used as well. The presently still forested sites are simply not suitable for the cultivation of sugarcane due to their strong inclination or necessary to preserve the water resources. They are protected by law, nevertheless their maintenance is not guaranteed. For the growing demand of biofuels the production of sugarcane turned a focus of international attention. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________


This study examined Akan marriage performance by comparing the present and the past constructively. Marriage is a significant institution in the Akan culture of Ghana, playing a crucial role in shaping societal values and norms. This study aims to conduct a comparative and constructive analysis of Akan marriage performance, exploring the changes that have occurred over time and their impact on contemporary practices. Comparatively, it was established that, Akan marriages were often arranged by parents or extended family members with little input from the individuals involved. However, in modern times, there is a shift towards more self-choice marriages, where individuals have greater freedom in selecting their partners. Constructively, it was revealed that, many Akan couples today strive to strike a balance between honouring traditional customs and incorporating modern elements into their marriage ceremonies. This blend allows them to maintain cultural connections while also adapting to contemporary realities. The study confined itself with primary source of data. Other authorities' works that are related to marriage performance; old and present, were consulted and reviewed to match up with the current study. Descriptive and survey design was adapted for the investigation. Purposive sampling technique was used to elicit significant information for the analysis. Data were collected through interviews and observations. One hundred and fifty (150) participants were involved in the investigation. Theories that support the investigation are Karl Marx (1848) social change theory and Walt Rostow (1960) modernization theory. These theories provide different lenses through which to analyze and understand the comparative and constructive analysis of Akan marriage performances, considering the historical, cultural, social, and gender dynamics involved.


Abstract : The transonic cascade wind tunnel at the Turbomachinery Laboratory was modified by incorporting a perforated wall section in the upper nozzle block. The purpose of this modification was to cancel the oblique shock waves from the cascade blades and to aid in starting the supersonic flow in the tunnel. Tests results indicated that the modification performed successfully. Supersonic flow was established through the cascade blading which models the relative flow at the tip of the laboratory's transonic compressor. A butterfly valve must yet be installed in the cascade exhaust to produce back pressures corresponding to the compressor's transonic operation. (Author)


Abstract In classical South Asia, most philosophers thought that the self (if it exists at all) is what the first-person pronoun 'I' stands for. It is something that persists through time, undergoes conscious thoughts and experiences, and exercises control over actions. The Buddhists accepted the 'no self' thesis: they denied that such a self is substantially real. This gave rise to a puzzle for these Buddhists. If there is nothing substantially real that 'I' stands for, what are we talking about when we speak of ourselves? In this paper, I present one Buddhist answer to this question, an answer that emerges from the work of the Abhidharma thinker Vasubandhu (4th to 5th century CE).


Large-scale SiO2 hollow nanoparticles were synthesized by a sol-gel method. The composition, morphology, and chemical bonding information of SiO2 hollow nanoparticles were studied by X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) and scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM). XANES at the Si L-edge and K-edge reveal the characteristics of hollow nanoparticles, which are essentially amorphous SiO2 with a slightly longer Si–O bond than SiO2 nanoparticles on average and deficiencies in oxygen. Individual SiO2 hollow spheres were also examined using STXM, which provides spectromicroscopic information, as well as the absolute thickness, of the sample.


Uzbekistan is a multinational state, home to over 130 nationalities. Most of them are Russian language speakers and learning about their country's official language has an important role for these citizens of the republic. Since the Uzbek and Russian languages are genetically refer to different families and structural features for different groups of languages, which mean that there are big differences between them. This is particularly revealed in the phonemic study languages, where there are skipped a lot of mistakes in broken accentology and in pronunciation of speech sounds of the Uzbek language. A comparative study of the phonemic system of the Uzbek and Russian languages will help Russian-speaking students to learn the correct pronunciation of specific consonant and vowel sounds, and thus prevent errors occurring under the influence of the mother tongue.


In 2000, the federal government approved a law that permitted the states to set wages floors above minimum wage. The states of Rio de Janeiro and Rio Grande do Sul adopted this law in 2001. We utilized panel data of Employment Monthly Survey from 2000 and 2001, and observed a low adherence to this law in these states. Furthermore, we get evidences of negligible effect on employment level. These results indicate a high legislation noncompliance due to low enforcement of the law, as suggested by the theory.


In this brief, we propose a class of generalized memristor-based neural networks with nonlinear coupling. Based on the set-valued mapping theory, novel Lyapunov indefinite derivative and Memristor theory, the coupled memristor-based neural networks (CMNNs) can achieve fixed-time stabilization (FTS) by designing a proper pinning controller, which randomly controls a small number of neuron nodes. Different from the traditional Lyapunov method, this paper uses the implementation method of indefinite derivative to deal with the non-autonomous neural network system with nonlinear coupling topology between different neurons. The system can obtain stabilization in a fixed time and requires fewer conditions. Moreover, the fixed stable setting time estimation of the system is given through a few conditions, which can eliminate the dependence on the initial value. Finally, we give two numerical examples to verify the correctness of our results.


Recent progresses on silica-based highly nonlinear fibers for practical FWM-based applications such as wavelength conversion efficiency enhancement and chromatic dispersion design are described, and then functional wavelength conversions using the fibers are demonstrated.


— In this work the effects of the pure nitrogen gas plasma on PAN (Polyacrylonitrile) based carbon fiber surfaces are described. The fiber has been treated by using high frequency capacitively coupled single and dual RF-PECVD systems under different processing conditions; exposure times, RF powers and nitrogen gas pressures. Raman spectroscopy technique is used to characterize the surface structure of the fiber before and after the plasma treatment. It was found that the tensile strain increased when the pressure increased from 0.5 to 0.75 Torr in a single RF CCP system. In case of dual RF CCP with a low power discharge; 50 50 W and 30 minute processing time, there will be a compressive strain at a pressure of 0.9 Torr. In contrast, the amount of tensile strain decreases with increasing HF-RF (40.68 MHz) power at constant LF (2.1 MHz) power. Thus, by calculating the surface crystalline size according to intensity ratio of D (1340 cm − 1 ) and G (1577 cm − 1 ) bands, ID / IG, in the first order region, the crystallization of the carbon fiber has been demonstrated. In addition, the increase in the intensity ratio shows that the plasma treatment process causes more disorder surface structure as compared with the untreated one until the crystallization takes place.


The RELIGARE project is about religions, belonging, beliefs and secularism in Europe. It examines the legal rules protecting or limiting (constraining) the experiences of religious or other belief-based communities. Where the practices of communities or individuals do not conform to State law requirements, or where communities turn to their own legal regimes or tribunals, the reasons behind these developments need to be understood.


Crown rust, caused by Puccinia coronata f. sp. avenae, is an important disease of oat (Avena sativa). Pyramiding effective resistance from diverse sources is one strategy to provide more durable control of crown rust. The objective of this study was to develop a DNA marker for the resistance gene Pc94 to crown rust derived from the diploid oat Avena strigosa. Amplified fragment length polymorphism generated two DNA fragments that were associated with the resistance gene Pc94 in a F2 population derived from a cross between the rust-susceptible oat 'Calibre' and a near-isogenic hexaploid oat line, S42, possessing Pc94. One of the fragments was successfully converted into two sequence-characterized amplified region (SCAR) markers linked to the Pc94 gene in the Calibre/S42 F2 population. Specificity of the SCAR markers to the Pc94 gene was confirmed in three other populations. The estimated distance between the SCAR markers and Pc94 ranged from 0.9 to 3.4 centi-Morgan. These SCAR markers developed for the Pc94 gene will be valuable tools for pyramiding this gene with other resistance genes to crown rust in marker-assisted breeding programs when crown-rust races with the appropriate virulence combinations are not available to detect the genes being introgressed.


A lot of conflicts that are observed in rural areas can be qualified as environmental conflicts. The question is whether environmental arguments mobilised by social actors are to be considered as a sort of rhetoric with some hidden interests or if there is a specifcity or a novelty in these environmental discourses around nature, pollution or landscape and biodiversity. This paper defends the second assumption. Current analysis consider conflicts around rural territories as conflicts between social groups that are competing to use space according their own social or economic priorities. But when we describe environmental conflicts, we can see other stakes that emerge from the social dynamics of conflict. Thus this contribution suggests to analyse these conflicts as framing conflicts that aim at redefining these objects. Then our analysis tries to describe the social dynamics, the specifc processes of social alliances and oppositions that lead to draw up new framings. These processes imply a new norms, new knowledges or techniques, and transformed identities in order to rebuild territories. Beyond the concrete objects that are at stake, this paper propose a new grid to analyse territories by borrowing concepts to the deleuzian philosophy.


Abstract : A stacked plot of 24-hour magnetograms from the AFGL Magnetometer Network is presented for each UT day of the year 1983. Each plot, on a single page, contains all 21 traces from the fluxgate magnetometers of the network(three components at seven stations). The data plotted are 2 min averages of the 1 min edited data set that has been provided to the World Data Center. To aid in comparisons between resolution of one or two nanoteslas. For the ten percent of all days that are more active, the plots have been repeated at a reduced amplitude. These magnetograms serve to assess the general character of magnetic activity, identify events for scientific study, and indicate the coverage and quality of the data available from the World Data Center.


This study is an attempt to develop an index on ethnic tolerance among the Malay, Chinese and Indian undergraduate students of three Malaysian public universities. It focuses on three main domains: religious practices, ethnic‒cross relationship and governance. The data of 378 respondents were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) software version 22. The calculation and the measurement of the index are based on the method and equations used in calculating the index among Malaysian youths in 2015 that were capable of incorporating many domains. All the domains are significant in contributing to ethnic tolerance the composite index value of 4.13 out of 5 was obtained which shows the students are at the level of highly tolerant.


The need for cultivating the discipline of economics by foresters is emphasised. The requirement of the various Industries projected to 1975 is briefly stated. Economics of raising plantations of Bamboo, Eucalyptus and Teak are dealt in a comparative manner. The need for selecting the best sites available even for species which can thrive on poorer soils is emphasised. The need and method of planning of plantation schemes is touched upon.


Four forms of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy involving experienced therapists and psychiatric outpatients were compared in an outcome investigation. Patients received either individual therapy or group therapy that lasted either 6 months or 24 months. A comprehensive set of outcome scores provided by patients, therapists, and an independent assessor was monitored each 6 months including a 6-month follow-up assessment. Therapy outcome, therapy process as viewed by the therapists, and cost-effectiveness were examined. What emerged as important was the particular form of therapy received, not the general type of therapy or the general duration of therapy when considered as independent dimensions. The results favored long-term group therapy and short-term individual therapy over long-term individual therapy and short-term group therapy. Advantages and difficulties associated with each form of therapy are discussed.


A series of dichloride complexes of titanium and zirconium with amidate and ureate ancillary ligands have been prepared. Three examples of bis(amidate)dichlorotitanium and zirconium complexes were effectively synthesized through salt metathesis with metal tetrachloride as starting materials. Optimum results were achieved using sodium amidate salts formed from sodium bis(trimethylsilyl)amide and neutral amide proligands, while other methods were ineffective. Use of electron-donating ureate ligands in lieu of amidates enables preparation through alternate routes. Protonolysis of Ti(NMe2)2Cl2 and Zr(NMe2)2Cl2(dme) with urea proligands leads to dichlorobis(ureate) complexes in good yield. Using a tethered bis(ureate) ligand eliminates the fluxional behaviour and coordination isomerism observed for both bis(amidate) and bis(ureate) zirconium complexes.(© Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2009)


The Survey of British Dialect Grammar was carried out between 1986 and 1989. Its main aims were to increase our knowledge of the morphology and syntax of BrE dialects, and to consider the edu-cational implications arising from the coexistence of Standard English and dialect grammar. The Survey responses indicated those features that are most widespread in urban varieties of BrE, including some not usually included, such as should of. Some features widely reported are thought to be used by 'educated' speakers so should perhaps not be considered as nonstandard, such as there's and there was, never as past tense negator, and (possibly) adverbial quick. All these features are characteristic of spoken English, and children have to learn not to use them in their school writing. Perhaps such features should be thought of as 'social dialect' features rather than as regional dialect features, but their social distribution has not yet been determined.


The development of student health services in colleges and universities has led, during the past decade, to a growing awareness of the importance of mental health problems in student populations (see Davy, 1960; Malleson, 1963).


Over a two-year period beginning in March 2004, community colleges in Maryland developed a revised set of accountability indicators for a state-mandated Performance Accountability Report first required by a 1988 statute. A major innovation was a new model for assessing student degree progress. This article explains the development and components of this new degree progress model and examines how three sets of environmental factors - service area characteristics, institutional characteristics, and student body characteristics - correlate with graduation-transfer rates for sixteen Maryland community colleges. The analysis is exploratory with several methodological limitations, but is also suggestive of how environmental factors influence student outcomes. The article concludes with a comparison of actual graduation-transfer rates with expected rates following the framework advocated by Astin. Introduction to the Maryland Degree Progress Model The Maryland Model analyzes the progress toward degree completion of community college students by incorporating 1) developmental education needs and developmental course completion, 2) interim measures of success, and 3) transfer to other institutions, including private and out-of-state institutions. The model was developed by the Maryland Community College Accountability Work Team during 2004 in response to a charge from the Maryland Council of Community College Chief Executive Officers. The presidents appointed the Work Team on March 5, 2004, with a charge to create a statewide outcomes assessment model incorporating developmental studies, graduation, and transfer. From March 2004 to February 2005, the work team reviewed state accountability systems and indicators (Clagett, 2005). The basic framework for the Maryland Model was adapted from statewide accountability practices in Texas (Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, 2004). The definition of the study cohort was adapted from Florida (Florida Community College System, 2003). Guidelines and reporting templates were distributed to the institutional research offices of Maryland's sixteen community colleges in February 2005. Working with the institutional research professionals through the Maryland Community College Research Group, the work team provided direction and clarifications throughout the spring and summer of 2005. By January 2006, all sixteen colleges had completed the analysis for the cohort entering in fall 2000. Graduation, transfer, accumulation of 30 credits in good standing, and continuing enrollment were calculated for the fall 2000 cohort four years after initial entry. The Maryland Council of Community College Chief Executive Officers endorsed the Maryland Model of Community College Student Degree Progress and other proposed changes to the state-mandated Performance Accountability Report on September 16, 2005. The Maryland Association of Community Colleges presented the proposed revisions, including indicators derived from the Maryland Model, to representatives of the Maryland Higher Education Commission, Department of Legislative Services, and Department of Management and Budget on November 17, 2005. The proposal was endorsed at that meeting and subsequently adopted by the Maryland Higher Education Commission in February 2006. The first Performance Accountability Reports incorporating indicators based on the Maryland Model were submitted to the Commission July 1, 2006. Defining the Model Cohort People attend community colleges for a variety of reasons other than earning a degree. Identifying degree-seekers is not straightforward, as student goal data are often incomplete, changeable, out of date, and even deliberately false. Students may not know whether they want to pursue a degree when they enroll. Data collection systems may not reliably collect student goal data. Relying on a student's declared major is problematic since many colleges require all students (including non-degree-seekers) to declare a major, and to qualify for financial aid, students may have to declare themselves to be degree-seeking. …


An experimentally feasible scheme for implementing quantum dense coding in cavity QED is proposed. In the scheme the atoms interact simultaneously with a highly detuned cavity mode with the assistance of a classical field. The scheme is insensitive to the cavity decay and the thermal field. Bell states can be exactly distinguished via detecting the atomic state, and the quantum dense coding can be realized in a simple way.


In the light of some problems existing in Chinese fund industry, this paper advances some corresponding suggestions from three aspects of the governance structure, legal norm and professional subdivision.


The article describes the synchronic differences of literary and colloquial pronunciations of Wuxi Dialect,trying to find out the reasons for the direction of their competition and the speed of their evolution.In the meantime,it also analyses the phenomenon of complicated overlapping of literary and colloquial pronunciations.


This paper deals with an attitude control scheme for an orientation maneuver of spinning spacecrafts with body-fixed gas-jet thrusters. The spin axis control and the angular momentum vector control are the two controls proposed so far for small-angle maneuvers. The two control methods are extended to the largeangle maneuvers with which nonlinear dynamics must be taken into account. In the spin axis control, the spin axis and the angular momentum vector are simultaneously controlled by gas-jet thrusters to coincide with the desired orientation. The control time interval and the fuel-consumption are adopted as performance criteria. In the angular momentum vector control, only the angular momentum vector is positively controlled. After that, the passive nutation damper aligns the spin axis with the angular momentum vector. The adopted performance criteria is the fuel-consumption. These concepts are formulated as optimal control problems. The necessary conditions for these problems are obtained via Pontryagin's Maximum Principle. They show that the optimal control is of an on-off or bang-bang type. This result is encouraging to the users of thrusters providing only constant torques, because they may hope to realize optimal controls by applying the thrusters. Analytical solutions of the above mentioned problems are difficult to obtain because of their high dimensionality and nonlinearity. Minimum fuel problems are numerically solved by the method based upon the linear programming proposed by Wolshe et al. This method is also adopted with modifications to solve minimum time problems. Obtained result reveal that the angular momentum vector control is superior to the spin axis control from the viewpoint of reduction in the minimum fuel-consumption.


The authors describe a novel low-stress, acetylene-terminated polyimide well suited as the interlayer dielectric for MCMs (multichip modules). For successful application as an interlayer dielectric in a high-density microelectronic package, organic polymers must possess a variety of demanding properties, e.g. processibility, mechanical strength, adhesion, low dielectric constant, low water absorption, minimal outgassing, low thermal expansion, etc. The appropriate balance of properties depend upon the specific application. The authors describe a unique, oligomeric approach toward providing these balanced properties with the ability to customize the final product performance. It is shown how the thermal expansion and resulting residual film stress can be controlled by the proper choice of oligomeric structure. Acetylene end-capped polyisoimide oligomers with low thermal expansion from which low-stress dielectric films can be prepared are demonstrated. The properties and processing of these films are discussed and compared to conventional acetylene end-capped polyimide films.<<ETX>>


Objective: the study evaluated the clinical and echocardiographic data, before and after percutaneous mitral commissurotomy (PMC) in patients with calcific mitral stenosis.nbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbspnbsp Materials and methods: this is a retrospective study of 215 patients divided into two groups: 148 patients with calcific mitral stenosis (Group 1), and 67 patients without mitral calcifications (Group 2). The study period is between January 2011 to July 2015.Results: the group 1 was significantly older than the group 2 (49,7plusmn12,2 (group 1) versus 42,7plusmn12,8(group 2) , plt0,001), and had significantly more men than women (female gender:75% in group 1 vs.88,1% in group 2, plt0,05). Before PMC: group 1 had significantly higher Wilkins (9,3plusmn0,8(group 1) vs. 8,5plusmn0,6 (group 2)nbspnbsp p lt0,001) and smaller mitral valve area (0,91plusmn0,20 (group1)nbsp vs.0,99plusmn0,20 ( group 2), plt0,05). After PMC: the final valve area was significantly smaller in patients with, than, without calcifications (2,10plusmn0,26 vs.2,20plusmn0,22nbsp plt0,05). However , the rate of good immediate results, defined as valve area ge1,5 cmsup2 with no mitral regurgitation gt2/4 ( 97,9%vs.100% , pgt 0,05), and the rate of post PMC mitral regurgitation (MRge3/4) (2% vs.0% , pgt0,05), were no different between the 2 groups.Conclusion: PMC can be used for the treatment of patients with calcific mitral stenosis safety, with good immediate results.nbsp nbsp


We explain how to obtain a highly versatile and precisely annotated dataset for the multimodal locomotion of mobile users. After presenting the experimental setup, data management challenges and potential applications, we conclude with the best practices for assuring data quality and reducing loss. The dataset currently comprises 7 months of measurements, collected by smartphone's sensors and a body-worn camera, while the 3 participants used 8 different modes of transportation. It comprises 950 GB of sensor data, which corresponds to 750 hours of labelled data. The obtained data will be useful for a wide range of research questions related to activity recognition, and will be made available to the community1.


The invention discloses a signaling interaction method of a heterogeneous wireless network based on a layered semi-centralized structure, comprising the following steps that: each resource counter counts and calculates related load information within the range under jurisdiction, and transmits the load information obtained by counting and calculating to each resource allocator; if each resource counter does not receive an acknowledgement message sent by each resource allocator within a waiting time limit, the signaling interaction method when each resource allocator malfunctions is executed; if each resource counter receives the acknowledgement message sent by each resource allocator within the waiting time limit, each resource allocator transmits the load information counted and calculated by each resource counter to a primary information server a1; if each resource allocator does not receive an acknowledgement message sent by the primary information server a1 within the waiting timelimit, the signaling interaction method when the primary information server a1 malfunctions is executed; and if each resource allocator receives the acknowledgement message sent by the primary information server a1 within the waiting time limit, the signaling interaction method when all executing devices operate normally is executed.


The study of the law and the jurisprudence reveals that the creditor has numerous duties which demonstrate themselves, as well in contractual subject, during the execution of the contract or after the nonfulfillment that is after the emergence of the damage, as in extra-contractual subject. Therefore, the creditor must be honest, namely loyal and honest, and reasonable, that is that he should be diligent, cautious and moderated. He should know how to act and react, according to a set of standards of behavior the application of which is placed under the control of the judge which, to appreciate them, has, more vast, moderating and sovereign powers. We insist on the term duty and not obligation because the constraints of the creditor have nothing to do with the contents of the obligation stemming from the contract or from the obligation arisen from the law, from the offence or from the quasi-offence; This duty is connected with the effect or with the compulsory force of the legal relation which they transcend and impose themselves upon the creditor without counterpart chargeable to the debtor. The duty of the creditor has in common certain number of characters : they have an extra-contractual nature, constitute a set of standards of behavior based on moral and technical foundations and are sanctioned by traditional civil measures and, by "peines privees" (private punishments), which present the peculiarity of power to be at the same moment preventive, repressive and compensatory. The force to this duties lies in the homogeneity of their characters and in the efficiency of the measures which assure the respect for it. It is for that reason that we can say that they are not category-specific but form, henceforth, a real category. From then on, it would not be logical and desirable that the legislator finishes this evolution and enriches our substantive law of capacities giving an official character to this duties following the example of the Anglo-Saxon countries and other European countries?


The author analyzes the performance indexes of American and Japanese automotive generators and the demands of domestic industry standard;analyzes the factors and rules affecting main performance indexes from the angle of alternator design;emphasizes on how to regulate the design and manufacturing techniques to make product meet the technical demands of engine and car.


Cadmium is a known industrial and environmental pollutant. The present study was conducted to assess the potential influence of maternal cadmium (Cd) exposure on postnatal development and neuromotor maturation in offspring rats. Moreover, locomotors activity and anxiety - like behavior was also monitored post weaning. Cadmium chloride in doses of 0 , 5, 50 mg / L was administered orally in drinking water to pregnant rats from the 7 th day of pregnancy till weaning of these pups at 30 days of age . All the females were allowed to deliver and wean their offspring. The pups were evaluated for physical development and neuromotor maturation (Reflexes). Also, open- field activity and anxiety- like behavior in elevated plus maze (EPM) were determined at weaning age of young rats. The results revealed that, birth weight of pups exposed to high doses of Cd was decreased relative to controls. A delay in some developmental landmarks (incisor eruption, vagina opening, testes descent) due to maternal cadmium exposure was also noticed pups. Moreover, a delay in neuromotor development (neonatal reflexes) and poor motor coordination was recorded in Cdcl2 exposed neonates. Cadmium - exposed offspring showed hyperactivity in open field test presented by increased horizontal locomotion. Anxiogenic effect of cadmium was evidently observed during open -field and elevated plus maze tests. Our results strongly suggest that maternal exposure to Cdcl2 in high doses has detrimental effects on the physical maturation & reflexes of neonate rats as well as anxiety - like behavior. (Mervat M. Kamel, Abeer H. Abd El Razek Perinatal Eexposure to Cadmium Affects Neurobehavioural Development and Anxiety - Like Behaviour in Rat Offspring. Life Science Journal. 2011; 8(4):529 -536) (ISSN: 1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com.


Based on delay-line read-out methods of micro-channelplate (MCP) stacks we develop imaging system for single particle and photon spectroscopy. A complete system consists of an open MCP-detector with helical wire anode, specially designed front-end electronics and a stand alone PC-based TDC-system. We achieve a position resolution better than 0.1 mm and excellent linearity for open dimensions up to 100 mm, multi-hit operation, and detection rates up to 20 kiloEvents/sec in an event-listing mode or over 1 MegaCount/sec in a histogram mode. Both modes allow 2D position and time-of-flight (TOF) spectroscopy with approximately 1 nanosec TOF resolution. Furthermore, we currently test a delay-line anode on printed circuit that operates with image charge pick-up from a high-resistive collecting anode. With an image charge detection method this 3D-imaging technique can be applied to commercial sealed MCP single-photon detectors. While a simple high-resistive collection anode is placed inside the tube, a position sensitive pick-up electrode can be mounted next to it outside the vacuum wall.


Reverse osmosis can potentially be used for separation of acetic acid from waste stream. However, the investigation on the separation of this binary mixture utilizing reverse osmosis is scarce. Thus, this study aims to evaluate the feasibility of lab-synthesized and commercially available reverse osmosis membranes to separate low acetic acid concentration from aqueous mixture. A commercially available AG membrane and three laboratory synthesized polysulfone (PSf) membranes were used in this work. Initial test for water permeation using dead end filtration found that 17.5 wt% PSf has the highest water permeability. As the polymer concentration decreases, the membrane porosity increases which decreases the resistance which enables the penetration of the permeant more easily through the membrane matrix resulting in higher water permeation when 17.5wt% PSf was used. Further modification by interfacial polymerization to form a thin polyamide layer on the porous support was seen to have had improved the membrane affinity towards water resulted in increased of permeation through the membrane matrix. However, the rejection was lower than that of the AG membrane. This indicates that, the increase in water permeation when 17.5wt%PSf was used is due to the high membrane porosity. This is evidence since 17.5wt%PSf has the highest water flux but lower acetic acid rejection compared to the commercial AG membrane. Low rejection of acetic acid when reverse osmosis membrane was applied indicates that other factor such as Donnan effect has to be further considered when synthesizing the membrane.


Segmentation of chest CT scans from Covid 19 patients can quantify the severity of the disease. A new approach that has achieved very promising results uses two longitudinal input scans of a patient from two different time points. Information such as spatio-temporal cues from the reference scan can then be used to improve disease segmentation. This resulted in better performance compared to a static model. The segmentation performance of this network is limited by the fact that there is very little annotated longitudinal CT lung data from Covid-19 patients. To overcome this limitation and improve segmentation, we aim to use transfer learning as in Model Genesis. This involves pre-training a source model on chest CT images with self-supervised learning. A major advantage of this approach is that it does not require labelled data. The trained source model can then yield a much more powerful target segmentation model. To pre-train the model with self-supervision, the chest CT images are transformed in various ways and the task of the encoder-decoder network is to reconstruct the original image. In this way, the network already has to learn important information, such as local boundaries and texture, to be able to reconstruct the original image. In contrast to Model Genesis, we would use a longitudinal approach as in the target model, meaning that we input two chest CT images to the network and one of them is to be reconstructed. In doing so, the network can learn, for example, to retrieve certain information from the second scan. Date & Time 04.März 2022 -11:30 Title Stiffness-based Ultrasound and CT Registration for Optimal Scanning Trajectory Student Chenyu Zhang


Introduction and objectives: The most commonly used treatment for extraarticular fractures of distal radius is closed reduction and maintenance of reduction in a cast. Two types of casts are used: plaster splint for 7–10 days and later exchanged to a circular cast and the use of circular cast immediately. The objective of this work is to compare both types of treatment in terms of ability to achieve reduction and to maintain it during healing.Methods: A prospective, randomized and blinded study was designed. To date, 21 patients enrolled the study. Informed consent was given. The inclusion criteria were: older than 35 years, extraarticular distal radius fracture sustained less than 24 hours before and not previously treated. Exclusion criteria included previous injury in the same wrist, open fracture, and not compliance with the protocol. After intrafocal anesthesia with mepivacaine 1%, fracture was reduced under traction and immobilized in a dorsal short plaster splint (splint group) or a circular short ...


Purpose – Clinical placements within healthcare are fundamental to student development and higher education institutions need to ensure that students' learning within practice is supported. There is an increasing evidence base to suggest that simulation may help to bridge this gap. The purpose of this paper is to describe how a cohort of 85 first‐year mental health students undertook a simulation project, in which they followed the admission of a virtual patient (in the form of an avatar) called Mohammed, to an acute inpatient ward. This simulation project was a two‐week experience for student nurses, whereby they engaged with a virtual service user and worked in teams and as individuals to support his recovery. This project allowed students to practice their clinical skills and communication skills within a safe and supportive environment.Design/methodology/approach – This paper is an evaluation of a two‐week experience for student nurses where they were supported to engage with a virtual service user. I...


Abstract The present study examines the development of certain hypothetical cognitive structures—infralogical groupings described by Piaget and Inhelder—in high school students. Six Piagetian-type tasks, proposed to evaluate functioning with certain infralogical groupings, were individually administered to 108 boys and girls from grades eight, 10, and 12. The development of infralogical groupings in the concrete operational period purportedly enables Ss to establish spatial relationships between objects and between objects and their parts. A scalogram analysis was used to examine the development of three projective and three Euclidean infralogical groupings; the six tasks formed a hierarchy and composed a unidimensional scale when placed in order from least to most difficult. This task order was partially supported by the results of the McNemar test between adjacent pairs. Statistically significant differences in attainment were observed between age/grade level as grades increased on five tasks, and betwe...


The charge density distribution in N-n-butyltetrachloro-phthalimide has been determined by means of high-resolution X-ray diffraction at 100K. The supramolecular structure of the title compound is stabilized by intermolecular halogen bonds C-Cl∙∙∙O and intermolecular Cl∙∙∙Cl interactions [1]. In the current presentation the deformation density distribution of electron density and topological analysis of electron density for the title compound crystal are shown. The deformation density clearly indicates a significantly anisotropic distribution of electrons in the halogen atom with less of them in the direction of C-Cl bond and more in the other two directions (see Figure 1 below). The topological analysis confirms conclusions derived from the deformation density distribution. This research was supported by a grant of the Polish Ministry of Education and Science (Grant No. N N204 028138).


This paper provides an extensive evaluation of high frequency jump tests and measures, in the context of using such tests and measures in the estimation of dynamic models for asset price jumps. Specifically, we investigate: i) the power of alternative tests to detect individual price jumps, most notably in the presence of volatility jumps; ii) the frequency with which sequences of dynamic jumps are correctly identified; iii) the accuracy with which the magnitude and sign of a sequence of jumps, including small clusters of consecutive jumps, are estimated; and iv) the robustness of inference about dynamic jumps to test and measure design. Substantial differences are discerned in the performance of alternative methods in certain dimensions, with inference being sensitive to these differences in some cases. Accounting for measurement error when using measures constructed from high frequency data to conduct inference on dynamic jump models is also shown to have an impact. The sensitivity of inference to test and measurement construction is documented using both artificially generated data and empirical data on both the S&P500 stock index and the IBM stock price. The paper concludes by providing guidelines for empirical researchers who wish to exploit high frequency data when drawing conclusions regarding dynamic jump processes.


[Objective]To understand the genetic characteristics of influenza A(H3N2) virus circulated in 2 outbreaks in the different area of Nanning at the same time. [Methods]Viral RNA was extracted from the influenza A(H3N2) virus subtype isolated from MDCK,and was sequenced full-length hemagglutinin nucleotide,then the amino acid sequence was deduced.The analysis focused on the genetic characteristics of HA1 Gene. [Results]A total of 5 strains of influenza A(H3N2) virus subtype were isolated.The results of nucleotide and amino acid sequence demonstrated that the similarities of nucleotide and amino acid sequence compared with Northern Hemisphere vaccine strain A/Wisconsin/67/2005(H3)recommended by WHO in 2007 were 98.58%~98.89% and 96.96%~97.87% respectively,the number of alternative were 11~14 and 7~10,which involved 3 major antigenic sites. [Conclusion]The strains of influenza A(H3N2) virus subtype circulated in the 2 outbreaks had antigenic drift and virulence change.The characteristics of strains isolated from different areas were not quite similar,and the strains from 1 outbreak at different time were different in gene.


the observational interval than to those which arrive later. As I have noted before, an improvement could be obtained by making T less than 2jtRC seconds, but to do so might destr-oy the great advantage of the constant-deflection method—its constant deflection—since the deflection may not be sufficiently complete and the meter needle may still be moving rapidly. It is possible, however, to eliminate at least a part of this defect of the constant-deflection method. The simplest way to accomplish this result is to use a pen-and-ink recording meter with the photometer instead of the usual needle-type meter. In addition, the time constant of the photometer should be much shorter than the desired observation time. A good value might be RC T/SO. Only one deflection per observation should be made. The recording will show the noise superimposed upon the deflection; but, now the integration can be performed (by eye) in such a fashion that equal weight is given to all parts of the observation interval, thereby giving an increase in the precision of the measures. In practice, a recording meter gives perhaps 50 percent greater precision than the needle-type meter and should give results comparable with those given by electron-counting photometers.


We present a parallel optical compare and exchange (C and E) module that compares all the bits of two words in parallel. The implementation of the parallel C and E module utilizes smart pixel arrays based on the hybrid integration of heterojunction phototransistors (HPTs) and vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). This paper describes the design of the parallel C and E modules.<<ETX>>


Objective To explore the significance of reserving the whole rectus muscle sheath and the technique of rotationally-striping the rectum mucous membrane in treatment of familial polyposis coli(FPC) for retaining the FPC patients' urinating,defecating,and sexual functions to improve the life quality of the postoperative patients.Methods We reviewed the related operations performed by us for the FPC patients using the technique of rotationally-stripping the rectum mucous membrane to reserve the whole rectus muscle sheath in treatment of FPC.We evaluated the effectiveness of this kind of operation and the its effects on improving the patients' life quality,especially on the young patients.Results After the rectum mucous membrane was completely stripped,the whole rectus muscle sheath had no residual membrane tissues left within the sheath;thus,the membrane secretion would not develop and the postoperative infection would not occur;therefore,the operation was successful.In addition,the long-term operative effect was good as proctopolypus and canceration would not take place.Conclusion The reservation of the whole rectus muscle sheath and the rotationally-striping method for the rectum mucous membrane in treatment of FPC can retain the postoperative FPC patient's urinating,defecating,and sexual functions and can improve the patient's life quality,especially the young patient's life quality.


In the software engineering researchers have proposed many cost estimation techniques. This research paper shows modification of estimating interactive software project size with enhanced use case point. A critical study shows that how we can improve efficiency of original method of cost estimation enhanced use-case point. Estimating interactive software project size with Enhanced use case method and stored procedure with transaction will integrated for find the result with more efficient. Calculation of use case point are not difficult main difficultly is in defining use case and actor. This paper also shows how we may use stored procedure with transaction in calculation of use case point. Keywords—Use case point(UCP) ,interactive use case point ,


Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is a chronic autoimmune disorder in which the destruction of the insulin-producing cells and resulting clinical symptoms are preceded by the appearance of a number of islet-cell specific autoantibodies. Linkage (1) and association analyses have demonstrated that type 1 diabetes has a very strong genetic component, with specific alleles and haplotypes at the HLA class II genes, as well as HLA-A and -B alleles, conferring either susceptibility to or protection from T1D (2–6). The ability to identify individuals at high risk for type 1 diabetes using genetic and/or autoantibody markers (7–10) has been a long-standing goal of the diabetes research and clinical community and a critical element in T1D prevention strategies. The role of prediction in prevention is twofold: 1 ) Clinical trials to evaluate potential preventative interventions are more efficient if the recruited subjects are at high T1D risk, and 2 ) interventions are likely to be more effective if administered early in disease progression or during the prediabetic phase, a stage identified by autoantibody markers in individuals who carry genetic risk alleles.

Although a large number of genetic variants associated with T1D have been identified by genome-wide association study analyses (11), the major genetic determinants remain specific alleles at the HLA class II and, to a lesser extent, class I loci. Because specific combinations of alleles at the HLA loci determine the genetic susceptibility, the risk for T1D is best captured by considering DR-DQ haplotypes and genotypes …