The existence of high conductivity features such as fractures, karst zones, and void space conduits can severely restrict the sweep efficiency of water or polymer flooding. Preformed particle gel (PPG), as a cost-effective technology, has been applied to control excessive water production. However, conventional PPG has limited plugging efficiency in high-temperature reservoirs with large fractures or void space conduits. After water breakthrough, gel particles can easily be washed out from the fractures due to the lack of particle-particle association and particle-rock adhesion. This paper presents a comprehensive laboratory evaluation of a novel water-swellable high-temperature resistant hyper-branched re-crosslinkable preformed particle gel (HT-BRPPG) designed for North Sea high-temperature reservoirs (130 °C), which can re-crosslink to form a rubber-like bulk gel to plug such high conductivity features. This paper systematically evaluated the swelling kinetics, long-term thermal stability and plugging performance of the HT-BRPPG. Bottle tests were employed to test the swelling kinetic and re-crosslinking behavior. High-pressure resistant glass tubes were used to test the long-term thermal stability of the HT-BRPPG at different temperatures, and the testing lasted for over one year. The plugging efficiency was evaluated by using a fractured model. Results showed that this novel HT-BRPPG could re-crosslink and form a rubber-like bulky gel with temperature ranges from 80 to 130 °C. The elastic modulus of the re-crosslinked gel can reach up to 830 Pa with a swelling ratio of 10. In addition, the HT-BRPPG with a swelling ratio of 10 has been stable for over 15 months at 130 °C so far. The core flooding test proved that the HT-BRPPG could efficiently plug the open fractures, and the breakthrough pressure is 387.9 psi/ft. Therefore, this novel BRPPG could provide a solution to improve the conformance of high-temperature reservoirs with large fractures or void space conduits.


Macrofaunal Community Structure on the Gulf of Mexico Continental Slope: The Role of Disturbance and Habitat Heterogeneity at Local and Regional Scales. (May 2007) Archie Wood Ammons, B.S., Texas A&M University at Galveston Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mary Wicksten Dr. Gilbert Rowe The ecological forces that drive community structure of deep-sea benthic communities are poorly understood, yet such communities rival in biological complexity those of coral reefs or rainforests. Using components of the recently concluded DGoMB project, local and regional-scale structure of benthic macrofaunal communities were examined at thirty two locations throughout the continental slope of the northern Gulf of Mexico. Controlling factors associated with sediment disturbance, food supply, and faunal competition between functional ecological groups were evaluated for correlative and relational patterns. A higher order taxonomic sufficiency approach was used to calculate both alpha and beta diversity. The results of this study indicate that macrofaunal communities are very patchy, having wide variations in abundance at within-site, adjacent-site, and across-basin scales, yet all sample areas possess a large richness of higher taxa. Declining abundance was noted with increasing water depth and reduced particulate organic carbon levels. Upper-slope submarine canyons possess some of the highest abundances. Less mobile macrofauna, such as poriferans, bivalves, and scaphopods, dominate slope communities


The relaxation characteristics of solutions of the Soviet-made polymethine dye No. 3955 in various solvents were determined. A suitable selection of the solvent made it possible to vary the temporal correlation interval from 45 to 11 psec and the reduction in the temporal interval increased the spectral correlation interval. Under certain conditions the width and structure of the emission spectrum in one axial period remained constant throughout a giant pulse.


This paper represents an approach of using a distributed genetic algorithm for generating an aggregative production plan to maximize the total profit of the firm. The described methodology provides a tool which assists the company management in finding an optimal long-term production plan. The entire system is composed by a business information system a front-end for the database of the ERP system, a simulation model and a distributed genetic algorithm. The purpose of the integrated system is to help operative management personnel to take decisions with respect to long-term production planning. In order to improve the response time, the entire system is distributed across several network machines.


A compact and energy-efficient ternary logic gate based on MTJ-based nonvolatile logic-in-memory (NV-LIM) architecture is proposed for ternary neural network (TNN) hardware implementation. The use of feedback loops for equal-resistance sensing of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices achieves better energy efficiency as well as reduced MTJ device count and circuit area. Through an experimental evaluation of a basic component of TNN hardware, its impact on the compact and energy-efficient TNN hardware design is demonstrated.


This paper explores knowledge infrastructures developed with the aim of opening cultural heritage institutions for public access and involvement. We concentrate on the new modes of knowledge produc ...


ABSTRACT To-date, assessments of nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) of sugarcane have not included the contribution of its components, nitrogen uptake efficiency (NUpE) and nitrogen utilization efficiency (NUtE). This study determined these values, based on biomass and plant nitrogen (N) content, in two four-month-old pot-grown genotypes. The treatments included six N regimes, with nitrate (NO3—N) or ammonium (NH4+-N) supplied alone, or as NO3−-N for the first 6 weeks and then NH4+-N until harvest, each as 4 or 20 mM. Regardless of the N form, NUE was higher at four than at 20 mM due to significantly higher NUpE at low N supply. The results indicated that there was luxury N uptake and preference for NH4+-N nutrition, which resulted in the highest determined NUE. There were significant differences between genotypes in biomass, morphological growth parameters, N uptake, total plant N and NUE, the latter matching previously established sucrose yield-based NUE field rankings.


Charles S. Levy, DSW, is Professor, Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University, New York, New York. Considerable attention has been paid in the social work literature to the purposes, skills, and processes of supervision. But the subject of ethics in supervision has been virtually neglected. This article discusses some of the reasons for according to ethics in supervision a high priority, particularly because of current conditions in the field. Six conditions that presently exist in so cial work make the formulation and imple mentation of an ethic for supervision in social work more imperative than ever be fore: (1) resources for social work training and education have been reduced or elim inated, (2) social agencies are finding it difficult to raise funds for their programs, (3) what was formerly a tight labor market has become a tight job market, (4) social work education at the bachelor's degree and associate degree levels has increased, (5) agencies are employing greater numbers of paraprofessional personnel, and (6) pro fessional personnel are increasingly de ployed in supervisory positions.


The present paper provides a brief introduction to the book The Turns of Translation Studies: New Paradigm or Shifting Viewpoints?by Snell-Hornby, followed by a detailed analysis of its major features.


Aluminosilicate and ORMOCER gels and coatings containing photochromic dyes, 1, 3-dihydro-1, 3, 3-trimethylspiro-[2H-indole-2, 3'-[3H]-naphth-[2, 1-b][1, 4]-oxazine] (SO) and 1', 8a'-dihydro-2', 3'-dimethoxycarbonyl-spiro [fluorene-9, 1'-indolizine] (DHI), were prepared by the sol-gel method and the photochromic activity was monitored in the course of the sol-wetgel-xerogel transformation. The photochromic activity of the aluminosilicate gels decreases rapidly and even vanishes in the wetgel-xerogel stage while that of ORMOCER gels and coatings levels off in the early wetgel-xerogel stage at a reasonably high photochromic intensity with the colour-fading speed similar to that in ethanol and the photostability being considerably improved. The experimental results are discussed in terms of the matrix effect on photochromism of organic dyes.


Although liposarcomas are one of the more common sarcomas found in other tissues, they are among the rarest tumors in the breast. The purpose of presenting this case is to highlight one of rarest and interesting variant of breast sarcoma and the importance of misdiagnosis of liposarcoma in a tru-cut biopsy.


The application of microsurgical techniques to plastic and reconstructive surgery is a new trend, which has begun and advanced only during the last few decades. The advantages of using these techniques are: to improve the level of therapeutic and surgical results; to shorten the duration of patient hospitalization; to open the way to new surgical approaches; and to broaden areas of research. Early in 1964, we began small vessel anastomosis experiments and performed groin free flap replantation and transplantation in 60 dogs, with a survival rate of 66%. In 1965, we tried our first clinical case of groin free flap transfer, but failed because of arterial thrombosis. The Cultural Revolution in 1966 stopped all our microsurgical work, and it was not until 1973 that we continued both experimental and clinical microsurgery. As of September 1982, we have used microsurgical techniques in a total of 321 cases in our Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. We here present and analyze our work, with the aim of evaluating the merits, feasibility, and current degree of sophistication in the microsurgical techniques we use in plastic and reconstructive surgery.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of serratus anterior strengthening exercises on scapular position and Visual Analog Scale (VAS) pain measurements taken at the resting position in young adults with adducted scapular. The exercise program included stretching of the scapular retractor and strengthening of the serratus anterior muscle. We measured the distance from the midline of the thorax to the vertebral border of the scapular with a tape line (Superior Kibler), and the distance from the 7th cervical spinous process to the acromial angle with 3-dimension motion analysis system, to compare the resting scapular position before and after exercise. Fifteen subjects with adducted scapular were recruited to compare the resting scapular position and VAS. The distance from 7th cervical spine process to acromial angle of the scapular and VAS decreased significantly (p


The present paper extends the multimodal method, which is well known for liquid sloshing problems, to the free-surface problem modeling the levitating drop dynamics. The generalized Lukovsky-Miles modal equations are derived. Based on these equations an approximate modal theory is constructed to describe weakly-nonlinear axisymmetric drop motions. Whereas the drop performs almost-periodic oscillations with the frequency close to the lowest natural frequency, the theory takes a finite-dimensional form. Periodic solutions of the corresponding finite-dimensional modal system are compared with experimental and numerical results obtained by other authors. A good agreement is shown.


Retracing the steps of the fugitive Prince Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie - after his defeat at Culloden, this book offers insights into highland life and clan history. The author walked the hillsides and glens of the Highlands and sailed to Skye and the Outer Hebrides in following the route of the Prince's five-month flight, which was characterized by narrow escapes, hunger, fatigue and dependence on the loyalty of strangers.


This paper provides an overview of a technology that offers a direct connection to the power network without a step up transformer. Implementation of powerformer will bring a change in the present scenario of generation. It is also shown that powerformer can act as differential protection scheme for high voltage cable wound generator. Many other applications like stability control, controlling high voltage bus, are mentioned.


BACKGROUND: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive leukemia with 5-year overall survival of 20-25%. The major reason for treatment failure in AML is resistance to chemotherapy. Thus, there is an urgent need for identification of novel therapeutic agents for AML. Neoplastic cells, including AML, have dysfunctional redox regulation that results in increased reactive oxygen species (ROS). Accumulation of ROS leads to oxidation of free and incorporated nucleotides, leading to DNA damage and cell death. MTH1 is a nudix family hydrolase that sanitizes the oxidized nucleotide pool to prevent incorporation of these damaged bases in the DNA. MTH1 is thought to be non-essential for normal cells but crucial for neoplastic cells in order to avoid incorporation of oxidized dNTPs into DNA, thereby evading DNA damage and cell death. Whether MTH1 inhibitors have any activity against AML is not known. METHODS: Neoplastic myeloid cell lines HL-60, HEL, K562, KG1A, ML1, MV-4-11, SET2, and U937 were treated with varying concentrations of TH588 for a total of 48 hours. In experiments using the pan-caspase inhibitor Q-VD-OPh (Qvd), cells were pre-treated with 5µM Qvd for 1 hour followed by TH588. Cells were washed and stained with annexin, propidium iodide (PI), or MitoTracker (Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA) for flow cytometry. To evaluate the potential impact of MTH1 inhibition on chemorefractory AML, HL-60/VCR cells were treated with vehicle control or TH588 in culture medium with or without vincristine (1µg/ml). Percentage apoptosis was calculated by normalizing to vehicle only control. With IRB approval, bone marrow aspirate samples were obtained from patients with untreated AML or healthy controls. Mononuclear cells were analyzed using colony-forming unit (CFU) assays. The total number of erythroid (CFU-E) and myeloid (CFU-G, CFU-GM) colonies containing ≥50 cells were read on day 14 and reported as percentage colonies compared to vehicle control. RESULTS: TH588 induced dose-dependent cell death in each of the neoplastic cell lines tested except HEL. In particular, treatment with TH588 resulted in a dose-dependent increase in the number of cells undergoing apoptosis as indicated by annexin V and/or PI staining (IC 50 3.1-21.3µM, Figure 1). Pre-treatment with Qvd significantly inhibited TH588-induced cell death in all the cell lines studied except KG1A and SET2, suggesting a caspase-dependent mechanism of cell death. In further studies, cells treated with TH588 exhibited decreased MitoTracker staining; and Qvd pretreatment increased the number of MitoTracker Low cells at the same time apoptotic cells decreased, suggesting that mitochondrial damage is upstream of caspase activation in TH588-induced apoptosis. Treatment with TH588 not only induced apoptosis in HL-60/VCR cells, but also facilitated further apoptosis in cells co-treated with vincristine and TH588 (Figure 2). Treatment with TH588 also diminished colony formation in a primary AML sample (IC 50 6µM, Figure 3). Analysis of additional primary AML samples is ongoing. DISCUSSION: Our results show that the MTH1 inhibitor TH588 induces apoptosis in most neoplastic myeloid cells. MTH1 causes mitochondrial damage that, in turn, leads to caspase-dependent apoptosis in these cells. In HL-60/VCR cells representing chemorefractory phenotype, TH588 induces apoptosis as a single agent and resensitizes cells to vincristine. Moreover, TH588 significantly diminished colony formation in primary AML ex vivo . Further preclinical and possible clinical study of this class of agent appears warranted. Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Cotton occupies a prominent place in the national economy of our country and prosperity of millions of country's rural and urban population, who depend upon a beautiful harvest of this vegetative fibre and oil yielding cash crop. Several fungi found on market seeds used in foods are known to cause considerable damage either directly to those that carry them or to the crops that are raked from such contaminated seed stocks.


We present a novel method for initializing layers of tensorized neural networks in a way that avoids the explosion of the parameters of the matrix it emulates. The method is intended for layers with a high number of nodes in which there is a connection to the input or output of all or most of the nodes. The core of this method is the use of the Frobenius norm of this layer in an iterative partial form, so that it has to be finite and within a certain range. This norm is efficient to compute, fully or partially for most cases of interest. We apply the method to different layers and check its performance. We create a Python function to run it on an arbitrary layer, available in a Jupyter Notebook in the i3BQuantum repository: https://github.com/i3BQuantumTeam/Q4Real/blob/e07c827651ef16bcf74590ab965ea3985143f891/Quantum-Inspired%20Variational%20Methods/Normalization_process.ipynb


The invention relates to a production technology of a material applicable to the cylinder body and cylinder cover of a diesel engine, belonging to the field of casting technology. The technology comprises seven steps: equipment preparation, dosing, feeding, melting, adjustment of chemical components of molten iron, inoculation and pouring. By adopting the technology, the carbon saturation degree Sc of the molten iron of the cylinder body and cylinder cover material of the diesel engine is controlled to 0.9-0.93, the carbon equivalent CE is controlled to 3.95-4.1, and the molten iron fluidity and casting manufacturability are guaranteed; and meanwhile, the ripeness grade RG of the molten iron can reach 113%, the inoculation effect is guaranteed, and the potential of the material is fully developed. The relative hardness RH of the obtained cylinder body and cylinder cover material of the diesel engine can reach 0.84, and the cutting property is excellent. After one year of application of the technology, the cost can be reduced by 300 yuan for each ton of casting.


We derive the mass-weighted total density slopes within the effective (half-light) radius, γ′, for more than 2000 nearby galaxies from the SDSS-IV (Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV) MaNGA survey using Jeans-anisotropic-models applied to integral field unit observations. Our galaxies span a wide range of the stellar mass (109 M⊙ < M* < 1012 M⊙) and the velocity dispersion (30 km s−1 < σv < 300 km s−1). We find that for galaxies with velocity dispersion σv > 100 km s−1, the density slope has a mean value 〈γ′〉 = 2.24 and a dispersion σγ = 0.22, almost independent of velocity dispersion, consistent with previous lensing and stellar dynamical analysis. We also quantitatively confirm with high accuracy a turnover in the γ′–σv relation is present at σ ∼ 100 km s−1, below which the density slope decreases rapidly with σv, consistent with the results reported by previous analysis of ${\rm ATLAS^{\rm 3D}}$ survey. Our analysis shows that a large fraction of dwarf galaxies (below M* = 1010 M⊙) have total density slopes shallower than 1, which implies that they may reside in cold dark matter haloes with shallow density slopes. We compare our results with that of galaxies in hydrodynamical simulations of EAGLE, Illustris, and IllustrisTNG projects, and find all simulations predict shallower density slopes for massive galaxies with high σv. Finally, we explore the dependence of γ′ on the positions of galaxies in haloes, namely centrals versus satellites, and find that for the same velocity dispersion, the amplitude of γ′ is higher for satellite galaxies by about 0.1.


Readability is determined by the characteristics of the text that influence their understanding. The web is composed of content on various topics and the results retrieved in the top positions by the main search engines are expected to be those with the highest number of views. In this study, we analyzed the readability of web pages according to the topic to which it belongs and their position in the search result. For that, we collected the top-20 results retrieved by Google to 23,779 queries from 20 topics and used several readability metrics. The results of the analysis showed that the content from organizations (like colleges and other institutions) and health-related content have lower readability values. Categories Games and Home are on the opposite side. For the categories identified as having less readability, tools can be developed that help the user understand their content. We also found that top-ranked pages have higher values of readability. One can conclude that, directly or indirectly, readability is a factor that seems to be being considered by the Google search engine or has an influence on page popularity.


This study investigates the level of knowledge, awareness and understanding of fraud activities. It also identifies elements of fraud triangle theory which has the most influence on fraud activities and examines the fraudsters profile from academic staff perspectives. Findings from this study show that most of the academic staffs have a moderate knowledge and awareness of fraud and generally the information was obtained from the Internet. Most of them choose opportunity as the motivational factor for someone to perpetrate fraud and it will cause a serious problem to the society.


With the improvement of people's living standards and quality, playgrounds need to not only maximize their own profitability as a strategic goal in terms of fare sales and amusement facilities construction, but also need to meet consumer demand for maximum entertainment utility. Based on these two goals, this article uses the daily number of tourists in 2018 as the base period to make consumption behavior and fare predictions, and gives related recommendations. This article first uses the exponential smoothing method to calculate the initial forecast of the number of summer vacation and National Day visitors, and then combine the data from the first five months of the biennium to find the actual forecast value and determine the date with the largest number of people. Then build a gray forecasting model to get the initial forecast value, and finally get the forecast result of the number of visitors on August 5, 2019. Then use AHP method to explore the best scheme to play under the conditions of purchasing a ticket. Finally, compare the pass price and the total cost of the project from the perspective of the operator, and then combine the actual situation to determine that the setting of the ticket is necessary.


An empirical study was carried out to assess the effect of intensive vegetable cultivation on the amount of soil carbon stored in Abak, Onna, Uyo and Ikot Ekpene area of Akwa Ibom State, Southeastern Nigerian. The objectives of the study were to; assess the types of farming practices in the study area, characterize the physical and chemical properties of soils, quantify the amount and types of organic carbon stored as well as assessing the functional pool of soil organic carbon. Random and systematic sampling techniques were used for the collection of soil samples. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed that the average amount of soil carbon sequestered was similar among the study locations, ranging from 497.4 to Mgha


Customer expectations are the key for success in a market which comes from meeting or exceeding their expectation. Understanding the expectations of the customers is of utmost important to serve the customers better. Several literatures have clearly identified the influence of customers' past experience on their future expectation. This paper examines the involvement of experience driven mental process in the creation of customers' future expectations by explaining the role of mental component while processing information. This paper provides a conceptual framework of customer experience driven expectation by integrating the concept of customer experience, customer expectation and cognitive psychology. The paper also explains how the concept of mental accounting can be applied to explain the customer expectation and positioning of products. Introduction The concept of customer satisfaction is always considered as an important area in marketing. Meeting or exceeding the expectations leads to a high degree of satisfaction and failure to do so leads to dissatisfaction (Walker, 1995; Paul, 2012). Managing expectations of the customers is the key for success in any market (Paul, 2012). Meeting expectation increases the probability of success of an enterprise (Schurter & Towers, 2006). Zeithaml & Bitner (1996) stressed that the marketers need to continuously consider the expectation of the customers to avoid dissatisfaction. On the other hand, satisfactory experiences provide good memories to the customers and increase customer level of satisfaction which results in increasing customer loyalty and service providers' profitability. Experiences are personal in nature and indicate customers' involvement at various levels (Gentile, et al., 2007). Customer experience always receives greater attention among academics and business. Understanding the role of a customer experience in his expectation is necessity of developing a customer centric marketing strategy (Bhowal & Paul, 2013; Paul, 2012). Past experience acts as main source of customers' expectation (Anderson & Sullivan, 1993; Robledo (2001). The organizations need to understand how customer experience affects their behaviour (Klaus & Maklan, 2011). This paper attempted to highligh the mental operation driven by customers' past expereince for shaping their expectations . Objective The objective of the paper is to develop a theoritical framework for customers' experience driven expectation by integrating the concept of customer experience, customer expectation and mental accounting. Methodology The study is conceptual in nature. The study is based on the survey of literature available in the areas of customer expectation, customer experience and cognitive psychology. For this purpose, past studies relevant to the study were reviewed. An attempt is made to develop a conceptual framework through the integration of the literatures. Customer Experience Customer experience is the customers' internal and subjective response that they have with the company. Several scholars termed experience as the 'take-away' impression or perception created during the process of using, maintaining, and disposing of a product or service (Berry, et al., 2002; Lweis & Heackel, 1999). Chodchuang & Haron (2012) defined customer experience as "a psychological feeling existing in the mind of the customer". Customers' experience comes from the felling that they have while interacting with companies (Leanard & Carbonate, 2009). Customer experience originates from the interfaces between a customer and a company, a product which provoke reactions. Customers' always have an experience whenever they come across a product or services (Berry, et al., 2002). Consumption always carries an experiential effect (Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982). Such experience may be good, bad or indifferent depending on the customers' own interpretation. Thus, customer experience, being a psychological process, has a strong relationship with the cognitive psychology relating to information processing. Customer Expectation Customer expectations are the customer wants i.e. what customers feel that a firm should offer over and above what they actually offer (Hsiehy & Yuan, 2010). According to Tyron (1994) expectations are the "anticipations of future consequences based on prior experience, current circumstances, or some other source of information". "Customer expectations are the inner standard beliefs and attitude by which customers judge the products and services" (Arnold & Reynolds, 2003). Expectation changes with time with the experience. Past experience acts as the important source of expectation (Anderson & Sullivan, 1993). Robledo (2001) has also identified past experience as main source of expectation. Experience plays a crucial role in customers' expectation formation (Bhowal, A. & Paul, T., 2014). Customer without previous experience has unrealistic and less refined expectation (Higgs, et al., 2005). Thus, expectations of the customers are outcome of the experience dreiven by a psychological process. Experience-Cognition-Expectation Expectations are not constant and as and when customers receive new information expectations are reformed (Parasuraman, et al.,1994; Coye, 2004). From the definition of experience and expectation, it is observed that both experience and expectation involves human cognitive process. The theory of cognitive psychology is predominant in shaping the expectations. Cognitive psychology focuses on how people acquire, process and store information. The cognitive theory deals with the interaction between the mental component and the information that is processed in human mind (Neisser, 1967). Cognitive theories are based on integration of events into an active storage system comprised of organizational structures termed schemata (Baron & Byrne, 1987). Schemata formulate frameworks in which new information must fit in order to be understood (Bell-Gredler, 1986).The human mind processes all additional information,


Electronic procedures are replacing text-based documents for recording the steps in performing medical operations aboard the International Space Station. S&K Aerospace, LLC, has developed a content-based electronic system-based on the Extensible Markup Language (XML) standard-that separates text from formatting standards and tags items contained in procedures so they can be recognized by other electronic systems. For example, to change a standard format, electronic procedures are changed in a single batch process, and the entire body of procedures will have the new format. Procedures can be quickly searched to determine which are affected by software and hardware changes. Similarly, procedures are easily shared with other electronic systems. The system also enables real-time data capture and automatic bookmarking of current procedure steps. In Phase II of the project, S&K Aerospace developed a Procedure Representation Language (PRL) and tools to support the creation and maintenance of electronic procedures for medical operations. The goal is to develop these tools in such a way that new advances can be inserted easily, leading to an eventual medical decision support system.


Among the numerous inscriptions from Novae published by the Polish colleagues, that of G. Baienius Ianuarius deserves a special attention. It has been raised on October the 5th 227 AD under the governorship of Lucius Mantennius Sabinus. On the left side of the basis a text in hexameters contains the military carrier of C. Baienius Ianuarius. It is the lecture of this text that the author tries to improve. One of the conclusions is that G. Baienius Ianuarius carried out as a centurio of the legio I Italica a mission in Rome about 223/224 AD. Another conclusion is that the statue represented an aquila, symbol of the legion


Most surprising of all, empire is seen too often from a purely metropolitan perspective. This book is an important contribution to the study of nineteenth-century Britain. It should be read widely by scholars of the period, and should interest all historians of technology. As a course text it will be indispensable in advanced undergraduate and graduate teaching on the technologies of both industrialization and empire. It offers much to the specialist, and if Engineering Empires does not explore all the paths to which it draws attention, it certainly paves the way for many further studies. EMMA REISZ Queen's University Belfast


We review recent results on the existence of ground states for the infrared-critical spin boson model, which describes the interaction of a massless bosonic field with a two-state quantum system. Explicitly, we derive a critical coupling $\lambda_{\mathsf c}>0$ such that the spin boson model exhibits a ground state for coupling constants $\lambda$ with $|\lambda|<\lambda_{\mathsf c}$. The proof combines a Feynman-Kac-Nelson formula for the spin boson model with external magnetic field, a 1D-Ising model correlation bound and a compactness argument in Fock space. Elaborating on the connection to a long-range 1D-Ising model, we briefly discuss the conjecture that the spin boson model does not have a ground state at large coupling. This note is based on joint work with David Hasler and Oliver Siebert.


This paper aimed at the rate control problems of JVT-G012,the typical algorithm for H.264/AVC,and presented a new rate control algorithm.After motion detection,if the previous and current frame were in the same complex area,factual encode rate of the previous frame was used to adjust target rate of the current frame.As for the scene changes and high motion video based on motion detection,the minimum sum of squared difference between original and reconstructed pixels after the rate distortion option was used to estimate MAD,and then,MAD was used to compute quantization parameter based on the quadratic model in the process of encoding.The Lagrange parameter can be optimized.The experimental results show that the rate of this algorithm is higher than JVT-G012 and lower than Improvement of H.264AVC by JIANG but the scheme of this paper can effectively improve video quality at scene changes and high motions.Moreover,the scheme also enhances the average PSNR of the test sequences compared to JVT-G012 and JIANG's Improvement.


Palladium and rhodium were recovered from glass fiber castable by benefication-metallurgy combination process.Pd and Rh with grade of 90%~93%in glass fiber castable was preliminary enriched by gravity concentration and palladium and rhodium concentrates with grade of 60%~80% were obtained. The low grade tailings were smelted with lead as collector in Na2 O-Al2 O3-SiO2 slag system and then blown with air to produce Pd and Rh concentrates after lead was removed.Pd and Rh qualified metal products were gained by concentrates refining.The results show that total recovery of Pd and Rh is over 99%and 98.5%respectively.


The present invention relates to a method of manufacturing the probe holder and the ceramic member formed by using the Enschede other tight and comprising boron nitride as a component, and a sintered body of the ceramic member that the boron nitride is oriented in one direction, the ceramic member. Ceramic member, the orientation degree index is at least 0.8. As a result, has a thermal expansion coefficient close to silicon with having a free cutting, it is possible to provide a manufacturing method of a ceramic member, the probe holder and the ceramic member formed by using a ceramic member having a high strength.


Background: Although the importance of teaching a correct inhalation technique in patients with asthma or COPD is recognised, the optimal method of inhalation technique education is unknown. To improve this, inhaler-specific visual instruction cards as an adjunct to standard education have been developed. Aim: To evaluate the value of these visual instruction cards in optimising inhalation technique in patients with asthma or COPD. Methods: Randomised controlled trial in 100 outpatients with asthma or COPD (49% male, mean age 63 years). Patients received either usual inhalation technique education (Usual Care) or received the visual instruction card in addition to the usual inhalation technique education (Usual Care+). At baseline and follow-up (at 6-8 weeks) inhalation technique was assessed using inhaler-specific checklists. Disease control was measured by ACQ or CCQ. Results: In both groups the proportion of patients with an adequate inhalation technique significantly improved. The improvement in the Usual Care+ group was significantly higher as compared to the Usual Care group (4% to 85% and 12% to 57% respectively, p Conclusion: This study emphasises the importance of proper inhalation technique education, and in particular, the value of the newly developed visual instruction cards.


Single source molecular precursors (SSPs) provide an opportunity to get control over the microstructure of nanomaterials at atomic level. A SSP was designed and developed for the synthesis of ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposite by sol gel method. In a typical synthesis process, a bimetallic molecular compound with chemical formula [Cl2TiZn(dmae)4] (dmae=dimethylaminoethanol) was synthesized and its chemical composition was determined by elemental analysis. The obtained compound has shown excellent solubility in common organic solvents, a prerequisite for its use in sol gel method as SSP. The SSP obtained was controllably hydrolyzed by adding equimolar amount of water using ethanol as solvent to get ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposite gel. The resulting gel was precipitated at pH=9 and sintered at 200 °C (T200), 400 °C (T400), and 600 °C (T600). The XRD analyses have shown that the as synthesized (non-sintered, T00) powder was amorphous. However, the crystallinity improved upon sintering, and the XRD analyses revealed that the resulting nanomaterials were composed of mixed oxides i.e., ZnO and TiO2. The ZnO was in wurtzite (hexagonal) while the TiO2 was in brookite (orthorhombic) phase. The increase in particle size was further confirmed from BET analysis and SEM micrographs. The IR spectra obtained for the resulting powder have shown the peculiar vibrational bands for Zn-O and Ti-O. Furthermore, the IR spectra revealed that the non-sintered ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposite had significant number of OH group which was removed upon sintering. The photocatalytic activities of the ZnO/TiO2 nanocomposites were tested. All the samples have shown good photocatalytic activities. However, the T400 has shown higher activity than the T00, T200, and T600. The higher photocatalytic activity of T400 than T00, T200, and T600 may be due to improved crystallinity which ensures efficient grain boundary interfaces.


Introduction Fourteen case studies: Changing sections Emily's test Fundamental problems Making the grade (College algebra version/Calculus I version/Multivariable calculus version) Making waves Order out of chaos Pairing up The quicksand of problem four Salad days Seeking points Study habits Studying the exam (College algebra questions/Calculus II questions/Multivariable calculus questions) There's something about Ted What were they thinking?


As U1 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (U1 snRNP2) has a crucial role in pre‐mRNP splicing, the interaction of anti‐RNP antibody with snRNP within viable lymphocytes may profoundly influence cell functions. We have shown that antibody can penetrate viable human lymphocytes, and anti‐RNP antibodies enter more cells than other anti‐nuclear antibodies or control IgG. In order to study the in vitro interaction of anti‐RNP antibodies with viable cells. T lymphocytes were metabolically labelled with 35S‐methionine, then incubated with the antibodies and washed. A set of 35S‐labelled cell‐associated snRNP polypeptides A, B'/B, C and D were found to bind to both monospecific human polyclonal anti‐RNP IgG (human anti‐RNP IgG) and a mouse monoclonal anti‐RNP antibody (2.73), indicating that anti‐RNP antibodies interacted with RNP antigen inside or/and on the surface of viable cells. To investigate antibody binding to RNP antigen on the cell surface, the cell surface proteins were either iodinated with 125I or the cells processed for immunoelectron microscopic studices after incubation with MoAb. At least seven 125I‐labelled polypeptides on the cell surface were found to be immunoprecipitated by the anti‐RNP MoAb which have similar molecular weights to U snRNP polypeptidcs 70K, A, B, D, E, F, and G. The immunoelectron microscopic studies showed that the gold particles formed clustered patches on the cell membrane. Further studies suggested that RNP antigen bound to the cell surface, and the RNP binding structure was probably a heterodimer receptor. This study provides evidence to suggest that anti‐RNP antibody entry into viable cells may be mediated by interaction with RNP antigen expressed on the cell surface.


A practical method of obtaining compact atomic non-relativistic wavefunctions adapted to the 2nd order calculation of expectation values of mono- and bi-electronic operators is described. Specific isotope shifts are thus calculated: as a test for the method, in He I 1s2p for which the exact values are known; in Mg I or the virtual transition 3s3p 1P-3P.


A challenge for most young engineers is the ability to communicate a design, research results or new ideas in a clear concise manner. One technique used at the United States Military Academy (USMA) to demonstrate the importance of communication is the K'NEX Project Management Exercise. The single day exercise navigates students through the entire design process and requires little student preparation. This paper lays out the conduct of the exercise, the results from the exercise as an event at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Regional Student Conference and an assessment of the exercise by faculty and students. The feedback shows that an exercise of this nature impresses upon the students the importance of communication in everything they do, especially in their current coursework. The predominant student and faculty recommendation is to use this or a similar type of exercise to not only demonstrate the importance of communication but to provide an excellent model for teaching and assessing the ABET communication skills objective.


Interstitial deletions of chromosome 6q are a relatively rare finding. Deletions have ranged from the loss of a single band to larger deletions spanning multiple bands. The clinical phenotype varies, but some features commonly seen include cardiac anomalies, hypotonia, facial dysmorphism and mental retardation. To further delineate the syndrome, we report an infant with facial dysmorphism, ectrodactyly and tetralogy of Fallot owing to interstitial deletion 6q16.1–6q22.32. On array comparative genomic hybridization analysis, the deletion spanned from the 93 377 323rd base to the 127 650 582nd base on chromosome 6 [coordinates are based on Human Mar. 2006 (hg18) assembly of International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium]. A literature review identified 16 additional cases with overlapping interstitial deletions of chromosome 6q between q13 and q23.1. Genotype–phenotype correlations are considered.


There are more than 60 wordnets worldwide; the Romanian wordnet is among those that are maintained and further developed. Begun within the BalkaNet project and further enriched in various (application oriented) projects, it was used in word sense disambiguation, machine translation and question answering with promising results. We present here the latest qualitative and quantitative improvements of our lexical resource, special attention being paid to derivational relations, the latest statistics, as well as the development of an Application Programming Interface, meant to facilitate work with the wordnet, both for its further development purposes and for its use in applications. In the context of creating a common European research infrastructure network, our wordnet is licensed through META-SHARE, being freely available for scientific purposes.


Various environmental concerns motivate scientists and researchers to look out for unique new materials in science and technology. In order to address the demand for polymeric materials with partial biodegradability, the usage of lignocellulosic fibre in the polymer matrix has risen. Lignocellulosic fibres are a cheap, easily renewable resource that is readily available in all regions. Cellulosic plant fibres also have a plethora of possibilities for use in polymer reinforcement because of their properties. Many researchers put their effort into developing a natural polymer with better mechanical properties and thermal stability using nanotechnology and the use of natural polymers to make its composites with lignocellulosic fibres. This study provides a review of the biodegradable composite market, processing methods, matrix-reinforcement phases, morphology, and characteristic improvements. In addition, it provides a concise summary of the findings of significant research on natural fibre polymer composites (NFRCs) that have been published. Indeed, a noticeably brief discussion is provided on the significant issues faced during composite extraction as well as the challenges encountered during the machining. Recent developments in the study of lignocellulosic fibre composites or NFRCs have demonstrated their enormous potential as structural elements in vehicles, aerospace structures, buildings, ballistics, soundproofing, and other structures.


The theory and practice of up-only or down-only prescaled (or constant time) counters is well understood both in industry and in the academia. Such counters are obtained by partitioning the counter into sub-blocks in order to be able to anticipate the CARRY propagation inside each block (similar to a carry-select adder). When properly designed, prescaled counters have a clock period independent of counter size. Until now it was not known whether it is possible to design a constant time up/down binary counter. The paper presents the theory behind building a synchronous up/down counter of arbitrary length and with period independent of counter size. The main idea behind the novel up/down counter is to recognize that the only extra difficulty with an up/down (vs. up-only or down-only) constant time counter is when the counter changes "direction" from counting up to counting down and vice-versa. For dealing with this difficulty the new design uses a "shadow" register inside each sub-block with the purpose of always storing the previous block value. When counting only up or only down the counter function like a standard up-only or down-only constant time counter but when it changes direction, instead of trying to compute the new value (which typically requires carry propagation), it simply uses the contents of the shadow register which contains the exact desired previous value. A 54-bit up/down counter running at 40 MHz was implemented in an Atmel AT6000 FPGA and similar up/down counters can be implemented in any technology.


Aim: We examined associations of eight SNPs in/near seven candidate genes with glycaemic response to 6 month treatment with DPP4 inhibitors. Patients & methods: 206 patients with type 2 diabetes (116 men and 90 women) were treated with sitagliptin or vildagliptin (both 100 mg/day) in combination with metformin or metformin/sulphonylurea over 6 months, and the reduction in glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) was measured. Results: Rs6923761 in GLP1R was significantly associated with a reduction in HbA1c (adjusted p = 0.006). Homozygotes for the minor A allele had smaller reduction in HbA1c by 0.4% (4 mmol/mol) than the G allele carriers (p = 0.016). Conclusion: The missense variant rs6923761 in the GLP1R gene was associated with a smaller glycaemic response to 6 month gliptin therapy in diabetic patients of Central European origin.


streaming media: this is what happens when Jackson's short novel becomes a Netflix property. To fill hours of programming, The Haunting of Hill House needs to be greatly expanded; to fit into the existing mold the story must incorporate a steady dose of jump scares and Stranger Things–style cliffhangers; to invite repeat screenings it needs a host of webpage-baiting Easter eggs (hello Russ Tamblyn!). Indeed, a more transparent Netflix would have used this book's title itself. The issue extends beyond curmudgeonly grumbling about this series' lack of fidelity, or wrongheadedly advocating for a return to those barren "fidelity" days of adaptation studies. Even more address from the contributors on the union of Netflix—and other streaming services—with literary properties would have been welcome (but please note that this volume does not condemn such discussion). It seems almost as though artists like Flanagan, and audiences, can conform with the dictates of streaming media culture or abandon new audio-visual media completely. It is not only Jackson fans, Henry James aficionados, or English professors who are anxious about a future littered with literary adaptations that feel more like The Mandalorian (2019–) than the seemingly annual BBC versions of Austen novels. Or, though Austen's work survived a zombie invasion, must we rejoice in Baby Yoda gifs from the next Pride and Prejudice? Paul N. Reinsch Texas Tech University


This study evaluated the in vitro activity of antimicrobial peptides pexiganan (MSI-78), h-Lf1-11, LL-37, cecropin B, magainin-2, and fengycin B against the veterinary mastitis agent Prototheca bovis. The results showed that pexiganan, h-Lf1-11, LL-37, and cecropin B were able to inhibit the growth and had effect on algaecide P. bovis isolates (n = 32). The minimum inhibitory concentration ranged from 5 to 10 µg/mL for pexiganan, and algaecide effect was detected from 5 to 20 µg/mL. The minimum inhibitory concentration ranged from 10 to 80 µg/mL for h-Lf1-11, 20 to 80 µg/mL for LL-37, and 40 to 160 µg/mL for cecropin B. These findings present a promising and novel alternative for P. bovis treatment and growth control.


Quantex's electron trapping (ET) materials are investigated as an integrated spatial light modulator (SLM) at the filter plane in a joint transform correlator (JTC). The ET based spatial light modulator can detect visible incoherent light, store an image pattern, and modulate the incoming coherent infrared light. Such a JTC architecture eliminates the electronic-to-optical and optical-to-electronic conversion between the square law detector and the next SLM in a joint transform correlator.


This study described a study about an analysis of English and Indonesian idioms and proverbs. This research purposed to analyze the differences and similarities between English and Indonesian idioms and proverbs that used in daily life. Idiom is a set of word that have different meaning from the basic word. Proverb is a speech that can be used in everyday life for many situation that containing parable, comparison, and advice to that can apply as the way of life. The researcher used some research methodology such as research design, source of data, collecting data, data analysis and research instrument. The methodology of this study is library research. Based on researcher analysis English and Indonesian idioms and proverbs actually almost the same in meaning, but they have their own culture to deliver ideas about idioms and proverbs. It is misunderstanding among the people when they have to deliver the proverb in different culture and socities. So the writer concluded that there are similarities and differences between idioms and proverbs of English and Indonesian but it is depended on their culture. . Key Words: Analysis , Idiom, Proverb , English and Indonesian.


The failure of antibiotics in the treatment of shock from Gram-negative bacteria has called attention to the need for measures that can counteract bacterial endotoxins. From the success of serum therapy against the toxins of Gram-positive bacteria i t would seem reasonable to try a similar approach in the treatment of endotoxic shock, bu t only a few reports indicate that immune serum may prevent death from endotoxin. Creech found that intraperitoneal injection of globulin from rabbit antisera protected mice against lethal intraperitoneal doses of Serratia marcescens endotoxin.lf2 Abernathy and Spink observed inconstant protection in mice injected intraperitoneally with a mixture of lethal doses of brucella endotoxin and serum from patients with active brucellosis. Kim and Watson reported tha t intravenous injection of serum (or its 19s fraction) from tolerant rabbits reduced the pyrogenic and lethal effects of a standard dose of intravenous Escherichia coli endotoxin in normal rabbits, but no relationship was found between protection and 0-antibody titer.4 The present experiments were undertaken to obtain more information on the prevention of death from endotoxin by antisera, with the eventual aim of developing antisera against human endotoxic shock. Antisera and endotoxin were not administered by the same route in these experiments, since in peritonitis, pneumonia, and genitourinary infections, the antiserum would be given a t a site remote from that at which the endotoxin is elaborated in the tissues. 3


The prevention of cognitive disorders and dementia represents a major challenge in the coming years. The identification and management of the risk factors for these incapacitating conditions must therefore be a priority in order to define the best tools for early prevention. Studies over the past few years indicate that hypertension is involved not only in cerebro-vascular morbidity and mortality, but also in the pathogenesis of cognitive disorders and dementia. The existence of cognitive deficits and dementia syndromes in certain hypertensive elderly subjects has led a number of authors to study the relationships between cognitive functions and blood pressure (BP). Although the results of cross-sectional studies diverge, longitudinal studies show that subjects' cognitive level is often inversely proportional to their BP values measured 15 or 20 years previously. The higher their BP used to be, the poorer their cognitive function. Data from certain recent therapeutic trials suggest that antihypertensive treatment might prevent the occurrence of dementia (of all aetiologies) in hypertensive patients aged 60 years and over. In this context, the effect of antihypertensive treatment on cognitive functions should represent one of the main criteria of evaluation of future morbidity and mortality studies, some of which are already in progress, with results available in the near future.


The existence of infinitely many positive solutions of quasilinear elliptical differential equation Δ 2U=f(x,u,u), x∈Ω α is proved, when throughout exterior domains Ω α={x∈R N||x|>α},N≥2,α>0, where x=(x 1,x 2,…,x N), u=(ux 1,ux 2,…,ux N),and Δ 2=·.


Effects of different heating methods on the gel-forming ability of silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) surimi and soybean protein blended surimi (composite surimi) were studied. The microstructures of various surimi samples were observed under scanning electron microscope. The relation between gel characteristics and its microstructure was also surveyed. The results showed that (1) microwave heating was much faster than conventional waterbath heating in attaining the same gel strength and no appearance of gel collapse in microwave heating method due to its fast temperature rise; (2) under nearly same temperature heated, the strength of simplex surimi gel formed by micro wave-waterbath combined heating exhibited the highest and the lowest by waterbath heating; the strength of composite surimi gel formed by single microwave heating showed the strongest and the least by waterbath heating; (3) the microstructures of gel samples which were heated by microwave to a given temperature showed more uniform, fine and compact structure in micrographs than those heated by waterbath. Also, it was in consistent with the variation of gel strength.


Abstract The unsuitability of current methods for measuring total renal blood in the absence of renal function has prompted the design of a new method of measuring renal blood flow. Following percutaneous catheterization of a renal artery and the corresponding renal vein, indocyanine green was infused into the renal artery at a known constant rate and simultaneous blood samples were obtained from the renal vein and aorta. Utilizing the Fick principle, renal blood flow through the kidney was measured. In 8 patients with essential hypertension undergoing renal arterial catheterization to exclude renal artery disease, blood flow through the right kidney averaged 516 ± 133 ml. per minute per 1.73M. 2 . In 5 of these patients blood flow through the left kidney averaged 576 ± 140 ml. per minute per 1.73M. 2 . Total renal blood flow (derived from the sum of the flow through the right and left kidneys) averaged 1,108 ± 306 ml. per minute per 1.73M. 2 in 5 patients. The simultaneously measured para-aminohippurate values in these patients averaged 1,160 ± 227 ml. per minute per 1.73M. 2 It was demonstrated by measurement of renal blood flow with para-aminohippurate (PAH) and radioactive krypton (Kr 85 ) that catheterization of the renal artery and infusion of indocyanine green did not alter renal blood flow. However, a major assumption of the method was that the human kidney acted as a mixing chamber. In addition, the need to catheterize the renal artery and vein preclude its routine use wherever PAH clearances are valid. It is suggested that as the method is independent of renal tubular function and urine formation, its major application should be in measuring renal blood flow in the anuric subject.


【Objective : The aim of this study is to review the historical development and current situation of Mongolian traditional medicine. Method : Systematic literature review for books, journals, governments statistics, reports on mongolian traditional medicine was carried out. Results : The theory of Mongolian traditional medicine is influenced by the philosophy and medical theories of the ancient orient such as India, Tibet and China-theories of hot and cold, principle of yin and yang and five elements. There are very unique treatments like brain tram concussion, fermented horse milk treatment as well as moxibustion, acupuncture, and blood letting. It appears that they are very closed to nomadic life. Training program of each institutes need to be standardized. Mongolian traditional medicine had been almost destroyed by the influence of communist idea from 1930s until the end of the 1980s. Since 1990, Mongolian government put much emphasis on the development of traditional medicine. And now about 3.7% of total beds is traditional medicine one and that there are six TM schools and the total number of traditional medicine in 2012 is 1696. However, there are still the lack of manpower, facilities, standardized training program and scientific research for traditional medicine. Conclusion : Mongolian traditional medicine has been developed over centuries in response to Mongolia's unique geographical and climate conditions and the lifestyles of its people and that made contribution to the health of mongolian people. However, it needs to be strengthened because there are poor infrastructure and training program.】


We report the electric-field dependence of 180° domain-wall mobility in congruent LiTaO3 measured at room temperature using in situ electro-optic imaging microscopy. The measured sideways domain-wall velocity of serrated domain fronts formed upon merger of domains was an order of magnitude larger than that for independently growing domains. The wall velocities also show a strong dependence on the nature of the applied electric field, being an order of magnitude larger for steady-state voltages as compared to pulsed voltage measurements. This is shown to be due to wall stabilization between applied voltage pulses resulting in an inertial delay in moving a domain wall which has been at rest for many seconds.


A new GaAs(100) spin polarized electron source with an optical polarimeter, which is employed in the field of polarized electron and gas atom collision, is presented in detail. The apparatus is passive-magnetic-shielded by a box and a cylinder made of nickel–iron–molybdenum soft magnetic alloy without Helmholtz coil arrangement. And a uniformly distributed residual magnetic field of less than 5×10−7 T is obtained near the collision area. The spin polarized electron beam is transmitted and focused onto collision point from photocathode by a set of electron optics with more than 25% transmission 95 cm distance through an 1 mm diameter aperture. Construction and operation of the apparatus, such as vacuum and magnetic shielding system, photocathode, laser optics, electron optics and polarimeter are discussed. The polarization of the spin polarized electron beam is determined to be 30.8±3.5% measured with a He optical polarimeter.


Objective: To observe the effects of Kangfuxin liquid combined with triple therapy on gastric ulcer and the influence on gastric mucosal PGE2 and serum matrix metalloproteinase- 9 levels. Methods: 82 cases with gastric ulcer were randomly divided into two groups,patients in control group received triple therapy,patients in treatment group accepted Kangfuxin liquid combined with triple therapy. The clinical efficacy,HP eradication rate,gastric mucosal PGE2,serum serum matrix metalloproteinase- 9 and recurrence rate in both groups were observed. Results: The curative effect of Kangfuxin group was obvious better than that of control group,the gastric mucosal PGE2 content was increased and serum MMP- 9 level was decreased. the effects of Kangfuxin group were better than those of control group. Conclusion: Kangfuxin liquid combined with triple therapy was an effective method in treatment of gastric ulcer,its mechanism maybe related to the influence on gastric mucosal PGE2 content and serum matrix metalloproteinase- 9 level.


The present invention is a method and a roll cover making roll cover, at least one material is applied to the surface or the base substrate of the roll. In a first embodiment, a single material is applied as a phase having fluidity. Uniform coating is applied to the roll of material, for example cooling, the material such as by curing or other means when solidifying, smooth and permanent roll cover is formed on the surface of the roll. In another embodiment, at least two materials are applied to the surface of the roll phase having fluidity. The first material may be a first material capable sacrificial removed and added to the surface of the roll cover in a preselected pattern. After the sacrificial material has been added, the second material, such functional resin is applied to the surface of the roll cover, the sacrificial material after the second material has solidified, it is removed. In another embodiment, the use of sacrificial material is avoided and material is added in a predetermined pattern. In the fourth embodiment, two or more different materials are applied.


The XML schema language is becoming the preferred means of defining and validating highly structured XML instance documents. We have extended the conventional mutation method to be applicable for W3C XML schemas. In this paper a technique for using mutation analysis to test the semantic correctness of W3C XML schemas is presented. We introduce a mutation analysis model and a set of W3C XML schema (XSD) mutation operators that can be used to detect faults involving name-spaces, user-defined types, and inheritance. Preliminary evaluation of our technique shows that it is effectiveness to test the semantics of W3C XML schema documents.


The peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is recognized as one of the most important legume crops globally for its use in human food; it is widely distributed and cultivated in tropical and subtropical regions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the cryopreservation of five peanut varieties conserved in the INIAP Germplasm Bank, testing cryopreservation methods, evaluating the germination percentage of whole seeds and embryonic shoots. Subsequently, two quantitative variables, shoot length and root, were evaluated. The average germination percentage of varieties and treatments was higher when embryonic axes were isolated with 99.31% than 86.06% seeds. The best germination percentage of the five varieties for seeds and embryonic shoots was obtained by the Peruvian variety with 88.13% and 92.50%. The best treatments by variety for the germination of whole seeds and embryonic axes were obtained by the treatment (desiccation and NL) for whole seeds (GS2) with 95.42% and embryonic axes with 92.83%. Ageing and cryopreservation treatments positively affected germination and seedling vigor in whole seeds and embryonic axes. The two quantitative variables, shoot and root length showed variability between the five varieties; significant differences were observed between the four treatments evaluated for whole seeds and embryonic axes. The three treatments for whole seeds (GS1, GS2 GS3) and the non-cryopreserved control treatment (GSC), as well as the treatments for embryonic axes (GEA1, GEA2 GEA3) and the non-cryopreserved control treatment (GEAC), obtained good survival. They germinate whole seeds and embryonic axes with sprout development (aerial part) and root formation. With the most effective treatments for whole seeds (GS2) and embryonic axes (GEA2), the cryopreservation of the national peanut collection of the INIAP Germplasm Bank could be started.


INTRODUCTION The case reported is that of a young man who killed himself by means of a gunshot wound to the head. The circumstances were those of suicide. At autopsy, in addition to findings entirely in keeping with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, it was noted that the thyroid gland was black in colour and that the skin of the deceased showed the scarring of acne vulgaris. There was no information concerning drug treatment of the deceased in the police report of the events leading up to death. However, examination of the general practitioner's notes revealed that the deceased had been receiving regular treatment with Minocycline, an antibiotic particularly useful in the treatment of acne, for approximately one year prior to his death. The association between Minocycline therapy and black discoloration of the thyroid gland is well documented, the first human example having been described in 1976 (Attwood and Dennett, 1976). Much effort has been expended in attempting to elucidate the nature of the pigment involved (Reid, 1983; Saul et al., 1983; Gordon et al., 1984; Senba et al., 1988). Current thinking suggests that the material is a membrane-bound degradation product of Minocycline which may have a mild inhibitory effect upon thyroid function if used in the long term. A review of the literature is presented.


Because of linkage and variation in heterozygosity, individuals differ in the Mendelian sampling variance on their gametes. Thus some parents produce genetically more variable offspring than others. With genomic EBV and phased genotypes, these differences can be quantified and potentially used to increase genetic gain. Here we show that genetic gain and the probability of breeding a top-ranking individual can be increased by selecting individuals on an index of their GEBV and the standard deviation on the GEBV of their gametes (SDGEBV). The optimum index was , where is the standardized truncation point belonging to the selected proportion p. Compared to selection on ordinary GEBV, in dairy cattle the probability of breeding a top-ranking individual can be increased by 36%, and response to selection by 3.6% when selection is strong (p = 0.001). Preselection on GEBV facilitates implementation with little loss of gain.


Disclosed are an ultra-light insulation material composition with superior flame-retardant and thermal resistance characteristic, an apparatus for manufacturing the composition, and a method for manufacturing the composition by using the apparatus. A flame-retardant layer including inorganic nonflammable material is formed on a surface of a chip, which is obtained by pulverizing expended polystyrene resin in a size below 3 mm. Through compress-kneading and pressing works with adding thickener, flame-retardant, curing control agent, auxiliary adhesive, dyes/pigments, and waterproofing stuff. The insulation material composition is subject to a pressing work including a vibration pressing work, a press pressing work, and an extrusion pressing work, so that the ultra-light composition can be rapidly obtained. Waste resource is reused and a tire and poisonous gas caused by the insulation material can be prevented. The composition makes a great contribution for solving a pollution problem and disposable polystyrene can be reused.


The effect of working temperature and that of subsequeut low-temperature annealing on the hardness and the magnetic properties have been investigated for low carbon mild steel and pure copper.Specimens were deformed at temperatures between 75°C and 700°C, and then thier hardness and magnetic properties were measured at room temperature. The higher the working temperature on pure copper the less its hardness, while the hardness of mild steel increases at first, reaching maximum at about 250°C and then decreases in accordance with increasing working temperatures. It is because of diffusion of carbon and nitrogen atoms in α-Fe during deformation.Though the mild steel is hardened by annealing at low temperature after cold working, it is still more hardened through deformation at elevated temperatures.When specimens are annealed for 30min. at temperatures at 100°C to 700°C after elevated working temperature, the recovering temperature of mild steel and that of copper slightly increase according to working temperatures, and the hardening phenomena generally observed in annealing cold worked mild steel, were not seen when the working temperature was above 250°C.


ABSTRACT Objective: To analyze computed tomography scans of paranasal sinuses of a series of patients with coronavirus disease 2019, and correlate the findings with the disease. Methods: Computed tomography scans of 95 adult patients who underwent a polymerase chain reaction test for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 were analyzed. Clinical data were obtained from patients' records and telephone calls. Paranasal sinus opacification was graded and compared according to severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positivity. Results: Of the patients 28 (29.5%) tested positive for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (median age 52 [range 26-95] years) and 67 were negative (median age 50 [range 18-95] years). Mucosal thickening was present in 97.4% of maxillary sinuses, 80% of anterior ethmoid air cells, 75.3% of posterior ethmoid air cells, 74.7% of frontal sinuses, and 66.3% of sphenoid sinuses. Minimal or mild mucosal thickening (score 1)and normally aerated sinuses (score 0) corresponded to 71.4% and 21.3% of all paranasal sinuses, respectively. The mean score of each paranasal sinus among severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positive and negative patients was 0.85±0.27 and 0.87±0.38, respectively (p=0.74). Median paranasal sinus opacification score among severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positive patients was 9 (interquartile range 8-10) compared to 9 (interquartile range 5-10) in negative patients (p=0.89). There was no difference in mean score adjusted for age and sex. Nasal congestion was more frequent in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 positive than negative patients (p=0.05). Conclusion: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection was associated with patient recall of nasal congestion, but showed no correlation with opacification of paranasal sinuses.


An anthology of essays by some of the leading members of The Outdoor Writers' Guild describing their favourite walks, places or hills. Some have chosen particular districts or regions, whilst for others it is a special climb or walk.


FIELD: information technology. SUBSTANCE: present invention relates to transmission of broadcast data. Provided is a method and system for transmitting stream in a mobile broadcasting system, which receives information content in streams of broadcast services (BCAST) from a module for generating information content and provides for broadcast services to one terminal or a group of terminals through one broadcast distribution system and an interactive network. The method involves stages, on which carrier channel assignment is requested for, on which the stream is transmitted. The carrier channel is assigned in response to the request, and the stream is adapted for its correspondence with the assigned carrier channel and the adapted stream is transmitted to the terminal on the assigned carrier channel. EFFECT: more efficient data transfer. 43 cl, 6 dwg


From a dual-systems perspective, it has been proposed that predictive validity of whether individuals act out or stifle their reactive aggression will be maximized if (a) automatic and (b) controlled precursors of aggression are assessed and (c) situational boundaries in favor of acting out or restraining oneself are specified. In the present research we experimentally manipulated participants' self-regulatory resources in an ego depletion paradigm and subsequently measured reactive aggression in the Taylor Aggression Paradigm. Assessing automatic and controlled precursors of reactive aggression via an Implicit Association Test of Aggressiveness (Agg-IAT) and a selfreport reactive aggressiveness questionnaire, respectively, we demonstrated a theoretically expected double dissociation: Reactive aggression of ego depleted individuals was associated with the indirect measure (Agg-IAT) whereas non-depleted participants' reactive aggression correlated with the direct measure (self-report). The results corroborate the usefulness of both direct and indirect measures of aggressiveness and point to boundary conditions of these measures' criterion validity.


Terrain knowledge around unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) is vital for autonomous navigation. Having global understanding of the surroundings of UGVs is important, although the field of view from UGVs is very limited. Thus, we utilize an aerial vehicle to provide a large terrain map from sequential aerial images. In this paper, we present multiple techniques to accelerate the process of terrain classification so that it can run onboard on the aerial platform. The main techniques used to accelerate the process is a "knowledge distillation" of a deep neural net to a shallower one, and a super pixel implementation. We evaluated our system on Jetson TX1 with actual images collected from a weather balloon which confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed system.


We have demonstrated the first direct femtosecond vortex beam generation from a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) mode locked Yb:KYW oscillator, featuring a homemade defect-spot mirror. Experimentally, a Laguerre Gaussian LG01 vortex beam with a repetition rate of ∼103.5 MHz and a pulse duration of 298 fs has been obtained. Both the defect mirror induced spatial loss modulation and intra-cavity astigmatism are responsible for the doughnut mode generation. Further, the chirality of the vortex beam is controlled by slightly tilting the angle of the Yb:KYW crystal, which hence breaks the azimuthal symmetry inside the laser cavity and leads to differential losses for LG0,+1 and LG0,-1 modes. The potential of the vortex beam's amplification by a 2-m long Yb-doped double cladding fiber (DCF) amplifier has also been demonstrated.


GRADUATE FOCUS • 1 These findings come from an analysis of data from the UCLA Graduate Division Doctoral Exit Survey completed by UCLA doctoral recipients from Winter Quarter 1994 through Spring 1999. The survey sought opinions on a number of topics and gathered data that had not been available in other campus databases. Exit surveys of doctorate degree recipients are being used by a growing number of research universities nationally as a means for better understanding a broad range of issues in graduate education and professional training. UCLA has been a leader in the development of such an exit survey. Research into doctoral education consistently emphasizes the importance of student-faculty relationships. Faculty-student interaction directly affects whether students complete degrees, the time to degree, and student satisfaction with the experience of obtaining a doctoral degree. Baird (1993), Bowen and Rudenstine (1992), Hodgson and Simoni (1995), Nerad and Cerny (1993), Tinto Members of the Academic Community:


Objective To observe the changes in cytokines, oxygen free radicals, acidulous production in serum and to investigate the effectiveness of monitoring metabolism of cells and the method for evaluating cell injury in patients with severe trauma. Method The detailed data of 117 patients rescued and managed carefully from May 2005 to February 2007 were assessed and stratified with ISS and APACHE Ⅱ , and the serum levels of arterial blood lactate(ABL) ,base deficit(BD) ,superoxide(SOD) ,lipid peroxide(LPO) ,TNF-α and IL-6 were measured in real-time according to the condition of the patient. Results The monitoring biomarkers obviously changed with injury severity which endangered the situation of patients after trauma (P < 0.05) , especially in the patients with ischemia , hypoxia, shock, iniection, SIRS, and MODS (P < 0.01). The persistence of extremely elevated levels of biomarkers meant the organ failure and fatality of patients after trauma, and there was a obvious differece between those cases and cases without elevation of biomarkers ( P < 0.01). Conclusions The outcome of patients after trauma is closely correlated with injury severity,infection and MODS,and the levels of biomarkers including ABL, SOD, IPO, TNF-a and IL-6 are useful indicators of outcome measure.

Key words:
Wounds and injuries;  Cell injury;  Multiple organ dysfun ction syndrome (MODS);  Trauma score


Background: Tuberculosis, TB is an infectious disease affecting millions of people each year and Indonesia have the second highest prevalence in the world. The cure of TB is already existing but hence to factors such as long treatment with severe side-effects results in low compliance. The aim of the study was to describe nurse's conceptions of caring for patients suffering from tuberculosis in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Method: Individual interviews were conducted with ten nurses at different hospitals and primary health centers. The material was analysed with a phenomenographic approach. Findings: Three categories were described; "The conceptions of tuberculosis as a contagious disease", "The conceptions of the nurse's role" and "The conceptions of the patient's situation". Results showed that precautions and protection of transmission was the most prominent conception related to tuberculosis-care. Another point of view was nurse's role as an educator to improve patient's knowledge regarding precautions and treatment plan. Conclusion: To perform nursing, precautions and protection is significant even though medication for TB is free of charge. However, other economic factors remain as well as manage the complexity of TB for example multidrug-resistance (MDR), calls for further research.


PROF. G. UBALE E&Tc, KSIET,HINGOLI ABSTRACT: The internet security has become the important criteria in the 21st century security applications and its prominence is increasing along with the implementation of the innovative technologies. The data transmission based algorithms has gained popularity in the security domain to provide the protection to the secret information in a reliable way. The secure data transmission is been a concerned area in the field of security and the accidental/incidental attacks on secure data makes it more challenging to provide the ample security without any flaws. The secure image transmission technique paid a lot of attention from the research organizations because of its unique ability to recover the secret image almost losslessly. Although tremendous progress has been made in the past decade on this area but it is consider as unresolved issue in the security domain of the digital image processing domain. The novelty of the proposed method is it automatically transforms the large-volume secret image into a so-called secretfragment-visible mosaic image of the same size. In order to convert the secret image into a mosaic image make use of color transformations is done by dividing the secret image into fragments and transforming their color characteristics to be those of the corresponding blocks of the target image. A scheme namely lossless hiding scheme is utilized along with the key which is used to recover the secret image from the mosaic image by using the information which is embedded into mosaic image. The reliability and efficiency of the proposed method are evaluated by simulation results.


Preface 1. Recurrence 2. Existence of invariant measures 3. Ergodic theorems 4. Ergodicity 5. Ergodic decomposition 6. Unique ergodicity 7. Correlations 8. Equivalent systems 9. Entropy 10. Variational principle 11. Expanding maps 12. Thermodynamical formalism Appendix. Topics of measure theory, topology and analysis Hints or solutions for selected exercises References Index.


A cable-driven parallel manipulator (CDPM) possesses a number of promising advantages over the conventional rigid-link manipulators, such as simple and lightweight mechanical structure, high-loading capacity, and large workspace. However, the formulations and results obtained for the rigid link manipulators cannot be directly applied to CDPM because of the unilateral property of cables. This paper focuses on the workspace analysis and optimal design of a specific type of CDPM, i.e. a completely restrained symmetric cable-driven planar parallel manipulator (CDPPM). The tension plays a key role in building up the workspace. In the analysis, performance criteria such as tension bound and stiffness condition are considered to construct the feasible workspace. Moreover, simplex search method is employed to obtain the optimal feasible workspace with respect to the locations of the connecting points and suspending points. Computation results have shown that the optimal workspace can be always obtained at configurations where either the base or the platform is degenerated to a line.


The state evolution of quantum teleportation for different types of continuous variables is mathematically analyzed based on the measurement theory of quantum mechanics.The fidelities in different systems are deduced.Our results show that for different input state the expressions of fidelity and the nonclassical boundary are different.Comparing with the coherent state,when the input state is a nonclassical state higher quantum entanglement is required for obtaining the same fidelity.


The use of multiple robots to accomplish a task is certainly preferable over the use of specialised individual robots. A major problem with individual specialized robots is the idle-time, which can be reduced by the use of multiple general robots, therefore making the process economical. In case of infrequent tasks, unlike the ones like assembly line, the use of dedicated robots is not cost-effective. In such cases, multiple robots become essential. This work involves path-planning and co-ordination between multiple mobile agents in a static-obstacle environment. Multiple small robots (swarms) can work together to accomplish the designated tasks that are difficult or impossible for a single robot to accomplish. Here Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Bacteria Foraging Algorithm (BFA) have been used for coordination and path-planning of the robots. PSO is used for global path planning of all the robotic agents in the workspace. The calculated paths of the robots are further optimized using a localised BFA optimization technique. The problem considered in this project is coordination of multiple mobile agents in a predefined environment using multiple small mobile robots. This work demonstrates the use of a combinatorial PSO algorithm with a novel local search enhanced by the use of BFA to help in efficient path planning limiting the chances of PSO getting trapped in the local optima. The approach has been simulated on a graphical interface.


A short summary is given on the key points of the Furry picture. It describes quantum mechanical systems in external fields. It differs therefore from the quantum mechanical Schrödinger, Heisenberg and interaction representations.


The invention discloses a method for identifying the video action based on trajectory sequence analysis and rule induction, which solves the problems of large labor intensity. The method of the invention divides a complete trajectory in a scene into a plurality of trajectory section with basic meaning, and obtains a plurality of basic movement modes as atomic events through the trajectory clustering; meanwhile, a hidden Markov model is utilized for establishing a model to obtain the event rule contained in the trajectory sequence by inducting the algorithm based on the minimum description length and based on the event rule, an expanded grammar analyzer is used for identifying an interested event. The invention provides a complete video action identification frame and also a multi-layer rule induction strategy by taking the space-time attribute, which significantly improves the effectiveness of the rule learning and promotes the application of the pattern recognition in the identification of the video action. The method of the invention can be applied to the intelligent video surveillance and automatic analysis of movements of automobiles or pedestrians under the current monitored scene so as to lead a computer to assist people or substitute people to complete monitor tasks.


The importance of HIV infection at both a national and global level requires constant cooperative advocacy from all the professions. This article outlines not only the natural history of the infection and the great advances which have been made in its management, it also highlights the pivotal and often vulnerable role of women within the complex developing picture of the epidemic. The laws and ethics of HIV/AIDS are explored including confidentiality and criminalization.


This paper reviews recent advancements in phase-modulated continuous-wave (PMCW) radar design and implementation, along with the design and prototyping of PMCW radars on the board level for rapid testing and iteration. In the last five years, a plethora of PMCW radar simulation research has been conducted, which modern IC and board-level microwave component design has caught up to. Benchtop systems and embedded system-on-chip PMCW radars have been realized, allowing for progress toward high-accuracy radars that incorporate advanced digital signal processing techniques. With access to faster semiconductor technologies, embedded chip solutions, and improved printed circuit board (PCB) techniques, PMCW radars can be realized on a portable board-level system. This paper reviews the concepts surrounding PMCW radars, as well as recent simulation efforts and radar system realizations through PCB designs and integrated system-on-chips.


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As primary total hip arthroplasty procedures continue to rise, acetabular revision surgery will be in increasing demand.

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Treatment of acetabular component failure and associated bone defects depends on patient characteristics, the degree and location of bone loss, the ability of the columns to support biologic fixation, and the presence of pelvic discontinuity.

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In revision total hip arthroplasty, technological advances have been made to address limitations of acetabular cup removal while preserving host bone stock.

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The goal of acetabular revision reconstruction should be to obtain stable fixation and restore the hip center. The various acetabular cup removal systems are discussed.


Neostigmine is an anticholinesterase agent used to reverse the effects of nondepolarizing muscle relaxants. A study of two comparable groups of patients, out of a total of 87 undergoing total colectomy and ileorectal anastomosis for ulcerative colitis, revealed that when neostigmine was administered during anesthesia, the post-operative leak rate from the anastomosis as revealed by routine barium enema three weeks postoperatively was 36%. In the group not receiving neostigmine, only 4% leaked. The most likely explanation would seem to be that neostigmineinduced contractions of the gut caused excessive traction on the anastomotic suture line. Direct observation of one case during surgery revealed that the routine dose of atropine, administered with the neostigmine, did not abolish vigorous intestinal peristalsis, and disruption of the anastomosis was seen to occur.


Subtitle: Captain Daniel Maurino, ICAO's leading expert in the field of Safety Management Systems (SMS) and a true pioneer of the application of the SMS approach to aviation, reviews current policies surrounding safety data and discusses his perpective on the sharing or protecting of various types of safety information in both day-to-day and investigative contexts.


X-ray induced photoconductivity measurements reveal that the radiation-induced conductivity of polyethylene terepthalate films is greatly reduced by doping this polymer with 2,4,6-trinitrofluorenone which acts as a deep trap for the photocarriers. The radiation-induced conductivity of this doped dielectric is reduced to 1 percent of the value for the undoped material and is lower than that observed in commercial polymer films we have studied. The preparation and dielectric properties of the doped films are described.


AbstractThe paper is devoted to the presentation of a newly developed radiative transfer codeSCIAPOL_1.0 for a plane-parallel turbid slab illuminated by the monodirectional wide beam. TheSCIAPOL_1.0 is based on the discrete-ordinates solution of the vector radiative transfer equation.The code is applied to a number of problems, including studies of the applicability of the scalarapproximation for the calculation of light reflectance from aerosols, clouds, and molecularatmospheres. We also study the accuracy of the single scattering approximation as applied to thecalculation of light reflection from molecular and cloudy atmospheres and propose newapproximations for the calculation of the reflection function and the degree of light polarizationunder unpolarized light illumination conditions.D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Polarization; Radiative transfer; Clouds; Aerosols; Molecular scattering 1. IntroductionLight coming to the Earth from the Sun is unpolarized. However, it becomes polarizeddue to interaction with molecules and particles present in the terrestrial atmosphere. Inparticular, the theory of molecular scattering (Rayleigh, 1871) states that the polarization


In recent years the volume and spatial extent of anthropological noise pollution of the oceans has become clearer as underwater acoustic research has matured in the open literature following the run-down of the cold war. In parallel, the range, depth and dependence of marine mammals on sound for communication and environmental sensing has been brought sharply into focus by an increased attention to marine mammal research. We are now aware that present levels of anthropological noise might represent a significant threat to some marine animals. Uncertainties in the understanding of function and hearing sensitivity of marine mammals prevents us from reaching firm conclusions, but the detrimental impact could be severe. A sketch review is given of the known sources of natural and man-made noise, methods by which marine mammal responses can be estimated and the possible damage mechanisms. Ambient noise levels from shipping and other human activities are presented for Northern and Southern Hemisphere sites. Shipping appears to have raised background noise significantly throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Available evidence and moderate extrapolation of known features of marine mammal hearing leads us to conclude that total noise levels are likely to be adversely affecting several species.


The invention discloses a brass alloy bar replacing lead element by unidirectionally cutting bismuth, aluminium and tin, comprising the following constituents in percent by weight: 58-64% of copper, 0.5-3% of bismuth, 1-4% of aluminium, 0.5-1% of tin and the balance of zinc. The design principle of the lead-free brass alloy ingredients of the brass alloy bar disclosed by the invention avoids the addition of lead on the basis of keeping the cutability, the wear resistance and the antifrictionability of the original lead-containing tin bronze, suppressing the dissolution of lead by adding a silicon element and an aluminium element, and controlling the dissolution quantity of lead to be less than 0.01 mg/L. The principle is to form independent phases with dispersed distribution in a copper alloy by virtue of the added bismuth element, aluminium element and tin element, wherein the independent phases play a chip-breaking role during cutting, thus improving the cutting machinability of brass.


The study of the process of foreign policy decision-making in a number of political systems is complicated by lack of adequate hard data, insufficient opportunities to conduct informal discussions with the officials who may be involved in the process, and inadequate opportunities even by astute observers to estimate who makes policy. Generally speaking, these questions are harder to answer with regard to "closed" political systems, where foreign policy processes are regarded as so sensitive that they are not discussed publicly nor are differences about foreign policy issues debated overtly although they may be discussed publicly in oblique terms. The difficulties are not limited to "closed" systems. Most nation-states' national leadership regards foreign policy processes as secret in nature; however, in "open" systems, there are more opportunities to have access to hard data shortly after a decision has been taken. Interviews and informal exchanges can occur with considerable regularity and be extremely informative, and observers can have access to accurate observations about foreign policy processes and decision-makers. The Chinese case falls much more in the "closed" than "open" case; I do not make this statement easily. Having conducted interviews of Chinese foreign affairs officials for over a decade and with those from many other countries about Chinese foreign affairs processes as well as their own, this conclusion is inescapable.


Substance-abusing women experience burdens making attending high-risk prenatal care critical for a healthy pregnancy. Many face barriers that compromise their health by reducing access to care, delaying their first prenatal appointment. One hundred forty-one women attending a high-risk prenatal clinic were compared to a matched group from the hospital's general obstetrics clinic. Analyses revealed that substance-abusing women with a mental illness attended prenatal care earlier than those without a mental illness. This is important because psychiatric illnesses might precipitate poor reproductive behaviors. Women with HIV also entered prenatal care earlier, which improves reproductive health. Clinicians' roles are discussed.


This research aims to analyze the energy efficiency of smart grid systems in University of Phayao with installed 500 kW solar panels, and to propose ways to increase the energy efficiency of the system according to Life Cycle Assessment framework from manufacturing, transportation, installation, operation, maintenance, and end of life. The results showed that the generated power from grid at 1 kWh uses accumulated energy of 3.61 MJ, while smart grid systems use accumulated energy of 2.252 MJ. The solar panels have the most accumulated energy of 2.234 MJ, which is equal to 99.22 % and making a total energy absorbed equal to 1.347. That means the energy efficiency of smart grid system have good energy efficiency. Therefore, the maintenance of the system to increase the service life from 20 years to 25 years will reduce the accumulated energy of the system by 14.17 %. The guideline to increase the efficiency of the system that will be installed in the future recommends a solar panel with low energy consumption in the manufacturing process, and in addition to being able to reduce the accumulated energy in the system also help increase the system performance in the other one as well.


The concept of pre-evaluating construction green properties for bidders is proposed for needs of sustainable development of building industry.On the one hand,the estimated cost value of saving resources and energy can be figured out by analyzing the composition of tender offer and control price of bidding(or base price of bidding);On the other hand,score is given on environmental protection of construction according to the reasonableness of environmental protection measures in bidding data.Then,the score that is related to environment protection cost of construction and installation cost is converted into equivalent cost value of environment protection of construction.Finally,equivalent cost value which denotes construction green properties of bidder can be obtained after the above cost values are integrated.It helps to choose a contractor with high level of green construction.


Objective To evaluate systematically the effectiveness and safety of Corticosteroids in eosinophilic esophagitis.Methods We searched Medline(from 1966 to Jan.2008),the Netherlands Excerpta Medica database(EMBASE)(from 1977 to Jan.2008),Cochrane database of systematic review(CDSR)(No 4,2008),Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials data bases(No 4,2008),Chinese Biomedical Literature Database(CBNdisc)(form 1978 to Jan.2008) and CNKI(from 1979 to Jan.2008).A Meta-analysis was conducted on the randomized controlled trials(RCTs) involving corticosteroids for eosinophilic esophagitis.Results Only 1 RCT was enrolled,which scored 5 by Jadad Scale.The study included 36 eosinophilic esophagitis patients who were divided randomly into groups therapy(n=21,receiving fluticasone propionate) and control(n=15,receiving placebo).It was found that the histological remission rate was significantly higher in therapy group than in control;the distal esophageal groove number,proximal or distal esophageal membrane eosinophil stratification phenomenon and proximal or distal esophageal epithelial hyperplasia reduced significantly in therapy group as compared with control(P0.05).The vomiting improved more in therapy group than in control,the difference was significant(67%,27%,respectively,P=0.04).Conclusion Corticosteroids is an attractive therapy for eosinophilic esophagitis.But this evidence is based on 1 trial,a small sample size.More high-quality trials are needed to clarify the effect of Corticosteroids on eosinophilic esophagitis.


Some fissures of earth dams isn't noticed highly.They can result in the concentrate seepage passage way or the eath slide of dam body.The treatment method has the excavation and earth-fill grouting and both the method.