Purpose: Convolutional neural networks can be trained to detect various conditions or patient traits based on retinal fundus photographs, some of which, such as the patient sex, are invisible to the expert human eye. Here we propose a methodology for explainable classification of fundus images to uncover the mechanism(s) by which CNNs successfully predict the labels. We used patient sex as a case study to validate our proposed methodology. Approach: First, we used a set of 4746 fundus images, including training, validation and test partitions, to fine-tune a pre-trained CNN on the sex classification task. Next, we utilized deep learning explainability tools to hypothesize possible ways sex differences in the retina manifest. We measured numerous retinal properties relevant to our hypotheses through image segmentation to identify those significantly different between males and females. To tackle the multiple comparisons problem, we shortlisted the parameters by testing them on a set of 100 fundus images distinct from the images used for fine-tuning. Finally, we used an additional 400 images, not included in any previous set, to reveal significant sex differences in the retina. Results: We observed that the peripapillary area is darker in males compared to females ($p=.023, d=.243$). We also observed that males have richer retinal vasculature networks by showing a higher number of branches ($p=.016, d=.272$) and nodes ($p=.014, d=.299$) and a larger total length of branches ($p=.045, d=.206$) in the vessel graph. Also, vessels cover a greater area in the superior temporal quadrant of the retina in males compared to females ($p=0.048, d=.194$). Conclusions: Our methodology reveals retinal features in fundus photographs that allow CNNs to predict traits currently unknown, but meaningful to experts.


ABSTRACT Clutch judder has serious impacts on the noise, vibration and harshness performance. In this article, a simplified dynamic model with nonlinear friction torque is developed to simulate clutch judder, and the stability and dynamic response of the clutch are analysed. The real part of the judder modal eigenvalue, the moment when the clutch enters the stick state and the fluctuation level of the driving part of the clutch are treated as the evaluation indices. An uncertain hybrid model with random and interval variables is used to describe the uncertainty of parameters and a hybrid perturbation vertex method is formulated to compute the uncertainty. Furthermore, parameters with high sensitivities are used as design variables and uncertainty-based optimization is conducted to reduce clutch judder. The optimization results strongly validate that the proposed method is very effective in improving the robustness of the clutch judder performance.


This paper discusses the philosophy of the long-range research program drafted by the Surveying and Mapping Division's Research and Development Committee. The author demonstrates the need for the program and the vital interest of ASCE in its implementation. The proposed research could be carried out in a coordinated program by using three separate kinds of research facilities: universities, private firms, and government agencies. Funding of the program would be a major problem. Potential sources of funds include: private surveying and mapping firms, equipment manufacturers, public and private foundations, government mapping agencies, and research-industry organizations. The program would require strong backing by influential representatives of professional societies, industry, education and government. ASCE could expedite the program by serving as a clearing house and catalytic agent in getting the research done in a systematic manner.


This paper introduces Improcess, a novel cross-disciplinary collaborative project focussed on the design and development of tools to structure the communication between performer and musical process. We describe a 3-tiered architecture centering around the notion of a Common Music Runtime, a shared platform on top of which inter-operating client interfaces may be combined to form new musical instruments. This approach allows hardware devices such as the monome to act as an extended hardware interface with the same power to initiate and control musical processes as a bespoke programming language. Finally, we reect on the structure of the collaborative project itself, which offers an opportunity to discuss general research strategy for conducting highly sophisticated technical research within a performing arts environment such as the development of a personal regime of preparation for performance.


Kenneth Arrow's "Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care" (1963) was published at a time when health economists were still a small sect of adventurous scholars. Regular economists wondered why any ambitious young academic would venture into such strange, uncharted territory from which one might never be able to return—to the comfort of academic tenure. The natives of the uncharted territory, on the other hand, greeted the sect as arrogant missionaries bent upon imposing neoclassical economic doctrine on a people who viewed their land as a semireligious place that would forever remain impenetrable to commercial forces. What greater comfort for the adventurous sect than to receive from the hand of one of the world's most renowned regular economists a treatise that not only lent professional respect to the sect's exploits, but also served as an authoritative road map for much bolder incursions into health care. Arrow's script is dated by the graceful prose then still customary among social scientists. It is, however, so richly laden and so compact that it demands from readers nothing less than the academic analogue of talmudic scholarship. As James Robinson remarks at length in his essay in this volume, casually read, or selectively cited, the article can be made to serve all manner of entrenched economic interests or preferred ideology. Arrow's objective in his article was to identify the special characteris-


Abstract Despite 15 years of prevention efforts, recent increases in HIV infection have been documented for Black women in the US. Little is known about the role played by HIV status disclosure in high HIV prevalence communities. 180 Black women who used drugs in the past 30 days were recruited between May 2002 and May 2004 in New York City. Women were administered a structured network questionnaire and HIV serotested. Risk practices, HIV status disclosure within networks and mixing patterns by known HIV status are examined. Most (85%) women had used crack in the past 30 days; 48 (27%) had injected drugs, 65 (36%) reported anal sex, and 99 (55%) reported sex work at some time. Forty (22%) women were HIV-seropositive; 29 (16%) knew their seropositive status. Of high risk individual behaviours, only a history of sex work was associated with an HIV-seropositive status [(aOR=3.0; 95%CI: 1.3–7.3), p=.01]. Few (7%) of 600 network members disclosed an HIV positive status, although 73% were sex or drug use partners. Women who knew themselves to be HIV-infected were more likely than other women to report HIV-infected network members [(OR=1.5; 95%CI: 1.1–6.4), p=.03]. However, only 51% of network members disclosed an HIV status and women disclosed to 50% of their network members. In a context of high background HIV prevalence and low levels of HIV status disclosure, serodiscordant mixing patterns likely facilitate transmission.


The theme of this master's thesis is the nutrition status of children in primary education. Today's way of life has not only changed the eating habits of adults but also children's eating habits. Previous research shows that there is a higher number of children who are overweight or have some degree of obesity. The aim of this research is to check the nutritional status of students in primary education, their eating habits and sport activities within their free time. The research was conducted in 9 primary schools in Pula using an anonymous online questionnaire. The obtained results show that there is a difference in nutritional status of Pula's younger children depending on their school age. The differences are related to the respondents' gender and class. The results also show that the male students in the first grade and female students in the second, third and fourth grade are normally fed. Increased value of the body mass index (BMI) was recorded in second, third and fourth grade for male students and for female students in the first grade. The eating habits of the students are partly satisfactory because the students mostly eat before going to school (breakfast) and do not consume carbonated drinks, but for brunch they mostly consume the so-called unhealthy carbohydrates. Furthermore, in their free time, students are largely involved in sports and spend a lot of time in the fresh air.


The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of developmental self-regulation in adolescence as a differentiating factor of tobacco and alcohol use. It was used a sample of 407 high school students, assessed with a number of questions about such substances use and the Adolescent Self-regulatory Inventory (Moilanen, 2007), a developmentally based measure about self-regulation. Results suggest that self-regulation is a differentiating factor between adolescents who use substances and those who not, and the intensity of consumption. Teenagers who use alcohol and tobacco seem to present consistently lower scores in short and long-term self-regulation. The limitations and implications of the results are presented and discussed.


The celebrations heralding modern anaesthesia were clouded in controversy when a serious legal fight broke out among Sir WTG Morton, Crawford Long and Horace Wells, each claiming credit for the invention of ether. Credit was ultimately bestowed on Morton, even though he died in financial penury. He would have bowed his head in shame, with the modern anaesthesia research and publications being beset with allegations of scientific misconduct and unethical practices. The growth of the speciality has been based on innovations and sound scientific evidences but is increasingly marred by allegations of falsification, fabrication, plagiarism, and 'fraud'. It is high time that this issue is tackled in a stern and swift manner lest it is too late, and the quality of patient care is impinged upon.

The word 'ethics' is derived from the Greek word 'ethikos' meaning a system of right conduct and the word 'plagiarism', from 'plagiare' meaning 'to kidnap' in Latin.[1] Plagiarism has been the bane of publications for long and needless to say, it creates doubts on the authenticity of the research itself. Sub-average knowledge of the research methodology and publication guidelines have contributed to some extent, but deliberate misconduct is frequent; motives related to career enhancement and pecuniary gains form a sizable proportion. The Medical Council of India has made publications mandatory for promotions of teaching faculty, and this has created a 'Publish or Perish' situation for some of them.

Copying of text from someone else's work and claiming it to be one's own, copying ideas and concepts without citing the reference of original authors and similar other acts of academic dishonesty constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarised content may be checked using software available to editors and reviewers, but they are not completely fool proof and fail to pick up some of the plagiarised content. The most authentic and efficient plagiarism checking tools are beyond the financial capacity of many journals and is a constraint for reviewers and editors.[2,3]

To claim oneself to be an author, as per the criteria fixed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, there must be substantial contribution towards conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, interpretation of the data, etc.[4] On numerous occasions, names are entered by virtue of being seniors, by request, by pressure/coercion or simply because of friendship. The chief responsibility for such misconduct lies with the principal author.

In this issue of IJA, authors have tried to convey the various forms of scientific misconducts, authorship criteria, and conflicts prevalent in medical field through a special article. They have also suggested some concrete measures to curb these menaces by formulating appropriate policies.[5] In an upcoming publication in this journal, authors, in a survey, evaluate the various forms of challenges faced by the current generation of authors and faculty members while writing for anaesthesiology journals in India. They have suggested more stress to be laid on evidence-based formulation of journal policies so as to minimise professional misconducts, plagiarism, and conflicts.

The editorial board also faces bitter challenges from authors requesting special and rapid attention. Continuously pressurising the editor by any means of communication, conveying inappropriate remarks on rejection of the article, not adhering strictly to the revision comments sent by the editor, exerting external pressures on editor from influential persons and criticising the functioning of the journal without a deep understanding also constitutes gross misconduct on the part of the authors.

Submission of same manuscript simultaneously to multiple journals despite clear instructions and despite author self-declaration is attempted by some authors to enhance chances of acceptance or chances of early acceptance; this also amounts to misconduct.[6,7] The reviewers and the editorial group are subjected to additional workload and that too for substandard submissions. Redundant publication that is a reproduction of a part or whole of the previously published manuscript or reproduction of same data in more than one manuscript ('salami slicing') also amounts to a serious professional misconduct. This constitutes a violation of copyright law and such publications make the findings of the meta-analysis inappropriate and are detrimental to the scientific dignity and reputation of the journal.[6,7] The withdrawal of unpublished manuscript or retraction of the published article may provide some comfort for the respective editors, but repeated activities by other authors may create distrust among authors, editors and the reviewer.

The limited access to full-text PubMed indexed articles in resource challenged nations like India is one of the major reasons that such manuscripts go undetected under the scrutinising eyes of the reviewers and editors during the review stage. However, misconduct is not just prevalent in the developing nations but is equally prevalent throughout the globe.[8] Unfortunately, the evidences and results of such publications may actually find acceptance in guidelines and practice with potential for harm to patients.[9]

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has laid down a code of conduct for scientific research and publication ethics for authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, administrators, and members of the scientific committees.[10] The reviewers and editors have great responsibility to ensure that injustice is not done to the authors who submit their genuine work with years of hard work with high expectations.[9]

Statistical analysis is one of the common areas where maximum errors are committed and fabricated results are presented. Lack of awareness and knowledge can lead to the application of inappropriate techniques and tests and sometimes done deliberately so as to enhance the significance of their study. Such falsified data are difficult to detect even during the peer review stage as most of the reviewers and editors are not well versed in the science of biostatistics. Responsibility also lies with teaching faculty to impart scientific knowledge to the post-graduates during their training. Unfortunately, many lack this knowledge themselves.

It is imperative on the part of the editorial board to deal with various types of violations of COPE guidelines.[10] Not doing so can amount to professional misconduct by the board. Rejecting the manuscript, censuring the author, informing the misconduct to institutional authorities, and retracting the article if already published are some of the countermeasures to be adopted by the journal. Details of the violations should also be conveyed to other journals of similar interest and speciality.

The biggest drawback in the scientific world is that, for an identical offence, the disciplinary action is not uniform among different journals/countries.[3] It is high time that journals in India take proactive measures and follow the lead established by some of the popular journals such as 'Anesthesia and analgesia'. Issues related to plagiarism have made headlines in Indian newspapers but without any exemplary action or punishment from the journals. In current circumstances, it behoves us in the editorial board of IJA to strive hard to make its scientific content free of any plagiarised and redundant text with suitable education and guidance to authors, not just punishment. The endeavour is to facilitate quality research and publications in anaesthesiology and improve the journal's global ranking.


This report describes the fabrication of an integrating hemiellipsoid and the associated analytical and empirical evaluation of it. The focusing properties of the instrument are seen to be of high quality, and quantitative information is presented regarding the selection of the size of a detector to be used.


Since the first successful CubeSat missions in the early 2000s, payloads for this form factor have emerged and have increased in technical performance level. This trend is likely to continue in the near future. However, despite the subsequent increase in data load and the increasing modularity of components, there are no clear trends for a new electro-mechanical interface standard. The only widely adopted data bus in CubeSats, I2C, is limited in terms of data rate and reliability. Custom solutions overcoming these limitations are generally not well documented, and especially implementation results in CubeSats are lacking. Therefore, there exists a need to increase the performance and reliability of the CubeSat bus platform. This paper proposes an innovative CubeSat data bus architecture, including performance and reliability tests. The first need is to increase the feasible data rates to be compatible with future large-data payloads. Secondly, the system's reliability must be increased compared to the current I2C standard, as many launched CubeSats using this data bus experience severe problems such as bus lockups and even a few catastrophic failures. The concept proposed in this paper is to separate the main bus used for telemetry and command from the data bus used for payload data, which provides room for optimising the performance of both buses. The selected bus technology standards used to drive the hardware were found through a survey and subsequent trade-off of available serial bus standards. For the main bus, this trade-off results in either a CAN bus or RS485 bus to both increase the robustness of the internal network and potential data throughput. For the payload bus, a USB-based bus is selected to provide a high data rate with increased reliability compared to often-used standards. The combination of both options optimises performance while keeping electrical power consumption at a minimum. Making use of the common modular designs of CubeSats and recent developments in the respective data bus technologies, a flexible, robust and high performance data bus architecture is devised. A practical setup simulating a CubeSat with multiple realistic subsystems generating pseudo data is used to validate the operations of such a data bus. To find the maximum capacity of the network, multiple subsystems are connected with varying high and low data rates, thereby simulating current typical CubeSat subsystems and potential future payloads requiring high capacity data networks. Furthermore, methodologies are developed for implementation and qualification of the proposed bus in future CubeSat missions.


Using large-scale network analysis I map the cosponsorship networks of all 280,000 pieces of legislation proposed in the U.S. House and Senate from 1973 to 2004. In these networks a directional link can be drawn from each cosponsor of a piece of legislation to its sponsor. I use a number of statistics to describe these networks such as the quantity of legislation sponsored and cosponsored by each legislator, the number of legislators cosponsoring each piece of legislation, the total number of legislators who have cosponsored bills written by a given legislator, and network measures of closeness, betweenness, and eigenvector centrality. I then introduce a new measure I call 'connectedness' which uses information about the frequency of cosponsorship and the number of cosponsors on each bill to make inferences about the social distance between legislators. Connectedness predicts which members will pass more amendments on the floor, a measure which is commonly used as a proxy for legislative influence. It also predicts roll call vote choice even after controlling for ideology and partisanship. I would like to thank Tracy Burkett, Diane Felmlee, Jeff Gill, Ben Highton, Bob Huckfeldt, Jonathan Kaplan, Mark Lubell, Mark Newman, Mason Porter, Brian Sala, and Walt Stone for helpful comments and Skyler Cranmer for research assistance. This paper was originally prepared for presentation at the 2005 Midwest Political Science Association and American Political Science Association annual conferences. A copy of the most recent version can be found at http://jhfowler.ucdavis.edu. Contact: Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616. (530) 752-1649. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


A two-dimensional steady and laminar natural convection in an air-filled (Pr = 0.7) rectangular enclosure is investigated numerically. The horizontal walls are thermally insulated and the vertical side walls have two spatially varying sinusoidal temperature distributions of different amplitudes and phases. The governing equations in primitive variables are discretized by the finite-volume method and solved by the SIMPLE algorithm. The fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are systematically investigated over a wide range of Rayleigh number (Ra = 103–106), amplitude ratio ( ), phase deviation (φ = 0 − π), and aspect ratio (Ar = 0.25–4). The results show that the natural-convection heat transfer in enclosures with two sinusoidal temperature distributions on the side walls is superior to that with a single sinusoidal temperature profile on one side wall.


This dissertation aims to bring together information and data on how craft and material properties are included in simulation role play games. The topic of research was inspired by the lack of academic research into craft and crafting within digital games. The research is analysed from multiple avenues, including the point of views of the players, the intentions of developers and the social cultural influences. In addition to the research into simulation role-play games the reflection of first hand testing and analysis of the crafting elements and mechanics of some simulation role-play games is also included in this paper. The games included are those which fit into the categories of simulation role-play games and include crafting mechanics in different forms within them. Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, MineCraft and The Sims are just some of the included titles. Collection, material properties, crafting and the use of resources within games are comparatively explored alongside research into culture, economics, ethics and visual design principles.


Fuchs, that is a medium-sized group of companies with a 50 years' tradition - partners for building, specializing in building construction and civil engineering works with a total of five locations in Bavaria, Saxony and Brandenburg. With a work-force of roughly 1000, an annual turnover of approx. DM 300m is achieved. Precast construction is an important production focal point of the company - for this, three facilities are maintained in Bavaria (Bachhausen / Upper Palatinate) in Saxony (Mittelbach) and in Brandenburg (Linthe). With its IQ house, the company has established itself throughout Germany as one of the top players in cost-efficient building. The company has seen itself as a complete supplier already at an early point of time - the prerequisites for this, the company has consistently implemented in its production. In building construction, Fuchs, a member of the medium-sized Syspro cooperation, is regarded as a leader in quality and production. Fuchs, together with Reymann-Technik commissioned the first precast floor production in February 1992, the second already in December 1992, and finally in April 1994 the third. A wall and special parts production followed in July 1996. As the for the present last step in this expansion phase, the precast plant located in Linthe, about 60 km south of Berlin, directly on the A9 autobahn, built in 1994, was extended.


The absorption cross sections for gaseous ClNO2 in the 200–370 nm region and for Cl2 in the 270–400 nm region have been determined at 298 K. The cross sections for Cl2 are in excellent agreement with the literature. At λ < 300 nm the absorption cross sections for ClNO2 are in good agreement with those of lilies and Takacs (1976/1977) and Nelson and Johnston (1981) but are higher than those of Martin and Gareis (1956) from 220 to 240 nm. In the tropospherically important region beyond 290 nm our results, which have been corrected for impurity Cl2 using a combination of mass spectrometry and UV absorption, fall between those of Martin and Gareis (1956) and lilies and Takacs (1976/1977) and are in excellent agreement with the values of Nelson and Johnston (1981). Estimates of the photolysis rate constants and photolytic lifetimes for ClNO2 for various solar zenith angles at the Earth's surface are reported. It is shown that atomic chlorine from ClNO2 photolysis may be a significant initiator of organic photooxidation in both moderately polluted and remote marine atmospheres.


Protein purification essentially requires macroporous adsorbents matrices, which can provide high efficiency in packed bed and expanded bed (EB) even at high flow rates on account of reduced pore diffusion resistance resulting from finite intraparticle flow in the superpores. Rigid spherical superporous adsorbent beads with high carboxyl group density were prepared by crosslinking of cellulose. The matrix (diameter: 100–300 μm, mean pore size: 1–3 μm, pore volume: 57–59%, and bulk density: ∼1,438 kg/m3) could be used in packed bed as well as EB for purification of various biomolecules. Attempts were made to use indigenously developed rigid, superporous crosslinked cellulose adsorbent for high‐throughput purification of lysozyme from chicken egg white's extract. A typical adsorption isotherm for lysozyme in crude was well correlated with the Langmuir isotherm model. Two maxima of binding capacity on celbeads bearing carboxymethyl (celbeads‐CM) group for lysozyme were observed at pH 4.5 and 7.5. Uptake kinetics showed that the diffusivity of lysozyme was 100 times higher than conventional matrices. Such superporous matrix can be used for high‐throughput purification of proteins from crude feedstocks and is reflected in leveling off of height equivalent to theoretical plate vs. flow curve after threshold velocity. Optimization of binding and elution conditions resulted in overall purification of lysozyme in a high yield and purity of 98.22 and 98.8%, respectively, with purification factor of 51.54 in a single step. The overall productivity (14.21 kg/m3 h) and specific activity (2.2 × 105 U/mg) were higher than that obtained with traditional particulate resins. © 2011 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2011


A biological command based controller designed for the Human-inspired robotic exoskeleton (HuREx) was developed and introduced in this paper. This controller is built upon human's musculoskeletal system which could provide subject-specific parameters for the controller as well as the robot design. There are two layers in the biological command based controller: the outer position controller and the inner force controller which aim to track desired position and force respectively. Desired forces aiming to control the actuators were calculated firstly by the real-time muscle force estimation (RMFE) algorithm using kinematic inputs. Then a model based PID controller was used as the inner force controller to control the pneumatic air muscle actuators directly. The controller was tested by a gait-swing assistance robot. A gait cycle of knee joint was used as desired trajectory for position tracking. The simulation results show that the proposed biological command based controller could track both desired knee angles and desired forces.


The present study used Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) to examine the functional morphology of the feeding and associated appendages of the detritivore-collector atyid shrimps Caridina cantonensis Yu, 1938 and C. trifasciata Yam & Cai, 2003. The third maxillipedes of both species are equipped with serrate setae ending in a terminal pore, which setae may thus serve both as mechano- and chemo-receptors. Pereiopods 1 and 2 have dense, long, simple setae and single-rowed serrate setae for effective brushing fine-particulate organic matter and scraping periphyton from the substratum. Pereiopods 3 and 4 are heavily armed with large cuspidate setae and with simple type setae, which can be used for food collection or providing strong anchorage. The dactylus of pereiopod 5 is oval, flattened, and equipped with serrate setae on the ventral margin. In contrast to the suspension-feeding Atya innocuous (Herbst, 1792), Caridina spp. show a lower setal diversity, while all setal types on the pereiopods are mechano-receptors, being specialized for collecting food.


Objective To investigate the correlation between the magnetic resonance imaging(MRI)signal intensity and Aggrecan content in the degenerative lumbar intervertebral disc. Methods Forty-six lumbar intervertebral disc samples were selected from 46 hospitalized patients (age 14~51 years,average 35 years )with lumbar intervertebral disc herniation or trauma of lumbar vertebra undergoing surgery procedure. The signal values of MRI T2WI of disc and cerebrospinal fluid in sagittal plane were measured before operation and the ratio between them were calculated. The protein was extracted from the disc,and the Aggrecan content was determined by Western blot. The correlation between the signal intensity of MRI T2WI and the Aggrecan content was analyzed with Pearson test. Results The correlation coefficient(r)between the ratio of the MRI signal intensity and the Aggrecan content in the discs of GradeⅠ,Ⅱ and Ⅲ were 0.877,0.689 and 0.699 respectively(PⅠ=0.00426,PⅡ=0.00156,PⅢ=0.0006). Conclusion The signal intensity of MRI T2WI declines with the decrease of Aggrecan content in the degenerative lumbar intervertebral disc,and the correlation between them is statistically significant.


The utility model relates to a touch panel laminate structure of a display, in particular to a touch panel laminate structure of the display, which can reduce the production cost and reduce electromagnetic interference. The touch panel is provided with a transparent substrate; a transparent conducting layer is arranged above the transparent substrate in a laminated manner; a rectangular surrounding electrode pattern layer is arranged above the transparent conducting layer in a laminated manner; a mother glass layer is further arranged on the upper surface of the electrode pattern layer; and the touch panel is arranged above a display panel in a laminated manner. Through the design, the touch panel provided by the utility model can eliminate the processing of a surface hardening layer, thereby simplifying the manufacture process, increasing the production yield rate and reducing the manufacture cost; and meanwhile, the interference of electromagnetism in the transparent conducting layer and the electrode pattern layer can be reduced, and the touch certainty and the accuracy of the touch panel can be improved.


It is shown that magnetite nanoparticles (MagNPs) grafted with polyethylene glycol (PEG) self‐assemble and short‐range‐order as 2D films at surfaces of aqueous suspensions by manipulating salt concentrations. Synchrotron X‐ray reflectivity and grazing‐incidence small angle X‐ray scattering studies reveal that K2CO3 induces the migration of the PEG‐MagNPs to the liquid/vapor interface to form a Gibbs layer of monoparticle in thickness. As the salt concentration and/or nanoparticle concentration increase, the surface‐adsorbed nanoparticles become more organized. And further increase in salt concentration leads to the growth of an additional incomplete nanoparticle layer contiguous to the first one at the vapor/liquid interface that remains intact.


REVIEW: BUSINESS CORPORATIONS AND THE BLACK MAN, S. Prakash Sethi, Chandler Publishing Co., clothbound $6.00, paperback $3.25. How will American business learn to understand and deal fairly with the dreams of the black community and their collective demands for power? Professor Sethi's book seeks an answer to this question by telling the dramatic story of the confrontation in late 1966 and 1967 between the Eastman Kodak Company, the largest employer (41,000) in Rochester, New York and FIGHT-a new black power group organized by Saul Alinsky and led by militant Minister Florence. Poor southern blacks had streamed into prosperous Rochester. There were riots in 1964. The blacks were disorganized. In this climate the Rochester churches brought in Saul Alinsky. Sethi's purpose is not simply to describe one historical case in readable prose (as he does), but to relate this conflict to a theory of social change: This book developed out of my studies on the role of business corporations in a changing social system. Business organizations today find themselves confronted by new groups, especially those representing minorities, who question the social values of the economic services the corporations perform, whose demands defy long accepted criteria of economic efficiency, and more important, whose strategies and tactics seem to violate all the rules of the game. (p. xvii)


The task of my bachelor thesis was to process the study entitled. Optimization of processing of aluminum profiles. At the practical part have been designed the technology processing of aluminum profiles. First, was excluded the areas of profiles, which adversely affect the bending of aluminum profile.The next task was to separate these areas from the profile by method of water jet cutting. These samples were then heat-treated and subjected to mechanical tests. To carry out the practical part of this thesis was used the following technological equipments: Machine waterjet cutting from Company Flow, electric resistance chamber furnace, universal testing machine for static and dynamic (low-cycle) tests: tension, bending, compression. The measured values of samples were compared with the previous state of the material before any heat treatment. In my thesis I am looking for an optimal solution to greater efficiency of production and also saving the time.


This paper emphasizes the importance and sustainable development ideal.Based on the design of dwelling greenlands,this paper describes how to design the greenlands in small dwelling districts with saving cost and convenient management.Also it puts forward that the time and spatial ideal should be taken as the outstanding position in the management of small dwelling district greenlands,and the economical expense and long-term management purpose should be taken into account.


Intelligent Video-Surveillance (IVS) systems are being more and more popular in security applications. The analysis and recognition of abnormal behaviours in a video sequence has gradually drawn the attention in the field of IVS, since it allows filtering out a large number of useless information, which guarantees the high efficiency in the security protection, and save a lot of human and material resources. We present in this paper ADABeV, an intelligent video-surveillance framework for event recognition in crowded scene to detect the abnormal human behaviour. This framework is attended to be able to achieve real-time alarming, reducing the lags in traditional monitoring systems. This architecture proposal addresses four main challenges: behaviour understanding in crowded scenes, hard lighting conditions, multiple input kinds of sensors and contextual-based adaptability to recognize the active context of the scene. Keywords—Behavior recognition, Crowded scene, Data fusion, Pattern recognition, Video-surveillance


Failure of screening in an individual patient essentially means failure of the screening tests to detect the HCC at a curable stage or failure to properly interpret the screening test results (recall procedures), or failure to apply the appropriate treatment for that stage of disease at a timely interval after detection. Studies of resection and local ablation suggest that the likelihood of cure starts to diminish once the HCC is between 2 and 2.5 cm in diameter [3–5]. Therefore, the target size lesion that screening should detect is below approximately 2.5 cm. To be useful, a screening test should be able to find most lesions smaller than this size. Failure of the screening test to identify such a small cancer that is present and may be curable may be due to inadequate sensitivity of the screening test, too long an interval between screening tests, development of an aggressive cancer that exhibits microvascular invasion and/or metastasis even while still small, or to an infiltra tive tumor that does not form a clearly identifiable lesion. The serological screening tests are AFP concentration, des-g-carboxy prothrombin and the L3 fraction of AFP. However,


In the field of cryogenic storage, the medium inside the pressure vessel is in a liquid state and thus is incompressible. Therefore the storage tank should be designed in a way, that makes the best possible use of the available space within an aircraft. A composite-overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) based on intersecting spheres (multi-sphere) provides a more volumetrically efficient solution compared to packed cylinders when fitted in a rectangular prescribed box. Additionally, it leads to weight savings due to equal membrane strains when subjected to uniform pressure and less required thermal insulation attributed to the spheres consisting of minimum surface area per given volume. The latter is the result of the minimization of passive heat in the cryogenic liquid and is associated with the fact that spheres have the minimum surface area for a given volume. In the present work, a numerical and experimental study of a novel multi-spherical COPV with a plastic liner was performed. A thermo-mechanical model based on Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was developed to assess the effect of cryogenic operation at the structure. The model incorporated the dependency of engineering properties and coefficient of thermal expansion of the composite overwrap and liner materials to temperature, in order to describe the structural response to cryogenic temperatures more accurately. This dependency was determined through using approximation functions based on results from material coupon testing. The temperature profile and strain response of the tank were assessed through thermocouples and Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) respectively, throughout the cryogenic chill-down and pressure cycling test. The experimental results verified the accuracy of the involved stiffness and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) functions and the FE analysis with average offset of 10 [%]. The most important outcome from the study is the absence of damage in the composite overwrap after cryonic chill-down and pressure cycling, which can be regarded as a positive indication of the suitability of Type IV multi-spherical COPVs for cryogenic storage applications.


The energy and angular distributions of neutrons from the p + d yields n + p + p reaction were measured for incident protons of energy 6.06, 7.15, 8.90, and 13.5 Mev. The peak in the neutron spectra near the maximum neutron energy is in qualitative agreement with the calculations of Heckrotte and MacGregor. (auth)


Himalayas are a great boon to India as they block the monsoon winds from the oceans, allowing the northern plain to receive plenty of rainfall. The rivers Ganga and Brahmaputra are fed by the snow of the higher peaks, and these also protect from the cold biting winds o North Asia. But it is this Himalayan range again, which is one of the biggest hotspots of natural disasters, because they are still growing and young mountains and the changing climate of the globe has added to the frequency and extent of such disasters. This paper involves the study of the Basin of Alakananda River, a tributary of the Ganges, so as to delineate the flood prone zones of the area. Almost every year this region is affected by cloudbursts and consequent floods. The parameters taken into consideration here are the slope, the river networks and the soil type of the area. River Tools has been used to extract the stream networks of the river. Consequent analysis has been carried out in ArcGIS. The results of the analysis show that the topology of the area is highly dangerous for any urbanization. Villages constructed on this region are very much vulnerable to heavy floods due to the loose soil type present on the surface and the steep slope. The study identifies such highly vulnerable regions in the Alakananda River Basin.


Ultimately-to use an intellectually compromised and politically discredited word-we are all probably investigating what (in Adrian Forty's words) "we are able to say about the actions of individuals as social beings." Design doesn't exist for its own sakemuch to the disappointment of unreformed Modernists and some curators of white cubic museum. It exists, instead, in real lives, real situations, real places, and real time. Modernist designers, of course, believed that they were treating design as a means to an end of a social project. The most committed of Modernists, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, declared: "Not the product, but man, is the end in view." But the Modernist conception of "man" (let alone woman) left much to be desired because men and women inevitably failed to live up to the Platonic perfection of phileban solids and beautiful forms. It was Reyner Banham who pointed out that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, not in the design of the dish. Banham's Confucian-like wisdom was uttered in the 1960s; and his influence was felt profoundly, if sometimes grudgingly, by the first generation of design historians in the 1970s. Victor Margolin is right in his dating of the shift from a Pevsnerian, Modernist approach to design history, to a Banhamesque one around this time. The design criticism that Banham was publishing in New Statesman and New Society, beginning in the 1950s, opened up the study of design history to include almost anything from the design and graphics of cigarette packaging, through television puppet series, to Argentinean decorated buses. This shift was not the result of Banham's writing; rather, the writing was, itself, a symptom of a paradigm shift resulting from the explosion of an urban, sophisticated popular culture. Design objects (and graphics, too) were no longer seen as derivations (whether stylistically or intellectually) of architecture, but of fashion. Fashion initially provided the new model because it was constantly in a state of change, and thus it was essentially ephemeral. What mattered was not its intellectual content, integrity and zeitgeist credentials; but its visual impact and appropriateness to particular-and temporary-circumstances. Banham (and others of the Independent Group generation) taught us that design history was not concerned with a particular class of architecture-related objects deemed by high-minded writers as worthy of serious consideration. Instead, design history could concern itself with what previously had been dismissed as trivial,


The studies were carried out in a large fruit-growing farm in Central Russia "Agrofirm named after 15 years of October" in the Lebedyansky district of the Lipetsk region. The farm is switching to intensive horticulture using new varieties of apple trees on low-growing rootstocks. The article analyzed the results of a study of a comprehensive assessment of apple varieties with the necessary technological parameters for the production of products that meet domestic and international standards. We studied the main components of productivity and marketability of four varieties of apple trees on low-growing rootstocks: Ligol, Honey Crunch, Berkutovskoe and Spartan. It was found that all varieties are productive and have high marketability. But the most productive variety was Ligol -75 t/ha, which exceeded Spartan by 24 t/ha, Berkutovskoe - by 39 t/ha and Honey Crunch - by 48 t/ha. It was established that the commercial qualities of fruits depended on the characteristics of the variety, changing from the place of growth and the weather conditions of the year. By the sum of sugars, the best variety of apples was determined - this is Spartan, it had the most sugars (11.9%), the excess over the Ligol variety was 1.0%, Honey Crunch - 1.3%, Berkutovskoe - 1.6%. It was found that the highest content of ascorbic acid was in apples of the Berkutovskoye variety (15 mg/100 g), somewhat less was contained in the fruits of Honey Crunch - 14.5 mg/100 g. The minimum amount (8.8 mg/100 g) of ascorbic acid was in Spartan apples. It was established that with an average value of the sugar-acid coefficient of 13.8, the diversity limits for the studied varieties varied from 12.8 (Ligol) to 14.3 (Honey Crunch and Spartan). It was suggested that two varieties of honey crunch and Spartan are closest to the optimal values for this indicator.


The desired aroma and flavour of coffee are developed during roasting process where the coffee beans undergo a series of complex chemical reactions leading to the changes of physical and chemical properties. In order to study the correlation between physical and chemical properties of the coffee beans during roasting process, 100 g of Timor Arabica coffee beans were roasted and sampled at 2 minutes interval roasting period. The physical changes such as weight loss, surface temperature, colour and cracking sound as well as spectral characteristics changes by using FTIR spectrometer were investigated. The timing for the spectral characteristics apparent changes correspond well with the first and second cracking sound noted at 6 and 10 minutes roasting period, respectively. It can be assumed that important chemical compounds, which may be good indicators for coffee roasting degree, appeared near the optimum roasting period. The physical and chemical properties changes data may be utilized to develop an online monitoring device for roasting degree doneness.


An objective of a hearing aid (HA) is to improve speech communication for the hearing-impaired listeners. The current best practices for dispensing HAs involve pure tone audiometry (PTA), a functional test that characterizes ability to detect pure tones, but not perception of complex time-frequency patterns in natural speech. We present a phonetic-contrast function (PCF) that takes a test-reference pair from the Minimal Contrast Set (MCS) and generates a time-frequency-energy matrix of contrast regions. The test word is first time-aligned to the reference word using modified dynamic time warping. The frequency axis is composed of 11 bands defined by an audiometric filterbank presented in a companion work. The energy is in a pseudo dB scale in the ±120 dBSPL range. We will demonstrate the operation of PCF for English MCS spoken by a male and a female speaker. In a companion work, we developed a functional test for listening competence based on MCS that include substitutions, deletions, and insertions of acoustic-phonetic features in the stimuli, as in [lock, log, locks]. Future work includes PCF-based investigations with hearing impaired listeners to improve intelligibility of fricatives, stops, etc. by refining the HA parameters in the 11 audiometric frequencies used in sound processing.


In order to eliminate the focus deformation and at the same time localize the field near the interface, a tightly focused evanescent field combining with a radially polarized illumination, generated by interference method with a single LCD, is proposed in this paper. A scanning near-field optical microscope (SNOM) has been employed to observe the focal spot near the interface by means of directly scanning over the focal field.


Objective: Intravenous (IV) levetiracetam (LEV) is approved for use in patients older than 16 years and may be useful in critically ill children, although there is little data available regarding pharmacokinetics. We aim to investigate the safety, an appropriate dosing, and efficacy of IV LEV in critically ill children. Design: We describe a cohort of critically ill children who received IV LEV for status epilepticus, including refractory or nonconvulsive status, or acute repetitive seizures. Results: There were no acute adverse effects noted. Children had temporary cessation of ongoing refractory status epilepticus, termination of ongoing nonconvulsive status epilepticus, cessation of acute repetitive seizures, or reduction in epileptiform discharges with clinical correlate. Conclusions: IV LEV was effective in terminating status epilepticus or acute repetitive seizures and well tolerated in critically ill children. Further study is needed to elucidate the role of IV LEV in critically ill children.


Due to insufficient muscle strength, a novel rehabilitation mechanism of the shoulder joint exoskeleton is proposed and analyzed based on gear and rack transmission, which solves the problem that stroke patients need repetitive exercise rehabilitation training. First, the range of motion angle of the shoulder joint is determined, and the mechanical structure of shoulder joint rehabilitation is designed. The arc rack is engaged with the output shaft gear of the reducer, and the servo motor is utilized as the driving force to realize the internal/external rotation movement of the shoulder joint. The motor connects the horizontal connecting rod and the rotating rod through the cross roller bearing to realize the abduction/adduction and flexion/extension movement of the shoulder joint. Second, the kinematics and dynamics of the shoulder joint exoskeleton are analyzed, investigated, and verified for the rehabilitation mechanism. The simulation analysis of the mechanism is completed in the virtual prototype. The changes in the joint angle and end trajectory and joint moment with time and angular velocity under the given working conditions are obtained, which directly reflect the movement of each joint of the rehabilitation mechanism. Finally, aiming at the nonlinear disturbance in the trajectory tracking control of the rehabilitation mechanism of the shoulder joint exoskeleton, the trajectory tracking approach of the mechanism is achieved aided with the closed-loop PD iterative learning control method. The results demonstrate that the actual trajectories are in good agreement with the desired trajectories, which can achieve effective tracking and improve the control quality of the system.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief introduction of the finite difference based parabolic equation (PE) modeling to the advanced engineering students and academic researchers.

Design/methodology/approach
A three-dimensional parabolic equation (3DPE) model is developed from the ground up for modeling wave propagation in the tunnel via a rectangular waveguide structure. A discussion of vector wave equations from Maxwell's equations followed by the paraxial approximations and finite difference implementation is presented for the beginners. The obtained simulation results are compared with the analytical solution.

Findings
It is shown that the alternating direction implicit finite difference method (FDM) is more efficient in terms of accuracy, computational time and memory than the explicit FDM. The reader interested in maximum details of individual contributions such as the latest achievements in PE modeling until 2021, basic PE derivation, PE formulation's approximations, finite difference discretization and implementation of 3DPE, can learn from this paper.

Research limitations/implications
For the purpose of this paper, a simple 3DPE formulation is presented. For simplicity, a rectangular waveguide structure is discretized with the finite difference approach as a design problem. Future work could use the PE based FDM to study the possibility of utilization of meteorological techniques, including the effects of backward traveling waves as well as making comparisons with the experimental data.

Originality/value
The proposed work is directly applicable to typical problems in the field of tunnel propagation modeling for both national commercial and military applications.


The possible accidental releases from nuclear power plants with pressurized water reactors are classified into eight release categories. To assess the damage resulting from these releases, a model for accident consequences (UFOMOD) is set up. In this model, the atmospheric dispersion and ground deposition are evaluated, and the space- and time-dependent activity concentration in the atmosphere and on the ground is calculated. From these concentration values, the potential doses on which the different protective measures and countermeasures depend are first determined. The doses to be expected are then calculated taking into account these protective measures and countermeasures. Based on these doses, the consequences are assessed for the population affected, in terms of somatic early fatalities, somatic late fatalities, and genetic exposure. The consequences are then assessed by running several times through the 8 release categories at 19 sites with a total of 25 reactor units. The calculations for each site are based on 115 different weather sequences of several hours' duration, assuming that these sequences have the same probability in each of the 36 predetermined wind directions (each of 10 deg). In parallel, the corresponding frequencies of occurrence are determined. From the pairs of values ''extent of consequences/frequency of occurence,''more » the final results are derived.« less


Decreasing of noise level depending on park plantings structure parameters is reviewed in this article. The connection between noise level and these parameters is shown. Equation allows calculating its decreasing at the stages of park designing and reconstruction is revealed


The work is the second part of an essay published in "Lanx" 1 (2008). After exposing the previous reconstructions, a new proposal is advanced, which explains the marquee through the macedonian architecture and suggests a new architectonical building type, the oecus aegyptius . Since only the interior is known, the dimensions are calculated (m 34 x 26 approximately for the base, m 22 for the height of the columns, with the addition of the roof), and the constitutive elements are interpreted according to the comparison with the archaeological and literary evidence: the palm- and thyrsos-shaped columns, the nymphai and the antra , the statue bases, the arch door, the lacunar ceiling, the sloping roof, the furniture, the gold and silver vases, the works of art. The exhibition lasts one year, and consequently becomes a new "event", in connection with the contemporary dionysiac pompe : the works of art acquire a new meaning, connoting the Lagides as refined collectors, and are part of a cultural and political program, probably organized by the Museum scholars. The exhibition, indeed, is marked by an encyclopaedical purpose: on one hand it seems to be the ephemeral equivalent of the Museum and of the zoo promoted by Ptolemy I, on the other it takes part in the cultural construction of the Ptolemean family, being almost its dynastic monument.


In 1978 BLS adopted an estimator for U.S. CPI component indexes that incorporates scientific samples of outlets and varieties and that allows the calculation of reliable standard errors. Consumer substitution of outlets and varieties offering better values could cause bias in these indexes. A more important source of bias is, however, a tendency to give excessive weight to items whose initial price is temporarily low. The empirical evidence is striking. Average price series and matched food CPIs grew at almost the same rate before 1978, but between 1980 and 1992 the CPIs average about 1.4 per year more growth. For unleaded gasoline, the discrepancy averages 0.8 per year.


Following a common ambition in his time, Francis Bacon reflected on the ways to preserve the self, heal the sick and above all extend life. Here as elsewhere, he did not fail to detect the shortcomings (desiderata) affecting the study of phenomena. Nevertheless, what is truly new – encapsulated in the neologism euthanasia – is the recommendation, when suffering becomes unbearable, not that old-fashioned suicide should be committed but, rather, that technical assistance should be given able to provide a gentle death.


The weak formulation of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in three space dimensions is discretized with spectral element approximations and Gauss-Lobatto-Legendre quadratures. The Uzawa algorithm is applied to decouple the Velocities from the pressure. The equation that results for the pressure is solved by an iterative method. Within each pressure iteration, a Helmholtz operator has to be inverted. This can efficiently be done by separating the equations for the interior nodes from the equations at the interfaces, according to the Schur method. Fast diagonalization techniques are applied to the interior variables of the spectral elements. Several ways to deal with the resulting interface problem are discussed. Finally, a comparison is made with a more classical method. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.


We investigate pre-processing using the observed quenched fraction of group and cluster galaxies in the Yang et al. (2007) SDSS-DR7 group catalogue in the redshift range of 0.01 10^14.5 M_sun) systems in our sample.


Drosera peltata Thunb. was described from a specimen collection made in 1793 (Thunberg 7720) from the vicinity of current-day Sydney, Australia. In the years that followed at least a dozen morphologically similar taxa were described, often with imprecisely defined characters that led to confusion in the application of available names to plants in the wild and in cultivation. Conn (1981) and Gibson (1993) independently tackled part of this taxonomic problem and this led to one of us (R.G.) continuing the study of the complex as a PhD project at the University of New England. Additional morphological work resulted in the recognition of the D. peltata complex as comprising five species (Gibson et al. 2012).


The electrode, as one of the most critical components in a proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) cell for hydrogen production, has a significant impact on cell performance. Electrodes that are fabricated via various techniques may exhibit different morphologies or properties, which might change the kinetics and resistances of the PEMWE. In this study, we have successfully fabricated several electrodes by different techniques, and the effects of electrode coating methods (ultrasonic spray, blade coating, and rod coating), hot press, and decal transfer processes are comprehensively investigated. The performance differences between various electrodes are due to kinetic or high frequency resistance changes, while the influences are not significant, with the biggest deviation of about 26 mV at 2.0 A cm−2. In addition, the effects of catalyst ink compositions, including ionomer to catalyst ratio (0.1 to 0.3), water to alcohol ratio (1:1 to 3:1), and catalyst weight percentage (10% to 30%), are also studied, and the electrodes' performance variations are less than 10 mV at 2.0 A cm−2. The results show that the PEMWE electrode has superior compatibility and redundancy, which demonstrates the high flexibility of the electrode and its applicability for large-scale manufacturing.


Cardiac surgeons have made sporadic attempts to devise a suitable method of closure of atrial septal defects for some time. Cohn 1 in 1947 invaginated the atrial wall, sewed it to the edges of experimental defects, and cut loose the fixed portion of the wall. Murray 2 in 1948 proposed and used in patients a method of direct closure by suture that appears, from his description of the operation, to resemble the method described below. At the time of writing of Murray's article, one of his patients who seemed clearly to have had an atrial septal defect was doing very well after the operation. Others 3 have devised methods of suture or methods using prostheses that have functioned well in animals but have not done well or have not been tried in human beings. Gross and others 4 report success in three of six instances of operative closure of atrial


Fabrication of micro and nanoscale components are in high demand for various applications in diversified fields that include automotive, electronics, communication and medicine. Focused ion beam (FIB) machining is one of the techniques for microfabrication of micro devices. This paper presents a review of FIB machining technology that include its parameter, responses, its important component systems, as well as the fundamentals of imaging, milling (etching) and deposition techniques. The application of FIB in micromachining is also presented.


There is a significant recent interest in collaboratively training a machine learning (ML) model without collecting data to a central server. Federated learning (FL) emerges as an efficient solution mitigating systemic privacy risks and communication costs. However, conventional FL inherited from parameter server designs relies too much on a central server, which may lead to privacy risks, communication bottlenecks, or a single point of failure. In this paper, we propose an asynchronous and hierarchical local gradient aggregation and global model update algorithm, FedDual, under three different security considerations for FL in large decentralized networks. Particularly, FedDual preserves privacy by introducing local differential privacy (LDP) and aggregates local gradients asynchronously and hierarchically via a pair-wise gossip algorithm, which is more competitive than previous gossip-based decentralized FL methods in terms of privacy preservation and communication efficiency, and offers more computational efficiency compared to existing blockchain-assisted decentralized FL methods. Further, we devise a noise cutting trick based on Private Set Intersection (PSI) to mitigate the prediction performance loss of the global model caused by the leveraged LDP. Rigorous analyses show that FedDual helps decentralized FL achieve the same convergence rate of $\mathcal {O}\left({\frac {1}{T}}\right) $ as centralized ML theoretically. Ingenious experiments on MNIST, CIFAR-10, and FEMNIST confirm that the model prediction performance gained from FedDual is close to centralized ML. More importantly, the proposed noise cutting trick helps FedDual to train better global models than LDP-based FL methods in terms of prediction performance and convergence rate.


This paper presents a new characterization setup for Printed Electronics. The proposed system allows automatic generation of experiments, optical and electrical characterization, and statistical result analysis of full printed foils. Although its primary objective is the extraction of the needed post-layout corrections, due to its modular design, it can extract other technology information, like Design Rule values or overall printing quality of the whole fabrication process.


The Fe-Al-Ni composite oxide was synthesized through a simple coprecipitation method. The adsorbent was characterized by using scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, zeta potential, and energy dispersive analysis of X-rays, and its defluoridation properties were investigated. Adsorption kinetics fitted well the pseudo-second-order model. The fluoride adsorption isotherm was well described by the Freundlich model. Moreover, when the initial fluoride concentration was 200 mg/L, the maximum adsorption capacity was calculated as 59.5 mg/g from the Langmuir model. It was found that the maximum removal rate was 93.6% at pH = 7, with an initial fluoride concentration of 10 mg/L. The co-existing anions indicate that chloride, sulfate, and nitrate don't have much effect on F– adsorption, but phosphate and carbonate show a significant effect on F– removal. It shows that the efficacy of the adsorbents still maintains high as being reused, indicating that the spent adsorbent is suitable for regeneration.


What are the risks for breast cancer? Although breast cancer occurs 100 times more frequently in females than in males, suggesting that breast cancer prefers tissue that is primed by female hormones, there are a significant number of other risk factors that are associated with its occurrence. These risk factors have cast doubt on the role of the sex hormones being primarily responsible for the initiation of breast cancer, namely: a) The disease is more commonly diagnosed in post-menopausal women not on HRT than in premenopausal women. b) It is a disease of the ageing. The older the woman, the more likely she is to develop breast cancer. At age 50 years, the rate of diagnosis is 1:50, whereas at 70 years, it is 1:20 and at 85 years it is 1:10. A 50 year old has a 10% lifetime probability of developing and a 3% probability of dying of breast cancer. c) Pregnancy before the age of 25 years, even though associated with high levels of endogenous sex hormones, results in a reduced risk, especially if associated with breast-feeding. d) An increas ing number o f pregnancies is also associated with a reduction. Women who have 5 or more children have about twothirds the rate of breast cancer as women who have one child. e) The oral combined contraceptive pill is not associated with an increased diagnosis of breast cancer. f) A body mass index of greater than 30 kg/m , or regular consumption of alcohol, will increase the incidence of breast cancer. g) A menarche <12 years or menopause >54 years are associated with an increased incidence. h) Increased breast density at the time of mammography. Recent reviews of 7 studies have indicated decreased mammographic sensitivity in hormone users, with a slight increase in false positive recalls. Post-menopausal women not on HRT, but with an increased breast density on mammography, require mandatory surveillance with annual mammography and ultrasonography as these patients may have a higher incidence of breast cancer. i) A family history of two first degree family relatives with breast cancer doubles the individual's risk of developing the disease. Family history does not further increase the small risk of breast cancer said to be associated with HRT usage. j) Oophorectomy before 35 years reduces the lifetime risk of breast cancer by 75% in women.


With the growing progress and embracing of smart digital technology integration for education, large amount of data is collected from informative backgrounds which has been analyzed and given motivational perceptions to the educational worker. The data-driven method for improved understanding and enhancing knowledge together with the learning situation paves the way for learning analytics to contribute to smart learning. The current learning analytics lacks knowledge awareness, an essential component in smart education—this paper analysis the smart leaning mechanism and reviews the smart leaning application development tool. The survey has been taken based on the questionnaire related to smart learning with the respondents of 100 individuals. The paper also highlights the smart classroom integrated technology development towards smart learning architecture. The analysis includes the negative and positive impact of smart application-based learning and cost-effective leaning for the middle-income sectors.


The third sector,known as "the third power",is supposed to be non-profitable standing out of government and corporate.However,profit seeking are found in the third sector.During the reform of the government,some functions of the government are transferred to the third sector,at the same time,a close and complex relationship in personnel between government and the third sector has been set up,which brings the third sector authority and resources from the politic system,and it makes the illegal way possible.The officer of business system plays an important role in the third sector's seeking for profit.


Leibniz's philosophy of time, often seen as a precursor to current forms of relationalism and causal theories of time, has rightly earned the admiration of his more recent counterparts in the philosophy of science. In this article, I examine Leibniz's philosophy of time from a new perspective: the role that tense and non-tensed temporal properties/relations play in it. Specifically, I argue that Leibniz's philosophy of time is best (and non-anachronistically) construed as a non-tensed theory of time, one that dispenses with tensed temporal properties such as past, present, and future. In arguing for this thesis, I focus on the three facets of Leibniz's philosophy most relevant for evaluating his commitment to a B-theory of time: (1) the nature of change, (2) the reality of the future, and (3) the truth-conditions for tensed temporal statements. Despite prima facie evidence to the contrary, I show that a close examination of Leibniz's views on these topics provides compelling evidence for interpreting his philosophy of time as a B-theory of time.


The existing seismic processing technology is capable of preserving kinematics of reflection and beneficial to structural prospecting, but it may degrade dynamics of reflection and go against lithologic prospecting. In fact, almost every main processing step brings changes to reflection in certain form, and waveform of reflection is damaged unavoidably as a result of accumulations of these changes. The impact of processing on reflection could possibly depress or destroy the effect of AVO, the reliability issue has already been a bottleneck in enhancing precision of reservoir description. A fundamental settlement of the issue introduced in this paper is to extract primary waveform of target reflector directly. With primary waveform and its derived attributes, reliable basic data is acquired for AVA analysis.


The Lingding channel appears as a quasi-linear dark-bright feature in a TerraSARX synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image acquired in the area of Pearl River Estuary (PRE), China on October 25, 2010. The tidal current in this area is almost parallel to the major axis of the Lingding channel. In this paper, researches on the SAR remote sensing imaging conditions of channel topography have been carried out based on the analysis of SAR imaging mechanism. A 3-D simulation imaging model of SAR shallow water topography for the PRE consisting of a 3-D hydrodynamic model and a radar simulation model has been used. Simulations on SAR remote sensing imaging of channel topography have been carried out under different radar parameters and sea conditions, then the best conditions for SAR imaging of the PRE shallow water topography are given.


The state of lipid peroxidation and the oxidative modification of proteins in the blood of 29 women with chronic endometritis aged 27 to 40 years were studied. The control group consisted of 19 healthy women aged 27 to 44 years. The intensity of lipid peroxidation was estimated by the level of diene conjugates and malondialdehyde, the oxidative modification of proteins - by the level of carbonyl derivatives. It was shown that in the blood of women with chronic endometritis, the concentration of aliphatic aldehyde groups and 1,9 times the carbonyl groups in protein molecules increases by 3,3 times compared with the control group. A significant increase in diene conjugates by 34% and malondialdehyde in blood plasma and red blood cells by 47 and 43%, respectively, was established. The increase in lipid peroxidation products and oxidative protein modification in the blood indicates the development of oxidative stress in women suffering from chronic endometritis. Compared with healthy patients with chronic endometritis, a convincing tendency toward an increase in prolactin and anti- Muller hormone against a decrease in progesterone was revealed in the group compared to healthy ones. To predict possible complications in patients with chronic endometritis, it is advisable to study the indicators of protein and lipid peroxidation as markers of oxidative stress and the severity of the inflammatory process. In addition, such patients should be advised to take antioxidant drugs in combination with the basic therapy.


The invention belongs to the technical field of pattern recognition and computer vision, particularly to a sub-pixel level image sampling and representing method based on a retina theory, a digital camera image sensor is directly corresponded with a retinal receptive cell layer by the method, a digital image which is captured by the digital camera is carried out sampling which is similar to a retina mechanism. The specific steps of the method is that each pixel in the image is treated as a color block, a whole digital image which is composed of all the color blocks is corresponding to a rectangle area in vision field, thereby being convenient to flexibly sample according to a mode of a retina photoreceptor. The sub-pixel level image sampling and representing method in the invention is helpful to realize distinctive treatment to different orientation stimulus in the vision field with a high-precision supersaturated sample which is used for recognition and a low-precision sparse sample which is used for keep alert, therefore, a processing module is optimized between the structure complexity, the computing load, the processing time and processing precision.


Due to serious supply voltage unbalance in coalmine distribution network, an improved cascaded STATCOM control strategy under network voltage unbalance is proposed. In the proposed control strategy, on the one hand, under the supply voltage unbalance the balance of capacitor voltages at DC side is implemented by global control, clustered balancing control and individual balancing control, on the other hand, the reactive power and negative-sequence current of the unbalanced network are completely compensated by dual closed-loop control composed of outer voltage loop and inner current loop. Results of simulation and industrial prototype experiments show that the proposed cascaded STATCOM control strategy can effectively resolve the difficulty in the balance control of capacitor voltages at DC side under unbalanced network voltage, and the ability to resist imbalance of cascaded STATCOM is improved as well.


E-learning and distance education technologies have become a part of modern education and imply a wide range of providing learning materials. The most widely used asynchronous means for material delivery are video-lectures, mini-clips and video-podcasts. Many university professors find them very useful; however, not every university professor has enough knowledge about psychological aspects of visual and audial information perception. In the paper the author ignores the main distinguishes between these three audial-visual means mentioned above conditionally combining them into one term – a video-lecture, since the work is devoted to the characteristics of visual and audial information perception. These characteristics are to be taken into consideration while preparing a video-lecture.


In this paper, we have investigated the inflationary Bianchi type-VI cosmological model in the presence of mass less scalar field with a flat potential. To get an inflationary solution , we have considered a flat region of a constant potential V . Some physical and kinematical properties of the model are studied.


Summary The inoculation of parental spleen cells in F 1 hybrid mice favors the growth of both Graffi leukemia virus-induced lymphomas and murine sarcoma virus-induced rhabdomyosarcomas. Histocompatibility typing showed that the lymphomas originated from the hybrids and not from the parents. These observations from experiments with a known leukemogenic virus support the theory of the role of an "endogenous" leukemia virus in previously reported lymphomas arising during chronic allogeneic disease, but they suggest that the parental spleen cells play an active role in enhancing the phenomenon. The mechanisms of this action are briefly discussed.


Mixtures of air with either Cl/sub 2/ or CFCl/sub 3/ were photolyzed in a reaction chamber by simulated solar radiation. Ozone formation was temporarily inhibited by Cl/sub 2/ and permanently inhibited by CFCl/sub 3/. A chemical mechanism including gas phase and wall reactions is proposed to explain these results. The CFCl/sub 3/ is assumed to be adsorbed on the chamber walls and to poison the sites for Cl destruction.


We have applied the semi-classical formalism to the excitation and ionization of neutral and highly ionized atoms. By extending this method to the case of relativistic projectile energies, we open up an exciting field of applications, with entirely new types of processes becoming possible. The recent production and detection of a new type of an "exotic atom," namely antihydrogen, provides a striking example where the formation proceeds through bound-free pair production with antiprotons. Bound-free pair production is also of practical importance for relativistic heavy-ion colliders, constituting one of the dominant beam loss processes. A further application of this formalism pertains to Coulomb excitation and break-up of pionium, i.e., "exotic atoms" consisting of a π+π−-pair in a bound state. Cross sections for various transitions and break-up processes also in the screened Coulomb field of a nucleus are evaluated analytically and numerically.


Public forest administrations in the Western Balkans were challenged when facing novel forest policies following the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. To answer (i) what (formal) goals lead public forest administrations nowadays and (ii) how do public forest administrations fulfil these goals, we evaluated the implementation of forest policy goals in Serbia, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, and Republika Srpska by using existing criteria and indicators and the 3L model as a theoretical basis. Survey and document analyses focused on the effects observable in state and private forests. In state forests, all public or state forest enterprises were able to reach goals of multifunctionality and profitablity by prioritizing marketable goods. Sustaining forest stands is important, but it is met differently in practice. Performance in private forests is much weaker and the influence of ministry departments or sectors is weak. In conclusion, the potential for a new, stronger role of public forest administration exists: (i) the supply of marketable and nonmarketable goods could be increased, whereas securing sustained forest stands remains a permanent challenge; (ii) efficiency and profits could be improved if internal and external pressures grow; and (iii) joining forces of forestry actors could strengthen the currently weak political role and enable a strong forestry representative to emerge in the future.


The aim of this project is the design, development and evaluation of collaborative applications on mobile devices. For this study, a pervasive game was developed, which supports the use of it by many players simultaneously and can be played simultaneously in different cities by different groups of players. This game belongs to an emerging genre that mixes reality with the virtual digital world, using the real space as the gaming environment. The game was developed here uses the main elements of the bluff, deception and the assignment of roles. For its development an iterative design model was followed. The evaluation phase took place with various techniques and methods in different stages of development. The implementation was made for mobile phones running Android, also a new platform for mobile devices from Google and the OHA.


The risk of poststroke epilepsy (PSE) after endovascular treatment (EVT) is not well characterized. In this nationwide study, we assessed the risk of PSE after EVT and identified associated predictors.


ABSTRACT Heidegger's remarks about language in Being and Time do not constitute a comprehensive theory of language. Hubert Dreyfus, William Blattner and Mark Wrathall each propose a derivativist reading of these remarks. Derivativism is the theory that language is derivative of a pre-linguistically articulated experience of the world – but derivativism is not quite right. It does not account adequately for the relationship between the disclosedness of being-in-the-world and what Heidegger calls discourse [Rede]. I claim that although language has its ontological foundation in the constitution of disclosedness, this does not mean that language is prefigured by a way of being-in-the-world that is existentially prelinguistic. Finally, I develop Wrathall's claims about disclosedness into a more palatable account of the relationship between discourse and language, which I test against Heidegger's claims about the relationship between discourse and language in Being and Time.


Initially, an analysis of the logic design was used on plates or cups of pre-Hispanic cultures of the Grass, or Quillacingas, located south of Colombia. The results of this approach led to the construction of some activities to classes under the heading of movements and transformations in the circle. The main objective was to raise a methodological proposal to adapt a pre-Hispanic designs school environment, regardless of the regional context of the designs, as well as the presentation of a new work proposal in circular regions of the movements, dilation and the friezes, different from traditionally presented in school textbooks. In general, it is part of a ethnomathematics research to finish in a classroom experience with math teachers in training located north of Colombia.


Fiscal policy has remained under the authority of national governments in "Euroland," while monetary policy is unified in the hands of the European Central Bank. This arrangement does not produce optimal results. This article looks at the normative foundations of fiscal policy in the European Union, by mapping the allocative function, stabilization, and redistribution policies onto three models of legitimacy: the problem-solving European Union, the communitarian model, and the European Republic.

http://www.stefancollignon.de/PDF/3 sources of legitimacy.pdf


An approximation is presented stating that the coherence length in meters of a GaAlAs laser is equal to the output power given in milliwatts. (AIP)


Sir:I read the article "Prepectoral Breast Augmentation: A Safe Alternative to Submuscular Prosthetic Reconstruction following Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy" by Sbitany et al.1 with interest. However, I feel that they failed to adequately emphasize an important reason for inserting the prosthesis in the


It is important to investigate the firing activities of neurons, and previous experimental works have shown that fractional-order neuronal models depict the firing rate of neurons more verifiably. In this study, a modified fractional-order Hindmarsh–Rose neuronal model is proposed, and the dynamics and firing activities are investigated. Some novel phenomenon can be found. First, by analyzing numerically and theoretically, the Hopf bifurcation is found to occur when the external direct current stimulus is chosen appropriately. The effects of fractional-order on the bifurcation are also studied. Second, when injecting a direct current stimulus, compared with the integer-order model, the system has more varying dynamic behaviors and firing pattern transitions. Under different external current stimulus, periodic firing patterns and chaotic firing patterns occur when fractional-order changes, but the regions of chaotic firing patterns are different. In other words, the transition mode of periodic firing and chaotic firing induced by fractional-order is different under different external current stimulus. The two-dimensional colored diagram of firing patterns is also investigated. Finally, when injecting periodic current stimulus, regular/irregular bursting, multiple spiking, regular\irregular square wave bursting, and mixed firing mods are found by setting the appropriate fractional-order, amplitude, and frequency of the external current stimulus. Some firing patterns cannot be found in integer-order models. When the amplitude is chosen at appropriate values, the region of frequency when the system displays the mixed firing modes decreases with increasing fractional-order.


Objective
To understand the current equalization in essential public health services in China, and to provide recommendations for health resource allocation and public health policy making.

Methods
WHO′s comprehensive evaluation model, and the Rank Sum Ratio (RSR) method were used to analyze, rank and categorize essential public health services.

Results
Thirty-one provinces (cities, autonomous regions) in China were grouped into five categories, namely, relatively balanced area, low input area, resource shortage area, over utilization area and resource waste area.

Conclusions
The equalization of essential public health services in China is gradually being realized, but there are still setbacks such as mismatch between health needs and resource input, waste and over-utilization of resources. To correct these problems, relevant recommendations on health policy making for different areas were given.

Key words:
Health services administration; Essential public health services; Comprehensive evaluation; Rank sum ratio method; World Health Organization


AYAs with KTs experience high rates of premature allograft loss during the HCT. There is a critical need to identify protective factors associated with stable HCT. Resilience—the ability to adapt and thrive in the setting of adversity—has known positive impact on health outcomes. This study explored the novel role of resilience constructs as protective factors in securing stable HCT among AYA with KT.


With an angular resolutions of 0.05–0.2 mas, millimeter-VLBI1 observations (at 22, 43, and 86 GHz) allow to investigate the very central — sub-parsec scale — regions of active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are self-absorbed at lower frequencies. Here we briefly present preliminary results from recent observations of Cygnus A at 22 & 43 GHz, which reveal evidence for subluminal motion in jet and counter-jet, and 86 GHz VLBI observations of two extreme γ—blazars, suggesting a tight correlation between their γ—ray activity and the generation of jets.


Link by link chain models in VALDYN have been used extensively during the development stages of an engine and the results have been correlated successfully to measured results. DOE (Design of Experiments) is a proven and widely used process of conducting and planning experiments in order to extract the maximum amount of information from the collected data in the presence of noise (statistical variance in inputs) in the fewest number of experimental runs. The fundamental principle is to vary all relevant factors simultaneously over a set of planned experiments and then connect the results by means of a mathematical model. This model is then used for interpretation, predictions and optimisation. The VALDYN analysis and DOE methodology were combined to provide a robust validation of a timing drive design considering a wide range of noise factors. The inclusion of noise factors in a timing drive test program would result in difficult engine builds with large assumptions on the interactions and importance of noise factors. It was felt that a more thorough and efficient approach would be to perform limited engine testing coupled with extensive CAE investigations using DOE techniques. A 2 stage DOE was used, the first to show the relative importance of a range of noise factors; the second to provide a detailed model to show how the interaction of the important noise factors affected the response. The outputs chosen were the parameters that most affect timing drive durability. The experiment highlighted the important factors as sprocket tooth profile, chain clearance (chain wear), guide location and excitation into the timing drive. The interaction of these properties varies, particularly with chain wear. The maximum chain load seen, under the worst case engine conditions, was less than the fatigue limit of the chain providing confidence in the durability of the timing drive under all engine conditions.


Measurements of the gas phase proton transfer equilibrium [1]: AH + B− = A− + BH with a pulsed electron high pressure mass spectrometer (PHPMS) lead to and data. These relative acidities are converted to the absolute acidities [2]: AH = A− + H+bycalibration of the relative and scale to the known values for and of a reference compound(HCl). Earlier determinations that included 16 aliphatic AH are extended in the present work and provide data for 47 aliphatic carboxylic acids. These include halogen, OH, CH3O, C2H5O, PhO, and NH2 substituted acetic acids, and halogen substituted, unsaturated, and cyclic RCO2H of higher carbon number. The effects of the various substituents on the gas phase acidity are briefly examined. Keywords: acidities in gas phase, proton transfer equilibria, ion-molecule equilibria, mass spectrometry.


Bureaucracy and Public Choice gives a theoretical and empirical appraisal of modern bureaucracy. It argues that bureaucracies and bureaucrats are indispensable in the making and implementation of public choice. Explanations of bureaucracy range from the Weberian model - with bureaucracy maximising rationality - to the interpretation of the garbage-can' scholars - presenting bureaucracy as organized chaos. The book first considers approaches to understanding bureaucratic behaviour in organizational sociology, economics, and decision-making theory. The concepts of bureaucratic efficiency and accountability are discussed at length. The political culture of a country is shown to influence the relationship between bureaucrats, politicians and the electorate, affecting both their efficiency and accountability. The status of bureaucracies is shown to depend on whether they deliver the goods according to normative criteria. The book makes these criteria explicit and assesses the extent to which bureaucracies are capable of meeting them.


Background Revision THA presents significant challenges for the surgeon when the proximal femur is deficient or mechanically unreliable. The aim of this study is to assess the clinical and functional results of the use of tumor enndoprosthesis to reconstruct the proximal femur when there is massive bone loss. Patients and Methods A prospective study was conducted involving 10 cases. The follow up of the cases ranged from 12 months to 30 months with a mean period of an average of 23months. The indications for revision surgery were aseptic loosening in 9 cases and septic loosening in one case Harris hip score was used for pre and postoperative clinical evaluation of the patients Results At the latest follow up the Harris Hip scores improved from a preoperative average of 16 (range, 3-47), to a postoperative average of 75.6 (range, 66-94). The complications that we encountered in the study included one case of superficial wound infection, another case developed sciatic nerve palsy postoperatively. No other complications were reported. Conclusion Revision hip replacement in proximally compromised femurs presents a significant surgical challenge. When there is massive proximal femoral bone loss proximal fitting revision stems do not achieve adequate fixation hence the use of tumor prosthesis is indicated.


Transforming condensing or extraction-condensing steam turbine into back-pressure steam turbine will increase the temperature of exhaust,which would cause the excessive expansion of cylinder and have impact on the normal operation of turbine.In this paper,a new approach of transformation is proposed.And it guarantees the safe operation of turbine by reducing the temperature of back cylinder.


Learning of user preferences, as represented by, for example, Conditional Preference Networks (CP-nets), has become a core issue in AI research. Recent studies investigate learning of CP-nets from randomly chosen examples or from membership and equivalence queries. To assess the optimality of learning algorithms as well as to better understand the combinatorial structure of classes of CP-nets, it is helpful to calculate certain learning-theoretic information complexity parameters. This article focuses on the frequently studied case of learning from so-called swap examples, which express preferences among objects that differ in only one attribute. It presents bounds on or exact values of some well-studied information complexity parameters, namely the VC dimension, the teaching dimension, and the recursive teaching dimension, for classes of acyclic CP-nets. We further provide algorithms that learn tree-structured and general acyclic CP-nets from membership queries. Using our results on complexity parameters, we assess the optimality of our algorithms as well as that of another query learning algorithm for acyclic CP-nets presented in the literature. Our algorithms are near-optimal, and can, under certain assumptions, be adapted to the case when the membership oracle is faulty.


Introduction: Klotho is a transmembrane protein highly expressed in the kidneys and choroid plexus. Klotho modulates insulin sensitivity and suppresses oxidative stress. Two missense variants in th...


It may be very difficult to make the clinical diagnosis of intestinal obstruction in the first twenty-four hours, because of the fact that the symptoms typical of this lesion may be totally or partly absent. When regarding the classical symptoms of intestinal obstruction it will be noticed that the relation of the pain generally gives rather indefinite data on which to base the diagnosis, as it is essentially indistinguishable from colicky pain with other causal relation. Further, the pains has no typical location. Neither do the vomitings supply informative facts before the vomitus is becoming foul. This is a late symptom, however, and indicates that the situation is on the point of becoming exceedingly grave. Information to the effect that there has been no passage of feces or flatus is of small value during the first twenty-four hours. Besides, one may often observe that patients suffering from intestinal obstruction have spontaneous defecation with discharge of flatus some time after the onset of pain. The feeling of oppression, which is frequently pronounced, may perhaps be of more value. The objective findings are also scarce during the first twenty-four hours. Meteorism may be slightly pronounced, or it may be entirely absent. Visible peristalsis and the so-called Wahl balloon symptom (»hypogastric football») are important findings. They are only rarely demonstrable, however. Borborygmus and squirting sounds associated with the attacks of pain are effective data on which to base the diagnosis. They may also be present, however, when there is no obstruction. Increase in the quantity of peritoneal fluid occurs early in intestinal obstruction. CHRISTENSEN has demonstrated this in operations as early as


In an extremely interesting paper in this issue Goudsmit and colleagues [1] investigate the impact that patients who fail therapy had on the transmission of zidovudine (ZDV)-resistant strains of HIV-1 in the Amsterdam Cohort Study (ACS) from 1990 to 1998. The authors present both new empirical data and analyze a mathematical model in order to explain their empirical ®ndings. Goudsmit and colleagues [1] identi®ed three individuals with ZDV-resistant primary infections by analyzing sequence data from the reverse transcriptase and protease genes of viruses from gay men newly infected with HIV-1. They then used a simple mathematical model to calculate the number of cases of ZDV resistance that were expected to have occurred in the ACS as the result of transmission over this time period. The model was based upon three difference equations, and included three clinical groups: patients infected with wild-type ZDV-sensitive viruses (S), patients infected with ZDV-resistant viruses as a result of suboptimal treatment (R), and patients infected with ZDV-resistant viruses as a result of transmission (I). The parameters in the model varied with time, and were estimated from the ACS data. The model predictions were then compared with their empirical ®ndings.


The standard of competency to represent oneself at trial is the same standard as competency to stand trial. The federal constitutional right to self-representation requires that a defendant who is competent to be tried for a crime be permitted to proceed pro se if that is the defendant's choice.


The Physics of Superheroes. By James Kakalios. Gotham, New York, 2005. 384 pp. $26, C$36. ISBN 1-592-40146-5. Discussing the powers and exploits of comic-book superheroes and villains, the author argues that the laws of physics are surprisingly effective in the worlds of comic books.