Preschool Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs Toward Science by Sharon Henry Lloyd MA, Nova Southeastern University, 2004 BS, University of Central Florida, 1987 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University December 2016 Abstract In the United States, a current initiative, Advancing Active STEM Education for Our Youngest Learners, aims to advance science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for the youngest learners. The purpose of this study was to understand preschool teachers' proficiency with science and address the problem of whether or not science learning opportunities are provided to young children based on teachers' attitudes and beliefs. A theoretical framework for establishing teachers' attitudes toward science developed by van Aalderen-Smeets, van der Molen, and Asma, along with Bandura's theory of self-efficacy were the foundations for this research. Research questions explored preschool teachers' attitudes and beliefs toward science in general and how they differed based on education level and years of preschool teaching experience. Descriptive comparative data were collected from 48 participants using an online format with a selfreported measure and were analyzed using nonparametric tests to describe differences between groups based on identified factors of teacher comfort, child benefit, and challenges. Results indicated that the participants believed that early childhood science is developmentally appropriate and that young children benefit from science instruction through improved school-readiness skills. Preschool teachers with a state credential or an associate's degree and more teaching experience had more teacher comfort toward science based on attitudes and beliefs surveyed. The data indicated participating teachers experience few challenges in teaching science. The study may support positive social change through increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses of preschool teachers for the development of effective science professional development. Science is a crucial component of school-readiness skills, laying a foundation for success in later grades.In the United States, a current initiative, Advancing Active STEM Education for Our Youngest Learners, aims to advance science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for the youngest learners. The purpose of this study was to understand preschool teachers' proficiency with science and address the problem of whether or not science learning opportunities are provided to young children based on teachers' attitudes and beliefs. A theoretical framework for establishing teachers' attitudes toward science developed by van Aalderen-Smeets, van der Molen, and Asma, along with Bandura's theory of self-efficacy were the foundations for this research. Research questions explored preschool teachers' attitudes and beliefs toward science in general and how they differed based on education level and years of preschool teaching experience. Descriptive comparative data were collected from 48 participants using an online format with a selfreported measure and were analyzed using nonparametric tests to describe differences between groups based on identified factors of teacher comfort, child benefit, and challenges. Results indicated that the participants believed that early childhood science is developmentally appropriate and that young children benefit from science instruction through improved school-readiness skills. Preschool teachers with a state credential or an associate's degree and more teaching experience had more teacher comfort toward science based on attitudes and beliefs surveyed. The data indicated participating teachers experience few challenges in teaching science. The study may support positive social change through increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses of preschool teachers for the development of effective science professional development. Science is a crucial component of school-readiness skills, laying a foundation for success in later grades. Preschool Teachers' Attitudes and Beliefs Toward Science by Sharon Henry Lloyd MA, Nova Southeastern University, 2004 BS, University of Central Florida, 1987 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Walden University December 2016 Dedication This doctoral journey is dedicated to my family. First, to my loving husband, Luke, whose support and encouragement kept me focused. Second, to our four children and their spouses with their cheering and reassuring remarks. Third, to my in-laws, whose goading and patronage provided incentive. Finally, in memory of my parents, who taught me to always keep on learning, as life is a journey. Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge and give my sincere appreciation to my committee members. I am tremendously grateful for the diligent support and guidance of my doctoral chair, Dr. Maryanne Longo. Her invaluable expertise, help, and words of encouragement throughout the doctoral journey provided the guidance necessary for completion. My methodologist, Dr. Donna Brackin, added a critical eye, useful suggestions, and more words of encouragement. Thank you, Dr. Maryanne Longo and Dr. Donna Brackin; your support was truly appreciated. I would like to acknowledge the preschool teachers who participated in this research. Thank you for being part of this study and being early childhood educators. You share your enthusiasm and curiosity with young children and lay the foundation for later learning. A thank you to future preschool teachers who will guide young children on a journey to lifelong learning.


The use of Generator has become a very common in almost every passive infrastructure companies, Industries, hospitals, Townships etc, while by using these Generators, a number of challenges are faced by the users and companies. Among all other challenges fuel stealing from the generator fuel tank has become an alarming issue as the price of the fuel is touching sky high day by day. Although many security and safety features are added but the fuel robbery is still out of control and the loss of the companies are immeasurable. So an advanced control system is designed with the PIC microcontroller which can measure the level of fuel in the fuel tank by using a high tech ultrasound sensor and store the data in to a data acquisition system.


Hamiltonian lattice dynamics is a very active and relevant field of research. In this Special Issue, by means of some recent results by leading experts in the field, we tried to illustrate how broad and rich it can be, and how it can be seen as excellent playground for Mathematics in Engineering.


Objective To analyze the constituents of the essential Callicarpae nudiflorae HooK.et Arn.MethodsGC-MS method was used.Results29 compouds were identified.The identification rate was 48.3%.ConclusionThe main chemical components of the oil were caryophylleneoxide;1,5,5,8-tetramethy-12-oxabicyclododeca-3,7-diene;Eudeama-4(14),11-diene;α-Caryophyllene;Caryophyllene;Isoaromadendreneepoxide;Viridiflorol;1β,4βH,10βH-Guaia-5,11-diene;Cadina-1(10),4-diene;Trans-Z-α-Bisabolene epoxide;15,16-Dinorlabdane,8,13∶13,20-diepoxy,(13S)-and Aromadendrene,etc.


e15014 Background: Perineural invasion(PNI) with urothelial carcinoma may be identified in radical cystectomy specimens, and its prognostic significance is controversial. We sought to determine the...


Rice rats were used to test the effect of topically applied chlorhexidine gluconate and stannous fluoride on the loss of periodontal bone. Eighty-eight weanlings were divided into eight groups of eleven animals each. Four groups were swabbed five times each week with either: a) 0.2 % chlorhexidine; b) 2 % chlorhexidine; c) 0.2 % chlorhexidine and 10 % stannous fluoride combined, or d) deionized water. Four other groups were swabbed only twice (once at the start and once at day 30) with either: e) 0.2 % chlorhexidine; f) 10 % SnF2; g) 0.2 % chlorhexidine and 10 % SnF2, or h) deionized water. After two months the animals were killed and the mandibular quadrants scored to estimate bone loss. Concentrations of 0.2 and 2 % chlorhexidine applied five times per week and 10 % SnF2 applied only twice, significantly reduced bone loss when compared to the deionized water control. The more frequent applications had a significant beneficial effect as compared to the less frequent applications.


In 1972 Hunt, Howell, and Roscoe examined and compared the goals of various educational programs for engineering psychologists. Two years later Martin considered "What is wrong with human factors students?" The present treatise is an attempt to discover whether we are operating in a closed universe and have in fact come round to our starting point or have progressed in our attempts to equip students for gainful employment. Comparisons are drawn between the state of the educational process then and its present condition, including data on basic skills (NAEP, Spring 1989) and higher-level thinking abilities (anecdotal and empirical) or lack thereof. Contemporary problems are outlined and sources of these difficulties are identified where possible. Problem areas include deficiencies in student preparation, academic and industrial short-term corporate memory, supply-demand communication, economic forces, and the issue of certification (individuals and programs). The authors conclude by examining where current trends may be taking us.


Developments in machine and die design and improvements in process measurement and control are described. These lead to cost reductions and a potential for the production of more complex castings. Castings with a ruling section thickness of less than 1 mm can be mass produced with an excellent surface finish direct from the die.


Desiccation-tolerant (orthodox) seeds can survive in the dry state for considerable periods and so can be stored successfully at low water content and subzero temperatures. Orthodox seeds possess a variety of protective processes and mechanisms that confer desiccation tolerance, important among them being metabolic shutdown and intracellular dedifferentiation. In contrast, desiccation-sensitive (recalcitrant) seeds cannot tolerate water loss and so cannot be stored using conventional seed bank conditions. Particularly with respect to storage, recalcitrant seeds do not undergo intracellular dedifferentiation nor any significant metabolic shutdown. Embryos of recalcitrant seeds remain metabolically active, with little or no reduction in extent of the extensive intracellular membranes. At the water content at which they are shed, with the ongoing metabolism in recalcitrant seeds, developmental phenomena grade imperceptibly into those associated with germination. Thus, recalcitrant seeds can be stored intact only until germination is initiated, which can range from a few days to several months, depending on species. Mild drying to inhibit germination in storage (subimbibed storage) leads to more rapid loss of viability. The only feasible method for long-term storage of germplasm of recalcitrant-seeded species is cryopreservation, but this requires partial drying to prevent ice crystal damage. However, the response to drying depends on the drying rate: slow drying induces viability loss at high water contents, whereas material dried rapidly can survive (in the short term) to water contents low enough to permit vitrification of the remaining intracellular water rather than the formation of ice crystals, if cooling rates are rapid enough. Recalcitrant seeds are almost invariably too large to permit the rates of drying and cooling required for vitrification, and so excised embryonic axes are generally the explants of choice. This review highlights how the physiology of recalcitrant seeds impacts on attempts to cryopreserve the excised embryonic axes/embryos.


I think that the experience of both the emerging market crisis and Mexican crisis of the mid-nineties, the Asian crisis, the Argentinian and Brazilian crises, and then the global financial crisis has raised their warning signs into many economists' opinions about the risks of financial markets, and of course I think you in Latin America will be well aware of this historically, but it really took the 2008-2009 crisis to raise the issue in more advanced economies, and the issue is really that financial markets can be substantially beneficial but they can also have major risks, and those risks can possibly be aggravated by opening up financial markets to external capital flows, capital outflow and inflow.


The dramatic increase in computational capability that has occurred over the last ten years has allowed fully electromagnetic simulations of large, complex, three-dimensional systems to move progressively from impractical, to expensive, and recently, to routine and widespread. This is particularly true for systems that require the motion of free charge to be self-consistently treated. The QUICKSILVER electromagnetic Particle-In-Cell (EM-PIC) code has been developed at Sandia National Laboratories to provide a general tool to simulate a wide variety of such systems. This tool has found widespread use for many diverse applications, including high-current electron and ion diodes, magnetically insulated power transmission systems, high-power microwave oscillators, high-frequency digital and analog integrated circuit packages, microwave integrated circuit components, antenna systems, radar cross-section applications, and electromagnetic interaction with biological material. This paper will give a brief overview of QUICKSILVER and provide some thoughts on its future development.


Summary Homogenates of rat liver, kidney, brain, spleen and muscle prepared in modified Tyrode's solution and injected into the rat are capable of stimulating erythropoiesis as measured by Fe59 incorporation into red cells and reticulocyte counts. The activity of the homogenates does not appear to be a nonspecific effect. Certain points of similarity are noted between the homogenates and plasma erythropoietin.


Breast cancer is one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers among women. Several techniques have been developed to help in the early detection of breast cancer such as conventional and digital x-ray mammography, positron and single-photon emission mammography, etc. A key advantage in digital mammography is that images can be manipulated as simple computer image files. Thus non-dedicated commercially available image manipulation software can be employed to process and store the images. The image processing tools of the Photoshop (CS 2) software usually incorporate digital filters which may be used to reduce image noise, enhance contrast and increase spatial resolution. However, improving an image quality parameter may result in degradation of another. The aim of this work was to investigate the influence of three sharpening filters, named hereafter sharpen, sharpen more and sharpen edges on image resolution and noise. Image resolu- tion was assessed by means of the Modulation Transfer Function (MTF).In conclusion it was found that the correct use of commercial non-dedicated software on digital mammograms may improve some aspects of image quality.


FIXED CELLULAR TERMINAL FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES TO TWO THREADS. TO ACCESS A MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK AND SERVICES PROVIDING BASIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORK TO A TERMINAL PUBLIC SWITCHED TELEPHONE (TT2) ORDINARY attached to it. SUCH TERMINAL IS DERIVED FROM A TERMINAL CELL PHONE GSM, WITH TRANSMISSION TO FOUR THREAD THROUGHOUT THE JOURNEY, comprising a conversion circuit TWO WIRES (H) CONNECTED BETWEEN COUPLE OF TRANSMISSION (TP) and receive (RP) and line SUBSCRIBER (SL) TELEPHONE TERMINAL (TT2). Further comprising an echo canceller (EC) PRIOR TO THE CIRCUIT OF CONVERSION TO TWO THREADS (H), to subtract part of a first signal (FS) to the terminal TELEPHONE (TT2) a second signal (SS) FROM THE SAME AND OFFSET THIS IS PART OF ECO OCCURRED IN THE TERMINAL TELEPHONE MAINLY (TT2) AND CONVERSION CIRCUIT TWO THREADS (H).


Kikuchi–Fujimoto disease, also known as "histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis," is a rare, benign disease that commonly affects young females. Patient usually presents with swollen lymph nodes in neck (cervical lymphadenopathy), fever, night sweats, weight loss, nausea, and vomiting. Due to the similar symptomatology, the disease is often confused with tuberculosis and lymphomas. The exact cause remains unknown with no evidence of inheritance. The diagnosis is confirmed by histopathologic examination of lymph node biopsy, which reveals necrosis (that varies considerably from one case to another), histiocytes (contains phagocytosed debris), crescentic nuclei, karyorrhexis, and plasmacytoid monocytes. The disease is self-remitting within 1 to 4 months. However, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), oral corticosteroids, and hydroxychloroquine may be used for symptomatic relief.


The reasons for an increase in the cross sections and the range of interaction of hadrons with increasing energy are discussed. A picture of fast hadron collisions that enables one to explain on the basis of quantum chromodynamics perturbation theory the main qualitative features of present-day experimental data is examined.


This work deals with statistical tests of association between genetic markers and disease phenotypes. The main criterion used for comparing the tests is statistical power. First we consider animal models and then data from association studies of humans. For the animal section, we analyse a dataset from a prominent mouse experiment which developed a heterogeneous stock of mice via multiple crosses. This stock is characterised by small distances between recombinants which allows fine mapping of genetic loci, but also by uncertainty in haplotypes. We start by highlighting the disadvantages of the currently used approach to deal with this uncertainty and suggest a method that has greater statistical power and is computationally efficient. The method applies the EM algorithm to the broad class of exponential family distributions of phenotypes. We also develop a Bayesian version of the method, for which we extend the widely used IRLS algorithm to maximisation of the weighted posterior. Then we move on to genome-wide association studies (GWAS), where two situations are considered: known and unknown minor allele frequency. First we develop an innovative Bayesian model with the optimal prior for the known population MAF. We demonstrate that not only it is more powerful than any frequentist test considered (the size of the advantage depends on prevalence of the disease and MAF), but also that the frequentist tests change ranking in terms of power. A remarkable property of the frequentist tests, the advantage of discarding part of the data to gain power, is highlighted. The second chapter on GWAS considers the currently more common situation of the unknown MAF, when the Armitage test is known to be the most powerful frequentist method. We show that the suggested model is more powerful in the broad selection of settings considered, including the three different allele effect models: additive, dominant and recessive. For both known and unknown MAF cases we point out that the parameters are constrained and demonstrate how to gain power by taking this constraint into account.


Introduction Following the introduction of human insulin – the first recombinant therapeutic protein – over 25 years ago, the number of marketed biological products has grown to over 100 with many more in development; while the frequency at which they are employed is ever increasing. The inherent physicochemical properties of proteins, i.e., large molecular size, instability (both physical and chemical) and limited permeability across biological barriers, confer unique challenges with respect to their formulation and delivery. Accordingly, the vast majority of marketed protein therapeutics are currently administered via the parenteral route. A number of approaches have been successfully employed to modulate and optimise the delivery of proteins including amino acid substitution, PEGylation and acylation of the parent compound, while most recently efforts have intensified to realise the possibility of noninvasive delivery.


Abstract The present work is concerned with the aerodynamics of the turbulent boundary-layer flow over yawed rectangular cavities with the focus on the steady and unsteady pressures generated by the interaction. Cavities with a planform aspect ratio of 4-85 and streamwise length to depth ratios from 1 to 3 were studied experimentally in a low-speed wind tunnel. The results indicated three main types of cavity flows. The shear layer bridges the cavity for small angles between mean flow direction and minor cavity axis. The flow field remains almost two-dimensional with little change in drag coefficient. Strong instabilities, associated with a rise in drag coefficient, are found when the cavity is yawed to greater angles. An aerodynamic feedback mechanism depending on interactions between the separated shear layer and the cavity fluid is suggested as the mechanism responsible for the generated oscillations. The influence of the cavity depth is, hereby, found to be fundamental as it determines the degree to which interactions between the separated shear layer and the cavity base occur. As a result both the magnitude and the frequency of the instabilities are a function of the cavity depth. When rotating to higher angles a greater portion of the shear layer reattaches to the cavity base which leads to a loss of flow organisation and a significant increase in drag.


Abstract Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) is a well-known (sub)micron particle size analysis technique. As such, it should be a valuable technique for water droplet size determination in (sub)micron water-in-oil emulsions. In this study, the sample pretreatment conditions were optimized in order to enable accurate droplet size determination by DLS. Whereas DLS was indeed capable of detecting differences between differently produced (sub)micron sized w/o emulsions, it was observed that the estimated droplet size was highly influenced by the measurement conditions used. First of all, the experimentally determined diffusion coefficient decreased with increasing water droplet concentration, which is thought to be due to interaction effects between the water droplets. To minimize this effect, the used concentration should be as low as possible. However, in doing so, the water droplets were frequently observed to disappear during storage or even during analysis, due to their dissolution in the dilution medium. The latter disturbing effect could be avoided by (sufficient) water saturation of the dilution medium and preventing water evaporation by closing the diluted sample and by restricting the head space. Summarizing, (sub)micron water droplets can be characterized using DLS. However, careful selection of the sample preparation and measurement conditions is necessary to obtain reliable data. Graphical Abstract


Development of new weapons system for future war is increasingly becoming too costly and complicated. At the same time, the effectiveness of the new weapons system has to be verified and enhanced through computer simulation even before a physical prototype is completed. Due to this reason, modeling and simulation techniques are recently receiving a lot of attention Several S/W tools exist for simulating small-scale engagements, however, it is very difficult to model combat entities systematically and subsequently reuse them. To overcome these difficulties, this paper presents a modeling methodology for simulating small-scale engagements using the DEVS-formalism, which systematically classify and define combat entities. This paper also explains a DEVS-based framework for a small scale combat simulation.


In this article, key difficulties of management process for carbon nanostructure synthesis are described. Tasks of optimum control of the carbon nanostructure synthesis process and management in case of emergency situations are formulated. The mathematical model of carbon nanostructure synthesis is offered. The equations for calculation of quantitative, qualitative indexes, indicators of safety and operability of engineering procedure are provided. The necessity of mathematical model use for carbon nanostructure synthesis is caused by improvement of the quality, the quantity, a decrease in the cost value of carbon nanostructures and an increase in safety of the engineering procedure of their obtaining. Testing and approbation of the mathematical model for carbon nanostructure synthesis are executed on a fullerene industrial production line. Suitability of the mathematical model of carbon nanostructure synthesis for production control in the mode of optimum control and management in case of emergency situations is confirmed. The obtained solution is recommended for implementation on the enterprises of a similar purpose.


This overview of theatre research in the Nordic countries presents some characteristic features that can be traced in recent scholarly publications. After explaining what 'Nordic' means in this context, the first section describes the marks that the general theoretical development in the field has made among notable Nordic scholars, especially in research on contemporary performances. 'Artistic research' is the Scandinavian equivalent to 'practice as research' and this branch of research has recently advanced very quickly and along various organizational lines. The writing of theatre history, especially on the controversial issues of the 1930s and 1940s, are investigated in the next section. Finally, the establishment of national theatre histories has proved to be highly political, especially in Sweden, where three histories of Swedish theatre have been published in four years. In conclusion, the author expresses his optimistic view of the future of theatre studies in the Nordic countries.


With the rapid development of security monitoring, assisted driving, remote health diagnosis and other fields in recent years, the recognition of human characteristics has attracted more and more attention. The wideband radar has a high range resolution compared to the narrow-band radar which make it able to extract fine features of human micro-movements. However, the micro-movement features of the human body are often in a complex background. Furthermore, the micro-movement features of the human body are weak compared to the main body. Therefore, the classification and recognition of human micro-motion based on wideband radar is still a difficult problem. Inspired by the successful application of convolutional neural network in image processing, this paper proposes a wideband hand gesture recognition method based on dual-channel convolutional neural network for wideband radar, which takes the range-Doppler map and high resolution range profile of human micro-motion as inputs. The effectiveness of this method is verified by experimental data, after the information is convolved, the features are fused, and finally the purpose of classification is achieved. The target recognition rate of this method is 95.67%, which is much higher than 89.87% of the High Resolution Range Profile(HRRP) and 88.61% of the Range Doppler(RD), which verifies the effectiveness of the method.


This paper presents the results from an empirical study that analyzes the distribution of patenting output of inventors working in the chemical, electrical and mechanical engineering industry in 43 German companies. The findings of this study suggest that the technological performance of inventors defined by the number and quality of filed patents is highly concentrated. In particular, a very small group of key inventors is responsible for the major part of the company's technological performance and, thus, for the company's competitiveness. This knowledge, in turn, results in major consequences for the human resource management in R&D.


Five species found in the phytoplankton collected in the area of Kobe city are reported here as new to Japan. They are : 1. Oscillatoria kawamurae NEGORO, 2. Scenedesmus diagonalis FANG, 3. Desmidium baileyi NORDST. forma tetragonum NORDST., 4. Streptonema trilobatum WALLICH, and 5. Spirulina princeps W. et G. S. WEST. The former four species are interesting with respect to their rather rare distribution.


This knowledge document is an effort intended to capture some of the key aspects on co-treatment design – treating domestic wastewater and faecal sludge (FS)/septage together, internationally and within India through literature review and elicitation of expert opinion. Some insights are drawn for assessing co-treatment feasibility and design for Indian context. Desk Study on Co-treatment of Wastewater and Faecal Sludge


The effect of reverse power levels on the capacity of a code-division multiple-access (CDMA) cellular network is evaluated. The inter-cell and intra-cell interferences of every cell on every other cell are first calculated for a given network topology. Based on this, the nominal power of users is increased by a factor we call the power compensation factor (PCF) which enables small cells to overcome the excessive interference from adjacent large cells. The PCFs provide flexibility in the allocation of capacity. By changing the PCFs, capacity can be exchanged between cells. The implied cost of the network capacity function with respect to the PCFs is calculated and used to maximize the capacity of the network by applying a gradient descent algorithm.


The invention discloses a constant current source which comprises a first current mirror, wherein the first current mirror comprises a current input end, a first current output end and a second current output end; the constant current source further comprises a current maintaining unit; in the current maintaining unit, conductive paths of a first transistor and a third transistor are sequentially connected between the first current output end and a first reference potential terminal in series; conductive paths of a second transistor and a fourth transistor are sequentially connected between the second current output end and the first reference potential terminal in series; grid electrodes of the first transistor and the second transistor are electrically connected with the first current output end; grid electrodes of the third transistor and the fourth transistor are electrically connected with the second current output end; and a drain electrode of the second transistor is further electrically connected with an external load. By means of the constant current source, current output by the constant current source is not influenced by the resistance value of the load.


In this paper we suggest a connection between quantum mechanics and Verlinde's recently proposed entropic force theory for the laws of Newton. We propose an entropy based on the quantum mechanical probability density distribution. With the assumption that the holographic principle holds we propose that our suggested quantum entropy generalizes the Bekenstein entropy used by Verlinde in his approach. Based on this assumption we suggest that Verlinde's entropic theory of gravity has a quantum mechanical origin. We establish a reformulation of the Newtonian potential for gravity based on this quantum mechanical entropy. We also discuss the notion of observation and the correspondence to classical physics. Finally we give a discussion, a number of open problems and some concluding remarks.


As they increase in popularity, social media are regarded as important sources of information on geographical phenomena. Studies have also shown that people rely on social media to communicate during disasters and emergency situation, and that the exchanged messages can be used to get an insight into the situation. Spatial data mining techniques are one way to extract relevant information from social media. In this article, our aim is to contribute to this field by investigating how graph clustering can be applied to support the detection of geo-located communities in Twitter in disaster situations. For this purpose, we have enhanced the fast-greedy optimization of modularity (FGM) clustering algorithm with semantic similarity so that it can deal with the complex social graphs extracted from Twitter. Then, we have coupled the enhanced FGM with the varied density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise spatial clustering algorithm to obtain spatial clusters at different temporal snapshots. The method was experimented with a case study on typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, and Twitter's different interaction modes were compared to create the graph of users and to detect communities. The experiments show that communities that are relevant to identify areas where disaster-related incidents were reported can be extracted, and that the enhanced algorithm outperforms the generic one in this task.


Paper presented at the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence-sponsored seminar, 'A New Revolution? Greece, Europe and the Crisis of Political Legitimacy' University of Manchester, 25 February 2009


When I was in the Royal Navy during the last War we were always told that we had no rights to insist on, only privileges to be earned. Nowadays, rightly or wrongly, it is generally accepted the world over that everyone has rights: the right to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of happiness. What then of the human fetus? As far as happiness is concerned I suppose we can never know for sure whether a fetus is, or indeed can be, happy or unhappy. Nevertheless those who through the ages have pondered our existence in the womb, whether poets or philosophers, saints or scientists, have usually regarded intrauterine life as a little paradise and the expulsion at birth into the outer world as a trauma or even a tragedy. As Wordsworth put it: 'Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home'. Similar ideas were also expressed by the English metaphysical poets of the 17th century. One of these, Thomas Traherne, an unpretentious country parson, long before the controversies of the 19th century about the relative importance of heredity and environment in the shaping of the individual, had come to the conclusion that 'our misery proceedeth ten thousand times more from the outward bondage of opinion and custom than from any inward corruption or depravation of nature; it is not our parents' loins', he declared, 'so much as our parents' lives that enthrals and binds us. The pure and virginal apprehensions and the divine light wherewith I was born, are the best onto this day wherein I can see the Universe. By the gift of God they attended me into this world and by His special favour I remember them from now. .. '. Few of us I fear have been vouchsafed Traherne's special favour. Perhaps just as well!-for although most antenatal experiences may well be pleasant, birth itself is hardly likely to be so. In the late 19th century this intrauterine paradise of the poets and mystics was invaded and shared by somewhat improbable partners when Sigmund Freud and his school of psychoanalysts used the concept of an intrauterine paradise lost to explain the whole wide …


Dobutamine stress echocardiography (DSE) is used widely to evaluate myocardial viability, but is limited by the subjective nature of test interpretation. Assessment of systolic function by pulsed tissue Doppler imaging (TDI) during dobutamine stimulation may allow a more objective evaluation of myocardial functional reserve and, thus, myocardial viability. In 30 patients (58 ± 9 years) with prior myocardial infarction, pulsed TDI with low dose dobutamine stress (10 μg/kg/min) was performed to assess myocardial viability. Qualitative assessment of two‐dimensional (2‐D) DSE and positron emission tomography (PET) were used for comparison. Peak systolic myocardial velocity was measured for each left ventricular segment (16 segments) at baseline and low dose dobutamine stress using pulsed TDI. The absolute and relative increases of peak systolic velocity from rest to low dose dobutamine stress were calculated. Three hundred sixty‐four segments with adequate pulsed TDI tracing were divided according to either 2‐D DSE or PET findings into normal, viable (mismatch), and nonviable (match) segments. The increase of peak systolic myocardial velocity from baseline to low dose dobutamine was significantly different between segments defined as normal, viable, and nonviable by 2‐D DSE (2.71 ± 1.91 cm/sec, 1.86 ± 2.15 cm/sec, and 0.99 ± 1.16 cm/sec, respectively; P < 0.001). The increase of peak systolic myocardial velocity from rest to low dose dobutamine for normal, mismatch, and match segments defined by PET was 2.72 ±1.96, 1.01 ± 0.96 and 0.80 ± 1.07 cm/sec, respectively (P < 0.001). In conclusion, the increase of peak systolic myocardial velocity during low dose dobutamine stimulation determined by pulsed TDI distinguishes between different myocardial viability states. It complements the standard interpretation of stress echocardiograms.


Proposes the use of Legendre descriptors (LDs) as features for classification of polygonal closed curves. The normalized cumulative angular function of such a curve is expanded in a Legendre polynomial truncated series whose coefficients are used as shape features called the Legendre descriptors (LDs). By considering several examples of polygonal object classification, the computer simulation shows that the LDs lead to significantly better results (increase of interclass distances), by comparison with the classical Fourier descriptors. It seems that the world of Legendre polynomials is more suitable to approximate a polygonal curve than the world of sinusoidal function.<<ETX>>


This article analyzes a community tourism enterprise in Jamaica that has sought to provide an alternative experience to the self-contained resorts that dominate tourism in Jamaica. The resorts as they are currently structured have actually become a barrier between tourists to Jamaica and Jamaican society. This has had negative effects on the quality of the tourist experience for visitors to Jamaica and has limited the economic and social benefits of tourism for Jamaica. The community tourism project outlined by Hawkes and Kwortnick is an ideal model in theory. Its intention is to offer tourists a genuine Jamaican tourist experience and to expand the benefits of tourism for Jamaican society. However, the practical application of community tourism requires considerable development and improvement before its can be a commercially viable alternative for tourists and operators alike.


Accumulation of neutrophils within the epidermis and formation of pustules represents a unique, however, ill-understood phenomenon in human skin. In this overview, we compare localized versus systemic pustular disorders. Localized pustules are mostly infectious and appear to be generated by the interaction of skin cells with Th17 cells and macrophages. IL-1β, IL-17 and TNF-α in concert stimulate IL-8 secretion by keratinocytes. This cutaneous defense circuit creates the ensuing pustular pathology. In systemic pustular disease, dendritic cells (DCs) are activated by TLR-mediated signaling. IL-23 secreted by myeloid DCs feeds the cutaneous defense circuit, which results in neutrophilic infl ammation and pustules, as seen in infectious pustules. The distinction between local and systemic infl ammation, leading to neutrophil migration into the epidermis appears to be helpful in improving understanding of these common disorders of the skin.


Part 1: The direction of APEC. Part 2: APEC from an Asian perspective. Part 3: Economic implications of trade liberalization. Part 4: Financial intergration and foreign direct investment. Part 5: Human resource impacts and environmental challenges. Part 6: Linkages of APEC with other regional groupings.


Aimed at a rope deployment mechanism, under the hypothesis that the rope can not extend, the kinematic relationship between the rods and the multi-rigidbody geostatic model of the mechanism are established. Through the simulation and the mechanical analysis of the deployment process, the prototype deployment experiment had been done with controlling of the trace of the deployment velocity. The consequence shows the displacement, power consumption and disturbance of the mechanism accord with the expectation value of the theoretic model. It more shows our model could reflect the characteristic of this kind of mechanism, and also provides the gist for the deployment mechanism design。


We describe the outreach programme of the Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI), a four-year project funded by the European Union under Framework 7 and designed to maximise planetary science output in Europe. Outreach is a key activity within Europlanet RI and we have put in place a programme to build channels of communication between the planetary science community, the public and the media. One of the major challenges that we have identified is the low value that some parts of the research community place on outreach activities. We describe how we hope to change attitudes and raise the prestige of public engagement in planetary science by establishing an annual prize and a funding scheme. Both schemes are now in their second year, with the third round due to be announced at the EPSC–DPS Joint Meeting in October 2011. B es t P ra ct ic es


In this paper, performance comparison of FFT algorithms for OFDM system is shown and advantage of proposed SRFFT is verified through implementation. For the single input and output structure in the most OFDM communication systems, adaptation of SRFFT might be inefficient. In this paper, improved SRFFT with pipeline structured FFT/IFFT of single input and output is developed and verified with Matlab, VHDL, synthesis tool and simulation tool.


With the establishment of socialist market-oriented economic system, great changes of human capital property rights system have taken place. Higher educational resource distribution model of "national entrance examination monopolistic system" under the planned economic system can no longer satisfy the needs of social development. Higher educational resource distribution system should be reconstructed from the viewpoint of fairness and efficiency.


Gastric retentive dosage forms are highly useful for the delivery of many kinds of drugs.The use of floating dosage forms (FDFs) is one of the methods used to achieve prolonged gastric residence time (GRT). Formulation of Metronidazole (MDZ) as FDF provides an opportunity for both local and systemic drug action for eradication of Helicobacter pylori which is a gram-negative bacterium that is associated with gastric inflammation, peptic ulcer, and gastric cancer.This study was undertaken in order to formulate effervescent single-unit floating drug delivery system (FDDS) for MDZ.In the effervescent method, a carbon dioxide generating agent, e.g. sodium bicarbonate, was incorporated in hydrophilic polymer matrix together with MDZ.Different formulation parameters were studied and their effects on the floatation and in vitro drug release profiles were investigated.Polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) provided rapid hydration of matrix, and this influence was decreased with time.Pectin was found to meet the requirements needed from a matrix for drug delivery applications including suitable mechanical properties to confine the gas, and to sustain MDZ release.The optimal amount of polymer and effervescent agent, lubricant agent concentration, and compression force were also demonstrated.The stability of the selected floating MDZ tablet formula (6) was also studied at different temperatures for three months and the calculated expiration date was found to be more than 4 years


INTRODUCTION
Chikungunya virus infection in Colombia became epidemic in 2015. It is estimated that there is underreporting of cases to the public health surveillance system which can induce bias in epidemiological projections for decision making, a serious problem, as it veils the real magnitude and actual epidemiological importance of this disease.

OBJECTIVE
To estimate the underreporting of cases of chikungunya infection in the municipality of Girardot, Cundinamarca, from November, 2014, to May, 2015.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We conducted a descriptive and retrospective study using surveys in 132 blocks selected by simple random sampling for community active search and the revision of 100% of the individual records of health services and those from the public health surveillance system for institutional active search. The data were analyzed using EpiInfo, version 7.

RESULTS
The attack rate was 64.7%. The estimated underreporting was 36.1% for not attending medical consultation while 24.9% of cases were not reported to the public health surveillance system. The principal cause for not seeking medical consultation among those surveyed (n=392; 43%) was self-medication, followed by the collapse of health services (n=207; 23%).

RESULTS
The attack rate was 64.7%. The estimated underreporting was 36.1% for not attending medical consultation while 24.9% of cases were not reported to the public health surveillance system. The principal cause for not seeking medical consultation among those surveyed (n=392; 43%) was self-medication, followed by the collapse of health services (n=207; 23%).

CONCLUSION
The overall underreporting since the beginning of the epidemic in Girardot was 87.05%.This research explains 60.9% of this underreporting.


Results of many years of observations from the ground and from the Voyager encounter with Venus are presented which clarify a number of issues that were subjects of speculation or partial information. The new issues that the encounter brought to light are outlined. The encounter revealed additional rings, extensive dust associated with them, and complexities, including azimuthal asymmetries. Uranus possesses a strong (about 1 gauss) magnetic field with a bizarre geometry that can be described as a dipole offset 0.3 RU from the center of the planet and tilted approximately 60 deg with respect to the axis of rotation. It is argued that it is produced by a magnetohydrodynamic dynamo at about 0.4 RU from the planet's center. It is inferred from this that at least part of the interior is a convective fluid, indicating an adiabatic temperature profile and a warm interior. The magnetic field produces a magnetosphere with some peculiar characteristics, owing to the unique orientation of the dipole axis with respect to the direction of the solar wind flow.


The Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer is powered by SW26010, a new 260-core processor designed with on-chip fusion of heterogeneous cores. In this article, we present our work on optimizing the training process of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) on the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer. Specifically, a highly efficient library (swDNN) and a customized Caffe framework (swCaffe) are proposed. Architecture-oriented optimization methods targeting the many-core architecture of SW26010 are introduced and are able to achieve 48× speedup for the convolution routine in swDNN and 4× speedup for the complete training process of the VGG-16 network using swCaffe, compared to the unoptimized algorithm and framework. Compared to the cuDNN library and the Caffe framework based on the NVIDIA K40m GPU, the proposed swDNN library and swCaffe framework on SW26010 have nearly half the performance of K40m in single -precision and have 3.6× and 1.8× speedup over K40m in double precision, respectively.


Isparta being centre of Hamitogulları Emirates, with prominent figures in the period of Ottoman is an important cultural area. At this context be mentioned judges, sheikhs, government leaders etc. which grown in Isparta. On the other hand, the city is one of the significant literary center about with twenty poets. In the tezkires, the studies which contained the biographies of the poets, sheikhs, scientists, are some information about the poets in Isparta, too. In this article will be dwelt on the poets of Isparta taken place in Sicill-i Osmani, one of the last and interesting chains of the tradition of Ottoman biography and written by Mehmed Sureyya.


We have revealed that a new scheme of solar cells, i.e., an intermediate-band-assisted hot-carrier solar cell (IB-HC-SC) using energy-selective contacts (ESCs) consisting of quantum wells (QWs) can be a practical solution to achieve significantly high conversion efficiency. There are three requisites unique to hot-carrier extraction for high conversion efficiency: (1) a long thermalization time of carriers in the absorber, (2) a narrow energy-selection width of the ESCs, and (3) a short equilibration time of carriers in the absorber. The use of an intermediate-band (IB) absorber relaxes the first requisite, because the two-step excitation via the IB dramatically suppresses entropy generation associated with hot-carrier extraction that is more remarkable at a shorter thermalization time. The suppression of the entropy generation allows us to use QW-ESCs to solve the issue related to the second requisite involved in practical ESCs consisting of size-distributed quantum dots. The new scheme provides limiting conversion efficiency of around 50% (0.1 sun)–65% (1000 sun) that are significantly higher than those of conventional IB solar cells, when the thermalization time of hot carriers is assumed to be 1 ns.


Boronization on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has proved to be quite beneficial with increases in confinement and density and decreases in impurities observed in the plasma. The boron has been applied to the interior surfaces of NSTX, about every 2 to 3 weeks of plasma operation, by producing a glow discharge in the vacuum vessel using deuterated trimethylboron (TMB) in a 10% mixture with helium. Special NSTX requirements restricted the selection of the candidate boronization method to the use of deuterated boron compounds. Deuterated TMB met these requirements but is a hazardous gas and special care in the execution of the boronization process is required. This paper describes the existing GDC, gas injection, and torus vacuum pumping system hardware used for this process, the glow discharge process, and the automated control system that allows for remote operation to maximize both the safety and efficacy of applying the boron coating. The administrative requirements and the detailed procedure for the setup, operation and shutdown of the process are also described.


For many years techniques from numerical analysis have been applied fruitfully to the study of dynamical systems. In this paper it is shown that the theory of dynamical systems may be applied to certain computational problems. In particular the question of global convergence of various QR algorithms can be reduced to the study of certain vector iterations derived from Schur forms of matrices. The technique is illustrated in determining the convergence behavior of normal Hessenberg matrices under the Francis and multishift QR iterations.


This paper reports results from the quantitative comparison of readings of isolated sentences as well as spontaneous narratives by four female speakers, two each from different dialects. A multi-dimensional analysis of prosodic parameters was performed employing Fujisaki model based parameterizations of F0 contours, as well as a model of the perceptual local speech rate in order to capture the durational characteristics. Analysis shows that inter-speaker differences are vast with respect to speaking style regarding intonation as well as timing. In read utterances subjects generally accent more frequently and assign less prominence.


We report the case of a patient with pancreatic adenocarcinoma and mucinous air-space metastases, in which the diagnosis was suspected at magnetic resonance using heavily T2-weighted images obtained with magnetic resonance hydrographic sequences.


When an oil reservoir reaches the end of its production life the well which has been drilled to extract the oil must undergo completion or ldquowell abandonmentrdquo. Abandonment is the process whereby all the productive zones within the well are isolated with cement, removing some or all of the production tubing and setting a surface plug in the well with the top of the plug between 30 and 50 m below the mudline. The process of abandonment can be hampered if it is not possible to remove pipes from within the well casing. It is proposed that by lubricating the annulus, the space between the casing and pipe, it may be possible to extract problematic pipe work by reaching pressure equilibrium between the reservoir and annulus. Experiments have been carried out to investigate the mixing time of a heavy brine with water. This mixing is known as lubrication. Lubrication can be used to increase the pressure (or fluid weight) at the bottom of a well. When heavy brine is added at the top of a column of water the fluids will mix and the resulting fluid has a greater density than that of water which increases the pressure at the bottom of the well. The experiments were carried out in test rigs comprising of a clear plastic tube sealed at the lower end and connected to a Perspex tank by a ball valve at the top of the tube. The dimensions of the test rigs were chosen to be a scale representation of a typical oil well. The well geometry was simplified with the upper part of the tube vertical and the lower part of the tube inclined at an angle to the vertical with the joint occurring at roughly 60 % of the vertical distance from the top. The diameter of the tubing could not be scaled using the same length scale and so instead a number of tube diameters were tested. The ratio of fluid volumes above and below the circulation point was conserved with the brine volume being equal to 75 % of the water volume; i.e. a 3:4 ratio. The pressure at the lower end of the tube was measured using a piezoelectric sensor inserted through the centre of the plug sealing the end of the tube. Tests were carried out for 10 mm, 20 mm, 40 mm, 60 mm and 100 mm diameter tubes. The aim of these tests was to demonstrate the relationship between tube diameter and time taken to reach equilibrium. For all of these tests the total vertical distance from the top of the tube to the pressure sensor was 3.0 m. Additional experiments were carried out to establish if the relationship between tube length and time taken to reach equilibrium is linear. Straight lengths of 1.0 m, 1.5 m, 2.0 m, 2.5 m, and 3.0 m of 40 mm diameter tube were tested. Initially the mixing of the brine and the water is rapid but as the time from valve opening increases the rate of change of pressure with time reduces approaching the final value asymptotically. This makes it unlikely that the lubrication process will be carried out in order to reach the final pressure and so results are presented in terms of the time taken to reach 75 % of the final pressure. Increasing the tube diameter was shown to reduce the time required to reach 75 % of the final pressure. It was also established that there is not a linear relationship between tube length and time taken to reach equilibrium. This demonstrates that whilst lubrication can be used to increase the pressure at the bottom of an oil well the time scale needed to produce a significant increase in pressure is very large.


Efficient compression of correlated data is essential to minimize communication overload in multi-sensor networks. In such networks, each sensor independently compresses the data and transmits them to a central node due to limited communication bandwidth. A decoder at the central node decompresses and passes the data to a pre-trained machine learning-based task to generate the final output. Thus, it is important to compress the features that are relevant to the task. Additionally, the final performance depends heavily on the total available bandwidth. In practice, it is common to encounter varying availability in bandwidth, and higher bandwidth results in better performance of the task. We design a novel distributed compression framework composed of independent encoders and a joint decoder, which we call neural distributed principal component analysis (NDPCA). NDPCA flexibly compresses data from multiple sources to any available bandwidth with a single model, reducing computing and storage overhead. NDPCA achieves this by learning low-rank task representations and efficiently distributing bandwidth among sensors, thus providing a graceful trade-off between performance and bandwidth. Experiments show that NDPCA improves the success rate of multi-view robotic arm manipulation by 9% and the accuracy of object detection tasks on satellite imagery by 14% compared to an autoencoder with uniform bandwidth allocation.


It is intended to examine form in two pieces of music written/realised in 1927: Webern's Opus 20 (string trio) and Louis Armstrong's Wild Man Blues (Hot Seven) as a method of evaluating their significance and diametric social relationship. Reference is made to visual art movements and ideas from this period as well as a glance at scientific and mathematical theory which may be seen to have a coincidental relationship with some ideas in art in 1927. Introduction. Throughout the classical musical cannon within the European tradition, structure can consist of many diverse forms (sonata, ritornello, fugue, canon, rondo etc) built using a particular process of music composition. Over centuries now, written musical notation has been the main system of planning and constructing a piece often before it has ever been heard beyond the composer's own imagination. However, it is considered harder to trace form in improvisation because of it being seen (or not seen!) as shapeless and amorphous due to a popular misconception that there are overriding visceral inclinations with spontaneous invention.


circular dichroism (CD) spectrophotometer has been used to determine their enantiomeric excess.1 It also has been used to evaluate the secondary structures of peptides and proteins.2 The conventional CD spectrometer, however, is not necessarily easy to use. A xenon-lamp with a large power used in this instrument requires water-cooled heat sinks and a nitrogen purge to reduce the production of ozone. Moreover, this apparatus frequently needs to be calibrated with an authentic compound such as dpantolactone or (+)-camphor-10-sulfonic acid. In an optically active compound, the CD spectrum is obtained from the absorbance difference between left and right circularly polarized light. Circularly polarized light can be created easily by using a prism and a retarder. Holzwarth proposed measuring the CD spectrum by placing a prism and a multiple-order retarder in a spectrophotometer.3,4 This method is based on the principle that the circularly polarized beams created from the adjacent quarter-waves of the retarder have opposite rotational senses. Therefore, the absorption spectrum obtained by such a device oscillates. The amplitude and phase of these oscillations on the spectrum can be utilized to directly give the magnitude and sign of the CD, respectively. But in the 1960s, when Holzwarth did his experiments, even if the spectrophotometer caught small magnitude of CD oscillations, it was technically impossible to extract them from the large absorption of the compound. This technique has disappeared from the field of CD measurement. However, recent advancements of the digital computer techniques might make it possible to measure CD spectra based on this principle. Inexpensive adaptation of the optics to the conventional spectrophotometers may thus allow them to make CD measurements. In this paper, we describe the optimization and the limitations of CD spectrum measurements by this procedure.


The paper discusses the dimensioning strategies of two network providers that supply wavelength channels to the same population of users in a competitive environment. Users are assumed to compete for best service, while operators wish to maximize their profits. This setting gives rise to a users game that determines the partition of primary traffic between operators; and a two-stage game between operators. These games are modelled and discussed.


The underwater towed system described here consists of tow cables, a towed body, an acoustic module and tail rope towed behind a surface ship. The required depth at a particular speed of the towing ship is obtained by paying out specified length of cable from the winch. However the excessive drag forces on the various components of the towed system results in impractically large values of cable length, especially at higher speeds. A hydrodynamic depressor is designed to improve the depth performance. The design is evolved based on numerical analysis and towing tank tests. Estimation of depth attained is carried out based on steady state theory of tow cables. Validation of the numerical analysis results is carried out through field evaluation of depressor performance during sea trial of the towed system.


Summary The value of an integrated reservoir characterisation is illustrated for this Sahara Algeria case study that makes full use of the high-resolution, broadband, full-azimuth, point-source point-receiver integrated acquisition and processing system seismic data combining rock physics, seismic interpretation, as well as amplitude variation with offset and amplitude variation with offset and azimuth inversion. The combination of the various techniques and disciplines allows for a detailed discussion of field development with considerations that would not be possible without this integration. The study reveals high-quality reservoir facies and natural fractures, crucial for field development in a low-porosity reservoir.


This article asserts that in order for the field of Traumatology, to thrive it must embrace a multidisciplinary approach that adopts a wide variety of methods of inquiry. An example of such diversity of inquiry is the latest issue of TRAUMATOLOGYe. Three papers are reviewed. It is noted that the Dyregrov (1998) article represents the latest assertion that psychological debriefing including, but not limited to Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) is valuable. The assertion is that no research has confirmed the lack of utility. Indeed, the fact that so many continue to use debriefings illustrate the utility of the approach. This article then focuses on the paper by Bedics, Rappe & Sansone (1998). Their study focused on the case records of children enrolled in a residency treatment program for children with conduct disorders, 11-16 years old. The investigators predicted and found that a substantial number of children in the program were exposed to considerable traumatic events and met the criteria for ...


PART I: WHAT ARE THE ORIGINS OF EXTRAORDINARY HUMAN EVIL? Introduction: A Place Called Mauthausen 1. The Nature of Extraordinary Human Evil "Nits Make Lice" 2. Killers of Conviction: Groups, Ideology, and Extraordinary Evil Dovey's Story 3. The "Mad Nazi": Psychopathology, Personality, and Extraordinary Evil The Massacre at Babi Yar 4. The Dead End of Demonization The Invasion of Dili PART II: BEYOND DEMONIZATION: HOW ORDINARY PEOPLE COMMIT EXTRAORDINARY EVIL A Model of Extraordinary Human Evil 5. What Is the Nature of Human Nature? Our Ancestral Shadow The Tonle Sap Massacre 6. Who Are the Killers? Identities of the Perpetrators Death of a Guatemalan Village 7. What is the Immediate Social Context? A Culture of Cruelty The Church at Ntamara 8. Who Is the "Other"? Social Death of the Victims The "Safe Area" of Srebrenica PART III: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED AND WHY DOES IT MATTER? 9. Conclusion: Can We Be Delivered from Extraordinary Evil?


This study aimed at evaluating the coupling effect of silane Si69 bis(triethoxysilylpropyl)tetrasulfide in metakaolin (MK) in automobile tire tread compounds based on a styrene–butadiene rubber/butadiene rubber blend. A reference compound of a typical tread recipe, filled with silica and carbon black, was used as a reference due to the acknowledged effect of TESPT in silica incorporation in elastomers. A silica sample without silane was also prepared. Silica was then completely substituted by MK, producing two samples, with and without silane. The samples were tested for crosslink density, rheometry, and morphology, and the vulcanization reaction parameters were determined and evaluated. Silane improved the interaction between MK and the polymer matrix, evidenced by the increase in crosslink density and vulcanization reaction rate, the same effect silane causes on silica-filled composites. Morphology also revealed that silane increased MK dispersion and adhesion to rubber. On the other hand, MK seems not to be as reinforcing as silica, considering that maximum torque is related to the stiffness of the material, with MK exhibiting lower values for this parameter.


Although nanotechnologies hold great promise in glioma therapy, there have been few positive results in the clinical setting so far due to intra- and inter-patient heterogeneity. New models allowing tumor-specific targeting and extensive and safe intratumoral distribution must be developed to efficiently deliver drugs carried by nanoparticles. Laboratory modifications of nanoparticles have been tested to specifically track tumor cells, and a great step forward has been made thanks to the conjugation with neural and mesenchymal stem cells. These stem cells possess a specific tropism for brain tumors which makes them putative candidates as delivery vehicles for nanoparticles in glioma therapy. Stem cells have a natural tendency to migrate and distribute within the tumor mass and they can also incorporate nanoparticles. Stem cell therapy combined with nanotechnology could be a promising tool to efficiently deliver drugs to brain tumors.


When a lab monkey reaches the end of a study, scientists typically euthanize it or transfer it to another project. But primate researchers are increasingly interested in a third option: sending their older monkeys to sanctuaries to live out their lives in a more natural setting. Many say it9s the right thing to do. But retiring research monkeys can be onerous and expensive. At the same time, some in the biomedical community say sending monkeys to sanctuaries is a bad idea, because it can deprive scientists of critical data. All of this has left labs caught in the middle, struggling with whether they should retire their monkeys—and the best way to do it.


On point sets with differences of distances not less than the minimum distance.- Sample path properties of diffusion processes on compact manifolds.- Some new results in summability theory.- On irregularities of distribution on the hyperbolic plane.- Completely uniformly distributed sequences of matrices.- On digit expansions with respect to second order linear recurring sequences.- Naherungsformeln zur Berechnung von mehrfachen Integralen mit Anwendungen auf die Berechungen von Potentialen, Induktionskoeffizienten und Losungen von Gleichungssystemen.- On the variance of the sum of digits function.- On the analysis of probabilistic counting.- A determinant evaluation and some enumeration results for plane partitions.- An inequality with applications in diophantine approximation.- Lattice points in planar domains: Applications of Huxley's 'discrete hardy-littlewood method'.- Pseudorandom numbers generated from shift register sequences.- Divisors in arithmetic progressions in imaginary quadratic number fields.- Further results on a problem of Knodel concerning the analysis of bin-packing.- An asymptotic expansion for .- A note on the Ramanujan-Nagell equation.- Strong Weyl property in uniform distribution.


Upon driving ultrafast electron current on a metal wire by irradiating a femtosecond laser pulse with an intensity of 1018 W/cm2, we obtained an intense half-cycle THz surface wave with electric field strength exceeding 1 MV/cm.


Prior research studies how chief executive officers' (CEOs') demographic characteristics, such as gender and age, impact firm unethical behaviors. However, the effect of CEOs' biological traits on corporate illegality is not fully known. Grounded in the approach/inhibition theory of power, this article analyzes whether and how one of male entrepreneurs' most obvious genetically determined biological traits, facial masculinity, predicts the corporate illegality of new ventures. Biological traits are mainly genetically determined. They not only shape an individual's psychological process, but also impact behaviors. Recently, scholars repeatedly call for incorporating entrepreneurs' biological traits into entrepreneurship research. Based on a sample of Chinese firms listed in the growth enterprise market from 2010 to 2016, we identify and quantify male entrepreneurs' facial masculinity with the artificial intelligence facial recognition technology Face++. We find a positive relationship between male entrepreneurs' facial masculinity and new venture corporate illegality. Moreover, we explore the moderating role of individual differences (personal accountability) and social factors (social instability). These factors decrease the likelihood of male entrepreneurs with more facial masculinity to engage in new ventures corporate illegality. Although the facial masculinity of firm leaders may benefit firms by improving firm performance, our results show that there is a need to consider this stably biological trait when predicting unethical behaviors among new ventures.


Weather monitoring deals with the tracking, analysis, and possible prediction of the weather conditions of a geographical area. Most of the stations do not account for the weather conditions of smaller geographic regions. The smart sustainable mini weather station is specially designed to cover smaller areas in a self-sustainable way. This feature makes it extremely useful in places that have been already affected by natural disasters and have no power supply. The system is developed on the ESP32 platform and senses 6 different weather parameters. The collected data is transferred to an online database and made available through a website and a mobile App. After testing the system in various conditions, it was observed that weather readings per minute can be taken and the system works without an external power supply for approximately 11 hours.


Studies of capital market efficiency are important because they infer that there are predictable properties of the time series of prices of traded securities on organised markets. We examine the weak form of the efficient markets hypothesis to indicate its usefulness in terms of the results of this study. Furthermore, this study of individual securities prices of traded securities on organised markets corroborate previous findings of studies of stock market indexes both in the United States and for foreign stock exchanges that daily patterns are present in the times series of securities prices. You will note also, that the models identified reflect the closing prices on one day less the closing price on the previous day. In this way, we study returns and not average or closing prices.


A TiO2/PS composite system is prepared by chemical vapor deposition which is a common technique in preparation of nano-materials. We report the measurements of the nonlinear refractive index of the TiO2/PS composite system as measured by the reflection Z-scan technique. The large magnitude of the third-order nonlinear coefficients of the TiO2/PS composite system shows that it is a promising candidate for further material development and possible photonic device applications.


The effect of different plant growth regulators and carbon sources on the growth and the content of baicalin、baicalei of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi callus were studied In this article,.The results showed that fitting concentration of plant growth regulators and carbon sources could all promote the growth of callus.Supplement of NAA、IAA markedly increased the content of baicalin and baicalein of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi callus.In carbon sources,only 40 g·L-1 sucrose markedly increased the content of baicalin.The order of the effect of carbon sources on promoting the content of baicalein was sucrose glucose maltose.If the content of baicalin and baicalein was used as the evaluation index,the adding of 0.5 mg·L-1 6-BA or 1.0 mg·L-1 IAA and 0.2 mg·L-1 or 3.0 mg·L-1 NAA was the best choice respectively.If synthetically considering the cell growth and the content of baicalin and baicalein,adding 3.0 g·L-1 NAA was the optimum treatment,in which the growth(dry weight) of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi callus was increased 3.98 times,the yield of baicalin and baicalein was 4.81 g·L-1 and 2.72 g·L-1 respectively.


The utility model discloses a fixing device for milling a cambered surface on a connecting piece. The fixing device comprises a fixing base and further comprises a front bracket, a rear bracket, a supporting piece, a sliding block, a cam, a stop pin, a mandrel, opening gaskets, gaskets and a nut. The front bracket, the rear bracket and the bearing piece are detachably connected to the left side, the middle and the right side of the fixing base respectively. The cam is rotationally connected to the front bracket. The stop pin is arranged at the upper end of the cam. A sliding groove is formed in the front bracket and located above the cam. The sliding block is arranged in the sliding groove in a sliding mode. The stop pin slides into the sliding groove to abut against the bottom face of the sliding block. The rear bracket is connected with the middle of the mandrel in a sleeving mode. The opening gaskets comprise the first opening gasket and the second opening gasket. The gaskets are arranged on the two sides of the rear bracket on the mandrel. An anti-rotation clamping groove is formed in the middle of the mandrel. The rear bracket is provided with an anti-rotation pin inserted into the anti-rotation clamping groove. The first opening gasket and the second opening gasket are located on the head and the tail of the mandrel respectively. The tail of the mandrel is provided with a thread and connected with the nut. By means of the fixing device, the connecting piece can be rapidly fixed, and the production efficiency is greatly improved.


With the computer network technology and the rapid development of digital technology,online education has en-tered the digital,intelligence,personality and stage of development.This article focused on e-learning system based on the P2P streaming video technology platform of teaching resources framework for learners with a "learner-centered" network-based learning environment.


Objectives As the evidence on the possible association between lifting and retinal detachment (RD) is limited and controversial, we analysed a large population-based cohort to investigate the risk of RD arising from occupational lifting. Methods We assessed the incidence of surgically treated RD occurring between 1991 and 2009 in a national cohort of 49,321 Swedish men conscripted for military service in 1969–1970. We applied a job exposure matrix to occupational data from the 1990 census to estimate the frequency of heavy lifting (>20–25 kg) at the workplace. We fitted Poisson regression models including lifting, myopia, income, and education level to estimate incidence rate ratios (IRR) and 95% confidence intervals of RRD. Results We analysed 217 RD cases that occurred in 7 80 166 person-years. Estimates adjusted by myopia and socioeconomic factors support the hypothesis that the risk of RD increases among subjects lifting heavy weights at least twice per week, compared to workers not performing lifting (IRR 2.38, 95% CI 1.15–4.93, p for trend across lifting categories 0.014). Myopia was a strong negative confounder of the lifting - RD association. While RD was rare in the entire cohort (0.28 cases per 1000 person-years), the rate peaked at 7.9 per 1000 person-years among workers frequently lifting heavy loads, aged between 50 and 59 years, and affected by severe myopia. Conclusions Our study provides evidence that performing heavy occupational lifting increases the risk of RD, while myopia and socioeconomic factors may be important negative confounders of this association.


Publishers details for: Prisoners as Citizens: Human Rights in Australian Prisons Edited by Brown, David and Wilkie, Meredith Federation Press, Leichhardt, 2002 ISBN 1862874247, 368 pp. Includes footnotes.


Aims-To investigate the role of the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in the connective tissue changes seen in the intestine in Crohn's disease. Methods-Indirect immunofluorescence microscopy using specific antibodies to the MMPs (collagenase, gelatinase A and B, and stromelysin) were used to assess the distribution of these enzymes in normal and diseased intestine. Results-In normal intestine the matrix metalloproteinases were confined to a few isolated inflammatory cells, but in Crohn's disease, the inflammatory infiltrate was associated with increased numbers of polymorphonuclear leucocytes which stained positive for gelatinase B. Stromelysin was also detected extracellularly on the connective tissue matrix in regions of smooth muscle cell proliferation and mucosal degradation. Interestingly, in ulcerative colitis, another inflammatory bowel disease, stromelysin was localised in the lamina propria in regions ofmucosal loss. Conclusions-The increased numbers of inflammatory cells containing gelatinase B, and the localisation of extracellular stromelysin in regions of fibrosis and mucosal degradation, suggest that these enzymes have a role in the pathological changes seen in Crohn's disease. In cases of ulcerative colitis stromelysin was also detected on the laIina propria in regions of mucosal loss, and seems to be associated with the connective tissue changes that precede mucosal loss. School of Biological Sciences, University ofManchester Medical School, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PT C J Bailey M E Grant C A Shuttleworth Strangeways Research Laboratory, Worts' Causeway, Cambridge RM Hembry Department of Surgery, University of Manchester, Hope Hospital, Salford A Alexander M H Irving Correspondence to: Dr C A Shuttleworth Accepted for publication 7 September 1993 (7 Clin Pathol 1994;47:113-116) Crohn's disease is a chronic inflammatory bowel condition that mainly presents in early adult life. The underlying aetiology remains unknown. Features of Crohn's disease include chronic transmural inflammation, fibrosis, and fistulae formation. Complications associated with intestinal obstruction are severe, but treatment is largely unsatisfactory, with stricture formation often recurring after surgical resection. In contrast to Crohn's disease, strictures are not observed in the other inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, and inflammation is restricted to the mucosal layers of the colon and rectum. Connective tissue degradation during both normal tissue remodelling and in pathological conditions is mainly achieved by the action of the matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs). These are a family of zinc containing enzymes with distinct specificities for the individual components of the extracellular matrix.'-' The collagenases are the most specific of the MMPs, cleaving the triple helix of types I, II, and III collagens at a single site. This action causes the molecule to unwind4 and become susceptible to further proteolytic attack by gelatinases, a group of enzymes which also degrade types IV and V collagens.5 Two collagenases have been identified, a 55 kilodalton enzyme (MMP1), synthesised and secreted by connective tissue cells and macrophages, and a 75 kilodalton enzyme (MMP8), prepackaged in the specific granules of polymorphonuclear leucocytes. Two gelatinases have also been identified, a 72 kilodalton form (gelatinase A, MMP2) derived from mesenchymal cells, and a 95 kilodalton form (gelatinase B, MMP9) associated with macrophages and polymorphonuclear leucocytes (PMNLs) as well as some stimulated connective tissue cells and tumours. The stromelysins (MMPs 3 and 10) have a much broader substrate specificity and degrade a range of extracellular matrix components, including proteoglycans, the non-helical regions of type IV collagen, laminin, and fibronectin.5


Writing is one of the most important inventions of Humankind. There are few main languages in the ancient world. Among these ancient languages Sanskrit was used in Indo region. Brahmi script is one of the most important ancient letters in South Asia. It became the matrix of Debanagaricharacter used for Sanskrit and Hindi. And, it produced Burmese script, Khmer script, Thai alphabet, Laotian alphabet, Tibetan alphabet, etc., during the last two thousand years. The people of Sri Lanka are fortunate that some of the writing of their ancestors is preserved on various inscriptions found throughout the country. These inscriptions have been discovered under the drip ledges of caves, rocks, pillars and slabs. Inscribed gold, silver and copper plates have been discovered as well. On the decipherment of these inscriptions, historical, linguistic and paleographical conclusions could be arrived at. The source data of this study is already published grayscale images of early Brahmi script. These images are taken from the paper copies of inscriptions called as estampages (rubbed copy). Up to the present, reading and analyzing these inscriptions are done by manually. The aim of this study is to develop algorithms based on image data of these estampages and implement a digital data repository. The process of this study can be divided into few stages. Such as: (1). Producing precise alphabet fonts of early Brahmi scripts has been produced from photographic data, (2). Precise method of identification of ancient letters with the aid of the alphabet fonts, which leads to automatic reading of ancient inscriptions by computers, (3). Database implementation for the analysis, (4). Develop web based interface for scholars over KISSEL network to share the knowledge and experience among the KISSEL users.


The topical problem of school leavers' adaptation to the system of higher education is analysed in the study. Some attempts to prove that the development of a personality's adaptive capability should be an object of school education are made. One of the conditions for the development of the adaptive capability is found the personality-oriented educational process. It activates the internal motivation, contributes to the development of students' independence by involving them in the process of goal setting and assessment, provides an opportunity to choose both the content and the form of educational activity.


Aiming at setting VAV temperature system with PID controller the paper improves PID controller to a kind of ideal controller with modified particle swarm algorithm.The result of conventional PID control can be as the reference to compare the results of particle swarm algorithm PID control and particle swarm algorithm with inertia weight PID control.The simulation results show that particle swarm algorithm with inertia weight PID control has the advantage of faster response,smaller overshoot,and the ability of balancing whole situation search and part search.Therefore,this method to improve VAV system is much effective.


A water-permselective composite membrane was prepared by the concentrated emulsion polymerization method. A large volume fraction of an aqueous sodium acrylate solution was dispersed in a small amount of divinyl benzene. Each of the two phases contained a suitable initiator and the continuous phase contained an appropriate surfactant. The concentrated emulsion thus obtained has the appearance and behavior of a gel. The gel was sandwiched between tow glass plates and subjected to polymerization via heating at 45°C for 24 h. The resulting membrane was dried and further employed in several kinds of experiments. The swelling of the membrane in water depends on the pH of water and can be as large as 86. At low pH values, the swelling was very small. The permeation rate of a water-ethanol mixture was in the range of 96–560 g/m2 h and decreased with increasing alcohol concentration and increasing poly(sodium acrylate) fraction in the membrane. The permselectivity varied between 32 and 235, increasing with increasing poly(sodium acrylate) fraction in the membrane and with increasing or decreasing ethanol concentration (depending upon the composition of the membrane). The activation energy for pervaporation varied between 6.58 and 8.14 kcal/mol, depending upon the composition of the feed. The permselectivity decreased slightly with increasing temperature.


The present authors have investigated on brittle fracture initiation in welded structures, using 600mm wide, transversely butt-welded plates of 80 kg/mm2 class high tensile steels.They found that brittle cracks initiated at fusion zone of one surface, and immediately propagated through the heat-affected zone. Fracture stresses, in some cases, were lower than yield stress of the base metal.Such brittle fracture, occuring along the brittle zone of welded joint at low stress level, was considered to be a characteristic phenomenon to welded structures; it could hardly be reproduced. in any of the existing testing methods.


User behavior in sosial media and hoax information are an interesting phenomenon today. Social media is the most effective medium in Hoax's acceptance and dissemination of information. Various backgrounds of user behavior becomes one of the factors that make it easier for them to disseminate information without going through the verification process. Research method uses a qualitative descriptive method with research object of civitas academic environment of President University. The results show the behavior of social media users in responding Hoax information is quite diverse with a variety of user backgrounds. Users understand the Hoax information and impacts that arise after disseminating the information. The main reason the users spread the information Hoax is to influence the opinions/ attitudes of others. The other reason is to become a viral Social media users also understand that Hoax information can divide the nation. To inhibit the dissemination of hoax information, the role of government and parents is needed as well as the literacy/education of social media usage so that user behavior will be wise in responding to all information received. https://doi.org/10.26905/jmdk.v5i1.1342


The processes by which human observers are able to detect signals in a background of noise have become a major topic of investigation in experimental psychology. To date the greater part of the work has been concerned with auditory signal detection, perhaps because of the many practical problems arising in the engineering of communication systems in which the receiver is a human operator faced with the task of discriminating signals from noise over an incoming channel, and with general theories of signal detectability.1 Problems unique to visual signal detection have just begun to receive analysis.2 The writer's interest in this line of investigation arose from the potential usefulness of a forced-choice detection technique for estimating perceptual span, that is, the number of elements perceivable from a visual display of very brief duration. In preceding studies2' I estimates of perceptual span were obtained from detection data in the following manner. A set of stimulus displays was prepared, each comprising a set of printed symbols in a random arrangement. Of the total set of symbols used in all of the displays, two, which we shall call A and B, were designated as critical elements and all the rest as noise elements. Each display included exactly one of the two critical elements plus a number of noise elements, and the position of the critical element was determined randomly. Over a series of trials, each of the two critical elements appeared equally often, and the task of the observer was to state following the 50-ms exposure of each display whether he believed the critical element present to have been A or B. In order to perform at better than the chance rate of 50 per cent correct, it would clearly be necessary for the observer to perceive at least a portion of the elements in each display. The term "perceive" is not entirely well defined, but here we take it to mean simply that the observer receives and processes information from an element of the display in such a way that he is able to classify it as signal or noise. Now if on a series of trials the observer is presented with displays of size D, then on all trials on which he perceives exactly k elements, his probability of correct detection of the critical element present will clearly be given by


Space weathering processes such as solar wind irradiation and micrometeorite impacts are known to alter the the properties of regolith materials exposed on airless bodies. The rates of space weathering processes however, are poorly constrained for asteroid regoliths, with recent estimates ranging over many orders of magnitude. The return of surface samples by JAXA's Hayabusa mission to asteroid 25143 Itokawa, and their laboratory analysis provides "ground truth" to anchor the timescales for space weathering processes on airless bodies. Here, we use the effects of solar wind irradiation and the accumulation of solar flare tracks recorded in Itokawa grains to constrain the rates of space weathering and yield information about regolith dynamics on these timescales.


This paper studies the technology of preparing iron oxide desulfurizer,using the discards with iron(red mud) which from Aluminum factory as the chief material,investigates the effects of binders,pore-making agents and dry method on the desulfurizer activity,and conducts compositive experiment to measure the desulfurization effectiveness,finding out the optimum material proportion: slag to iron oxide to binders to pore-making agents=100∶30∶15∶3.The penetration time for 10g desulfurzation is 5.31 hours.


This research aims to determine whether the money attitude, religiosity influences the
behavior of debt management with self control as a mediating variable in the community in
Surabaya. The sample in this research was Surabaya people who had debt taken as many as
331 respondents. Data and data collection methods in this research are primary data
obtained from the distribution of questionnaires. The data analysis technique in this research
uses descriptive analysis and statistical analysis using the Partial Least Square (PLS) test
tool, which is supported by the WarpPLS 6.0 application. The results of this research indicate
that money attitude have a significant positive effect on Debt Management Behavior and
Religiosity has a significant negative effect on Debt Management Behavior. The Self Control
mediates a partial or partial money attitude in Debt Management Behavior.
Keywords: Debt Management Behavior, Money Attitude, Religiosity, and Self Control


In 2006,Commerce Bureau published the first china's time-honored brands list,which arouse people's consideration about the existence and development of time-honored brands.This essay pays attention to the situation,problems and the crisis reasons on the basis of the definition and characteristics analysis,also,it puts forward some countermeasures aim at these problems.


At present,students of high vocational colleges have different English bases and levels.According to the spirit of 'The Basic Teaching Requirements of English Course in High Academic and Vocational Education' by National Department of Education and the practical condition in public English teaching,carrying out level-based teaching in accordance with the students' aptitudes can perfect the system of encouraging students,improve the class airs and keep 'the teaching' and 'the learning' going on smoothly.


To provide an adaptive flow control with low interference in the surface of the invention provides a flow control device (32) for influencing a flow (12) of a fluid medium (14) to a fluid dynamic surface (10) of a fluid-dynamic profile body (34) comprising an acoustic wave generating device (36 ) for generating a standing sound wave (38) with locally defined antinodes (40) and wave nodes (42) and / or a locally defined focused acoustic pulse. In addition, a so-provided profile body, a corresponding flow control method and advantageous applications are described.


Purpose – In the last 40 years, the UK valuation profession has relied heavily upon the "hardcore" or "layer" method for valuing reversionary properties (under‐ and/or over‐rented). This approach is not used elsewhere in the world and, prior to the rent freeze of the 1970s in the UK, it wasn't a principal method in the UK. However, valuers today, particularly in London, use this method exclusively despite it producing erroneous answers in certain cases (over‐rented; non‐normal cash flows). This paper seeks to address these issues.Design/methodology/approach – This paper undertakes an indicative pilot study of valuation models used in the valuation of reversionary properties in the downturn of 2008‐2012. The study, whilst small, provided an insight into the techniques chosen by valuers to look at properties where the risk of falling rents, voids and prolonged vacancy is relatively high.Findings – The paper looks at approaches, methods and techniques for property valuation. It identifies that the determinat...


In vision-driven Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) where cameras play a vital role, accurate detection and re-identification of vehicles are fundamental demands. Hence, recent approaches have employed a wide range of algorithms to provide the best possible accuracy. These methods commonly generate a vehicle detection model based on its visual appearance features such as license plate, headlights, or some other distinguishable specifications. Among different object detection approaches, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have the advantage of magnificent detection accuracy in case a huge amount of training data is provided. In this paper, a robust approach for license plate detection (LPD) based on YOLO v.3 is proposed which takes advantage of high detection accuracy and real-time performance. The mentioned approach can detect the license plate location of vehicles as a general representation of vehicle presence in images. To train the model, a dataset of vehicle images with Iranian license plates has been generated by the authors and augmented to provide a wider range of data for test and train purposes. It should be mentioned that the proposed method can detect the license plate area as an indicator of vehicle presence with no Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithm to distinguish characters inside the license plate. Experimental results have shown the high performance of the system with a precision 0.979 and recall 0.972.


Gaining by contract Buddhist Sūtra reading with the presentation motif on the site of the preaching scenes,the seven grades of Indra's Net of gems,the seven groves of jewel trees,the precious lake of the eight virtuous characteristics in the Pure-Land full of with Lotus,the Treasure House of Precious Things and analyzing those images such as the images of heavenly-music instruments,rain of deva-flowers and the heavenly Birds,this article has drawn a conclusion that this is a definitely the illustrations to Amitya-vyuha which is located on the top of the ceiling of the shrine at the south wall inside Cave 225 at Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang.


Mathematics Advanced Algebra is an important basis for professional courses, which is characterized by abstract rigorous, problem-solving approach and flexible. Article for an advanced algebra exercises, gives a different method of proof, and as experience shows the process of doing exercises concluded with the knowledge and contacts have been important conclusions.


The occurrence of different parasitoids of some insect pests were studied in southern Goias and southern Minas Gerais, Brazil. The parasitoids were obtained from tomatoes, corn and fruits. Parasitoids of eggs, larvae and pupae were obtained.

KEY WORDS: Insecta, Diptera, biocontrol, Hymenoptera, Hemiptera


P artly as the result of historical circumstance, most people in the United States are not paying sales taxes on their purchases over the Internet. As a result, many state and local officials have become quite agitated that the rise of the Internet will severely erode the state and local tax base. Their fear, as spelled out by Newman (1995), is that "state and local government finances are becoming road kill on the information superhighway." Although sales taxes on physical goods have received most of the attention, other tax issues such as the taxation of Internet access and international taxation of Internet commerce are also important. In the last two years, a debate over taxes and the Internet has raged at the highest levels. In 1998, Congress passed the somewhat misleadingly titled Internet Tax Freedom Act. Contrary to popular impression, this act did not place a moratorium on sales taxes on Internet purchases, only on discriminatory taxes and on Internet access taxes. The act did create a commission to study the sales tax issues, but the commission was unable to reach a consensus (Advisory Commission, 2000). Congress has since proposed extending the Tax Freedom Act temporarily, but the major issues have not been resolved. In this paper I will consider both sides of the relationship between electronic commerce and fiscal policy. For the impact of electronic commerce on fiscal policy, I will pay particular attention to the potential sales tax revenue losses. The data suggest that the potential losses are actually modest over the next several years. I will also consider the reverse relationship—how fiscal policy affects Internet com-