Microstrip antennas offer many attractive features and hence it is very challenging to model efficiently their resonance and radiation characteristics (Pozar & Schaubert, 1995). In particular, microstrip antennas composed of perfectly electric conducting (PEC) patches mounted on spherical surfaces possess two basic advantages against the planar ones. First, their curved shape makes them more applicable to real-world moving configurations such as missiles, satellites and aircrafts, where large plane boundaries are usually absent. Second, the frequency scanning problem encountered in case of planar microstrips at low elevations may be overcome due to the conformability of spherical antennas. Apart from these two advantages, spherical microstrip antennas offer (due to their relatively simple geometry) additional attractive features like low cost, light weight, easy fabrication as well as integrability with microwave and millimeter-wave circuits. As far as the metallic patch is concerned, circular or annular-ring ones are preferable for mounting on a spherical body. Interesting design characteristics of microstrip antennas are mainly the complex resonant frequencies, the radiation pattern and the input impedance. An extensive literature survey concerning the analysis of non-planar radiating microstrip structures, as well as the investigations of the aforementioned design characteristics is included in the classic book (Wong, 1999). The mathematical methods, developed for analyzing the behavior of a spherical microstrip, may be categorized as follows: (i) the full-wave approach implements the method of moments (MoM) to approximate the surface current on the PEC patch by means of suitable basis functions (Uwaro & Itoh, 1989; Tam & Luk, 1991; Wong, 1999, Sipus et al., 2003; Giang et al. 2005), (ii) the cavity model analysis assumes that the distance between the substrate and the radiating metallic patch is electrically small, forming a cavity into which the vector of the electric field is independent of the longitudinal coordinate (Lo et al., 1979; Luk & Tam 1991; Chen & Wong, 1994), (iii) the generalized transmission-line model (GTLM) extracts an equivalent circuit for the spherical microstrip, where the line parameters are the electromagnetic fields under the patch (Ke & Kishk, 1991; Kishk, 1993). Regarding the analysis of spherical microstrips, whose circular metallic patch is located inside a coating, composed of an arbitrary number of concentric spherical substrate and superstrate layers, an efficient approach for the analysis of the related resonance and radiation characteristics has been proposed in (Valagiannopoulos & Tsitsas, 2008a; Valagiannopoulos & Tsitsas, 2008b). The generic structure of that microstrip configuration


By analyzing the change course of social class structure of Beijing since Chinese reform and opening up more than 30 years,this paper comes to the conclusion that the social class structure of Beijing has changed from the '士 ' type,the pyramid type into the olive type nowadays,but not yet a middle class society,which is fractured because of urban-rural division and four different functional areas,and which has the characteristics of fracture tendency. Therefore,it puts forward to cultivate the middle class,improve the quality of middle class,create mechanisms of upward mobility and heal the rift of social class structure.


Shallot (Allium wakegi Araki.) is one the leading commodities of the Central Sulawesi and also the ingredient material of making fried onion for industry purposes. This study aims to determine the effect of a combination of various types of seaweed extract and organic fertilizers such as N, P, and K on the Growth and yield of Shallots of lembah palu variety. The experimnet used a Randomized Block Design (RBD). With treatment, namely T1 (Ulva sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant), T2 (Cauelerpa sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant), T3 (Sargassum sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant), T4 (NPK fertilizer 20 gram/plots), T5 (Ulva sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant dan NPK 20 g/plot), T6 (Cauelerpa sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant and NPK 20 g/plot) and T7 (Sargassum sp. seaweed extract 50 ml/plant and NPK 20 g/plot). Therefore, there were 7 treatments and every treatment was repeated three times. Therefore, there were 21 experimental units. The results showed that the application of a combination between various types of seaweed extract and NPK on shallots significantly affected all observations except plant height. The treatment combination between Ulva sp seaweed extract and NPK produces the best value compared to other treatments.


of providing reviews of current books in order to bring you this special condensation of a HANDBOOK ON SCHOOL NEWS. The HANDBOOK is scheduled for publication in the fall of 1964 by the National School Public Relations Association. Mrs. Lewis, a contributor to the HANDBOOK and an editor of EDUCATION U.S.A., has prepared a digest of the practical aspects of press relations for school administrators.


The existence of an Oxford dramatic piece of 1636 variously called Moore's Mask or The Moor's Mask has been known to scholars since 1891, when F. G. Fleay included it in a list of "University plays in English." Fleay gave no source for his information, however, and the location of the manuscript has hitherto been unknown. G. E. Bentley wrote in 1956 that "I find no other record of this masque. Presumably Fleay's information was derived from the manuscript, but I do not know where it is." Harbage and Schoenbaum's Annals of English Drama (1964) simply repeats Fleay's entry with the comment "Extant?" Fleay called the work Moore's Mask; Bentley The Moor's Mask; Harbage and Schoenbaum give both titles


This paper reviews the recent progress of Japan's senior citizen employment and undertakes a case study of one successful senior citizen employment that a company in Gifu prefecture Japan began eight years ago. In 2001, "Kato Sangyo", one small company in Gifu prefecture, began the employment of over 60 years-old senior citizens. The company employed 15 senior citizens at first. The oldest woman employed by the company was 79 years old at that time. She is still now working for the company. At present, 40 workers out of total 96 employees in the company are over 60 years old. Regarding this challenging employment trial, many mass media including Wall Street Journal have already reported. The article of Wall Street Journal introduced the senior citizen employment of Kato Sangyo as one of the most successful employment model in Japan, and it took up Kato Sangyo as a symbol of Japan's recent changing employment circumstances. In addition, this paper provides a result of the recent interview to CEO of Kato Sangyo, and the questionnaire survey of the senior citizen workers of the company. This case study could be useful for the researchers who are interested in the senior citizen employment or the connected field.


The experiment was designed for studying the effect of Danshen root on antioxidant function in blood plasma of diabetes rats induced by STZ.Using a diabetes rats model established by streptozotocin(STZ) injection,the selected SD rats were randomly divided into two groups as diabetes group(n=15),Danshen treatment group(n=15).The normal rats servedas control group(n=20).The liquid of Danshen root in the 5mL/kg d was taked orally and filled stomach in salvia miltiorrhiza treatment group,the similar dosage of distilled water was taked orally and filled stomach in diabetes group and the normal control group.The period of experiment was 28 days.The blood was taken behind the eye saket on 7,14,21 and 28days.Activation of SOD,GSH-Px and CAT and the content of MDA were measured in blood sera.Compared with the diabetes group,the activity of SOD,GSH-Px and CAT in Danshen root treatment group was significantly different(P0.01),its increase tended to the normal control group,the content of MDA in Danshen root treatment group was significantly different(P0.01),its decrease tended to the normal control group.The Danshen root have effect on reducing peroxidation stress in diabetes rats.


Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) play a key role in process industry to achieve safety. One of the most important criteria for SIS design is the requirement that the user assigns and verify Safety Integrity Level (SIL) of SIS. This paper proposes a new possibilist importance measure to reduce the SIL uncertainty when the SIS components failure probabilities are uncertain.


We consider downlink transmission in a multi-user environment, where each base station transmits multiple data streams to its corresponding mobiles using multiple input multiple output (MIMO) OFDM. Using distributed schemes, we find the optimal transmit and receive weight vectors to maximize the total data rate for each user. We consider two scenarios, where in one the total power per user and in the other total power per subcarrier is fixed. In each case, we propose iterative algorithms to maximize the allocated rate per user. We discuss the convergence of our schemes and compare their performances with those of previous work.


Infective endocarditis(IE) is a kind of endocardial infection which cardiac intima is affected by some pathogens.Intravascular catheter, implantable artificial device and surgery are the common reasons for IE, congenital heart diseases and cardiac surgery are the main causes for IE in children.The incidence of infective endocarditis is high and case fatality rate is as high as 20%.The dominant pathogen of IE is gram-positive bacteria.Modified Duke standard is the gold standard in the diagnosis of IE, some other imaging evidence and new laboratory tests and biomarkers for diagnosis of IE have improved the sensitivity of the diagnostic criteria.Good oral hygiene and regular dental check are the most effective prevention measures.The idea of " endocarditis management team" in the newest guidelines on IE requires multidisciplinary experts to participate in diagnosis and treatment of IE.Individualized treatment is the best way to improve the patients survival rate.

Key words:
Infective endocarditis; Diagnosis; Treatment; Progress


Introduction: Several side effects may occur during cancer treatment such as myelosuppression following systemic chemotherapy, which is mainly manifested as neutropenia and is associated with increased infection risk. Febrile neutropenia is associated with a worse prognosis. Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) may be given prophylactically before chemotherapy in selected cases or as adjuvant therapy in febrile neutropenia. G-CSF administration may be associated with several side effects, including skin manifestation. More rarely, G-CSF administration may induce acute febrile neutrophilic dermatosis is which known as a Sweet syndrome. Case Presentation: A 63-year-old man with nasopharyngeal cancer stage III on chemotherapy and radiotherapy came to our emergency department with a chief complaint of fever, coughing, and shortness of breath. He was diagnosed with community-acquired pneumonia and febrile neutropenia. His white blood cell (WBC) count was 200/mm3 . On the third day of hospitalization and G-CSF administration, he developed a rash and had skin desquamation mainly on his head including the scalp, face, lips, upper trunk, arms, and the surface of both hands. His follow-up laboratory result was WBC 8300/mm3 with a neutrophil count of 87%. Presumable Sweet syndrome diagnosis with differential diagnosis of other drug eruption reactions was made. Systemic and topical were administered, and G-CSF was stopped. Significant improvement was observed. Conclusions: G-CSF administration in febrile neutropenic cancer is generally safe; however, several adverse events may occur. Cutaneous adverse events following G-CSF administration should be recognized and treated accordingly. Sweet syndrome is rare but should be recognized as a possible G-CSF-induced drug skin complication.


We study four-dimensional boundary value problems for the nonhomogeneous wave equation, which are analogues of Darboux problems on the plane. They were formulated by M.H. Protter in connection with BVPs for mixed type equations that model transonic flow phenomena. It is known that the unique generalized solution of Protter's problem may have singularity at only one point. This singularity is isolated at the vertex O of the boundary light characteristic cone and does not propagate along the cone. We present some conditions on the smooth right-hand side functions that are sufficient for existence of generalized solutions and give some a priori estimates for its singularity at O.


With controlled burning for afforestation as control,the afforestation effects of Non-controlled burning with mildly tillage on Eucalyptus spp.were investigated of in field.The results showed that product cost has reduced more than 300 yuan/ hm2 and stock tree volume rise 20.4 m3/hm2 by non-controlled burning with mildly tillage for afforestation.Non-controlled burning with mildly tillage for afforestation was an effective measure which can reduce soil and water losses,protect ecological environment,thus it was valuable for popularized application.


Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems are threatened by smart attackers, who apply programmable radio devices such as software defined radios to perform multiple types of attacks such as eavesdropping, jamming and spoofing. In this paper, MIMO transmission in the presence of smart attacks is formulated as a noncooperative game, in which a MIMO transmitter chooses its transmit power level and a smart attacker determines its attack type accordingly. A Nash equilibrium of this secure MIMO transmission game is derived and conditions assuring its existence are provided to reveal the impact of the number of antennas and the costs of the attacker to launch each type of attack. A power control strategy based on Q-learning is proposed for the MIMO transmitter to suppress the attack motivation of smart attackers in a dynamic version of MIMO transmission game without being aware of the attack and the radio channel model. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme can reduce the attack rate of smart attackers and improve the secrecy capacity compared with the benchmark strategy.


On the one hand,the implementation of school fees brought vitality to the education reform of university;on the other hand,it brought more pressure to the poor students who want to go school.The tuition fees collection is difficult in practice.This paper talks about the method of how to collect the tuition of the debts and discusses some problems we must care for.


Sense of community and social life are two key concepts related to social cohesion, which have been the subject of extensive studies in several disciplines including sociology, psychology and built environment. Social life studies have been mostly conducted in the built environment discipline focusing on city centres; while sense of community studies were mostly the target of sociologists and psychologists focusing on neighbourhoods. As a result, the role of the built environment on the sense of community and social life of neighbourhoods is considered as a missing gap in the literature. This paper, through defining the concepts of social life and sense of community, aims to develop a conceptual framework for further implementation in future research. Accurate implication and interpretation of the concepts show that neighbourhoods can include the sense of community in the residential environment and the social life in the commercial environment. This is because residential environments are where residents' requirements can be met through their commitment to the community and commercial environments are the fulcrum of interaction and communication.


Statistical N-gram language modeling is used in many domains like spelling and syntactic verification, speech recognition, machine translation, character recognition and like others. This paper describes a system for sentence structure verification based on Ngram modeling of Bangla. An experimental corpus containing one million word tokens was used to train the system. The corpus was a part of the BdNC01 corpus, created in the SIPL lab. of Islamic university. Collecting several sample text from different newspapers, the system was tested by 1000 correct and another 1000 incorrect sentences. The system has successfully identified the structural validity of test sentences at a rate of 93%. This paper also describes the limitations of our system with possible solutions.


(58) Field of Search ................. 514/557, 724, 26, 784. 514/272, 783, 553, 574, 788 (56) References Cited FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS 343.0709 3/1986 Fed. Rep. of Germany . 2103089 2/1983 United Kingdom . OTHER PUBLICATIONS Schwartz et al., 'Surface Active Agents", Interscience Publishers Inc., 1949, Chapter 20, pp. 452-458. Primary Examiner-Frederick E. Waddell Assistant Examiner-Raymond J. Henley, III Attorney, Agent, or Firm-Wegner, Cantor, Mueller & Player (57) ABSTRACT A virucidal agent having broad-spectrum activity con tains at least 70% by weight of ethanol and/or propa nols and from 0.5 to 5% by weight of a short-chain organic acid.


This study describes a new and simple approach to produce multiple optical vortices (OVs) using three-dimensional polymeric photonic crystal (PhC). The crystals are fabricated by well-known inward-growing self-assembly technique using polystyrene micro-particles of particle sizes 990 and 1900 nm. This fabrication technique provides the cubic lattice arrangement to the spheres with the ⟨1 1 1⟩ plane parallel to the substrate. When a Gaussian beam from a He–Ne laser at 633 nm is diffracted through the crystal of particle size 990 nm, six bright spots along with a central spot are observed on the screen. Diffractions are observed up to third-order in the case of 1900 nm particle size PhC. Multiple OVs arise when vortex beam with topological charge 1 is diffracted through such a crystal. The diffraction pattern shows similar arrangement of bright spots as for the Gaussian beam except now the diffracted spots contain the property of incident OV, i.e. the central dark core. The diffraction is recorded using a charge coupling device camera.


During the last decade, a growing prevalence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) has been noticed by the law enforcement agencies. Although NPS have no medical use due to their very high toxicity, they are often sold on the black market. NBOMe defines a group of toxic amphetamines that has as parent compound 25I-NBOMe, a synthetic derivative of 2C-I (2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodophenetylamine). In this paper, we are presenting a series of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) designed to identify the NBOMe class membership based on a mixture of topological and 3D-MoRSE descriptors. For this purpose, the molecular structures of 160 compounds representing NBOMe compounds, narcotics, sympathomimetic amines, potent analgesics, as well as their main precursors have been first optimized. Then a molecular database was formed by computing a large number of topological and 3D-MoRSE descriptors that characterize these structures. This database was used as input for building an ANN system designed to recognize NBOMes. The relevance of the input variables on its classification performance has been assessed and new systems have been built by using different combinations of selected topological and 3D-MoRSE descriptors. The best performing system has been found by comparing various classification efficiency criteria.


Background: Foot wounds in people with diabetes mellitus are a common and serious global health issue. Negative pressure wound therapy can be used to treat these wounds and a clear and current overview of current evidence is required to facilitate decision-making regarding its use. Aim of the Work: To compare the efficacy of negative pressure wound therapy with that of a control group using conventional moist wound dressings, in healing of diabetic foot ulcers, in terms of 1) Change in size of wound. 2) Rate of granulation tissue formation as percentage of ulcer surface area. 3) Period of hospital stay. 4) Cost of both modalities of treatment. And 5) Complications after treatment. Study Design: Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial. Place: This study was conducted in the vascular surgery department at Al-Azhar university hospitals. Methodology: The study included 50 patients randomized into two groups (25 patient for VAC therapy & 25 patient for conventional dressing) suffering from diabetic foot wounds. Results: In our study, 6 of 25 (24%) in the Conventional treatment group were females whereas 19 of 25 (76%) in the Conventional treatment group were males. 3 of 25 (12%) in the NPWT group were females and 22 of 25 (88%) were males. In the Conventional treatment group, 21 of 25 (84%) were above 60 years of age. 20 of 25 (80%) in the NPWT group were above 60 years of age. Wound bed showed signs of healing by granulation tissue formation in 19 among 25 patients (76%) compared to Conventional treatment, 7 showed granulation among 25 patients (28%) one week after initiation of treatment. (P=0.001). Granulation of the wounds was > 50% in 20 of the 25 patients underwent NPWT whereas only 3 of the 25 in the Conventional treatment had shown > 50% granulation. There was a highly statistically significant difference between average Granulation as % of ulcer area and it is significantly high in vacuum dressing. It was 51.92 ± 21.03 in Conventional treatment compared with 78.68 ± 18.12 in NPWT group (p- value < 0.05). Wound size was measured at initial presentation and then after treatment. Before treatment, the mean surface area of wounds in the NPWT group was 40.44 cm2, the Conventional treatment 38.52cm2. After wound management, mean surface area of the diabetic wounds was 36.08 ± 2.56 cm2 in the NPWT group and 37.63 ± 2.86 cm2 in the Conventional treatment. This represents a statistically significant difference (P=0.05). At the end of our study the incidence of secondary higher amputation in NPWT group was 5/25 (20%), the Conventional treatment 6/25 (24%). There was no significant difference between both groups (P=0.13). There is a statistically significant difference between average graft take-up and it is higher in vacuum dressing. It was 80.78 ± 14.54 in NPWT and 59.58±19.25 in control group. (P-value = 0.035). Daily mean cost in conventional dressing group was 67.43 ± 5.3 EP compared to 95.7 ± 10.2 EP in VAC group. A difference which is statistically different. Also, at the end of the study, total mean cost in conventional dressing group was 1976 ± 123 EP compared to 2275 ± 154 EP in VAC group. There was a difference in the total cost finally. Period of hospital stay till the wound was fully granulated and ready for skin grafting was 22.87 ± 7.62 in NPWT compared to 32.53 ± 10.17 in the conventional group. There is a highly statistically significant difference between average duration of hospital stay and it is reduced significantly in vacuum dressing. (p-value= 0.02). Conclusion: The rate of granulation tissue formation, wound surface area, overall graft survival was better in NPWT group as compared to conventional dressing group. Overall hospital stay and amputation rate were less in the NPWT group. Thus, NPWT can be considered as a superior option in the management of diabetic foot wounds. Cost of VAC therapy was higher than conventional dressing.


(57) Abstract: the oxidation resistance is improved, the alloy article of manufacture having a biaxially textured surface formed by the thermomechanical method, up to 60 atomic percent nickel; Mg, Al, Ti, Cr, Ga, Ge 0, Zr, Hf, Y, Si, Pr, Eu, Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Lu, Th, Er, Tm, be, Ce, Nd, Sm, Yb, is selected from La and mixtures thereof. 1-25 atomic% of oxide forming elements; and containing the remainder of the copper. Surface smoothness of the article of manufacture, without adversely affecting the surface texture can be improved by thermal mechanical methods. Without adversely affecting the surface texture of the article of manufacture, by incorporating another material to the article of manufacture, it is possible to lower the CTE of the article of manufacture, it is possible to enhance the physical strength. The alloy article of manufacture, the substrate is useful as a conductive substrate for superconductive composite material coated with the superconducting oxide. Method for producing an alloy article of manufacture by the melting method and the coating-core method is also disclosed.


In this thesis, the challenges for the support of information workers in the domain of personal information management are addressed. In Chapter 1 three major challenges are identified: 1) information overload and fragmentation, 2) multitasking within an unstructured, frequently interrupted workflow, and 3) increasing mobility demand. It has been argued that dedicated support of current needs in personal information management will help to overcome the challenges, reduce information and cognitive overload, and facilitate performance of information workers. Investigating the current needs of information workers, one has to focus on those that are currently supported by paper document management and transfer the mechanisms of this support to the digital domain. Our studies have addressed the role of paper documents in dealing with each of the three identified challenges. In the first study, presented in Chapter 2, paper document management has been discussed in relation with information overload and fragmentation. The study used contextual interviewing technique, with participants interviewed at their workplace. The results showed that information workers keep actively using task-related collections of paper documents. By grouping task-related documents from different origins together, information workers create a representation of a "stable state" within a task, which helps to resume the task after an interruption that is almost inevitable in a multitasking environment. To investigate task-switching patterns, related to document manipulation, and factors influencing the occurrence of the patterns, an observational study was performed, described in Chapter 3. This study identified eight task switching patterns, which varied in the explicitness of an indication of a task state in the environment and in the level of subject's activity directed to indicate the task state at the moments of switching. Among the identified influencing factors, the reason for the switch (self-switching or external interruption) had an effect on the occurrence of subjectactive patterns. Self-switching usually resulted in user-active document manipulation in the environment which could not be observed during external interruptions. The domain where the last action was performed also had an influence on the switching pattern, with active manipulation of documents occurring more often in the physical than in the digital domain. It has been concluded that, while switching tasks in an unstructured multitasking workflow, manipulation of paper documents plays an important role in creating a stable state at the moments of switching between tasks. We hypothesized that paper documents possess visually distinctive attributes that are associated with the semantics of the related tasks. By manipulating task-related documents at the moments of task switching, these visually distinctive attributes change, reflecting the changes in the task state. This hypothesis has been tested in a study using triad elicitation interview technique in combination with laddering, presented in Chapter 4. As a result, we developed a clustered model of relationships among identified visual cues of paper documents and semantic judgments of the tasks. The relationships among clusters have been analyzed based on three criteria: content-dependency, flexibility, and effort, which together define ease of manipulation for each cluster of visual cues. It has been concluded that physical environment, in particular, task-relevant paper documents, allow flexible encoding of task-related semantic cues into available environmental visual cues. This mechanism needs to be transferred to the digital domain, especially to support mobility of information workers. This research suggested that the extensive use of paper documents in the digital era can be largely explained by the embodiment of paper as a part of physical environment in which a human acts. Chapter 5 summarized the results of all studies into a set of requirements for the design of a personal information management system. We proposed a layered framework for presenting the requirements from the point of view of task decomposition and discussed the needs of the information workers related to each layer. For each of the aforementioned layers within the framework, requirements for the design of a digital system were presented and discussed in detail. Chapter 6 revised the challenges discussed in Chapter 1 from the point of view of the findings, summarized methodology and contribution of the research and reflected on the most prominent results.


An assembly comprising an input shaft having a first, second, third and fourth passage, an input shaft enclosing the shaft, a housing having a hub, which surrounds the shaft, a first path connecting the first passage having a first power cylinder, a second path connecting the second passage to a second power cylinder, a third path, which connects the third passage with equalizing volume, and a fourth path that links the fourth passage bypassing the hub with a third servo cylinder.


Physicians with different personalities; who are too similar; and with varying workloads are just three reasons partnerships don't work out.


The present invention provides a method for manufacturing a frozen microwave instant food, primarily shaping the cooked ingredients before cooking (general shape or crushed, finely divided, sludge) impregnation, which impregnation solution, containing 30 ~ 150g / L trehalose and 1 100g / L polysaccharides, gums, phospholipids, starch, polylactic acid, food or food thickener with an aqueous solution of the adhesive agent. Using trehalose or polysaccharide gums, phospholipids, starch, polylactic acid, food thickener, with one or more food ingredients and then coating agent, forming a film, in order to increase water retention, slow dissipation, stabilizing ingredients and structure, to suppress retrogradation of starch, inhibition of protein denaturation, fat rancidity inhibition, inhibition of unsaturated fatty acids decompose when heated fish meat, fruit and vegetable browning inhibition, tissue protection, so as to strengthen the water retention frozen prepared food, and improve the taste dry.


Abstract Measurement errors and missing data are often arise in practice. Under this circumstance, we focus on using jackknife empirical likelihood (JEL) and adjust jackknife empirical likelihood (AJEL) methods to construct confidence intervals for the error variance in linear models. Based on residuals of the models, the biased-corrected inverse probability weighted estimator of the error variance is introduced. Furthermore, we propose the jackknife estimator, jackknife and adjust jackknife empirical log-likelihood ratios of the error variance and establish their asymptotic distributions. Simulation studies in terms of coverage probability and average length of confidence intervals are conducted to evaluate the proposed method. A real data set is used to illustrate the proposed JEL and AJEL methods.


The colour-magnitude relation (CMR) of cluster ellipticals has been widely used to constrain their star formation histories (SFHs) and to discriminate between the monolithic and merger paradigms of elliptical galaxy formation. We investigate the elliptical CMR predicted in the merger paradigm by using a ΛCDM hierarchical merger model. We first highlight sections of the literature which indicate that the traditional use of fixed apertures to derive colours gives a distorted view of the CMR due to the presence of colour gradients in galaxies. Fixed aperture observations make the CMR steeper and tighter than it really is. We then show that the star formation history (SFH) of cluster ellipticals predicted by the model is quasi-monolithic, with over 95 percent of the total stellar mass formed before a redshift of 1. The quasi-monolithic SFH produces a predicted CMR that agrees well at all redshifts with its observed counterpart once the fixed aperture effect is removed. More importantly, we present arguments to show that the elliptical-only CMR can be used to constrain the SFHs of present-day cluster ellipticals only if we believe a priori in the monolithic collapse model. It is not a meaningful tool for constraining the SFH in the merger paradigm, because a progressively larger fraction of the progenitor set of present-day cluster ellipticals is contained in late-type star forming systems at higher redshift, which cannot be ignored when deriving the SFHs. Hence, the elliptical-only CMR is not a useful discriminant between the two competing theories of elliptical galaxy evolution.


By modelling individual's preference under ambiguity as Choquet integral with respect to a Neo-additive capacity, the paper investigates the e¤ects of ambiguity and agents'ambiguity attitude on the process of economic industrialization.The results are presented with Keynesian ‡avor: Coordinating su¢ cient optimism can create " Big Push " to help the economy to achieve self-ful…lled Pareto-optimal equilibrium and economic boom; however, su¢ cient pessimism result simply in coordination failure and cause economy " stuck " in an inef-


A new amphipod species of Bogidiellidae Hertzog, 1936 is described and illustrated based on specimens collected from bore wells in the state of Andhra Pradesh, Southern India. The new species is closely related to those belonging to a group of Bogidiella species with inner rami of pleopods reduced or absent. Bogidiella totakura sp. nov. differs from all the other species in the group mainly by the shape, size and ornamentation on gnathopods and telson. This is the second Indian species of Bogidiella.


Background: During puberty, mammary tissue undergoes rapid development, which provides a window of heightened susceptibility of breast composition to the influence of endogenous and exogenous hormones. Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDC) may affect breast development and composition and the risk of developing breast cancer in adulthood. Methods: We evaluated the associations between breast density and urinary concentrations of phenols and phthalates collected at Tanner 1 (B1) and Tanner 4 (B4) in 200 Chilean girls. Total breast volume (BV), fibroglandular volume (FGV), and percent dense breast (%FGV) were evaluated at B4 using dual X-ray absorptiometry. Generalized estimating equations were used to analyze the association between concentrations of EDC biomarkers across puberty and breast density. Results: The geometric mean %FGV was 7% higher among girls in the highest relative to the lowest tertile of monocarboxyisooctyl phthalate [1.07; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.01–1.14]. Monoethyl phthalate concentrations at B4 were positively associated with FGV (highest vs. lowest tertile: 1.22; 95% CI, 1.06–1.40). Bisphenol A displayed a U-shaped association with FGV; girls in the middle tertile had at least 10% lower FGV than girls in the lowest or highest tertiles. Monocarboxyisononyl phthalate showed a nonlinear association with BV. No other statistically significant associations were observed. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the developing breast tissue is susceptible to select EDCs during childhood and adolescence. Impact: This study may spur further investigations into environmental influences on breast development during puberty and how shifts in pubertal breast density track through the life course to modify breast cancer risk.


We injected eggs of softshell turtles (Trionyx spiniferus) with solutions of urea at the midpoint of incubation to induce different levels of uremia in developing embryos. The experiment was undertaken as a test of the hypothesis that urea inhibits intermediary metabolism of embryos and thereby causes a reduction in their rates of growth. The injection protocol elicited a physiologically realistic range of uremias, but we found no evidence that metabolism or growth of embryos was impaired even at the highest levels of uremia. The most likely explanation for our results is that the uremias commonly encountered during natural incubation by embryos of this and other species of turtle are insufficient to inhibit intermediary metabolism. Thus, the influence of the hydric environment on metabolism and growth of embryonic turtles apparently is not mediated by differential rates of increase in the concentration of urea in body fluids.


Karin Laglas has been Dean of the Architecture Faculty since January 2011. She sees the wide-ranging nature of the faculty as a strength, but would also like to reduce 'fragmentation'.


Near-forward scattering of light by an infinitely long homogeneous right circular cylinder has been considered using the anomalous diffraction approximation. The scattering function is shown to be expressible in terms of known functions by means of a series expansion. Simple formulae have been obtained for the specific cases of (i) near-forward scattering and (ii) a large-diameter cylinder. The validity of these formulae is examined numerically. The corresponding large-sphere formula is also examined to check that the analysis is not limited to particles of cylindrical geometry only.


Link prediction is a task in Social Network Analysis that consists of predicting connections that are most likely to appear considering previous observed links in a social network. The majority of works in this area only performs the task by exploring the state of the network at a specific moment to make the prediction of new links, without considering the behavior of links as time goes by. In this light, we investigate if temporal information can bring any performance gain to the link prediction task. A traditional approach for link prediction uses a chosen topological similarity metric on non-connected pairs of nodes of the network at present time to obtain a score that is going to be used by an unsupervised or a supervised method for link prediction. Our approach initially consists of building time series for each pair of non-connected nodes by computing their similarity scores at different past times. Then, we deploy a forecasting model on these time series and use their forecasts as the final scores of the pairs. Our preliminary results using two link prediction methods (unsupervised and supervised) on co-authorship networks revealed satisfactory results when temporal information was considered.


Legal practice in the post-soviet union environment in recent years show that a large number of M&A, JV and international financing transactions in Uzbek companies involving foreign entities or foreign investment are governed by laws other than national legislation. Establishment of legal entities are based on contractual agreement of the founders (Memorandum of Association/Shareholders agreement) and Uzbek law provides a relative freedom at the conclusion of the contracts or afterwards through allowing parties to choose the law that will apply to their rights and obligations under the contract. A choice of law upon agreement of the parties is provided by the article 1189, Civil Code of the RUz. However, the foreign law chosen by the parties cannot, in theory, affect the operation of the imperative norms of the legislation, meaning that the minimum requirements set by the legislation should be complied with at all instances.The rigid nature of the national legislation and distrust towards the judicial system of Uzbekistan is the main reason 'why much legal activity is effectively "offshored" through the use of contracts governed by English law, and disputes being referred to arbitration in London as in every other CIS country. English law, as well as English arbitration courts, often appear in the international transactions, including transactions involving Uzbek entities. English law is widely used around the world because of its clear, well-established character. The British legal system has evolved for over several hundred years and continues to grow and is characterized by flexibility and adaptation to the rapidly changing business environment. This flexible nature is one of the most appealing aspects of English law, which can also confuse those who are not familiar with it. When comparing the English legislation with the European continental system of law or the legal systems of now CIS countries, it is vital to note that English law is not enshrined into a single set of laws.The contractual principles of British law are very clear, concise and flexible to great extent and therefore, permit the parties to agree on whatever terms they may want. Legal provisions, such as warranties, representations, indemnities, put and call options, covenants, drag and tag along options, conditions precedent, good leaver/bad leaver provisions, deadlocks mechanisms and preferential share rights make English law straight-forward, flexible and thus, preferable by foreign investors entering Uzbek market. The ultimate aim of the paper, therefore, will be concentrated on exploration of the peculiar features of English law which make it lucrative to companies in Uzbekistan when carrying out transactions and analysing whether the same or similar concepts can be included in Uzbek contracts. Through examining the existing national legislation and making cross jurisdiction comparison with the English law concepts the paper will make an attempt to put forward recommendations for wider research in the area to make Uzbek law preferable by foreign investors. The subject research work has been divided in five major chapters and further divided into various sub topics. The first chapter provides brief introduction to the concepts of JV and M&A, discusses the differences and highlights their relevance to the current topic. The second chapter of this work attempts to briefly overview some main English contract law concepts. The third chapter deals with foreign investment environment in Uzbekistan, advantages of investing into the country and popular forms of ownership of legal entities. The fourth chapter of this research work is an endeavour to find the link between contractual relationship of the parties and memorandum of association. The final chapter before the conclusion, carefully analyses Uzbek legislation for provisions permitting inclusion of English Contract law provisions in memorandum of association. And, finally, the sixth chapter of this dissertation gives conclusion of the research work.


The conditions under which platinum is lost from platinised titanium anodes during the electrolysis of dilute brine solutions have been studied. The phenomenon is explained in terms of a potential-dependent change in surface structure and it is shown that platinum loss can be avoided by control of the anode potential.


Purpose of the study is to identify possible relationship between functioning of students' family and their mathematical achievement. The research is based on analytical survey methodology and the study group consisted of 319 grade 7 and 8 students. As research tools "Mathematical Achievement Test" (Canakci, 2008) and "Family Functioning Scale" Bulut (1990) was utilized. Statistical methods were used to identify possible relationship between several subscales of family functioning and mathematical achievement. Results indicates a significant relationship between mathematical achievement and several subscales of family functioning (problem solving, roles, affective responsiveness, general functions). As the subscale "general functions" indicative of general overview of the scale it confirms a relationship between students' mathematical achievement and functioning of their family


This research paper provides a comprehensive exploration of the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in value creation within the e-commerce sector, focusing on how task and information complexity affect AI deployment. It first outlines the historical development of value theory and value creation, highlighting the shift from traditional modes to modern interactive and co-creation models. Following this, the paper delves into AI's potential in various e-commerce dimensions including personalization, product recommendation, supply chain efficiency, and more. The centrepiece of the study is a detailed matrix classifying AI into Automated Intelligence, Assisted Intelligence, and Augmented Intelligence, based on the complexity of tasks they execute and the information they analyse. This research study engaged a panel of fifteen industry and academic experts to critically examine and assign complexity scores to various Artificial Intelligence applications within the e-commerce and similar sectors. The experts evaluated task and information complexity, thereby enabling a classification of the applications into a comprehensible matrix. This classification not only provides a guide for AI system design and evaluation but also enhances understanding of their functional dynamics. The paper contributes theoretically by advancing our understanding of AI as a value creator in e-commerce and practically by offering a roadmap for businesses to adopt and leverage AI technologies. As AI continues to revolutionize the e-commerce sector, the findings of this study provide invaluable insights for businesses seeking to gain a competitive advantage in the digital marketplace.


The recent discovery that rats can be tickled suggests a deeper understanding of human laughter. We laugh when a system we share with other mammals is disinhibited. Laughter can thus be induced by direct action on the brain. In ordinary life, we have one physical response, laughing, but it can be induced by three very different stimuli or circumstances. One, we laugh when tickled. Two, we laugh for purely convivial, social reasons. Three, we laugh at jokes, wit, and less intellectual stimuli-like pratfalls and practical jokes. Leaving direct action on the brain aside, we can hypothesize that the latter three all involve the same psychological situation. Laughter is induced by, first, a mild, sudden, and playful threat to our ongoing process of maintaining and re-creating a personal style of responding to many things besides jokes followed by, second, the nullification of that mild threat.


Gas Turbines (GT) applied to integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants utilizing Nitrogen injection to reduce emission and increase power output. This redesign process reduced the customer's equipment and the operational cost for GT's with Nitrogen injection. This project focused on reducing nitrogen supply pressure required by the GT. Customer's cost of electricity (COE) is reduced, translating to additional potential revenue of $3.0MM over the life of the plant. This has been achieved through six sigma methodology of design optimization of the Nitrogen injection manifold, reduced combustion chamber pressure entry loss and optimizing the control system. Statistical analysis combined with various engineering tools was used to optimize, validate and verify the new design. The new design is applicable to all GT frame sizes. It also, can be applied as an upgrade to existing units.Copyright © 2001 by ASME


This paper introduces the first state-based formalization of isolation guarantees. Our approach is premised on a simple observation: applications view storage systems as black-boxes that transition through a series of states, a subset of which are observed by applications. Defining isolation guarantees in terms of these states frees definitions from implementation-specific assumptions. It makes immediately clear what anomalies, if any, applications can expect to observe, thus bridging the gap that exists today between how isolation guarantees are defined and how they are perceived. The clarity that results from definitions based on client-observable states brings forth several benefits. First, it allows us to easily compare the guarantees of distinct, but semantically close, isolation guarantees. We find that several well-known guarantees, previously thought to be distinct, are in fact equivalent, and that many previously incomparable flavors of snapshot isolation can be organized in a clean hierarchy. Second, freeing definitions from implementation-specific artefacts can suggest more efficient implementations of the same isolation guarantee. We show how a client-centric implementation of parallel snapshot isolation can be more resilient to slowdown cascades, a common phenomenon in large-scale datacenters.


In this paper, we establish criterions for classifying marine accidents to integrate the navigation safety system of Taiwan. Together with unpredictable of marine accidents, the inaccuracy of maritime data in Taiwan makes marine incident information possess the characteristic of Gray message as described by Gray Theory. After analyzing the data of 107 marine incidents, we classified the accidents into four types by the Gray Clustering Method. The results revealed that the crew's negligence accounts for 93.5% for the cause of all accidents. Furthermore, 85.1% of crew's negligence is caused by senior crew. Through classifying marine accidents, this paper not only makes the port managers of port bureaus and insurance companies realize the damage levels of various kinds of marine accidents and their causes, but also provides the managers of harbor bureaus a basis to strengthen seamen's quality and management.


t. Joseph's Community Hospital in West Bend, WI, will close in the next few years to make room for a new hospital. This replacement facility will represent a breakthrough in hospital design. Inspired by the Institute of Medicine report To Err Is Human,1 we recognized the opportunity to increase patient safety and promote a patient safe culture through facility design, something not traditionally done in healthcare.


For centuries, traditional agricultural systems have contributed to food and livelihood security throughout the world. Recognizing the ecological legacy in the traditional agricultural systems may help us develop novel sustainable agriculture. In order to meet the rising demands for food and nutrition of the over-increasing populations, there is an urgent need nowadays to increase rice and fish production in Bangladesh. Despite there have been higher potential for rice-fish integration in Bangladesh, it has been adopted by comparatively few farmers due to various socioeconomic, environmental, technological and institutional constraints. Even though, integrated rice-fish farming is the best farming practice in terms of resource utilization, diversity, productivity, production efficiency and food supply. In spite of this, a small proportion of farmers are involved in integrated rice-fish farming. However, from their findings, it has been documented that rice-fish farming is a viable option towards an efficient farm production compared to the rice monoculture practice and that integrated performs better in terms of cost and technical efficiency, and benefits. Thus, integrated rice-fish farming can help Bangladesh keep pace with the current demand for food through the production of sufficient rice and fish by efficient resource utilization and proper management. However, the lack of technical knowledge of farmers, high production costs and risks associated with flood and drought, are inhibiting the widespread adoption of this practice throughout the country in a sustainable and significant manner. Keywords—Rice-fish farming, prospects, potentials, practices, benefits.


The rate of surgery in eastern Mediterranean countries remains low. The provision of widespread cataract surgery delivered in a timely fashion before individuals are visually impaired by this condition may result for a reduction of blindness and visual loss. A related disturbing issue is the frequency with which ophthalmic surgery results in intra operative or postoperative complications. In several eastern Mediterranean countries, the rate of complications following cataract surgery remains high. The recent introduction of new techniques for cataract surgery, including phacoemulsification, has been started by ophthalmologists in eastern Mediterranean countries. Despite these advances, less than 20% of the cataract surgery in eastern Mediterranean countries is phacoemulsification. This is because of lack of resources in certain areas for cold and emergency cases, the presence of corneal scars, and advanced mature cataracts [1].


Manufacturing companies worry that producing in high labour-cost countries can not be sustained and are considering moving manufacturing to low labour-cost regions. Manufacturers that are considering this approach should be aware that moving to low-labour cost countries does not always lead to cost reductions. Cost increases may occur as a result of productivity differences. One of the causes for these productivity differences is national culture. This paper's analysis leads to the conclusion that national culture affects the method of organising and this in turn affects labour productivity. Countries may have a cultural competitive advantage to conduct specific types of activities.


The 2014 Farm Bill's commodity title requires producers to make an important decision: whether to sign up for one of two versions of the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program or the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program (see January 30, 2014, February 12, 2014, and February 6, 2014 for further information). This decision is made for each Farm Service Agency (FSA) farm. The choice of program is a one-time decision to be made by the deadline established by FSA and expected to be during the upcoming summer. The decision cannot be changed during the five-year life of the 2014 Farm Bill. Today's post describes each of the program options using an example farm to illustrate payment calculations across a range of price levels for corn and soybeans.


Necessary and sufficient conditions for a function to be a multiplier mapping the Besov space B-1(m)(R-n) into the Besov space B-1(l)(R-n) with integer l and m, 0 < l <= m, are found. It is shown that multipliers between B-1(m)(R-n) and B-1(l)(R-n) form the space of traces of multipliers between the Sobolev classes W-1(m+1)(R-+(n+1)) and W-1(l+1)(R-+(n+1)).


Syntaxin-1 is a central component of neuronal soluble N-ethylmaleimide-sensitive factor (NSF) attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complex (S€ollner et al. 1993) and believed to play an essential role in neurotransmitter exocytosis. The lack of syntaxin-1 results in an entire loss of both evoked and spontaneous neurotransmitter release in Drosophila (Schulze et al. 1995) and a near complete paralysis in C. elegans (Saifee et al. 1998), causing preor perinatal death of the organisms. However, a crucial in vivo function of syntaxin-1 has not been demonstrated in mammals. Dr Akagawa, the discoverer of syntaxin-1A as a marker of early amacrine cell development in rat retina in 1985 (Barnstable et al. 1985), and his colleagues previously generated syntaxin-1A knockout (KO) mice (Fujiwara et al. 2006). The mice surprisingly retained normal life span and basic neurotransmission, whereas their synaptic plasticity such as long-term potentiation was partially impaired (Fujiwara et al. 2006; Mishima et al. 2012). This modest phenotype was considered to be because of the functional redundancy of syntaxin-1A and -1B (Bennett et al. 1992). To address the role of syntaxin-1B in vivo, Dr S€udhof's group generated mice (Gerber et al. 2008) harboring syntaxin-1B 'open' conformation mutations (L165A/E166A) (Dulubova et al. 1999). The knock-in mice developed lethal seizures after 2 weeks of age regardless of the presence or absence of syntaxin-1A, indicating the importance of syntaxin-1B. Nonetheless, neurons from syntaxin-1A null mice carrying the knock-in 'open' conformation mutations of syntaxin-1B exhibited relatively normal neurotransmission with an increased size of readily releasable pool (Gerber et al. 2008), making in vivo function of syntaxin-1B unclear. To answer this question, Kofuji et al. (2014) from Dr Akagawa's group have now generated syntaxin-1B null mice and analyzed their phenotypes in an article published in this issue of Journal of Neurochemistry. Kofuji et al. (2014) found that almost all syntaxin-1B KO mice died by post-natal day 14 and exhibited motor function impairments tested by righting reflex, presumably owing to the reduced neurotransmitter release (data not shown). Importantly, the mice displayed several abnormal brain morphologies. These include a thinner molecular layer and a reduced branching of Purkinje cell dendrites in the cerebellum, as well as a smaller number of neurons in the hippocampus. The authors also found that syntaxin-1B KO neurons exhibited reduced viability in culture beginning at 9 DIV, while the morphology of surviving neurons seems no different from other genotypes, suggesting that the surviving ones develop normally. Interestingly, this reduced viability of syntaxin-1B KO neurons was found to be partially rescued by culturing them with wild-type (WT) or syntaxin-1A KO glial feeder layer. Subsequently, similar rescue effects were observed when the authors cultured them with glial conditioned medium from the WT or syntaxin-1A KO glial cells. However, neither glial feeder layer nor glial conditioned medium from syntaxin-1B KO mice ensured neuronal survival, suggesting a lack of support from the glial cells in these mice. In addition, the application of neurotropic factors brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and NT-3 to neuronal culture partially restored the survival of syntaxin1B KO neurons. The authors also found that the syntaxin1B-deficient glial cells exhibited perinuclear localization of BDNF-positive puncta with reduced numbers at the cell periphery compared to WT glial cells. At the protein level, Munc18-1, an essential regulator of syntaxin-1 in exocytosis (Han et al. 2010), was decreased in syntaxin-1B-deficient glial cells. Moreover, the release of BDNF was significantly reduced in syntaxin-1B KO glial cells under high potassium stimulation, while BDNF mRNA levels were not altered


Neuropeptide Y is one of the most abundant and widely distributed peptides in both the central and peripheral nervous systems. It plays important physiological and pathophysiological roles in cardiovascular, eating and sleep disorders as well as depression, anxiety, pain, cocaine withdrawal and sexual dysfunction. Thus, it offers promising opportunities for therapeutic intervention. This article reviews the patent literature in the Neuropeptide Y area of drug discovery and assesses the therapeutic value of the latest pharmacological tools and agents.


Mass production of Ge lenses is a very common operation in the infrared (IR) optics manufacturing industry. The process of choice for production of such optics is single point diamond turning (SPDT). Ge is a very suitable material for SPDT and this gives the ability to produce complex elements with excellent surface finishes (<5 nm RMS). In this paper the application of the Micro-LAM (referred to μ-LAM hereafter) process in SPDT of single crystal Ge is reported. The main idea is to investigate the maximum in-feed rates for a spindle speed of 5000 RPM as function of the tool nose radius and rake angle. Typical industry practice is to machine Ge with a spindle speed of 5000 RPM to 12000 RPM, and finishing in-feed rates between 0.5 μm/rev and 1 μm/rev. It is shown that an increase in the tool nose radius leads to an increase in the maximum in-feed achievable without the appearance of brittle fracture zones on the surface. It is also shown that using larger negative rake angles can also enable higher tool in-feeds without trade-off's to the surface quality.


The proposed prototype "Real route navigation system based automated stereo volume control system" controls the stereo volume of a car or any vehicle. The volume control is adaptive and regulates as prescribed by the central pollution control board. The major components of the prototype are single-board computer and Thin film transistor (TFT) display. Further, an android application called GPS logger is used to get the precise Latitude and longitudinal coordinates of the vehicular position using cell Phone. The co-ordinates sent by the GPS logger to the cloud are retrieved by the single board computer using read and write Application programming interface (API) keys. On considering various areas like Silent zone, No-horn zone, City limits, and Highway. Co-Ordinates have been manually set with fixed sound limits for each zone. The designed prototype is simple and cost-effective to provide automated stereo volume control which is the vital requirement as one of the features in Autonomous vehicular Design.


The paper studies the criteria of the adequacy applicable to the process of translating poetry. The historical forms of theory and practice of translating poetry are analyzed as well as the ideas of modern scientists in translation studies dealing with translating poetry. The peculiarities of modern period of poetry taken as social and cultural phenomenon are also subjects of the research. Taking into consideration all investigated aspects of poetry and its translation the paper determines the priority of pragmatic aspect of the realization of poetry in the fields of culture as the touchstone of translating poetry adequacy evaluation.


Even though many members from the broad family of carbon nanostructures have been known to us for decades, and despite their promising potential in biology and medicine, there is still a long way ahead to reach the goal of using them in real applications. The cause of such a gap still lies in the persistent drawbacks of insolubility, processability difficulties, poor consistency of macroscopic assemblies and surface inertness of carbon nanostructures. However, solely their direct chemical derivatization might not solve the problem right away. New processing elements need to come into play, but this also twists the whole picture, as the toxicity and performance profiles become more complex. We herein analyse the potential of natural polysaccharides (with a particular focus on cellulose) towards hybrid materials and structures for biomedical purposes. The role that these biopolymers acquire when interfacing with carbon nanostructures goes far beyond a mere dispersing effect, but instead creates unprecedented synergies leading to hydrogels, aerogels, films or fibres with high biocompatibility and bioactivity. In this chapter, the history of carbon nanostructures and natural polysaccharides in the field of biomedical applications will be respectively reviewed, to subsequently go into detail of specific hybrids made with the most relevant biopolymers (namely cellulose, chitin, chitosan and alginate) with extraordinary prospects in biomedicine.


The paper introduces an integrated protection device of three-phase motor controlled by SCM 89C52,which realizes integrated and intelligent controlling of electric motor.The circuit principles and hardware design of the device are emphatically presented.


Vehicle routing for municipal waste collection encompasses a variety of problems. In this paper, we explore the techniques we have developed for solving some of these problems.


ABSTRACT The SEM EDS method was applied to the working surfaces of prehistoric and experimental reaping tools in order to help solve the problem of the origins and development of their characteristic polish, called "sickle gloss." Experiments with contemporary steel scythes, as well as replicas of flint blade tools, were conducted and were compared with prehistoric Neolithic and Early Bronze Age reaping implements. The most important result of the study was the recognition, on the working surfaces of both steel and flint experimental tools, of the presence of an additional layer, termed here a "crust." This thin layer consists of calcium, carbon, oxygen, chlorium, phosphorus, aluminum, silica, potassium, and sometimes sulphur. The proportion of silica in this crust (0.8 -1.5% on average in both groups of experimental tools) was considerably smaller than the proportion of silica in the crust of prehistoric tools (5. 4 -11.6%). The most probable explanation for these results is selective chemical weathering. Prehistoric tool users discarded artifacts in silica-rich Holocene soil deposits in which easily dissolved calcium, aluminum and phosphorus oxides were replaced by less easily dissolved silica (SiO2).


Objective: To evaluate the potential anti-prostate cancer effects of Paris polyphylla ethanol extract (PPEE) and its underlying mechanisms. Materials and Methods: The anti-proliferation activity of PPEE was tested on PC3 and DU145 cells using Cell Counting Kit-8 assay. The pro-apoptotic and cell cycle arrest effects of PPEE were confirmed by flow cytometry. Apoptosis of prostate cancer cells was induced by PPEE through endogenous and exogenous pathways. A mouse xenograft model was used to examine its anti-prostate cancer effects in vivo. Results: We found that the IC50 of PPEE on PC3 cells was 3.98 µg/ml and the IC50 of PPEE on DU145 cells was 8 µg/ml. PPEE induced prostate cancer cell apoptosis in a concentration dependent manner, through endogenous and exogenous pathways. PPEE induced PC3 cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 and G2/M phases, while in DU145cell it induced cell arrest in the G0/G1 phase. PPEE inhibited the growth of prostate cancer cells in vivo. Conclusion: PPEE could inhibit prostate cancer growth in vitro and in vivo, induce apoptosis of prostate cancer cells, and cause cell cycle arrest, which laid the foundation for further research on the anti-tumor mechanism of PPEE.


Today, tourism web data are growing every day and storing in relational database, Thai and Cambodian tourists use internet to find tourism information every day. Absolutely, the problem of information that not preferable what they are looking for with mess of data. Therefore, ontology plays an important role in semantic web search to solve the problem of tourist finding information. In this research, the main point is to adopt semantic web to the local tourism website allowing users to search information from web search engine to get relevant information. The method of development has the 6 modules as follow: (1) removing stop word from user query, (2) construction tourism ontology OWL model, (3) SPARQL query semantic related word with ontology, (4) converting relational database into RDF dataset, and (5) SPARQL query construction to query data from RDF dataset and (6) display result. Additionally, the propose approach supported the tourism information system which can search all necessary information from tourism domain such as locations, services, attractive places, activities…etc. Metric-based approach is used to evaluation ontology schema and knowledgebase. The result shown schema and knowledgebase design are preferable quality. The two systems searching show that system use only keyword to search information get a few relevant data with 12% and system use ontology keyword-based get more relevant information with 88% . It indicate that the system searching OWL model can help tourist to find information which they are looking for without waste of time and system better handling of data.


Purpose – To suggest to others in the field an approach equally valid for transforming existing courses into online courses and for creating new online courses.Design/methodology/approach – Using the literature for substantiation, this article discusses the current rapid change within organizations, the role of technology in that change, and the consequent necessity of transforming existing face‐to‐face training into or creating new online courses. Further, it proposes a training model that explains the role of the principles of project management and instructional design and how to apply them to achieve this transformation and/or creation.Findings – This approach, which is based on the author's years of experience as an instructional designer and teacher and verified by recognized authorities in the field, combines the practice of project management, instructional design (both traditional and online) to produce a training model suited to today's business environment.Originality/value – The model portraye...


The presented research was focused on the field of sentiments, attitudes and concerns of educators potentially working with pupils with impairment under inclusive settings. This study was aimed at discovering whether the above stated parameters change after achieving qualification in special needs education. The results of research encompassing a period of two years aimed at describing a group of 794 educators from the point of view of the development of their attitudes, opinions and concerns while being focused on the process of inclusion. In accordance with the obtained results, supervision as a special psychological support is badly needed.


We report on Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) 52X2 G750M spectra of SNR 1987A obtained in 2000 May, and compared with nearly-identical observations taken in 1997 April. Such carefully-matched observations allow for a clean subtraction of the inner equatorial ring (ER) emission and an improved measurement of the hot spot fluxes. We present Hα fluxes and line widths for the seven hot spots clearly detected in the 2000 May data. We also provide the first description of spatially-compact emission associated with HS 1-029 which spans wide wavelength ranges of the G140L, G230L, G430L and G750L spectra taken in 1999 September and October. We suggest that this apparent continuum most likely arises from free-bound, free-free, and two-photon decay transitions in H I.


Abstract The home environment, especially parental involvement in the learning process, plays a substantial role in cultivating beneficial student learning outcomes. As a special issue on parental involvement, the articles herein share new insights on parental role construction and parental involvement within diverse contexts. The central focus spotlights the Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (HDS) model of parental involvement and more specifically the psychological construct of parental role construction. Special attention is given to sociodemographic and cultural differences that influence parent involvement in an increasingly diverse school population that offers a collective counter narrative to deficit approaches of parental involvement. The ideas and methods shared within the articles are also situated within other trends in parent involvement practices that include parents' role in supporting students' positive development, self-sufficiency in their academic learning and future decision-making, as well as how parents view their role amidst the increasing use of digital tools for at-home learning. Each article within the special issue considers the complexities of the context, alignment to parental role construction and involvement, and new trends and directions for research on parental involvement.


Metaphorical expression is profoundly transformative, both cognitively and theologically. However, not all metaphors are created equal, nor simplistically metaphorical in the strictest sense. Wheelwright (1962) identified two distinctive semantic movements in metaphor: epiphor and diaphor. Epiphor is the transference of a name to some other object, while diaphor works differently, creating meaning by juxtaposing the particulars of an old experience with new experiences, in order to transform despair to hope, lament to praise, complaint to trust. This article explores the semantic depth of the two ways in which metaphor functions, by investigating several historical references in the psalms with a view to understanding when history is history, when history is plainly metaphorical, and when history is best understood diaphorically. 1. "ALL SLANG IS A METAPHOR, AND ALL METAPHOR IS POETRY" (CHESTERTON 2018:61) It has become, as Derrida (1974:30) noted, conventional in reflection on metaphor to begin with Aristotle: There is a code, a program, a rhetoric ... in any discourse about metaphor: in the first place, by custom, Aristotle's definition is to be recalled. Jacobson "I will open my mouth in a parable" 294 A summary of Aristotle's definition, as it is drawn from both The poetics and The rhetoric, still seems apropos and perhaps rises to the "plea of necessity". Metaphor [according to Aristotle] consists in giving [a] thing a name that belongs to something else; ... this is transference of a nominal label from one thing to another. Aristotle (1922:356) goes further and not only describes the basic function of metaphor, but also praises its ability to communicate: "Metaphor, more than anything, has clarity and sweetness and strangeness" of expression.1 There are two critical elements, in this instance, which have continued to influence discourse on metaphor. First, of course, is the idea of transference: metaphor is calling one thing by another name that properly belongs to something else, i.e. that is not native to it. There are a number of ways of characterising this technical exchange of meaning, for the present I will be using the fairly standard labels "source domain" and "target domain". The "target domain" is the thing or idea that is being described; the "source domain" is the thing or field that is borrowed to describe it.2 Example: "The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer" (Ps. 18:2). The second element is Aristotle's characterisation of this transference as being defined by, and powerful because of its "strangeness": it is another name that is borrowed to describe something else, and this other name is not natural or native to it. Example: "The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock" (Ps. 18:46). Metaphor, then, is about transference (quite literally ... or literarily, μετὰ + φέρω) of meaning from one thing to another. For Aristotle, this was at least partially limited to the realm of the noun. The Lord is a "rock".3 But is this all that metaphor does, and is the "simple" metaphor the only thing that does this? Is metaphor a form of expression, or is it also a way of thinking, of knowing? I will not rehearse the entire argument in this instance, but will summarise what I take as my own position. Kövecses (2005:2, 11) puts it this way: 1 This is my translation, based on the Greek presented in the Loeb Classical Library edition of Aristotle's Rhētorikḗ. 2 Another standard is the "tenor and vehicle" where tenor = target and vehicle = source. 3 "True metaphor therefore is confined to the limits of the Aristotelian onoma ... It seems, [however], that the field of the onoma – and consequently that of metaphor, as the transfer of a noun – is less that of the noun in the strict sense (a sense which it acquired very late in the development of rhetoric) than that of the nominalizable" (Derida 1974:30, 33). Acta Theologica Supplementum 32 2021 295 we actually understand the world with metaphors and do not just speak them ... It is complex metaphors ... with which people actually engage in their thought in real cultural contexts; each source domain contributes predetermined conceptual materials to the range of target domains to which it applies. Metaphor is one way – one essential way – in which we think and communicate our thinking, part and parcel not only of how we communicate, but of how we conceive and how conception is transformed. Similarly, in her construction of theological reflection grounded in parable, Teselle (1974:632) mentions that [i]n metaphor knowledge and its expression are one and the same, there is no way around the metaphor, it is not expendable. In other words, metaphor is not reducible, in a simplistic way, to a grammatical function. Furthermore, an essential quality of the metaphor is that it need not be bound by any rule of grammar, or into a particular grammatical form; it is free to transfer meaning and understanding, and thus bring about transformation in meaning and understanding.4 This is true not only of the potential source and target domains – in metaphor one may think of God as rock (Ps. 19:14; Isa. 26:4), an "eagle" (Ps. 91:4), and even "maggots" (Hos. 5:12), or of the human being as "tree" (Ps. 1:3; 52:8 [10]), a "horse or a mule" (Ps. 32:9), or even a "worm" (22:6) – but of the form which metaphorical reflection and articulation may also take. Metaphor, and the form in which it is borne, cannot be limited either grammatically or rhetorically. A related and often noted issue has to do with the relationship of metaphor with simile. The argument is, usually, that a simile is essentially the same thing as a metaphor. Wheelwright (1962:71) also addressed this similarity, concluding that "the grammarian's familiar distinction between metaphor and simile is to be largely ignored". To a certain degree, it must be acknowledged that metaphor and simile perform, essentially, the same function. But, as Brown (2002:7) suggested, while the distinction in grammatical function may be relatively close, "rhetorically speaking ... the difference may be anything but negligible". To quote Aristotle (Rhētorikḗ III.1406b) again: "A simile is also a metaphor ... differing in the form of expression." This captures well the 4 "The test of essential metaphor is not any rule of grammatical form, but rather the quality of semantic transformation that is brought about" (Derida 1974:30, 33). Jacobson "I will open my mouth in a parable" 296 both/and; metaphor and simile do the same thing, but differently. In other words, the relationship of the comparative functions of metaphor and simile may not be one of "apples to oranges", but it is certainly one of "Fuji to Granny Smith". The differences matter. At this point, I want to suggest that there is also a good deal more subtlety both in the way in which metaphor functions, and in what serves – in different ways – the rhetorical function of the metaphorical. There is more to the idea of "metaphor" than meets the eye, and more that is "metaphorical" than the simplest form of transference. Coming to grips with the complexity of the metaphorical will mean that there is more to metaphor than identifying the "target" and "source" domains. These are, in a sense, only two legs of the epistemological stool – and, in another sense, only one side of what is happening in metaphor. Wheelwright (1962:26-31) identified three essential elements of metaphorical reflection:


This paper reports the results of a survey of citizen attitudes toward growth, and the quality of life in an expanding Sunbelt community. We find considerable continuity in our results with those of earlier research on "community satisfaction" in more stable metropolitan areas. A t the same time there are unusual findings here—in particular regarding how evaluations of certain kinds of local public services and of public sector efforts to control growth—influence perceptions of quality of life. These and other results in the paper suggest directions for future research on Sunbelt communities. They point, as well, to the importance of both population and community dynamics and local political reactions to such changes for a general understanding of perceptions of quality of life.


Public relations practitioners provide information subsidies to the media on behalf of their clients to influence the media agenda and potentially affect public opinion. McManus (1994) stated that news media are using more public relations information subsidies to contain costs and increase profits. Through in-depth interviews and a nationwide survey, this study of editors' perceptions of the phenomenon suggests that increasing economic constraints have led to an increased use of public relations materials only in specific instances that often do not support the agenda-building goals of the sponsoring organizations.


Background : Depression as a result of many causes. Both of abnormal substances in the Brain, genetic effects of personality. And stress in life. Patients with depressive symptoms, most often chronic and recurrent diseases are a disease in which there is a need to maintain a long life together. Causes of stress in life can lead to depression. If there is a search system depression screening among chronic diseases. Fast and efficient. And monitored continuously improve performance and to the person concerned. From family. Community to prevent depression and Solved it. Objective : This study aimed to explore the prevalence of Depression in Chronic Disease Patients in sriratana Hospital 2011 (October 2010 to September 2011) Study design ะ A cross sectional descriptive studies Method : A cross sectional descriptive studies in Chronic Disease Patients in Sriratana Hospital 2011 (October 2010 to September 2011) Total 3,412 cases. To study by Questionnaires that includes 2 sections. The first section was personal information. Second was the depression screening Questionnaires include 2 Questions (2Q).and 9 Questions (9Q) of Prasrimahaphodi psychiatric Hospital. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics for the Frequency and percentages. Result: The results of this study 3,412 cases. Patients with hypertension, the maximum of 2,024 cases 59.3%). Followed by diabetes ทาellitus 1,058 cases (31.0%). Asthma 156 cases (4.6%). Chronic renal failure 66 cases (1.9%). Epilepsy and thyroid disease 54 cases (1.6%).Screening with the 2 question (2Q) found, Chronic renal failure disease has abnormal screening results for the 77.3%. The depressions screening with nine screening questions (9Q) with chronic moderate to severe depression. That maximum disease must be treated by drugs and psychotherapy was hypertension 28.6%. Conclusions : The results of the study showed that symptoms of depression are associated with higher rates of chronic disease, which are diseases overlap (complex diseases) are made worse quality of life for patients. Is an urgent need to look for. Screening and support. To maintain appropriate and effective. Keywords : Chronic diseases, Depression, Questionnaires include 2 questions (2Q). and 9 questions (9Q).


This paper studies the problem of implementing a shared memory test-and-set object using only shared registers. Our contribution is threefold. First, we present a general framework to allow reasoning about reusing one-shot shared memory objects in the construction of bounded space long-lived objects. Then we derive general theorems about test-and set objects that simplifies reasoning about their implementation. Finally we show the validity of our approach by constructing an n process long lived test-and-set object from n + 1 one-shot test-and-set objects, and proving this construction formally correct.


Nowadays, there can be identified at ease a number of significant areas based on a conventional digital circuitry, such as evolvable or adaptive hardware, fault-tolerant architectures, reconfigurable systems or circuit development, where the introduction of partial reconfiguration principles may bring significant benefits with respect to traditional approaches. In case of polymorphic digital circuits (polymorphic digital circuit is able to perform more than one intended function, it typically has one stable structure for all required functions and the actually performed function or mode depends on a state of an environment) only one small-scale solution has been reported so far - the REPOMO. In this paper, main attention is given to the proposal of an innovative approach with increased flexibility, where the resulting capabilities are demonstrated.


Accurate application identification is one of the core elements of network operations and management to provide enhanced network services and security. While the signaturebased approach that examines packet content for identification is attractive with greater accuracy than the traditional technique relying on TCP port numbers, one potential challenge is multiple matches arising when more than a single application identifies the data stream in question. In that case, the input stream cannot be adequately classified solely by the help of the application signatures, and it is necessary to establish an additional process that reconciles such multiple matches in order to make the final identification decision. In this paper, we address the problem of multiple matches by developing a set of selection heuristics that help accurately identify the application associated with the input data stream. The heuristics choose one out of a set of applications using their own unique discrimination function, and the input traffic can be classified into the selected application. Our experimental results with a recent traffic data set show that our proposed method successfully deals with multiple matches, achieving a high degree of identification accuracy up to 99% with respect to precision and recall.


Nanocrystalline TiO_2was prepared by traditional and improved sol-gel methods with inorganotitanates and two polymers(PEG and starch),respectively.For the improved method,the way separating TiO_2 from dry gel depended on not calcining at all but redissolving the dry gel.The obtained TiO_2 powder is ultrafine(4?nm) and crystallized(anatase phase),which was acted as the raw material to control TiO_2 particle size by heated-treatment.It was supposed that the crystallization occurring at low temperature(≤100?℃)result from the special structure of gel which formed by the polymers with Ti(NO_3)_4.For the improved method,it was found that a small amount of NO_2 gas can be easily collected and redissolved polymers can be reused.So this method is also good to environment protection.


Abstract This paper studies the observer based fault detection problem in networked control systems. It is assumed that the transmission delays caused by the communication network are varying and their probability distribution is unknown but knowledge about its stochastic characteristics is known a priori . First the dynamic modelling of a proposed networked control system under different sampling frequencies using the packet-oriented data transmission method is derived. Based on this developed system model, an approach for fault detection system is presented. Main attention is paid to the residual evaluation task in order to reduce false alarm rate caused by the uncertainties due to the effect of the communication network. A study based on simulation platform to verify the results is given.


Qualitative metasynthesis is an intentional and coherent approach to analyzing data across qualitative studies. It is a process that enables researchers to identify a specific research question and then search for, select, appraise, summarize, and combine qualitative evidence to address the research question. This process uses rigorous qualitative methods to synthesize existing qualitative studies to construct greater meaning through an interpretative process. The purpose of this article is to describe qualitative metasynthesis as an innovative research approach for the field of early childhood intervention. Although this is not a new research approach in other fields, the authors suggest that it can offer a promising practice in the field of early childhood intervention. In this article, the authors explore how qualitative metasynthesis can be a practical and effective approach of inquiry as they continue to broaden their understanding about young children with disabilities and their families.


The author recalls how he first became interested in American studies and comparisons in 1967, and how, twelve years later, he attended a conference (as did George Fredrickson) comparing the U.S. and South African frontiers. The author then weighs the merits of White Supremacy and Black Liberation individually, and writes that "[w]hat is needed now is for someone to bring the two stories together and to write a fully comparative study of both processes in both countries."


Compared to the CAVLC in H.264/AVC, CAVLC in HEVC has been improved much. One mechanism that contributes to the improvement is adaptive code word swapping based on previous coded symbol in the early design of HEVC. However, such a instantly swapping strategy often makes a wrong estimation of the real statistics and may lead to inefficient coding that may even worse than without adaptation. In this paper, we analyze potential loss caused by instantly swapping and propose a counter-based adaptation scheme to further improve the entropy coding efficiency. We discuss the bit-depth of those counters that achieves a trade-off between the adaptation capability and a good estimation of the statistics. The proposed scheme introduces a sum counter for each code table and a counter for each code. The sum counter determines when to shift all the counters to prevent overflow and make sure symbols far away influence less. The experimental results show that the counter based algorithm brings about 0.7% bits saving compared with the instantly swapping adaptation algorithm. Compared with the CAVLC without adaptation, the performance gain of the counter adaptation algorithm is about 4.0% bits saving. A variant of the proposed counter-based adaptation has been adopted by HEVC design.


1.1 GPS – benefits & constraints The Global Positioning System (GPS) is an all-weather, global, satellite-based, roundthe-clock system developed by the U.S. Department of Defense, which since the early 1980s has been available to the civilian community and has truly revolutionized navigation, surveying and geodesy. GPS is based on a constellation of up to 30 satellites orbiting the Earth, broadcasting signals that permit a GPS receiver to determine its position, velocity and time from observations to at least four visible satellites. GPS is the most effective general-purpose tool ever developed for geopositioning on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. GPS, and similar follow-on Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), will be the conerstone geolocation technology for the next few decades. However, standard GPS/GNSS is not ideal for ubiquitous positioning requirements as it cannot be used indoors or where the satellite signals may be obstructed by buildings or foliage.


ABSTRACTRealization of autonomous behavior in mobile robots, using fuzzy logic control, requires formulation of rules which are collectively responsible for necessary levels of intelligence. Such a collection of rules can be conveniently decomposed and efficiently implemented as a hierarchy of fuzzy-behaviors. This article describes how this can be done using a behavior-based architecture. A behavior hierarchy and mechanisms of control decision-making are described. In addition, an approach to behavior coordination is described with emphasis on evolution of fuzzy coordination rules using the genetic programming (GP) paradigm. Both conventional GP and steady-state GP are applied to evolve a fuzzy-behavior for sensor-based goal-seeking. The usefulness of the behavior hierarchy, and partial design by GP, is evident in performance results of simulated autonomous navigation.


Based on an analogy between thermodynamics and Bayesian inference,inverse halftoning was formulated using multiple halftone images based on Bayesian inference using the maximizer of the posterior marginal(MPM) estimate.Applying Monte Carlo simulation to a set of snapshots of the Q-Ising model,it was demonstrated that optimal performance is achieved around the Bayes-optimal condition within statistical uncertainty and that the performance of the Bayes-optimal solution is superior to that of the maximum-a-posteriori(MAP) estimation which is a deterministic limit of the MPM estimate.These properties were qualitatively confirmed by the mean-field theory using an infinite-range model established in statistical mechanics.Additionally,a practical and useful method was constructed using the statistical mechanical iterative method via the Bethe approximation.Numerical simulations for a 256-grayscale standard image show that Bethe approximation works as good as the MPM estimation if the parameters are set appropriately.


Abstract An aeromagnetic survey of the Uinta Mountains and the adjacent basins shows a minimal anomaly over the mountains very similar to the results of a ground study by Behrendt and Thiel published in 1963. However, the interpretation of the airborne data shows that the minimum is actually not negative but simply a nonanomalous area between two intrabasement anomalies caused by changes in magnetization within the magnetic basement or within the Lower Precambrian beneath the metasedimentary series of the Middle and Upper Precambrian. Consequently, the mountain mass is considered to be a nonmagnetic suite of metasediments in the form of a wedge of material more than 35,000 ft thick and about 110,000 ft wide on outcrop within the surveyed area.


This book studies the relation between administrative capacity and a member state's influence in the European Union. More specifically, it studies member states' ability to exert control over the European Commission during trade negotiations. But what determines administrative capacity and how do member states ensure their preferences are defended during trade negotiations? A combination of qualitative fieldwork and survey-analysis provides the answer. Interviews in Belgium, Poland, Estonia and Spain offer a privileged insight in the functioning of national trade administrations and its effects on their behavior in the Council of Ministers. Through survey data, these findings are further corroborated. The book is aimed at a readership interested in EU decision-making, negotiation theory, comparative public administration and the international political economy of trade.


We are grateful for the comment from McKean et al on our article reporting on anxiety and depression among a group of socially transitioned, prepubescent transgender children ages 3 to 12 years.1 Although we have additional research in progress that can better speak to some of their concerns (eg, the focus in the first article on parental reports), we are able to provide additional information from the Pediatrics data set to address their 2 major concerns: (1) the (high) socioeconomic status of our participants; and (2) the results with regard to the age distribution of our sample.

First, McKean et al point out that our study focused on a "narrow socioeconomic sample," or more specifically, that our sample was considerably wealthier than the average American or Canadian family. This issue is one we have discussed elsewhere,2 and we agree that it is a limit to the generalizability of our findings. To better understand this issue, we report our results according to socioeconomic group in Table 1. It is …

E-mail: krolson{at}uw.edu


It is well known that the estimation of a labour supply function is complicated because of the non-linear budget constraint an individual faces. This non-linearity may arise from a variety of reasons - the structure of the tax/benefit scheme, overtime rates etc. Non-linearities also cause problems when it comes to interpreting the policy implications of the estimates. In this study we first estimate two well-structured econometric labour supply models which mimic the actual budget constraints as closely as possible. Utilising estimation results we construct a microsimulation model to analyse different income tax regimes and systems to the labour supply. Our simulation results show that none of the proposed reforms are self-financing. A revenue neutral proportional tax system does not have major effects on labour supply. The biggest behavioural responses are achieved if we reduce the marginal tax rates from the lower end of the state income tax schedule.


In genome-wide association studies (GWAS), detecting population stratification is one of main isuues. As population stratification can produce spurious associations in GWAS, it is necessary to find hidden structures and assign individuals to subpopulations in advance. We suggest an exploratory approach for population structure analysis based on independent component analysis (ICA). ICA is mainly used for blind source separation, which attempts to distinguish individual signals in situations where multiple signals are mixed. It can treat non-Gaussian data and use higher moments. To determine the population structure, we first reduce the dimensionality of samples by projecting the data to a lower-dimensional subspace built by ICA. The samples are then bisected using fuzzy clustering. Repeating this procedure until some predetermined stopping criterion, we can detect the population structure and assign individuals to subpopulations. Information about the number of optimal subpopulations can also be obtained. To assess the proposed method, we analyze simulated genotypic data.