With the popularity of the Internet and related technologies, dynamics in customer demand and market competition become even fierce. In such situation, the role of e-business has evolved from conventional cost reduction and efficiency improvement to enhancement of organizational flexibility and adaptation to changing environment. However, a comprehensive literature review reveals that there is a lack of study of the impacts of e-business on firm dynamic capability and performance. Viewing e-business as a complex organizational innovation, this study aims to understand e-business assimilation and the mechanism underlying how enterprises leverage e-business to create value in a changing environment. In particular, three related research questions are examined: How to conceptualize and operationalize e-business assimilation? What factors impact e-business assimilation? And how e-business assimilation contributes to organizational dynamic capability and firm performance?
Drawing upon previous studies and theoretical foundations, an integrated research model is developed to address antecedents and consequences of e-business assimilation. Based on Technology-Organizational-Environmental framework, top management support, IT readiness, and competition intensity are proposed to influence both the breadth and depth of e-business assimilation. Dynamic capability is proposed to mediate the effect of e-business assimilation on firm operational effectiveness and competitive advantage. Hypotheses are proposed to describe relationships among antecedents, e-business assimilation, dynamic capability and firm performance constructs.
A measurement scale is developed by adopting from prior empirical studies and revised based on feedback from pilot study. By using survey data collected from Chinese companies, the proposed hypotheses and research model are evaluated.
The properties of measurement scale are evaluated by conducting factor analysis and hypotheses are estimated by using structural equation modeling (SEM) method. Partial least square (PLS) software package is used for data analysis. The mediating effect of dynamic capability between e-business assimilation and firm performance constructs is examined by using a model comparison approach.
Most proposed hypotheses are found significant except the effects of competition intensity on e-business assimilation. The results show that top management support and IT readiness significantly impact e-business breadth and depth, which are found significantly influence dynamic capability and indirectly influence operational effectiveness and competitive advantage.
In an innovation assimilation perspective, this study contributes to the e-business literature by focusing on e-business assimilation which is neglected by prior studies. This study also originally applies dynamic capability approach to e-business value creation and examines the impacts of e-business on firms in a changing environment, offering a theoretical extension of the mechanism underlying e-business value creation. Generally, this empirical research provides valuable groundwork for further studies on e-business operations.
Keywords: E-Business Assimilation, Dynamic Capability, E-Business Value Creation, Firm Performance


The invention discloses an integrated forming method of a non-transparent nonmetal member and a metal member. The integrated forming method comprises the following steps: A, placing the non-transparent nonmetal member in a mould; B, placing the metal member positioned at the peripheral edge of the nonmetal member in the mould, wherein the metal member is of a continuous structure positioned at the peripheral edge of the nonmetal member; C, heating the metal member to ensure that the metal member forms a semi-solid state metal defined in a mould cavity; D, extruding the semi-solid metal by using the mould to ensure that the semi-solid metal is seamlessly bonded on the peripheral edge of the nonmetal member; and E, rapidly cooling the semi-solid metal positioned at the peripheral edge of the nonmetal member to ensure that the semi-solid state metal forms an amorphous metal bonded on the peripheral edge of the nonmetal member. The integrated-forming method disclosed by the invention is simple and easy to operate, and high in yield; the difficulty of processing the surface of the metal member is reduced, and the processed integrally-formed member is attractive in appearance.


Abstract: In modern society, where information security is emphasized, the importance of biometrics, which identifies individuals based on their physical and behavioral characteristics, is increasing. Hand geometry based biometric systems are gaining acceptance in low-to-medium security applications. Hand geometry -based identification systems use geometric characteristics of the hand, such as finger length and width, palm diameter and circumference. The proposed system is an authentication system that uses these hand shape features for user authentication. This project presents a low-cost, high-performance, and easy-to-use hand-geometry based biometric personal authentication system. One of the novelties of this work involves the introduction of position-based, position-independent feature extraction and hand shape identification, useful for problems related to image processing and pattern recognition. Today, the presence of students (classes) has become an important part of every organization/institution. Traditional methods of recording attendance through paper attribution or signatures are very time consuming, insecure and inefficient. This paper describes manual student attendance management in a computerized system for convenience or data reliability. Therefore, the system was developed by integrating a ubiquitous computing system into the classroom to manage student attendance with palmprint scanners


1. Glutamic acid accelerates both mental and physical growth in mongols. 2. Improvement in mental growth, while genuine, is not as great as in nonmongoloid retardation. 3. Improvement in physical growth, however, is striking over a 6 months' treatment period.


The native-silver-bearing deposits of the Great Bear Lake region occur within two separate domains, namely the Echo Bay sector and the Camsell River sector. In all these deposits, native silver occurs in veins, associated with a wide range of Ni-, Co-, and Fe- arsenides, Cu-, Fe-, Ni-, and Co-sulfides, and pitchblende in gangues of quartz, calcite, dolomite, siderite, rhodochrosite, and fluorite. The host rocks of the veins are for the most part Aphebian volcano-sedimentary roof pendants within the Great Bear batholithic complex. The carbonates (calcite, dolomite, siderite, and rhodochrosite) show a wide range of δ18O (6.8 to 22.5‰, SMOW) and δ13C (−2.7 to −13.3‰, PDB) values. A single analysis of quartz gave a δ18O value of 16.54‰ (SMOW). The δD of water in fluid inclusions in quartz, dolomite, and calcite shows a range from −62.2 to −98.5‰ (SMOW). The δD of present-day meteoric waters from the region shows a range of −146.5 to −165.2‰ (SMOW). The δ18O of the hydrothermal fluids (0.47 to 9.12‰, SMOW) was...


Contrary to an oft-made claim, there can be observational distinctions (say for the expansion of the universe or the cosmological constant) between "single-history" quantum theories and "many-worlds" quantum theories. The distinctions occur when the number of observers is not uniquely predicted by the theory. In single-history theories, each history is weighted simply by its quantum-mechanical probability, but in many-worlds theories in which random observations are considered, there should also be the weighting by the numbers or amounts of observations occurring in each history.


Objective To investigate the effect of pethidine and promethazine IV on painless artificial abortion.Methods Two hundred healthy women without induced abortion contraindications were randomly assigned to receive pethidine and promethazine before artificial abortion(n=100) or no pre-operative medication(control group,n=100).Pethidine 50mg and promethazine 25mg were intravenousely injected slowly.Results The analgesic effects,the degree of cervical relaxation,the incidence of artificial abortion syndrome and side effects during the operation were significantly different in favour of pethidine and promethazine group(P0.01).The total amount of vaginal bleeding was not significantly different between two groups(P0.05).Conclusion Intravenous injection of pethidine and promethazine before artificial abortion has favourable analgesic effects.It is a simple safe inexpensive supplementary measure and suitable for basic-level hospital use.


Metabolic flux analysis (MFA) plays an important role in guiding the genetic manipulation in metabolic engineering. Due to the complexity and hugeness of metabolic network, a powerful platform is necessary for the MFA. In this work, some excellent and novel software is introduced to MFA, which will enhance the efficiency greatly.


The aim of this research is to examine the effect of realistic mathematics education approach on academic achievement in secondary school 5th grade decimal notations. Mixed method and easily accessible case sampling method were used in the research. The research group consists of 56 students at the 5th grade level of a public secondary school in Gaziantep. Decimal Notation Achievement Test and Interview Form were used as data collection tools. The research lasted for 20 lesson hours. Decimal Notation Achievement Test was applied as a pre-test, post-test and retention test. As a result of the research, the pre-test success levels of the experimental and control groups regarding decimal notations did not differ statistically significantly, and In the post-test results, it was determined that the success of the students in the experimental group, increased significantly more than the control group. There was no statistically significant difference between the success levels of the two groups in the results of the retention test.


The infusion of endotoxin in man is followed by a fall in mononuclear cell count and subsequent granulocytosis. Significant granulocytopenia was not observed, nor were changes in plasma fibrinogen levels or platelet counts noted. Although a correlation was demonstrated between dose of endotoxin administered and hematologic response, there was no correlation between the magnitude of fever and hematologic changes. Hematologic responsiveness was unchanged following the development of febrile tolerance to endotoxin.


The rubber specimens of transmission mount are tested to obtain the hyperelastic and viscoelastic properties by the static and dynamic test, respectively. The static tests are consisted of uniaxial and biaxial tension and pure shear test. Mooney-Rivlin constants are obtained from these test results. Also, the storage and loss moduli are obtained to know the viscoelastic characteristics by dynamic mechanical analyzer. From the static and dynamic test data, the mechanical performances of rubber mount such as static and dynamic stiffness are predicted with finite element analysis. Also, the dynamic tests of rubber mount subjected to static load are carried out to measure the support load and the dynamic stiffness. Finally, the predictions of FEA and the results of experiments are compared.


Propagandist and Nationalist Arthur Griffith starts the Sinn Fein Printing & Publishing Company, Ltd and launches the Sinn Fein Daily, a newspaper created by Irish products and meant to sway Irish minds. Griffith, trained in the visual side of publishing, saw a need, whether out of losing money or readers, to expand his audience. In doing so, he created a new kind of political paper, visually swaying to attract the masses and marketing his political ideologies in new ways. Debts and harassment by other political papers wanting to use the Sinn Fein name saw his downfall.


This paper introduces a low-power time-domain comparator with a modified current starved inverter circuit. The proposed comparator converts the analog input voltage into a time delay that creates a phase difference between the input signal and the reference signal. Then a phase detector is utilized to determine either the input signal is leading or lagging compared to the reference signal. Moreover, the power optimization is achieved by limiting the short circuit power $(P_{SC})$ that passes through both charging and discharging phases. A prototype of the proposed comparator is designed and simulated in $0.13 \mu m$ CMOS technology where it draws $0.6 \mu A$ from a 1 V supply with a sampling rate equals 10 MHz. Moreover, the simulation results of the proposed comparator offer a FoM of 60 fJ/conversion step. Finally, the proposed time-domain comparator circuit is compatible with wide range of applications (i.e., internet of things (IoT) sensors and integrated DC-DC converters).


BACKGROUND Mechanics of Solids is a second year undergraduate subject, undertaken by both Civil and Mechanical engineering students at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). Mechanics of Solids has been delivered for many years in a traditional format with lectures and problem solving tutorials. As part of a national Australian project "Enhancing Industry Exposure in Engineering Degrees", UTS in partnership with other universities and industry partners in Australia has sought industry involvement to engage students with the real-world challenges of engineering practice.


Colistin, currently regarded as the last‐resort antibiotic for the treatment of infections caused by multidrug‐resistant bacteria, is used in poultry production to treat and prevent infection, and as a growth promoter. Poultry litter is commonly used as organic fertilizer; however, there are no reports on the effect of its application regarding colistin resistance in soils. Thus, the objective of the present study was to compare the abundance of the colistin resistance gene (mcr‐1) in soils from vegetable production areas that received non‐composted poultry litter as organic fertilizer and native vegetation areas. The mcr‐1 gene was detected in all soil samples from both areas. A significant difference (p < 0.05) was observed in the relative abundance of the mcr‐1 gene between soils pertaining to the vegetable production area and the native vegetation area in six of those 10 properties. This is the first report of the presence of the colistin resistance gene in soils from Brazil. The vast majority of antibiotic resistance genes acquired by human pathogens originated in natural environments. Thus, the presence of the mcr‐1 gene in soils treated with poultry litter and from native vegetation areas reinforces the need for studies that minimize potential risks of the development of colistin resistance.


Using a methanol utilizing acidophilic MB 58 bacteria strain (IMET 10945T), a stable fermentation process was performed in a pilot plant pressure fermenter of 250 l total volume for more than four months.

Under the fermentation conditions (system pressure and retention time) used, productivities ranged between 2.3 and 9.4 BDM kg−1. h−1 and growth yields between 0.31 and 0.42.

Models describe the correlations between yield and retention time. The mean value of growth yield amounts to 0.41 at a retention time of 6.5 h.


Under the complicated electromagnetism circumstance,the intelligent control and guidance' robust problem model of surface-to-air missile weapon system was established.Such ways and theories as Elman-NN,T-S fuzzy reasoning,LMI calculating,optimization control etc were applied to mathmatically describe the non-line control and guidance process of surface-to-air missile weapon system.The purpose was optimization design of the intelligent control and guidance' process of surface-to-air missile weapon system aiming at system robust capability,to work out some main technologies' MATLAB simulating procedures.


Viral marketing, the method of using a small set of users in social networks to propagate products through cascades, is a well-known and extreme research problem in recent years. Then, influence maximization (IM) is formulated, which aims to select the most influential seeds to maximize the expected total adoption eventually. IM expresses viral marketing perfectly. However, almost all prior work focused on cardinality constraint or considers only simple comparative products model. They neglected that composite complementary products (CCP) are widespread. In other words, when a customer adopts products <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$B$ </tex-math></inline-formula> at the same time, it is possible for him to adopt product <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$C$ </tex-math></inline-formula>. Therefore, we design a multi-layer network model under independent cascade (IC) model to adapt to multiple complementary products and define the seed selection problem for complementary products model [IM for complementary products (IMCP)] and CCP model (IMCCP) under knapsack constraint. Here, the seed for different products has a different cost. In this paper, we propose two efficient techniques to solve IMCP problem, called Greedy and general-TIM. The Greedy uses simple Greedy Hill-Climbing algorithm under knapsack constraint and obtain <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$({1}/{2})(1-({1}/{e}))$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-approximation, but the time complexity is hard to accept. The second algorithm, general-TIM, forms a weighted set cover problem by means of randomized sampling (close to Greedy in practice), which reduces the time-consuming significantly. For IMCCP problem, it is difficult to handle because no ready-made algorithms exist to optimize a function that is nonsubmodular and nonsupermodular. Then, we need to get help from sandwich method by finding an upper and lower bound. Finally, our algorithms are evaluated on several real data sets, which prove the correctness of our algorithms.


Usability patterns represent knowledge about known ways to design graphical user interfaces that are usable and meet the needs and expectations of users. There is currently a plethora of usability patterns published in books, private repositories and the World-Wide Web. The dominance of pattern creation and discovery efforts has neglected the emerging need to organize the patterns so they can become a proactive resource for developing interfaces. This paper presents an approach using Semantic Web concepts that turns informal patterns into formal representation capable of supporting systematic design methods. Through this method, loosely coupled pattern collections can be turned into strongly coupled pattern languages representing software patterns and the context in which usability patterns should be applied. Furthermore, we demonstrate how experience-based mechanisms can be utilized to continuously improve the resulting pattern libraries. 1 Usability Patterns as an Interface Design Resource The development of interactive software systems, i.e. systems with significant user interface components, is currently faced with a dilemma. Design for usability is becoming increasingly important to the success of software systems, but software developers are usually poorly trained in human factors or usability issues. Education and iterative development processes aimed at evaluating and improving the user interfaces are necessary solutions to this problem, but techniques are needed that provide software developers with proactive knowledge and techniques for developing high quality user interfaces. There is no lack of information and guidance on the design, development, and evaluation of user interfaces. Usability guidelines, patterns, principles, books, Web pages depicting good and bad examples, databases and various repositories are examples of both the plethora of knowledge and proliferation of formats that have been used to disseminate usability design knowledge. Design patterns, structured descriptions of a successful solution to a recurring problem, have emerged as an important tool that explicitly represents when and how a pattern should be used [7, 10]. Current approaches to representing patterns are document-based, at best supported with hypertext tools on the Web. These passive representations rely on individual developers to know of the existence of the resources and understand when they should be applied. Given the potentially copious numbers of patterns that can be used in different contexts and the lack of training in usability issues, this is not a satisfactory solution. Computational pattern representations are needed that facilitate retrieval, and support for design processes. In addition, mechanisms are lacking to turn the currently isolated sets of patterns and pattern collections into a pattern language, [3] an interconnected corpus of knowledge that embodies a degree of consensus the design community. Tools and techniques are needed to create a community of practice in the patterns community that continuously evolves and refines the available usability patterns. In this paper, we present a framework in which patterns are represented using Semantic Web technologies [4, 17] for creating ontologies. Ontologies are formal and explicitly defined specifications of concepts whose meaning is shared within a community [31]. We provide a specific example of ontologies and associated rules and inferences that allow intelligent support for applying usability patterns. This is demonstrated through a next-generation BORE (Building an Organizational Repository of Experiences) system, a software process framework tool for generating flexible development methodologies [21]. The BORE framework is extended and used to demonstrate how Semantic Web technologies can be utilized to support distributed ontologies and forms of computational reasoning to support the design of user interfaces. Description logic reasoning and rules are used to actively deliver patterns and other usability knowledge to the developer and find related patterns that fit the defined context of the application. 2 Usability Guidelines and Patterns Usability guidelines have been used to disseminate usability knowledge and ensure a degree of consistency across applications [24, 29, 34]. Usability guidelines provide principles and concepts that lead to good interface design from both general and widget-specific perspectives. While hundreds of usability guidelines have been designed and published, the guideline statements tend to be stated in an abstract, decontextualized, manner. This leads to problems of interpretation, applicability, and ambiguous or contradictory statements [8, 32] that make it difficult for developers to properly apply usability guidelines. A usability patterns community, inspired by the recent work on software patterns, [5] has begun to explore how patterns can be used to provide an intermediate perspective between universally applicable usability guidelines and component-specific style guides [25, 36]. The essential idea of a design pattern is to capture recurring problems along with the context and forces that operate on the problem to yield a general solution. Collections of patterns can be organized in a network of higher-level patterns that are resolved or refined by more detailed patterns, resulting in a pattern language [3]. Differences between usability guidelines and usability patterns lie primarily in perspective and representation of the information. The perspective of usability patterns tends to be more problem-oriented, focusing on describing a problem and solution, than the more general information or advice perspective of guidelines. Although templates and data structures for describing guidelines and patterns can easily be reconciled, the 'context' and 'forces' fields commonly seen in pattern formats is indicative of a problem-oriented perspective The goals of both these approaches are essentially the same: to document and manage experience about usability design issues in a format that is easily disseminated and understood. But current research has focused on the development of pattern and guideline content, with very little work being performed on tool support for applying the knowledge contained in guidelines and patterns. 2.1 Current Support for Usability Patterns Suppose a project team is developing E-commerce website to serve users who want to purchase a set of products through a Web browser. The product offerings are large and diverse enough that it makes sense to divide the site into multiple Web pages with navigational aids to go between categories. But this leaves the sticky problem of how to collect items that have been chosen in different places in the site, both from a Fig. 1. An Online Usability Patterns Collection (from [van Welie 2005]). usability perspective and an information retention perspective (i.e. keeping track of chosen items across separate Web pages). Some members of the team are aware that proven usability knowledge for these types of interfaces is available and refer to the Interaction Design Patterns website (often referred to as the Amsterdam Patterns Collection) [35] containing over 60 usability patterns (see Fig. 1), including guidelines relevant to the project such as Ecommerce and Web shopping patterns. Many other pattern collections exist, both in Web sites [15, 27, 33] and books, [34] and could also be used by the team instead of or in addition to this pattern collection. Given the discovery of this pattern collection, the team must read, digest and sort out the collection of patterns to find which ones might be applicable to parts of their interface design. This leads to a number of problems when trying to design the system using the pattern collection. First, since the patterns are not represented in a problem-oriented form, it is not immediately clear which set of patterns apply to a particular problem. For example, the shopping cart pattern [35] is a solution to the problem of users purchasing items, but it is not clear which other patterns may also apply to this situation. The developers must read all the patterns and make decisions about the applicability of each pattern to the current project. Second, after a particular pattern has been chosen, there are no indications or formal relationships about which pattern(s) should be used with the chosen pattern. For example, using the Shopping pattern may involve choices for specific interaction types, such as using a persistent button or frame to indicate and store persistent items across Web pages, or the need for specific types of search interactions. The patterns are represented in informal natural language, at best using hyper links, or a "Related patterns" field that link to other patterns in the collection. Otherwise, there is little to no information on how the patterns may work together for solutions to larger problems. In addition, there are no links between pattern collections, making the work for the development even harder, as the relationship between patterns in collections is not specified, or at best specified with a hypertext link that carries no semantics. 2.2 Tools for Finding Guidelines Because usability patterns are such a new discipline, few or no tools have been built to help people find relevant patterns. Within the guidelines community, a number of tools have been developed, such as classification schemes, [28] and various information retrieval and hypertext tools [23]. Efforts have also defined mechanisms for validating guidelines, although few efforts have followed such standards. This is also the case for design patterns [14] where the tool most used are UML models and, but no attempt is made to investigate relationships between patterns and/or composing multiple patterns [2]. The potential utility of using the structured format of patterns, for example using the context field to formally or systematical


Double patterning technology (DPT) is one of candidates to achieve 45nm or 32nm half-pitch and is getting popular as ITRS2006update(1). ITRS2006update specifies the tight specification of image-placement and the difference of CD mean-to target of two masks, and they are also evaluated and reported(2). From photomask fabrication viewpoint or just even employing actual wafer exposure experiment, it's much difficult to evaluate actual impact on wafer using DPT. Because what observed on wafer is mixture of not only photomask-property but also exposure's one and new topic of hard-mask process'. In this paper, one evaluation procedure will be proposed using actual two photomasks and the DPT impact on wafer just from two photomasks will be demonstrated. Then the approach of wafer image composing procedure with photomask-SEM image, photomask measurement and exposure simulation will be discussed


This study was designed to investigate the effects of teaching lexical collocations on students' knowledge of collocations as well as the possible relationship between knowledge of collocations and the quality of these students' writing. The participants were 28 first semester students currently pursuing their foundation studies at Institut Perguruan Batu Lintang, Kuching. A lexical collocation test was constructed to assess participants' knowledge of lexical collocations before and after the treatment, and an essay was used to collect naturally occurring data of the participants' use of collocations and subsequently, to measure the quality of the essay. The Control Group was taught vocabulary using the conventional way, focussing on individual words, while the Experimental Group was taught using the Lexical Approach. Descriptive statistics was used to examine the participants' knowledge of lexical collocations and explore possible associations between the teaching of lexical collocations and the quality of participants' essays. The results indicated that there was a positive effect between the teaching of lexical collocations and the quality of the essays, and that the participants' knowledge of collocations improved. Based on the findings, it is concluded that teaching vocabulary using the Lexical Approach contributes to more obvious improvement in participants' collocational knowledge.


Abstract An investigation was carried out to ascertain: (i) whether pupils gaining spelling scores a year or more below their chronological ages would gain lower scores on a Self‐concept as a Learner scale, than pupils whose spelling scores were a year or more above their chronological ages; (ii) whether such less competent spellers, apart from obtaining lower self‐concept scores, were also retarded in reading and basic arithmetical reasoning, as well as having below average verbal ability.


ABSTRACT This article presents the VLSI design of a configurable RSA public key cryptosystem supporting the 512-bit, 1024-bit and 2048-bit based on Montgomery algorithm achieving comparable clock cycles of current relevant works but with smaller die size. We use binary method for the modular exponentiation and adopt Montgomery algorithm for the modular multiplication to simplify computational complexity, which, together with the systolic array concept for electric circuit designs effectively, lower the die size. The main architecture of the chip consists of four functional blocks, namely input/output modules, registers module, arithmetic module and control module. We applied the concept of systolic array to design the RSA encryption/decryption chip by using VHDL hardware language and verified using the TSMC/CIC 0.35 m 1P4 M technology. The die area of the 2048-bit RSA chip without the DFT is 3.9 × 3.9 mm2 (4.58 × 4.58 mm2 with DFT). Its average baud rate can reach 10.84 kbps under a 100 MHz clock.


In this article, Keith Dear argues that demographic and geographic constraints on national power are reducing in two ways. First, that automation, robotics and AI reduce states' dependence on people to create wealth and to scale military forces to deter or fight. Second, while geography was once the only arena for international competition, today, economic, military and political contests increasingly extend to the digital metaverse. He argues that we are moving beyond the 'geo' in geopolitics, witnessing the digital transformation of power.◼


Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. has demonstrated real-time processing of 3D imaging LADAR point-cloud data to produce the industry's first time-of-flight (TOF) 3D video capability. This capability is uniquely suited to the rigorous demands of space and airborne flight applications and holds great promise in the area of autonomous navigation. It will provide long-range, three dimensional video information to autonomous flight software or pilots for immediate use in rendezvous and docking, proximity operations, landing, surface vision systems, and automatic target recognition and tracking. This is enabled by our new generation of FPGA based "pixel-tube" processors, coprocessors and their associated algorithms which have led to a number of advancements in high-speed wavefront processing along with additional advances in dynamic camera control, and space laser designs based on Ball's CALIPSO LIDAR. This evolution in LADAR is made possible by moving the mechanical complexity required for a scanning system into the electronics, where production, integration, testing and life-cycle costs can be significantly reduced. This technique requires a state of the art TOF read-out integrated circuit (ROIC) attached to a sensor array to collect high resolution temporal data, which is then processed through FPGAs. The number of calculations required to process the data is greatly reduced thanks to the fact that all points are captured at the same time and thus correlated. This correlation allows extremely efficient FPGA processing. This capability has been demonstrated in prototype form at both Marshal Space Flight Center and Langley Research Center on targets that represent docking and landing scenarios. This report outlines many aspects of this work as well as aspects of our recent testing at Marshall's Flight Robotics Laboratory.


[Abstract] Proliferative capacity and degranulation are important features of antigen-specific CD8 + T cells. By combining tetramer staining with a CFSE staining, we were able to enumerate the total number of antigen-specific T cells, as well as their number of divisions upon antigen-specific stimulation during a week. In addition, we performed restimulation of these cells, to analyze their ability to secrete cytolytic granules, visualized by CD107a staining.


Members of Agrobacterium are costly plant pathogens while also essential tools for plant transformation. Though Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (AMT) has been heavily studied, its polygenic nature and its complex transcriptional regulation make identifying the genetic basis of transformational efficiency difficult through traditional genetic and bioinformatic approaches. Here we use a bottom-up synthetic approach to systematically refactor the tumor-inducing plasmid, wherein the majority of AMT machine components are encoded, into a minimal set of genes capable of plant and fungal transformation that is both controllable and orthogonal to its environment. We demonstrate that engineered vectors can be transferred to new heterologous bacteria, enabling them to transform plants. Our reductionist approach demonstrates how bottom-up engineering can be used to dissect and elucidate the genetic underpinnings of complex biological traits, and may lead to the development of strains of bacteria more capable of transforming recalcitrant plant species of societal importance.


Abstract This paper presents the framework for a methodology for insuring the durability of construction sealants. The basic approach involves determination of an allowable strain capacity. This is done by establishing a 5% exclusion value on the ultimate strain capacity of the unaged sealant, then modifying that by empirical reduction factors to reflect the effects of service conditions. Fatigue, heat, water, chemicals, cold, and ultraviolet light are considered, as are state of strain, joint geometry, substrate type, and a safety factor. Data taken for tests on a solvent acrylic sealant are used to illustrate application of the method. Further research needs are briefly discussed.


Providing anti-counterfeit medium using diffraction structure transfer foil and the diffraction structure transfer foil was further improved the utility of the diffraction structure transfer foil in the authenticity judgment by observable more diverse diffracted light pattern. Diffraction structure transfer foil according to the present invention (21) includes a transfer foil substrate (1), the transfer foil substrate (1) while peeling the protective layer which is laminated on the surface of the (2), the release protection layer (2) laminated on the diffracted light transmitted laminate for the (13a), the adhesive layer laminated on the diffracted light transmitted laminate for (13a) and (9), comprising a laminated diffraction optical delivery body (13a) has a diffraction structure forming body in which a plurality of diffractive structures (4, 7) are formed, the reflective layer formed in accordance with each of a plurality of diffractive structures (4,7) (5a, 8a) and has, the plurality of reflecting layers (5a, 8a) of the, transmission density of a reflective layer (5a) is in the range of 0.01 to 0.9, other reflective layer (8a) transmission density of at least 1.0.


A meso-porous anodic alumina capillary tube (MAAC) having highly oriented radial meso-pore channels with a minimum diameter of 3 nm has been successfully synthesized using a novel pulse sequential anodic oxidation technique at 100 Hz of pulse frequency. A value resulting in a high channel-pore formation rate at 1 V of the pulse sequential voltage was determined to be the optimum pulse frequency for the anodization. Transmission electron microscopy observation and N_2 sorption analysis revealed that controlling the minimum pore channel diameter at 3 nm was possible by the voltage of 1 V. The gas permeance according to Knudsen's diffusion mechanism was demonstrated at 500 °C, by evaluating gas permeation properties through the meso-porous anodic alumina capillary tube with radial meso-pore channels with minimum diameter of 3 nm, achieving hydrogen permeance of 1.8 × 10-6 mol/m2 s Pa.


Objective: To determine the prevalence, demographic characteristics and microbiological assessment of the causative agents of significant bacteriuria in healthy pregnant women and its effect on pregnancy in women in Enugu, Eastern Nigeria.
Materials and Methods: A prospective study based on data obtained from healthy pregnant women seen at antenatal clinic of University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) and three primary health centers in Enugu, between 15th February 1995 and 14th August 1996. Seven hundred and fifty-eighty healthy pregnant women were seen during the review period.
Results: The prevalence of bacteriuria in this study was 12.7 percent. Escherichia coli was the commonest organism (36.5%) isolated. Antimicrobial susceptibility test revealed that 98.9% of the organisms were sensitive to cephalexin and 93.8% to nitrofurantoin. The organisms were resistant to ampicillin and co-trimoxzole. The prevalence of preterm delivery, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and anaemia were higher in the study group than the control, but the difference was not statistically significant (p>0.05). Patients in the lower socio-economic class and those with pre-pregnancy history of urinary tract infection were more at risk of asymptomatic bacteriuria.
Conclusion: All pregnant women should be screened for bacteriuria and those with significant bacteriuria treated with antibiotics.
Key Words: Significant bacteriuria, pregnancy, Enugu, Nigeria.
[Jnl College of Medicine Vol.8(2) 2003: 20-22]


My thesis focuses on some of the determinants of electoral participation (input side of democratic legitimacy) and on the effect of legislature size on the quality of government (output side of democratic legitimacy). In chapter 1 I analyze how having an incumbent among candidates affects electoral turnout, by using a data set providing information on the results of Italian municipal elections over the period 1993-2011. Endogeneity issues are handled through an instrumental variable approach using the mayor term-limit as an instrument for the presence of the incumbent mayor among candidates. I find that the impact of incumbency is heterogeneous across geographical areas. I speculate that the north-south divergence is related to differences in social capital and in clientelistic relationships established by incumbent politicians.
In chapter 2, I examine the personal incumbency effect at a local level in Italy over the period 1993-2011, by applying a non-parametric Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design that compares candidates who barely win an election to those who barely lose, exploiting the fact that incumbency status changes discontinuously at the threshold of margin of victory of zero. I find that incumbents are more likely to win the competition compared to their challengers at the Italian municipal elections. Also, the effect of interest seems to be larger in magnitude for municipalities located in the North of Italy compared to southern municipalities.
Finally, in chapter 3 I study the effect of council size on municipal expenditures by using a rich data set providing information on Italian municipal budgets over the period 2001-2007. By implementing a Sharp Regression Discontinuity Design, I find a negative relationship between local government size, as measured by total expenditures per capita, and the council size. Similar results are found when I consider expenditures that are more directly under the control of bureaucrats, such as current expenditures per capita. Finally, I test the "law of 1/n" on pork barrel policies, finding again a negative effect of council size on capital expenditures per capita.
Keywords: Incumbency; Political Competition; Electoral Turnout; Social Capital; Government Size; Legislature Size; Law of 1/n; Instrumental Variable; Natural Experiment; Sharp RDD.
JEL classification: D72, D78; J71; J16 ; J45


To investigate the accuracy properties of a diagnostic procedure, the frozen section, in order to differentiate cancer and benign illness of the thyroid gland, 149 patients, 133 females (89%) and 16 males (11%), were studied mean age was 41 years, all patients underwent thyroid surgery and all had frozen section. A definitive diagnosis (gold standard) was obtained by means of the definitive biopsy, using the surgical specimen. The diagnostic index was calculated from a contingency 2 x 2 table. Diagnostic accuracy was 89.9%, uncorrect diagnostic 10.1%. False positives 2.6%, false negatives 7.3 %. Sensitivity 70%, specificity 96%, positive predictive value 86%, negative value 90% with prevalence of 24.8%. The low sensitivity of the intraoperative pathologic consultation showed some deficient of the test detecting cancer, with high specificity exhibiting good competitiveness to identify cancer absence.


The mCBP and CBP are two kinds of isomers containing carbazole groups and often used as the device hosts for fluorescence and phosphorescence emission. However, there are little studies on the microscopic mechanisms of exciplex-type devices based on mCBP or CBP. In this paper, the isomers of mCBP and CBP are used as donors and the PO-T2T is selected as an acceptor. The two kinds of exciplex-based devices are fabricated according to a mass ratio of 1:1, which are respectively referred to as device 1 (Dev. 1) and device 2 (Dev. 2). Their magneto-electroluminescence (MEL) curves are measured at different working temperatures and various injection currents. It is found that the low field effects of the MEL curves from Dev. 1 are dominated by the B-mediated reverse intersystem crossing (RISC) process at room temperature, and as the operational temperature decreases, the MEL line-shapes change gradually from RISC to the intersystem crossing (ISC) process. Conversely, the low field effects of the MEL curves of Dev. 2 are governed by the B-mediated ISC process at room temperature, and the ISC process first weakens then strengthens with temperature decreasing. The high field effects of the MEL curves of Dev. 1 and Dev. 2 are both dominated by the B-mediated triplet-charge annihilation (TQA) process at room temperature, but those of Dev. 2 at 20 K present the B-mediated triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA) process. The completely opposite low-field line-shapes of MEL traces from Dev. 1 and Dev. 2 can be attributed to their different structures of mCBP and CBP, which lead to the higher and lower triplet state exciton energy, respectively. The higher triplet exciton energy of the mCBP donor causes the triplet exciplex energy to be confined effectively, which promotes the RISC process (EX1 ← EX3) in Dev.1. Contrarily, the lower triplet exciton energy of the CBP donor causes the triplet exciplex to experience an energy loss process (EX3 → T1, CBP) , resulting in the suppressed RISC process in Dev. 2. Consequently, the overlapped effects of the ISC process of polaron pairs and the RISC process of exciplex in Dev. 2 under the action of external magnetic field display the ISC-determined process at room temperature. Moreover, the temperature-dependent change in the microscopic process of Dev. 1 such as the conversion from RISC to ISC is because decreasing temperature is not conducive to the occurrence of the RISC process of exciplex states due to its endothermic property. The low-temperature TTA process occurring in Dev. 2 is due to the suppressed energy loss process of triplet exciplex via the Dexter energy transfer from the triplet exciplex to the triplet exciton of CBP donor. In addition, when the mass ratio of mCBP donor to PO-T2T acceptor varies from 1:4 to 1:1 to 4:1, the RISC process of MEL curves of devices turns stronger and stronger, which is because the devices tend more to balance, favoring the RISC process. A higher external quantum efficiency is obtained in the mCBP:PO-T2T host than in the CBP:PO-T2T host when fluorescent guest material of TBRb is used as a dopant in these two exciplex-based devices, which verifies the importance of the effective confinement of triplet exciplex energy in improving the luminescence efficiency. Note that via the MEL detection technology, the current- and temperature-dependent microscopic processes and their reasonable interpretations and device performances from exciplex-based devices with the isomers of mCBP and CBP as donors have not been reported in the literature. This work provides experimental and theoretical references for fabricating the high-efficiency exciplex-based organic light-emitting devices.


ObjectiveComprehensive knowledge about the anatomy of the surgical site is an important prerequisite for any surgical procedure. This study aimed to assess the prevalence, position and anatomical characteristics of mandibular incisive canal (MIC), lingual foramen (LF) and anterior loop of the mandibular canal (ALMC) in an Iranian population using cone beam computed tomography (CBCT).Materials and MethodsThis study was conducted on 103 patients who underwent CBCT prior to implant placement. The CBCT scans of patients were evaluated by two observers to determine the visibility and length of MIC, LF and ALMC. The buccolingual inclination of MIC at the initiation point of canal and canal path were also studied.ResultsThe prevalence of MIC, LF and ALMC was 90%, 76% and 84% on CBCT scans, respectively. The mean length of MIC and ALMC was 7.5mm and 1.2mm, respectively and the mean width of LF was 0.9mm. The MIC had a buccal inclination at the initiation point and approximated the lingual plate as extended towards the midline. Analytical statistics including independent samples t-test, paired samples t-test, ANOVA analyses were applied.ConclusionConsidering the high prevalence of MIC, ALMC and LF and wide range of MIC (1.2mm to 20mm) and ALMC (1mm to 9.9mm) length, CBCT is recommended for patients prior to surgical procedures in the anterior mandible to determine the exact location of these anatomical structures.


Fatty acids in milk are one of the most important components of milk. The aim of this study was to determinate relationships between groups of fatty acids and body condition score change in Czech Fleckvieh cows. Fatty acids were classification along its length of chain and its source of creation. To analysis was included total of 50 Czech Fleckvieh cows with different order of lactation. During the first 4 weeks of lactation, milk samples were collected at a weekly interval and body condition score was assessed. Statistical analyses were performed using Microsoft Office Excel and the procedures MEANS and GLM of SAS 9.1. During the first four week of lactation, the proportions of short- and medium-chain fatty acids as well as de novo synthesised fatty acids increased. Moreover the cows with a greater body condition score change mobilized storage depot fat more intensively, which resulted in higher proportions of dietary and depot fatty acids since week 1 of lactation, and long-chain fatty acids since week 2 of lactation. On the contrary, the animals with only a small body condition score change exhibited high proportions of short- and medium-fatty acids as well as de novo synthesised fatty acids in the most part of the period analysed. This indicates abut negative energy balance in early part of lactation and its compensation. The results also confirm the relationships between different groups of fatty acids, body condition score and negative energy balance. As more accurate for evaluation of intensity of negative energy balance was confirmed rather classification along source of creation. These results further emphasize importance the monitoring of body condition, milk composition and good herd management in first part of lactation.


The orderly control strategy of the optical storage charging station can significantly reduce the impact of the disordered charging of many vehicles on the power grid. However, users' response to orderly charging will cause inconvenience to some extent. Therefore, this paper proposes a coordinated control strategy of optical storage charging station based on peak-valley period, taking the minimum total load of charging station and the minimum charging cost of users within the user charging period as the objective function, and adopts the bee colony algorithm to comprehensively analyze the impact of different peak-valley period division and different user responsiveness on the power grid impact. The effectiveness of this strategy is verified by an example analysis. This method significantly reduces the impact of the optical storage charging station on the power grid.


In thiswork, we consider a remote estimation systemwhere a remote controller estimates the status of heterogeneous sensing devices with the information delivered over wireless channels. Status of heterogeneous devices changes at different speeds. With limited wireless resources, estimating as accurately as possible requires careful design of status update schemes. Status update schemes can be divided into two classes: centralized and decentralized. In centralized schemes, a central scheduler coordinates devices to avoid potential collisions. However, in decentralized schemes where each device updates on its own, update decisions can be made by using the current status which is unavailable in centralized schemes. The relation between these two schemes under the heterogeneous devices case is unclear, and thus we study these two schemes in terms of the mean square error (MSE) of the estimation. For centralized schemes, since the scheduler does not have the current status of each device, we study policies where the scheduling decisions are based on age of information (AoI), whichmeasures the staleness of the status information held in the controller. The optimal scheduling policy is provided, along with the corresponding MSE. For decentralized schemes, we consider deviation-based policies with which only devices with estimation deviations larger than prescribed thresholds may update, and the others stay idle. We derive an approximation of the minimum MSE under the deviation-based policies and show that it is e/3 of the minimum MSE under the AoI-based policies. Simulation results further show that the actual minimum MSEs of these two policies are even closer than that shown by the approximation, which indicates that the cost of collision in the deviation-based policy cancels out the gain from exploiting status deviations. key words: remote estimation, age of information, decentralized access, mean-field model


A water harvesting system for research purposes has been established in the Lisan Peninsula of the Dead Sea in the middle of the Jordan Rift Valley, where no authorized guideline is available for designing water harvesting systems. Rainfall and runoff, which occurred as flash floods, were observed at the downstream end of a gorge with a 1.12 km2 barren catchment area from October 2014 through July 2019. Due to the extremely arid environment, runoff from the catchment is ephemeral, and the flash flood events can be clearly distinguishable from each other. Thirteen flash flood events with a total runoff volume of more than 100 m3 were successfully recorded during the five rainy seasons. Pearson and Spearman correlations between duration, total rainfall depths at two points, total runoff volume, maximum runoff discharge, bulk runoff coefficient, total variation in runoff discharge and maximum variation in runoff discharge of each flash flood event were examined, revealing no straightforward relationship between rainfall and runoff. The performance of the conventional SCS runoff curve number method was also deficient in reproducing any rainfall–runoff relationship. Therefore, probability distribution fitting was performed for each random variable, focusing on the lognormal distribution with three parameters and the generalized extreme value distribution. The maximum goodness‐of‐fit estimation turns out to be a more rational and efficient method in obtaining the parameter values of those probability distributions rather than the standard maximum likelihood estimation, which has known disadvantages. Results support the design of the water harvesting system and provide quantitative information for designing and operating similar systems in the future.


Predatory behavior of Pseudodorus clavatus (Diptera, Syrphidae) on aphids tended by ants. In this study, we examined the interactions between myrmecophilous aphids, their ant-guards and a predatory syrphid species, Pseudodorus clavatus (F.). Larvae of this predator were found in the colonies of three aphid species: Aphis gossypii, A. spiraecola and Toxoptera sp., which were tended by eight ant species, especially Camponotus. Hoverfly larvae managed to infiltrate the aphid colonies and consume nymphs. Predator larvae exhibited inconspicuous movements and were not detected by ants which were commonly observed touching and antennating the larvae they come into contact. These results suggest that behavioral and chemical cues are involved in the infiltration and on the successful predation of syrphids upon aphids.


This paper argues that at its very core, the policy response to a pandemic such as COVID-19 is shaped by the search for the right balance between openness and closure, mobility and public safety. More specifically, drawing upon relevant social-scientific literatures and examples relating to the fight against COVID-19 in Switzerland, the paper highlights three broad and fundamentally intertwined spatial logics of control and restriction through which differing degrees and modalities of closure and openness are being articulated in the context of infectious disease. These refer to (1) border and access control;(2) the monitoring of people and objects on the move and (3) to the internal organization and monitoring of specific spatial enclaves. The three spatial logics of crisis management and control offer an exploratory framework, the paper argues, to study the functioning and implications of outbreak response both during and after the pandemic.


By using a numerical method an investigation was conducted of the fully developed laminar flow and heat transfer characteristics of fluids in two kinds of wavy channel, namely, a sine type and a triangle type. The impact of Reynolds number on the flow and heat transfer performance was analyzed under the condition of a constant wall temperature. Moreover, the friction resistance factor and the Nusselt number of the two kinds of channels were separately compared. The results of the comparison indicate that the relative magnitude of the flow resistance in the two kinds of channel will differ, depending on the magnitude of the Reynolds number. The heat exchange rate in the wavy channel of the sine type is greater than that in the wavy channel of the triangle type. In view of the above, the selection of heat exchanger channel surface should be conducted by adopting a comprehensive approach.


In this work I post-process a series of simulations of Giant Molecular Clouds (GMC) from Dale (2017), Dale et al. (2014) by running them through MOCASSIN (MOnte CArlo SimulationS of Ionized Nebulae) and studying the emission from the simulated clouds. I present spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from each simulation, including from multiple directions for some runs to highlight how this has no effect on the obtained SED. With these I present a new correlation between how IR/UV ratios evolve with time, and how they change with different initial conditions. I also study the turbulent nature and behaviours of the clouds, determining what could dominate the measured turbulence through observational techniques on these simulations. Because these simulations omit stars lower than 20 M , I identify the approximate missing luminosity, including from lower mass accretion and show that in spite of the missing stars, the SED results and time-dependent SED relationships are not impacted by this and still remain accurate for our clouds due to the missing emission being negligible with respect the massive stars and reprocessing through the GMC. Dust plays an integral role in the measured emission from molecular clouds, however is a challenging property to accurately model. Given that a dust grain size model is used in this work, I also conduct an experiment using several grain size distributions which highlighted our adopted distribution leads to predictions that, with the exception of distributions found only in circumstellar discs, were in agreement with observation. Finally, I study emission line ratios across the clouds and produce Baldwin, Phillips and Telervin (BPT) maps with known classification lines, and empirically derive new classification lines specific to ionised regions and molecular clouds based upon my results.


British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, 102 Industrial Place, Penticton, BC,V2A 7C8, Canada British Columbia Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection, Biodiversity Branch, 2975 Jutland Road, Victoria, BC, V8T 5J9, Canada Okanagan University College, 583 Duncan Avenue W, Penticton BC, V1A 8E9, Canada, email email@example.com University of British Columbia, Zoology Department, 6270 University Boulevard, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z4, Canada


The security copy (also known as backup) is the practice of coping data from a device to another one, with the possibility of total or parcial restauration of the data. In many organizations, the security copy activity is considered critical, as the incorrect performance might cause losses and damages, as the loss of strategic information of the company, causing incalculable damage to your business, on some occasions the information can not be created again. There are many commercial tools that are able to perform the security copy currently. AMANDA is a open source tool, which is maintained by several systems administrators world wide. The aim of this project is to evaluate a study about the AMANDA backup tool and to compare it with the ARCserve tool, one of the most well-known and used commercial tool in the market, analyze the difficulties and performance, and determine if its implantation is viable in an organization. The utilised method in this project is the theoretic research and comparative analyzis. A study over three security copy tools has been carried out, AMANDA, ARCserve and Bacula, their caractheristics and their performance, giving a special attention to AMANDA, which is the focus of this project. The obtained results were considered satisfactory for the conclusion of this project. Although AMANDA tool has a higher level of difficulty on its configuration, it might substitute a commercial tool like ARCserve, with no loss regarding quality and reliabilty of the service. Moreover, the achieved performance results could be the same or even better compared to ARCserve tool.


Objectives To present the clinical presentation, workup, surgical approach, and pathological findings of the first case report of a patient with adenocarcinoma ex‐pleomorphic adenoma of the lacrimal sac and nasolacrimal duct.


Sediment samples from the North Sea and the Skagerrak were analyzed for organochlorine pollutants. Standardisation for organic carbon content of sediments proved to be a suitable tool for comparison of pollution of different sea regions. Relatively high contaminant concentrations were found in coastal regions of the southern North Sea, while standardised organochlorine concentrations in the Skagerrak were almost at baseline level. In addition to the major inputs via rivers and the atmosphere, ocean incineration of hazardous wastes was identified as a probable source of organohalogen pollution. Although the production and use of certain organochlorines have been restricted in most North Sea states, depth profiles from the Skagerrak indicate that deposition of these contaminants has increased until recently. This trend will possibly continue since only a very small proportion of all persistent organochlorines produced in Western Europe in the past has already reached the sea. As a consequence, no persistent and bioaccumulable organics, like most organohalogens, should be allowed to enter the sea in the future. This, in many cases, will necessitate not only better filter techniques, but a dramatic reduction of organic chemical production itself.


List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction 1: Reincarnating Pythagoras: Anima Mundi and Renaissance Gaia Theory 2: Mute Timber? Environmental Stichomythia in The Old Arcadia and Poly-Olbion 3: The Reformation and the Disenchantment of Nature 4: "Hast Any Philosophy In Thee, Shepherd?": Environmental Ethics and the Good Life in Renaissance Pastoral 5: Rethinking Dominion: Pastoral and the Republic of Nature Conclusion: Ecocriticism as a Version of the Pastoral Notes Bibliography Index


Information Extraction has recently been extended to new areas by loosening the constraints on the strict definition of the extracted information and allowing to design more open information extraction systems. In this new domain of unsupervised information extraction, we focus on the task of extracting and characterizing a priori unknown relations between a given set of entity types. One of the challenges of this task is to deal with the large amount of candidate relations when extracting them from a large corpus. We propose in this paper an approach for the filtering of such candidate relations based on heuristics and machine learning models. More precisely, we show that the best model for achieving this task is a Conditional Random Field model according to evaluations performed on a manually annotated corpus of about one thousand relations. We also tackle the problem of identifying semantically similar relations by clustering large sets of them. Such clustering is achieved by combining a classical clustering algorithm and a method for the efficient identification of highly similar relation pairs. Finally, we evaluate the impact of our filtering of relations on this semantic clustering with both internal measures and external measures. Results show that the filtering procedure doubles the recall of the clustering while keeping the same precision.


We use a quantum mechanical charged particle as a test particle which probes the dynamics of force-related fields it is subject to. We allow for geodesic motion and relations involving gravitation appear. Gravitation affects quantum dynamics by modifying operator algebra. The emerging commutator between momentum's components is recognized as being proportional to electromagnetic field strength tensor. We define electromagnetic field sources through momentum's components commutator which is proportional to geometric (gravitational) quantities. As a result, a source of the electric field can be thought of as the geometric disturbance. The framework points to the non-existence of mass-less charges and gravitation being able to introduce compressability of the quantum mechanical system's phase space, which constitutes its main coupling to the quantum (condensed matter) system.


In order to protect user privacy in Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS), a series of ingeniously designed privacy-preserving frameworks have been proposed. The state-of-the-art approaches adopt Homomorphic Encryption (HE) for linear function and Garbled Circuits (GC)/Oblivious Transfer (OT) for nonlinear operation to improve computation efficiency. Despite the encouraging progress, the computation cost is still too high for practical applications. This work represents the first step to effectively prune privacy-preserving deep learning models to reduce computation complexity. Although model pruning has been discussed extensively in the machine learning community, directly applying the plaintext model pruning schemes offers little help to reduce the computation in privacy-preserving models. In this paper we propose Hunter, a structured pruning method that identifies three novel HE-friendly structures, i.e., internal structure, external structure, and weight diagonal to guide the pruning process. Hunter outputs a pruned model that, without any loss in model accuracy, achieves a significant reduction in HE operations (and thus the overall computation cost) in the privacy-preserving MLaaS. We apply Hunter in various deep learning models, e.g., AlexNet, VGG and ResNet over classic datasets including MNIST, CIFAR-10 and ImageNet. The experimental results demonstrate that, without accuracy loss, Hunter efficiently prunes the original networks to reduce the HE Perm, Mult, and Add operations. For example, in the state-of-the-art VGG-16 on ImageNet with 10 chosen classes, the total number of Perm is reduced to as low as 2% of the original network, and at the same time, Mult and Add are reduced to only 14%, enabling a significantly more computation-efficient privacy-preserving MLaaS.


Excerpt Many accounts in the literature have described vascular and parenchymal lesions of the kidneys associated with hypertension, presumably representing human counterparts of the Goldblatt phen...


Vaccine hesitancy has been a complex, dynamic yet interesting topic of discussion. Vaccine information
seeking has been on to observe because it doesn't just give us an insight as to why people sought vaccine
information, it also helps provide clarity as to what they may be looking for. Therefore, it will be interesting
to examine the relationship between vaccine information seeking, and vaccine confidence. This paper will
employ the use of quantitative research using the survey method. Using a sample size of n =100. The
findings showed that there was significant relationship between the content of vaccine information and
vaccine confidence and that the source of vaccine information does not really affect vaccine confidence.


Teachers' professional development is a hot international educational research. However, people pay no enough attention about the professional development of high school technology teachers. Systemly describing the research on the content of general technical teachers' professional development, the practical problems of general technical teachers' professional development, and the countermeasure of general technical teachers' professional development.


One of the subjects must be mastered by mathematics students is the Numerical Method. In this lecture, software assistance is needed for difficult and complicated questions to be solved manually. However, based on the needs analysis carried out, the software assistance has not been applied in lecturer of Numerical Method all this time. This study aims to describe the application of Just Basic software in lectures of Numerical Method. This study follows the implementation steps in the ADDIE model (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation). The subject of this research trial was the students of the Mathematics Education Study Program at Serambi Mekkah University in the 6th semester of 2015. Numerical Method Lecture assisted by Just Basic software was very helpful for students in the lecture process seen from the results of lecture implementation observations which showed excellent results. Then the results of observations of student activities are more than 90%, as well as an increase in formative scores in every meeting. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that the lecture on Numerical Method was greatly helped by the application of software.


The University of Pennsylvania's Department of Infectious Diseases received an HIV education grant through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in 2002. Since then, they have established a permanent clinical and educational program at the main public hospital in Gaborone, Botswana. An attending faculty member resides in Gaborone year-round, and additional infectious disease specialists, fellows, medical residents, and students rotate through the hospital. A team of Penn doctors and students admit patients to the medical ward, care for them through discharge, and often follow them up as outpatients. They have recently invited neurologists to assist in their efforts, and as a fourth-year resident, I spent 5 weeks there in the spring of 2006. To date, three Penn-affiliated and one non-Penn-affiliated neurology residents have participated in the program.

Botswana is a parliamentary republic in southern Africa (figure). Most of the 1.7 million residents are Setswana, whereas the other ethnic groups include Basarwa (bushmen), Kalanga, and Caucasians. Botswana represents one of the few African countries to have sustained high rates of socioeconomic and infrastructure growth over its 40 years of independence. It provides free healthcare and education to all residents. However, Botswana has one of the highest prevalences of HIV in the world at 24% in adults.1 Recently, the government has started to cover anti-retroviral therapy through its outpatient clinics, but it has been slow to reach all …


Energy spectrum analytic system of 200MeV linear accelerator in NSRL is used to detect the beam energy and to guild the machine adjustment. This paper shows the former status of the system, and analyses some of its shortcomings. In the NSRL project II, the system is redesigned, and has been installed recently. This paper also describes the results of physics computation and some newest preliminary experiments.


In Chinese less populated western regions where road networks are sparse, accidents are prone to occur due to poor road conditions and bad weather conditions. Severe losses of life and property are caused because of delayed accident detection and first-aids. Consequently, it is imperative to improve the traffic safety by adopting advanced modern technologies for traffic incident detection on sparse road networks. This paper proposes a bi-objective optimization model to determine the type and location of detectors with the objectives of maximizing the incident coverage and minimizing the cost. Due to the unique characteristics of road, traffic and accidents, license plate recognition technique (LPRM) is applied to the incidents surveillance for sparse road network. The weighted-sum method and genetic algorithm (GA) are used to solve the proposed bi-objective location model considering the tradeoff between quality and cost of detectors.


Brown planthopper, Nilaparvata lugens is the major pest in rice production. Development of BPH- resistant varieties is an economical and effective way to control this pest. In present investigation 600 rice genotypes were screened in greenhouse along with resistant and susceptible checks viz., PTB 33 and TN1 respectively during Kharif 2016, Rabi-Summer 2017 and Kharif 2017 results were confirmed by probing mark test by BPH. Among the rice genotypes which showed the resistance to BPH were also studied for BPH honeydew excretion as indicator of antibiosis mechanism. Among the 600 genotypes five is shown resistant namely IC454040, IC454223, IC135425, IC301734 and IC301736. The selected resistance genotypes also exhibited significantly highest probing marks with resistant, IC454040 recorded lowest honeydew excreted area of 16.23mm2/2(♀) and followed by IC 454377, IC 301732, IC 301736, IC 460174X, IC 459199, and PTB 33 registered significantly lower honeydew excretion (17.22, 18.76, 19.49, 19.57 and 20.07 mm2 / 2 (♀) respectively). The rice genotype which has shown resistant to BPH can be used in breeding programmes for developing the BPH resistant varieties.


This paper reports an ultrasensitive surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for detecting and identifying four kinds of DNA bases: adenine, cytosine, thymine, and guanine using a gold nanoparticle dimer. The gold nanoparticle dimer was directionally arrayed on a substrate in order to achieve huge enhancement according to the polarization-dependent enhancement. 10−11 M limit of detection for four DNA bases and 0.1 s rapid detection for adenine were achieved. Additionally, a separated single dimer was fabricated and evaluated. We clarified single-molecule-level SERS detection and identification was possible using the locally enhanced single hotspot of the single dimer with the 1-nm nanogap.


The Chandman massif, a typical structure of the Mongolian Altai, consists of a migmatite–magmatite core rimmed by a lower grade metamorphic envelope of andalusite and cordierite‐bearing schists. The oldest structure in the migmatite–magmatite core is a subhorizontal migmatitic foliation S1 parallel to rare granitoid sills. This fabric is folded by upright folds F2 and transposed into a vertical migmatitic foliation S2 that is syn‐tectonic, with up to several tens of metres thick granitoid sills. Sillimanite–ilmenite–magnetite S1 inclusion trails in garnet constrain the depth of equilibration during the S1 fabric to 6–7 kbar at 710–780 °C. Reorientation of sillimanite into the S2 fabric indicates that the S1–S2 fabric transition occurred in the sillimanite stability field. The presence of cordierite, and garnet rim chemistry point to decompression to 3–4 kbar and 680–750 °C during development of the S2 steep fabric, and post‐tectonic andalusite indicates further decompression to 2–3 kbar and 600–650 °C. Widespread crystallization of post‐tectonic muscovite is explained by the release of H2O from crystallizing partial melt. In the metamorphic envelope the subhorizontal metamorphic schistosity S1 is heterogeneously affected by upright F2 folds and axial planar subvertical cleavage S2. In the north, the inclusion trails in garnet are parallel to the S1 foliation, and the garnet zoning indicates nearly isobaric heating from 2.5 to 3 kbar and 500–530 °C. Cordierite contains crenulated S1 inclusion trails and has pressure shadows related to the formation of the S2 fabric. The switch from the S1 to the S2 foliation occurred near 2.5–3 kbar and 530–570 °C; replacement of cordierite by fine‐grained muscovite and chlorite indicates further retrogression and cooling. In the south, andalusite containing crenulated inclusion trails of ilmenite and magnetite indicates heating during the D2 deformation at 3–4 kbar and 540–620 °C. Monazite from a migmatite analysed by LASS yielded elevated HREE concentrations. The grain with the best‐developed oscillatory zoning is 356 ± 1.0 [±7] Ma (207Pb‐corrected 238U/206Pb), considered to date the crystallization from melt in the cordierite stability ~680 °C and 3.5 kbar, whereas the patchy BSE‐dark domains give a date of 347 ± 4.2 [±7] Ma interpreted as recrystallization at subsolidus conditions. The earliest sub‐horizontal fabric is associated with the onset of magmatism and peak of P–T conditions in the deep crust, indicating important heat input associated with lower crustal horizontal flow. The paroxysmal metamorphic conditions are connected with collapse of the metamorphic structure, an extrusion of the hot lower crustal rocks associated with vertical magma transfer and a juxtaposition of the hot magmatite–migmatite core with supracrustal rocks. This study provides information about tectono‐thermal history and time‐scales of horizontal flow and vertical mass and heat transfer in the Altai orogen. It is shown that, similar to collisional orogens, doming of partially molten rocks assisted by syn‐orogenic magmatism can be responsible for the exhumation of orogenic lower crust in accretionary orogenic systems.


A sensor array comprising 9 potentiometric chemical sensors and some pattern recognition tools for the data processing has been applied in order to characterize the groundwater in the plain of Kairouan Region (Tunisia). A total of 17 groundwater samples were collected from three different villages and analyzed for their chemical components. Nine chemical parameters were determined: Potassium, Sodium, Calcium, Ammonium, Cadmium, Chlorides, Nitrates, Fluoride and pH. Multi-sensor responses measured in each water sample were diagnosed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Cluster Analysis (CA). PCA is a procedure for reducing data redundancy. CA is used to detect spatial similarity among sampling sites. This methodology is simple, rapid and the obtained results demonstrate that the electronic tongue technique based on the sensor array combined with pattern recognition method could be a useful tool for the characterization and the classification of wells water samples.


P2P network has become a main trend in next generation networks for the reason of expandability,data updating,privacy protection and so on.Text retrieval in P2P environment is one of the major fields in the application of P2P technique.This paper focused on the recent works on P2P text retrieval and discussed a few open problems that have not been studied in great depth.


Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) has over the years evolved to be one of the most promising remote sensing modalities for large-scale monitoring of the ocean and maritime activity. The detection of ships at sea in SAR imagery is a challenging task, as it requires the detection of small targets with little exploitable spatial information within a high resolution image. We present a novel method for the detection of ships based on superpixel segmentation and subsequent statistical characterisation, with no prior land masking. Our method acts as a bound to a CFAR detector, greatly reducing false positives. We present results on SENTINEL-1 imagery, demonstrating the detection performance of our algorithm.


This is a study with qualitative approach that used oral history as a methological framework for the investigation of the knowledge and practices that make up the work of traditional midwives in four communities in the State of Amapa, Brazil. This activity though the reports of 20 midwives repeat an oral traditional the transmission the experiences. The results reveal that, consist in an effort for the preservation of their ancestors cultural values in which home delivery takes part along time. It also offers significant contribution for the building of a new glimpse in the search on the humanization of care in childbirth and women's hearth. Finally, the social acknowledgement and legitimation of the midwives' jab are shown.


The objective of this case study was to investigate the ability of 10th graders and pre-service teachers to solve logical–mathematical thinking challenges. The challenges do not require mathematical knowledge beyond that of primary school but rather an informed use of the problem representation. The percentage of correct answers given by the 10th graders was higher than that of the pre-service teachers. Unlike the 10th graders, some of whom used various strategies for representing the problem, most of the pre-service teachers' answers were based on a technical algorithm, without using control processes. The obvious conclusion drawn from the findings supports and recommends expanding and enhancing the development of logical–mathematical thinking, both in specific lessons and as an integral part of other lessons in pre-service frameworks.


Statements of the meaning and purpose of physical explanation are numerous. Every philosopher who has written on "Inductive Logic" has in some manner described or circumscribed the problem of physical explanation. The present paper is not a review of existing knowledge or opinions. It was written with an acute consciousness of the incapacity of most theories of explanation to provide grounds upon which modern hypotheses may stand, and it attempts to formulate a concept and an understanding of physical explanation which is, as far as logical principles permit, in conformity with modern views.


Activation of proinflammatory pathways in monocytes leads to enhanced inflammation in various tissues which in turn can promote the development of many chronic diseases. Unlike other cytokines, IL‐1β production is regulated at both transcriptional and posttranslational levels. TLR activation induces expression of pro‐ IL‐1β that needs to be processed by activated inflammasome to release bioactive IL‐1β. High saturated fat consumption is associated with increased postprandial inflammation. However the mechanism remains unclear. Thus, we determined whether 1) a major dietary saturated fatty acid palmitic acid (C16), as well as lipolysis products of postprandial triglyceride‐rich lipoproteins (TGRL) containing palmitic acid as the major fatty acid, induce IL‐1β expression and stimulate inflammasome‐mediated IL‐1β secretion in monocytes, 2) whether this process is TLR‐mediated and, 3) whether DHA inhibits this process. Results show that C16 and TGRL lipolysis products induce but DHA inhibits the expression and secretion of IL‐1β by reciprocally modulating TLR2 activation as assessed by recruitment of TLR2 and adaptor molecules into lipid rafts (faithful readout for direct activation of TLR2). Together, these results suggest that inflammasome‐mediated inflammatory responses in blood monocytes can be dynamically modulated by types of dietary fat we consume.


I. IntroductionWellwood Avenue is home to two of the best pizza parlors in the town of Lindenhurst, Carlo's and Giuseppe's. The two stores engage in heavy competition, but both have been consistently profitable. Last year, though, Carlo's began advertising its new "Healthy Pizza"-a pizza with zero grams of fat that tastes just like Carlo's traditional pizzas. Carlo's advertises its amazing new product throughout the town. The Healthy Pizza becomes the talk of Lindenhurst, and soon Carlo's profits have quadrupled. Giuseppe's, on the other hand, is floundering since the debut of the Healthy Pizza.After three months of incredibly poor sales, Giuseppe's becomes desperate to discover the secret behind the Healthy Pizza and sends a sample of the amazing product to a laboratory to discover its ingrethents. After performing some tests, the laboratory informs Giuseppe's that there is no secret ingrethent in the Healthy Pizza-the pizza has just as many grams of fat as a typical pizza. Carlo's has been selling the same product it has always sold, just advertising it to be something different. Giuseppe's alerts the local media of the scam, and soon after, Giuseppe's sales return to what they were prior to the unveiling of the Healthy Pizza.Giuseppe's, however, feels that Carlo's should compensate it for the sales it lost due to the Healthy Pizza, and retains an attorney to sue Carlo's. The attorney performs some research and discovers Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act,1 which seems tailor-made to protect a party like Giuseppe's. The attorney files suit in the federal district court in Lindenhurst, expecting the case to be an easy win. However, the case becomes complicated when Carlo's submits a motion to dismiss, arguing that Giuseppe's lacks standing to sue under Section 43(a)'s false advertising protection. The district court is located in a circuit that has yet to determine a standard for pmdential standing in Section 43(a) false advertising claims. The court, therefore, turns to the Section 43(a) false advertising standing jurisprudence of other circuits. After examining the decisions in which other circuits have developed standards for standing in Section 43(a) claims, the district court determines that Giuseppe's does not have standing to sue. Despite the fact that under the plain meaning of Section 43(a) Giuseppe's standing would seem apparent,2 the district court, through examining the Section 43(a) standing jurisprudence of the other circuits, is able to find that Giuseppe's lacks standing to make a Section 43(a) false advertising claim against Carlo's.The above hypothetical may seem unrealistic, but the Eleventh Circuit's recent ruling in Phoenix of Broward, Inc. v. McDonald's Corp.,3 which prevented a Burger King franchisee from suing McDonald's for alleged false advertising under Section 43(a), lends it credibility.4 If rulings like the one against the Burger King franchisee become common, Section 43(a)'s protection against false advertising effectively will become a dead letter. This is troubling not only to commercial players who rely on Section 43(a) to prevent their competitors from engaging in activities like that in which Carlo's engaged, but also to consumers who are protected indirectly from false advertising by the liability Section 43(a) places on those who engage in false advertising.5 A clear standard for standing in Section 43(a) false advertising claims that can easily be applied in a consistent manner and is true to the plain meaning of the statute's language is, therefore, necessary.The goal of this Note is to establish that the current state of Section 43(a) false advertising standing jurisprudence is unstable and that this instability in the law is troubling because it permits courts to reach outcomes which remove the teeth from Section 43(a)'s false advertising protection. Part II provides an explanation of standing in general. Part III gives a history of the Lanham Act, particularly its false advertising protection. …


Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) is a new selfadaptive random search methodology inspired by social behaviour of animal.Many strategys have been introduced to improve the performance of PSO,but few system is static in the real world because of the various uncertain factors.So the researches on Dynamic Optimization Problems have more practical significance of the project.This paper compares and analyzes the performances of the two latest improved PSO and the other two improved algorithms.It is concluded that the different algorithms put up different characteristics in dynamic environment.


The processes of interaction of hard-coal pitch with coke calcined at different temperatures have been investigated. An influence of the temperature of calcination on the fractional composition of the pitch and the nature of the evolution of gas from the coke-pitch compositions on baking have been shown.


Objective To investigate the effects of nNOS gene on the nNOS expression and survival situation of spinal motoneuron(MN) following avulsion.Methods Roots avulsion models were completed on the SD rats,then the siRNA gene consequence targeting on nNOS was constructed,then applicatied into spinal cord intrathecally on the 14d after avulsion.All animals were subdivided randomly into 3 groups including saline control group,random sequence siRNA control group and nNOS-siRNA treatment group.MN nNOS expression and survival rate were evaluated with the methods of NADPH-d histochemical staining and neutral red counterstaining at 17 d followed avulsion surgery.Results The nNOS-positive MNs rate in saline control group,random sequence siRNA control group and nNOS-siRNA treatment group were(39.46±2.41)%,(42.21±2.29)% and(18.10±6.63)% respectively,compared to two control groups,the nNOS-positive MNs rate in siRNA treatment group decreased significantly(P0.05).The MN survival rate in 3 groups were(89.13±3.47)%,(88.26±2.95)% and(80.51±9.16)%.Compared to control groups,although there was a decline trend about MN survival rate in nNOS-siRNA treatment group but without statistical significance(P0.05).Conclusion The present study provide a strong proof that siRNA can be applied in the avulsion model effectively and safely,furthermore siRNA could blockade the expression of nNOS in MN and induced the decreasing on MN survival rate followed by root avulsion.In a word,our present data indicated that nNOS gene may play a positive role in sustaining for MN survival after avulsion injury.


The utility model relates to a W-shaped toothed groove graphite composite gasket. The cross section of a skeleton of the utility model is in the shape of a W. One round ring-shaped groove is respectively arranged on the lower surface and the upper surface of a gasket body, and expanded graphite is pressed in grooves. The utility model is characterized in that the bottom surfaces of the grooves are provided with a plurality of concentric slots with different radiuses; the shape of the grooves can be a triangle or a trapezoid; the shape of the slots can be continuous. The concentric slots arranged on the bottom surfaces of the grooves on the upper surface and the lower surface of the gasket body can be opposite and can be staggered.


The aim of the current study is to investigate the impact of fipronil (FPN) insecticide oral exposure on thyroid gland and its related hormones in male albino rats. FPN was administered at dose of (4.85 mg/kg b.wt) twice weekly for 90 days. FPN exposed rats showed non-significant decrease in serum TSH level, while serum T3 and T4 levels showed significant decrease, significant increase in mRNA expression of hepatic uridine 5diphosphoglucuronosyl transferases (Ugt1a1) and sulfotransferases (Sult1b1) enzymes, Thyroid gland showed follicular disorganizations with severe vacuolation of the lining epithelium and extremely reduced sizes and colloid content. Ultra-structure of follicles showed damaged cells with detached microvilli and pyknotic nucleus. Mitochondria were degenerated with loss of cristae. It is concluded that alterations in thyroid hormones by FPN not only due to distress on physiology of the gland but more specifically due to its injurious effect on thyroidal tissue. Japanese Journal of Veterinary Research 64(Supplement 2): S79-85, 2016


Microsurgery is associated with prolonged surgical times with an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism and myocardial infarction. The use of antithrombotic means is a commonly employed tactic to prevent vascular thrombosis after microvascular free flap surgery. Flap loss is a devastating complication of microsurgical procedures that leads to detrimental outcomes. A 32-year-old male patient has a ruptured calcaneal tendon. He underwent 5 surgical cleanings with multiple failed sequential attempts at wound closure. Traumatology department in its microsurgery division where it is proposed to perform neo-tendon with graft of palmaris longus of the right thoracic extemity and radial antebrachial microvascular flap. The neo tendon was performed in addition to the micro surgical coverage with the radial antebrachial flap.When having vascular control with micro-clamps, 6000 U of unfractionated heparin was initiated, approximately 20 minutes after the end of the microvascular anastomosis, there was incoercible bleeding, which is initially treated with spray fibrin. Continued bleeding after 3 hours, so it was decided to reverse the effect of heparin with transfusion of fresh frozen plasma, 10 mg of vitamin K and fibrinogen. The effect of heparin was reversed without having thrombotic complications of microvascular anastomoses. The flap was not reexplored since they showed no signs of vascular compromise. If anticoagulants have been used and an incoercible hemorrhage is found, the effect of heparin must be reversed. In the transfer of tissues with microsurgery, the recommended and safe anticoagulation are prophylactic doses and not therapeutic doses.


This paper presented a formal semantic description method in the process of the model-driven development.This approach used meta-model to describe the mapping relationship between meta-model and its semantics formally for the precise semantic description.Thus,it also provided support to MOD.It applied the description frame to the definition of model transformation rules as well as the analysis and verification of meta-model.It took simple Petri net as an example to show that this method can support the model transformation and the code generation effectively.


To study the effect of dietary fibre from pomelo peel on intestinal fermentation in ovariectomized rats. Forty SD female rats were divided into five groups.The rats in four of them were double ovariectomized and one week later assigned as model control group ( OVX- CN) ,Pomelo peel raw materials group ( PP) ,Pomelo peel soluble dietary fiber group ( PPSDF) and Pomelo peel insoluble dietary fiber group ( PPIDF) .The rats in the fifth group were sham-ovariectomized as sham control( sham-CN) .All rats were sacrificed after 4 weeks of feeding to assay body weight gain,cecal tissue weight,the amount of free ammonia,short - chain fatty acids ( SCFAs) and microbe in cecum contents.The results showed that pomelo peel raw materials,soluble dietary fiber ( SDF) from pomelo peel and insoluble dietary fiber( IDF) from pomelo peel could drastically increase the concentration of short -chain fatty acids in cecum content and the area of cecum ( p 0.05) ,decrease the pH and free ammonia of cecum contents,and increase the amount of beneficial bacteria and inhibite harmful bacteria growth in intestinal environment.Dietary fiber from pomelo peel could obviously promote the intestinal fermentation in ovariectomized rats,improving the intestinal environment.


Magnesium hydride (MgH2) is a promising anode material for lithium ion batteries (LIBs) by virtue of its high theoretical specific capacity, suitable potentials, and abundant source. However, the electrochemical performance of MgH2 electrode is still far from satisfactory due to its poor electronic conductivity and fast capacity decay. In this paper, a hydrangea-shaped hierarchically 3D magnesium hydride-carbon framework (MH@HyC) consisted of MgH2 nanoparticles (NPs) uniformly self-assembled on hierarchical porous carbon (HyC) is fabricated for advanced lithium storage. Featuring by high surface area and the well-defined macro-meso-micropore structure, HyC plays an ideal structure-directing role for the growth of MgH2 NPs with size-control, high loading, and hydrangea-shape array. Taking advantage of the robust 3D hierarchically porous structure and the derived interactions, MH@HyC not only provides sufficient electrochemically active sites, enhances the electronic conductivity and channels for rapid transfer of electrons/Li ions, but also relieves the agglomeration and accommodate the volumetric effects during cycling, leading to high capacity utilization, fast electrochemical kinetics, and well-sustained structural integrity. As a result, MH@HyC delivers a high reversible capacity of 554 mAh g-1 after 1000 cycles at a high current rate of 2 A g-1, enabling it a potential anode candidate for LIBs.


PURPOSE
To construct siRNA-VHL expression vector and detect the effect of VHL gene interference on BMSCs.

METHODS
According to the dog's VHL gene sequences, four pairs of siRNA oligo were designed and synthesized. Using vector cloning kit reorganization, four pairs of double-stranded siRNA were inserted into the expression vector (pcDNA™ 6.2-GW/EmGFPmiR) and 4 siRNA expression plasmids (SR144-1,SR144-2,SR144-3,SR144-4) were constructed. With the vector universal primers, colony PCR was screened. The positive clones were sequenced to verify whether the sequence of insert fragments in recombinant clones was consistent with oligo sequences designed or not. Interference vector transiently transfected the BMSCs. qPCR and Western blot were used to detect the gene silencing effect. In order to improve transfection efficiency of siRNA-VHL as well as the effect of the VHL gene silencing, pLenti-mi-VHL was constructed.

RESULTS
Through sequencing the plasmids cloned, the fragment sequences inserted in recombinant clones were consistent with the designed oligo sequences. After 24 h and 48 h transfection of BMSCs cells by plasmids, SR144-4 showed the best effect of interference by qPCR and Western blot. Through comparing the sequencing results, the inserted fragment sequences were completely correct and the pLenti-mi-VHL was successfully constructed.

CONCLUSION
The siRNA-VHL expression vector for BMSCs is successfully constructed and applicable for further experiments. Supported by Research Fund of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (Grant No.9411954800) and Foundation for Open Project from Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology (Grant No.S30206).


Through exploring the principles,overall goals and main tasks of E- government network construction of local higher education in Guizhou province and involving the main applied systems and constructive contents,this paper makes a functional statement about building E- government network construction of local higher education and puts forward the project requirements and concrete safeguards of implementing E- government network construction of local higher education in Guizhou province.