Learning Objectives: After reading this article, the participant should be able to:1. Describe the pathophysiologic aspects and mechanisms of different types of skull fractures.2. Recall the clinical and radiological aspects of the different types of skull fractures.3. Establish a management plan for the treatment of skull fractures and their potential complications.


This article1 explores paradoxes in being the White mother of Mexican American children and discusses how some of its attendant issues contrast one another. The author, an American scholar, believes she is taught to think and to write, not from the heart, but from a detached and "objective," cerebral cortex, and she sees the places, the prism through which the world is seen, are constantly shifting. The author writes of liminality and simultaneity, "I'm 'swimming in the sea' as both the swimmer, struggling, and part of the sea, itself, pulling myself under, drowning in between-ness . . ." The headings, "From the Shore," provide a detached, theoretical reflection upon the author's experiences as a White mother of mixed-race children: "I'm standing on the banks, looking into my experiences and speaking from my 'head'," and the headings, "In the Sea," provide stories: "I'm immersed in the depths of my experiences and reflecting from my 'heart'."


The invention discloses a complementary tunnel natural ventilation system with a solar air pump and a method. The complementary tunnel natural ventilation system with the solar air pump comprises a ventilating shaft arranged to run through a mountain above a tunnel, wherein a solar air pump system capable of heating air at an outlet end of the ventilating shaft and pumping out polluted air in the tunnel through a negative pressure, which is formed after the heated air rapidly flows out of the ventilating shaft, is arranged at the outlet end of the ventilating shaft; an electric driving ventilation system capable of performing auxiliary ventilation when ventilation quantity is not enough is arranged at an inlet end of the ventilating shaft; the solar air pump system comprises a solar heat receiver connected to the outlet end of the ventilating shaft; and a chimney communicated with the solar heat receiver is arranged on the solar heat receiver. According to the complementary tunnel natural ventilation system with the solar air pump, disclosed by the invention, the natural ventilation function of the tunnel during sunlight illumination period is realized; the ventilation function of the tunnel is realized by means of an electric driving fan during the period without sunlight illumination; and the sunlight illumination and the electric driving fan are complementary to finish basic requirements of the ventilation function of the tunnel under an energy-saving condition.


A 70-year-old man with a history of essential hypertension presented to his gastroenterologist with a 6-month history of unintentional weight loss. After an unremarkable colono-scopy, a computed tomographic (CT) scan of the abdomen was performed demonstrating a 6.2-cm arterially enhancing hepatic mass with delayed washout and extension into the hepatic vein ( ► Fig. 1a , b ). The patient was found to have no associated liver disease or serologic evidence of viral hepa-titis. A biopsy of the mass was performed demonstrating poorly differentiated hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and the patient was referred to interventional radiology for locoregional therapy. Prior to liver-directed therapy, imaging demonstrated a small pleural effusion felt to be related to venous invasion and narrowing of inferior vena cava (IVC). The drug-eluting beads transarterial chemoembolization (DEB-TACE) was performed with 100- to 300-µm drug-eluting beads loaded with 75 mg of doxorubicin (LC Beads, BTG, West Conshohocken, PA) followed by 300 to 500 µm " bland " particle (Embosphere; Merit Medical, Salt Lake City, UT) embolization. An angiographic endpoint of 5-beat stasis was reported. No angiographic images were stored demonstrating arteriovenous shunting; however, in retrospect, shunting could have been suspected based on attenuation of caval blood surrounding the tumor on arterial phase


There are some changes in business requirements and new technologies about data management in building SINOPEC oil field data center.Based on MDA(Model Driven Architecture),a model architecture of oil field enterprise data center in SINOPEC is put forward,that includes business model,logical data model,physical data model,and translating methods from business model to logical data model,and logical data model to physical data model are presented.Being business independent and platform independent,logical data model can meet difference business requirement and difference DBMS products.To support above MDA schema,meta-data management system and MDA tools are developed.


Case can be described using a perimeter adapted to provide equipment and downhole devices via a dead end to the lower end into the wellbore in order to guide the tool string through the conventional method and apparatus for friction or obstructive restricted passage having distinct wellbore wall, wherein the guide tool string may comprise a substantially circular shifts to its residue, and / or deformation of the pores and / or substantially circular and / or obstructive deformation or deformation hole through passage therebetween, and thereby a variety of downhole devices may be used according to the present expandable and contractible member by incorporated, with respect to the deployment or substantially paraxial oriented abutment wall, can be used to guide the tool string through the channel of the inventive distinct abutment around the plurality of engaging the shaft conventional dead end or a restriction of said wall.


The manufacturing and characterization of undoped, nonlinear barium titanate ceramic disc capacitors are discussed. The characterization of the capacitors includes the measurements of capacitance-voltage (C-V) response by means of a novel 1500-V quasi-DC charge/discharge circuit at room temperature and also as a function of temperature. Studies were made on the microstructure of the barium titanate ceramic material by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis. The influence of oxygen flow during preparation on the density, capacitance, and nonlinearity of the ceramic material is reported. A model is proposed in which the high dielectric constant and nonlinearity of the ceramic material can be quantitatively explained by considering the material as containing an ensemble of randomly orientated domains. It is shown that temperature dependence of capacitance may also be explained with this model.<<ETX>>


1.How climate warming may interact with other pressures on aquatic ecosystems is an important issue for research and management. We combined lake monitoring data with a palaeolimnological study to explore the combined effects of eutrophication and subsequent oligotrophication with a long-term temperature increase in epilimnetic waters. Our goals were (i) to evaluate how well sediment-based reconstructions reflect the instrumental observations, (ii) to use the palaeo-record to characterise a reference state for the lake and (iii) to explore whether data from the sediment record can aid in separating the effects of nutrient load and temperature in a large and deep lake. 2.Lake Mjosa is a large and deep lake in south-eastern Norway. Eutrophication symptoms peaked in the 1970s, which led to extensive measures to reduce the phosphorus load. A monitoring programme has run continuously from 1972. Monitoring has documented a marked decrease in phosphorus load and algal biomass and also revealed an increase in epilimnetic temperature and extended summer stratification. 3.Records of algal pigments and diatoms were extracted from sediment cores taken from 236m depth. The pigment record documented dramatic changes in lake production consistent with the monitoring record. The diatom record reflected well the eutrophication history of the lake and also demonstrated that the assemblage of the recent recovery stage differs from that of the pre-eutrophication period. 4.Ordination of diatom assemblages over time constrained by proxies for nutrient load and temperature indicated that the diatom assemblage correlated with both factors, which together accounted for 60% of the variation in diatom composition. No interaction was detected between these factors. The results suggest that the diatom assemblage has responded to varying nutrient loads as well as to changes in temperature and/or factors that correlate with temperature. 5.Reconstructions of algal biomass and total phosphorus content mirrored known changes through the monitoring period, although the absolute phosphorus estimates were too high relative to the instrumental record. The sediment record from Lake Mjosa provides a baseline for lake production in terms of algal pigments and organic contents, and for the diatom assemblage composition in a pristine stage. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.


Chinese traditional finance management focus intensively on pure financial technique,regarding institution and finance market as external variables of analytical framework,so that results in defects in both financial theory structure and financial practice.Western corporate finance provides important reference for the transformation of the traditional financial paradigm.Taking the important role of non-corporate firms in account,the term "firm finance" seems more suitable than the term "corporate finance".Based on the reality of "firm" and its "finance",firm finance mainly studies institution,finance market and financial technique,and the mutual relationship among the three elements.Thus,firm finance can widen and develop the study scopes of traditional finance management.


In Malaysia, sixth form is a post-secondary education that is comparable to pre-university programs such as A-level and Foundation qualifications. Enrolment in sixth forms has dwindled over the past ten years due to assumptions that the curriculum is difficult and because it is offered in regular secondary schools. Thus, the sixth form transformation program was introduced in 2015 with the purpose to rebrand sixth form education to a new setting comparable to other pre-university education, with a focus on improving the school climate and increasing teacher self-efficacy. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the level and relationship of the school climate on teacher self-efficacy. This survey was carried out using a questionnaire instrument, involving 695 sixth form teachers currently in Selangor. The findings showed that the level of school climate and teacher self-efficacy in all sixth form centers were at a high level. There was also a strong positive relationship between the school climate and sixth form teachers' self-efficacy. Social and academic dimensions contributed significantly to the teacher self-efficacy of 38%. Hence, further studies looking at aspects that suggestively contribute to the school climate should be given due attention to ensure that transformation planning can be implemented as intended.


Results are presented of a study of SEU generated transient pulse attenuation in combinational logic structures built using common digital CMOS design practices. SPICE circuit analysis, heavy ion tests, and pulsed, focused laser simulations were used to examine the response characteristics of transient pulse behavior in long logic strings. Results show that while there is an observable effect, it cannot be generally assumed that attenuation will significantly reduce observed circuit bit error rates.


In this short note we try to generalize the Clemens-Griffiths criterion of non-rationality for smooth cubic threefolds to the case of smooth cubic fourfolds.


IN a previous paper(l) a report was made on the effect of atropine, ergotamine, and pituitrin on phlorrhizin glycosuria. In this work the authors administered tyramine in the experiments purporting to show the effects of ergotamine, believing at the time that the ergotamine mentioned in the literature was the tyramine of ergot extracts. Our mistake having been pointed out to us, we have repeated the experiments using the alkaloid ergotoxin, and the results are reported below. We feel justified in using ergotoxin, since Dale and Spiro(2) have shown that the pharmacological effects of ergotoxin and ergotamine are indistinguishable. The technique was the same as that described in our first paper (loc. cit.). Ergotoxin in the form of the phosphate' was dissolved in water and administered to rats by subcutaneous injection. Some of the results are given in the following table. All the animals were fully phlorrhizinised for three or four days before the first day given in the table. The figures show in all cases a rise in the D/N ratio and percentage of glucose after the administration of ergotoxin, and at the same time there is a fall in urine volume, total sugar and total nitrogen. In some cases the rise in D/N ratio persisted for two days, after which it returned to the normal figure. Judging from these results, ergotoxin has no action antagonistic to that of phlorrhizin. The effect on the D/N ratio is similar to that reported for atropine in our first paper (loc. cit.), and the objections which we raised there to the findings of Teschendorf(3) with ergotamine would appear to be justified. We cannot subscribe to the theory that phlorrhizin acts on the sympathetic nerve endings of the kidney.


1 1 Abstract Flow is a state in which people are completely immersed in an activity without reflective self-consciousness but with a deep sense of control (Engeser & Schiepe-Tiska, 2012; Rheinberg, 2008). Recent research has challenged Csikszentmihalyi's (1975) assumption that the balance between challenge and skills promotes flow experience by revealing that an individual's achievement motive moderates this relation (Eisenberger, Jones, Stinglhamber, Shanock, & Randall, 2005; Engeser & Rheinberg, 2008; Schattke, 2011; Schuler, 2007, 2010). The compensatory model of motivation and volition (Kehr, 2000, 2004b) provides a more general explanation of how flow occurs and integrates motives and skills in a joint model. The model proposes that flow emerges when (1) implicit motives are aroused by taskintrinsic incentives leading to affective preferences for a task, (2) no competing explicit motives are activated that could lead to thematically different cognitive preferences (partial congruence), or the congruent explicit motive is elicited, which would lead to high cognitive preferences for the task (complete congruence), and (3) the ability to accomplish a task is perceived as sufficient. Derived from these propositions, it may also be possible to reach flow when other motives, such as the implicit and explicit power motives, are aroused. Study 1 tested whether the effect of implicit motives on flow would be mediated by affective preferences, and whether the components, affective preferences, cognitive preferences, and perceived abilities would interact with each other in order to promote flow. Studies 2 and 3 examined whether flow could also be attained by people high in powermotive congruence. The findings supported my hypotheses in most cases. Study 1 revealed that affective preferences mediated the effect of the agentic motive on flow. Moreover, a hierarchical regression analysis indicated that high affective preferences, high cognitive preferences, and


We all are familiar with smart phones and their technical & functional enhancement which makes user life much easier. There are thousands of applications present in play store today which fulfils our everyday life's needs. These Online Application Stores gives user hundreds of thousands of application in one minute. All users are aware of the fact that any individual run its application in play store with no such high restrictions and policies. It is due to android environment in which applications are only verified through mechanism of digital signatures along with coarse grained grant from server developers of android ecosystems. Recently IccTA surveyed a range of approximate 3000 realtime based applications with accuracy of 88% and founded around 150 interlinked security leaks in 20 applications. These days, a high rate of privacy data leaks comes under surveillance which arises due to feeding personal information into heterogeneous applications. It is a big challenge for the debuggers to trace security procedures and policies to prevent data leakage. In this paper, we describe methods of detecting and preventing android privacy leakage through privacy control mechanisms of android systems.


Selective detection of cysteine in serum samples was achieved on a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) and Nafion nanocomposite modified electrode with high precision. The superior conductivity and abundant amount of active chemical oxygen groups on the edge of GNR led to extremely highly electrocatalytic activity of GNR towards the electrochemical oxidation of cysteine at +0.025 V. The electrocatalytic behavvailable online 13 December 2011 eywords: raphene nanoribbon igh selectivity ysteine ior was further used for sensitive detection of cysteine by differential pulse voltammetry. Under optimized conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the range from 25 nM to 500 M. The electrochemical sensor showed strong antifouling ability, good stability and selectivity. It could effectively exclude the interferences from other kinds of biothiols and the biological relevant species, thus had great perspective for in vivo analysis of biological samples. lectrochemical method


The article looks at one of the problems that Russia faces on its way to entering global marketplace. The most obvious step is Russia's accession to the WTO, which can bring about both challenges and opportunities. For Russian high-technology sector it means fierce competition against similar industries in the developed industrialised countries. There is a wide-spread opinion that Russian technology is doomed in case the country accedes to the WTO and that domestic liberal politicians do not understand that threat. In contrast with the view mentioned above, the this article analyzes telecommunication services and industry as a case-study and demonstrates that in reality Russian delegation is working hard to develop acceptable compromises in order to keep positions for domestic technologies and capital.


The ability of simulation to influence an overall design at the concept definition phase relies on being able to model, analyse, assess & optimise design scenarios very quickly. For thin-walled structures, traditional beam / shell models are extremely efficient, but modern trends towards 3D CAD modelling and digital mock-ups mean it is difficult to fully integrate these into the design process. The preparation of structural models requires expert judgement, for example on the choice of section properties for stiffeners or the treatment of local details such as connections, pockets, bosses and blend radii. To identify thin sheet regions in solid models, a property of solid shapes called the medial axis transform can be exploited. This identifies the local thickness and mid surface of the 3D model at any point; it can be used to derive aspect ratios which allow the identification of solid regions where shell modelling is appropriate. The remaining regions of the model, where reduced dimensional modelling is not appropriate, can be treated rigorously using local 3D meshes embedded within the shell models, provided appropriate techniques to couple solid and shell meshes are used. This approach offers the automation available from brute force 3D analysis, at an acceptable computational cost, whilst eliminating many of the potential errors in model preparation. It also facilitates the maintenance of high level system models, for example of a gas turbine whole engine model, as the detailed component designs evolve.


When and how does a state become a part of the international refugee regime, and how does a state's role within the regime change over time? Using South Korea as a case study, this article highlights the significance of Cold War politics as a main cause of the expansion of the international refugee regime. South Korea was first entered into the international refugee regime during the US-led Korean War. And it was due to the neocolonial relationship between South Korea and the US that South Korea participated in the Vietnam War, and consequently, South Korea received its first internationally recognized refugees. Pressure from the US largely explains the burden-sharing role that South Korea played during the Indochinese refugee crisis. However, repositioning itself as a subempire in Asia and seeking enhanced international stature, South Korea signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, finally becoming an official member of the international refugee regime.


Downy mildew disease caused by the fungus Sclerospora graminicola Schroet, causes yield losses across the millet growing zones of Nigeria. Identification of the source of resistance and gene actions controlling resistance is useful in developing appropriate breeding strategies. Therefore there was need to study downy mildew resistance in Nigerian elite pearl millet lines. Five pearl millet parental lines; BUDUMA, SOSAT-C88, LCICDMR36-4, 20B-2 and 25B-4 were obtained from Lake Chad Research Institute, Maiduguri. From this five parents, using factorial mating scheme of North Carolina Design II, F s, F s BC P s and BC P s 1 2 1 1 1 2 were generated during November, 2004 May, 2005. The five parents, twenty-four crosses and one check (7042 S), were evaluated using Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications at the downy mildew field nursery of Lake Chad Research Institute and the Experimental Farm of the Department of Crop Production and Horticulture, Federal University of Technology, Yola during 2005 and 2006 cropping seasons. Downy mildew resistance from this study was found to be influenced by dominant gene effect, because the ratios of dominance to additive variance values were more than unity for both incidence and severity index. Narrowsense heritability was moderately high, 66.06% for downy mildew incidence and 52.41% for downy mildew severity, indicating that there is the likelihood that improvement can be achieved by using these genotypes.


The research aims to identify the impact of the information gap strategy in the achievement of students in the first grade intermediate in sciences, in order to verify the objective, the researcher has put the zero hypothesis which states: There was no statistically significant difference at the level of significance (0.05) between the average scores of the experimental group according to the information gap strategy and the average scores of students in the control group who will study according to the usual method of testing the achievement of science, to be verified, he applied his experience in the second half of the academic year (2018–2019). The research sample consisted of (53) students of first grade intermediate in sciences, They were randomized to two groups. The number of students in the experimental group was 27 and the number of students in the control group was 26. The two groups were rewarded in the following variables (age, IQ test, grade 6). The results were then analyzed and showed the superiority of the experimental group students who studied according to the information gap strategy on the control group who studied the normal way in the achievement variable.


Objective To determine the prevalence of type II diabetes mellitus(DM)in HCV-infected patients.Methods Two hundred and twenty one HCV-infected and 660 HBV-infected patients were studied to HBV and HCV-Cirrhoain related to HBC-and HCV-infected and 660 HBV-infected patients were studied to HBV and HCV-Cirrhosis related to HBC-and HCV infection was 32%and 33% respectively.Results The prevalence of type 2 DM was higher in HCV-infected patients(21.2%vs10.9% P0.02)than in HBV infected patients;The prevalence of type 2 DM was higher in HCV related cirrhosis(30.6%)than chronic hepatitis C(23.5% P0.05);In cirrhosis patients,type 2 DM was present in 30.6% of the patients with HCV compared with 11.3% of that with HBV(P0.01).Conclusion The findings indicate that cirrhosis appears to be an important predictor of glucose intolerance in HCV-infected patients;The combination of cirrhosis and HCV infection increases the risk of type II DM;The prevalence of type II DM was higher in HCV-infected patients than in HBV-infected patients.


Atherosclerosis is a disease in which low density lipoproteins (LDL) accumulate in the arterial wall due to an inflammatory response, which is triggered by the oxidation of LDL molecules that are already present in the arterial wall. Progression of atherosclerotic plaques involves many components which includes, macrophages, monocytes, LDL, oxidized-LDL, cytokines etc. Clinical data is scarce for the long term evolution of plaques, therefore, mathematical models provide an alternative to enhance our knowledge in predicting and analyzing the complex processes in the advancement of atherosclerosis. In this thesis, we study different simplified mathematical models and analyse the long term behavior of evolution of plaques. One model we studied, consisted of ordinary differential equations that could be coupled and decoupled to the blood flow. Another model was also developed, which consisted of partial differential equations and that treats the artery wall as a moving boundary problem. The ordinary differential equations (ODE) model consisted of nonlinear coupled equations for oxidized-LDL, monocytes, macrophages, foam cells and radius of the artery (which can also be translated into an equation for endothelial shear stress). The model is distinguished by model A which is decoupled to the blood flow and model B, which is coupled to blood flow. The model B we call in thesis to be self-consistent system. Both models are time dependent and do not take account of geometry of the artery. Both these models have many parameters, which affect the growth of concentrations in time. A bifurcation analysis was therefore presented in this thesis to understand the impact of varying parameters on the system. For this purpose, a complete codimension two bifurcation analysis was carried out and singularities in the system were discussed. We found that the system, model A, can also have a codimension three bifurcation point (the degenerate Bogdanov-takens point). In model A, bistability and multistability was found to depend on the value of the parameter e. The parameter e is the ingestion rate of oxidized-LDL particles by macrophages in the equation for oxidized-LDL. The regions of stable and unstable equilibria and limit cycles were depicted with the two parameter diagrams. These regions were presented for cases with ingestion rate vs. LDL intake and shear stress vs. LDL intake. A threshold value dcrit was found for the LDL particles beyond which occlusion of the plaque seems inevitable. Two other critical parameter values for ingestion rates were also found. These values bcrit and ecrit were presented along with the Hopf curve as a function of parameters (d;b) and (s;d), which constitute a critical curve in the system. In model B, the multistability was disappeared and the attachment of blood flow profile stabilized the dynamics of the artery. For understanding the long term response of the suspended system in model B, we have carried out a slow-fast system analysis. This shows that the stable healthy state of (0;M0;0;R0) may be perturbed for short amount of times, but ultimately the suspended system always comes to a stationary point. This all depends on the values of parameters d;b;e. The reduction in radius was found to be proportional to cholesterol intake parameter. For longer times, the radius goes quasi-static suggesting the results to be physically viable. A complex time dependent moving endothelium model was also presented in an axi-symmetric setting in order to understand the role played by the geometry in the problem. To this end, the Navier-Stokes equations for blood flow were coupled with the convection-diffusion equation for LDL in lumen and a diffusion equation for oxidized-LDL in intima. These equations were coupled to a common boundary (the endothelium) and solved to study the long term effects of recirculation on LDL. The flux of low-density lipoproteins across the endothelium was shown to depend rather strongly on wall shear stress. For the limiting case of Poiseuille flow additional numerical simulations were performed. LDL concentrations and plaque volume were compared with the full model results. It was shown that recirculation leads to larger plaque volumes and is hence detrimental to plaque evolution. Our computations suggest that recirculation leads predominantly to a broader plaque. Comparison with Poiseuille flows also revealed that assuming a Poiseuille flow renders results that compare well with solutions of the full Navier-Stokes model. This implies that a good estimate of plaque progression can be obtained at less expense. It also validates results obtained in ODE model in which Poiseuille flow was implicitly assumed. For a better mechanical understanding of remodeling of the artery, the stress strain analysis may also be carried out. For this purpose, fluid-structure interaction (FSI) technique should be applied to the axisymmetric model we proposed. For a quantitative and realistic model the clinical data is vital to understand the growth of plaques. Such data will remain indispensable to construct increasingly realistic models and to obtain precise values of the model parameters, such that qualitatively predictive models can be realized in near future. Future close collaboration between clinical researchers and applied mathematicians will therefore be essential for progress in the this field.


Residual stress has a great impact on the feature of MEMS thin films, and the structural parameter and manufacturing process of MEMS thin films determine the magnitude of residual stress. Based on the conventional single-cantilever-beam micro-rotating structure, this paper presents a new structure and optimizes the corresponding parameters. The ANSYS software is adopted to conduct finite element analysis. In addition, we figure out the relationship between the new structure's residual stress and the deflection angle according to elasticity formulas and geometric principles. The analysis demonstrates that the original structure has several advantages in aspects of measuring residual stress such as low deviation, high accuracy and simplified process.


This excerpt, chapter 12 from the book Nursing Management: Principles and Practice, edited by Mary Magee Gullatte, RN, MN, ANP, AOCN, FAAMA, is part of a series of clinically relevant reprints that appear periodically in the Clinical Journal of Oncology Nursing.


The utility model provides a roll container, includes: the body, it has the upper shed, the lid, pivot ground couples to the body, the wheel couples to body and configuration and is used for rolling the body above that, control handle, pivot ground couple to the body, and handle pivot mechanism, the configuration is in order to keep away from body pivot control handle when the lid when opening.


Vector-maximization-problems arise when more than one objective function are to be simultaneously maximized over a feasibility region. The concept of proper e ciency has been introduced by Geo rion in order to eliminate points of a certain anomalous type.In multicriteria decision problems, the trade-o s play an important role and are related to the weighted sum programs. When the trade-o s belong to an interval, we obtain a polyhedral structure of dominance. In this paper, a generalization is provided for the characterization of the properly e cient solutions, as solutions of some parametric programmig problems.


The use of all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA) therapy for induction for acute promyelocytic leukaemia (APL) is well established and leads to a complete remission rate of > 70%. However, remissions are short and consolidation with chemotherapy is required. Continuous treatment with ATRA has been associated with a decrease in plasma concentrations of the drug, which may lead to resistance. Recently, a case has been reported successfully treated with ATRA alone, followed by maintenance with intermittent ATRA and continuous low-dose methotrexate and 6-mercaptopurine (Sanz et al, 2000). Here, we report two cases of APL with prolonged remissions after treatment with ATRA alone. An 81-year-old woman presented with pancytopenia due to APL in October, 1992. Cytogenetic analysis revealed t(15;17) as the sole abnormality, and the rearrangement was confirmed by Southern blot analysis. She was started on ATRA at 45 mg ⁄m. Chemotherapy was not given because of her age and history of cardiovascular disease. Her leucocyte count increased to 25 · 10 ⁄ l on day 1. On day 10, bilateral pleural effusions and culture negative fever developed, which was treated successfully with dexamethasone. The dose of ATRA was decreased to 25 mg ⁄m on day 30 because of abnormal liver function tests, and she remained on this dose for another 95 d. Bone marrow on day 73 showed morphological remission with persistence of t(15:17). No further bone marrow examinations were performed, but her blood counts remained normal, and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for the PML ⁄RAR transcript on peripheral blood was negative, with normal blood counts assessed 4 and 6 years after diagnosis. She died of unrelated cardiovascular complications in November 1999, 7 years after diagnosis. The second case involved a 76-year-old woman who presented in September 1997 with extensive mucosal bleeding. Laboratory investigations showed pancytopenia and disseminated intravascular coagulation due to APL, and RT-PCR confirmed the presence of the short isoform of the hybrid transcript generated by t(15;17). She was treated with ATRA at 45 mg ⁄m for 149 d. She declined treatment with chemotherapy. Her coagulation parameters normalized by day 2, and the leucocyte count reached a peak of 40 · 10 ⁄ l on day 12. She developed a cough and dyspnoea, which responded to dexamethasone. By discharge on day 18, she was feeling well with normal blood counts except for platelets at 60 · 10 ⁄ l; by day 35, the platelet count was normal. On day 58, bone marrow showed morphological remission, with normal cytogenetics and negative RT-PCR. Further RT-PCR analyses on peripheral blood have remained negative, most recently performed in July 2001. The patient remains alive and well with normal blood counts as of September 2001, 4 years after diagnosis. The mechanism by which our patients achieved prolonged complete remissions is unclear. It is unlikely that we observed spontaneous remissions as they are rare and of short duration (Enck, 1985). It is likely that ATRA was important in inducing the remissions. ATRA in supraphysiological doses causes differentiation of the promyelocyte by dissociation of a transcriptional corepressor complex, that exerts a dominant-negative effect on normal RAR-a-regulated gene transcription (Melnick & Licht, 1999). Continuous treatment leads to decreased plasma concentration and clinical resistance. However, leukaemic cells from relapses can continue to differentiate in vitro, though not in vivo. Moreover, the efficacy of liposomal ATRA suggests that the intracellular concentration of ATRA is critical, as use of this formulation maintains plasma concentrations of tretinoin and response in relapsed patients, but the response does not correlate with plasma concentration (Estey et al, 1996). Furthermore, the use of liposomal ATRA alone can induce prolonged molecular remissions (Estey et al, 1999). Thus, maintaining adequate intracellular concentrations of retinoids in the relevant target cell may permit ongoing differentiation. The prolonged complete responses in our patients indicate that the metabolism of ATRA in some patients may be endogenously altered to permit persistent and clinically effective intracellular concentrations of the ligand. Alternatively, the unusual response to ATRA may indicate that the disease pathogenesis in our patients may have differed from the norm, as it is clear from animal models that the translocation is necessary but not sufficient to produce leukaemia, and that other cytogenetically silent lesions must contribute (Zimonjic et al, 2000). The mechanisms mediating induced differentiation by ATRA have been intensively investigated (Melnick & Licht, 1999), but only recently has the means of cell death been elucidated (Altucci et al, 2001). It is conceivable that differing clinical outcomes to ATRA treatment may be due to intrinsic variations in leukaemic stem cells in their susceptibility to retinoidinduced, TRAIL ⁄DR5-mediated paracrine apoptosis. British Journal of Haematology, 2002, 117, 768–774


We discuss the link between the observations of distant quasars and those of massive dark objects in the cores of many local galaxies. We show how the formation of early black holes gives rise to the luminosity function of high-z quasars, while it imprints into their dark local relics a related shape of the correlation between masses and galaxy velocity dispersions. We propose that in its lower section, the correlation slope will reveal the (otherwise uncertain) strength of the feedback effects from the later quasar activity on the host galaxies.


The invention discloses a tandem coaxial diesel-electric combined propulsion system. Each mechanical propulsion part comprises a main diesel engine, a propulsion clutch, a tandem coaxial permanent magnet motor and a fixed-pitch propeller, wherein a shaft system of the fixed-pitch propeller directly penetrates through a winding of the tandem coaxial permanent magnet motor and is connected with a propulsion shaft of the main diesel engine. An electric propulsion part comprises an auxiliary diesel generating set, the tandem coaxial permanent magnet motors, grid-connected inverters and a ship power station. The ship power station comprises an alternating-current busbar, a direct-current busbar, a storage battery set, a grid-side converter and a DC/DC rectifier. The auxiliary diesel generating set is connected with the alternating-current busbar. The storage battery set is connected with the direct-current busbar through the DC/DC rectifier. The grid-side converter is connected between the alternating-current busbar and the direct-current busbar. The tandem coaxial permanent magnet motors are connected with the direct-current busbar through the grid-connected inverter. According to the tandem coaxial diesel-electric combined propulsion system, a pure-diesel propulsion mode, a pure-electric propulsion mode and a diesel-electric combined propulsion mode are flexibly configured according to different working conditions, and high operation efficiency of a ship is guaranteed under all the working conditions.


THE FORMAL arrangements made by employers for physicians to examine prospective employees or by institutions to employ physicians to treat their resident populations were discussed in the first article in this series. Third-party contracts of a more informal nature are often the origin of a physician-patient relationship. One member of a family commonly will request the services of a physician for another family member. In general, the same relationship is created between the physician and this patient as when the patient himself arranges for the physician's services. Children A physician-patient relationship may well be established between a physician and an unborn child. If a physician is caring for a woman he knows (or should know) is pregnant and negligently he causes prenatal injuries, in some states he may be liable to the baby if it is born alive. In 1946, a court in the District of Columbia was the first


As reported in the August issue (p. 6), researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research were certainly celebrating the news that Australia and South Africa would share in hosting the world's largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. But so were the many other astronomers and public servants in Australia and New Zealand, who have spent more than a decade planning and executing the bidding process.


PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED additional measurement error of a flow rate to provide an acoustic coupling to be minimized. The present invention relates to a device for coupling the ultrasonic clamp-on flow measurement head to a high temperature of the measuring tube. This device, thin coupling plate of thickness (2) is provided between the tube wall (3) and the measuring head (1). Measurement head temperature is lowered to the maximum allowed value by the coupling plate. The shape of the coupling plate (2), resulting temperature profile is adjusted as follows. That is, isotherms (7) in the wall region is parallel to the wall, with the measuring head region is adjusted so as to extend perpendicular to the traveling direction of the sound wave. This allows the measurement error caused by the through-flow measurement is minimized.


An idiopathic disorder characterized by the degeneration of the aortic media tissue and formation of cyst-like spaces. It may lead to aortic dissection.


Quantum Hall resistors made from epitaxial graphene measured with alternating current exhibit an unusual negative frequency dependence. To test the hypothesis that parasitic capacitances between contact pads cause this effect, we studied capacitance and dissipation factor in the quantum Hall regime for various in-plane electrode configurations. The largest dissipation factor is found for configurations where a strong electric field penetrates the bulk of the graphene. The measured effect of different electrode configurations on the frequency dependence of the quantized Hall resistance confirms our hypothesis. The findings are important for modeling and optimization of a future graphene-based quantum impedance standard.


Deep Neural Network (DNN) models have brought significant performance gains to machine learning tasks. Nevertheless, the huge storage and computational costs of high-performance models severely limit their deployment on resource-limited embedded devices. Knowledge distillation (KD) is the mainstream approach for models compression, but the existing KD framework has some limitations. First, the student model underperforms when there is a considerable capacity gap between the student and teacher models, which reduces the model compression rate in knowledge distillation. Second, compared with training from scratch, the billions of additional forward propagation of the complex teacher model is time-consuming, resulting longer train time in the distillation process. This paper proposes AKD, an efficient difference-adaptive knowledge distillation framework. AKD consists of two modules. The distillation module uses a modified auxiliary teaching architecture as the backbone, and the adaptive module introduces a difference-adaptive method, which can adjust the teacher model adaptively according to the continuously improving representation ability of the student model. Experimental results on different kinds of datasets and models indicate that AKD not only improves the efficiency of distillation, but also enhances the performance of the compact student model and raise the compression rate.


Nitric oxide (NO) has been proven to be a key regulator in the mammalian immune response, such as the innate and adaptive immune responses to tumors. The messenger NO involves T helper cell differentiation and lymphocyte biofunctions. In this study, we employed N,N'-di-sec-butyl-N,N'-dinitroso-1,4-phenylenediamine as NO donor and released NO around tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in vitro by short-time blue light irradiation. The interferon-γ secretion of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes was investigated to study the functional changes caused by the accurate spatio-temporal delivery of NO. The downregulation of interferon-γ in tumor infiltrating lymphocytes after NO treatment indicates promising biological applications to potentially play a role in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Shenzhen Second People's Hospital, the First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, China (approved No. 065) on February 12, 2018.


It is generally accepted that investigations in universal coding and predicting are based on the model of stationary ergodic sources. In this report we show that this model does not give possibilities to investigate large important classes of source codes and to distinguish asymptotic performances of popular universal codes. A new approach suggested here is to consider a set of all infinite sequences (over a given alphabet) and estimate the size of sets of compressible sequences with the help of Hausdorff dimension. This approach enables us, first, to show that there exist large sets of well compressible (and predictable) sequences which have got zero measure for every stationary and ergodic measure, and second, to distinguish an asymptotic efficiency of LZ codes and codes that are based on the technique of model weighting.


The ever increasing abundance of different fluorescent proteins and vital dyes that are available to researchers today make it possible to study a large variety of dynamic biological processes in live-cells [1, 2]. Many proteins of interest can be studied by expressing fluorescent fusion proteins in cells, either transiently by transfection or viral infection or permanently using transgenic animals. In addition, many organelles and cellular structures can be fluorescently labeled using specific vital dyes that are able to freely permeate the membranes of living cells. Using these labeling strategies in live cells enables researchers to study the dynamics of proteins in their native environment. In addition to gaining insight into protein dynamics, live imaging also decreases the introduction of fixation artifacts.


A new object tracking algorithm based on hierarchical siamese network is proposed to solve the challenges of target deformation and background interference in tracking tasks. The introduction of hierarchical features makes up for the lack of features information caused by too small target. A similarity measure mechanism is firstly learned through matching training of extracted hierarchical features on annotated datasets. Online target tracking is achieved by searching candidate images at multiple scales around the target center of the previous frame. The adaptive examplar and the first frame exemplar are used to measure the similarity of the current frame to obtain an accurate score map, which allows the algorithm to adapt to the change of the target. Our algorithm achieves real-time target tracking without online fine-tune and achieves long-term effective tracking on multiple challenging video sequences.


Post-disaster flood risk assessment is extremely difficult owing to the great uncertainties involved in all parts of the assessment exercise, e.g., the uncertainty of hydrologic–hydraulic models and depth–damage curves. In the present study, a robust and fast data-driven tool for residential flood risk assessment is introduced. The proposed tool can be used by scientists, practitioners and/or stakeholders as a first step for better understanding and quantifying flood risk in monetary terms. Another contribution of the present study is the fitting of an equation through depth–damage points provided by the Joint Research Center (JRC). The approach is based on hydrologic simulations for different return periods, employing a free and widely used software, HEC-HMS. Moreover, flood depths for the study area are estimated based on hydrodynamic simulations employing the HEC-RAS software and the Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) interpolation method. Finally, flood risk, in monetary terms, is determined based on the flood depths derived by the coupling of hydrodynamic simulations and the IDW method, depth–damage curves reported in the literature, vulnerability of residential areas and the residential exposure derived by employing GIS tools. The proposed tool is applied in a highly urbanized and flood-prone area, Mandra city, in the Attica region of Greece. The results are maps of flood depths and flood risk maps for specific return periods. Overall, the results derived from the application of the proposed approach reveal that the tool can be highly effective for post-disaster flood risk management. However, it must be noted that additional information and post-disaster data are needed for the verification of the damages from floods. Additional information can result in better calibration, validation and overall performance of the proposed flood risk assessment tool.


On behalf of all the members of the Organizing Committee, I would like to welcome you to the 4thInternational Conference on Signal Processing and Telecommunication Systems, ICSPCS'2010. The ICSPCS conferences evolved from the series of successful symposia and workshops, i.e. International Symposia on DSP and Communication Systems (DSPCS), and Workshops on the Internet, Telecommunications and Signal Processing (WITSP). ICSPCS'2010 incorporates the 12th International Symposium on DSP and Communication Systems (DSPCS'2010) and the 9thWorkshop on the Internet, Telecommunications and Signal Processing, WITSP'2010. The Organizing Committee has succeeded this year in achieving official technical co-sponsorship by the IEEE Communications Society for conference. As a result the ICSPCS'2010 conference has been listed in the IEEE database of the conferences and the proceedings will be published in IEEE Xplore.


Theoretical and experimental results on boundary acoustic waves propagated along a ZnO layer sandwiched between two materials are presented. The disprsion curve of the propagation velocity, the electro-mechanical coupling coefficient (K2) and the displacements were obtained theoretically as a function of the normalized thickness of the ZnO layer. The temperature coefficients of delay time (W) were also calculated and become zero at a particular thickness. Boundary acoustic waves can exist dy when the material constants of three materials satisfy the particular conditions obtained here. The existence regions are larger than those of the Stoneley waves we presented previously. Bpriments on Si02/ZnO/Si02 were also performed to verify theoretical prediction of the existence of boundary waves. A ZnO film and a thick Si02 layer were fabricated on a fused quartz substrate by sputtering technique. "hen the boundary waves were excited and received by interdigital transducers and propagated along the ZnO layer. Propagation loss was practically the same value as for Rayleiqh waves, indicating proper mode. These results lead us to expect that future SAW devices can be made without any package. I. In- 'On Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices are widely used as components in electronic equipment. The propagation mode in most devices is the Rayleigh wave on a surface of a piezoelectric substrate or a thin piezoelectric film on a substrate. Therefore, the substrates must be put into a package for protection against surf ace disturbance and so on. Since the package is larger than the substrate itself, it is difficult to satisfy the requirement for a smaller device; there are also problems of cost or reliability. In order to develop SAW devices without a package, we proposed the use of Stoneley waves [ll as the propagation mode [2,3,41, which are propagated along an interface between a piezoelectric material and an isotropic material. It was found that the existence region of Stoneley waves is restricted and depends on the piezoelectric material. On the other hand, boundary acoustic waves (BAW) propgated in a three media structure can be


In order to analyze and evaluate the difference in nutritive value of clams(Meretrix meretrix) with different shell colors and decorative patterns,the general nutritive components of clams with 3 kinds of shell colors and decorative patterns(white shell,red shell,black spot) were detected.Clams were dissected and sampled edible part as samples,and the contents of moisture,crude protein and crude fat,and the composition of amino acids and fatty acids of these samples were analyzed by adopting national standard methods.The results showed as follows: the contents of moisture,crude protein and crude fat in fresh samples of edible part in these clams were 81.15% to 81.89%,9.23% to 9.71% and 1.31% to 1.91%,respectively.There were no significant differences in above eneral nutritive component contents among 3 kinds of clams(P 0.10).A total of17 amino acids were detected in dry samples of edible part in these clams by adopting acid hydrolysis,and total amino acid(TAA) content was 42.95% to 48.45%,delicious amino acid(DAA) content was 17.44% to20.88%,and the DAA content showed significantly higher in red shell clam than that in white shell clams(P0.10).The first restrictive amino acid was valine in edible part of all clams.A total of 22 to 23 fatty acids were detected in dry samples of edible part in these clams,and the contents of polyunsaturated fatty acid(PUFA),eicosapentaenoic acid(EPA),ducosahexenoic acid(DHA) were 36.07% to 39.55%,11.37% to 12.87%and 9.82% to 12.44%,respectively,and the EPA content in red color clams was significantly higher that in white shell clams(P 0.10),while the DHA content in red color clams was significantly higher that in white shell clams and black spot clams(P 0.10).In conclusion,the 3 kinds of clams in this survey all have a high nutritive value and the nutritive value of red shell clams is the highest,at the same time,the umami of red shell clams is the best.


Whether the relationship between exports and growth in recent years caused various discussions. Based on exports industrialization in our country, together with the post – 1980 relationship between exports and economic growth has become important. Exports and economic growth in historical process in investigated in terms of its improvement. Annual data of exports and GDP for the period 1980-2011, with the export and growth in Turkey, whether there is a relationship between the short and long term (cointegration) and tested whether mutually causality. The results shows that there is not short term relationship between exports and economic growth. However, the long term relationship between two variables was determined and It has been pointed out that mutually exports and economic growth is not cause at 5 and 10 percent significance level.


Chronic use of non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) causes gastric hemorrhages, erosion, and ulceration. The endocannabinoid (eCB) system, comprised of cannabinoid receptors (CB1 and CB2), endocannabinoid ligands, and eCB regulatory enzymes, offers several targets to treat inflammatory disorders. We hypothesized that elevating the eCB 2‐arachidonoylglycerol (2‐AG) via JZL184, a selective inhibitor of its main catabolic enzyme monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL), protects against NSAID‐induced gastropathy. Mice administered the NSAID diclofenac sodium displayed gastric hemorrhages. JZL184, the proton pump inhibitor Omeprazole, or the primary constituent of marijuana, Δ9‐tetrahydrocannbinol (THC), significantly blocked hemorrhage development and increased stomach levels of 2‐AG, but had no effect on the eCB anandamide or prostaglandins PGE2 or PGD2. Pharmacological inhibition or genetic deletion of CB1 or CB2 receptors revealed that the gastroprotective effects of JZL184 and THC were mediated via CB1. The anti‐hemorrhagic effects of JZL184 persisted with repeated administration, indicating a lack of tolerance at low doses (e.g. 4 mg/kg). These data indicate that 2‐AG protects against NSAID‐induced gastropathy. Further, the eCB catabolic enzymes MAGL and FAAH offer promising targets for development of analgesic, gastroprotective therapeutics. Research supported by NIDA.


Millerichthys robustus survives in ephemeral pond habitats from Papaloapan river basin in Mexico by producing drought-tolerant diapausing embryos. Four stages in fertilized embryos were observed: Dispersion/re-aggregation, Diapause I, Diapause II, and Diapause III confirming its annualism. Eggs extracted from soil when the pool was completely dry were found in Diapause I. The chorion surface ornamentation is reported for this species for the first time.


In this study we investigate children's drawings produced in a 3 rd grade science class during a sequence of lessons about adaptation, focusing on parental care. We assume that drawing have an important role in introducing children to scientific literacy practices. Children's ways of engaging in the production of these representations result from interaction with peers, teacher and knowledge objects, and it is related to aspects of subject matter learning. The theoretical framework is based on studies from the field of multimodality, social semiotics and scientific literacy. Our data sources are: participant observation, video recording, field notes and collection of artifacts. In our analysis we contrast drawings and written texts considering various aspects. Our results indicate that children's drawings incorporate forms of representation particularly valued by science. We hope to contribute to foster discussion on the potential of drawings for learning science concepts. Palavras-chave: semiotica social, desenho, educacao em ciencias


The composition of Australia's Constitution saw a pattern of discrimination emerge against its Indigenous peoples, calling into question the strength of Australia's commitment to its founding narrative of a 'fair go'. This essay explores whether the 1967 Referendum, in which Australians voted overwhelmingly to amend the Constitution to allow the Commonwealth to make laws for Aboriginal people and include them in the census, had an affect on actual behaviour of the Commonwealth and non-Indigenous people towards the Indigenous population.


The ozonation of three organ phosphorus pesticides, malathion, diazinon and dimethoate, was conducted in water. The influence of the concentration of ozonated water, ozone action mode, degradation time and ion scavenger was discussed. The three organ phosphorus pesticides could bed gradated completely in 15min by bubbling ozone in water. And additional ion scavengers could increase the degradation ratio. The residues were extracted by solid phase micro extraction and detected by gas chromatography with flame photometric detector.


Humans live in material intercourse with both nature and each other to sustain life. These arrangements, which broadly fall under the notion of 'economics', have not always bankrupted nature. The long hunter-gatherer phase of human existence, in general, left a small ecological footprint. Nevertheless, many civilizations and even smaller-scale societies have destroyed their ecosystems through loss of topsoil, extinction of over-exploited species or failure of overly elaborate and inflexible arrangements; for example, dependence on complex irrigation systems that fail when drought strikes. The rise of fossil-fuel based economies, originating in the West in the 19th century and expanded globally by the late 20th, has produced a rise in living standards and population that is unprecedented, but that rise is now hitting ecological limits. How have Western ideas of economics dovetailed with this economic dynamism and ecological destruction? What can be gained by going back to models that, in terms of their human balance in nature, and perhaps their balanced relations among people as well, were more successful? In this chapter, and in this analysis as a whole, we will address these questions.


The multi-channel signal subspace algorithm for speech enhancement is studied, and the algor- ithm's parameters which affects the performance are analyzed.A simple and an effective method for esti- mating the noise variance are given. Through analysis, it is proved that the multi-channel signal subspace algorithm can denoise obviously and make very little voice injury. Compared with the single-channel subspace speech enhancement algorithm,the multi-channel signal subspace algorithm can not only upgrade the per- formance, but also have no increase in the amount of calculation. The muti-channel signal subspace alg- orithm has been used in speaker recognition system, and compared with other speech enhancement alg- orithms, such as Delay and Sum Beamfonning, Beamforming and Wiener Filter, and Linear Constraint Minimum Variance Beamfonning.The experimental results show that the muti-chanel signal subspace alg- orithra can effectively improve the recognition rate of the speaker recognition system in noisy environment.


" Phoenix " as chinese traditional culture in a symbolic,it take for this element of totems symbols to the life of the product advertising works of creative,Is a new way of life and provide people with new product requires.Advertising Design is the market and consumers the groups first,to start from the consumer,and integrated with chinese auspicious symbols of best symbolic,In the middle of the media as a cultural tradition.


For the new development of modern education, to enhance the practice part of teaching is the key approach to improve the teaching quality. In this paper the problems existed in the teaching process of data structure is expounded and analyzed in detail. New reformed experiment teaching methods are put forward and an instance is given in the end of the paper.


Studies evaluating the association between pulse wave velocity (PWV), a gold standard measurement of aortic stiffness and established markers of cardiovascular disease (CVD), with other established vascular markers or inflammation among young adult is still scarce. A systematic review of the literature was conducted to identify relevant studies on the association between PWV with other vascular markers or inflammation. Relevant articles from Ovid Medline, Science Direct and Scopus databases were explored between 2009 and March 2018. Original articles published in English measuring any correlation between carotid-femoral PWV (PWVcf) with either augmentation index (AIx), carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) or C-reactive protein (CRP) on young adult with age range between 18 and 45 years old were included. The literature search identified 21 potential articles to be reviewed, which meet all the inclusion criteria. Four articles investigated the correlation between PWVcf with CRP, however only two studies gave significant but weak correlations. As for CIMT, a single relevant article was found and the correlation was not significant. In conclusion, lack of association between PWV and other vascular markers and inflammation may suggest that these vascular markers have their own property in assessing vascular status. Thus, these markers should be measured independently for comprehensive assessment of future CVD risk.


New insights into the mechanisms underlying the action of macro- and trace elements on the brain and the microbiota-gut-brain axis will promote the development of food interventions aimed at optimizing brain function and preventing or treating neurodegenerative disorders and other age-related conditions. Rehabilitation of the seven most common deficiencies of trace elements: iron, zinc, copper, selenium, cobalt, chromium and iodine can increase global IQ, cognitive brain neurocommunication and the intellectual development of Homo sapiens in the 21st century. Further structural-functional and cognitive development of the brain will require quantitative and qualitative provision of new tools of bioelementology and brain nutritionology. N. P. Romanchuk studies show that for new neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, to manage human neuroplasticity and biological age, for modern neurophysiology and neurorehabilitation of cognitive impairment and cognitive disorders, sufficient functional and energy nutrition of the brain is needed. Authors' works in the creation of a new protective functional and epigenetic nutrition, the clinical application of strategic combined and hybrid methods and tools in the neurorehabilitation of the circadian system, the use of artificial intelligence in the functioning of the "cognitive brain" and "visceral brain" and brain-microbiota neural networks are a promising applied direction in personalized medicine. Psychoneuroimmunological communications and neuroendocrinological multimodal methods make it possible to significantly increase the duration of an active and high-quality healthy life of a person. Modern communications are multilevel, multi-paradigm and interdisciplinary models of information exchange. The new competencies of psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology and neuroeconomics play a strategic role in interdisciplinary science and interdisciplinary planning and decision-making, in creating a fundamentally new theory that will explain our decisions with genes, neuronal activity, our brain's perception of information, the influence of neurosociology and neuroevolution.


To detection of organophosphorus in spinach, the plant esterase was immobilized in magnetic chitosan bead by using glutaraldehyde as the cross-linking reagent and used for fast detection of organophosphorus pesticides. The best efficiency of immobilization could be obtained under the condition that the concentration of glutaraldehyde was 2.5%, the pH of glutaraldehyde was 5.5, the adding amount wheat esterase was 500 U, cross-linking time was 12 hours. The pesticides can be detected by the color developed during enzymatic reaction with this immobilization enzyme. The detecting sensitivity is 0.05~0.1 mg-kg -1 . The method is convenient for use and time saving.


Jose Leite de Vasconcellos, who is recognised as a pioneer of Portuguese dialectology, applied the term Portuguese co-dialect to refer to Galician. Nevertheless, on the one hand the concept behind this classification is, at first glance, obscure; on the other hand, Josh Leite himself uses as alternative terms dialect and co-dialect to refer to Galician Language. When it comes to clarifying these points, we must consider several aspects, such as the scientific paradigm which is the starting point of his research, the role of ideological factors (nationalism, positivism) as well as the socio-political and cultural situation of the linguistic varieties taken into account by him.


Land reform is an overhaul of ownership and control of agricultural land and legal relations related to land acquisition. The purpose of holding land reform is to enhance income and standard of living of smallholder farmers as a foundation or prerequisite for carrying out economic development towards a just and prosperous society based on Pancasila. The purpose of the land reform implementation is by the government distributing land to the community (farmers) by giving ownership rights, but the ownership rights cannot be traded for 10 years and there must be an authorized permit. This is contrary to the concept of ownership rights in the UUPA, which states that property rights are hereditary, strongest, fulfilled rights that people can have on land by looking at Article 6 regarding social functions. The strongest meaning of ownership rights over land is stronger than other ownership rights and does not have a term. The method used in this research is normative juridical which prioritizes secondary data in the form of primary legal materials, secondary legal materials, and tertiary legal materials. Then the secondary data is described and analysed using the theory of land law in the UUPA.


Abstract Spark plasma sintering (SPS) is a consolidation technique that can combine high heating and cooling rates with a uniaxial applied pressure resulting in short processing time. SPS has been successful in producing ceramics with novel microstructures, which are often reported to have been produced at temperatures lower than would be possible using conventional densification techniques. This has led many authors to infer the presence of additional densification mechanisms intrinsic to the SPS process. The present study considers the relationship between temperature measured in SPS and that experienced by the sample. A simple analytical model enables calculation of the equilibrium temperature distribution in a cylinder of known thermal conductivity and emissivity with constant heat generation per unit volume. Application of this model to the die assembly used in SPS allows estimation of the equilibrium sample temperature. Optimised processing conditions were identified for a fully dense submicrometre grain size alumina, and a SiN–40 vol.-%TiB2 composite. Both materials can only be processed to full density with optimised microstructures in a narrow temperature window. Using the analytical model, the temperature seen by the sample was calculated, and compared with the temperature required using conventional processing techniques. Observed microstructures were consistent with those obtained using conventional processing techniques when processed at the calculated temperatures, suggesting that when SPS is applied to ceramics, additional densification mechanisms intrinsic to the SPS process are not required to explain the observed microstructures. The dynamics of the temperature distribution and problems associated with producing large samples using SPS are also considered.


Based on the energy balance at integrated steel enterprise producing hot rolled flat products,the methods of recovering waste heat,utilization of secondary energy,and energy recycling efficiency are discussed.The further development mode and substantial measures to be taken are proposed.


This paper describes a self-systemic approach to the study of personality structure and process. Personality is conceptualized as organized around the ways one is committed to identifying oneself. Central to personality structure are those social roles the person is committed to performing. These role identities are the fundamental criteria by which goals, activities, and situations are selected by the person. Associated with role identities are identity goals, self-attributed characteristics that the person is motivated to exemplify when he or she is performing a particular role identity. Normative expectations are the person's beliefs as to which behaviors will express his or her identity goals. Data from a longitudinal and a cross-sectional sample of students supported this conceptualization. The theory is contrasted with the traditional self-concept approach, and is applied to an analysis of personality consistency; development, and adaptability.


The objective of this study is to determine whether or not, there are indicators in the pharmaceutical market that allow us to suspect collusion in Colombia. For which it will be the main reference indicators presented by Harrington (2008). The sources of information used in the work are separated by two stages due to the information available at the time, where five indicators of collusion were analyzed: Price stability, stability in market share, price correlation between firms, Prices and demand correlation and the effect of price ceilings. In both cases the 9 most representative firms of biotechnological -drugs in Colombia were observe and using the 15 most relevant markets for biomedical principles a sample of 424 medicines was obtained. In the first stage of the study (quarterly sample) 4 indicator s were measured: Correlation between price and demand, correlation between prices, share stability and price stability of market. Meanwhile in the second stage (annual exhibition) 4 indicators studied: share Correlation between price and demand, correlation between , prices stability, prices and ceiling price stability in prices.


Aim:  The importance of 'conventional' cardiovascular risk factors in haemodialysis (HD) patients has been questioned following evidence that pre‐HD blood pressure (BP) might be inversely related to mortality in contrast to post‐HD BP. To evaluate this reverse BP epidemiology in HD patients, HD‐induced BP changes were compared with aortic pulse wave velocity (PWV), an independent predictor of cardiovascular mortality.


This paper examines the wage structure and size of the public sector over the post-apartheid period. It does so both descriptively, examining the mean and median earnings in the public sector in the post-Apartheid period and the estimates of total public sector employment and wage bill using household survey data from the post-Apartheid Labour Market Series (PALMS). Trends in earnings and employment from the household survey data are also compared with the macro aggregates published by the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). The earnings premium for public sector workers is estimated using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Mincerian wage regressions and quantile regression techniques. This paper also investigates the effects of earnings imputation in the Quarterly Labour Force surveys on the estimates of the public sector earnings premium.


Using a multipath routing scheme, traffic between each pair of nodes can be routed across several paths, balancing link loads and maximizing bandwidth utilization. How to calculate the multipath routing that optimize network utilization is a traffic engineering task. Because the traffic demand experienced in ISP networks can be highly dynamic and unprectictable, non dynamic traffic engineering solutions can't fullfill the requirements of those networks. Some dynamic solutions have been proposed in the literature, but because they need to maintain distributed network state and systemically reconfigure it, they introduce too much overhead in the networks. In this work, we propose a new solution that combine both dynamic and non dynamic solutions, minimizing the overhead introduced by the dynamic solutions while being capable of dynamically absorb to unexpected traffic variations. By performing routing optimizations at (potentially) enlarged time intervals, and as result of this, letting the traffic between optimizations being routed in a potentially non optimal way, we can minimize the overhead introduced in the network. However this solution is only interesting if, during those periods, the deterioration of routing quality isn't significant. To determine the deterioration of the routing quality, we developed a fast and simple multipath routing algotithm that maximizes network utilization and we simulate our solution using topologies of real backbone networks. In our simulations, we also use distortion functions of traffic matrices to simulate typical traffic variations. Our results show that deterioration of the routing quality between optimizations isn't significant.


A process was developed on the pilot plant scale which can be used to reproduce fine particle TATB by dry amination. A series of 10 batches, with each batch yielding from 15 to 20 kg was produced to evaluate the process. The total chlorine content of the batches was generally about 0.5 percent but one of the batches had a total chlorine content higher than expected (1.05 percent).


This chapter investigates phenomena that allow 2D image structure to be interpreted in terms of 3D scene structure. Humans have an uncanny abilty to perceive and analyze the structure of the 3D world from visual input. Humans operate eortlessly and often have little idea what the mechanisms of visual perception are. Before proceeding, three points must be emphasized. First, while the discussion appeals to analytical reasoning, humans readily perceive structure without conscious reasoning. Also, many aspects of human vision are still not clearly understood. Second, although we can nicely model several vision cues separately, i n terpretation of complex scenes surely involves competitive and cooperative processes using multiple cues simultaneously. Finally, our interest need not be in explaining human visual behavior at all, but instead be in solving a particular application problem in a limited domain, which allows us to work with simpler sets of cues. The initial approach used in this chapter is primarily descriptive. The next section discusses the intrinsic image, which i s a n i n termediate 2D representation that stores important local properties of the 3D scene. Then we explore properties of texture, motion, and shape that allow us to infer properties of the 3D scene from the 2D image. Although the emphasis of this chapter is more on identifying sources of information rather than mathematically modeling them, the nal sections do treat mathematical models. Models are given for perspective imaging, computing depth from stereo, and for relating eld of view to resolution and blur via the thin lens equation. Other mathematical modeling is left for Chapter 13. It is convenient to think of a 3D scene as composed of object surface elements that are illuminated by light sources and that project as regions in a 2D image. Boundaries between 3D surface elements or changes in the illumination of these surface elements result in contrast edges or contours in the 2D image. For simple scenes, such as those shown in Figures 12.1 and 12.2, all surface elements and their lighting can be respresented in a description of the scene. Some scientists believe that the major purpose of the lower levels of the human visual system is to construct some such representation of the scene as the base for further processing. This is an interesting research question, but we do not need an answer in order to proceed with our work. Instead, we will use such …


This study investigated the relationship among foreign language learning anxiety, achievement goals, and multidimensional perfectionism.Incorporating approach and avoidance into mastery goal and performance goal, a 2X2 framework of achievement goals comprised mastery approach, mastery avoidance, performance approach, and performance avoidance in this article. Three factors, self-oriented, others-oriented, and socially-prescribed perfectionism, were explored to understand the relationship between perfectionism and foreign language learning anxiety. Results indicated that all factors of achievement goals and only socially-prescribed perfectionism were correlated to the foreign language learning anxiety. Analysis of the regression between the scale of language learning anxiety and the other factors showed that master approach, mastery avoidance, and performance approach could predict the language learning anxiety significantly


Having paid some attention to the structure of insects, I have carefully examined the fly's foot (Musca domestica, &c.), and finding much misapprehension on the subject still existing (in a recent popular publication), I thought a few remarks might not be uninteresting to some of the readers of this Journal, and lead to a further investigation by some one more experienced in these matters than- myself. Some months after I had arrived at my conclusions I met with the following remarks, some of which come nearer my own ideas than anything I have yet met with :—


The present invention relates to a method for estimating the noise standard deviation, in this method, after receiving a noisy input image and the input image is filtered to obtain a smooth image, taking the input image and the smoothed image the difference between the original noise FIG. Preclear boundary of the original noise figure, remove the estimated threshold value T or a threshold function Tg noise pattern to the boundary from the pre, then the threshold value T or a threshold function Tg determine the boundaries of the original noise figure, and Clear boundary determined from the original noise figure, then clear boundaries FIG noise standard deviation from the estimated noise.


The goal of this research is Western Kazakhstan oil properties study with commercial interests, particularly oil from Kenkiak and Zhanazhol oilfields, in order to maximize production capacity within compliance with the petroleum specifications. The laboratorial studies have been conducted to define the physical and chemical properties of the oil, to optimize atmospheric and vacuum distillations, and then the characteristics of individual fractions have been investigated. The technological classification is made for each type of the oil. The scheme of oil refining is developed taking into consideration the characteristics of the individual fractions. The proposed scheme helps to increase the oil refinery depth, to obtain high quality of petrol and lubricating oil, as well as to expand the range of oil products in a definite region.


The theme of this work are sanitation issues and compilation of sanitation plans. The beginning is devoted to European and Czech legislation related to the operation of food businesses, especially dairies and sanitation in them. Furthermore, there are sanitzing agents described. The work focuses on cleaning and disinfection procedures and rules for drawing up sanitation plans with concrete proposals for pilot school technology plant.


The Internet of Things (IoT) has emerged as a trend in the healthcare industry to develop innovative solutions that enhance patient outcomes and operational efficiency. Healthcare has become more accessible, affordable, and efficient to sensors, wearables, and health monitors. The healthcare industry's adoption of the Internet of Things is lagging behind other sectors despite its many benefits. This study aims to investigate the extent to which chronic patients in Malaysia are using healthcare services made possible by the Internet of Things. To that end, this study proposes a unified framework to examine how these highlighted factors affect Behavioral Intention (BI) with regard to adopting IoT healthcare services. The innovation here is in bringing together three distinct theories: i) the Technology-Organization-Environment Framework (TOE), which is a framework for understanding how companies adopt new technologies; ii) the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT); and iii) the Social Exchange Theory (SE). Patients in Malaysia who are coping with long-term health issues were surveyed online. This study also employs SPSS and Smart Partial Least Square (Smart PLS) for data analysis. Eleven hypothesized predictive components have been investigated. The results showed that chronic illness patients' BI towards adopting IoT solutions was considerably impacted by both individual and technological factors and related aspects. The impact of BI on Use Behaviour (UB) also showed similar outcomes. Moreover, trust somewhat mediates the impact of both individual and technological factors on BI. The findings of this investigation will be beneficial to policymakers and suppliers of healthcare in that country. Additionally, the patients and their family members would gain benefits from the study due to the fact that the delivery of comprehensive treatment, especially in the field of chronic disease management, will be improved through IoT-healthcare services. The Internet of Things will also let medical staff function remotely and professionally. Keywords—Internet of things; IoT; chronic disease; adoption theories; adoption


For Rahner, it is a vital passion to translate the language of faith in a meaningful, relevant manner for the anthropological-existential culture of contemporary man, this makes of him the great innovator of theological language in the 20th century. His mastery resides in a constant and growing integration of all that is human into a totalizing synthesis of Christian being.


Aims: Assess key cannabis use, risk and outcome characteristics among high-frequency cannabis users within a university student sample in Toronto, Canada. Methods: N = 134 active universities students (ages of 18–28) using cannabis at least three times per week were recruited by mass advertisement, telephone-screened and anonymously assessed by an interviewer-administered questionnaire. Relevant descriptive statistics are presented; subsequent univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses (MLRA) identified independent predictors of experiencing physical or mental health problems. Findings: The majority of respondents used cannabis >5 years, almost daily and >1 times/day, socially and medically on occasion. In past 30 days, 79% used cannabis by deep inhalation, 38% drove a car after use, 45% had difficulty controlling or limiting use and 52% experienced negative mental/physical health effects, with few respondents reporting any past treatment. The MLRA identified 'difficulty controlling or limiting use' (OR = 3.40, 95% CI = 1.58–7.30), 'non-white ethnicity' (OR = 2.78, 95% CI = 1.13–6.83), and 'living with others' (OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 1.02–5.55) as independent predictors (p < 0.01) of negative health problems. Conclusions: Our sample was characterized by several use-related risks and problems, which may result in long-term burden of disease. University environment may offer suitable settings for targeted interventions. Determinants of future cannabis use and problems should be assessed in this population.


In recent years, the potential scarcity of fossil fuels and increasing environmental challenges have motivated widespread study on electric vehicles (EV). Plugged-in EVs use the energy available in the distribution grid to charge their batteries. This shows the inevitability of the charging element and calls for an efficient network of fast charging stations. However, the developing EV charging infrastructure poses quite a lot of challenges for the existing distribution system. In this paper a photovoltaic (PV) generator integrated, three-phase fast charging station which also facilitates vehicle-to-grid (V2G) power exchange is modelled. The battery charger station aims at the regulation of the grid voltage level by varying the reactive power flow. The renewable source integration can prove as a means to reduce the power demand on the grid. The PV generation integrated EV charging station is connected to a microgrid system and the performance and operation of the system is analyzed by simulating different operating conditions.


On the basis of reading the domestic and foreign reference about complex systems science,this paper explores the complexity of E-government system, and using complex systems science and theory of complex adaptive system conceptually models complex adaptive system on E-government system, learning from the thought and method of complex systems, and achieves the purpose of design work on E-government system.


The attentional blink (AB) phenomenon refers to the failure to report the second target (T2) if it appears 200-500 ms after the first target (T1) in a stream of rapidly presented images. The present study aimed to investigate the neural representations of target processing under conditions where AB does or does not occur. We recorded EEG and behavioral data while participants viewed a rapid sequence of natural object images embedded with two face targets presented at two lag conditions: lag 3 (targets were 252 ms apart) and lag 7 (targets were 588 ms apart). Consistent with AB, our behavioral results showed a lower T2 identification accuracy in lag 3 compared to lag 7. We then used multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of EEG data to extract the neural dynamics of target processing over time. Comparing the neural representations of targets in the two lag conditions, we found that T1 processing coincided with T2 processing, resulting in suppressed T1 and T2 late representations in lag 3, where AB happened, but not in lag 7, where there was enough time between the two targets. Our results also indicated that target representations were different between participants with a strong AB effect (blinkers) and those with a weak AB effect (non-blinkers). These findings carry significant implications for theories of attentional blink, highlighting the need for their extension in order to account for naturalistic paradigms and new findings.


In this study, we propose a grating-based interferometer designed with a coplanar type and double-diffraction configurations to enhance the sensitivity while still simultaneously maintaining nanometric resolution of displacement and angle. According to our proposed method, two heterodyne beams with orthogonally polarized directions are propagated to a transmission grating with a symmetrical angle, and then diffracted. Since the two beams incident to different positions of the grating surface, two detection points are formed for establishing "coplanar type" optical configuration (detection configurations A and B). Each detection configuration has the same optical arrangement. Moreover, through the optical configuration design of "double-diffraction", fours corresponding diffraction beams will pass through the transmission grating again along the original paths, which could induce double phase variations in each beam. This means the sensitivity and resolution of the proposed interferometer will be enhanced double. When the grating moves along the in-plane direction, changes in the two interference phases in detection configurations A and B are the same, and can be observed from the two detectors. Moreover, the rotation angle of θz can be obtained by comparing the measurement results of in-plane displacement measured by detection configurations A and B. To verify the feasibility and performance of the proposed interferometer, a series of experiments were conducted, with the measurement results obtained from the proposed interferometer compared with the built-in capacitive sensor and linear encoder of two different commercial positioning stages. As can be seen from the results, the displacement and angle resolution of the system was found to be 1.5 nm and 50 nrad while the values of repeatability was found to be 2 nm and 80 nrad together with a long-term stability of about 8 nm and 200 nrad for 10 minutes. Experimental results also demonstrate that the proposed interferometer has the ability to perform precision displacement and angle information simultaneously without changing its optical configuration.


In this paper, a tapped delay multiclass support vector machine scheme is used for supervised job classification, based on video data taken from Nissan factory. The procedure is based on multiclass SVMs enhanced with the time dimension by incorporating additional information of n-th previous frames and allowing for user feedback when necessary. Such methodology will support the visual supervision of industrial environments by providing essential information to the supervisors and supporting their job.


The aim of the present research work was to investigate the potential of emulgel in enhancing the topical delivery of Turmeric. Emulgel formulations of Turmeric were prepared using Carbopol 934 as a gelling agent. The influence of the type of the gelling agent and the concentration of both the oil phase and emulsifying agent on the drug release from the prepared emulgel was investigated using. The main purpose of this research was to design to formulate and evaluate a topical gellified emulsions (Emulgel) of Turmeric by using high molecular weight water soluble polymer Carbapol 934. This Carbapol possesses very high viscosity, transparency, film forming properties at low concentration and reported to be useful in formation of gel with an objective to increase transparency and spreadability. All the prepared emulgel showed acceptable physical properties concerning color, homogeneity, consistency, spreadability, and pH value. The influence of the type of gelling agent on the drug release from the prepared emulgels was investigated and carbopol 934 showed good results not only in the drug release but also in physical evaluation parameters. From the drug release studies, F3 formulation showed 90.05% drug release in 6 h with good clarity and physical appearance and viscosity 2250cps.Stability studies showed that the physical appearance, rheological study, in vitro drug release, and anti-inflammatory activity in all the prepared emulgel remained unchanged upon storage for 3 months. It was finally concluded that the formulation F3 with 1%w/w Carbopol 934 was found to be more promising formulations as it shows better physicochemical characteristics and antiinflammatory activity compared to other formulations.


Suggested actions to deal with the bird 'flu epidemic - the treatment of symptoms in humans using antiviral drugs, the increased surveillance and monitoring of migratory birds, the locking up of poultry and the culling of diseased birds - are at best only a holding strategy. The author argues that we need to break the chain of infection and re-infection between wild aquatic birds and poultry which is assisting the spread of the virus. We could genetically engineer the domestic chicken to be immune to all major strains of influenza A that are affecting birds.


Single-family homes make up a significant portion of the rental housing market in the United States. Single-family rentals grew significantly in recent years, especially with the emergence of large-scale investors in the single-family rental market. We investigate if the rise of single-family rentals provides more housing choice for renter families with children, and if a greater number of single-family rentals provides low-income families with children with access to neighbourhoods with high- or moderate-opportunity education. We utilise the Child Opportunity Index to identify low-, moderate- and high-educational opportunity neighbourhoods and, using both binomial and multinomial logistic regression, examine the relationship between the rise in single-family rentals and neighbourhood opportunity access. We find growth in single-family rentals provides more rental alternatives for families with children but does not provide families with children in poverty access to high- or moderate-opportunity neighbourhoods in education. Growth in single-family rentals does provide access to high opportunity for near-poverty families with children (150–185% of poverty), but only when there are few of these kinds of families and when there are large increases in single-family rentals. Our findings suggest that rental burden prevents families with children in poverty from accessing high- and moderate-opportunity neighbourhoods, and the Housing Choice Vouchers programme does not help.


Based on results of GELA study, rituximab in combination with CHOP chemotherapy, given for eight cycles, may be considered the new standard of care for patients older than 60 years diagnosed with DLBCL. However, the afraid of early toxicity and underlying co-morbid illness in elderly patients implies often adjustments in this scheme. The aim of this study was to analyze the routine clinical practice in the up-front treatment of elderly patients (>65 years) with DLBCL. We have enrolled onto this study 80 patients (48 females) with median age 74 years (range, 65 to 85 years) who have been treated with CHOP-like regimens in combination with rituximab as first-line therapy. The 75% of patients had ECOG 0-1, 81% had Ann-Arbor stage III-IV, 41% had B-symptoms, 59% had aIPI 2-3, 39% had bulky disease (> 7 cm) and 55% had elevated beta-2 microglobulin. The most of patients received as up-front therapy R-CHOP (89%); R-CNOP and R-CEOP (doxorubicin is substituted for mitoxantrone and epirubicin, respectively) were the alternative regimens administered. The 57.5% of patients received 6 courses of treatment; the 25% received less than 6 cycles and only the 6% of patients (5 out of 80 patients) received 8 courses of treatment. In 31 out of 80 patients the doses of chemotherapy was reduced; in 20 patients the doses of chemotherapy were reduced in all courses and 2 patients received reduced doses of chemotherapy in 5 out of 6 cycles. In the 40% of patients G-CSF have been administered. The overall response rate was 86% (72% CR/CRu, 14% PR). In the 22 patients who received the lower doses of chemotherapy the overall response rate was 82% (50% CR/CRu) versus 88% in the remaining patients (81% CR/CRu) (p


Group theory is a technique which helps spectroscopists to establish theoretical calculation in vibrational frequencies of a molecule. Vibrational frequencies of a molecule can be determined by Infra red and Raman spectroscopy. In this article, different symmetry elements in group theory has been discussed. Point groups have also been discussed. Using the symmetry elements determination of dipole moments of molecule, and optical activity of molecule have been done.


ABSTRACT The probability of an instant rail break, initiated at a single pre-existing rail foot crack due to a severe wheel impact loading, is predicted using statistical methods and a time-domain model for the simulation of dynamic vehicle–track interaction. A linear elastic fracture mechanics approach is employed to calculate the stress intensity at the crack in a continuously welded rail subjected to combined bending and temperature loading. Based on long-term field measurements in a wayside wheel load detector, a three-parameter probability distribution of the dynamic wheel load is determined. For a faster numerical assessment of the probability of failure, a thin plate spline regression is implemented to develop a meta-model of the performance function quantifying the stress intensity at the crack. The methodology is demonstrated by investigating the influence of initial crack length, fracture toughness and rail temperature difference on the risk for an instant rail break.


age, one in every ten patients admitted to hospital suffer harm from tests or treatments intended to help them. Such accidental injury is more likely to happen in some parts of the hospital than others. About 7 million operations are performed annually on patients admitted to hospitals in England and Wales,1 so a large number of patients are exposed to errors and deviations from recommended practice, and some will suffer injury as a result. This paper describes some patient safety problems that occur in operating theatres and suggests ways to promote safety.