Empirical study of Fund Separation Theory seems rare based on specific capital markets,which made this paper innovative.The theorem was examined empirically in China's big-chip market in the efficient frontier approach and I came to the conclusion that the theorem stands when the A share market fluctuates stably and tumbles.Furthermore,I established a "market-efficiency-factor" to further discuss the phenomenon.And it concludes that when the factor is high,active investment is more significant.Therefore,investors can choose their investment strategy accordingly.


Correlation effects within the Oswald Ripening process are analysed by an off-centre diffusion approach. Herein the diffusion solution is derived as a function of both the growing and shrinking cluster sizes. Also, it is shown that the frequency transfer of particles between the shrinking cluster and the growing one may acquire high values due to the medium polarization. As a result, the temporal power law of the cluster growth derived in this theoretical model differs from that predicted by the LSW theory.


It is reported that hystomorphometric study of the articular cartilage in case of extremity extension by means of Ilizarov apparatus combined with the intramedullary reinforcement by bone nails is indicative of its compensatory abilities disruption. The data obtained should be taken into consideration in clinical practice in order to prevent the development of cartilage pathologies.


A simulation experiment is conducted using the WRF model and the track and 24 h accumulative rainfall is successfully modeled,but the simulated central pressure of Saomai is much higher than that of the real situation.To study the orographic uplifting effect upon the rainstorm and the structure of typhoon Saomai(0608) during the landfall,a set of orographic sensitive experiments are further carried out by changing the terrain altitude within the selected area.It is concluded that during the landfall of Saomai,the orographic uplifting is able to enlarge the rainfall of the typhoon,and also to enhance the centre potential vorticity,vertical velocity as well as the convergence of moisture flux obviously.Meanwhile,the orographic uplifting peaks at the moment of typhoon Saomai's landfall.


Background: Hypertension is a major public health problem worldwide, including India. Nowadays, prehypertension is common in young adults. It has genetic basis and runs in families. Parental history of hypertension increases the risk of developing hypertension, especially if both parents are hypertensive. Cause & effect relation of hypertension & autonomic dysfunction is not clear. Therefore, this study was planned to see autonomic function alterations in young adults of hypertensive parents, if any.Methodology: In this study autonomic activity was assessed in students with both parents hypertensive (n= 30), one parent hypertensive (n= 30) and both parents normotensive (n= 30).Resting heart rate and BP was measured for parasympathetic function assessment and rise in diastolic BP with hand grip dynamometer was used for sympathetic function assessment.Results: The study showed no significant difference in resting pulse rate of all the groups. BP was slightly higher in groups with hypertensive parents as compared to a group of normotensive parents, but the difference was statistically insignificant. Statistically significant rise in diastolic BP with handgrip dynamometer was observed in subjects with hypertensive parents.Conclusion: This rise in diastolic BP indicates increased sympathetic activity. Our results showed higher sympathetic activity in those with hypertensive parents. It also confirmed the genetic basis of sympathetic (vasomotor) tone. Young adults having hypertensive parents are at a greater risk of hypertension at an early age. Regular assessment of blood pressure and autonomic function with lifestyle modifications should be recommended to delay onset of hypertension in them.


Major depression is a stress-related disorder that shows a clear female preponderance. Sex differences in antidepressant response have been documented in both the clinical and experimental settings. It is of interest that antidepressant drugs exert critical immunotropic influences, mediated by direct and/or compensatory routes; these effects are not completely understood but comprise a matter of intensive investigation. Even though human studies have found only a few sex-related differences in the immunotropic effects of antidepressants, recent experimental evidence in the chronic mild stress model of depression points towards a sexually dimorphic neuroimmune playground in view of chronic antidepressant treatment. Herein, we provide a concise review regarding the effects of antidepressant pharmacotherapy on neuroimmune manifestations by concentrating on intriguing sex differences.


The total protein and total amino acid content of ovaries were studied in the freshwater fish; Barilius bendelisis and Barilius burna exposure to various sublethal concentrations of Dimecron (0.0064%, 0.0128%, 0.0192 and 0.0075%, 0.015%, 0.0225%) respectively for different time periods up to 96 hrs. All the concentrations of Dimecron brought about a significantly decrease in total protein and total amino acid content. The results are discussed in relation to the concentration of the most commonly used pesticide in this region.


We demonstrate micromechanical detection of ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) in thin magnetic films. FMR spectroscopy is performed on nanometer scale samples integrated with a micromachined silicon cantilever. We present several techniques by which the FMR signal is coupled to a mechanical response of the cantilever. Cantilevers with low spring constants and high mechanical Q are essential for these measurements. Sub-nanometer displacements of the cantilever are detected using a laser beam-bounce system typical of many atomic force microscopes (AFM). The high sensitivities achieved by integrating the sample with the detector allow magnetic measurements on samples with total magnetic moments smaller than detectable with conventional magnetometers. Metrology applications for micromachined magnetometers include ultra-thin film material characterization, magnetic field microscopy, microwave field imaging, and deposition process monitors.


According to the production site application and the maintenance and repair experiences of 12CM15 mode continuous miner,the paper had a classification on the electric system faults.Base on the analysis on the causes of the feed back fault of the pump motor control,the feed back fault of the haulage control and the electric protection fault,the paper provided the steps and methods of the trouble shootings which could be the technical supports to the fault diagnoses of the site application and the maintenance and repair.


Immobilization of lipase on chitosan powder was performed via cross linking technique. The aim of this research is to determine the optimum conditions for the immobilization process. Chitosan was prepared from crab shell through continous deacetylation, and crosslinked with glutaraldehyde. Immobilization of lipase on chitosan powder was studied under the optimum conditions e.i. pH optimum of lipase solubility and mole ratio of chitosan:glutaraldehyde. Immobilized lipase on chitosan powder was tested for the activity, thermal stability, multiple-use stability and kinetic parameters through the hydrolysis reaction of palm oil.
Continous deacetylation produced chitosans A, B and C with deacetylation degrees of 81.34% , 90.23%, and 92.80%, respectively. The optimum pH for enzyme dissolution was obtained at pH 6. Mole ratio of chitosan:glutaraldehyde for the enzyme immobilization reached optimum condition at a ratio of 2:1. Optimum efficiency of immobilization on chitosans A, B, and C, were 53.01


Abstract There has been a series of scholarly interactions on the viability of situating African ideology and spirituality within literary and biblical discourse. For instance, researchers have asserted that an expression of the African ideological stance has certain implications for theological reflections in Africa. Using the "inculturation hermeneutics" as a theoretical construct, this paper explores how a contextualization of the biblical and literary discourse within the framework of African ideology and spirituality can promote sustainable development in the continent. Key words: Biblical literature; Proverbs; Ideology; Spirituality; Development Resume Il y a eu une serie d'interactions scientifiques sur la viabilite de situer l'ideologie africaine et de la spiritualite dans le discours litteraire et biblique. Par exemple, les chercheurs ont affirme que l'expression de la position ideologique africaine a des certaines consequences pour la reflexion theologique en Afrique. L'Utilisation des "hermeneutique inculturation" comme une construction theorique, cette etude explore comment une contextualisation du discours biblique et la litteraire dans le cadre de l'ideologie africaine et la spiritualite ne peut promouvoir le developpement durable dans le continent. Mots cles: Litterature biblique; Proverbes; L'ideologie; La spiritualite; Le developpement INTRODUCTION/BACKGROUND INFORMATION In a society like Africa, that is riddled with socioeconomic and religious disequilibrium- a social context that is characterized by diverse forms of poverty and leadership dislocations, there is an urgent need for policy makers and stakeholders to have recourse to aspects of African ideology and spirituality on the one hand, and on the other, the Bible, and indeed, the essence of Christian religion. It is the contention of this paper that sustainable development is synonymous with wisdom, and that this dynamic quality is pronounced in the African experience and the Bible. Our leaders need to listen and act, not on emotional and situational outburst, but on words of wisdom, which these two worldviews produce. In other words, there must be an active dialogue between the Bible and African ideology, particularly as articulated in its folklore and proverb. While the African ideology challenges the Christian faith to be truly universal, the Christian faith challenges and illuminates African ideology and spirituality. When these blocs blend, development becomes a natural phenomenon. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM The research problem is that there has not been much dialogue between African ideology, especially its oral literature and the Bible. Even where general statements are made about the literary nature of the Bible in relation to the African cultural experience, the situation and application of this relationship in developmental terms have not been intensive. DEFINING LITERATURE The definition of literature has been an enterprising aspect of the theory of literature. Scholars have admitted that while the definition of literature is somewhat difficult and that there is hardly any book that fully addresses it (Adams, 1968), they still believe that the meaning of literature is known to all even if it cannot be articulated in definitive terms. Quite an appreciable number of researchers understand literature to include any text worthy to be taught to students by teachers of literature, when these texts are not being taught to students in other departments of a school or university (Hough, 1969). Significantly fascinating, McFadden (1978) sees literature as "a canon which consists of those works in language by which a community defines itself through the course of its history. It includes works primarily artistic and also those whose aesthetic qualities are only secondary" (p. 56). In essence, the self-defining activity of the community is conducted in the light of works, as its members have come to read them (or conceive them). …


Objective:to learn the effect of CHinese herbs compound preparation on CRF through the curative effect observation of CRF treated by Fuzhengpaidu Decoction.Methods:treated CRF with Fuzhengpaidu Decoction which is the empirical prescription of Prof.SU Sheng-shi.From 1997 48 cases have accepted the treatment.Such experimental indexes as BUN(blood urea nitrogen),BUA(blood uric acid),SCR(serum creatinine)were put into abservation.Result:Fuzhengpaidu Decoction can obviously improve the indexes such as SCR,BUN,BUA of patients with CRF during azotemia phase(P0.05),while those indexes declined in cases with CRF during renal failure phase as well as the symptoms were alleviated to some extent(P0.05).Conclusion:Fuzhengpaidu Decoction is worthy to be applied further and more widely for its little side effect and convenience.


To evaluate the long-term effectiveness of the National Energy Plan introduced by President Carter on April 20, 1977, this report summarizes results focusing on three specific questions: Can the Plan achieve its 1985 goals; how effective is the Plan after 1985; and could additional policies secure U.S. independence by 2000. To evaluate its effectiveness, a business-as-usual projection (government policies remain at their June 1977 status) was compared to the Plan. The analysis led to the following conclusions: (1) the National Energy Plan is first and foremost an energy conservation strategy; it does not recognize the severity of the long-term problems; and (2) the Plan's 1985 goal of a reduction in imports is overly optimistic. This analysis projects that imports will increase to 13 million b/d even if the Plan is implemented. Over the longer term (to 2000), the Plan has measurable positive effects. By reducing U.S. energy demand, the Plan postpones the world oil shortage for ten years, to the mid-1990s. While the Plan does not totally circumvent the domestic impact of the oil shortage (U.S. demand for foreign oil is still 13 Mb/d in 1995), the added ten years buy time to bring alternative energy sources on line. Bymore » adding to the Plan policies that accelerate supply, U.S. dependence on foreign oil could be reduced to 5 Mb/d by 2000. This plan would achieve the President's medium-term energy goal, effectively insulating the U.S. from a world oil shortage. With the major reduction in demand that is a consequence of the Plan, nuclear power is no longer a critical part of the U.S. energy supply future; the analysis indicates that even with a moratorium on nuclear power, the goals of the Plan could be met by accelerating coal production and use. In fact, oil imports could drop even further to 4 Mb/d when accelerated coal policies are added to the Plan. (MCW)« less


The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the genetic algorithm can be useful for the global path planning when the obstacles and current field data are given. In particular, the possibilities for a novel type small AUV mission deployment in tidal regions, which experience vortical currents, were examined. Experimental simulations show feasibility and effective in generate the global path regardless of current and obstacles. By choosing an appropriate path in space, an AUV may both bypass adverse currents which are too fast to be overcome by the vehicle's motor and also exploit favorable currents to achieve far greater speeds than motors could otherwise provide, while substantially saving energy.Keywords : Autonomous Underwater Vehicle(자율무인잠수정), Global Path Planning(전역경로계획), Genetic Algorithm(유전자 알고리즘), Vortical Current Field(와조류장)


x rofessor Papert (1987) has pre sented a case for developing a dis cipline of computer criticism, with aims similar to literary criticism. He suggests that computer criticism may help us understand computa tion as a medium of human expres sion. I believe such a field is a great idea and that its investigations could yield fundamental insights into the nature of mind and society, and their relation to computational media. Contributions to the field of literary criticism have had major in fluences on the nature of inquiries in history, anthropology, linguistics, psychology, and the philosophy of science (e.g., Baynes, Bohman, & McCarthy, 1987; Bernstein, 1983).


This paper presents calculations of ionospheric electron temperature and density perturbations and ground-level signal changes produced by intense oblique high-frequency (HF) radio waves. The analysis takes into account focusing at caustics, the consequent Joule heating of the surrounding plasma, heat conduction, diffusion, and recombination processes, these being the effects of a powerful oblique modifying wave. It neglects whatever plasma instabilities might occur. The authors then seek effects on a secondary test wave that is propagated along the same path as the first. The calculations predict ground-level field strength reductions of several decibels in the test wave for modifying waves having effective radiated power (ERP) in the 85- to 90-dBW range. These field strength changes are similar in sign, magnitude, and location to ones measured in Soviet experiments. The location of the signal change is sensitive to the frequency and the model ionosphere assumed; so future experiments should employ the widest possible range of frequencies and propagation conditions. An ERP of 90 dBW seems to be a sort of threshold that, if exceeded, might result in substantial rather than small signal changes. The conclusions are based solely on Joule heating and subsequent refraction of waves passing through caustic regions.


INTRODUCTION: Temporal hollowing is one of the earliest signs of facial aging. Fat and fillers are an effective method to treat the volume loss; however, the resultant anatomical location of filler is incompletely understood. The purpose of this study is to assess topographic changes of temple contour, and examine the final anatomical plane of hyaluronic acid (HA) gel injected into the anterior temporal fossa of cadaver specimens, using a previously published "One Up, and One Over" technique, as well as derivative techniques.


The increasing availability of geospatial data (i.e., exact longitudes and latitudes for each house) has the potential to improve the quality of house price indexes. It is not clear though how best to use this information. We show how geospatial data can be included as a nonparametric spline surface in a hedonic model. The hedonic model itself is estimated separately for each period. Price indexes are then computed by inserting the imputed prices of houses obtained from the hedonic model into the Fisher price index formula. Using a data set consisting of 454507 observations for Sydney, Australia over the period 2001-2011 we demonstrate the superiority of a geospatial spline over postcode dummies as a way of controlling for locational effects. While the difference in the resulting price indexes is not that large – since the postcodes in Sydney are quite narrowly defined – we nevertheless find evidence of a slight bias in the postcode based indexes. This can be attributed to systematic changes over time within each postcode in the locational quality of houses sold.


In this paper, the authors present vibration mode identification of rectangular plates by using discrete piezoelectric materials. The novelty in this study stems from the fact that only spatial information is used. The analytical development and numerical simulation results of the method are also included. For the structural vibration control community, identification of the dominant vibration has been an important issue. If the dominant vibration modes are successfully identified, the control engineers can choose a proper control gain set which has been pre-tuned for the identified vibration mode. As the development of piezoelectric materials progressed, vibration mode identification techniques step into a new stage. Several papers reported vibration mode identification by using distributed piezoelectric modal sensors. Unfortunately, the spatially filtering methods need specially designed configuration corresponding to the geometry of the structures. These difficulties hinder the application and development of modal sensing and vibration control technology. In this paper, the authors develop a new method of the mode identification, and present analytical simulations for rectangular plates and circular plates. Finally, experimental verification of the method is also presented.


AVO analysis has been successful with many cases in hydrocarbon detection in Tertiary turbidite reservoir in Angola deep water region.But there were some failed drilling cases relying on prospects from AVO study.Therefore,data oriented approach is proposed based on intensive analysis of seismic data,subtle rock physics study and forward modeling in order to improve hydrocarbon detection.


We present an approach to monitor and control the strength of the hybridization between electronic states of graphene and metal surfaces. Inspecting the distribution of the $\pi$ band in a high-quality graphene layer synthesized on Ni(111) by angle-resolved photoemission, we observe a new "kink" feature which indicates a strong hybridization between $\pi$ and \textit{d} states of graphene and nickel, respectively. Upon deposition and gradual intercalation of potassium atoms into the graphene/Ni(111) interface, the "kink" feature becomes less pronounced pointing at potassium mediated attenuation of the interaction between the graphene and the substrate.


Curdella Forbes deploys a complex of historically marked territorial metaphors—plot, plantation, squatting, trespass, and transgression—to read two apparently different texts, Maryse Condé's quasi-tragic 1976 novel Heremakhonon, which is set on the African continent, and a hilarious e-mail (which Forbes has titled "Puncie") circulated on the Internet. Arguing that these diachronous texts exemplify a culture of ideological disobedience that is celebrated as evidence of Caribbean identity yet undercuts Caribbean (and diasporic) modes of imagining identity and relation, Forbes shows how trespass and transgression, and the enduring concepts of plot and plantation, acquire completely different contours and raise different ethical questions depending on location. Thus Africa, as an ostensibly valorized original homeland for black Caribbean people, and the no-man's-land of cyberspace produce sites of ethical discomfort that radically test the celebrations associated with transgression in a postcolonial context.


Context: The Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) paradigm and the planning phase of a systematic literature review. Objective: A protocol to do a systematic literature review with detailed information about the processes suggested by several guidelines in the field of evidence-based software engineering. Method: An analisys of recent systematic literature reviews published in world leading journals, plus the use of two renowned guidelines and a textbook to sinthetise a formal plan (the protocol). Results: The validated protocol Conclusions: We found that most of the published systematic reviews lack on reporting the protocol, or it is weak. There is a lack of tool support to develop formal protocols. Although a protocol, like a plan, must have the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen situations, its objective is that the actual activities should resemble as far as possible of those already planned. Therefore, it is a difficult balance to achieve and, researchers must be careful not to introduce alterations that could become threats to the validity of the entire work.


This chapter considers the peril and promise of survey research in the field of gender, religion, and politics. It argues that surveys can provide important insights into these topics, but that survey research cannot answer many important questions, and is best used as one of several research tools to fully understand the complexities of religion and politics. The chapter briefly talks about arguments seeking to demonstrate that survey research is inappropriate for the topics of religion and gender, and then considers whether large cross-national surveys such as the World Values surveys work to obscure or reveal. It also considers what more narrowly focused surveys can reveal, and what insights can only be gained through other means. Although some social scientists remain centered in one form of evidence, surveys have an important role in generating and verifying hypotheses, and in helping us to understand religious mobilization and gender. Keywords: gender politics; global value surveys; religious mobilization


The predominant operationalizations of enduring rivalries use a period of time without a militarized dispute to identify the termination of such rivalries. The author argues that this misses the true termination date of most rivalries because it does not identify when the underlying disputed issues in the rivalry are resolved. The author suggests an operationalization that identifies rivalry termination dates based on a combination of the absence of militarized disputes and the use of public documents and statements that show issue settlement. Such an operationalization can result in significant changes in rivalry termination dates. The 1996 version of the Correlates of War militarized dispute data set is used to apply this new measure to Goertz and Diehl's (1995) set of enduring rivalries to produce new termination dates and show that tests of a model of rivalry termination produce different results when applied to this new data set.


We give examples of infinite order rational transformations that leave linear differential equations covariant. These examples are non-trivial yet simple enough illustrations of exact representations of the renormalization group. We first illustrate covariance properties on order-two linear differential operators associated with identities relating the same 2F1 hypergeometric function with different rational pullbacks. These rational transformations are solutions of a differentially algebraic equation that already emerged in a paper by Casale on the Galoisian envelopes. We provide two new and more general results of the previous covariance by rational functions: a new Heun function example and a higher genus 2F1 hypergeometric function example. We then focus on identities relating the same 2F1 hypergeometric function with two different algebraic pullback transformations: such remarkable identities correspond to modular forms, the algebraic transformations being solution of another differentially algebraic Schwarzian equation that also emerged in Casale's paper. Further, we show that the first differentially algebraic equation can be seen as a subcase of the last Schwarzian differential condition, the restriction corresponding to a factorization condition of some associated order-two linear differential operator. Finally, we also explore generalizations of these results, for instance, to 3F2, hypergeometric functions, and show that one just reduces to the previous 2F1 cases through a Clausen identity. The question of the reduction of these Schwarzian conditions to modular correspondences remains an open question. In a 2F1 hypergeometric framework the Schwarzian condition encapsulates all the modular forms and modular equations of the theory of elliptic curves, but these two conditions are actually richer than elliptic curves or 2F1 hypergeometric functions, as can be seen on the Heun and higher genus example. This work is a strong incentive to develop more differentially algebraic symmetry analysis in physics.


SUMMARY The maximum likelihood estimates of the parent-child interclass correlation and other parameters from familial data when the families have unequal numbers of offspring is given. Also given are two alternative sets of estimates which are easier to compute than the maximum likelihood estimates. Using these estimates, a test for the interclass correlation to be zero requires only the ordinary Student's t-distribution. Similarly other tests use only known distributions. In the analysis of familial data the degree of mother-sib resemblance is measured by the interclass correlation, the correlation between two different types of family member. Several estimates of this correlation have been proposed in the literature; see Rosner, Donner & Hennekens (1977) for details and their Monte Carlo comparisons of mean squared errors. In particular, they gave maximum likelihood estimates when the sib sizes are equal. However, when the sib sizes are not equal, Rosner (1979) proposed an algorithm for finding the maximum likelihood estimates which involves iterative maximization of an implicit function of two parameters. This algorithm is difficult to implement and may not even converge for some sets of data. Recently Mak & Ng (1981) used the linear model approach of Kempthorne & Tandan (1953) to obtain the maximum likelihood estimates. This reduces the problem to iterative maximization of a function of one parameter. However, nothing is known about the convergence of the procedure. Another iterative method of finding the maximum likelihood estimates has been given by Smith (1980). In this paper, an alternative approach is given which requires solving only one equation. Also, two alternative sets of estimates are given. These estimates are easier to compute than the maximum likelihood estimates. Using these estimates, a test for the interclass correlation to be zero is given; it requires only the ordinary Student's t distribution. Similarly, other tests use only known results.


In the sixteenth century, no Protestant interpreter of Paul had more influence on his contemporaries than Philip Melanchthon. To say that Melanchthon saw how to rescue dialectics for use in the humanist curriculum, however, does not undermine his deep commitment to the rhetorical methods of his time. In the Romans commentaries of the 1530s, he goes on the warpath against the Romanists, enthusiasts and Origenists, defending his Apology of the Augsburg Confession in the process. Large portions of Luther's preface were in fact merely a reworking of Melanchthon's exegesis. Scholars have expended an inordinate amount of effort to locate and date Melanchthon's earliest biblical lectures. The construction of introductions and outlines to biblical books stretches back into the history of the early church. In Pauline studies today, the role of justification by faith in the apostle's writings looms large.Keywords: Augsburg Confession; humanist; Paul; Philip Melanchthon; Romans


The present paper is to predict educational achievement goals using identity styles in high school students of Sirjan. The methodology of the research is descriptive. The sample included 349 students (female and male) who were chosen using multistage sampling method from the intended population. Hewitt identity styles inventory as well as Elliot and McGregor goal orientation inventory were used to assess the intended variables. Regression statistical method was used to analyze data. The research results showed that informational identity significantly predicts approach-mastery, avoidance-mastery and approach-performance goals. In addition, the findings indicated that normative identity significantly predicts avoidance-performance goal.


The subject of the article is the process of implementing the provisions of the Lisbon Treaty from 13 December 2007 during the first 5 years following its entry into force. The first part of the article introduces implementation actions concerning the EU's institutional system while the second part – works on the implementation of provisions concerning the delegated and implementing acts. The third part has been devoted to the implementation of provisions modifying the principles of democracy and the axiology of the EU, however the fourth part concerns changes in the European Union's common security and defence policy. Finally, the fifth part describes the Irish Protocol containing legal guarantees granted to Ireland by the EU within the domain of the right to life, education and family, tax policy and the security and defence policy.


CeO2因其具有铁磁性,在电子自旋器件方面有着广泛的应用前景。本文简要概述了近年来国内外学者关于CeO2铁磁性起源的研究成果,主要包括氧空位、磁性离子掺杂、表面Ce3+/Ce4+对、铈空位、表面Ce3+浓度、晶粒尺寸等原因。同时,对目前CeO2铁磁性起源研究存在的问题和未来研究方向进行总结和展望。 CeO2 has a broad application prospect in electronic spin devices due to its ferromagnetic. The research achievements of scholars domestic and overseas in recent years about the origins of the ferromagnetic of CeO2 was discussed in this paper briefly, mainly including oxygen vacancies, doping magnetic ions, Ce3+/Ce4+ pairs on surface, cerium vacancies, consistence of Ce3+ on surface, size of grains, et al. Meanwhile, the problems of the research and re- search direction about the origin ferromagnetic of CeO2 was summed up in this article and looked into the distance.


In this study, we propose a new method of adapting language models for speech recognition using para-linguistic and extralinguistic features in speech. When we talk with others, we often change the way of lexical choice and speaking style according to various contextual factors. This fact indicates that the performance of automatic speech recognition can be improved by taking the contextual factors into account, which can be estimated from speech acoustics. In this study, we attempt to find global and acoustic features that are associated with those contextual factors, then integrate those features into Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) language models for speech recognition. In experiments, using Japanese spontaneous speech corpora, we examine how i-vector and openSMILE are associated with contextual factors. Then, we use those features in the reranking process of RNN-based language models. Results show that perplexity is reduced by 16% relative and word error rate is reduced by 2.1% relative for highly emotional speech.


The prevalence of childhood obesity in the US is high, currently almost 17% of children and adolescents ages 2-19 years are considered obese. Following a tripling in the prevalence of childhood obesity since 1980, the rapid increase in prevalence has slowed and possibly leveled off during the last 10 years. Childhood obesity often tracks to adulthood and, in the short run, childhood obesity can lead to psychosocial problems and cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and abnormal glucose tolerance or diabetes. This session will describe the epidemiology of childhood obesity in the US.


Introduction: The State Emergency Medical System (PRM) exists to provide assistance to every person in state of sudden
threat to their health or life, operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round. The units of the system are
hospital emergency departments (SOR) and emergency medical teams, including aviation emergency medical teams.
The obvious purpose of the PRM System, which is to save life of human, as any complex activity, is sometimes put to
the proof. Appearing and publicised by media cases of late medical attention, calls ignored by a dispatcher or sending
emergency medical teams from hospital to hospital seriously undermine the reputation of healthcare service in Poland.
The aim: Evaluation of organization of the PRM System in Poland by practitioners – medical staff of Hospital Emergency
Departments, ambulance personnel and medical students.
Material and methods: The material included a group of 138 interviewees from 768 participants of the 11th Emergency
Medicine Conference Kopernik 2018. The research tool was the author's survey consisting of 12 thematic questions,
including one open question, and the part collecting sociodemographic data. The collected empirical material was given
descriptive and statistical analysis using Microsoft Excel. The results were presented by calculating the arithmetic mean,
median, dominant, standard deviation, coefficient of variation and% of responses respectively.
Results: In the majority of respondents' opinion the organization of the PRM system in Poland is average. The vast
majority of respondents (64%) consider the two-people "P" teams to be insufficient. Problems the most often reported
by the respondents were lack/or insufficient number of trainings, underfunding of the system, large salaries disparities,
shortages of staff, hampered cooperation with other services.
Conclusions: The analysis of selected items of the organization of the State Emergency Medical Service in Poland in
opinion of practitioners points out the need to implement organizational changes which could improve the system.


This paper describes a case history of the application of resistivity methods on the detection of a tomb tentatively
associated with Damiao de Goes, a prominent Portuguese humanist who lived in the XVI century. The survey
carried out inside Varzea Church comprised dipole-dipole, gradient and pole-pole arrays. The results obtained
from the 2D inversion of dipole-dipole data and 3D inversion of the gradient array have shown high resistivity
anomalies that were assigned to the walls of the tomb. The low resistivity anomalies observed in between were
interpreted as due to the presence of water enriched by ions from the decomposition of human bodies. This result
is corroborated by the imaging obtained using the 3D probability tomography of the gradient and pole-pole data.
Excavation works, carried out in accordance with the results of the geoelectrical investigation, successfully found
a 2.7×0.8×1.7 m tomb, where several human bones have been collected. A 3D resistivity model incorporating the
main features of the tomb was built after the excavation. The pole-pole model responses calculated from this model
reproduce the main features observed in the data.


Brief descriptions of the habitats and distributions of Avena species in the Mediterranean and Near East areas are given. These are based on observations made by the authors in three expeditions undertaken during the last decade.Avena pilosa, at its highest distributional density, is a primary component of the Quercus brantii climax area. The main concentration of A. clauda is in the Pistacia–Amygdalus steppe forest which is usually adjacent to the former species. Avena clauda is also a weed in some places in Iran. Both A. pilosa and A. clauda form large populations in Turkish and Iraqui Kurdistan and Iran but small and scattered populations in the Mediterranean region. Avena ventricosa is a rare and scattered species; it is probably of a relic nature and is found only in undisturbed habitats. Avena longiglumis is primarily a Mediterranean species and prefers light or sandy soil. The aggregate A. hirtula–wiestii is Arabo–Nubian–Mediterranean, and forms dense colonies. Avena barbata is Mediterranean – West...


Music source separation (MSS) aims at decomposing a music recording into its constituent sources, such as a lead instrument and the accompaniment. Despite the difficulties in MSS due to the high correlation of musical sources in time and frequency, deep neural networks (DNNs) have led to substantial improvements to accomplish this task. For training supervised machine learning models such as DNNs, isolated sources are required. In the case of popular music, one can exploit open-source datasets which involve multitrack recordings of vocals, bass, and drums. For western classical music, however, isolated sources are generally not available. In this article, we consider the case of piano concertos, which is a genre composed for a pianist typically accompanied by an orchestra. The lack of multitrack recordings makes training supervised machine learning models for the separation of piano and orchestra challenging. To overcome this problem, we generate artificial training material by randomly mixing sections of the solo piano repertoire (e.g., piano sonatas) and orchestral pieces without piano (e.g., symphonies) to train state-ofthe-art DNN models for MSS. As our main contribution, we propose a test-time adaptation (TTA) procedure, which exploits random mixtures of the piano-only and orchestraonly parts in the test data to further improve the separation quality.


Interpenetrating polymer network are a combination of two or more polymers that allow creating a new material with a unique set of properties. An ideal scaffold for an extracellular matrix could be achieved by the combination of polymers to improve the scaffold's physical and chemical characteristics. The aim of this work was to synthesize and characterize an interpenetrating polymer network of polyvinylpyrrolidone and poly(acrylic acid) in contact with cells of the oral mucosa. A sequential synthesis method was performed, adding polyvinylpyrrolidone xerogel to the acrylic acid monomer. Infrared spectroscopy and differential scanning calorimetry were used to characterize these networks. Differences in swelling kinetics, porosity, and density were also studied. A similar swelling degree and percentage of porosity between interpenetrating polymer network and poly(acrylic acid) were found. Also, maximum swelling was achieved in both networks at the same time point. The hemocompatibility and cell viability of the networks in contact with oral mucosa cells was also evaluated. Cytotoxicity analysis indicates that the interpenetrating polymer network is not toxic for oral mucosa cells. Additionally, the percentage of hemolysis was reduced when both poly(acrylic acid) and polyvinylpyrrolidone were combined as an interpenetrating polymer network. The results indicate that the combination of both polymers as an interpenetrating polymer network generated a suitable matrix for oral mucosa cells.


Failure of normal extension and retraction of the penis and prepuce in the male bovine animal of breeding age is cause for concern. Injury to the tender preputial tissue is a common occurrence, particularly in the young, sexually aggressive male.
Many promising young herd sires, and many older proven sires, have been removed prematurely from the breeding herd because of trauma to the preputial tissue. Corrective surgery and proper aftercare should reduce this loss. The purpose of the study reported here was to investigate a technique designed to prevent unwanted complications following surgical treatment of preputial injuries.


One numerical model allowing to study the influence of single and repeted scattering from interfaces of ocean ducts on total field angular structure of one sound source and on field weaking coefficient angular dependence is presented in this paper. The author obtains a system of rayonnement transport equations in functional or differential form as mathematical model for the structure. It is anticipated that the interfaces is omnidirectional and stochastically homogenious. Several exemples of numerical simulation are presented. The scattering on the seas is described with Voronovotch's small-slope approximation or Kurianov's two-scale model. One compares influence of scatterings of different orders


In the present article, we study the relationship of cotorsion pairs among three triangulated categories in a recollement. We show that if a triangulated category 𝒟 admits a recollement relative to triangulated categories 𝒟′ and 𝒟″, we can obtain cotorsion pairs in 𝒟 from cotorsion pairs in 𝒟′ and 𝒟″. On the other hand, we prove that certain cotorsion pairs in 𝒟 can induce cotorsion pairs in 𝒟′ and 𝒟″. Furthermore, we construct recollements of abelian categories from a recollement of triangulated categories.


Abstract Objectives: To identify and assess the barriers that health authorities face as they manage quality improvements in general practice in the context of the NHS reforms. Design: Qualitative case study. Setting: Three UK health authorities: a rural health authority in the south west, a deprived inner city health authority in the north east, and an affluent suburban health authority in the south east. Participants: Senior and junior managers. Main outcome measures: Structure of strategic and organisational management, and barriers to the leadership and management of quality improvement in general practice. Results: Seven barriers were identified: absence of an explicit strategic plan for general practice, competing priorities for attention of the health authority, sensitivity of health professionals, lack of information due to poor quality of clinical data, lack of authority to implement change, unclear roles and responsibilities of managers within the organisations, and isolation from other authorities or organisations facing similar challenges. Conclusions: The health authorities faced significant barriers that would impede their ability to fulfil their responsibilities in the new NHS and that would reduce their capacity to contribute to quality improvements in general practice. Key messages Health authorities fail to take a strategic approach to improving quality in general practice Doctors and health authority managers do not work sufficiently closely together to improve the quality of general practice Health authority managers seem to lack the authority and organisational structure to maximise the role in general practice expected of them in the NHS reforms


In this paper, we deal with the problem of categorizing different underwater habitat types. Previous works on solving this categorization problem are mostly based on the analysis of underwater images. In our work, we design a system capable of categorizing underwater habitats based on underwater video content analysis since the temporally correlated information may make contribution to the categorization task. However, the task is very challenging since the underwater scene in the video is continuously varying because of the changing scene and surface conditions, lighting, and the viewpoint. To that end, we investigate the utility of two approaches to underwater video classification: the common spatio-temporal interest points (STIPs) and the video texture dynamic systems, where we model the underwater footage using dynamic textures and construct a categorization framework using the approach of the Bag-of-Systems(BoSs). We also introduce a new underwater video data set, which is composed of more than 100 hours of annotated video sequences. Our results indicate that, for the underwater habitat identification, the dynamic texture approach has multiple benefits over the traditional STIP-based video modeling.


Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase(PAL) gene of Glycine max L (GM) was cloned by SOE-PCR method from the genomic DNA. The full length exon of PAL expression vector pET-GMPAL was constructed and expressed in E.coli. Catalytic activity of conversion L-phenylalanine into cinnamic acid by the recombination GMPAL is achieved at high specific activity, up to 211.7μmol/g pro·min (3529μkat/kg), higher than the parsley recombinant PAL, and Rhotodotorula glutins PAL. Molecular weight of the expressed PAL protein was estimated to be 77.9kD. The amounts of PAL protein expression level was 8% of total E.coli soluble proteins by SDS-PAGE. Results indicated that soybean recombinant PAL is efficiently expressed in E.coli as fully activated functional enzyme.


The excitonic electroabsorption has been investigated for a high-purity GaAs epilayer of 10 µm thickness at room temperature and clear red-shift (≃1.44 nm) of the excitonic absorption peak has been observed. An extinction ratio over 10 dB has been obtained with an applied voltage of 11 V, which is nearly five times larger than the theoretical estimation without considering the exciton. This may be the first observation for of a surface normal structure with a polyaniline as a transparent Schottky electrode. The insertion loss is estimated to be 3 dB. This relative low driving voltage for a bulk configuration without quantum wells is due to high-purity GaAs.


Given any infinite structure M with a decidable first-order theory, we give a sucient condition in terms of the Gaifman graph of M, which ensures that M can be expanded with some non-definable predicate in such a way that the first-order theory of the expansion is still decidable.


Abstract Most commonly followed practice to manage sucking insect pests during flushing season in citrus by citrus growers is foliar application of insecticides. Leaf dip bioassays for insecticides, viz., acephate 75 SP, dimethoate 30 EC, quinalphos 25 EC, chlorpyriphos 20 EC, spinosad 45 SC, imidacloprid 17.8 SL and thiamethoxam 25 WG, were conducted to assess the susceptibility of field collected Aphis gossypii and Aphis spiraecola (Hemiptera–Aphididae) adults. In general, the resistance ratio (RR) values indicated that the current levels in aphid population from major citrus belts of Maharashtra are in very low resistance category. Among seven insecticides tested on adult aphids collected from Nagpur, Amravati and Wardha districts during 2013–2015, neonicotinoid group proved the most effective in causing mortality as indicated by the lower LC50 values (0.01–0.04 ppm for imidacloprid; 0.03–0.05 ppm for thiamethoxam). Among the three locations, Amravati population has registered comparatively higher RR values indicating less susceptibility to insecticides. RR values calculated based on the base population indicated that the current resistance levels are between no and very low levels (1 < RR < 10).


This paper investigates applications mainly to the aerospace area. Even though the carbon fiber has an excellent properties, it has not been much used in the aircraft, etc, because of the cost and technology. But in these days, the properties are improved and the cost is down, using the carbon fibers are increasing every field.


Let $0 < s < 1$ and $1< p < 2$ be such that $ps < N$ and let $\Omega$ be a
bounded domain containing the origin. In this paper we prove the
following improved Hardy inequality:

Given $1 \le q < p$, there exists a positive constant $C\equiv
C(\Omega, q, N, s)$ such that
 $$
\int\limits_{\mathbb{R}^N}\int\limits_{\mathbb{R}^N} \,
\frac{|u(x)-u(y)|^{p}}{|x-y|^{N+ps}}\,dx\,dy - \Lambda_{N,p,s}
\int\limits_{\mathbb{R}^N} \frac{|u(x)|^p}{|x|^{ps}}\,dx$$$$\geq
C
\int\limits_{\Omega}\int\limits_{\Omega}\frac{|u(x)-u(y)|^p}{|x-y|^{N+qs}}dxdy
$$
for all $u \in \mathcal{C}_0^\infty({\Omega})$.
Here $\Lambda_{N,p,s}$ is the optimal constant in the Hardy
inequality (1.1).


Objective To express and serologically evaluate the recombinant protein EgAgB8/1 and the recombinant chimeric protein EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2 from Echinococcus granulosus in order to serologically diagnose cystic echinococcus(CE).Methods The recombinant prokaryotic expression vectors pET32a-EgAgB8/1 and pET32a-EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2 were introduced into E.coli BL21(DE3) LysS and induced with IPTG to express protein.The recombinant proteins obtained were purified by ultrasonication.The serological reactivity of these recombinant proteins was evaluated with Western blot using serum samples from patients with hydatidosis and cysticercosis as primary antibodies.Results E.granulosus recombinant antigens pET32a-EgAgB8/1 and pET32a-EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2 were successfully expressed in a prokaryotic expression system.SDS-PAGE analysis revealed that the molecular mass of the recombinant proteins was 28 ku and 38 ku,respectively.Western blotting revealed that these recombinant proteins reacted specifically with serum samples from patients with hydatidosis.To determine the serological reaction of these recombinant proteins,the proteins were allowed to react with 16 serum samples from patients with hydatidosis.Eleven samples reacted positively to the recombinant protein EgAgB8/1 and 13 reacted positively to the recombinant chimeric protein EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2.The proteins were also allowed to react with 12 serum samples from patients with cysticercosis.Five serum samples reacted positively to the recombinant protein EgAgB8/1 and 3 reacted positively to the recombinant chimeric protein EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2.Conclusion The recombinant chimeric protein EgAgB8/1-EgAgB8/2 possesses specific antigenicity and performs better than the recombinant protein EgAgB8/1 in the serological diagnosis of cystic echinococcosis.


Accessible summary
• This is the story of how we helped a lady with a learning disability whose mother had died.
• We know it is difficult for people to talk about death and we know that it can be very difficult to talk to a person with a learning disability about death.
• We talk about how we worked with this lady and her carers to help her to cope with her mother's death.
• We worked with this lady for eight sessions during 3 months.

Summary
This case study considers the psychological assessment, formulation and treatment of Hannah, a woman with a learning disability who recently experienced the death of her mother. Death still remains a challenging and often taboo subject. Moreover, when the grief is of a person with a learning disability, this combines with underlying difficulties in understanding the emotions of death and leads to an increased risk of behavioural and emotional issues. The assessment process is described; in particular the process with those involved in Hannah's care. The interventions used to assist Hannah in the bereavement process are also set out and took place during eight sessions over a 3 month period. A discussion and critical review of the case follows.


Eighty four human maxillary first premolars were injected with china ink, decalcified, cleared and used in study, in vitro, to determine the number of root canals, the frequency and location of lateral canals, the frequency and location of transverse anastomoses, the curvature of root canals, the location of apical foramens, and the frequency of apical deltas. The results were as follows: 1. Most of the teeth demonstrated two canals, but 20.2% of the teeth were found to have one canal. 2. Of the 151 canals studied, 38.4% of the canals were found to have lateral canals and these ramifications were usually located in the apical third of the root. 3. Of the two root canals in one root, 35.7% of the canals were found to have transverse anastomoses and were usually located in the middle third of the root. 4. 15.2% of apical foramens were located directly on the root apex and 84.8% of them laterally, and 52.3% of canals showed distal curvature.


Significance Catechol chemistry has emerged as a cornerstone of bioinspired polymers and adhesives due to its versatility in creating diverse covalent and dynamic noncovalent interactions (including metal coordination). The concept initially arose from the discovery that mussels use catechol moieties of 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) to mediate robust surface adhesion in seawater and to reinforce tough and self-healing biopolymer fibers. Currently, difficulties controlling DOPA redox chemistry limit its synthetic application; yet, mussels overcome this challenge daily through apparent physical and chemical process control. Here, we reveal that mussels employ several different processing pathways that predetermine the cross-linking fate of DOPA-containing proteins via spatiotemporal control of microenvironments in secretory vesicles and later in mature threads—with key significance for advanced polymer design. Inspired largely by the role of the posttranslationally modified amino acid dopa (DOPA) in mussel adhesion, catechol functional groups have become commonplace in medical adhesives, tissue scaffolds, and advanced smart polymers. Yet, the complex redox chemistry of catechol groups complicates cross-link regulation, hampering fabrication and the long-term stability/performance of mussel-inspired polymers. Here, we investigated the various fates of DOPA residues in proteins comprising mussel byssus fibers before, during, and after protein secretion. Utilizing a combination of histological staining and confocal Raman spectroscopy on native tissues, as well as peptide-based cross-linking studies, we have identified at least two distinct DOPA-based cross-linking pathways during byssus fabrication, achieved by oxidative covalent cross-linking or formation of metal coordination interactions under reducing conditions, respectively. We suggest that these end states are spatiotemporally regulated by the microenvironments in which the proteins are stored prior to secretion, which are retained after formation—in particular, due to the presence of reducing moieties. These findings provide physicochemical pathways toward greater control over properties of synthetic catechol-based polymers and adhesives.


There is a bidirectional relationship between sleep and mental health, with deteriorations in one often associated with concomitant decrements in the other. Young adults (YAs) are at an increased risk of experiencing sleep disturbance, as well as anxiety and mood disorders. Individuals at this developmental stage are also more likely to have an evening chronotype, the circadian preference most closely related to poor mental health outcomes. This dissertation comprises two studies that draw from the same data set. Study 1 examined the prevalence rates of, and relationships among, sleep disturbance as measured by three sleep metrics and mental health. Results from this first study demonstrated above average rates of anxiety, depression, and global distress. A dose-response relationship was found between sleep disturbance, as indicated by three separate sleep metrics, and mental health symptoms: the greater the number of sleep measures for which participants met or exceeded clinical cut-offs, the more severe was the mental health symptomology. Study 2 examined the prevalence rates of chronotype among YAs, and the relationship between chronotype and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and global distress, as well as the positive psychological constructs of mindfulness and perceived social support. The second study demonstrated a prevalence rate of evening chronotype that is consistent with other YA populations surveyed elsewhere. Additionally, it was found that chronotype shared a gradient relationship with mental health, with evening types endorsing greater scores on all mental health measures than their intermediate and morning counterparts. In contrast, morning types were more likely to report greater levels of mindfulness and perceived social support. Age had an inconsistent impact on the relationship between chronotype and mental health. This findings of these two studies emphasize the increased risk at which YAs with poor sleep quality and/or evening chronotype are for experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and distress. Study limitations and future directions for knowledge translation are discussed.


Reflectors are the preferred high-gain antenna for ground base stations and radar applications. However, they are bulky and heavy for airborne applications. Hence, planar arrays such as microstrip antenna arrays are favored in airborne use. Unfortunately, losses in the array feeding network are unacceptable at Terahertz (THz) frequencies due to the significant absorption of any material/substrate in this range (D. Grischkowsky et al., J. Opt. Soc. Am. B, 7, 2006, 1990). Therefore, high-gain reflectarrays are the preferred practical solution for high data rate THz airborne applications.


The purpose of this study is to describe of social media and brand loyalty. In addition, to determine the effect of social media on brand loyalty. this type of research is descriptive and verifikatif, by using online survey method. Sampling technique used is simple random sampling. The sample in this study amounted to 235 people with object of this research is Teh Botol Sosro. Data analysis techniques in this study using a simple linear regression analysis. the results of this study show the social media and brand loyalty categorized high on the continuum line. The result of correlation calculation of social media variables have a significant influence on brand loyalty


We describe a technique to reliably identify individual integrated circuits (ICs), based on a prior delay characterization of the IC.We describe a circuit architecture for a key card for which authentication is delay based, rather than based on a digital secret key. We argue that key cards built in this fashion are resistant to many known kinds of attacks.Since the delay of ICs can vary with environmental conditions such as temperature, we develop compensation schemes and show experimentally that reliable authentication can be performed in the presence of significant environmental variations.The delay information that is extracted from the IC can also be used to generate keys for use in classical cryptographic primitives. Applications that rely on these keys for security would be less vulnerable to physical attack.


AbstractPeople wonder why China's economy has developed so rapidly in the last 30 years and consider the development a miracle. I do not consider this rapid development to be a miracle. It is rather the result of an economic law. Three important fundamental driving forces have been behind this rapid development. These are the same driving forces that contributed to the rapid economic development of Japan before and after World War II, and of the Four Dragons (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and S. Korea) from the 1960s to the 1980s. The factors are human capital of high quality, a set of functioning market institutions and being at an early stage of economic development which gives the economy much room to catch up. Let me elaborate on these factors in turn…


ABSTRACT MNX1-AS1 expression has been proposed to be abnormally upregulated in multiple human malignancies and be linked with the survival outcome of patients. However, relevant conclusions were yielded based on the limited samples. Therefore, we herein implemented a meta-analysis of the published cohort studies to further decipher the relationship of MNX1-AS1 level to prognosis and clinicopathological features in various cancers. Additionally, using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) datasets we carried out a bioinformatics analysis to make a further evaluation on the prognostic value of MNX1-AS1 expression. The results of meta-analysis indicated elevated MNX1-AS1 level closely correlated with poorer overall survival (OS) (HR = 1.97, 95% CI, 1.73–2.24; P < 0.00001), and disease-free survival (DFS) (HR = 2.24, 95% CI, 1.48–3.38; P = 0.0001) in cancers, which was confirmed by the bioinformatics analysis. Besides, it was observed the upregulated MNX1-AS1 level was significantly related to invasion depth, disease stage, tumor metastasis, and differentiation. Collectively, high MNX1-AS1 level correlated with poor survival outcome and aggressive clinicopathological characteristics in various cancers, suggesting that MNX1-AS1 may be applied as a prognostic marker and even a therapeutic target. Nevertheless, more high-quality studies designed with a large sample size should be conducted to further determine the clinical role of MNX1-AS1 in specific cancer types. Graphical abstract


Short-term (up to 2-3 days ahead) probabilistic forecasts of wind power provide forecast users with a paramount information on the uncertainty of expected wind generation. Whatever the type of these probabilistic forecasts, they are produced on a per horizon basis, and hence do not inform on the development of the forecast uncertainty through forecast series. This issue is addressed here by describing a method that permits to generate statistical scenarios of wind generation that accounts for the interdependence structure of prediction errors, in plus of respecting predictive distributions of wind generation. The approach is evaluated on the test case of a multi-MW wind farm over a period of more than two years. Its interest for a large range of applications is discussed.


The membrane-bound hydrogenase was localized in cells of Alcaligenes eutrophus by electron microscopic immunocytochemistry. Post-embedding labeling performed on ultrathin sections revealed that the enzyme was located predominantly (80%) at the cell periphery in autotrophically and heterotrophically grown bacteria harvested from the exponential phase of growth. In the stationary growth phase, however, only 50% of the enzyme was found at the cell periphery; the remaining 50% was distributed over the cytoplasm. The relative amount of electron microscopic label per cell as seen by application of the protein A—gold technique was higher in cells grown autotrophically as compared to cells grown heterotrophically on fructose. Derepression of the enzyme was followed electron microscopically in a substrate-shift experiment (growth on fructose, followed by a shift to glycerol). Major amounts of the enzyme appeared to undergo a reattachment to the cytoplasmic membrane under these conditions, starting with a reduced location of the enzyme in the cytoplasm and an accumulation in cell areas close to the cytoplasmic membrane. These findings indicate that the 'membrane-bound' hydrogenase (i.e., that material enriched as membrane-bound enzyme according to the appropriate activity test) is not, in fact, membrane bound or membrane integrated but membrane associated. It may or may not interact with the cytoplasmic face of the cytoplasmic membrane, depending on the growth phase and conditions.


In general Multilevel inverter used to control various parameters of load. This paper has included about seven Level Inverter and cascaded seven Level Inverter which is used to convert uncontrolled D.C. into controlled A.C. For pulse generation we are using Sinusoidal Pulse Width Modulation (SPWM) technique by comparing carrier and reference signal which is widely used in industrial applications like speed control of Induction Motor, Brushless D.C. Motor and large power applications. By using this technique, we can reduce the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and improves voltage magnitude of load. All output result of inverter with R load, and FFT analysis has discussed in this paper.


The article presented the results of studying correlation of emotional and volitional characteristics of adolescents with a character accentuation type. The main approaches to character studying, problems of its definition and operationalization, connection with other categories were considered. Character was defined as sustainable ways of emotional and volitional response of an individual to environment. This definition is opposed to understanding of character as moral and ethical evaluation of an individual. Thus, we believe that character could be determined through emotional and volitional qualities. Accentuation of character mean excessively expressed trait that makes an individual vulnerable to specific influences. In the study, we relied on A. E. Lichko's typology of character accentuations. The disadvantage of typological approach to character studying was a lack of common basis for accentuations classification. We first made an attempt to correlate character accentuations typology with emotional and volitional qualities as a base of characters taxonomy. During the study the severity of emotional and volitional characteristics of adolescents with certain types of character accentuations was revealed, the descriptions of these character accentuations types in the context of emotional and volitional response were given as opposed to description of typical behavioral reactions.


Glaucoma is a group of eye diseases that damage the optic nerve. Glaucoma remains a leading cause of blindness in adults over age 60, according to the National Eye Institute (NEI), a division of the National Institutes of Health. Herbal medicine is the oldest form of healthcare known to mankind. Herbal medicine is still the mainstay of about 75–80% of the world population, mainly in the developing countries, for primary health care because of better cultural acceptability, better compatibility with the human body and lesser side effects. Population rise, inadequate supply of drugs, prohibitive cost of treatments, side effects of several allopathic drugs and development of resistance to currently used drugs for infectious diseases have led to increased emphasis on the use of plant materials as a source of medicines for a wide variety of human ailments. In this review the different medicinal plants which are used in the treatment of glaucoma are discussed.


Making efficient motion decisions for a multi-robot system is a challenging problem in target encirclement with collision avoidance. Specifically, each robot with local communication has to consider cooperative target encirclement and collision avoidance simultaneously. In this paper, a distributed transferable policy network framework based on deep reinforcement learning is proposed to solve the problem of multi-robot cooperative target encirclement with collision avoidance. The proposed policy network framework is able to process the information of uncertain number of robots and obstacles, which is a desirable property for multi-robot systems. In particular, graph attention communication mechanism is adopted to model multi-robot interactions as a graph and extract cooperative information from the graph. Long short-term memory is used to accept the states of uncertain number of obstacles. In addition, a compound reward is designed to lead the training of the behavior of target encirclement with collision avoidance. Curriculum learning is implemented to speed up the process of this training. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Moreover, we further show that the learned policy can directly transfer to different scenarios along with good generalization.


Objective To compare the therapeutic effects and the cost-effectiveness between puerarin and Xuesaitong in the treatment of cerebral infarction. Methods Using pharmacoeconomic cost-effectiveness analysis, puerarin was compared with Xuesaitong in the treatment of 94 patients with cerebral infarction. Results The total effective rates of puerarin and Xuesaitong were 88.89% and 87.76%, respectively, the cost-effectiveness ratios were 5.62 and 3.28, respectively. Conclusion Both of puerarin and Xuesaitong can effectively treat cerebral infarction, but the coat-effectiveness ratio of Xuesaitong is superior to that of puerarin.


By scraping data of almost 17 trillion plays of songs on Spotify in six European countries, this work provides evidence that the lockdown imposed in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic significantly changed the music consumption in terms of nostalgia. This work constructs a binary measure of nostalgia consumption of music and employs country-specific logistic regressions in which lockdown is taken as a treatment that interacts with a quadratic trend. The lockdown altered the trend of nostalgia consumption upward, which peaked roughly 60 days after the lockdown. A placebo test shows that the upward turn of slope is not an annual pattern. On the other hand, COVID incidence rate does not provide significant additional explanatory power to the model. This work shows that Spotify's users react to the lockdown even when COVID incidence rate is low and the impact stays high even the incidence rate has peaked, suggesting that demand for nostalgia tends to respond to the drastic and lasting change caused by lockdown rather than to the fluctuations in the viral infection.


Centaurea vlachorum Hartvig is described from alpine meadows on ophiolithic substratum on Mt. Milea in N Pindhos, Greece. It is a very distinct species related to sect. Leptoranthus within subgen. Jacea.


Educators and researchers in the acquisition of L2 phonology have called for empirical assessment of the progress students make after using new methods for learning [1]. This study investigated whether unlimited access to a speech-recognition-based language learning program would improve the general goodness of pronunciation of a group of middle-aged immigrant professionals studying English in Sweden. Eleven students were given a copy of the program UhyxǂÃHrÃby Auralog as a supplement to a 200-hour course in Technical English, and were encouraged to practice on their home computers. Their development in spoken English was compared with a control group of fifteen students who did not receive software. Uhyxà ‡'ÃHr uses speech recognition to provide conversational practice, visual feedback on prosody and scoring of pronunciation. A significant limitation of commercial systems currently available is their inability to diagnose specific articulatory problems. However, in this course students also met at regular intervals with a pronunciation tutor who could steer them in the right direction for finding the most important sections to practice for their particular problems. Students reported high satisfaction with the software and used it for an average of 12.5 hours. Students were pre-and post-tested with the automatic PhonePass SET-10 test from Ordinate Corp. Results indicate that practice with the program was beneficial to those students who began the course with a strong foreign accent but that students who began the course with intermediate pronunciation did not show the same improvement. With proper adaptation, speech technology allows beginning language students to practice spoken language outside the classroom. Dialogue-based software using fixed-response ASR lets learners have a simulated conversation with a computer. Practicing with such programs should help students improve fluency and confidence. Furthermore, the software can provide individual feedback on pronunciation, which is something that is often lacking in the language classroom. Algorithms calculate by how much a given pronunciation has deviated from a model, and give a score on phonetic accuracy. Visual representation of waveforms and pitch curves aid students in perceiving how their prosody deviates from a model. Computer animations illustrate the inside of the vocal tract and the movements necessary for proper articulation of sounds. Features such as these should be an important aid to teachers who do not have the resources to instruct students individually in pronunciation. Morley [1] expresses a " need for controlled studies of changes in learner pronunciation patterns as the result of specific instructional procedures …


As a traditional spicy condiment, Zanthoxylum armatum var. novemfolius is of high economical and medicinal value. Despite the long history of human cultivation, the molecular mechanisms underlying flower development are still poorly understood in Z. armatum. In this study, we performed de novo transcriptome assembly and comparative analysis of female and male flowers in Z. armatum. A total of 94,771 unigenes were obtained, and 50,605 unigenes were successfully annotated against the public database. Transcriptome data showed that 20,431 annotated unigenes were differentially expressed genes. KEGG enrichment analysis revealed that the most representative pathway was plant hormone signal transduction. Among them, 41, 16, 41, 27, 95, and 40 unigenes were involved in the biosynthesis and signaling of abscisic acid, ethylene, cytokinin, gibberellin, auxin, and jasmonic acid, respectively. Transcription factors also played crucial roles in flower development, such as AGL11, PMADS2, and NAC. These results provided an important basis for characterizing the potential mechanism of flower development and enriching the knowledge of reproduction genetics in Z. armatum.


Pulse propagation in a birefringent medium carries due weightage and importance in passive modelocking of fiber lasers. We have carried out study of nonlinear effects in birefringent medium by simulating pulse propagation using adaptive step size method, which is globally an efficient algorithm for solving Schrodinger type equations using split step Fourier method. Nonlinear optical loop mirror was realized and it was revealed that the results can be used in forming a figure of eight fiber laser using NOLM, where NOLM behaves like a fast saturable absorber. Novelty lies in producing accurate results using adaptive step size method. Index Terms: Non-linear Schrodinger equation (NLSE), Self Phase modulation (SPM), cross phase modulation (XPM), kerr non-linearity, Symmetrized split step Fourier method (SSSFM), Nonlinear Optical Loop Mirror (NOLM).


Two opto-mechatronic systems for optical measurements are proposed and realized. The first experimental setup is applied for determining the temporal coherence of light sources. The other opto-mechatronic system is used to study the Lau effect with a partially coherent light source, which is unconventional in Lau's experiment.


This paper presents an analytical framework, focused on individuals as the unit of analysis that enables micro-level analytical insights to be drawn from data collected in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) project. GEM is among the largest entrepreneurship research initiatives in the world. Its main purpose is to investigate how entrepreneurship influences economic development at the national level. It has had a strong influence on industry and entrepreneurship policy practice around the world. However, regardless of all GEM's previous achievements it is argued in this paper that an additional analytical framework complementing the earlier macro-level focus is crucial. The strengths and limitations of the proposed analytical framework are discussed. The key to successful micro-level analysis of GEM data is the ability to compare characteristics of entrepreneurship across countries and across different life cycle stages.


Unlike existing password authentication mechanisms on the web that use passwords for client-side authentication only, password-authenticated key exchange (PAKE) protocols provide mutual authentication. In this article, we present an architecture to integrate existing PAKE protocols to the web. Our integration design consists of the client-side part and the server-side part. First, we implement the PAKE client-side functionality with a web browser plug-in, which provides a secure implementation base. The plug-in has a log-in window that can be customized by a user when the plug-in is installed. By checking the user-specific information in a log-in window, an ordinary user can easily detect a fake log-in window created by mobile code. The server-side integration comprises a web interface and a PAKE server. After a successful PAKE mutual authentication, the PAKE plug-in receives a one-time ticket and passes it to the web browser. The web browser authenticates itself by presenting this ticket over HTTPS to the web server. The plug-in then fades away and subsequent web browsing remains the same as usual, requiring no extra user education. Our integration design supports centralized log-ins for web applications from different web sites, making it appropriate for digital identity management. A prototype is developed to validate our design. Since PAKE protocols use passwords for mutual authentication, we believe that the deployment of this design will significantly mitigate the risk of phishing attacks.


Abstract : This study examines options presently or potentially available to the U.S. Navy for assessing and displaying the existence or likelihood of elevated trapping layers (ETL) and their associated ducts over a particular geographic point or area, in support of command and control (C2) functions related to such tactical considerations as detection, intercept, communication, guidance systems functioning and surveillance. (Author)


This study examined the experiences of administrative interns at the completion of their experience, using a phenomenological framework, document analysis, semi-structured interviews and a survey. Findings indicate a disparity between theory espoused in programmes and actual practice of sitting administrators, ideological dissonance between traditional theories of leadership and the more contemporary theories taught in preparation programmes, a level of frustration regarding inconsistent implementation across school districts and time pressures to complete hours.


The domains of usage of large-scale distributed systems have been extending during the past years from scientific to commercial applications. Together with the extension of the application domains, new requirements have emerged for large-scale distributed systems. Among these, fault tolerance is needed by more and more modern distributed applications, not only by the critical ones. In this paper we present a solution aiming at fault tolerant monitoring of the distributed systems within the MonALISA framework. Our approach uses replication and guarantees that all processing replicas achieve state consistency, both in the absence of failures and after failure recovery. We achieve consistency in the former case by implementing a module that ensures that the order of monitoring tuples is the same at all the replicas. To achieve consistency after failure recovery, we rely on check pointing techniques. We address the optimization problem of the replication architecture by dynamically monitoring and estimating inter-replica link throughputs and real-time replica status. We demonstrate the strengths of our solution using the MonALISA monitoring application in a distributed environment. Our tests show that the proposed approach outperforms previous solutions in terms of latency and that it uses system resources efficiently by carefully updating replicas, while keeping overhead very low.


Storage mites (acarid mites) arerelated tothehousedustmitebutare usually foundin agricultural environments. Theyhavebeenshownto cause allergic symptoms inScottish farmworkers exposed tostored hay, butwhether farmworkers whogrow andstoregrain arealso at risk isunknown. Onehundred andone farmworkers on 22Essexfarms withgrain storagefacilities (88%oftheavailable workforce) participated inasurveyofrespiratory symptoms,withskin tests and determination ofserumlevels ofIgEspecific formitespecies, including storagemites. Ofthe101 workers, 21reported attacks ofcough, wheeze, orbreathlessness after exposure tostored grain and 15reported nasal symptomsafter grain exposure.Storage mitespecific IgEwas foundin59%of farmworkers withworkrelated respiratory symptoms,in60%withworkrelated nasal symptoms, andinonly9% ofsymptomless farmworkers. Workrelated respiratory andnasal symptomswere also significantly associated with atopy,andwithpositive skin test responsesandserum IgEspecific forDermatophagoides pteronyssinus. Storage mites werefoundingrain samples from16farmsin whichgrain was sampled, whereas D pteronyssinus was notfoundinany. Theclose association between serum storage mitespecific IgEandoccupational respiratory symptomssuggeststhat storage mites may beresponsible forrespiratory symptomsinthese Essexfarmworkers exposed to grain.


OBJECTIVES:To assess de novo hepatitis B virus (HBV) transmission from liver donors with HBV serum markers (HBM) to their recipients and the need for HBV vaccination before liver transplantation.METHODS:A total of 108 orthotopic liver transplantations for nonviral disease and the risk of developing de novo hepatitis B based on HBMs before transplantation have been studied. Of the 108 patients, 94 met the study criteria and were divided into two groups: 27 who had HBMs before transplantation (from past infection or by previous vaccination) and 67 who had no HBM. Development of de novo hepatitis B was determined by analytical, serological, and histological parameters.RESULTS:No case (0%) of de novo hepatitis B was detected in the pretransplantation HBM group, whereas there were 10 cases (14.5%) in the other group (p < 0.005).CONCLUSIONS:The presence of pretransplantation HBM in liver transplant recipients protects these patients against the development of de novo hepatitis B. This is especially important considering that there is a high prevalence of donors with positive hepatitis B core antibody (especially in some countries), and that these donors transmit HBV infection to recipients without HBM in a significant number of cases. Thus, vaccination against HBV in patients who are candidates for liver transplantation is fundamental to avoid cases of de novo hepatitis B.


e21569Background: Mechanisms underlying immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) efficacy and toxicity have yet to be fully elucidated and, to date, there are no reliable biomarkers predictive of the dev...


The [Cu(cyclam)]2+ (copper-1,4,8,11-tetraazacyclotetradecane)−saponite complex has been obtained by an ion exchange reaction, and a thin film for the [Cu(cyclam)]2+−saponite complex has been prepared by spin-coating onto glass slides. The orientation and the structural change of the guest complex ion in the interlayer space of saponite have been investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and polarization-dependent X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The interlayer thickness of 3.75 A from XRD analysis suggests that the copper complex ions are intercalated as a monolayer with the square planes of (CuN4) parallel to the silicate layers. Angle-resolved Cu K-edge XAS from 10 to 80° for the incident beam shows the well-resolved peak intensity variation of the xy (in-plane) and z (out-of-plane) components. From the polarized Cu K-edge X-ray near-edge spectroscopic (XANES) analysis, all the peaks can be assigned to the in-plane and out-of-plane components. The change of the bonding character also can be explain...


© Copyright 2009. The author, Carlo Ricci, assigns to Paideusis the right of first publication and educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive license to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the document is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author. Philosophical Clashes: Rethinking Scholarship


It is important to understand what exactly is being done and what is occurring in an affected persons body when approaching brain injuries and associated symptoms with Chinese medicine. In this chapter mechanisms of action will be explored along with risks and cautions associated with these treatment approaches. Emphasis will be placed on modern research into physiological mechanisms and responses. The reason for this being twofold: firstly, classical descriptions of mechanisms are easily accessible in many books on Chinese medicine; secondly, it is important for a practitioner to understand these physiological responses when communicating with other healthcare professionals unfamiliar with Chinese medical theory/terminology in explaining what care is being provided to a patient. Often those recovering from a brain injury are being treated by a wide group of professionals that may include their primary care, neurologist, nurses, neuropsychiatrists, speech-language pathologist, occupational therapist, neuro-optometrist, physical therapist, etc.


The rapid growth of civil aviation has promoted the growth of aviation maintenance industry. NDT technology, as an absolutely necessary method in aviation maintenance, has been taking a more and more important part in aviation maintenance, along with the revolutionary progress in the idea of aircraft design and maintenance style. Hereby we introduced briefly the present situation , development, and its characteristics of NDT technology for civil aviation aircraft. The-reasons that NDT technology had played the important role in progressing maintenance quality, assuring the flight safety were described in this article.


Extremely high sea levels, known as acqua alta, occasionally occur in the Adriatic in late autumn and winter, causing floods along the northern coastline and significant damage — especially in Venice. An exceptionally strong event of this kind was observed on 1 December 2008 when high sea level flooded a number of cities. During this event the oldest Croatian tide gauge station, Bakar, recorded the highest sea level, 121 cm, in its operating history (since 1929). In order to examine this particular event, we have analyzed time series of sea level, air pressure and wind recorded at stations along both sides of the Adriatic. Harmonic analysis was performed on the sea-level records to remove the tidal signal. The data were low-pass, band-pass and high-pass filtered in order to determine the low-frequency variability, the Adriatic-wide seiche and the local seiche activity, respectively. It turned out that the event was the result of superposition of several phenomena: storm surge caused by synoptic atmospheric systems, tide, basin-wide seiche, sea-level rise due to a low-frequency atmospheric disturbance and the local seiche. The present analysis may serve as an example of a possible contribution to the NVO AdriaMeteo project.


Gun having a barrel in which the spiral groove is formed, a one shot worth of ammunition in particular fired from small arms. Projectile which forms part of one shot worth of ammunition (1) is composed of a Vickers hardness 550 or more steel or other metal, and a coating of copper or a copper alloy. The projectile has a front body portion 9 having the same diameter as the diameter defined by the portion of the flat plurality of peaks between the grooves forming a spiral groove, a plurality of the plurality of grooves of the spiral groove having a rear body portion 3 having the same diameter as the diameter is determined by the valley. Since the thickness of the coating 13 is equal to or greater than the depth of the plurality of grooves of the spiral groove, the spiral groove is engraved the coating are important, the underlying metal or other hard metals are not engraved. Without substantially increasing the wear of the barrel, effects are obtained due to the rigid projectile material.


Based on the statistical method of the heating outdoor design temperature in HVAC design code, we use two calculation methods to analyze the outdoor design temperature and the heating load of some typical cities for intermittent heating . The results show that: the heating outdoor design temperature is higher 3.8 °C and 4.6 °C than that of the current standard value for long-term and short-term intermittent heating respectively, accordingly, the heating load of the long-term and short-term intermittent heating can be reduced by 9% and 15% according to the new outdoor design temperature calculated by this paper.


Forced to be flat when nonsingularly described by the equations of general relativity in a synchronous frame, a region outside matter sources is recognized to fail in defining space-time curvature consistently with the material nature of the Lorentz transformation. The curvature then extends to such a region only when there is a continuous background medium there. Arising from vacuum decay in the universe, as any matter, this medium is thus capable of avoiding the singularity of gravitational collapse as well. The theory of general relativity is then suggested to stem from such a formulation of the generalized postulate of relativity as also includes the covariance of energy-momentum conservation for a macroscopically continuous material system, namely the universe. Implying identity between gravitation and inertia, this formulation does not need the principle of equivalence as a separate postulate. The Einstein tensor is thus interpretable as standing for the energy-momentum of the gravitational field. In terms of the background medium, its small-amplitude approximation underlain by matter dynamics and phase transitions also describes what is viewable as gravitational waves. In the framework of such a macroscopic interpretation, gravitation ought to be irrelevant to purely microscopic interactions.


A new method for modeling C4ISR requirements is studied,which can serve as guideline in the modeling of C~4ISR requirements orienting operational domain.Considering the hierarchy of C~4ISR,the hierarchy of C4ISR requirements comes down to the hierarchy of node-relation,the hierarchy of activity,and the hierarchy of information.The methods of modeling the hierarchy of C~4ISR requirements are studied.In order to make the models integrative,the mapping relations of the basic elements in different models are discussed.Node mapping,activity mapping,IERs (information exchange requirements)mapping,and restriction data mapping are analyzed, respectively.At the same time,the corresponding arithmetic is presented.Therefore,node, information and activity are matching among node-relation model,information model,and IDEF0 activity model.Based these,integrative hierarchy modeling process for C~4ISR requirements is brought out.The C4ISR requirements models can be regarded as an integrative model.At last,an example shows that the method is highly helpful and feasible.


Given the MW-level direct-drive wind generation system, the optimal efficiency of generators and converters is analyzed. The loss model of the generators including iron loss and the neutral point clamping three-level converters is established. Based on the loss model and the voltage, current limit, the generators and converters, optimal efficiency analytic expressions of direct current are obtained by analyzing the relationships of direct current and loss under given torque, and then optimal efficiency solution of the wind system is got. Finally, Simulation and experiment results on a 2MW "back to back" PWM converter prototype indicate: in the fixed torque and speed condition, such optimal efficiency control is more efficient than the traditional control strategy not only on the generator or converter efficiency but also on the wind generation system.


Teaching Prayers to Early Children in the Covid-19 Social Distancing Period – the Perspective of Hadiths Teaching prayers to children is parents' and educators' obligation that must be done as early as possible. By teaching prayers since an early age, it is hoped that children can develop optimally in terms of physical, spiritual, and intellectual aspects, so that they grow into a generation with character. With the current outbreak of Covid-19, the education and teaching processesare experiencing a number of obstacles because children cannot interact directly with people other than their parents. This article aimed to describe how to teach prayers to early children based on the guidance of the Prophet Muhammad's hadiths, especially during the social distancing period of Covid-19. The research in this article used a qualitative method with a descriptive analysis approach taken from a variety of document data and in-depth observations. The research revealed that teaching prayers to early children based on the Prophet Muhammad's hadithsdeployed exemplary methods, habituation, advice, attention and monitoring, and punishment. Last but not least, parents and educators also provided educational materials such as religious, social, physical, moral and intellectual education


The prevailing theory for metabolic scaling is based on area-preserved, space-filling fractal vascular networks. However, it's known both theoretically and experimentally that animals' vascular systems obey Murray's cubic branching law. Area-preserved branching conflicts with energy minimization and hence the least-work principle. Additionally, while Kleiber's law is the dominant rule for both animals and plants, small animals are observed to follow the 2/3-power law, large animals have larger than 3/4 scaling exponents, and small plants have near-linear scaling behaviors. No known theory explains all the observations. Here, I show that animals' metabolism is determined by their Murray's vascular systems. For plants, the scaling is determined by the trunks' hydraulic conductance and the leaves' photosynthesis. Both analyses agree with data of various body sizes. Animals' scaling has a concave curvature while plants have a convex one. The empirical power laws are approximations within selected mass ranges. Generally, the 3/4-power law applies to animals of ~15 g to 10,000 kg and the 2/3-power law to those of ~1 g to 10 kg. For plants, the scaling exponent is 1 for small plants and decreases to 3/4 for those greater than ~10 kg. Kleiber's law 1 that metabolism scales with the 3/4-power of body mass has wide support in animals and plants 2,3 . Exceptions however are found at both ends of the size spectrum: small animals scale with the 2/3-power law 4–6 ; large animals such as cetaceans have larger than 3/4 power exponents 7 ; and small plants have a close to linear scaling 8,9 . The 2/3-power law would agree with the early surface heat dissipation hypothesis, but this is not supported by current analyses 10–22 . Currently , t he most influential theory explaining Kleiber's law is based on area-preserving fractal vascular networks 23,24 , though it is not universally accepted


During the rainy seasons in May and December 1988 and in December 1989, Myxomycetes were collected in northeastern and southern Tanzania, with 53 species found. According to the literature, all are new to Tanzania, and the following seven are new to Africa: Didymiwn bahiense Gottsb., Paradiachea cylindrica (Bilgram) Hertel, Physarwn notabile Macbr. , P. psittacinwn Ditmar, P. superbwn Hagelst., Tubifera bombarda (Berk. & Br.) Martin, and T. microsperma (Beck. & Curt.) Martin. A lectotype for Arcyria globosa Schw. is selected. Myxomycetes were more abundant in the montane forest belt than at other elevations, and no significant difference could be noticed in species composition between the two rainy seasons, May and December. Species belonging to the order Licheales were found only on decaying wood, and of the Physarales the majority of the specimens were found on litter.


V aginal hygiene is a private, sensitive topic. Recently, however, at meetings and in reports, researchers have been publicly voicing concerns that an often-overlooked vaginal infection that's common among some groups of women may contribute significantly to the spread of AIDS. Bacterial vaginosis, an annoying but seemingly harmless infection, occurs frequently among African women. It is less common in the United States, where it affects larger numbers of African Americans and Hispanics than whites. Emerging research suggests a danger to women with vaginosis and to their male sexual partners. The troublesome bacteria that cause vaginosis, or a deficit of those that appear to guard against it, may increase the likelihood that harmful vaginal invaders, including HIV, will cause disease and be transmitted. Diagnosing and treating bacterial vaginosis "is a very high priority for us," says Penelope J. Hitchcock, chief of the sexually transmitted diseases branch of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Md. "We're concentrating now on getting better tools [to do that]. Until we have those tools, this is a tough problem." Help may be on the way. Researchers are studying vaginal bacteria called lactobacilli that appear to protect women against vaginosis. Sharon L. Hillier of the University of Pittsburgh Magee-Women's Hospital is now testing what she calls a vaginal vitamin to restore proper concentrations of the helpful bacteria.