More than 20 trace metals are consistently present in normal human tissues, but only seven, chromium, molybdenum, manganese, iron, cobalt, copper, and zinc, are essential for human metabolic processes. Three other trace metals, vanadium, nickel, and tin, have been shown to be essential for animals and may prove to be essential to man. The essential trace element selenium is a metalloid whereas iodine and fluorine are both non-metals. The classification into essential and non-essential is open to debate. Schwarz! would argue that all trace elements are both essential and toxic, depending upon their available concentrations within organisms. Although the toxicity of an essential element at excessively high concentrations is beyond dispute (Wilson's disease is a clear example of this), I find it difficult to accept the essentiality of lead or of cadmium, neither of which has any known function. The criteria of essentiality have been the subject of a recent excellent review by Davies. 2 Essential trace metals function as activators of enzyme-metal-substrate complexes in which they are loosely bound cofactors that interact with substrate molecules by polarising bonds or by neutralising negative charges. The roles of trace elements that are integral constituents of metaIIoenzymes are either structural, in which they influence the reactivity of the protein by stabilising strained configurations of binding ligands about the metal atom, or catalytic, in which they act as centres of positive charge for Lewis-acid catalysis or by facilitating red-ox reactions when they possess more than one stable oxidation state. For example, in the copper-zinc enzyme superoxide dismutase, the role of zinc is structural whereas that of copper with its Cu(I) and CuCII) oxidation states is catalytic. Deficiencies of essential trace elements can lead to impairment of metalloenzyme functions which eventually manifest as clinical abnormalities. Causes of such deficiencies are prolonged inadequate dietary supply of available trace metals, metabolic disturbances, and excessive losses of trace elements as a result of tissue catabolism or therapeutic processes (Table I).


UNDERSTANDING THE COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF HIGH RISK OFFENDERS Kemshall, H (2008), Maidenhead: OUP/McGrawHill. ISBN 978-033 521998-5 (pbk) £22.99 This book contributes to the crime and justice series established by the OUP in 1996.The author, Hazel Kemshall is engaged with the issues surrounding risk in the criminal justice system through books, articles and a CD-ROM guide for criminal justice practitioners. She is an expert in this field. This book considers approaches to the particular 'high risk' group of offenders. Practitioners, managers and policy makers have been driven by 'extensive media, political and public attention, fuelled by blame and censure when things go wrong' ( introduction) . The book provides rigour and structure for those responsible for assessing and managing high risk offenders. The book is divided into seven chapters that explore the history and context of dangerousness, key issues in risk assessment and management, partnerships, human rights and in finally consider signposts for future developments. Governments have always been anxious about how to deal with those people who are considered to be 'risky' and the 'dangerous' yet these remain 'elusive terms'. The first chapter suggests that definitions around 'high risk' offenders are located within the contexts of use; legislation, policy, practice and public and media perspectives. A reader unfamiliar with this debate is offered a panoptic view of how risk has come to dominate research, thinking and practice. At its most basic Kemshall states, the debate it is about 'how we solve the problem of risk either as an exclusive society or as an inclusive one' (p23). This is the hinge on which the debate opens. Kemshall suggests that it is helpful for practitioners and managers to discern three approaches to definition-criminological and legal, psychological, and sociological. For practitioners the centrality of risk within offender based work has contributed to the development of differential risk assessment methods that may be, 'notoriously open to bias'(p11) Indeed in the time gap between the publication of the book and this review further serious offences by supervised offenders (baby P. and Sonnex) have further escalated public concern. Miscalculation is often attributed to individual failure and incompetence. Practitioners may be subject to a number of biases that may distort assessments and Kemshall provides, over several chapters an essential guide to these and stresses the need for the practitioners to remain alert and aware. Optimism remains however. Contemporary developments by engaging with different kinds of partnership offer a hopeful way forward. For this reviewer this was the most interesting and optimistic section of the book. …


In this paper fuzzy set theory is employed to improve the performance of a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm. The common approach to apply constraints in most of multi-objective optimization problems is to prevent the constraint violating solutions from entering the mating pool or at least let them to lose against any other feasible solution. This can lead to loss of solutions which belong to Pareto optimal set but located in the vicinity of a constraint violating solution. The use of nondominated sorting genetic algorithm along with fuzzifying the constraints and objective functions preserves the infeasible solutions with low constraint violation values. This leads to more convergence to Pareto optimal set. To assess the performance of this method, in addition to the test functions for unconstrained problems, three structural problems has been investigated.


Different recent approaches have demonstrated the feasibility of applying millimetre-waves (MMW) for the imaging of objects at a person's body. The utilisation of MMW allows for the detection of both metallic and non-metallic objects. In order to reduce costs a low number of transmit-receive modules should be used. Furthermore, the person should also be illuminated from different angles in order to avoid shadowing effects as good as possible. A way to fulfil these two conditions is to place one sensor above and another one below the person and either rotate the person standing on a turntable (inverse synthetic aperture radar, ISAR) or move the sensors on a circular path around the person (synthetic aperture radar, SAR). The goal of the reconstruction is to obtain information about the shape of possible threats and their positions in all three dimensions. During processing as a first step, the reconstruction is done along range and azimuth, which span the principal surface given by the suggested sensor configuration. Afterwards, the third spatial dimension can be determined by combined evaluation of the resolution capabilities of the curved synthetic aperture and the interferometric phase of two coherent receiving channels of one sensor.


Northern Italy is frequently affected by severe pre- cipitation conditions often inducing flood events with associ- ated loss of properties, damages and casualties. The capa- bility of correctly forecast these events, strongly required for an efficient support to civil protection actions, is still nowa- days a challenge. This difficulty is also related with the com- plex structure of the precipitation field in the Alpine area and, more generally, over the Italian territory. Recently a new generation of non-hydrostatic meteorological models, suitable to be used at very high spatial resolution, has been developed. In this paper the performance of the non-hydrostatic Lokal Modell developed by the COSMO Consortium, is analysed with regard to a couple of intense precipitation events oc- curred in the Piemonte region in Northern Italy. These events were selected among the reference cases of the Hydropti- met/INTERREG IIIB project. LM run at the operational resolution of 7 km provides a good forecast of the general rain structure, with an unsatis- factory representation of the precipitation distribution across the mountain ranges. It is shown that the inclusion of the new prognostic equations for cloud ice, rain and snow pro- duces a remarkable improvement, reducing the precipitation in the upwind side and extending the intense rainfall area to the downwind side. The unrealistic maxima are decreased to- wards observed values. The use of very high horizontal res- olution (2.8 km) improves the general shape of the precipita- tion field in the flat area of the Piemonte region but, keeping active the moist convection scheme, sparse and more intense rainfall peaks are produced. When convective precipitation is not parametrised but explicitly represented by the model, this negative effect is removed.


E-learning recommender systems are gaining significance nowadays due to its ability to enhance the learning experience by providing tailor-made services based on learner preferences. A Personalized...


We describe here the synthesis and antimicrobial activity of an innovative nanohybrid system, characterized by attachment of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) to the thiol‐functionalized polymer that was periodically crystallized on carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The synthesis of the nanohybrid architecture first involved direct crystallization of thiol‐functionalized copolymer along the long axis of CNTs, followed by attachment of AgNPs to the thiol‐group of functionalized copolymer. The antimicrobial activity was assessed in terms of interaction with Escherichia coli, where the constituents of the nanohybrid structure play a synergistic role. The antimicrobial activity was approximately four orders of magnitude greater than the ex situ precipitated bare AgNPs. Possible mechanisms underlying enhanced antimicrobial activity are discussed. The study underscores the potential of uniquely combining CNTs and biopolymers for biomedical applications, in the present case, antimicrobial activity.


Anomalies in the yield of ion-induced secondary electrons from single-crystalline target are studied. They are (1) disappearance ofchannelling dips in the angular distribution of the yield of secondary electrons in MeV light ion channelling, and (2) an increase of the yield at angle of incidence on a surface smaller than about 10°. These are interpreted in terms of ion trajectories affected by crystal periodicity and effective mean escape length for secondary electrons in a solid.


The paper begins with a shintesis of the Science and Health Programs Curriculum Proposal, worked up by the Pedagogic Studies ans Norms Coordination (CENP), from the bureau of Education in Sao Paulo State, Brazil. The Proposal's theoretical foudation on social-historic premises is also showed, toghether with the difficulties for the traditionally prepared teacher to work with it. Finally, the paper discusses the possible contribution of the educator-nurse professional, on the improvement of helth themes of the Proposal (1992), especially for the school. (Basic Cicle)


ABSTRACT In this study, we investigated the differentiation of five different chicken ecotypes – Center, North, South, West, and East – of Saudi Arabia using discriminate analysis. The analysis was based on nine important morphological and phenotypic traits: body color, beak color, earlobe color, eye color, shank color, comb color, comb type, comb size, and feather distribution. There was a strong significant relationship between the phenotype and effect of geographic height in terms of comb type and earlobe color in [...]


Natural gas is often sour, containing varying amounts of H2S and CO2. Gas sweetening processes that are routinely used rely on processes such as amine-based adsorption–desorption cycles, membrane separation, and cryogenic technologies which are energy-intensive and reject CO2. This work explores the mechanism and nature of active sites for hydrogenation (HYD) of CO2 in the presence of H2S on MoS2, a sulfur-tolerant catalyst, using steady-state kinetics studies and density functional theory calculations. In the absence of H2S, this reaction is positive order in CO2 and H2 and negative order in CO and H2O; the system, further, shows no H/D kinetic isotope effect, thereby indicating that C–O scission is rate-controlling. The specific mechanism at play, namely, redox or associative, could, however, not be adequately resolved with the available data. In the presence of H2S, the rate first drops (until about 60 ppm co-feed) and, then, increases (at >200 ppm), indicating a complex functional relationship of the ...


The expansion of productive scale is often funded by the immediate reinvestment of a depreciation fund. This phenomenon is called Lomann-Ruchti effect. The question is whether this is possible without additional investment or not. One theory claims this is attributable to the increased circulation of advanced capital, whereas, this article argues that the effect is realised by capital accumulation hidden behind depreciation procedures.


The transmission of monetary policy to the economy is a subject of major importance for central banks because, by using these measures, central banks can achieve their purpose of ensuring price stability without neglecting the objective of sustainable economic growth. In order to analyze the evolution of the monetary policy transmission mechanism in Romania, a time varying structural vector autoregression model is estimated, by using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm for the posterior evolution. The conclusions of the empirical study are: both systematic and non-systematic monetary policy have changed during the investigated period of time, the systematic response of the interest rate to shocks in inflation and unemployment being faster over the recent period. Also, non-policy shocks seem more important than interest rate shocks in explaining inflation and unemployment evolution.


The LabVIEW state diagram toolkit can be used to design and implement state machines within the LabVIEW development environment. The toolkit includes a state diagram editor so the user can draw the logic that defines the state machine. As this visual representation of the logic is created, the state diagram editor generates the LabVIEW code that executes the state machine. The logic is represented in code by a series of graphical while loops and case statements. The generated LabVIEW code can run on multiple operating systems and multiple real-time targets including NI programmable automation controller (PAC) platforms such as PXI/cPCI, CompactRIO, and Compact FieldPoint


This invention relates to a structure of a fine circuit of a CB with increased layers and its manufacturing method, which first of all provides a core CB having multiple connection pads on the surface, then forms a first dielectric layer on its surface, a second dielectric layer on the first layer and a third dielectric layer on the second layer and multiple pattern open-ends on the third layer then forms open-ends on the first and second dielectric layers corresponding to the connection pads of the core CB surface of said open-ends, then forms a seed crystal layer on the surface of the third layer, the pattern open-ends and in the holes then to plate a conductive metal layer on said seed crystal layer to form circuits on the pattern open-ends and blind holes in them, finally eliminates the conductive metal layer and the seed crystal layer on the surface of the third layer to let the conductive circuits of the pattern open-ends isolated by the third dielectric layer.


Given a spectrum X, we construct a spectral sequence of BP*BP‐comodules that converges to BP*(LnX), where LnX is the Bousfield localization of X with respect to the Johnson–Wilson theory E(n)*. The E2‐term of this spectral sequence consists of the derived functors of an algebraic version of Ln. We show how to calculate these derived functors, which are closely related to local cohomology of BP*‐modules with respect to the ideal In+1. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification 55N22, 55P60, 16W30.


The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1 variant has been supplanted in many countries by the BA.2 sub-lineage. BA.2 differs from BA.1 by about 21 mutations in its spike. Human anti-spike monoclonalantibodies(mAbs)areusedforpreventionortreatmentofCOVID-19. However, the capacity of therapeutic mAbs to neutralize BA.1 and BA.2 remains poorly characterized. Here, we first compared the sensitivity of BA.1 and BA.2 to neutralization by 9 therapeutic mAbs. In contrast to BA.1, BA.2 was sensitive to Cilgavimab, partly inhibited by Imdevimab and resistant to Adintrevimab and Sotrovimab. Two combinations of mAbs, Ronapreve (Casirivimab + Imdevimab) and Evusheld (Cilgavimab + Tixagevimab), are indicated as a pre-exposure prophylaxis in immunocompromised persons at risk of severe disease. We analyzed sera from 29 such individuals, up to one month after administration of Ronapreve and/or Evusheld. After treatment, all individuals displayed elevated antibody levels in their sera and neutralized Delta with high titers. Ronapreve recipients did not neutralize BA.1 and weakly impaired BA.2. With Evusheld, neutralization of BA.1 and BA.2 was detected in 19 and 29 out of 29 patients, respectively. As compared to Delta, titers were more severely decreased against BA.1 (344-fold) than BA.2 (9-fold). We further report 4 breakthrough Omicron infections among the 29 participants. Therefore, BA.1 and BA.2 exhibit noticeable differences in their sensitivity to therapeutic mAbs. Anti-Omicron activity of Ronapreve, and to a lesser extent that of Evusheld, is reduced in patients sera, a phenomenon associated with decreased clinical efficacy.


Harmonics reduce power quality and increase inefficiency. Although light emitting diode (LED) bulb has been considered more efficient than previous bulb technologies; its internal circuits potentially generate additional problems. This paper has surveyed 6 LED bulb samples and measured the harmonics generated by the internal circuits. As a result. 7 Watt type B LED bulb produces the highest 3rd order harmonics current which is incompatible with IEC61000-3-2 Class C. A prototype of LC filter is designed to decrease the harmonic level. The measurement shows that the designed passive filter is able to reduce at least 81.3% of harmonics.


This study explores the impact of couples' employment/retirement patterns on indicators of marital quality (conflicts, heated arguments, marital happiness). Logistic regressions based on data from the National Survey of Families and Households (N= 672) reveal that the husband retired/wife employed pattern is associated with perceptions of lower marital quality among traditional gender-role couples. On the other hand, traditional gender-role employed husbands with retired wives report somewhat higher marital quality than husbands in dual-earner couples. In addition, dual-retired spouses with recently retired wives score lower on marital happiness than spouses in current dual-earner couples.


Flying in the Afternoon Constellation (A-Train) has provided a unique opportunity to share experiences across continents for many years. The original goal of the A-Train, to fly several instruments in formation to provide complimentary, near-simultaneous observational data, has required the operations teams to overcome many unanticipated challenges. In fact, the biggest challenge has not been to coordinate teams or the spacecraft, but to ensure longevity and continuity of measurements. To achieve this goal, the ATrain community had to invent and re-invent common processes to face each new challenge.


The 2011 Indian census affirms that child sex ratios of Muslims and Christians (as Abrahamic religions) are "normal", but those of Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists (as Dharmic religions of Indian origin) are below par, due to increasing sex-selective abortion. One probable explanation could be that the scriptures of Abrahamic religions—especially the Quran—explicitly forbid female infanticide, a practice common in Pagan Arabia in the Middle Ages. Therefore, most of India's neighbours, including Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Bangladesh, have normal child sex ratios and the epicentre of the problem of low child sex ratios in South Asia is now largely concentrated in India. Historical census data also suggests that this acute gender bias is perhaps a recent phenomenon as before the widespread usage of ultrasound technology for sex determination; sex ratios of Hindus were in fact better than Muslims in India.


In Chinas recent socioeconomic reforms development and growth have become the top priority. Government policies fostering economic equality have been replaced by those fostering rapid economic growth. Inequality in income has grown at a startling pace in the last 25 years. In addition to marked interregional variation great intraregional differences in socioeconomic conditions and living standards have become commonplace in both urban and rural areas. The Gini index a widely used indictor for measuring inequality in income distribution increased from 0.31 in 1985 to 0.42 in 2001 according to a study by Wu and Perloff. Although other researchers have produced different estimates they generally agree that disparities in income and wealth have reached high and alarming levels. This stark inequality in China was also noted by a recent United Nations report titled The Inequality Predicament. Such changes can have major health consequences. This article investigates the health and mortality consequences of the collapse of the former Cooperative Medical System and Labor Insurance Scheme and the increasing disparity in the distribution of income and wealth. I examine mortality differentials among regions at different levels of socioeconomic development and explore their relationship to the increasing inequality in income distribution and to recent changes in health care. (excerpt)


The opinions expressed in this editorial article are solely my own, and are not representative of ARUP Laboratories or the Journal of Clinical and Molecular Pathology. If I say the word community, what does this conjure in your mind? A place where everyone is working together and everybody has a role to play? A place where everybody is accepted for who they are? Does the word actually convey a feeling? The definition of community I align with is "a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals". If this feeling could be achieved at a global scale the world as we know it would be very different to what it is now. I always thought that ants were a perfect community, all working towards the good of the colony. However, it has been observed that there are "lazy" ants that are immobile while other ants are working around them. It is not known what their role is, but they are not driven out of the colony. Therefore they either have a yet to be discovered role, or ant colonies are very accepting of all their ants.


Combustion device (5) includes a burner (10), downstream of the combustor burner (10) and (11), and the lance which projects into the burner (10) for fuel and air injection (14), a burner and a plenum (20, 27) that at least partially houses (10). Plenum (20, 27) is connected to the interior of the lance (14) for supplying the interior oxidant lance (14).


This paper argues that the financial crisis, which ravages Europe since 2008, could affect the liability of the EU Member States in various dimensions. The first dimension is the state's liability towards individuals for specific losses they incurred in the crisis. The second dimension represents the liabilities EU Member States took over to guarantee for banks or other Member States. With the legal basis for a liability towards individuals being either national or Union law, these two levels first are briefly examined, and the legal consequences of various types of failure of regulation described. Finally, some lessons to be learned from the financial crisis are outlined and the thesis is drawn that possibly the sovereignty of the MS was severely infringed by the crisis and the pertinent political reactions.


here is no road map for starting graduate medical education (GME) at an institution new to resident education, especially in a rural, sparsely populated region. This Perspective describes the key steps we followed from 2012 to 2016, and the considerations we learned from our initial experience of starting an internal medicine residency.


We study the (001) surface state of a recently proposed $E_g$ symmetry inter-orbital-odd spin-triplet s-wave superconducting (SC) state in Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ (SRO). We confirm that this pair potential is transformed into a chiral $d$-wave pair potential and a pseudo-Zeeman field in the band basis for a low-energy range. Due to the chiral $d$-wave pair potential, the surface states appear near zero energy in the momentum range enclosed by the nodal lines of the chiral d-wave pair potential for each band at the (001) surface. Nevertheless, the pseudo-Zeeman field gives band splitting of the surface states, and its splitting energy is much smaller than the SC energy gap. The local density of states (LDOS) at the (001) surface of the SC state has a pronounced peak structure at zero energy due to the surface states near zero energy when the order of the resolution is lower than the splitting energy. This peak structure is robust under perturbations, such as an orbital Rashba coupling or an $E_u$ SC pair potential at the surface.


ALTHOUGH the consequences of extensive resection of the small intestine differ in pattern and intensity a syndrome of conditioned malnutrition invariably follows.1 2 3 4 5 The chief manifestation i...


The 2015 Sustainable Operations Survey shows how health care organizations have made progress in certain areas and now are moving on to bigger, more complex challenges.


In this thesis, we will bestow ourselves to the theories of Francis Fukuyama and their applicability to foreign relations of presidents' W.Clinton and G.W.Bush administrations. In the first parts of the thesis, we will look at the main theories of F.Fukuyama, with which we will work further on. The second part is dedicated to analyzing the foreign relations of W.Clinton and G.W.Bush, mainly their presidential decisions, their speeches and its rhetoric. On the examples of american engagement in the international system, we will find whether its goals are applicable to Fukuyama's findings. Concept-wise, this thesis is an evaluation of international political doctrines of USA, and their counter-evaluation with emphasis on Fukuyama's theories.


1. Introduction.- 2. Convolution quadrature method.- 2.1 Basic theory of the convolution quadrature method.- 2.2 Numerical tests.- 2.2.1 Series expansion of the test functions f1 and f2.- 2.2.2 Computing the integration weights ?n.- 2.2.3 Numerical convolution.- 3. Viscoelastically supported Euler-Bernoulli beam.- 3.1 Integral equation for a beam resting on viscoelastic foundation.- 3.1.1 Fundamental solutions.- 3.1.2 Integral equation.- 3.2 Numerical example.- 3.2.1 Fixed-simply supported beam.- 3.2.2 Fixed-free viscoelastic supported beam.- 4. Time domain boundary element formulation.- 4.1 Integral equation for elastodynamics.- 4.2 Boundary element formulation for elastodynamics.- 4.3 Validation of proposed method: Wave propagation in a rod.- 4.3.1 Influence of the spatial and time discretization.- 4.3.2 Comparison with the "classical" time domain BE formulation.- 5. Viscoelastodynamic boundary element formulation.- 5.1 Viscoelastic constitutive equation.- 5.2 Boundary integral equation.- 5.3 Boundary element formulation.- 5.4 Validation of the method and parameter study.- 5.4.1 Three-dimensional rod.- 5.4.2 Elastic foundation on viscoelastic half space.- 6. Poroelastodynamic boundary element formulation.- 6.1 Biot's theory of poroelasticity.- 6.1.1 Elastic skeleton.- 6.1.2 Viscoelastic skeleton.- 6.2 Fundamental solutions.- 6.3 Poroelastic Boundary Integral Formulation.- 6.3.1 Boundary integral equation.- 6.3.2 Boundary element formulation.- 6.4 Numerical studies.- 6.4.1 Influence of time step size and mesh size.- 6.4.2 Poroelastic half space.- 7. Wave propagation.- 7.1 Wave propagation in poroelastic one-dimensional column.- 7.1.1 Analytical solution.- 7.1.2 Poroelastic results.- 7.1.3 Poroviscoelastic results.- 7.2 Waves in half space.- 7.2.1 Rayleigh surface wave.- 7.2.2 Slow compressional wave in poroelastic half space.- 8. Conclusions - Applications.- 8.1 Summary.- 8.2 Outlook on further applications.- A. Mathematic preliminaries.- A.1 Distributions or generalized functions.- A.2 Convolution integrals.- A.3 Laplace transform.- A.4 Linear multistep method.- B. BEM details.- B.1 Fundamental solutions.- B.1.1 Visco- and elastodynamic fundamental solutions.- B.1.2 Poroelastodynamic fundamental solutions.- B.2 "Classical" time domain BE formulation.- Notation Index.- References.


In all phases of forensic investigation, digital evidence is exposed to external influences and coming into contact with many factors. Legal admissibility of digital evidence is the ability of that evidence being accepted as evidence in a court of law. Life cycle of digital evidence is very complex. In each stage there is more impact that can violate a chain of custody and its integrity. Contact with different variables occurs through a life cycle of digital evidence and can disrupt its integrity. In order for the evidence to be accepted by the court as valid, chain of custody for digital evidence must be kept, or it must be known who exactly came into contact with evidence in each stage of the investigation. This paper presents a dynamics and life cycle of digital evidence. The Petri nets will be proposed and used for modeling and simulation of this process


A bioplastic derived from nanocellulose isolated from the pine flower (Pinus Merkusii) waste has been made. The red and yellow colors of bioplastic were afforded from the extract of dragon fruit and turmeric. Meanwhile, nanocellulose was hydrolyzed by citric acid using concentrations of 10%, 30%, and 60%, and obtained crystallinity index of 61.00%, 57.24%, and 52.82% respectively. Each nanocellulose applied has a crystallite size of 15.09 nm (calculated using XRD data with Scherrer's equation). The result indicated that the increase in both dragon fruit and turmeric extracts concentration increase the red and yellow color intensity of the bioplastic. This study paves the way for further application of nanocellulose in bioplastic.


Recently, it has been suggested that BDD-based RePlanning A* (BDDRPA*), a BDD-based incremental version of A*, might be an efficient search method for solving path-planning problems in artificial intelligence. BDDRPA* combines ideas of BDD-based search and incremental search to repeatedly find shortest paths from a start vertex to a goal vertex while the topology of the graph changes. However, BDDRPA* only works well when vertices are added or deleted but does't consider the weighted edges. When the edge costs are changed, it doesn't work, and moreover, in BDDRPA*, the heuristic function $h$ is set to 0, so BDDRPA* is degenerated to BDD-based incremental breadth-first search. In this article, we consider BDD-based weighted and heuristic search methods and generalize BDDRPA* to be a real BDD-based incremental heuristic search algorithm (GBDDRPA*). We then show experimentally that GBDDRPA* indeed speeds BDDRPA* up on gridworlds and thus promises to provide a good foundation for building incremental heuristic BDD-search-based replanners.


Purpose of reviewPatients with cancer face both physical and psychological challenges. In the past, oncologists often limited themselves to the medical aspects of cancer care and delegated psychosocial interventions to professionals from other disciplines. In this review, we explore the methods by which oncologists can expand their role in treating cancer patients. Recent findingsRecent studies have shown that individuals with cancer are not always satisfied with the care that they are receiving and believe that their existential needs are not being met. A model is suggested for improving the interaction between oncologists and their patients that involves focusing on the existential needs of an individual with cancer. Specific interventions and their appropriateness are discussed. SummaryOncologists should consider expanding their role and involving themselves in the more holistic aspects of cancer care. As a result of the bonds that they develop with patients, these professionals often find themselves in a position of being able to help and counsel cancer patients who are coping with feelings of isolation, loneliness, and fear.


The importance of cultivated forage crops in the Northern Great Plains continues to increase. Each year more stockmen are turning to, or extending, established cultivated forage crops for their winter feed requirements. Unfortunately, many of the dryland hay fields are composed of grasses only, notwithstanding recommendations to seed grass-legume mixtures. Grass alone becomes sod-bound quickly and resultant hay yields are low. This is attributable to an insufficient supply of available nitrogen in an area where the climate is usually the main uncontrollable limiting factor. Thus, it seems important to learn as much as possible about the factors which can be controlled. Although fertilizer trials on cultivated grasses for hay in dry climates have been, and are being conducted, few results have been published. Most reports deal with fertilizer trials on


Smith, AC. 2010. Tangible interfaces for tangible robots, Advances in Robot Manipulators, Ernest Hall (Ed.), ISBN: 978-953-307-070-4, INTECH, Available from: http://sciyo.com/articles/show/title/tangible-interfaces-for-tangible-robots


In this era of globalization, competition is becoming ever more intense. Manufacturing companies must not only compete locally but also on a global basis. Reducing manufacturing costs without sacrificing product quality is vital for the survival of manufacturing companies in a global market. With the increasing of market competition, the line balancing problem especially the assembly line balancing plays an important role for the industries to obtain the high quality and lowest cost. Assembly line plays a critical role in enabling a factory to deliver on time and at the right quantity and quality. This project main purpose is to assist in making an assembly line more efficient and productive through improving its line efficiency. The focus is on a bus seat assembly line. A manufacturing company faces difficulties in delivery on time. The core cause is the inefficiency of assembly line in the bus seat manufacturer. Therefore, the study will concentrate on manufacturer's problem, which is efficiency of assembly line balancing for VIP seats. This research will attempt to overcome the problem by balancing its line and improved its efficiency. It also involves minimizing the number of stations and minimizing the balance delay time (sum of idle time).


A core course on macroeconomic management: new methods and current policy issues was held in Washington, D. C. from February 17 - 27, 1998. The primary goal of these course offerings is to enhance the capacity of participants to use modern analytical tools to analyze current macroeconomic policy issues. Forty-one participants attended this course session, consisting mainly of professional macroeconomists, including Bank staff, government policy advisors, university professors, and academic and non-academic researchers. The session was evaluated by the Economic Development Institute (EDI) evaluation unit using an end-of-course questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of two main sections. One section asked participants to rate aspects of the course on the extent that the course met standard performance criteria. These performance criteria included the level and quality of support provided by course sponsors, the ability of presenters and appropriateness of course materials, and the degree to which participants felt they had received suitable training. The second main section asked participants to rate their level of information or knowledge about topics covered in the course, before and after completing the course.


This study aims to analyze the influences of prices, quality of products and services on purchasing decision in Pak Pong Klatak Satay Culinary in Bantul. The subjects of this research were customers of Pak Pong Klatak Satay Culinary in Bantul. The population of the study were people who purchased products of Pak Pong Klatak Satay Culinary in Bantul.  The samples were determined by accidental sampling method by total of 80 respondents. Data were collected by giving a list of questions / questionnaires to  respondents dealing with prices, products quality as well as services quality and how they influence the customers decision in purchasing the products. This study used a multiple linear regression analysis technique. The researcher tested the hypothesis using T test and F test. The test results  showed that prices have a positive but insignificant influence, products quality has a negative and insignificant influence. Meanwhile, services quality has a positive and significant influence. Prices, products and services quality contribute  to a simultaneously positive and significant influence upon customer's purchasing decision as the significant value of 0,000 is smaller than 0,5. The prices variables, products quality and services quality are able to explain the purchasing decision variable in Pak Pong's klatak satay culinary at 35%  and  the  remaining 65% explained by other variables not included in the study.


Objectives: This paper aims to discuss the research activities and development trends of antineoplastics targeting PD-1/PD-L1 based on scientometrics and patentometrics. Methods and Results: Publications and patents related to antineoplastics targeting PD-1/PD-L1 were searched and collected from the Web of Science (WoS) and the Derwent Innovation Index (DII) respectively. Totally, 11244 publications and 5501 patents were obtained. The publications were analyzed from the annual number, the top countries/regions and organizations to describe the scientific research trends in this field. The patents were analyzed from the annual number, the top priority countries and patent assignees to reveal the characteristics and status of technological development. As well as the identification of scientific research focus and technological development focus was based on the title and abstract of the publications and patents, using the freely available computer program VOSviewer for clustering and visualization analysis. The number of scientific publications and patent applications showed obvious increase of 29.84% and 33.46% in recent ten years (2009–2018), respectively. Results suggested that the most productive countries/regions publishing on antineoplastics targeting PD-1 /PD-L1 were USA and China, and the top three productive organizations were all from USA, including Harvard University, VA Boston Healthcare System (VA BHS) and University Of California System. There were four scientific research focus and five technological development focus in the field of antineoplastics targeting PD-1/PD-L1, and both the scientific research focus and technological development focus between China and USA were a little different. Conclusions: The results of this study presents an overview of the characteristics of research status and trends of antineoplastics targeting PD-1/PD-L1, which could help readers broaden innovative ideas and discover new technological opportunities, and also serve as important indicators for government policymaking.


The objective of the paper is to find empirically whether husbands and wives tend to retire at the same time, and to give an explanation of the findings. Similarity of retirement dates could be caused by similarity of tastes (assortative mating), by economic variables, or by the complimentarity of leisure. Each explanation would have different implications for the response of retirement to policy changes. Both simple data analysis and economic models of the age of retirement point to coordination of retirement dates: husbands and wives tend to retire at the same time. According to the results, very little of the coordination is due to economic variables, and simple cross-tabulations rule out assortative mating as an important explanation. This leaves complimentarity of leisure. Because of data limitations, this conclusion is, however, mainly qualitative. The data set is the Mew Beneficiary Survey.


The prevalence of childhood hypertension is rising in parallel with global increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity. We looked at key papers and documents covering three decades.


Title Study on optimization and robust control of active power decoupling circuit based converters [an abstract of dissertation and a summary of dissertation review] Author(s) 黄, 淳煥 Citation 北海道大学. 博士(工学) 甲第13531号 Issue Date 2019-03-25 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/74329 Rights(URL) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Type theses (doctoral abstract and summary of review) Additional Information There are other files related to this item in HUSCAP. Check the above URL. File Information Hwang_Soonhwan_abstract.pdf (論文内容の要旨)


Abstract The characteristics and function of large woody debris (LWD) were measured in 41 small (1.2-11.2-m bank-full channel width), fish-bearing streams in coastal British Columbia to determine how total LWD abundance and the features of individual LWD pieces (diameter, length, orientation, and presence of a rootwad) influenced the effectiveness of pool formation. Pool spacing (the number of channel widths between channel-spanning pools) was a decreasing power function of total LWD abundance, but the relationship was relatively weak. Stratification of sites by channel gradient improved the model fit, steeper streams (≥2% gradient) having a significantly lower pool spacing than lower-gradient streams (<2%). The proportion of LWD that formed pools increased from 6% for pieces with a diameter of 15-30 cm to 43% for pieces with a diameter of more than 60 cm. Large woody debris more than 60 cm in diameter formed a higher proportion of pools across all channel widths. A simple, size-structured model of LWD ab...


The important characteristic of the today's world economy is market spreading. Countries are becoming more open to influences dictated by developing economy and modern technologies. This opening has, as a consequence, the appearance of huge competition. Co...


classEx is a novel software that allows lecturers to carry out experiments in the classroom with an instantaneous graphical illustration of findings. Standard experiments with multiple treatments, monetary incentives, roles, groups, rounds and stages are available in a ready-made format. A back end allows more sophisticated users to implement their own experiments. We present examples, describe the architecture and show how the design can be tailored to become useful for research.


The aim of this study was to evaluate root distribution and water uptake patterns of the 'BRS Princesa' banana under different irrigation strategies in the semiarid region of northern Minas Gerais. To conduct the experiment, fve irrigation strategies were adopted: 50% of water depth reduction (WD), with a 7 day alternation frequency (AF) for the irrigated side of the plant; 50% of WD and AF of 14 days; 50% of WD 21 days; 50% of fxed irrigation WD (one lateral line on only one side of the plant); and full irrigation (two lateral lines with the valve open) throughout the cycle, with samples being collected in four different distances from the pseudostem (0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.0 m) and in fve different soil depths (0.05 to 0.15; 0.15 to 0.25; 0.35 to 0.45; 0.55 to 0.65 and 0.75 to 0.85 m). The experiment was arranged in a completely randomized 5 x 4 x 5 factorial design, with three replicates. Average root length density (RLD) was similar among treatments; however, when the banana was subjected to irrigation with partial water defcit, the plant exhibited greater root development; there is a reduction of RLD with the soil depth and maintenance of distribution of the roots with distance from the pseudostem; very thin to small roots are concentrated in a depth of 40 cm in the soil profle and 70 - 90% of these roots are located up to 75 cm from the pseudostem; a shorter interval of alternation of the irrigated side in PRD enables extraction of water in deeper layers.


Innovations in names and name patterns was the theme of a Nordic Symposium held in Halmstad in November 2013. The symposium was arranged by Halmstad University in collaboration with NORNA. The proc ...


There is a general proposition that availability of infrastructure facilities largely determines the locations of investment projects and also that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) can be Resource seeking, Efficiency seeking and clusters in a region where there is already existing FDI. I employed a panel dataset consisting of 16 groups of Indian states over the period from 2001-02 to 2016-17, with the aim to identify the infrastructure, resource, market, and agglomeration specific factors that contribute to the wide-scale heterogeneity in the per capita FDI inflows across the Indian States. My results suggest that the availability of roads, ports and telecommunication infrastructure predominantly influenced the variations in the FDI inflows across states than any other infrastructure specific determinant. The findings indicate that the efficiency of labor was the highest motivation among resource specific factors for investors. Moreover, higher tax disincentive, the presence of the SEZs, and agglomeration economies are found to be statistically significant. Lastly, the per capita FDI is not found to be market seeking in nature.


The friction and wear properties of the water lubricated rubber bearing, made of the nitrile butadiene rubber (NBR), were studied in this article. The results showed that adding the appropriate amounts of carbon black and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) could reduce the friction coefficient and the abrasion loss to the minimum values. Meanwhile, the general laws of the two parameters with different loads, rotational speeds and lubricant media have been discovered: the values of friction coefficient and abrasion loss of the rubber bearing, lubricated in both water and seawater, increase firstly and then gradually decrease with the increasing loads.When the loads exceed 500N, the values increase drastically. And the values of friction coefficient and abrasion loss decline with the increasing rotating speed. Moreover, the values of these two parameters in seawater were a little bit higher than those in water. The friction and wear mechanisms of water lubricated rubber bearing were also discussed..


We review the construction of a duality‐invariant higher‐derivative theory based on a doubled metric. This theory incorporates the corrections needed in the Green‐Schwarz anomaly cancellation mechanism. We note recent progress in elucidating the structure of the theory. This article is largely based on the plenary talk given by B. Zwiebach at "The String Theory Universe", 21st European String Workshop, Leuven, September 7‐11, 2015.


Abstract The number of people enrolling for psychology degree programmes is growing, yet men continue to be outnumbered by women. At school, boys and girls take the same subjects in similar numbers. After completing high school education, many boys and girls go to universities to pursue degree programmes of their choice. However, fewer men than women pursue psychology as a career field. The exploratory study sought to investigate the underrepresentation of men in psychology at a Historically Black University. Purposive sampling was used to select participants for the study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and data were analysed using thematic content analysis. The study revealed that gender-stereotypes influence male students to shun psychology. The findings of the study would help the University and Heads of Psychology Department to understand the underrepresentation of men in their psychology degree programmes.


Slope movements have caused severe damages of civil infrastructures and numerous human fatalities. Continuous monitoring of slope movements and the collection of vital landslide information are beneficial for the assessment of landslide hazard and risk. With the advances in wireless communication and Internet technologies, it becomes possible to continuously collect and assess landslide information, which can help to better understand landslide processes and to reliably issue early warnings. This paper presents the prototype development of an autonomous monitoring system for slope movements that couples wireless sensor networks and web services. Wireless sensor nodes are distributed in the field to autonomously collect and analyze sensor data taken from the observed slope. Embedded into the wireless sensor nodes are autonomous software units, referred to as "software agents", that are capable of automatically assessing the sensor data and sending alerts if abnormal slope behavior is detected. The wireless sensor network is remotely connected to an Internet-enabled early warning and information system, which integrates geospatial information from external geographic information systems (GIS) and provides real-time slope information to human individuals.


Eleven years ago, at a meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, I read a paper entitled "Animal Experimentation on Hearing: Its Clues to the Prevention of Deafness." 1 Since then a great deal of experimentation on deafness has been done with both animals and human beings as subjects. In the past three years extensive experimental work has been carried on as a result of demands for answers to problems raised by the war. Again the question is asked, "What is deafness, and what can otologists do for it?" This question divides itself, as always, into two components: (1) the problem of deafness due to mechanical causes, that is, to obstructive conditions that prevent sound from reaching the sense organ or the organ of Corti (middle ear deafness), and (2) the problem of deafness due to changes occurring in the sense organ and the cochlear nerve (nerve deafness). These


The strut-and-tie method (STM) is gaining recognition as a code-worthy and consistent design methodology for discontinuity (D-) regions in structural concrete. However, the development of code provisions for the STM has been hampered by uncertainties in defining strength and dimensions of an idealized load-resisting truss. In addition, the STM has been encumbered by an iterative and time-consuming design procedure in which many geometric details must be considered. To deal with the problem, researchers are developing computer-based tools, such as the authors' computer-aided strut-and-tie (CAST) design tool. CAST provides a graphical working environment for all aspects of the design process, including definition of the D- region, selection of the STM, truss analysis, member definitions, and creation of a design summary. This study details the STM, barriers to its advancement, the capabilities of computer-based design tools, and the CAST program. Suggestions are also made for future STM research.


In this article, the development of American credit rating industry is briefly introduced. The focus is on several giants, like Moody's, Standard Poor and Fitch in the field. Some main domestic credit rating agencies in different countries or regions are introduced as well. Moreover, a close look is taken on those located in the Asian and Pacific regions. A thorough investigation on status quo of Chinese credit rating industry was conducted. And some suggestions are made after analyzing main problems facing the industry of China on the basis of international comparative study.


This paper investigates the properties of syntactic edges, with special attention being paid to two central issues in cyclic syntax: the domain and the nature of cyclicity. This paper argues for the premise that predication domains form a Spell-out domain, and that Spell-out results in order preservation of the predication domain. It is shown that elements externally merged at the edge of a predication domain observe a special ordering restriction, the Edge Generalization. The ordering restriction is explained by the interaction of two premises of cyclic syntax, coupled with a theory of probe-goal Search. Empirical evidence for the proposal comes from various sub-extraction phenomena out of edges of predication domains in Korean and Japanese. In particular, the interactions between floating numeral quantifier constructions and (primary and secondary) predication constructions are closely examined. The current proposal poses some interesting challenges to the proposition-based-phase system: it argues against the claim that only strong phases undergo Spell-out, and that edges are spelled out separately from the complement. The proposal also has some implications for the structure and typology of resultative and depictive predicates, and for the finer-grained structure of VP including aspectual adverbs and small clause complements.


Fractals are geometric shapes and patterns that may repeat their geometry at smaller or larger scales. It is well established that fractals can describe shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by the classical Euclidean geometry. An eclectic survey of fractals is presented in two parts encompassing applications of fractals in a variety of diverse and innovative fields. The goal of the first part is to focus on the glossary of fractals, their mathematical description, aesthetic, artistic, and architectural applications, while the second part is focused on engineering, industry, commercial, and futuristic applications of fractals.


Planning for production, distribution, collection, and recovery of used products plays an important role in reducing environmental burdens of different industries. To this aim, many researchers have developed efficient mathematical models for planning forward and reverse supply chains. Most of the presented models have covered strategic planning in forward and reverse supply chains in this area, and have rarely addressed the mid- and short-run programming. In this paper, a comprehensive integrated mathematical programming model is developed for production and distribution planning in a closed-loop supply chain. In the proposed model, the customers are categorized into three groups including new product customers, recovered product customers, and raw material customers. Due to the economy of scale principal, hybrid production/recovery centers and hybrid distribution/redistribution centers are considered rather than separate facilities. The acquired results show the ability of the proposed model to production and distribution programming in a closed-loop supply chain.


In this study, we sought to prepare sangorache encapsulate (Amaranthus quitensis L.) by spray- and freeze-drying, using three different concentrations (3, 5 and 7%) of the encapsulating agent, maltodextrin. To atomize the powder, we used a Buchi mini spray-dryer B-290 with three inlet temperatures (140, 160 and 180 ℃) and a laboratory freeze dryer with a −0.8 bar pressure for 4 days. During atomization, the powders presented lower moisture content and water activity with the addition of maltodextrin; however, there were no significant changes in the moisture of the freeze-dried powders. Colorimetric analysis revealed that the luminosity (L) and chroma (C) values changed as maltodextrin concentration increased. The structures of particles were examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) SEM, and very different morphological characteristics resulted from the two drying methods. Also, apparent density, hygroscopy and dissolution testing revealed significant differences between the powders. Sangorache antioxidant compounds were preserved to a greater extent by applying low concentrations of the encapsulating agent and by the freeze-drying technique. The natural colorant from sangorache inflorescences could serve as an additive to improve food color in the industry.


An effective insolvency system represents a critical component and distinguishing feature of every well-functioning market economy. Among intensive efforts to institutionalize insolvency regimes in many developing countries since 1998, the adoption of the 2006 Enterprises Bankruptcy Law (hereinafter the 2006 EBL or the Law) in China represents an eye-catching accomplishment. The 2006 EBL establishes the legal mechanism through which enterprises can exit from the market or, preferably, be reorganized in an orderly fashion and thus is conducive to promoting a socialist market economy. This article will sketch the contours of the legislative background of the 2006 EBL, analyze its main points and features, identify the challenges to its enforcement, and examine other characteristics of the Law in order to provide some answers to these questions from the perspective of an insider. Following the introduction, Part II examines the legislative background of the 2006 EBL and discusses the inefficiency of previous bankruptcy legislation and practice and the role that both domestic demands and exterior pressures played in providing the impetus for reform. This part is designed to provide an understanding of the overall contents and structures of the Law. Next, the main elements of the 2006 EBL will be analyzed. These elements include the applicability and availability of bankruptcy procedures, the system of the bankruptcy administrator, the procedures for reorganizations of enterprises, the priority of claims established for bankruptcy distribution, the handling of cross-border issues, and other significant changes from the prior law. The 2006 EBL represents an amalgam of borrowing from international experiences and drawing on uniquely Chinese considerations. The article identifies several challenges for enforcing the 2006 EBL and offers suggestions on how to ensure that the Law functions well in practice.


Individual rationality sometimes leads to collectively irrational outcomes, a fundamental problem in the social and life sciences that has attracted sustained attention from experimentalists in sociology, psychology, biology, and economics. But what is it about individual rationality that sometimes gets us into trouble? Is the problem the egoistic pursuit of individual self-interest? Or does the problem with individual rationality lie elsewhere? To find an answer, this chapter closely examines the theoretical and experimental literature on social dilemmas, to see how researchers identify the source of the problem. The review suggests that the prevailing theory wrongly points to egoism as the problem. Failing to do what is best for everyone can also happen among rational altruists, and sometimes egoism is needed to prevent it. The chapter concludes by pointing to what we believe is the fundamental problem – a tension not between individual self-interest and collective welfare, but between individual autonomy and collective interdependence.


An almost 7-year-old girl was referred to Child Protective Services for evaluation of suspected sexual abuse after a school nurse noticed marks on her neck (Figure). The nurse was concerned that the marks were "hickeys," or suction marks, made by another person's mouth.


are an early target of payment reform because they occur frequently and are very costly, and it appears that many can be prevented with more attention to comprehensive discharge planning and care and support during the post-discharge transition.


It is difficult to deal with the collusion in malicious nodes and spy actions in large scale P2P networks. Aiming at these problems, a model for trust management based on fuzzy theory in P2P networks is proposed, in which the reliability of recommendation trust can be computed by aggregating similarity and Bayes estimate. With the help of chord protocol, the overheads of communication can be reduced well. Simulation results show that this model can distinguish malicious nodes effectively and improve the rate of successful transaction.


The application of multichannel reflection seismology to the study of crustal structure was pioneered in the 1960's by a number of individual scientists, most notably from Australia, German and Canada. Building upon that foundation, the COCORP initiative in the US demonstrated that such techniques could be effectively applied to the systematic exploration of the continental crust by adapting oil industry resources. Following COCORP's initial crustal survey in northern Texas in 1975, other national programs based on deep reflection profiling were established around the world. Many of these introduced fresh aspects to such work. BIRPS (UK) demonstrated how marine seismic profiling could probe not only the crust but the underlying mantle. DEKORP (Germany) focused on integration of reflection results with crustal refraction observation, and ECORS (France) stressed the relevance of crustal reflection work to petroleum exploration. LITHOPROBE (Canada) perhaps best exemplified the integration of the new seismic profiles with other geophysical observations and surface geological mapping. SINOPROBE has taking such interdisciplinary integration to perhaps its ultimate limit, while stressing the importance of such work to our understanding natural resources. Meanwhile, Geoscience Australia expanded its work to span virtually an entire continent, onshore and offshore, which it recently summarized in perhaps the world's best database of crustal imagery, now freely available over the internet. Various European groups formed international cooperative programs, such as ECORS-CROP, to expand coverage across political borders, and multinational consortia such as INDEPTH have tackled the most challenging of targets from a global perspective. Even a brief summary of the most compelling results from even a few of these programs would challenge the limits of any abstract. Moreover, debate still rages over the proper interpretation of even some of the foundational surveys. Suffice it to say here that our concept of crustal heterogeneity has been profoundly transformed by these results. The original vision of a global network of seismic reflection profiles remains incomplete, and persistent issues, such as 3D, remain to be properly address. Yet new technologies offer fresh opportunities to address remaining questions, whether old or new.


In many applications, anticorrosion steels of duplex grade have become competitive vis-a-vis austenitic stainless ones. It is for this reason that attention has been focused on the various aspects of the welding of these steels. The introduction of new grades with improved properties and competitive prices have extended their application, in the petrochemical and shipbuilding industries, to the welding of offshore structures. In particular, the newer grades, with higher nitrogen content and better weldability, have ceased to be regarded merely as 'interesting' and are now considered to be usable in practice. The duplex grade steels differ from the purely austenitic grades. In consequence, the key to their successful welding rests in the ability to devise correct welding procedures and in choosing, in this context, the right type of filler metal. The anticorrosion duplex grade steels are often called the 'new stainless steels'. The first steels of this type were produced prior to 1930 but their weldability was rather limited. Consequently, they have not had any wider application until fairly recently when the new, improved grades became available. In particular, it was the introduction of the new grades with higher nitrogen contents and better weldability, as well as the production of superduplex steels containing a higher proportion of alloying elements and possessing better properties that was the deciding factor in fulfilling very stringent market requirements.


The invention discloses a method for acquiring a transmission line tower coordinate. In the method, based on a computer technology, a lead adjustment calculation technology and a GPS measurement technology, one transmission line is taken as one control measurement lead; information, such as an apparatus, a measuring method, a horizontal angle, a horizontal distance and the like, is obtained through data mining. A few field GPS measuring points are reasonably arranged. The GPS is used to acquire national coordinates of the field GPS measuring points. Computer software is controlled and measured to calculate the national coordinates of the whole towers. Precision assessment is performed and measurement precision can be guaranteed. Compared to the current general method for acquiring the national coordinates of the tower through the GPS measuring method, by using the method of the invention, cost is low; a working efficiency is high; labor intensity is low; personnel needed in the method is few; quality is reliable; it is convenient for popularization and application; economic benefits and social benefits are remarkable.


A second grade boy was asked about a report that he had been seen smoking. His very serious response was, "Well, Mrs. Halverson, my brother and his friends held me down and made me smoke, and now I'm addicted." As an elementary guidance counselor with 10 years experience, I am often amazed at the stories students tell me when confronted with their improper behavior. In our attempt to educate young people about the dangers of smoking, we try many different ways to get this point across. We conduct drug-free clubs, teach refusal skills, and educate students about the nature and effect of drugs. Statistics convince us that the elementary school is the front line in the battle to keep our children from smoking addiction. Paralusz (1998) reported that 3,000 young people start smoking every day, accounting for more than one million new smokers each year. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (1996) indicated that of these 3,000 new smokers, 1,000 will die prematurely from diseases related to tobacco use. Some 90% of new smokers are under the age of 18 (Paralusz, 1998). Between 1991 and 1994, smoking by 13 year olds increased by 30% (Marks & Landro, 1996). President Clinton (1998) stated that tobacco addiction and its related health disorders are one of the greatest public health threats facing Americans today. Ideally parents should discourage their children from smoking and talk to them about the short- and long-term effects including addiction (Olson, 1996). Schools need to reinforce that message. The young boy in my office came from a home where both parents smoked, and he was often left in the care of his 13-yearold brother who also smoked. Evidence shows that young people who begin to smoke know about the addictiveness of nicotine but don't believe they will become addicted (Paralusz, 1998) They do not understand the nature of addiction. Smoking in America has become increasingly inconvenient and uncomfortable for smokers as more work places, stores, airplanes, and even homes are becoming "smoke free". Many smokers are literally left "out in the cold" when it comes to satisfying their addiction. The plan discussed in this article is an attempt to help the students understand the physical and social consequences of smoking as well as what it means to be addicted. The Plan November 21, The Great American Smokeout Day, provided the perfect focal point for the experience. After obtaining the consent of the principal, I presented the rationale and plan to the fourth grade teachers at my school. All six agreed to participate in the study. I promised to provide them with factual information and statistics, which I got from the Internet, that they would share with their students. I also printed informational letters for them to send to parents that contained my phone number so parents could call me with questions. Each teacher would receive a timer and enough Chinese finger traps for their class. I ordered Chinese Finger traps to give students something to keep their hands occupied and out of trouble while they were standing outside. I estimated that every 30 minutes a "two pack a day" smoker needs to smoke. Working from this premise, a timer was set to go off every 30 minutes, at which time the students would have to put on their coats and file outside, collecting their Chinese finger traps on the way out. For 5 minutes, the students stood outside the school. This standing time was one point in the day when teachers shared some of the statistics I had compiled about the health effects, costs, and other consequences of smoking. After 5 minutes, the students returned to their class, turned in their finger trap, and resumed their work. The teachers decided to show a popular movie at the end of the day and leave it running during the time they were outside. …


ABSTRACT: Stream crossings designed to simulate a natural streambed inside a culvert are commonly used to meet criteria where fish passage is required. Currently, there has been little research that quantitatively examines the flow patterns within these streambed simulation culverts. A model is presented that estimates the percent of a cross section that is within the swimming ability of juvenile fish developed from velocity measurements on first‐generation stream simulation culverts — those culverts with a continuous gravel bed. The model, developed with regression techniques, uses physical and hydraulic parameters including discharge, total cross sectional area, Froude number, and relative roughness, and was tested directly against velocity distributions computed from field measurements and in a culvert design mode. Results were favorable, although larger percentage errors exist, particularly at small flow depths. The model appears to underestimate the percent of channel cross section at or below a limiting velocity, hence it is generally conservative in design mode.


This paper demonstrates that modified navigation grade accelerometers are good candidates for space applications. This is the response to an increasing demand for high performance inertial sensors in new space applications. Improvement of this product is an ongoing effort to make small sensors reliable in even more demanding applications, such as Pioneers [1] and Eurisa [2] European projects.


Freedom of connection, freedom of expression: the changing legal and regulatory ecology shaping the Internet. Dutton, William H.; Dopatka, Anna; Law, Ginette; Nash, Victoria. Paris, UNESCO, 2011. 103p. ISBN: 978-92-3-104188-4. Available free online at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/ 001915/191594e.pdf Through this book, UNESCO aims to inform Member States about its strategy of promoting freedom of expression on the Internet. The publication explores the complex situation of freedom of expression on the Internet and provides a new perspective on the social and political dynamics behind the threats to expression. It develops a conceptual framework of 'ecology of freedom of expression' for discussing the broad context of policy and practice. Through its pioneering exploration of the various legal and policy mechanisms that are crucial for the free flow of information, the book provides guidance for policy makers and other relevant users on the creation of environments conducive to the freedom of expression.


The temperature dependence of spin-polarized tunneling is investigated between 77 and 420 K for various ferromagnetic tunnel junctions. Both the junction resistance and the magnetoresistance decrease with increasing temperature T . The experimental results are successfully described by a model that includes two current contributions. The dominant one is elastic, spin-polarized tunneling between the two ferromagnetic electrodes, each with an electron polarization P that decreases with T due to thermally excited spin waves according to P}(12aT), i.e., in the same way as the surface magnetization. A smaller second conductance is due to assisted, spin-independent tunneling which we find to be proportional to T. @S0163-1829~98!50930-7#


Cluster analysis is an important tool for discovering the structures and patterns hidden in gene expression data. In this paper, a new algorithm for clustering gene expression profiles is proposed. In this method, we find natural clusters in the data based on a competitive learning strategy. Using partially known modes as constraints in our method, we reduce the sensitivity of the clustering procedure to the algorithm initialization and produce more reliable results. Also the proposed algorithm can give the correct estimation of the number of clusters in the data. Experiments on simulated and real gene expression data demonstrate the robustness of our method. Comparative studies with several other clustering algorithms illustrated the effectiveness of our method.


The problem of Mixed convection about a vertical flat plate embedded in a
porous medium is analyzed .Nonsimilarity solutions are obtained for the cases of variable
wall temperature( as a function of distance) and a variable surface heat flux (VHF) in
form of q=w(x)=bxm.This applies to all regions of convection,by two a nonsimilarity
parameter from forced convection (c* or =1) to free convection (c* or =0).


Text-to-speech(TTS) has undergone remarkable improvements in performance, particularly with the advent of Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models (DDPMs). However, the perceived quality of audio depends not solely on its content, pitch, rhythm, and energy, but also on the physical environment. In this work, we propose ViT-TTS, the first visual TTS model with scalable diffusion transformers. ViT-TTS complement the phoneme sequence with the visual information to generate high-perceived audio, opening up new avenues for practical applications of AR and VR to allow a more immersive and realistic audio experience. To mitigate the data scarcity in learning visual acoustic information, we 1) introduce a self-supervised learning framework to enhance both the visual-text encoder and denoiser decoder; 2) leverage the diffusion transformer scalable in terms of parameters and capacity to learn visual scene information. Experimental results demonstrate that ViT-TTS achieves new state-of-the-art results, outperforming cascaded systems and other baselines regardless of the visibility of the scene. With low-resource data (1h, 2h, 5h), ViT-TTS achieves comparative results with rich-resource baselines.~\footnote{Audio samples are available at \url{https://ViT-TTS.github.io/.}}


Regionalisation on mainland Portugal was rejected by the electorate in the referendum of 1998. Consequently the process of regionalisation has taken place without any regional administrative units having been created, so to speak. Powers over spatial planning, infrastructure and development have been transferred to regional development commissions, which are decentralised central government agencies in five administrative regions. Relatively large intercommunal structures with powers in the same areas have also been set up. However, they are not local authorities, even in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and Porto. Legislation concerning them has been revised several times in recent years. Ultimately Portugal is still a relatively centralised state. The decentralisation process could be pursued through the transfer of powers to the intercommunal structures.


ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of adaptability of organizations and how that relates to their ability to generate innovations. Constructs from an organizational culture model and the innovation value chain was used as the foundation for a cross-sectional study in 7 organizations in Ireland. The findings reveal that adaptability is indeed related to innovativeness. Organizations that are good at creating change, learning, and creativity are better able to generate new ideas. In addition organizations that are also flexible can convert these ideas into outputs and subsequently disseminate them internally as well as outside the organization. Keywords: Innovation, Value Chain, Organizations, Culture INTRODUCTION It could well be argued that the world has entered the "Innovation Age". Popular media frequently remind organizations and individuals how important innovation is in light of the wave of new ideas and developments in many fields (Ohr, 2015; Percy, 2015). Innovation could, on the one hand, be regarded as a driver for change since organizations that are aware of new innovations and are quick to adopt them may also create a competitive advantage for the organization by changing what they do and how they do it. On the other hand instead of just being the driver for change, innovation can also be regarded as a result of change. It is therefore useful to distinguish between adoption of innovations and the generation of innovations (Smit, 2014). Organizations also want to be innovative by generating new products, services, and so forth. It is therefore not surprising that executives consume increasing amounts of information about innovation, and try to learn how others do it, in an effort to get their own organizations to be more innovative (Rao & Weintraub, 2013). The question on everyone's lips is how do we become more innovative? Research has suggested a strong link between organizational culture and the innovativeness of organizations (Tellis et al., 2009). More specifically it has been suggested as far back as the 1990s that higher levels of innovativeness are present in organizations that are adaptable and have, amongst others, a culture of learning (Hurley & Hult, 1998). Their research however focused more specifically on market and learning orientation as antecedents for innovativeness. More recently Skerlavaj et al. (2010) focused on the concept of an organizational learning culture and its relation to innovation. From their study of more than 200 organizations they conclude that an organizational learning culture has an impact on specifically technical and administrative innovations in organizations. The above however focuses on a fairly narrow conceptualization of adaptability. Similar contributions in research on organizational culture and its relation to how organizations perform in a variety of areas, do offer a somewhat wider view of adaptability and its relationship with innovativeness (e.g. Dasgupta & Gupta, 2009; Denison, 1990, 2000; Smit 2014; Smit et al., 2008). The purpose of this paper is to further explore the adaptability of organizations and its relation with innovation and the following research question is offered: What is the relationship between Organizational Adaptability and Innovativeness? It has to be noted at this point that the research had an exploratory nature since relationship between the constructs used in the investigation has not been tested before. In addition the data that was used was taken from a larger set of more than 900 responses gathered from 21 organizations based in 7 countries (6 from Europe) in a study aimed at investigating the relationship between organizational culture in general and innovation and its adoption. Since this resulted in a fairly heterogeneous sample the responses from one country (Ireland) was isolated for exploratory purposes. For this reason no formal hypotheses are stated, but a general expectation is that the results will reveal moderate to strong correlations between Adaptability and Innovativeness. …


end of the Jacques catheter (Fig. 1). Lubrication of the catheter and tube is carried out according to personal preference and, when the patient is prepared for intubation, the distal blind end of the Jacques catheter is inserted into the nostril and carefully pushed on until it is thought to be in the oropharynx. Direct laryngoscopy enables the end of the Jacques catheter retrieved by Magill forceps and brought out through the mouth. The endotracheal tube is then gent!? pushed into the nostril and, when it is seen in the pharynx, a tug on the catheter disconnects the catheter from the tube; intubation can then proceed as normal. This method is not difficult to master; to succeed the junction of the catheter and tube must not be too firm, and as a corollary to this, the Jacques catheter must not be pulled through the nose in the expectation that the tracheal tube will follow. The essence of the technique is to push the tracheal tube through the nasal passages with its opening covered by the expanded end of the Jacques catheter. The advantages of the method arethe reduction in trauma to the nasal passages, and the guarantee of a tube not contaminated internally by nasal secretions. Department of Anaesthesia, A.G. MACKINNON Queen's Medical Centre, M.J. HARRISON University Hospital and Medical School, Clifton Boulevard, Nottinghani N67 2UH.


The unmanaged groundwater extraction and inadequate aquifer recharge is the major cause of groundwater depletion in different parts of the world. In this study, the groundwater flow system of Mahvelat-Feizabad aquifer (NE of Iran) has been numerically simulated using MODFLOW code in the GMS interface. The model, primarily, calibrated for steady state condition for the mean hydraulic values of one-year period (Sep. 2012 to Sep. 2013) which has steady condition with low stresses on aquifer. Then the model is run/calibrated for transient condition for one year period (Sep. 2012 to Sep. 2013). After determining the hydraulic properties of the aquifer and confirming their validity, different scenarios were applied to the model. Results show that, by continuing the current aquifer conditions, there will be a constant decrease in water level with the approximate rate of 0.8 m/year. Changing the exploitation of water from critical zone and overexploitation from saline water zone will affect the critical zone by causing a sharp decline in water level as well as its affection in water quality parameters that directly affect the agriculture of this area. Results show that proper management of aquifer can affect the groundwater flow direction and extent of saline water zone. In addition, artificial recharge which contain direct and indirect technique such as percolation tank and injection well and spreading channel are all the preventative measures to overcome the expansion of saline water zone.


The emergence of query-based online data services and e-commerce applications has prompted much recent research on data caching. This article studies semantic caching, a caching architecture for such applications, that caches the results of selection queries. The primary contribution of this article is to revisit the performance and overhead of semantic caching using a modern database server and modern hardware. Initially, the performance study focuses on simple workloads and demonstrates several benefits of semantic caching, including low overhead, insensitivity to the physical layout of the database, reduced network traffic, and the ability to answer some queries without contacting the server. With moderately complex workloads, careful coding of remainder queries is required to maintain efficient query processing at the server. Using very complex workloads, we demonstrate that semantic caching works well in a range of applications, especially in network-constrained environments.


Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission is a key technique in 4G long term evolution (LTE) systems to enable broadband communication and coverage for user equipments (UEs) at the cell edge. However, as the transmit signals will reach the UE at several and varying delays, unsynchronized CoMP transmission might experience large timing offsets (TOs), imposing a significant performance loss. In this paper we focus on the impact of implicit feedback generation in closed-loop CoMP transmission operating in joint processing mode. To enable the expected advantages, reliable channel state information is crucial for practical realization of closed-loop CoMP transmission. We show that a spacing in terms of subcarriers between the reference signals in the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing symbols imposes a phase offset on the transmit covariance matrix in presence of TO, affecting the feedback generation and limiting the expected performance. We provide a solution to overcome this limitation by estimating and compensating this phase offset. We show analytically and numerically that keeping the phase offset close to zero, reliable feedback generation can be guaranteed and, as a result, near optimum performance is achieved in closed-loop CoMP transmission in unsynchronized networks with TO present.


This study aims to offer a directivity of community support, which is suitable for domestic circumstances by analyzing the community support method and the performance of the UR housing S that is a Japanese UR rental housing complex. In the UR housing S, even the residents, who did not join the residents' association made an exchange with each other, as events and exchange events continued, and there was a change in the sense of community, including improvement in identity. It is considered that taking the case of the UR housing S for their model, domestic apartment housing need to search detailed and differentiated community development methods fit for regional circumstances to increase participation of residents and maintain consistently.


In 5G networks, the deployment and management of mobile edge computing infrastructure is a major challenge for mobile operators. Most recent work focused on extracting static movement patterns of mobile users from the trajectories generated during a specific time period to help with the management and orchestration of network resources. However, movement patterns of mobile users are not static over time. Understanding significant differences in mobile users' movement during different time periods can provide insights for mobile operators to dynamically reconfigure the network in response to the changes in traffic flows by time of day. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a framework based on contrast data mining to identify significantly different movement patterns, which we model as corridors, during different time periods. To measure the difference, an improved distance measure based on a modified Hausdorff distance and Earth Movers' distance is proposed to calculate the dissimilarity between the identified corridors, which considers the spatial heterogeneity of mobile networks. To further extract the significantly different corridors, we formulate the definition of contrast corridors of mobile users' movement. Experimental results on synthetic datasets as well as real-life datasets collected by China Mobile show that our method can effectively and robustly detect contrast corridors from trajectories generated from different time periods in mobile networks by improving the F1 score by 20% on average.


Objective To investigate the expression of ATP-binding cassette superfamily G member 2(ABCG2) in liver cancer cell lines and the relationship between ABCG2 expression and liver cancer drug resistance,and observe the difference of function between the ABCG2 positive cells and negative cells.Methods The expressions of ABCG2 in four liver cancer cell lines(PLC/PRF/5,7402,7701,and 7721) were detected by flow cytometry.IC50 of 5-fluorouracil(5-FU) and adriamycin were calculated.The expression of the ABCG2 in the 7721 cell lines was observed by immunofluorescence staining.The ABCG2 positive and negative cells were selected by the axenic flow sorting method,the difference of function between the ABCG2 positive cells and negative cells was compared.ResultsThe positive expression rate of ABCG2 in the cell line 7721 was highest among four liver cancer cell lines(P0.05),and the ABCG2 positive and negative cells had clear bimodal.IC50 of 5-FU and adriamycin to the cell line 7721 were higher than those of the other three cell lines(P0.05) except for 5-FU to the cell line 7701.There was no difference in cell proliferation between ABCG2 positive cells and negative cells.Cell cycle analysis showed that the ABCG2 positive cells had more quiescent cells as compared with the negative cells(P0.05).ConclusionsABCG2 expresses in a variety human liver cancer cell lines,ABCG2 positive cells have some stem cell features like drug resistance and more quiescent cells comparing with the negative cells.


The optimal reserve price in the independent private value paradigm is generally expressed as a functional of the latent distribution of private signals, which is by nature unobserved. This feature has limited the implementation of the optimal reserve price in practice. In this article, we consider first-price auctions within the general affiliated private values paradigm. We show that the seller's expected profit can be written as a functional of the observed bid distribution. We propose a semiparametric extremum estimator for estimating consistently the optimal reserve price from observed bids. As an illustration, we consider the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) wildcat auctions.


The college architecture plays an important irreplaceable role in the composition of campus culture,which is the visual carrier of the humanis tic spirit,and also the places to cultivate teachers' and students' humanistic s pirit.The college architecture should also be a witness to a college's history a nd good tradition,a symobl of a college's features and humanistic spirit,and sho uld put forth effort to creat a people-oriented atmosphere of teaching and liv ing.


Size at maturity averaged 6.4-8.7 mm (TL) for males, 6.6-8.8 mm (TL) for females, and varied seasonally showing strong inverse correlation with temperature. Mean number of stage I young per brood was 11 (max. 25), the number and size of these being correlated with female body-size and therefore varying seasonally also. During winter the population contained a maximum percentage of large females producing maximum numbers of large embryos. Brood mortality approximates 20%. The sampled population was found in salinities averaging 4-30per mille with maximum numbers (64/m) in waters of 19per mille. Tolerance tests confirmed a salinity optimum in the vicinity of 20per mille but demonstrated broad euryhalinity. Population numbers were lowest during summer and early autumn, highest during late winter/spring. Data did not demonstrate a consistent seasonal population cycle, and it is suggested this was related to differing salinity regimes, recruitment rates, breeding aggregation and migration. There was a relatively up-estuary shift in distribution in spring, especially of adult females and to a less extent of juveniles. This may be part of a broader inshore- offshore migration pattern. Large sexually differentiated individuals dominated (90%) the winter population, the first sexually mature individuals having appeared in late autumn. Reproductive activity resulted in new recruitment by late winter which continued through summer and autumn. The population was dominated by juveniles during summer, by which time the overwintering adult cohort was lost. Females dominated the population, probably producing >1 brood per year, and having a longevity of one year. Early post-mating mortality of males is indicated. -from Authors


The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank(the Bank)initiated by China is a multilateral financial institution with its sphere of business focused on promoting the infrastructure construction of member countries.The Bank has attracted wide range of interests and discussions both in China and from the abroad.As the Bank will put into


HARMONI is the Extremely Large Telescope visible and near infrared integral field spectrograph and will be one of the first light instruments. The instrument supports four operational modes called No Adaptive Optics (NOAO), Single Conjugated Adaptive Optics (SCAO), High Contrast Adaptive Optics (HCAO), and Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO). These operational modes are closely related to the wavefront correction topology used to support the performance required for each of the science cases. By following a novel function model-based systems engineering (FBSE) methodology in conjunction with observing the software computer system golden rule of design; namely having tight cohesion within software modules and loose coupling between modules, a system architecture has emerged. In this paper, we present the design of the HARMONI Control System (HCS). Although this is not the first time (for example NACO on VLT and NIRC2 on Keck) that the adaptive optics required to correct the atmospheric turbulence is part of a general instrument design, and not tailored for a very specific science case, this will be the first instrument of this size and complexity in the era of extremely large ground-based telescopes. The instrument control design must be compatible with the ELT instrument control system framework while there is also an expectation that the adaptive optics (AO) real-time computer toolkit (RTC-TK) should be used for the realization of the AO real-time control software and hardware. The HCS is composed of the instrument control electronics (ICE), the Instrument Control System (ICS), and the AO Control Sub-system (AOCS). The operation concept of the instrument is also novel in that for each mode the instrument creates an instantiation of a virtual system composed of only the system blocks required to provide the selected mode of operation. Therefore, each mode supports a unique system composition in terms of hardware, software, and the sequencing of activities.


ABSTRACT: Systemic candidiasis in intravenous drug abusers (IVDA) is a new syndrome caused by Candida albicans and characterized by the sequential development of skin, eye, and osteoarticular lesions, which together form a typical clinical picture. We studied 30 patients with suggestive skin lesions: papules, nodules, and pustules in hair‐bearing areas, particularly the scalp and beard area, associated with hair invasion by candiadal hyphae.


This chapter will center on the continuing impact of systemic and persistent educational trauma experienced by Black and Latino males and how trauma affects their current learning. The young men's counterstories from a phenomenological study and documentary are included.


The present article aims to put into scholarly circulation two new unpublished Byzantine lead seals from the medieval fortress in the area of the village of Voden (municipality of Bolyarovo, Yambol region, Bulgaria). They were handed to the Regional Historical Museum in the town of Yambol as a result of the regular archaeological excavations of the site near the village of Voden, conducted in the period 2012–2019. The first seal dates from the last quarter of the 11th century and has a bust of the Holy Virgin with a halo and a round medallion with the image of the Infant Jesus Christ who blesses with both hands. From the legend on the reverse, it is clear that the bulla belonged to a Byzantine dignitary named Michael Tzitas, who advertises himself with the title of (proto)kouropalates and the position of doux. The second seal dates from the end of the 11th – the beginning of the 12th century and has an interesting and relatively rare iconographic plot depicting three military saints on the obverse, and an invocation to them on the reverse. The seal belongs to a clergyman – a metropolitan bishop of Athens, named Nicetas (Νικήτας).


Taking the geological mining conditions of the Qidong Mine in Suzhou Coalfield as an example,the paper stated the features of the original longitudinal fissure developed overburden strata under the high pressurized super thick water bearing gravel layer and the prin- ciple of the water controlled mining technology.With the water controlled mining technology,through the adjustment and control of the de- velopment degree of the tensile cracking failure zone occurred by the mining and through the variation of the permeability to control the wa- ter inrush quantity and no water inrush of the coal mining face,in consideration of the protected layer permeability factor no affected min- ing failure,in combined with the high water pressurized water body to the function and influences of the water conducted fissure zone height and the protected layer thickness under the fissure rock mass,with implementation of the improved water controlled coal mining safety measures,No.7_1 14 and No.7_1 12 fully mechanized coal mining faces had a safety production with limited water inrush from the gravel layer and no water inrush from gravel layer.


THE RCN has welcomed moves in the new nursing strategy for Wales to put in place all graduate entry to the profession.


Monte Carlo simulation experiments have shown that very high energy electrons (VHEE), 150-250 MeV, have potential advantages in prostate cancer treatment over currently available electrons, photon and proton beam treatment. Small diameter VHEE beamlets can be scanned, thereby producing a finer resolution intensity modulated treatment than photon beams. VHEE beams may be delivered with greater precision and accelerators may be constructed at significantly lower cost than proton beams. A VHEE accelerator may be optimally designed using laser-plasma technology. If the accelerator is constructed to additionally produce low energy photon beams along with VHEE, real time imaging, bioprobing, and dose enhancement may be performed simultaneously. This paper describes a Monte Carlo experiment, using the parameters of the electron beam from the UCLA laser-plasma wakefield accelerator, whereby dose distributions on a human prostate are generated. The resulting dose distributions of the very high energy electrons are shown to be comparable to photon beam dose distributions. This simple experiment illustrates that the nature of the dose distribution of electrons is comparable to that of photons. However, the main advantage of electrons over photons and protons lies in the delivery and manipulation of electrons, rather than the nature of the dose distribution. This paper describes the radiation dose delivery of electrons employing technologies currently in exploration and evaluates potential benefits as compared with currently available photon and protons beams in the treatment of prostate and other cancers, commonly treated with radiation.