Have you ever wondered that there's a leader within you? On a daily basis we face situations that are outside the scope of our control but we are, most of the times, forced to deal with it. Sometimes there is no escape allowed and we knowingly or unknowingly display leadership qualities in our behaviour. Moreover, it is not wise to run away from situations but logical to face them boldly. In this sense, I believe that we are the leader of our actions. However, one cannot be simply termed as a leader unless one strives to develop the qualities. This article speaks about developing the leader in you. It makes us aware about the leadership development programmes and building leaders at the workplace.


Mathematics is considered the foundation of development in science, technology, and thought, and its practicality for life is also evident. If it is possible to use student daily life experiences as the focus, combining mathematics with gaming, to incorporate the game context into mathematics instruction, it would enhance student interest in learning mathematics. At the same time, this would cultivate student ability in problem-solving, lower student fear for mathematics, and enhance their learning motivation. The purpose of this study is to explore the context-based game-based interactive instructional media developed by this study. The classroom is combined with u-learning of real context-aware situated learning and post-class m-learning simulated learning, and this is used to explore differences in learning effects of second grade elementary school students in the addition and subtraction units in mathematics, and questionnaires are used to understand student views toward context-based game instruction.


Designed chemistry experiment can improve students' comprehensiveability.A student' s knowledge level and experimental ability can be imdicated from the experiment designed by himself In this paper,the designed chemistry experiment was evaluated with the fuzzily comprehensive evaluation and the result showed that it was more accurate、more obuective.


Objective To evaluate the global contractile function of the left ventricle (LV) by speckle tracking imaging (STI) in patients with myocardial infarction (MI), in order to determine the feasibility of evaluation of LV funtion with mitral annular displacement (MAD).Methods The systolis parameters including longitudinal strain (GLs) ,circumferential strain (GCs) and MAD were obtained using STI and LV ejection fraction (LVEF) was acquired by three-dimensional echocardiography in control group and MI group,and the correlation between these parameters and LVEF was analyzed respectively.Results The parameters in MI group were significantly lower than those in the control group(P <0.01).GLs was the independent predictors of LVEF in control group and MI group.A good correlation was showed between MADin control group and MI group (r = 0.84, P <0.01 and r = 0.87, P <0.01, respectively).Conclusions MAD may be a promising modality to evaluate the global systolic function of LV in patients with MI for clinical routine practice.

Key words:
Echocardiography;  Myocardial infarction;  Ventricular function, left;  Mitral annulus displacement


The invention discloses a micro nanocomposite material with high thermal conductivity and a preparation method thereof. The preparation method comprises the following steps: dispersing graphite or expanded graphite into a surface modifier solution, stirring at a high speed for 30-60 minutes, then performing ultrasounic stripping on the obtained mixture for 0.5-10 hours, filtering and drying to obtain micro nano structure thermal conducting filler; mixing the micro nano structure thermal conducting filler with a thermal plasticity polymer by virtue of fusion or solution, so as to obtain a micro nanocomposite material, then placing the obtained micro nanocomposite material into a mould, and performing hot press molding at the temperature of 170-300 DEG C and the pressure of 10-18MPa, so that the micro nanocomposite material with high thermal conductivity is obtained, wherein quality content of the micro nanocomposite material in a composite material is 5-30%. The micro nanocomposite material with high thermal conductivity is prepared through ultrasonic stripping under action of surfactant while graphite or expanded graphite is taken as a raw material. The micro nancomposite material with high thermal conductivity has excellent thermal conductivity and good mechanical property and is simple to prepare and low in cost.


Strontium manganate (SrMnO4) in the presence of aluminium chloride (AlCl3) is an efficient reagent for the high yielding oxidative deprotection of aromatic and aliphatic silyl and pyranyl ethers into their corresponding carbonyl compounds, in solution and under solvent-free conditions.


(57) Abstract: suction jet pump for supply unit provided in the fuel tank of a vehicle, the mixing tube (18) has a integrally manufactured nozzle (10). The mixing tube (18) is configured to form the tube cylinder, thus the entire suction jet pump (8) substantially can be made of plastic in the axial direction with a release possible tool types within. Therefore the nozzle (10) is accurately positioned relative to the mixing tube (18). Therefore this suction jet pump (8) has a particularly high efficiency.


Research Scholar, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering Sri Satya Sai University of Technology and Medical Science, Sehore, Madhya Pradesh, India. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract— Wireless sensor network consist of large number of sensor devices spread over a larger filed. A sensor is a small device which is having one or more sensors, processor, memory, a radio and actuator. Each sensor device will sense the data and transfers the collected data along the network. To transfer the data, each sensor node should be present in the network. For that finding location is important so as to send and receive the data from one to another node. Finding the location in the ad-hoc [1] network is too difficult. In ad-hoc and wireless sensor network, every node is moving from one location to another location, when node is moving from one location to another location during that juncture there may be a chance of loss of data in the wireless sensor [2] network. Finding the accurate location [3] in the ad-hoc network and the time frame to transfer the data is not an easy task. Let's say i is the one node and j is the another node in the network, then finding the distance between the node is (i,j) € G, where G is the Euclidean space. Distance can be found in the way of d(i,j) and can be defined as d(p(i),p(j)), in this both local and non-local nodes can be noticed.


The embodiment of the invention provides a heart beat recognition method and device. The method comprises the steps that electrocardiogram data of sampling points of a plurality of leads are obtained within a statistical time quantum; differential multiply transformation is carried out on the electrocardiogram data of the sampling point of each lead; threshold detection is carried out on electrocardiogram data obtained after differential multiply transformation is carried out on the electrocardiogram data of the sampling point of each lead, so that a first heart beat position of each lead is obtained; a second heart beat position is determined according to the obtained first heart beat position of each lead. According to the heart beat recognition method and device, the heart beat positions can be accurately recognized, the QRS wave main peak position does not need to be determined again, the algorithm complexity is lowered, and meanwhile noise false detection and ventricular heart beat leak detection are avoided.


A UV preionized TEA CO[sub 2] laser suitable for high-repetition-rate operation is developed that utilizes inductive ballasted sparks for UV radiation to produce preionization and a saturable inductor for delay between preionizer and main discharge. Optimization study of laser performance with respect to various parameters is presented.


Binuclear FeII, ZrIV(HfIV)-containing phthalocyaninatoclathrochelates with terminal reactive formyl group were prepared using three synthetic approaches, (i) the direct template condensation of appropriate chelating and capping ligand synthons on the iron(II)...


This paper summarizes the present methods used to monitoring tool and introduces the fundamental principles,merits and demerits and application ranges of these tool monitoring methods.


According to the compaction character of earth mixture with different gravel content in the same technology,it is significant for reasonable technology selection of gravel compaction in practical engineering to classify the structure of earth taking the gravel content as index,dry-density as accordance,and present the classifying limitation for index of gravel content.


This study presents results of an on-going monitoring programme aimed at characterizing compositional variations in geothermal fluids along the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ). The study was initiated through a preliminary He-isotope survey in 2000 in response to 2 catastrophic earthquakes in 1999 (see results in Chem. Geol. 2002). The present programme was started in late 2001 and covers 9 geothermal sites which are monitored 3 times per year. The sites are located along an 800 km long segment of the NAFZ, from Yalova near the Sea of Marmara in the west, to Resadiye in the east. The data reported here cover the results obtained to date from the analyses of i) tritium contents and 18 O/ 16 O and D/H ratios of the hot and cold waters, along with their major anion-cation contents, and ii) CO2/He gas ratios and δ 13 C values of the CO2 gas in geothermal fluids.


Several forms of hepatic toxicity have been described with the antifungal agent ketoconazole. We report a case of massive liver enlargement with fatty infiltration presenting as gastric compression. This occurred in a young woman with AIDS taking ketoconazole as maintenance therapy for cryptococcal meningitis. This is the first reported case of ketoconazole causing fatty change in the liver.


The kinetics of central and peripheral fatigue development during an intensive constant‐load cycling exercise was evaluated to better understand the mechanisms of task failure. Thirteen males cycled to exhaustion at 80% of maximal power output in intermittent bouts of 6 min of exercise with 4‐min break between bouts to assess quadriceps fatigue with maximal voluntary contractions and single (1 Hz), paired (10 and 100 Hz) potentiated and interpolated magnetic stimulations of the femoral nerve (TwQ). Surface electromyographic signals (EMG) of the quadriceps muscles were recorded during stimulations and cycling. Total cycling duration (TCD) was 27 min 38 s±7 min 48 s. The mechanical response evoked by magnetic stimulation decreased mostly during the first half of TCD (TwQ1 Hz reduction: −34.4±12.2% at 40% TCD and −44.8±9.2% at exhaustion; P<0.001), while a reduction in maximum voluntary activation was present toward the end of exercise only (−5.4±4.8% and −6.4±5.6% at 80% TCD and exhaustion, respectively; P<0.01). The increase in quadriceps EMG during cycling was significantly correlated to the TwQ reduction for the rectus femoris (r2=0.20 at 1 Hz, r2=0.47 at 100 Hz, all P≤0.001). We conclude that peripheral fatigue develops early during constant‐load intense cycling and is compensated by additional motor drive, while central fatigue appears to be associated with task failure.


The primary aim of this study was to examine the effect of recent tobacco, alcohol and cannabis use on treatment outcomes among participants experiencing first episode psychosis (FEP).


Abstract. Rule-governed behavior is a central concept to explain complex human behavior from a functional-analytic standpoint. Recently, a self-report measure of a functional type of rule-following called generalized pliance has been developed – the Generalized Pliance Questionnaire (GPQ). The GPQ has two versions with 18 and 9 items, respectively. This study aimed to analyze the factor structure and psychometric properties of both GPQ versions in a Spanish online sample ( N = 846). Confirmatory factor analyses showed that the one-factor model obtained an acceptable fit in the GPQ-18, but an inadequate fit in the GPQ-9. The GPQ-18 showed measurement invariance across gender, excellent internal consistency, and convergent construct validity. According to the results, the GPQ-18 showed good psychometric properties in Spanish samples.


Boerhaave's syndrome is a rare spontaneous transmural esophageal rupture from forceful vomiting. It is commonly misdiagnosed either from the non-specific presentation or its mimicking known premorbid conditions. Mortality could be very high and early with delayed diagnosis. We present a rare occurrence of this syndrome in which delayed diagnosis was due to premorbid conditions of bronchial asthma and hypertension and not symptom presentation and with a very good treatment outcome.


During operation of oil-producing wells, knowledge of reliable values of the pressure and density of the blend, as well as the nature of their distribution along the tubing length, allows to choose the most effective method of oil recovery and determine the optimal mode of operation of the well. The article studies the structural diagram of a depleted well serviced with a variable speed pump, which is divided into three sections: bottom hole - suction of the pump, production string (tubing), and tubular annulus. The article also considers the dependence of the pressure and density of the blend on the oil-producing wells depth as one of the algorithm essential components for controlling the oil production process, which has its own characteristics for different ways of lifting products to the surface. The study results of changes in the oil, gas and water blend density in the tubing and in the tubular annulus, as well as changes in the oil and water blend density in the section of the bottom hole - suction of the pump indicate the need to measure pressure at the wellsite at several points. In other words, installation of remote stationary pressure indicators at the inlet and outlet of the downhole pump is a necessary and sufficient condition for information support, as well as inside of the tubing and tubular annulus of an oil production wells in order to apply them to the systems for monitoring and controlling the process of oil production. A device for measuring pressures inside the tubing and tubular annulus with the its installation possibility in several control points in an oil wellbore is proposed. The proposed device introduction for the purpose of the operational management of the production wellsite operation mode will lead to its effective operation and an increase in the oil flow rate.


Introduction The gold standard for knee surgery is the restoration of the so-called «neutral mechanical alignment ». Recent literature as pointed out the patients with «constitutional varus »; in these cases, restoring neutral alignment could be abnormal and even undesirable. The same situation can be observed in patients with «constitutional valgus alignment ». To date, these outliers cases have only been explored focusing on the lower limb; the influence of the pelvic morphotype has not been studied. Intuitively, the pelvic width could be a significant factor. The EOS low dose imaging technique provides full body standing X-rays to evaluate the global anatomy of the patient. This work explores the influence of the pelvic parameters on the frontal knee alignment. Material and methods – We included 170 patients (340 lower extremities). 2 operators performed measurements once per patient on AP X-rays. The classical anatomical parameters were: –Femoral mechanical angle (FMA) –Tibial mechanical angle (TMA) –Hip knee shaft angle (HKS) –Hip knee ankle angle (HKA) –Femoral and tibial lengths The morphotype was evaluated by: –the distances between the center of two femoral heads (FHD), between knees (KD) and between ankles (AD) –the medial neck-shaft angle (MNSA) –the femoral offset The horizontal distance between the limb mechanical axis (line passing from center of the femoral head to the center of the ankle) and the center of the knee was called the intrinsic mechanical axis deviation (IMAD) (fig 1). The horizontal distance between the pelvic mechanical axis (line from the center of the sacral plate to the center of the ankle) and the center of the knee was called the global mechanical axis deviation (GMAD) (fig 2). Inter-Operator Reliability was calculated with Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Inter-Reader Agreement was assessed with Bland-Altman test. A relationship between IMAD and GMAD to the other parameters was assessed using Pearson9s correlation coefficient. Results Inter-Operator Reliability was high for femoral offset, TMA and MSNA (ICC > 0,88) and very high for the other parameters (ICC > 0,93). These values are given in table 1 and all the 2D parameters are given in the table 2. IMAD was significantly correlated with HKA (r = 0,99), FMA (r = −0,58), TMA (r = −0,61) and KD (r = 0,72). GMAD was significantly correlated with HKA (r = 0,94), FMA (r = −0,53), TMA (r = −0,60) and KD (r = 0,67). Two groups were identified according to pelvic width (FHD): Group 1 (standard patients): Pelvic width Group 2 (wide pelvis): Pelvic width ≥ 18 cm (176 lower extremities) For standard patients the FHD is a significant parameter, whereas the proximal femoral anatomy (offset and MNSA) are more relevant for wide pelvis. Conclusion Accurate analysis of the morphotype of the lower limbs is essential for planning femoral or tibial osteotomy and knee prostheses. Taking into account pelvic morphotype can provide additional informations for the axes restoration and the detection of outliers patients.


With intention to contribute for a recognition of the scientific production in what it says respect to the thematic Colonial Education, a research of survey in the Lattes Resume (or Curriculum Lattes) was become fullfilled for the published scientific article identification with this thematic. It is important to detach that the carried through study is not exhausting and definitive and neither aimed at to the elaboration of a state of


In the monohydrate of 2-amino-8-(2-deoxy-α-d-erythro-pentofuranosyl)-8H-imidazo[1,2-a][1,3,5]triazin-4-one, C10H13N5O4·H2O, denoted (I) or αZd, the conformation of the N-glycosylic bond is in the high-anti range [χ = 87.5 (3)°]. The 2′-deoxyribofuranose moiety adopts a C2′-endo,C3′-exo(2′T3′) sugar puckering (S-type sugar) and the conformation at the C4′—C5′ bond is −sc (trans).


The newly developed heat-strengthened vacuum glazing has eased the bottleneck due to low strength of common vacuum glazing.Test results showed that its main performance indices are much better than the common vacuum glazing and insulating glass,and the composite type of the glazing is superior obviously in safety,energy saving and sound insulation.It will be a hot item as favorable material for windows,doors and curtain walls.An automatic line for the vacuum glazing production has been designed and will be completed soon.Compared with the pilot-scale line,the automatic line can achieve continuous batch production,thus improving greatly the product quality and rate of finished products and reducing the energy consumption and costs.Commissioning the line will ease another bottleneck,ie.,outdated equipment,so as to update the vacuum glazing industry as quick as possible.


Motivation is one of the most important forces that guide students' actions. It involves a direction, a goal or an objective and the arousal of one or more drives. A teacher needs to consider motivational strategies that can be used to enhance learners' motivation and increase their active participation in learning. Research and experience indicates that students who are intrinsically motivated will work hard and learn more because of their personal interest in the materials. The use of educational media and technology is one that is considered to provide motivation to learners during teaching –learning situation. The purpose of this study was to investigate if the use of computers as an instructional tool motivates students to learn effectively in secondary schools. The study used a descriptive survey design conducted in 25 secondary schools in Nyanza province that had computers at the time of the research. Participants included 25 principals, 140 heads of departments and 20 computer teachers. The secondary schools were drawn from rural, urban, and suburban areas in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Data was collected using questionnaire for the Principals and Heads of Departments, while Semi-structured interview schedule was used for the teachers. Data analysis involved the use of descriptive statistics that combined qualitative and quantitative methods. Data collection involved the use of questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The overall findings confirmed that the majority of the participants agreed that the use of computers increased their students' motivation to learn different subjects effectively. The study therefore recommended that public secondary schools should be assisted to purchase enough computers for teaching and learning.


Female two‐spotted spider mite Tetranychus urticae are grown under different photoperiods and the photoperiodic regulation of diapause is examined. The photoperiodic response curve for diapause induction was of the long day–short day type, with critical day lengths (CDLs) of 2 and 12.5 h; diapause was induced between these CDLs. The preimaginal period is significantly longer in diapausing females than in non‐diapausing females; moreover, a significant positive correlation is detected between diapause incidence and deutonymphal period. Diapause incidence is high when long‐night photoperiods are applied against a background of continuous darkness in the stages including the deutonymph; this stage appears to be the most sensitive to photoperiod. These observations suggest that diapause‐inducing conditions inhibit nymphal development, particularly in the deutonymphal stage when photoperiodic time measurement for determination of reproduction or diapause is carried out.


We have calculated certain dynamic polarizabilities (for both real and imaginary frequencies) for H, He, and H2 and the dispersion-energy coefficients for long-range interactions between them. We have done so in a sum-over-states formalism with explicitly electron-correlated wave functions to describe the states. To be precise, we have determined the dipole (α1), quadrupole (α2), and octupole (α3) polarizabilities of H and He for real frequencies (ω) in a range between zero and the first electronic-transition frequency and for imaginary frequencies (iω) on a 32-point Gauss-Legendre grid running from zero to ħω = 20 Eh, and for H2, we have found the dipole (α), quadrupole (C), and dipole–octupole (E) polarizability tensors for the same real and imaginary frequencies. The dispersion-energy coefficients, obtained by combining the sum-over-states for-malism for the polarizabilities with analytic integration over ω, gave values of C6, C8, and C10 for the atom–atom systems; C, C, C, C, and C for the atom–diatom systems; and C6, C and C for the H2H2 system. Nearly all the results are considered to be more reliable than those hitherto published and some have been obtained for the first time, e.g., C(iω), E(ω), and E(iω) for H2 and C, C, and C for the HH2 system. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.


Survivability in a battle field is the most important aspect to the warriors. To analyze the survival effectiveness of warrior platform, the simulation via war-game model is an essential step in advance to the development of platform. In this study, Army Weapon effectiveness Analysis Model(AWAM) was utilized for analysis. Several weapon parameters were adjusted to apply the characteristics of warrior platform in some cases of the defense and survival system. Especially, adjusted triage possibility, probability of kill, fatality and accuracy were employed as parameters in the simulation program to evaluate the survival effectiveness of intelligent system based on the previous researches. In the future battle field or virtual space in the AWAM, the warrior platform intelligent system could react emergency treatment on time by expoiting the bio-information of man at arms. Considering the order of supply priority, special force was selected as operating troops and battle scenario without engagement was selected to measure accurate survival effectiveness. In conclusion, the survivability of defence and survival system of the warrior platform was about 1.47 times higher than that of current system.


In this paper we are concerned with numerical methods for nonhomogeneous Helmholtz equations in inhomogeneous media. We try to extend the plane wave method, which has been widely used to the discretization of homogeneous Helmholtz equations with constant wave numbers, to solving nonhomogeneous Helmholtz equations with piecewise constant wave numbers. To this end, we propose a combination between the plane wave discontinuous Galerkin (PWDG) method and the high order element discontinuous Galerkin (HODG) method for the underlying Helmholtz equations. In this composite methods, we need only to solve a series of local Helmholtz equations by the HODG method and solve a locally homogeneous Helmholtz equation with element-wise constant wave number by the PWDG method. In particular, we first consider non-matching grids so that the generated approximations have better performance for the current case. Numerical experiments show that the proposed methods are very effective to the tested Helmholtz equations. AMS subject classifications: 65N30, 65N55


Heterogeneous devices are becoming necessary components of high performance computing infrastructures, and the graphics processing unit (GPU) plays an important role in this landscape. Given a problem, the established approach for exploiting the GPU is to design solutions that are parallel, without data dependencies. These solutions are then offloaded to the GPU's massively parallel capability. This design principle often leads to developing applications that cannot maximize GPU hardware utilization. The goal of this article is to challenge this common belief by empirically showing that allowing even simple forms of synchronization enables programmers to design solutions that admit conflicts and achieve better performance. Our experience shows that lock‐based solutions to the k‐means clustering problem, implemented using two well‐known locking strategies, outperform the well‐engineered and parallel KMCUDA on both synthetic and real datasets; with an average 8× faster runtimes across all locking algorithms on a synthetic dataset and 1.7× faster on a real world dataset across all locking algorithms (and max speedups of 71.3× and 2.75×, respectively). We validate these results using a more sophisticated clustering algorithm, namely fuzzy c‐means and summarize our findings by identifying three guidelines to help make concurrency effective when programming GPU applications.


Abstract 4087 Acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) is organized as a cellular hierarchy, initiated and maintained by a subset of self renewing leukemia stem cells (LSCs). We have recently reported that signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) is activated in CD34+/CD38− AML cells which contain abundant leukemia stem cells (LSCs) and inhibition of STAT5 induced apoptosis and sensitized these cells to the growth inhibition mediated by conventional chemotherapeutic agents (Int J Cancer. 2011;128:2317-25). This study attempted to identify molecules which are regulated by STAT5 and support survival of CD34+/CD38− AML cells. We lentivirally transduced a short hairpin (sh) RNA targeting STAT5 in CD34+/CD38− AML cells and compared their gene expression profiles with those of control shRNA transduced CD34+/CD38− AML cells by microarray analysis. Interestingly, DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) 3A, which catalyzes the transfer of a methyl group to DNA was differentially expressed between control and STAT5A down-regulated AML cells. In contrast, lentiviral transduction of STAT5A in CD34+/CD38− AML cells increased levels of DNMT3A. Reporter gene assays found that exposure of leukemia cells to IL-10 increased levels of the phosphorylated forms of STAT5, leading to transcriptional activation of DNMT3A. On the other hand, dephosphorylation of STAT5A by AZ960, a selective JAK2 inhibitor decreased this transcriptional activity in leukemia cells. Of note, forced expression of STAT5A in leukemia cells caused hypermethylation on the promoter region of tumor suppressor gene PTEN and down-regulated its mRNA levels as measured by methylation-specific PCR and real-time RT-PCR, respectively. Taken together, STAT5A may positively regulate levels of DNMT3A, resulting in inactivation of tumor suppressor gene by epigenetic mechanisms in LSCs. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


This paper attempts to evaluate, in a rather limited sense, the exchange experience of the Philippines during the period of generalized currency floating. The nature of the post-1970 exchange rate regime is analyzed, and various im plications of flexibility of the country's own as well as other countries' exchange rates are discussed. Furthermore, changes in the peso-u.s. dollar exchange rate are examined in the light of official intervention behavior in the foreign exchange market. The Philippines adopted a flexihle exchange rate system in early 1970 and has kept it in place since then. In many respects, this system has assisted the country in wea thering the external shocks which began with the oil crisis in 1973-74 without the exchange upheavals reminiscent of the 1950's and 1960's. While external balance is yet to be achieved, the post-1970 exchange rate regime, which is more precisPly characterized by limited rather than full flexibility, has Probably prevented more fundamental disequilibrium from developing, making abrupt and disruptive exchange rate adjust ments less of a possibility. The analysis of official intervention behavior in the Philippine foreign exchange market demonstrates the importance of the current account in the exchange rate adjustments undertaken by the monetary authorities, as well as the latter's commitment to the nominal peso-U.S~ dollar exchange rate. The second observation can be exnlained by the peso's traditional link to the U.S. dollar. However, because major currencies are floating, preoccupation with the nominal exchange rate has resulted in effective ex change rates which are not in the direction suggested bv the underlying balance of payments develo?ments in many instances.


The new method for efficient computation of the fundamental units of an algebraic number field developed by the authors in an earlier paper is considerably improved with respect to (Section 1) utilization to best advantage of the element of choice inherent in the method and the mastery of the linear programming techniques involved, (Section 2) ideal factorization, and (Section 3) the determination of sharper upper bounds for the index of Ue in UF. Introduction. In [3] the authors devised a new method for efficient computation of the fundamental units of an algebraic number field. However, a few questions regarding the ensuing algorithm were left unanswered. We therefore announced further investigations. In the last four years we obtained much more computational experience with our method, and we discovered that some of the procedures could be considerably improved. The results of the theoretical analysis are contained in this paper, numerical examples and a description of the computer program will follow subsequently. In Sections 1 -3 we discuss the essential points of the computation of fundamental units in number fields, in accordance with the usual procedure. Sections 1 and 2 contain the determination of a maximal system of independent units, and in Section 3 we obtain an upper bound for the index of the group generated by the computed units in the full unit group. Then the latter can be computed without further theoretical difficulties as outlined in [3]. We use the following notation. F is an algebraic number field of degree n > 2 over Q with discriminant dF. The ring of integers of F is denoted by oF, its unit group by UF. We assume that F has r, real and 2r2 complex conjugates, so that UF contains r = rx + r2 — 1 independent units according to the Dirichlet theorem. In Section 1 we study the generation of arbitrarily many integers of F of bounded norm. We obtain several important improvements over [3] concerning the choice of a basis of oF, the choice of w for transforming the fundamental parallelotope and especially the determination of the lattice points in the transformed parallelotope. In Section 2 we give a new method for the construction of units based on a sufficiently large number of algebraic integers of bounded norm. For real quadratic fields it was already discussed in [4]. By application of Sections 1 and 2 often enough we will obtain r independent units e" . . . , £r and thus a system of generators of a subgroup Ue of finite index in Received April 14, 1981. 1980 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 12A45. * Author supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. © 1982 American Mathematical Society 0025-5718/82/0000-0490/$05.25 275 License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 276 MICHAEL POHST AND HANS ZASSENHAUS UF. We do not deal here with the computation of a generating element of the torsion subgroup TUF of UF (for this see [3]). In order to determine a system of fundamental units derived from £,,..., er, we need an estimate of (UF: Ue) and a method of extracting roots from suitable power products e,""1 • • ■ e/"' (m¡ e Z). Improved upper bounds for the index of Ue in UF will be given in Section 3. Besides making use of conventional lower bounds for the regulator RF of F we develop new lower estimates derived from Minkowski's Theorem on Successive Minima. Though this method was already outlined in [3], we present it anew with substantially stronger results. The computation of UF from Ue—provided that an upper bound for (UF: Ue) is known—was completely described in [3]. Part II contains a description of the corresponding computer program as well as an extensive list of numerical results obtained so far. They cover all fields of degrees < 6 and small absolute discriminant. 1. Construction of Integers of Small Norms. For any integral basis w" . . . , w" of the given algebraic number field F there is a 1-1 correspondence between oF and Z" by means of the mapping (1.1) <p:F^Q":xxü>x + • • • + x"u" -► (*".. . , x"). Therefore we can compute integers of F of bounded norms as lattice points in the parallelotope (1.2) m := {(xx, . . . , x") G Z" | -1 < xt < 1, i = 1, . . ., n), respectively, in suitable linear transforms of m of equal volume. This procedure was described in detail in [3]. However, we did not discuss the effect which a particular choice of the basis to,, . . . , ion has on our method. To compute units from the integers of F obtained by the algorithm we would like their norms to be as small as possible. An upper bound is easily derived from (1.2). For (1.3) UB := max ft ( ¿ X& 1 < xi < l,i 1, where the product is taken over all conjugates, obviously (1.4) \N(i)\ < UB holds for every integer £ of F which we obtain by our method. Therefore the integral basis w" ..., «" should be chosen so as to make UB as small as possible. Unfortunately the computation of such a basis is at least as difficult as the computation of units. For example, in real quadratic fields the corresponding extremal value problem would involve a solution of Pell's equation. Nevertheless, it is advisable to carefully consider the choice of to,, . . . , un to make UB desirably small. A first step is, of course, the choice of basis elements of small norm. Since our method provides such elements at each step, a change of basis after a few steps is highly recommendable. Example: n = 2, F = Q(V6 ), oF = Z + V6Z . For 1, V6 as basis elements we obtain UB = 6. If we choose 1,2+ V6 instead, we get UB = 5. Moreover, m then contains a lattice point corresponding to 3 + V6 . After we change the basis to License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use EFFECTIVE COMPUTATION OF FUNDAMENTAL UNITS. I 277 to, = 2 + Vt5 , co2 = 3 + V6 , we obtain firstly UB = 3, and then also the fundamental unit e = «j + co2 of F as a lattice point of m. Hence we can compute the fundamental unit in that case without transforming m at all. In most cases, however, co-transformations of m cannot be avoided. For to G oF\Z we compute the right regular representation matrix Ma by means of (1.5) co(u" . . ., <a") = (co" . . ., w")Mu. Then the matrix \N(u)\~l//nMu yields a linear transformation of determinant ±1. Denote the transformed parallelotope by m(u): (1.6) m(w) = {\N(U)\-x/n(xx, ..., xn)Ml | -1< x, < 1, i = 1, .. ., n}. From this presentation it is easily seen that the bound UB of (1.3) remains unaltered for m(u>). An optimal choice for w is still an unsolved problem. We propose to call co "good", if m(u) contains many lattice points different from those of it. Unfortunately we do not know how to make the best choice of to to that effect. So far we can only give rules of thumb derived from our experience with extensive calculations. New lattice points rarely occurred if we chose co at random or if we made one coefficient in the representation of co by to,, ... , co" large and the other coefficients small. Substantially better results were obtained by using a number co of small norm and continuing by using a few consecutive powers of that same number. Apart from those improved results we gained also the following advantages. Firstly, numbers of small norms are already derived from the lattice points in m, they are always at hand. So we do not need an extra routine for the generation of co, we can simply choose the element of smallest norm in storage which was not yet used for this purpose. Secondly, we must compute Mu only once, compare the remarks to Step (A) below. Further simplifications can occur in the process of determining lattice points of 7r(co). We shortly recall the main steps from [3]. (A) By the elementary divisor theorem a unimodular matrix U and its inverse are computed such that MU =: N is a lower triangular matrix. (B) A lower triangular matrix ß G Z"x" is recursively computed from NB = \N(u)\In, In denoting the « X « unit matrix. (C) The integral solutions x G Z" of the system of inequalities (1.7) -\N(a)\<n-Wn(l, ...,l)'<xB< |A/(co)|("-,)/',(l, . . . , 1)' can easily be calculated, since in the ith inequality only x", . . . , x¡ occur (i = n, « 1,.... 1). (D) Every lattice point y of m(u>) is obtained from a solution x of (C) by means of y = xi/-'. In the sequel we investigate steps (A) and (C) for further improvements. Step (A). When we transform m by successive powers of an integer co of F, we can avoid computing Mu. = (MJf (v = 2, 3, . . . ) at each step. For the determination of the lattice points of the transformed parallelotope we do not actually need Ma. but only the lower triangular matrix Nu, obtained from it by column operations and multiplication by the corresponding unimodular matrices Uu. and U~l, respectively. We therefore compute those for consecutive powers of co in the following License or copyright restrictions may apply to redistribution; see https://www.ams.org/journal-terms-of-use 278 MICHAEL POHST AND HANS ZASSENHAUS way. Because of Mu = NaU~l and M'a = AfuAfM.= (MJV>,)ltffor v = 2, 3, ... , we calculate for each v > 2 the matrix MuNa,-x which cuts down the work by nearly one half, since Nu,-< is already a lower triangular matrix. Thereafter MuNa,-\ is transformed into a lower triangular matrix Na. and at each step U~}-i is transformed analogously yielding M"u = Nu,Ual. Moreover, we can give Na(Na. respectively) a canonically reduced form by column operations demanding for its entries n¡,: (1.8) «"• >0, -}«,<nu <\na (i = 2, ...,n;j= 1, ...,/1). Step (C). Solving the system of linear inequalities in the proposed way is recommendable only in case |A/(co)|("_1)/" is small compared with the entry bnn of B. Usually bn" will be one. So, if |A/(w)| becomes large, for example, when co is a power of some integer of F, we would have to consider the remaining n — 1 inequalities for a huge number of values xn, most of which would not yield a solution of the system. We therefore proceed in


This paper describes the design process and design validation of the US Air Force Research Laboratory developed Variable Camber Compliant Wing. The Variable Camber Compliant Wing was designed and fabricated based on compliant mechanisms and advanced manufacturing technologies, enabling a solution that is light weight, requires low power, and is low cost. The Air Force Research Laboratory demonstrates a new capability and technology for an active wing camber change without discrete control surfaces under realistic aerodynamic conditions. In this particular study, the wing was designed to target, but does not exactly resemble airfoil shapes between the NACA 2410 and NACA 8410, but the design is not only limited to these airfoils. The entire skin is seamless and continuous, constructed from a single piece of non-stretchable composite skin. The smooth elastic deformation of the Variable Camber Compliant Wing is obtained through the underlying compliant mechanism. 2D camber change is achieved by linear actuation to control both leading and trailing edge deflection. 3D shape change is also capable through camber variation along the span using a distributed actuation system. Proving the capability of a smooth 2D and 3D shape change would allow aircraft to significantly reduce fuel burn by continuously optimizing the wing L/D throughout the mission, as well as reduce airframe noise caused by holes and gaps existing on a conventional wing. Future aerodynamic applications and testing plans are discussed in this paper.


Among innovations and improvements that occurred in the past two decades on the techniques and tools used for statistical process control (SPC), adaptive control charts have shown to substantially improve the statistical and/or economical performances. Variable sampling intervals (VSI) control charts are one of the most applied types of the adaptive control charts and have shown to be faster than traditional Shewhart control charts in identifying small changes of concerned quality characteristics. While in the designing procedure of the VSI control charts the data or measurements are assumed independent normal observations, in real situations the validity of these assumptions is under question in many processes. This article develops an economic-statistical design of a VSI X-bar control chart under non-normality and correlation. Since the proposed design consists of a complex nonlinear cost model that cannot be solved using a classical optimization method, a genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to solve it. Moreover, to improve the performances, response surface methodology (RSM) is employed to calibrate GA parameters. The solution procedure, efficiency, and sensitivity analysis of the proposed design are demonstrated through a numerical illustration at the end.


Background: Malnutrition is a frequent problem in cancer patients. Malnutrition and weight loss are associated with worse outcome, impaired quality of life, and performance status in cancer patients. Objective: The study aimed to assess the nutritional status of patients with stomach, colorectal, and hepatic malignancies in relation to different sociodemographic and clinicopathological characteristics. Method: This cross-sectional study included 298 incident cases (85 liver, 93 stomach, and 120 colorectal cancers) enrolled during the period from January 2018 to September 2019. The instrument of this study consisted of Socio-demographic, clinicopathological characteristics, and the Mini Nutritional Assessment (MNA) questionnaire. Results: Malnutrition was found in 39.6% of all patients; 49.5% of stomach, 39.2% of colorectal, and 29.4% of liver cancer patients. The independent factors that significantly predict malnutrition were tumor type (OR: 3.4: 95%CI: 1.6-7.1 - stomach vs. liver) and (OR: 1.8, 95%CI: 0.9-3.6 - colorectal vs. liver), psychological problems (OR: 3.8: 95%CI: 2.1-6.8), low performance status (OR: 5.6: 95%CI: 1.8-17.9), and smoking (OR: 1.9: 95%CI: 1.1-3.4). Conclusion: Malnutrition is prevalent among gastrointestinal and liver cancers. It is more frequent in stomach cancer cases than in liver cancer cases. The independent factors that significantly predict malnutrition were: tumor type, psychological problems, low performance status, and smoking


The use of Natural Gas (NG) in internal combustion engines has been increased in this decade. The objective of this paper is to investigate the NG injection timing on the dual-fuel engine. In this paper experimental based on dual fuel engine strategy (DFE strategy) was tested with several variations of gas injection based on CA at the modified direct - injection engine into a DFE strategy. In the data test, the variation is CA 260, 244, 230, 214 bTDC. This research is for observed how it affects the engine performance. The indication of the effect of NG injection based on the CA variation is the non-homogenization of the NG-air mixture in the intake manifold, and the delay in mixing NG-air to go into the combustion chamber. From several data tests that have been done, there is an increase in engine power, thermal efficiency and a decrease in SFOC fuel consumption. The optimum combination of the DFE strategy has a fluctuating value when taken from test experimental data. The trend is seen, that CA 230 bTDC is the optimum value to be operated in the DFE strategy. Because there is an increase in Torque, Efficiency thermal, and a decrease in SFOC of fuel consumption.The use of Natural Gas (NG) in internal combustion engines has been increased in this decade. The objective of this paper is to investigate the NG injection timing on the dual-fuel engine. In this paper experimental based on dual fuel engine strategy (DFE strategy) was tested with several variations of gas injection based on CA at the modified direct - injection engine into a DFE strategy. In the data test, the variation is CA 260, 244, 230, 214 bTDC. This research is for observed how it affects the engine performance. The indication of the effect of NG injection based on the CA variation is the non-homogenization of the NG-air mixture in the intake manifold, and the delay in mixing NG-air to go into the combustion chamber. From several data tests that have been done, there is an increase in engine power, thermal efficiency and a decrease in SFOC fuel consumption. The optimum combination of the DFE strategy has a fluctuating value when taken from test experimental data. The trend is seen, that CA 230 bTDC...


This is a report on the first meeting of the seventeenth NCGIA research initiative, entitled "Collaborative Spatial Decision-Making." This meeting, held in Santa Barbara between September 16th and 19th, 1995, was attended by representatives of the NCGIA, university faculty members from North America and Europe, and representatives of US companies. The contents of this report are compiled from the notes of the organizers and student rapporteurs, materials prepared during the meeting and the personal notes of several of the participants.


Using a set of high-resolution N-body/SPH cosmological simulations with identical initial conditions but run with different numerical setups, we investigate the influence of baryonic matter on the mass distribution of dark halos when radiative cooling is not included. We compare the concentration parameters of about 400 massive halos with virial mass from 1013 to 7.1 × 1014 h-1 M☉. We find that the concentration parameters for the total mass and dark matter distributions in nonradiative simulations are on average larger by ~3% and 10% than those in a pure dark matter simulation. Our results indicate that the total mass density profile is little affected by a hot gas component in the simulations. After carefully excluding the effects of resolutions and spurious two-body heating between dark matter (DM) and gas particles, we conclude that the increase of the DM concentration parameters is due to interactions between baryons and DM. We demonstrate this with the aid of idealized simulations of two-body mergers. The results of individual halos simulated with different mass resolutions show that in the gas profiles of densities, temperature and entropy are subjects of mass resolution of SPH particles. In particular, we find that in the inner parts of halos, as the SPH resolution increases the gas density becomes higher but both the entropy and temperature decrease.


The collectors past musician has been through of preserved. the whose present The energy day heyday owes and of a enthusiasm great the British deal so to musical much the generations music collector, of the of as collectors through whose energy and enthusiasm so much music of the past has been pr served. The heyday of the British musical collector, as Alec Hyatt King demonstrates in his important survey of the subject,1 was the Victorian era, when historical values began to assume a measure of the importance attached to them today. Although the musical life of the Elizabethans was in many ways more vital than that of the Victorians, the collector appears to have been a much more unusual figure in their times, and the lack of sufficient records makes him all the more difficult to trace. Natur-


The results of radiation impedance design of magnetostatic wave microstrip transducer with wide strip are presented in this report. It was analysed the radiation impedance as a function of frequency for microstrip lines with different distance between the line conductors and the surface of magnetized ferrite film.


Children form an important proportion of the vital human potential of any country and therefore their health and wellbeing is of great importance. Like preschool children, primary school children are of concern from nutrition view point as they are still in a growing age physically and their intellectual development is rapid. Earlier studies conducted in the Bareilly region had shown high prevalence of child malnutrition including vit A, energy and calcium deficiency. These deficiencies contribute to ill growth, poor physical development as well as low performance in school. Therefore nutrition education was imparted to the primary school children of backward areas through a combination of media and the impact was studied in terms of knowledge and practices. A total of one hundred an fifty children of 7-9 years were purposively selected. A pretested survey schedule was used for pre and post exposure data collection. A combination of folders, booklets, charts, group discussion, lectures, picture books & puzzles were used for imparting the messages. Knowledge scores and practices obtained after nutrition education showed a significant improvement due to given programme. Also an overall improvement was noticed with respect to the nutrient consumption in both urban and rural group of children.


Since Henry Power in 1663 successfully revived eelworms which had been frozen in vinegar for a few hours, there has been much interest in cryopreservation. As liquid nitrogen and other cooling agents became more widely available a standard method involving a single cooling rate for the cryopreservation of fungi was proposed by Hwang in 1960. This method was used until the early 1980s, but an increasing number of recalcitrant strains were found. Research at the time was empirical and based on attempts to find the universal cryoprotectant which would protect all fungi irrespective of the cooling rate. The real need was to go back to basics and study the response of the living cell to freezing and thawing. The use of cryogenic light microscopy to study fungi provided a major breakthrough, and showed that cooling rates which cause shrinkage or ice formation should be avoided. Further work is required particularly on membrane structure and the mechanism by which intracellular ice causes injury, as well as the effects of the age of the culture, hyphal structure and growth requirements. Cryopreservation is the only method of preservation which will store fungi and other cells for extremely long periods of time without detectable genetic or morphological change.


At present,more emphasis are focused on western economics with the weakening of political economics in undergraduate education and postgraduate education.Students easily accept ideas in the western economics while feel withdrawn and hard to learn political economics.This is a sharp contrast in different feelings towards two courses.The author analyzes the problems and puts forward the possible solution and countermeasures to the problems.


Psychological trait estimation from external factors such as movement and appearance is a challenging and long-standing problem in psychology, and is principally based on the psychological theory of embodiment. To date, attempts to tackle this problem have utilized private small-scale datasets with intrusive body-attached sensors. Potential applications of an automated system for psychological trait estimation include estimation of occupational fatigue and psychology, and marketing and advertisement. In this work, we propose PsyMo (Psychological traits from Motion), a novel, multi-purpose and multi-modal dataset for exploring psychological cues manifested in walking patterns. We gathered walking sequences from 312 subjects in 7 different walking variations and 6 camera angles. In conjunction with walking sequences, participants filled in 6 psychological questionnaires, totalling 17 psychometric attributes related to personality, self-esteem, fatigue, aggressiveness and mental health. We propose two evaluation protocols for psychological trait estimation. Alongside the estimation of self-reported psychological traits from gait, the dataset can be used as a drop-in replacement to benchmark methods for gait recognition. We anonymize all cues related to the identity of the subjects and publicly release only silhouettes, 2D / 3D human skeletons and 3D SMPL human meshes.


This work introduces a new preprocessing step for object detection applicable to UAV bird's eye view imagery, which we call Adaptive Resizing. By design, it helps alleviate the challenges coming with the vast variances in objects' scales, naturally inherent to UAV data sets. Furthermore, it improves inference speed by two to three times on average. We test this extensively on UAVDT, VisDrone, and on a new data set we captured ourselves and achieve consistent improvements while being considerably faster. Moreover, we show how to apply this method to generic UAV object detection tasks. Additionally, we successfully test our approach on a height transfer task where we train on some interval of altitudes and test on a different one. Furthermore, we introduce a small, fast detector meant for deployment to an embedded GPU. Code is available at https://github.com/cogsys-tuebingen/adaptive_resizer.


Micro-financing performs a fundamental function in the sustenance of small and medium enterprises as they serve as supporting vessels in issuing start-ups to small and medium enterprises particularly, to rural unbanked population. Despite this vital role, about 70% of these firms are in the trading sector experiencing numerous hurdles that have slowed their growth and development among which include insufficient operating capital, insufficient industry knowledge, outdated technologies, a lack of company expertise, and lack of production facilities. How microfinance services affect the small and medium-sized businesses financial performance in Nairobi City, Kenya, was the main focus of this inquiry in light of the surrounding circumstances. Specifically, this investigation will determine microfinance credit services effect on small and medium enterprises' financial performance in Kenya under the context of Nairobi City. The inquiry was anchored on credit rationing theory and resource-based view. The target demographic sample in this study was 120 Small and Medium Enterprises owners which were arrived at via random sampling in Nairobi City. The research was based on descriptive research design. Primary data utilization was adopted and sourced through questionnaires. Checking of the instruments, validity and reliability was necessary. Evaluation of the information was via descriptive statistics including mean, frequency and percentage, and inferential analysis which includes correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis. The utilization of diagnostic tests such as heteroscedasticity, normality and multicollinearity checked the assumptions of regression analysis. The outcome of analysis was presented using tables. Ethical principles relating to research were duly observed. Discovery from the survey indicated that credit services positively and significantly affected SMEs financial performance and therefore rejected the null hypothesis. The study recommends its increase to boost SME financial performance in Nairobi City, Kenya. This will help improve the level of the SMEs financial performance in the city of Nairobi, Kenya.


Exclusive production of vector mesons was studied with the HERMES spectrometer at the DESY laboratory by scattering 27.6 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons or positrons off unpolarized hydrogen and deuterium as well as off transversely polarized hydrogen internal targets. Results of the measurements of the Spin Density Matrix Elements (SDMEs) for ρ0 and φ, the ratios of helicity amplitudes for ρ0 on unpolarized H and D targets as well as of the transverse target spin asymmetry (AUT) for ω and φ production on a transversely polarized H target will be reported.


The development objective of the Regional Great Lakes Integrated Agriculture Development Project for Africa are (i) to increase agricultural productivity and commercialization in targeted areas in the territory of the Recipient and improve agricultural regional integration; and (ii) to provide immediate and effective response in the event of an eligible crisis or emergency. The financing agreement includes three conditions of effectiveness: (i) establishment of a project coordination unit; (ii) establishment of the project steering committee; and (iii) adoption of the project implementation manual. The recipient is working on the designation of the representative and has notified the bank that it would like first to convene a meeting with their counterparts from Burundi and discuss further whom to designate as this would not impact the first six months of implementation. therefore, the recipient would like to designate a representative for the regional coordination committee no later than six months after the projects effective date.


Peptides naturally produced by parasitic intestinal worms could help treat auto-immune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis, say researchers at Monash University.


A method for the determination of tungsten trioxide in tungsten concentrate was established by taking the advantage of good linearity of novel multi-element analyzer.Fusion conditions,sample mass,calculation method,chromogenic agent preparation,etc.were optimized.Method accuracy and precision were verified by management sample and production sample.The results showed that after the sample was fused by mixed fuse of sodium peroxide and sodium carbonate and the fusant was leached by EDTA(20g/L)-ethyl alcohol(5g/L),Fe,Ca,Mn,Cu,Ni,Bi,etc.had no interference with the determination,except for Nb,whose interference could be eliminated by oxalic acid.The proposed method has been applied to determine tungsten trioxide in tungsten concentrate.The found values were consistent with the reference value or the results of gravimetry.The relative standard deviation(RSD,n=6)was within0.12%-0.30%.


We show that for values of masses of the gluino and stop favored by ``naturalness,'' the top quark produced in the decay (g) over tilde -> t (t) over tilde (1) can be polarized. This polarization depends only on the mixing in the stop sector as opposed to that of the top quark produced in decays (t) over tilde -> t (chi) over tilde (0)(i), (b) over tilde -> t (chi) over tilde (-)(i). In both the cases the polarization constructed through the distribution of top decay products in the laboratory frame, is different from the top polarization predicted in the rest frame of the mother particle (gluino/stop), which depends on the SUSY parameters as mentioned above. Here, we propose an estimator of lab frame top quark polarization, starting from the rest frame polarization of the top. This estimator depends only on the magnitude of velocity of the mother particle and assumes a narrow width for the mother particle. With a Monte-Carlo simulation of the full production and decay chain we establish our estimator to be accurate within 1% and the computation is a much simpler exercise compared to calculating from first principle. We also study effects of finite width of the mother particle using a suitably modified estimator and find it most useful for stop-quarks decays.


In the first paper under this title [4 we have introduced the following notion. Let X be a topological space and [A} a closed covering of X. Then X is said to have the weai topology with respect to [A}, if the union of any subcollection [A} of [A} is closed in X and any subset of A whose intersection with each A is open relative to the subspace opology of A is necessarily open in the subspace A. Any CW-complex (cf. [5) has the weak topology with respect o the closed covering which consists of the closures of all he cells. As another example we remark that a topological space has always he weak topology with respect to any locally finite closed covering. The purpose of this paper is to establish the following theorem. Theorem 1. Let X be a topological space having the weak topology with respect to a closed covering [A}. Then X is paracompact and normal if and only if each subspace A is pracompact and normal. Thus if X has the weak topology with respect to a closed covering [A}, each of he following properties for all subspaces A implies he same property for X: (1) normality, (2) complete normality, (3) perfect normality, (4) collectionwise normality, (5) paracompactness and normality, (6) countable paracompactness and normality. On the other hand, local compactness or metrizability for all A does not necessarily imply the same property for X. 1. Lemmas Lemma 1. Let A be a closed subset of a pracompact and normal space X. If {G} is a locally finite system in A which consists of open Fo-sets G of A, then there exists a locally finite system {H} of open Fo-sets of X with the following properties:


New single-crystal 6.3% SiFe wires with diameters of less than 90 ¿m and lengths of from 7 to 30 cm were produced by the R&D Division of Toyobo Ltd. Sensitive and complete bistable flux reversal (the large Barkhausen effect or re-entrant flux reversal), similar to that seen in amorphous magnetostrictive wires, was found to occur in these wire samples. Single-crystal 6.3% SiFe wire exhibits almost zero magnetostriction. The mechanism of domain wall propagation along the wire axis is analyzed. Pulse generation characteristics measured for various magnetic fields and stresses are described.


What role does the modern city play in facilitating cultural exchange? With the increase of globalization, cities have become destinations for tourists and immigrants alike, collisions of people from different countries with different languages. From an optimistic point of view, the modern city must therefore pioneer cultural exchange as a beacon of cultural diversity. The tale told by West Side Story of two lovers that come together despite serious clashes between their respective clans holds within it such a promise. And yet the portrayal of the modern city a few years later in Playtime and the projection of the future city in Blade Runner show pessimistic undertones. Within the former, director Jacques Tati criticizes the modern city as a sterile environment void of culture and cultural exchange, through which tourists pass without interacting with one another. In the latter, futuristic Los Angeles sharply contrasts the Paris of Playtime with its melting pot of architectural styles and languages, but is still characterized by a distinct lack of meaningful exchanges between people of different ethnicities. Thus both Playtime and Blade Runner deny the hopeful future posed at the end of West Side Story and assert that the globalized city has little potential for bridging boundaries and facilitating dialogue among different cultures.


by metronidazole was 88.7%. This compares with other workers' results, e.g. 92.5% (Fowler and Hussain, 1968) and 86% (Rodin et al., 1960). The cure rate for the present group of patients treated with tinidazole was 86.8%; this is statistically comparable with that obtained in the group treated with metronidazole. It also compares favourably with results from other anti-trichomonal agents, namely, nifuratel 65.7% (Fowler and Hussain, 1968) and nitrimidazine 82% (McClean, 1972). It can be concluded that tinidazole is an effective anti-trichomonal agent. Moreover, the low toxicity and the absence of nausea make the drug more likely to be a suitable agent for a single regimen, an advantage in the management of genital infection and a further trial, using single-dose treatment, might be considered.


OBJECTIVE: To compare the pulmonary function of individuals morbidly obese submitted to gastroplasty. METHODS: 25 individuals participated of this research, divided in experimental group with 15 subjects (female = 13 and male = 2) and control group with10 subjects (female = 8 and male = 2). Spirometric values were measured in the pre-operative and post-operative phase, three months after surgery. RESULTS: There was a significant difference intragroup in the initial analysis after three months follow-up weight, body mass index (BMI), Forced Vital Capacity (FVC), Expiratory Reserve Volume (ERV), Inspiratory Capacity (IC) and the Forced Expiratory Flow (FEF25-75%), in individuals who underwent surgery. For the results of the analysis of the differences between the experimental and control groups in the analysis of group and time, it were considered significant FVC and ERV. Verified that those nonspecific disturbances in the pre-operative and began to have normal lung function in the post-operative phase. There were not significant differences between the characteristics of the proportions of spirometry between groups and the intragroup experimental evaluation. CONCLUSION: Bariatric surgery influences in relation to improvement in lung function, observing that a longer follow-up of these individuals can show results in further confirming the importance of weight loss for lung function.


This study was designed to quantitatively determine the total acidity, volatile acidity, and the presence of artificial dyes in wines shipped home in The Gardens and The Villages Quintanas city of Trujillo, in November 2009 for which were obtained from 60 samples of wine, whose analysis is conducted in the Laboratory of Food Science, National University of Trujillo. We quantified total acidity, volatile acidity and identification of artificial colors, by the method of the American Society of winemakers, steam distillation and Aratta Posetto respectively. The results show that 70 percent of samples tested are not suitable for human consumption


Emerging wireless standards have pushed researchers to look for new RF architectures capable of operating at several frequency bands. Direct conversion between baseband and RF signals is gaining terrain towards becoming the RF front-end of choice. Six and five-port direct conversion receivers have demonstrated being an interesting technique since they can be designed and calibrated to operate in a wide frequency band. We present in this paper a new architecture for direct up-and-down conversion between baseband and RF signals. The main advantage of the proposal is its wideband operation due to a redundant vector basis.


The objective of this research is to examine the relationship between signals including governance and management practices and the performance of family firms IPOs. Using IPO data of 129 family firms and 129 comparable non-family firms from the Taiwan Stock Exchange, our findings highlighted the role of non-family insiders, or non-family affiliated directors in the IPOs of family firms. Our comparison between family and non-family IPOs shows hiring prestigious underwriters significantly improves the performance of family firm IPOs. Finally, we found the industries of IPO firms moderate the relationship between corporate governance characteristics and IPO performances, as non-family firms in technology industries are perceived to be more legitimate than their family counterparts. This paper makes three contributions to existing research. Firstly, we contribute to the legitimacy theory by suggesting an interaction effect between internal (organizational) and external (environmental) factors. Secondly, our analysis highlighted the roles of affiliated directors and industry in the performances of public family firms. Thirdly, this study contributes to the family business research by underscoring the differences between family and non-family firms in the IPO context.


The rapid development of information technology, supported by the development of the increasingly advanced internet, provides convenience, especially in the application of Ecommerce in the business world. Ecommerce is a website for buying and selling goods or services by utilizing a technology network. This encourages entrepreneurs to switch to the digital world including Mata Fashion Oebobo which is one of the boutique stores with a business engaged in selling clothes, especially Jepara-patterned woven clothing located at Oebobo Market, Kupang City, NTT. This boutique store needs a system that later the system can make it easier to also increase income and expand the network in selling woven clothes. From these problems, researchers designed a web-based Ecommerce application that can help customers in shopping online anytime and anywhere by utilizing social media as an access tool. In this implementation the author begins with interviews and observations. The result of this research is a web-based Ecommerce system that is expected to help companies in increasing income, as well as expanding sales networks in Mata Fashion Oebobo.


Based on the theoretical basis of quality management and strategic man-agement, this paper analyzes the definition and links of quality strategy, quality policy and quality objective, and puts forward the model for military enterprises to formulate quality strategy, policy and objective, explains the application of the model by a case, so as to provide reference for military enterprises to practice.


Using the data of land use change and energy consumption information and adopting direct carbon emission coefficient method,the land use effects of carbon emissions of Tongling County during 2000-2013 were estimated. Combined with TM images,using geostatistics analysis,the temporal and spatial patterns of carbon emission risks of land use of Tongling County were analyzed. The results showed that land use carbon emissions of Tongling County in the mass presented the trend of growing. The number of carbon emissions was creeping up from40 800 tons of 2000 to 2 230 900 tons of 2013,and it has increased 2 190 100 tons. Construction land is the main carbon source and forest land is the main carbon sequestration,and in 13 years,carbon emissions of construction land has increased 2 191 700 tons,and the contribution rate to carbon emissions was 92. 26%; carbon absorption of forest land maintained at between 1. 20 million-1. 24 million tons,and the contribution rate to carbon sequestration was up to 60. 52%. On the spatio-temporal distribution pattern,index of carbon emission risk of land use of Tongling County during 2000-2010 became larger and larger; index of carbon emission risk and spatial distribution of land use types were greatly related,and it showed a trend that it is from high to low in the process of promoting outward from the town.


When this professor had a hard time having students understand Legendre transformation , he converted the act of learning the Legendre transformation into a kind of laboratory exercise in which the students were forced to grapple with the problem in his or her own way.


Objective To provide an ideal animal model for exploring the pathogenesis and experimental treatment of malignant melanoma in the small intestine.Methods Fresh tissue of lung metastatic lesions from patients with malignant melanoma of the smallintestine were transplanted into mucosa of the small intestine in nude mice.After 4 times of screening.the tissue of the lung metastatic lesions from the nude mice were transplanted into the small intestine of additionat nude mice.Tumorgenecity and metastasis of transplanted tumors were observed,and were analyzed by morphology,karyotype and flow cytometry.Results A lung metastatic model of human primary malignant melanoma of the small intestine in nude mice was successfully constructed and named HSIM-0601.Massive melanin granules and melanin complex were seen in cytoplasm of tumor cells.Immunohistochemical straining of S-100 and HMB-45 were positive.The number of chromosome was between 57 and 59.DNA index was 1.49.HSIM-0601 was passed for 26 generations.A total of 173 nude mice were used for tumor transplantation.The growth rate of the transplanted tumors and resuscitation rate of liquid nitrogen cryopreservation were both 100%.In HSIM-0601.lung metastasis rate was 100%(173/173)and lymph node metastasis rate was 61.3%(106/173).Conclusions The HSIM-0601 successfully mimics the natural clinicopathologic course of patients with primary small intestinal melanoma,and provides an ideal animal model for research on pathogenesis,metastasis and experimentM therapy of malignant lymphoma in the small intestine.

Key words:
Small intestinal neoplasmas;  Malignant melanoma; Lung metastasis;  Nude mice


To investigate the possible involvement of cytoskeletal components in antigen (Ag)-mediated activation of phospholipase D (PLD) in rat basophilic leukemia (RBL-2H3) cells, the effects of cytochalasin D, which is known to interfere with actin organization in various cells, on Ag-induced PLD activity were examined. Cytochalasin D, at concentrations that induced distinct shape changes of RBL-2H3 cells, enhanced the Ag-induced 5-HT (serotonin) release and formation of phosphatidylbutanol (PBut), a specific and stable metabolite produced by PLD activity in a concentration-dependent manner. Concomitantly, Ag-induced 1,2-diacylglycerol (DG) accumulation as well as phosphatidic acid (PA) production were increased by the drug. In contrast, cytochalasin D had no effect on PLD activation in response to phorbolmyristate acetate, an activator of protein kinase C (PKC), and Ca2+ ionophore A23187. These results suggest that cytoskeletal components may modulate Ag-induced PLD activation upstream of PKC and Ca2+ in RBL-2H3 cells.


Wheat breeders with universities and commercial seed companies in the United States have been developing procedures and germ plasm for production of hybrid wheat. Research evaluating the merits of several alternative breeding procedures currently continues. Breeders were improving the agronomic milling and baking characteristics of parental lines, and were beginning to produce and evaluate hybrids to identify the superior hybrids. The economic success of hybrid wheat depends upon the yield advantage shown by hybrids over conventional wheat varieties, and the cost of planting hybrid seed as compared to present seed costs. Hybrid seed production is accomplished
through the use of three wheat lines. Hybrid seed usually is obtained by planting the female and male parents in alternate drill strips. The article reviews a study conducted in hybridization.


As the development of Artificial Intelligent, visual object tracking plays a key role in computer vision area with numerous real-world applications. This paper proposes a novel approach with the combination of deep spatial transformer features and discriminative correlation filters-based tracking frameworks for the visual tracking problem. The deep spatial transformer features have several advantages compared to the standard deep features (fully connected layers). Firstly, they are more robust when object is suffering affine transformation because of the specific characteristic. Secondly, they have low dimensionality with deeper layer. Lastly, some structural information is contained during tracking procedure. We perform comprehensive experiments on two benchmark datasets: OTB and VOT2015. Surprisingly, compared with some traditional approach based on hand-crafted features, our results further show the affine robustness. We also maintain the accuracy and tracking speed compared with several discriminative correlation filter-based tracker at the same time. Finally, results comparable to state-of-the-art trackers are obtained on all two benchmark datasets.


Knowledge of the in-cylinder pressure pulse in IC engines is of main importance in order to fulfill the requirements on low fuel consumption, exhaust emissions and noise. Direct measurements of the ...


APPLYING suction with a syringe and needle is a dangerous method of treating infantile subdural haematomas, yet the practice is widespread. Recently there has been renewed interest in the conservative management of infantile subdural haeniatoma, hence a renewed interest in subdural tapping. It is difficult to say who first described this condition. During the second half of the nineteenth century, adult pachymeningitis haemorrhagica interna was recognised and i t was known that a similar condition occurred in infants. The first series of infantile subdural haematomas was reported by ROSENBERC in 1913l; a medical classic, one of those in which a previously unknown syndrome was fully described in the first paper written about it. In the first quarter of this century the infantile form was regarded as a variety of adult subdural haematoma and was treated in the same way, by craniotomy and removal of the clot and membranes2. Subsequently, greater conservatism in the management of adult haematomas was advocated3 when i t was realised that washing out the cavity from burrholes was often all that was needed. I N G R A H A M and H E Y L ~ , followed by MATSON', opposed this conservative treatment in children and continued to advocate the removal of the membranes by craniotomy, on the grounds that the membranes stopped the brain growing. In general, this approach has held sway for the last 30 years. Recently a number of people have again advocated the conservative approach for infantile subdural haematomas, using repeated subdural tapping without removal of the The advice given is that the fluid should be allowed to drip out until the pressure in the skull is atmospheric. The temptation is strong for a busy Houseman or Registrar t o attach a syringe and speed up the process, and in fact the practice is widespread. Nowhere in the literature is the firm injunction given 'thou shalt not suck'. The benefits of a conservative approach may be lost if suction with a syringe is used. MARTIN (recording his conversion to the practice of not sucking), with WALLACE and ROSS!' showed that when suction was used there were two possible ill-effects. Firstly, a proportion of the circulating blood volume (of the order of 7 per cent) was suddenly diverted from the systemic arterial and capillary bed to f i l l the venous system in the skull, passively dilated by the sudden removal of intracranial fluid. Secondly, suction could start fresh bleeding into the cavity and cause the haematonia to persist. It is common oral teaching, though rarely mentioned in the literature"', that if too much fluid is taken off the infant may die, either at the time or subsequently, and also that aspiration by syringe should be terminated if the infant becomes pale and stops crying. The stopping of crying, and pallor, and the occasional death, are usually explained as being due to 'brain-stem shock', produced by suddenly changing the pressure on the brain. It


Travelling wavefronts for a system of two reaction–diffusion equations are studied. The existence of a family of wavefronts (one for each wave speed) as well as the existence of the minimal speed (in the case that the Lewis number is greater than $1$) are proved. Asymptotic formulae for the wavefronts are established. New results are obtained when applying the main theorems to an isothermal autocatalytic chemical reaction system.


The new genus and species, Gondekia hastula, are described from the Middle Devonian (Givetian) Hungry Hollow Formation of southwestern Ontario. Astraeospongium lancifer Reimann, 1945, is also included in the new genus and A. acicularis is considered a synonym of that species. Gondekia has a flat saucer-like form and a felted, but thin, skeleton composed of at least three orders of regularly spaced and oriented simple sexiradiates. Gondekia is placed in the Eiffeliidae but is convergent toward the Astraeospongiidae in having a somewhat thickened wall.


Bis(2-hydroxybenzene)phthaldiimine (BHBPDI) as a new quadridentate Schiff base ligand and its [Mn(III)(BHBPDI)Cl] complex were synthesized and characterized by analytical and spectral data (MS, FT-IR, UV-Vis, 1H NMR). The aerobic oxidation of thiols catalyzed by Mn(III)-complex using molecular oxygen was studied at room temperature. The reaction proceeded to yield the corresponding symmetric disulfides in good to high yields. The reaction was retarded when the reaction mixture was saturated with nitrogen gas. This system provides an efficient and convenient method for the oxidation of thiols to symmetric disulfides.


Cucurbit[8]uril catalyzes reversible photodimerization of polymer-appended guests, transitioning hydrogel crosslinking from physical to chemical networks. The process of photodimerization is partially reversible, yielding materials with hybrid emergent properties, and which can also be patterned. Accordingly, hydrogels with externally controlled network dynamics are demonstrated.


Covariant actions for the bosonic fields of D=10 IIB supergravity are constructed with the help of a single auxiliary scalar field and in a formulation with an infinite series of auxiliary (anti)-self-dual 5-form fields.


Plywood panels have multiple applications in construction, in the furniture industry and packaging. There is a need to improve techniques for assessing quality of these products. This paper proposed the use of geostatistics to evaluate the behavior of the of the plywood panel. The physical properties were analyzed (moisture content, density and water absorption) in the full extent of the plywood panel of Eucalyptus sp. , bonded with adhesive single-component polyurethane. For analysis, three panels of five layers, with dimensions of 350 x 350 x 15.5 mm each, were employed. The tests were based on the standards EN 323-2000, EN 322-2000 and ABNT NBR 9486- 2011. Statistical modeling was performed using the R software, using the methodology of geostatistics. The average results were compared with values reported in the literature. The average water absorption was 7% higher in comparison with other studies, which used urea formaldehyde. So, the product can be applied only to interior and their use is not advisable for floors; the average moisture content and density were within the average values found in the literature. The behavior of the properties analyzed using the geostatistical model was not homogeneous, with large variations. Geostatistics was considered an appropriate tool for the study of the variability of the plywood panel properties, and can be applied for better quality control of them.


Minkowski structure of the Fermion propagator in QED$_{2+1}$ is evaluated using dispersion like method Including massive fermion loop to the photon spectral function there is no infrared divergences in the gauge d=-1.Screening effects suppress the chiral order parmeter for small numbers of fermion flavour N.We evaluate the order parameter as a function of coupling constant c and N.There exsists a critical region where the chiral symmetry is dynamically broken.


We study the mean tidal coherence of galaxy environments as a function of intrinsic luminosity determined by the absolute r-band magnitude. The tidal coherence of a galaxy environment is estimated as the cosine of the angle between two minor eigenvectors of the tidal field smoothed at the scales of 2 and 30 h−1 Mpc, respectively, centered on each of the local galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Data Release 10. Creating four luminosity-selected samples of the Sloan galaxies, we control them to have identical density distributions in order to nullify the dominant effect of the local density. The samples containing more luminous wall and field galaxies were found to yield lower mean values of the tidal coherence, which is a trend that turns out to be robust against the variation of the smoothing scales. At a fixed morphology, the same trend is found for the late-type spiral and lenticular galaxies in both of the field and wall environments. The early-type spiral field galaxies show no significant dependence on the tidal coherence, while both of the least and most luminous elliptical wall galaxies are found to dwell in the regions with highest tidal coherence.


The COVID pandemic has given rise to the necessity of social distancing regulations, which has brought the importance of workspace management on the construction site to an unprecedented level. Understanding and visualizing the interaction and tradeoff among space, time, and workforce is critical for construction managers to schedule and deliver projects on time. Therefore, the objectives of this research are to investigate how the critical path method (CPM) and Takt-time planning methods utilize space, time, and workforce differently, develop a tool to visualize the space–time–workforce interactions, and investigate the space–time–workforce tradeoff based on different managers' preferences. This research selected a high-rise office building project and collected 889 sets of productivity data of five specialty trades. The research built a simulation model to investigate productivity and project performance under 267 scenarios of different combinations of the three resources. A dynamic tool was then developed to visualize workspace, time, and workforce interactions. Finally, a Choquet integral–based evaluation and decision tool was developed. The simulation results show that the Takt-time planning method can reduce up to 80% of workspace overlap compared with the actual production plan with less than 20% of duration extension. The contributions to the body of knowledge are (1) creating a visual framework for managers to understand the interaction and tradeoff among space, time, and workforce quickly and accurately, and (2) developing an innovative Choquet integral approach for managers to evaluate planning strategies according to project preferences. The framework and analysis method can be adapted to other construction projects to assist managers to visualize and optimize the space–time–workforce tradeoff under uncertain project drivers. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Journal of Management in Engineering is the property of American Society of Civil Engineers and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)


Until now, over 20 years has elapsed since the first conduction of laparoscopic liver resection (LLR), which was reported in 1991 for the treatment of benign liver tumors incidentally found in a gynecologic laparoscopic surgery [1]. Although numerous doctors attempted to perform LLR after the abovementioned case, the development of minimally invasive hepatic surgery was slow in the first decade, when most of the cases were laparoscopic cystic fenestration. What is more, the resections of solid tumor were mainly limited in the left lateral section or the margins of the liver [2], and very few specialized centers attempted and managed to perform laparoscopic major liver resection, which was defined as resections of three or more liver segments.


Natural killer cells not only play important roles in protecting against viral infection and cancer but also involved in the pathogenesis of Graves' disease. Killer Ig-like receptor (KIR) genes encode receptors which are mostly expressed on and regulate the activation of natural killer cells. Our previous research found that the KIR2DS4 gene frequency was lower in patients with Graves' disease than in controls. Nevertheless, the specific mechanisms by which natural killer cell act is obscure in Graves' disease. In total, 178 participants including newly diagnosed Graves' disease patients (n = 95) and healthy individuals (n = 83) were recruited in this study. TSH (thyrotropin), FT3 (free triiodothyronine), and FT4 (free thyroxine) were assayed using electro chemiluminescent immunoassays. The counts of natural killer cell (CD3−CD56+ natural killer cell), activated natural killer cell (CD3−CD56+CD69+ natural killer cell), and KIR2DS4-expressing natural killer cell (CD3−CD56+CD158i+ natural killer cell) in peripheral blood were analyzed using flow cytometry. The proportions of natural killer cells and activated natural killer cells were lower in the newly diagnosed Graves' disease patients than in the controls; the difference was statistically significant (P < 0.05). However, the difference in the proportion of KIR2DS4-expressing natural killer cells between the two groups was not statistically significant. In Graves' disease patients, no relationship was found between the proportion of natural killer cells and the blood FT3 level, the blood FT4 level, or the blood TSH level; however, the proportion of activated natural killer cells was negatively correlated with FT3 and FT4 and positively correlated with TSH. Our research findings revealed that a reduction in the counts of natural killer cell and activated natural killer cell might be involved in Graves' disease pathogenesis.


An analysis which predicts that multirecess hydrostatic journal bearings exhibit dynamic instability at and above a certain speed of shaft rotation is summarized. This instability is characterized by the centre of the shaft exercising vibrations in a closed orbit of high eccentricity at a frequency equal to one half of the critical shaft speed. Futhermore, this frequency corresponds to the natural frequency of the system at zero eccentricity in the absence of shaft rotation. An expression for the critical speed of an orifice compensated bearing with four recesses is given and an experimental verification of these predictions is presented.


In the problem of probability forecasting the learner's goal is to output, given a training set and a new object, a suitable probability measure on the possible values of the new object's label. An on-line algorithm for probability forecasting is said to be well-calibrated if the probabilities it outputs agree with the observed frequencies. We give a natural non-asymptotic formalization of the notion of well-calibratedness, which we then study under the assumption of randomness (the object/label pairs are independent and identically distributed). It turns out that, although no probability forecasting algorithm is automatically well-calibrated in our sense, there exists a wide class of algorithms for "multiprobability forecasting" (such algorithms are allowed to output a set, ideally very narrow, of probability measures) which satisfy this property; we call the algorithms in this class "Venn probability machines". Our experimental results demonstrate that a 1-Nearest Neighbor Venn probability machine performs reasonably well on a standard benchmark data set, and one of our theoretical results asserts that a simple Venn probability machine asymptotically approaches the true conditional probabilities regardless, and without knowledge, of the true probability measure generating the examples.


FEW parts of Europe have been more clearly influenced by geographical features in their development and history than the Balkan peninsula. The whole peninsula is divided into two parts by the north and south central range, consisting of the Shar mountains in the north, Grammos in the centre, and Pindus in the south. Throughout all history this range or line of ranges has proved the most formidable barrier to intercourse and trade; the p«sses through it are few, and although their difficulty is frequently exaggerated none is sufficiently easy to unite the districts on either^ sideTo the west of the central range, on the Adriatic slope, the land is almost uniformly mountainous, but to the east, on the Aegean side, it is, as it were, broken up into a series of small plains divided from each other by mountain barriers, most of which, starting from or close to the central range, end upon the sea. Thus in the extreme north is the range of the Balkans proper, with their offshoot Rhodop>e; further south is the range that ends in Mt. Bermius by Verria, southward again the range of Olympus, and within Greece itself the ranges of Othrys and Oeba, which, breaking off from Pindus, extend down to the coast.


The purpose of this thesis is to optimize the breast cancer treatment planning for the coplanar tangential fields of 6MV energy. The need for this arose as the dose distribution appears deficient both at the center and deeper in the CTV, as shown in the CT and sagittal images below, whereas the dose is satisfactory distributed at the perimeter of the breast.

In order to accomplish that, there were applied 4 radiation techniques: 1. Two coplanar tangential fields of 6MV energy, 2. Two coplanar tangential fields of 15MV energy, 3. Two coplanar tangential fields of 6MV energy with Field in a Field (FiF) of 15MV energy and 4. Two coplanar tangential fields of 6MV energy with two Fields in a Field (FiF's) of 15MV energy. The method above was applied on 100 patients. 95% of them had T1 tumor (T<2cm), T2 tumor (T=2-5cm) and a number of infiltrated lymph N<3.
The equipment that has been used for the materialization of the procedure was: 1. A Computed Tomographer Somatom Duo Siemens, 2. An RVS system of VARIAN, 3. A TPS Eclipse system of VARIAN, 4. A Simulator Aquity of VARIAN and 5. A linear accelerator ELEKTA SL 15.
 Using the program IBM SPSS 20 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), for a hundred patients, the statistical analysis showed that the average of the mean dose was 96.5% for the 6MV, 98.9% for the 15MV, 100.7% for the 6MV + 1 FIF of 15MV and 101.9% for the 6MV + 2 FIF of 15MV respectively (95% CI, p 750cc). In this particular clinical scenario two 6MV tangential fields with 2 FIFs consistently outperformed the others. Minimum dose was also statistically different among all groups (p<0.05) except for the two FIF-less tangential fields with 6 and 15 MV. Interestingly, minimum dose (%) lacked a dependence on volume size.
 The result of this procedure was that the mean dose increases from method to method as it was obvious from the statistical analysis. The homogeneity index decreases respectively from method to method which indicates improvement of the dose distribution. It was also proved that, for certain large volumes of CTV the best method was the 6MV with two FIF's of 15MV energy, whereas for smaller volumes of CTV the other three methods were of the same effectiveness. In conclusion, as far as the organs at risk concern, it has been found that the V20, of the heart and the right or left lung each time, is irrelevant of the technique that has been used each time.


The currently available cosmological data yield, as a most striking result, that the expansion rate of the universe seems to be increasing at late times, contrary to the standard (zero cosmological constant) FLRW prediction. The usual explanation for this discrepancy is that a new component of the energy density of the universe, known as dark energy, dominates this recent evolution. Since the existence of such a new component would have a revolutionary impact on our understanding of the fundamental laws of physics, we think important to check other interpretations. We have therefore shown that the SNIa observations could be reproduced by the effect of inhomogeneities. This idea has been further developed by different teams, and enlarged to other cosmological data. We will give here a review of the results of these works and the prospects for future developments.


Abstract This paper presents a radiochemical procedure that combines radiochemical sample preparation and analyte separation to provide a rapid sample preparation method. Extractive ligands are prepared in a polymer matrix. This system can be immobilized on a surface or on a filter. Filters allow rapid sample uptake due to the movement of the analyte through the filter material. These approaches offer fast uptake kinetics, high material loading, and good selectivity. These systems have been demonstrated for the rapid extraction of plutonium and americium from solution and their subsequent analysis by alpha spectrometry, with no additional sample preparation required, thus eliminating extensive wet chemical processes that would otherwise be necessary. We have evaluated the extraction efficiency that can be obtained and have shown that these systems can provide for alpha spectrometry peak widths near what can be obtained using traditional techniques such as electroplating. We have also demonstrated Polymer Ligand Films (PLFs) for the selective extraction of plutonium from a solution prepared from a soil digest.


Excerpt The beneficial effect of whole blood transfusion in hemophilia has been recognized for over 30 years. The marked fall in the coagulation time following the transfusion of normal blood was a...