The purpose of this research was to determine whether there are differences in attitudes towards learning in the face of the use of the Tics of teachers of the Higher Technological Institute of Technology Idat of the professional careers of Administration and Systems. With a descriptive, comparative methodological design, and a sample of 120 teachers, who were given a questionnaire to assess the attitude (cognitive, affective and behavioral) towards learning versus the use of Tics. The results showed a predominance of The Systems career with respect to the career of Administration, and in making the comparisons the alternate hypothesis was confirmed: if there are significant differences in attitude (cognitive, behavioral)towards learning against the use of the Tics of the teachers of the Systems career compared the teachers of the management career of the Higher Technological Institute "IDAT".


To the Editor,

We agree that it is important for clinicians to understand the health values and beliefs of patients from cultures, races, and ethnic backgrounds other than their own.[1] This understanding establishes a foundation for engaging patients in a process of information exchange that ensures that their choices are based on their values and preferences. Shared decision making engages both physicians and patients in delivering evidence-based care, which is culturally specific and patient-centered. It is probably not possible to address disparities and dispel inequities in healthcare delivery by assigning the burden of tailoring care to physicians alone.

Patient-physician communication has been shown to significantly affect patient decisions about their health practices and the health outcomes that are related to these decisions. This occurs during the process of giving clear information and emotional support, sharing decision making, and agreeing on the nature of the problem and the need for follow-up.[2–5] Overall, patients of physicians who are involved in participatory treatment decisions have better health outcomes than those who are not.[6–9] They report being more satisfied with their medical appointments and are more successful at self-management and compliance with treatment regimens.[6,7,10] A number of studies have shown that African American women report receiving less information and fewer opportunities for participatory decision making during their medical appointments than do whites.[6–9] They also report shorter office visits and lower visit satisfaction with physicians who are race-discordant.[11] Krupat and colleagues[12] showed that African American and low-income breast cancer patients who demonstrated assertiveness were more likely to receive full tumor staging than those who did not demonstrate assertiveness.

It is the informed patient who can actively participate in medical decisions. A group of our cancer studies investigated early detection, survivorship care, and end-of-life decisions from the patient's perspective. Findings highlighted the importance of understanding the patient side of communication during medical appointments for promoting behaviors that lead to compliance with evidence-based guidelines and care.

In a study with 141 African American and white, first-degree relatives (sisters, daughters, and mothers) of breast cancer patients, we assessed information that they had received from their physicians in regard to their cancer risk status. From the patient's perspective, their discussions with physicians about risk had a significant impact on their mammography compliance. Women who reported discussing both family history and risk with their providers were significantly more likely to have had a mammogram within the past 2 years (n = 43; 91.5%) than those who discussed only one of these topics (n = 42, 72.4%) or neither topic (n = 17, 48.6%) (chi square = 18.56, P < .001). Those informed of their increased risk of developing breast cancer tended to be younger, white, and educated beyond high school.[8]

It is likely that the context of the doctor-patient interaction, rather than the difficulty of getting to see the doctor in the first place, can result in disparities in the use of health services.[13] In a second population-based study with African American participants (n = 428), we found that patient reports of communication in the medical encounter about risk, family history, and screening frequency were the strongest predictors of screening compliance for African American women in their 40s and 50s.[14] For each unit increase in reported doctor discussions, women in their 40s were 1.81 times (P < .001; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.35–2.42) as likely to report screening compliance with mammograms and clinical breast examinations. Those over 50 were more than 1.64 times (P < .001; 95% CI, 1.21-2.22) as likely to be compliant.

A large body of research has investigated breast cancer disparities in early detection. However, a gap remains in the scientific literature with regard to factors that may be associated with obtaining follow-up medical care after primary cancer treatment. Access to quality medical care has been shown to vary substantially by socioeconomic status and race.[15] To address this gap, a third ongoing study is investigating African American and white breast cancer survivors' perceptions of patient-physician communication and involvement in medical decisions about their primary breast cancer treatment and follow-up care. Preliminary findings from focus groups indicated that the majority of African American patients (n = 39) wanted to have a significant role in making decisions about their primary breast cancer treatment and follow-up care: 44% wanted to make the final decisions themselves; 49% wished to share these decisions with their physicians; only 7% opted to leave the final decisions up to their doctors. Approximately 50% believed that their doctors provided enough information for them to make informed decisions about their breast cancer treatments and follow-up care.[16]

The need for training of healthcare professionals in communication strategies, which are designed to engage patients in medical decisions and reduce disparities, is evident at all stages of the cancer care continuum. Findings from a final study that investigated family concerns about communication during end-of-life cancer care emphasized the importance of training healthcare professions in the content, timing, and biases associated with information delivery to facilitate informed decisions about end-of-life care by dying patients and their families. Satisfaction with end-of-life care was associated with the perceived quality of communication among patients, family members, and the healthcare team.[17]

Disparities in quality of life and associated health practices remain poorly understood for minorities and low-income populations. Simultaneously investigating both sides of the patient-physician communication equation, and the sociocultural and health literacy factors that mediate them, may bring us closer to eliminating disparities in the use of health services and the resulting health outcomes.

Readers are encouraged to respond to George Lundberg, MD, Editor of MedGenMed, for the editor's eye only or for possible publication via email: ten.epacsdem@grebdnulg


The process of stream trenching and slope formation cause a continuous change in the stress field of the river bank slopes.The superficial rockmass is unloaded in the change of stress field.The depth of unloading should be indifferent in the same area.An investigation is carried on the stress field at a hydropower station in southwest China.The station has two dams.The up and downtream dams have a distance of 1.4km.The investigation detected that unloading depths of the rockmasses at the two dam sites have wider differences.At the upstream dam site,the unloadin depth is more than 20m,and its extreme depth can reach to 90 m.At the downstream dam site,the unloading depthis only 5~20m.Field survey and numerical simulation indicate that orientation of the rock formation is the key factor for the difference in the unloading depths at the up and downstream dams.Trends of rock formation and river bank slopes at the upstream dam are paralleled.The rockmass of steep dip angle is easy to be cracked.The weathering is invaded.The depth of the rockmass unloading is deep.At the downstram dam,the trends of the rock formation and river bank slopes are nearly are perpendicular.The strength of the rockmass is greater than the bedding planes.The structural surfaces that parallel to the river bank slopes are less.Therefore,the unloading depth of rockmass is within 20m.


In many important industrial applications the diameter of a pipe is much larger than wall thickness. In this case the approximate theory is applicable, when a pipe is considered as an unwrapped isotropic plate. In this paper, a technique for obtaining pipe mode amplitudes in terms of the solution to the forced 3D problem on a plate is presented. The same principle can be extended to relate guided wave scattering from defects in plates to scattered circumferential modal amplitudes from defects in pipe. Results are shown that illustrate the application of the method to reflection from through thickness circumferential cracks in pipes.


the location of nests of hosts was found. Significant fluctuations of intensity of infestation over the years have occurred. These facts can be explained by the instability of parasitic systems under anthropopression.


Online Material: List of main seismological databases, OASIS database general schema, tables of networks and stations, and example station monography and extracted waveform time series.

The availability of an extensive dataset of seismological data, together with the description of the recording site, can help improve studies on the causes and effects of earthquakes, such as studies on seismic hazard, site‐response analysis, soil–structure interaction, seismic source properties, shallow and deep earth structure, and so on.

The number of seismological stations installed worldwide for either monitoring seismicity at regional or national scale or deployed for specific studies has dramatically increased in the last years. As a consequence, there is a growing need on one hand to archive the huge quantity of acquired data in a safe and organized way and, on the other hand, to provide suitable access and search‐capability tools to those data. Several research institutions from different countries currently collect their seismological data into databases, making them available on the Web. ![Graphic][1] A list of the main worldwide, national, and Italian seismological databases is provided in the electronic supplement to this article.

In this article, we present the OGS Archive System of Instrumental Seismology (OASIS), the new information system developed at the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics (Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale [OGS]), settled in Italy, with the aim of organizing, archiving, and providing access to the whole set of its seismological instrumental data.

OGS is a research institute located in Trieste, northern Italy, which has a well‐established seismological tradition and had a relevant growth after the 1976 M w 6.4 Friuli earthquake with the development of the northeast Italy seismometric network (rts.crs.inogs.it; last accessed February 2015). During the last decades, and especially after 1995 when OGS switched its regional network from analog to digital …

 [1]: /embed/inline-graphic-1.gif


A 19-year-old woman came to the accident and emergency department with neck swelling and discomfort. This, she reported, had developed shortly after she had induced vomiting by pushing two fingers into her mouth; she was trying to deal with a foreign body sensation in her throat after eating a meal of chicken, and the manoeuvre was successful. On examination she had obvious subcutaneous cervical emphysema extending to her upper anterior chest wall; she was apyrexial, there were no signs of respiratory distress or stridor, and her cardiovascular system was normal. On flexible endoscopic examination no intralaryngeal injury could be seen. A chest X-ray on admission showed air in the subcutaneous tissues of the upper anterior chest wall but no evidence of pneumomediastinum or pneumothorax. The lateral soft tissue X-ray of her neck revealed air in the subcutaneous tissues (Figure 1). She was admitted for observation, bed rest and prophylactic antibiotics. Pending radiological investigation she was fed by nasogastric tube. Her condition improved gradually _ia-lt


[Objective]To investigate a minimally invasive,safe and effective method for treating the nonunion of tibia fracture with Bastianti external fixators.[Method]Bastianti external fixators were used to treat nonunion tibia fracture with axial force followed by functional exercises in early stage.[Result]All cases showed tibia fracture union in 4~12 months after operation.According to the criterion of treatment effects,35 cases were as excellent,7 as good,and 1 as poor.[Conclusion]It is a good method that nonunion of tibia fracture was treated with Bastianti external fixators for maintaining pain-free joint activity and joint functional recovery in early stage.


The virtues are imbedded in a new field: positive psychology. With a definition and brief discussion of the parameters of positive psychology, various factors related to virtues are explored, including their public versus private aspects, domain-specific versus global characteristics, the necessity for careful claims regarding what we do and do not know in this area, progress in measurement, the need for interventions, the attention to communal matters, their natural bridges with health, and the overlap among them. In addition to exploring issues related to the present virtues of love, forgiveness, gratitude, humility, wisdom, control, and hope, additional virtues are noted. It is suggested that the interface of clinical, counseling, social, personality, and health psychology could profitably turn its attention to the study of virtues within the positive psychology paradigm.


Aim: The aim of the study was to illuminate activities at nurse- based atrial fibrillation/arrhythmia clinics in Sweden. Background: Atrial fibrillation is the most common cause of arrhythmia and it is expected that the number of patients with atrial fibrillation will continue to increase. It has been shown that in-patient care can be reduced by following up these patients using guidelines at a nurse-based clinic. The patients were better informed about their illness and guidelines were more comprehensively implemented. Method: An interview study with a descriptive approach and telephone interviews based on a questionnaire with quantitative and qualitative questions was carried out with staff from 14 clinics. Findings: The results show that patients with atrial fibrillation were treated using the recommended guidelines, but the inclusion criteria for this population differed among clinics. Patients with atrial fibrillation are in need of structured follow-up and designated support. Conclusion: Nurse-based clinics for patients with atrial fibrillation are not yet common in Sweden. The results of the study indicate that more atrial fibrillation/arrhythmia clinics should be started, and show how structured care at the clinics should be implemented.


Business games for instruction have continued to grow in their use. While the basic structure of these games has largely remained the same, the technical support provided to both players and game administrators has changed substantially.


This paper expounds how to construct the harmonious relation between librarian and readers from the aspects of librarians' work attitude, service mode, paying attention to the communication with readers and the functions of persuasion in the service.


BACKGROUND
 There is increasing focus on social media usage among young adult patients.

 OBJECTIVE
 This study aims to understand and compare the social media habits of youth with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and type 1 diabetes (T1D).

 METHODS
 This is a cross-sectional study of subjects from Boston Children's Hospital outpatient IBD and diabetes clinics. Patients over the age of 18 were invited to complete a brief anonymous survey, which asked about the various ways they use several social media platforms.

 RESULTS
 A total of 108 patients were included evenly split across disease type. Eighty-three percent of participants spent at least 30 minutes per day on social media, most commonly on Instagram and Facebook. While the content varied based on the platform, patients with IBD posted or shared content related to their disease significantly less than those with T1D (38% vs 23%, P=0.02) Among Instagram users, IBD patients were less likely to engage with support groups (22% vs 56%, P=0.04). Among Twitter users, IBD patients were less likely to seek disease information (77% vs 29%, P=0.005) Among Facebook users, IBD patients were less likely to post about research and clinical trials (31% vs 65%, P=0.04) or for information seeking (49% vs 87%, P=0.003), IBD patients were also less likely to share their diagnosis with friends or family in person.

 CONCLUSIONS
 Young adults with IBD were less willing to share diagnosis, post or explore disease on social media. This could lead to a sense of isolation and should be further explored.


The aim of this paper is to prove the following result: Theorem. Let G be the group defined by the presentation where each ui is a word in the xj and , and suppose that there is a homomorphism σ such that the orders of the elements respectively. Let If G is finite, then α−d + 1 > 0 and .


The characteristic of forces acting in the connecting beans of tall building is analysed.This paper presents design methods which solve the difficulties in designing.The reinforcement sheets are suggested which are applicable for deep connecting beams with compare the characteristic of forces acting in the deep continuous beams to the deep connecting beams when the ratio of span to high is more than 2.5


A receiving antenna alters an incident field in such a way that the field is concentrated at the terminals of the antenna. The Poynting power flux density vector associated with the field carries to the antenna the power dissipated in the antenna structure and the load. Streamlines of the Poynting vector field can be used to understand electromagnetic energy flow near linear and aperture antennas. Poynting streamlines provide a way to understand and guide the design of superdirective antennas. Directivity-enhancing screens that attract Poynting streamlines and increase the aperture efficiency of a horn antenna to almost 200% are studied. Superdirective antennas generally have limited practical value due to poor radiation efficiency, narrow bandwidth, and extreme sensitivity to fabrication errors. We show that these limitations can be mitigated by using metal-only structures that are optimized for broadband operation. The tradeoff between peak achievable aperture efficiency and bandwidth is explored.


Abstract-Sixteen reflectance spectra of Vesta in the 400--720 nm range are obtained on November 23-24 1990, for various angles of rotation of an asteroid about its axis. A weak tendency of shifting with the Vesta rotation phase is found for the center of the pyroxene 505 nm absorption band. This variation is caused by changes in iron and calcium content in surface pyroxenes. The presence of aluminum in pyroxenes of Vesta is established on the basis of a comparative analysis of the absorption-band positions in the asteroid spectrum at 505, 900, and 1900 nm, which are the mean values for the entire surface. INTRODUCTION Vesta, the second largest body in the asteroid belt, is nearly spherical in shape, about 500 km in diameter, and its rotation period is 4.342h. Images of Vesta obtained directly with the Hubble Space Telescope (Zellner et al., 1996) clearly support the existing views on the albedo nonuniformity of its surface (Velichko, 1988; Lupishko et al., 1988; Tsvetkova et al., 1991; Hoffmann and Geyer, 1993). Drummond et al. (1988) noted in this context that Vesta resembles the Moon in spot distribution: dark regions concentrate predominantly on one hemisphere. Not only albedo but also color characteristics vary over the Vesta surface (Gehrels, 1967; Blanko and Catalano, 1979; McCheyne et al., 1985; Velichko et al., 1988). Festou et al. (1991) made a combined analysis of the reflectance spectra of this asteroid in the visible and the ultraviolet range recorded by the IUE satellite at different Vesta rotation angles and inferred that two dark spots exist on its surface: one covers a great part of the southern hemisphere and the other is located very close to the equator. The reflectance spectra of Vesta and of basaltic achondrites are known to be quite similar (McCord et al., 1970). The results of spectral observations of Vesta ma<;le it possible to obtain a mineralogical scheme of the asteroid surface, most of which is occupied by the eucrite-type material, whereas in the equatorial region, two diogenite spots are located (Map, 1983). It follows from these observations that the shift of the center of the pyroxene absorption band with the variation of the asteroid-rotation phase is detected. The position of this center varies from 900 nm (diogenites) to 940 nm (eucrites), which corresponds to the laboratory spectra of these meteorites (Gaffey, 1976). On the other hand, V dovichenko et al. ( 1990) found that the rotation of Vesta is accompanied by variations in the depth of the 900-nm pyroxene absorption band, whereas the wavelength shift of this band is weakly pronounced. V dovichenko et al. note with care that the tendency for the band center to mqve to the long-wavelength region of the spectrum with the increase of the band depth is possible, but the magnitude of this shift was not estimated. The spectra of Vesta obtained by us at different oppositions [see Golubeva and Shestopalov (1988) and references therein] show variations in the profile, intensity, and position of the pyroxene 505-nm absorption band, but it is not clear if these changes are caused by real changes in the pyroxene chemical composition or by systematic errors arising in the calibration of asteroid spectra. For this reason, we made spectral observations of Vesta at the 1990 opposition. RESULTS OF OBSERVATIONS Sixteen spectra of Vesta were obtained on November 23-24, 1990, with a scanning ·spectrophotometer mounted at the Cassegrain focus of the Shemakha observatory reflector. The apparent stellar magnitude of asteroid was :::::6.5m and the phase angle was 5.5°. As a standard, we used the HD 21364 star of spectral class B8located at the sky within 30' from the asteroid. The energy distribution in the spectrum of the star was obtained in absolute units with the same instrumenta-


The time varying nature of electric arc furnace (EAF) gives rise to voltage fluctuations, which produces the effect known as flicker. Employing reactive power compensation devices such as static VAr compensator (SVC) is one of the main approaches to mitigate this phenomenon. By utilising prediction methods to forecast EAFs reactive power consumption for a half-cycle ahead, performance of SVC can be enhanced substantially. This study proposes a rolling Grey model and a Grey–Markov method to predict the actual reactive power of Mobarakeh Steel Company, Isfahan/Iran. To investigate the efficiency of the proposed methods the results are compared with the results of EAFs reactive power compensation when no prediction method is employed. Furthermore, autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models with updating coefficients, which are studied in the literature are used to predict EAF reactive power. Various methods for updating ARMA coefficients including normalised least mean square, recursive least square method and an online genetic algorithm are used. By comparing the indices which are defined using the concept of flicker frequency and power spectral density, the superiority of Grey–Markov and rolling Grey model over the aforementioned prediction methods is investigated.


This is the first in a series of reports on a longitudinal investigation of the initiation and progress of periodontal disease in man. One group was established in Norway in 1969 and consisted of 565 male students and teachers between 17 and 30+years. A second group of comparable age was established in Sri Lanka in 1970 and consisted of 480 tea laborers. Both groups were scored for various disease parameters at start and at intervals during the subsequent seven years. This paper describes the design of the investigation and periodontal state of the two groups at baseline.

The results show that th Norwegian group had good to excellent oral hygiene and mild gingivitis. Supra-and subgingival calculus were inconspicous and untreated slowly with age. The mean loss of attachment in the 30+year old was less than one millimeter.

Tht Sri Lankan tea laborers showed poor oral hygiene, abundance of calculus and generalized moderate to severe gingivitis. Caries and dental restorations were non-existent. Slight loss of attachment was seen in the 15year old and increased through the twenties. The 30+years old Sri Lankan tea laborer showed a mean loss of more than 3 mm and a subsantial number of teeth exhibited attachment loss in excess of 10 mm.

The baseline analysis indicated that due to the choice of study groups and design, the longitudenal data will lend themselves to describing the initiation, pattern of development and the rate of progress of periodontal disease during major portions of the abult life of these people.


The invention belongs to the technical field of petroleum processing and particularly relates to a method of preparing hydrogenated petroleum resin through continuous hydrogenation of petroleum resin. A tubular reactor the inside of which is provided with a static mixing element and the inlet of which is provided with a gas distributor is adopted for reaction in the method. The method includes premixing petroleum resin, a solvent, a catalyst and hydrogen, feeding the mixture into the tubular reactor, and reacting at 150-250 DEG C under 3.0-10.0 MPa with retention time being 2-5 hr, wherein the catalyst is a modified skeleton nickel catalyst, the nickel content is 40-80 wt%, the average pore diameter is 2.0-20.0 nm, the mass ratio of the petroleum resin, the solvent and the catalyst is 1:(1-3):(0.01-0.03) and the mole ratio of the petroleum resin to the hydrogen is 1:(2-5). The method is low in reaction pressure and low in solvent consumption. The hydrogenated petroleum resin prepared by the method is high and stable in quality.


. We explore a class of random combinatorial structures called weighted multisets. Their components are taken from an initial set satisfying general boundedness conditions posed on the number of elements with a given weight. The component vector of a multiset of weight n taken with equal probability has dependent coordinates, nevertheless, up to r = o ( n ) of them as n → ∞ , we approximate by an appropriate vector comprised from independent negative binomial random variables. The main result is an estimate of the total variation distance. For illustration, we present a central limit theorem for a sequence of additive functions.


The applications of Advanced High-Strength Steels (AHSS) in the automotive industry are rapidly increasing due to a demand for a lightweight material that significantly reduces fuel consumption without compromising passenger safety. Automotive industries and material suppliers are expected by consumers to deliver reliable and affordable products, thus stimulating these manufacturers to research solutions to meet these customer requirements. The primary advantage of AHSS is its extremely high strength to weight ratio, an ideal material for the automotive industry. However, its low ductility is a major disadvantage, in particular, when using traditional cold forming processes such as roll forming and deep drawing process to form profiles. Consequently, AHSS parts frequently fail to form. Thereby, in order to improve quality and reliability on manufacturing AHSS products, a recently-developed incremental cold sheet metal forming technology called Chain-die Forming (CDF) is recognised as a potential solution to the forming process of AHSS. The typical CDF process is a combination of bending and roll forming processes which is equivalent to a roll with a large deforming radius, and incrementally forms the desired shape with split die and segments. This study focuses on manufacturing an AHSS top-hat section with minimum passes without geometrical or surface defects by using finite element modelling and simulations. The developed numerical simulation is employed to investigate the influences on the main control parameter of the CDF process while forming AHSS products and further develop new die-punch sets of compensation design via a numerical optimal process. In addition, the study focuses on the tool design to compensate spring-back and reduce friction between tooling and sheet-metal. This reduces the number of passes, thereby improving productivity and reducing energy consumption and material waste. This numerical study reveals that CDF forms AHSS products of complex profiles with much less residual stress, low spring back, low strain and of higher geometrical accuracy compared to other traditional manufacturing processes.


Aim : to evaluate the quality of the preoperative nursing visit  check list  data in a university hospital in northeastern Brazil.  Method:  cross-sectional study from July to December 2017. The parameters non-fulfillment and reliability of data were used. For the calculation of incompleteness, the scoring system proposed by Romero and Cunha was adopted. Reliability was measured by the  Kappa  indicator.  Results:  203 preoperative visit sheets were analyzed; 68.2% of the variables (15 of 22 variables analyzed) had a percentage of non-fulfillment ranging from >5% to 9.9%, classified as very low/low non-fulfillment. Considering the  Kappa  values, 81.8% of the studied variables had data reliability considered almost perfect.  Conclusion:  The quality of the preoperative visit  check list  data is satisfactory, since the non-fulfillment of most of the analyzed variables is very low/low and the agreement analysis indicated that the information is robust and reliable.


In the course of telephone interviews, interviewers often have to break existing standards. One of the reasons for this is that the respondent does not understand the question or is in a situation of complex correspondence, when he or she can not give an unambiguous answer. This violation of the standards is manifested in various forms. However, from the point of view of further methodological work, the most interesting example is the explanation or description by the respondent of the circumstances in which he is or was earlier, instead of a direct answer. These detailed, non-standardized answers can be called paradigms in the sense that they provide us with information about how the respondent answers the question of which arguments he uses, what difficulties he encounters. Since we are talking about complex correspondences, in which, basically, violation of interview standards arise, this new additional information can be useful for changing the operationalization of concepts and further working with the toolkit. There are two ways to work with the breakdown of the survey, depending on what task the interviewer poses. In the framework of a standardized paradigm, it should in principle avoid departing from standardization and, correspondingly, the appearance of paradata, because at the time of a complex communicative situation, the probability of its influence on respondents' responses increases. Therefore, it is necessary to minimize the interviewer's participation in the search for the answer and maximize the interpretation of the question by the respondent. A more flexible survey sees the main task in bringing to the respondent the meaning of the question that was laid during the design of the survey and to receive a relevant answer. Therefore, it allows interlocutors to exchange clarifying questions and explanations. In the process of such interaction, there arise waste from standardization, which entail an array of additional information. If we adhere to the second approach, then the search for an answer to a question in an interview is a complex process involving both participants in the conversation. Their interaction is aimed at clarifying the meaning, without which the answers received can not be of any value.


The exchange rate works as a price readjustment mechanism in civil works contracts. But, the Central Bank of Costa Rica modified the system to fix the exchange rate. The exchange rate of the colon to the dollar does not produce necessarily a progressive rise of the dollar. Thus, the traditional mechanism for price readjustment does not always ensure an economic balance in civil works contracts.


1 Saez M, Rodriguez-Martin M, Sidro-Sarto M et al. Multiple verrucae vulgaris in a young woman's tattoo. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol 2006; 20: 356–357. 2 Levy J, Sewell M, Goldstein N. II. A short history of tattooing. J Dermatol Surg Oncol 1979; 5: 851–856. 3 Gilson CC. Ethical and legal aspects of illustrative clinical recording. Br J Hosp Med 1994; 52: 225–229. 4 Hood CA, Hope T, Dove P. Videos, photographs, and patient consent. BMJ 1998; 316: 1009–1011. 5 Kluger N, Aractingi S. Sarcoidosis in tattoos in chronic hepatitis virus C. Presse Med 2006; 35: 1668–1669. 6 Kluger N, Comte C, Guillot B. Molluscum contagiosum on a tattoo. Ann Dermatol Venereol 2007; 134: 506–507.


Abstract Microbial proteolytic activity of rumen of large farm animals, buffalo and cattle, were studied. Enzymic proteolytic activity of microbes of buffalo rumen was much less than that of cattle; however, the profile was reversed for chemical constituents. The proteolysis proceeded progressively with time, but at all intervals rumen liquor of buffalo was much less proteolytic than that of cattle. The pattern was similar for different substrates. The significance of the "sparing effect" of rumen microorganisms of buffalo on degradation of dietary protein is discussed.


Objective To study the effect of Huoxue Lishui therapy(HLT) on expression of transforming growth factor-β1(TGF-β1) in traumatic proliferative vitreoretinopathy(PVR).Methods Experimental PVR models were induced by posterior penetrating eye injury and plateletrich plasma(PRP) to the central vitreous cavity,and positive expression of TGF-β1 in PVR was ex-amined with immunohistochemistry.Results Compared with other groups,the positive expression of TGF-β1 in HLT group was decreased(P0.05).Concliusion HLT can decrease the positive expression of TGF-β1 of the proliferative membranes from the vitreous and inhibit the development of PVR.


A Centenary Pessoa. Edited by Eugenio Lisboa with L. C. Taylor. Translations: poetry by Keith Bosley; prose by Bernard McGuirk, Maria Manuel Lisboa, and Richard Zenith. With an introductory essay by Octavio Paz and contributions from Antonio Tabucchi, Jos6 Blanco and others. Carcanet 1995. 335 pp. L25.00 Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquietude. Translated with an introduction by Richard Zenith. The Sheep Meadow Press 1996. 323 pp. $17.95 (paper) Fernando Pessoa & Co., Selected Poems. Edited and translated by Richard Zenith. Grove Press 1998. 290 pp. $25.00 Poems of Fernando Pessoa. Translated and edited by Edwin Honig and Susan M. Brown. City Lights Books 1998. 240 pp. $15.95 (paper) Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished: Selected Prose. Edited, translated, and introduced by Edwin Honig. City Lights Books 1988.134 pp. $12.95 (paper) Darlene J. Sadlier, An Introduction to Fernando Pessoa: Modernism and the Paradoxes of Authorship. The University Press of Florida 1998.168 pp. $49.95 George Monteiro, The Presence of Pessoa: English, American and Southern African Literary Responses. The University Press of Kentucky 1998. 164 pp. $22.95 Suddenly, Fernando Pessoa is everywhere. The last time I was in Paris, the billboards in the Metro were being pasted with notices of Antonio Tabucchi's theater piece The Last Three Days of Fernando Pessoa. The French publishing house Christian Bourgois has just released volume VIII of its complete Pessoa, which includes a set of poems Pessoa wrote in his own time-machine English, The Mad Fiddler. Ammann Verlag in Zurich has just brought out his fiction, including the intriguing novella The Anarchist Banker, in German translation. Wim Wenders' penultimate film Lisbon Story, which itself peddles a fair bit of Pessoa nostalgia, has helped to revive the fado, the traditional Portuguese fate song. One of the best-known of these fado singers, Bevinda, has returned the compliment with a CD called Pessoa em pessoas in which she sings a clutch of his poems` to the accompaniment of a string duo. Her voice has that lingering quality of plaintive delectation the Portuguese call saudade, a kind of nostalgia-haunted immobility the reader learns to recognize after even a superficial acquaintance with Pessoa's work. In his own country, Pessoa has become an icon, recognizable with a few strokes of the cartoonist's pen-the stencil reproduced in A Centenary Pessoa shows him purposefully striding the length of page 158 while throwing three different shadows. Like Joyce's in Ireland, Pessoa's fame has given rise to a culture industry without precedent in Portugal, and Pessoa's imprimatur was posthumously sought for the more modest democratic state that in 1974 shrugged off the dour Salazar dictatorship, the Estado Novo, under which Pessoa himself had lived. By the 1980s, he had become what he predicted he would, a super-Camoes, with his portrait adorning the 100-escudos banknote, Portugal's equivalent of the one-dollar bill. (Camoes, it should be added, stands in the same relation of prestige to Portugal's history as Shakespeare to England's, a strong writer who defined the sensibility of a colonial empire at its outset.) There is now-inevitably-a full-time Equipa Pessoa regularly updating and jealously guarding scholarly access to the work. Retaining control of what he wrote when he was alive never interested Pessoa. Astonishingly, when he died in 1935, he had only one book in Portuguese to his name, Mensagem, a heraldic sequence published the year before his death which dismantles and reinvents the myth of the Portuguese-God's other chosen people-in a Europe "propped upon her elbows." Pessoa wrote much as Picasso drew: on the backs of envelopes, on cafe menus, handbills, advertisements, his employer's stationery, on anything that came to hand. He simply hoarded his manuscripts, moving on to some other project, rather than submitting them to editors. …


Summary Among the whole burden of the written sources dealing with the urban appearance of Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria, five or six ancient authors give us precious information which could finally offer a lead to the reconstruction of the monumental center of Alexandria: 1) Strabo, 2) Diodorus, 3) Zenobius, 4) Achilles Tatius, 5) Pseudo-Libanius and 6) Pseudo-Callisthenes. Nowadays, the written testimonia concerning the historical topography of Alexandria are severely withstanding to a hypercritical treatment, to a disapproval instead of a reappraisal. Tkazcow 2013, 687: The reconstruction of the topography of the city in the Ptolemaic and Early Roman Periods was, for a long time, based exclusively on Strabo's description (sometimes supplemented with information provided by Diodorus, Polybius and Caesar); the critic is moved against Adriani 1966 and Fraser 1972, 13–34; McKenzie 2007. Yet, there is no other way to solve the puzzle of the monumental center of Ptolemaic Alexandria, but to explain the thinking behind what the ancient authors, principally Strabo, may have seen in Alexandria as eyewitnesses.


unlikely, to my mind, that two distinct diseases are at present gr4uped under the name of progressive muscular atrophy, the disease of the muscles being in the one primary, and in the other secondary an affection of the trophic centres in the spinal cord. With reference to the morbid changes in the muscles in the case of W. T., little need be said, inasmuch as they conform accurately to the descriptions of other observers. The annexed wood-cut, from a drawing by Mr. A. H. Young, of altered muscular fibres in Dr. Leech's case will illustrate the changes usually met with. In the least altered muscular fibres the transverse striation is often indistinct, and a considerable increase of the muscle corpuscles is observed (a). In the vicinity of these fibres others maybe observed which have undergone every degree of atrophy, while numerous nuclei are always to be seen in their substance (h and c). In some of the fibres which are greatly atrophied, the transverse striation may even be more distinct than in health (d), and then their edges


This paper proposes three phase high step up DC-DC converters are in need for applications, where increased loads are used. The proposed three phase DC-DC converter has with input-parallel, output series combination, accompanied by dual coupled inductors. The proposed converter inherits the advantage of being used in three phase applications, compared to the conventional converter. At the input, the presence of the paralleled dual coupled inductors shares the input current. The prototype circuit of the conventional converter has been modified by The prototype The proposed three phase converter has a rating of about 100 W output power at a switching frequency of about 40 kHz and satisfactory agreement between experimental and theoretical analysis has been observed. An output voltage of about 295 V has been harvested.


Introduction: Chitin degradation by chitinase enzyme can be used on a large scale for bioremediation of seafood waste and is environmentally friendly. Objective: The main aim of this study was to screen the potential of the strain as a chitin degrading agent. Methods: In this present study, the cell-free supernatant of Bacillus salmalaya was determined for its protein concentration. Bacillus salmalaya139SI was isolated from agricultural soil and it was identified by staining technique and colony morphology. The production of chitinase by Bacillus salmalaya139SI was optimized under different concentrations of substrate, pH and temperature. Results: Strain 139SI exhibited strong hemolytic activity and the crude protein concentration of Bacillus salmalaya was 84.09mg/ mL with OD value 0.462. Strain 139SI were also screened on colloidal chitin agar medium supplemented with mineral salt. Chikinase production was determined by clear zones of hydrolysis produced after 7 days of incubation at 37°C. The maximum chitinase production was observed in Brain Heart Infusion broth supplemented with 1.0% colloidal chitin at pH 7 and temperature 35°C after four days of incubation. Chitinase activity was observed when high concentrations of crude extract of 139SI able to degrade shrimp shell by showing the degradation zone at day 4. Conclusion: From the results, we concluded that the Bacillus salmalayahas potential to be a biofunctional chitinase that could degrade complex polysaccharides present in the organic wastes and applicable in cleaning the environment.


Background: Although General Practice (GP) was recognized as a medical specialty in Greece in 1986, the number of GPs is insufficient to cover needs and only few medical graduates choose GP as a career option. In the present study we investigated the profile of medical students in terms of their decisions regarding specialization and the possible association of career choices different from GP with the status of undergraduate training regarding GP.


System matrix works as an association between image and detected data. Accurate expression of the system matrix is a key component during PET image reconstruction. However, with numerous Line-of-Responses (LORs) detected in modern 3D PET scanner, the huge storage size of a full system matrix increases computational burden. To solve this essential issue, we designed a rotationally symmetric polygonal pixel grid with fan-shaped segments in the image domain to efficiently compress the matrix with geometrical symmetries. This idea mainly came from the polygonal geometry of detector rings in most PET system.


The "feminist trilogy" novels of the English New Woman author Sarah Grand culminate, after a long and tortuous course, in a vision of the female public speaker, described by the narrator as "one of the first swallows of the woman's summer" (Beth Book 527). Surprisingly, Grand's works have not yet been placed into conversation with other novels portraying female orators. Her trilogy directly intervenes in this strain of fiction, which unfolds approximately from the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention to the propaganda novels of the militant suffragette era. By her own account, Grand's first novel portrays a heroine typifying "not a perfect, but a transitional state . . . , a state which may have its repulsive features" (Ideala 5). By the trilogy's final entry, Grand reframes a pejoratively cast "mesmeric power" for charismatic speech in the far more positive terms of what she calls "genius." In the process, she successfully transforms the female public speaker from a curious anomaly to the harbinger of feminist triumph. In this essay, I consider the roughly half-century lineage of the novel of the female orator, which includes contributions by Nathaniel Hawthorne and George Eliot, followed by even more explicit treatments in Henry James, Grand, and Elizabeth Robins. What emerges from this consideration is a view of a contested strain of the nineteenth-century novel, within which the female orator was the object of satire and scrutiny before her successful emergence in the suffragette novel. Across the nineteenth century, iterations of this figure are alternately condemned or apotheosized through the use of the rhetoric of the mesmeric and the supernatural. The story of what I call the novel of the female orator—there was never a discrete genre for the female orator—begins with Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance (1852), and ends with the sudden evaporation of the suffragette novel at the outset of the First World War. Its development is intertwined with the "debate about female publicity" (Harman 2), chronicled in such studies as Barbara Leah Harman's The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England. Harman argues that the


In this paper, an algorithm is derived to solve a problem of inverse acoustics. It considers the damped acoustic boundary value problem, i.e. the Helmholtz equation and admittance boundary condition, in order to approximate the boundary admittance of interior domains. The algorithm is implemented by using a finite element method and tested for two-dimensional cavities with arbitrary shapes. The admittance condition is reconstructed based on sound pressure measurements. The solution of the arising nonlinear system of equations is obtained by applying the Newton method following a presetting method for finding reasonable initial boundary admittance values. A residual norm accounts for the objective function. Its first- and second-order sensitivities are determined analytically by using a modal decomposition in order to avoid direct inversion of the system matrix. The experiment is simulated by taking sound pressure data of the forward solution as inputs for the inverse problem. Test examples show that very few measurement points are necessary to reproduce piecewise constant boundary admittance values very accurately. Then, the admittance boundary condition is applied to reproduce the sound pressure distribution in the cavity. Again, it becomes obvious that only a few measurement points are required to reconstruct the sound pressure field.


ISSN: 2348-9812 Oxide thermoelectric performance has shown steady increase in the past 25 years. There has been wide interest in applications such as waste heat recovery and radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG's) where potentially higher temperature use could lead to higher thermoelectric generator efficiency [1]. A higher use temperature will also yield a higher figure of merit (ZT). Zinc Oxide (ZnO) is a promising candidate as an n-type thermoelectric temperature due to its high temperature stability, non-toxic nature and low-cost [2]. ZnO is a wide direct gap semiconductor with high electron mobility and thermal conductivity [3]. ZnO has a high thermal conductivity which adversely effects thermoelectric performance. In one study, it was found that the room temperature value for Al-doped ZnO was 40 W/m K and 13 W/m K for dually doped (Al, Ga) ZnO [4]. The thermoelectric performance for Al-doped ZnO has been reported as a ZT=0.33 [5,6]. Nanostructuring has been used to improve thermoelectric efficiency in ZnO [7,8]. Using nanoparticles as the starting material, Al-doped ZnO had a thermal conductivity of ~2 W/m K at room temperature and a projected ZT ~ 0.44 at 1000K [7]. Introduction of nanovoids in the Al-doped ZnO samples resulted in a ZT ~0.6 at 1250 K [9,10]. However, there were difficulties in producing consistent homogeneity in the samples. Dually doping with aluminum and gallium resulted in a ZT=0.65 at 1247K [4]. Although the electrical conductivity decreased with the addition of gallium, the thermal conductivity of the sample was decreased to ~5 W/m K thus leading to the high value of ZT. It was also felt that nanostructuring also aided in the decrease in thermal conductivity. Spark plasma sintering (SPS) was used to densify duallydoped (Al, Ga) ZnO samples in another study [11]. Although, the thermal conductivity was decreased due to small grain sizes, the reported ZT of 0.14 was primarily due to a low power factor. It has been demonstrated that reprocessing thermoelectrics PbTe doped with 2 mol% Na and PbTe-SrTe (2 mol%) doped with 1 mol% Na in a SPS resulted in a higher ZT due to a reduced thermal conductivity [11]. This reduction in thermal conductivity was due to the formation of nanophases and mesophases in the materials which scattered a wider range of phonons. Introduction Nanometer sized ZnO powder was co-doped with gamma aluminum oxide and gallium oxide and sintered using a direct current sintering furnace. Sintered samples were reprocessed by crushing the samples in a Carver press, then milling for 4 hours. The reprocessed samples were then re-sintered in the direct current sintering furnace. Heat capacity, density and thermal diffusivity were measured in order to determine thermal conductivity as a function of temperature. Thermoelectric properties were measured. It was found that the thermal conductivity decreased from 7 W/m K to 3.5 W/m K at 805K by using the reprocessing technique. It is projected that the value will be less than 2 W/m K and the figure of merit greater than 0.65 at 1400K. In this study we used direct current sintering to densify co-doped Al, Ga ZnO samples and determine the thermal conductivity and thermoelectric figure of merit for singly processed and reprocessed material.


Copyright note: Penn School of Design permits distribution and display of this student work by University of Pennsylvania Libraries. Suggested Citation: Strassner, Andrea Joy Cochrane (1996). Religious Institutions and Faith-Based Community Development Corporations: A Link Between Affordable Housing and Historic Preservation in Inner City Neighborhoods. (Masters Thesis). University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.


As has been often acknowledged amid the articles presented in this JELPP special issue, the impetus for its focus on leadership for social justice arose out of the editors' involvement in the international research project exploring the same phenomenon. One of the key questions guiding this particular international research project is: How can an international and comparative research enhance our understanding of what social justice leadership means in different national contexts? To date, this research project has attracted the involvement of some 36 universities across 25 different countries. Indeed, there are research sites in each and every continent. It seems that the issue of social justice, and how it can be proclaimed and established through suitable leadership, has become a global concern. Arguably, there is growing scepticism about the panacean social benefits of neo-liberal economic policies. Despite the economic influence of such policies for more than 20 years, people are not witnessing the heralded social benefits of a free market. Quite the contrary, it seems that the rich are getting richer and more people are becoming disadvantaged (OECD, 2011). Now it seems that rather than leaving socially just outcomes to the insentient vagaries of national economic policies, a significant number of people around the world are striving to reclaim this perceived essential human responsibility. Thus, a laudable aim of this international research project is, first, to understand what constitutes leadership for social justice and then, provided there are discernible universal norms and principles, propose ways in which such leadership can be nurtured and enhanced. Surely any means for broadening and hastening the spread of leadership for social justice is a worthwhile achievement.


Improved genetic algorithm increase the compression ratio and rate of digital image. The improved genetic algorithm process the parallel selection of transform block in multiple sequence. For the transformation of image data used the fractal transform function. The fractal transform function gives the non-overlapping blocks of given image. The dimension and transform of image mapped in second dimension. The improved genetic algorithm process of data based on reference direction of image. The direction of image divide into three section horizontal, vertical and diagonal.The proposed algorithm is simulated in MATLAB software and used standard image dataset such as Leena, Barbra and cameraman. For the evaluation of the performance measure the value of PSNR and compression ratio.


Coronary arteryDisease is the common impact of death worldwide in type 2 Diabetes mellitus.High rate of asymptomatic coronary heart disease in type 2 DM.We studied aboutthe prevalence of silent myocardial ischemia (SMI) in asymptomatic type 2 diabetes mellitus by using treadmill test. We also analysed about the clinical predictions ofSilent Myocardial Ischemia in asymptomatic type 2 DM. The study was one year cross sectional study conducted on the 50 asymptomatic type 2 DM outpatients in the tertiary care hospital during the period of July 2014 to July 2015. The result showed that Out of 50 cases , Treadmill test positive cases were 15 (30%) and negative cases were 35(70%) patients groups.The preponderance of SMI in type 2DM, without previous clinical and electrocardiographic signs of ischemic heart disease or hypertension is 30%.Age, duration of diabetes, triglyceride levels, autonomic neuropathy and glycosylated hemoglobin are strong clinical predictors of silent myocardial ischemia.Based on our study, a routinescreening is must for Silent Myocardial ischemia in asymptomatic type 2 DM outpatients who had longer duration of diabetes, high triglycerides and HbA1C levels.


Subsurface reduction of U(VI) can be mediated by microorganisms and their redox-active mineral
byproducts, yielding relatively insoluble U(IV) species. Although uraninite is generally assumed to be the
dominant product of biological U(VI) reduction, recent work by the SLAC SFA and others provide evidence
that other forms of U(IV), such as molecular complexes, may also be produced. The microbially
mediated in situ reduction of U(VI) is touted as a potential approach for the remediation of uraniumcontaminated
DOE sites. The success of such a strategy is contingent upon the enduring stability of the
biologically reduced uranium. The goal of this work is to elucidate and quantify the fundamental structure-composition-stability
relationships of these species as part of the SLAC SFA focus on molecularscale
processes of key importance to uranium behavior in the subsurface at DOE sites. Here we report key
insights to factors controlling the formation of molecular U(IV) product(s) in pure culture and sediment
columns. These species lack the U-U EXAFS shell characteristic of uraninite.
We carried out lactate-stimulated uranium reduction experiments in columns packed with Rifle IFRC
sediment augmented with Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 cells. Major findings of the work included a shift
in the microbial community composition over time away from S. oneidensis in low G+C Gram-positive
bacteria, as well as the formation of a molecular tetravalent uranium species lacking intermediate-range
structure, as demonstrated by EXAFS.
In addition, several bacterial species, including Desulfotomaculum reducens MI-1, Clostridium acetobutylicum
and S. oneidensis, were found to be capable of producing molecular U(IV) as a product of
U(VI) reduction in pure culture under specific geochemical conditions. In fact, geochemical conditions
appear to exert significant control over the product of microbial U(VI) reduction since S. oneidensis produces
uraninite under some geochemical conditions and molecular U(IV) under others.
Finally, the reduction of U(VI) by redox-active biogenic Fe(II) phases also generates several distinct
U(IV) products depending on the geochemical matrix. In some cases, EXAFS indicated the formation of a
molecular U(IV) species, whereas in other instances, uraninite was formed.
These findings reinforce the conclusion that uraninite is not the only product of direct and indirect
biological U(VI) reduction, but that molecular tetravalent uranium species must also be considered when
modeling uranium mobility in the subsurface. Our present research efforts are focused on evaluating the
reactivity of molecular tetravalent uranium, as well as the conditions leading to the formation of such species
as a result of biological U(VI) reduction. Identification of key factors controlling the formation of
molecular U(IV) and biogenic uraninite and knowledge of their reactivity is leading to new geochemical
models for uranium cycling in reducing sediments, and to a deeper and more defensible scientific basis
for in situ reductive remediation technologies.


Nearly every area of mathematics, natural, social, and engineering now includes research into finding exact answers to nonlinear fractional differential equations (NFDES). In order to discover the exact solutions to the higher order Sasa-Satsuma equation in the sense of the beta derivative, the paper will discuss the modified simple equation (MSE) and exponential rational function (ERF) approaches. In general, symmetry and travelling wave solutions of the Sasa-Satsuma equation have a common correlation with each other, thus we reduce equations from wave transformations to ordinary differential equations with the help of Lie symmetries. Actually, we can say that wave moves are symmetrical. The considered procedures are effective, accurate, simple, and straightforward to compute. In order to highlight the physical characteristics of the solutions, we also provide 2D and 3D plots of the results.


I0 Merlin HE. Azoospermia caused by colchicine-a case report. Fertil Steril 1972;23:180-1. '1 Whorton D, Krauss RM, Marshall S, Milby TH. Infertility in male pesticide workers. Lancet 1977 ;ii :1259-61. 12 Lantz GD, Cunningham GR, Huckins C, Lipschultz LI. Recovery from severe oligospermia after exposure to dibromochloropropane. Fertil Steril 1981 ;35:46-53. 13 Lancranjan I, Popescu HI, Gavanescu 0, Klepsch I, Serbanescu M. Reproductive ability of workmen occupationally exposed to lead. Arch Environ Health 1975 ;30 :396-401. 4 Toth A. Reversible toxic effect of salicylazosulfapyridine on semen quality. Fertil Steril 1979;31:538-40. 15 Levi AJ, Fisher AM, Hughes L, Hendry WF. Male infertility due to sulphasalazine. Lancet 1979;ii:276-8. 16 Toovey S, Hudson E, Hendry WF, Levi AJ. Sulphasalazine and male infertility: reversibility and possible mechanism. Gut 1981;22:445-51. 17 Birnic GG, McLeod TIF, Watkinson G. Incidence of sulphasalazineinduced male infertility. Gut 1981 ;22:452-5. 18 Pryor JP, Blandy JP, Evans P, Chaput de Saintonge DM, Usherwood M. Controlled clinical trial of arginine for infertile men with oligozoospermia. BrrJ Urol 1978;50:47-50. 19 Stewart BH. Drugs that cause and cure male infertility. Druig Therapy 1975 ;5 :42-9. 20 Padr6n RS, Nodarse M. Effects of amitriptyline on semen of infertile men. Br 7 Urol 1980;52:226-8. 21 Murdia A, Mathur V, Kothari LK, Singh KP. Sulpha-trimethoprim combinations and male fertility. Lancet 1978;ii:375-6. 22 Guillebaud J. Sulpha-trimethoprim combinations and male infertility. Lancct 1978;ii:523. 23 Hendry WF. Male infc rtility. Br 7 Hosp Med 1979;22:47-60. 24 Evans HJ, Fletcher J, Torranice M, Hargreave TB. Sperm abnormalities and cigarette smoking. Lancet 1981;i :627-9. 25 Kalla NR, Vasudev M. Studies on the male antifertility agent gossypol acetic acid. II. Effect of gossypol acetic acid on the motility and ATPase activity of human spermatozoa. Andrologia 1981 ;13:95-8.


Nondestructive Testing (NDT) in the engineering community is normally associated with the objective to detect, to classify and to size material nonconformities – for instance beginning with nonmetallic inclusions of a size of some ten $\mu$m in steel or Aluminum alloys up to so-called 'material defects' like macroscopic cracks of some mm size. This objective, however, is at the top of the list of activities concerning the number of applications in nondestructive material testing worldwide. Methodologies like UT (Ultrasonic Testing) and RT (Radiographic Testing) or MT (Magnetic Testing) are well introduced in a wide field of product and component examination standards. In the last 15 to 20 years, the NDT technology was also developed for characterizing materials, for instance in terms of microstructure parameters, i.e. lattice defects, like distributions and densities of dislocations, precipitates, micro-voids, in order to describe strengthening and/or softening in materials, mainly in metal alloys, but also to measure the applied and residual stresses (Dobmann et al. , 1989).


The invention relates to the stress evaluation of a laser cladding layer and in particular relates to a nondestructive evaluation method of the stress of a cladding layer based on a critical refraction longitudinal wave. According to the invention, the nondestructive evaluation of the cladding layer stress is realized through selecting a double critical refraction longitudinal wave probe with a suitable central frequency; an optimum propagation distance is determined as the spacing distance between a propagation probe and a receiving probe to be fixed by combining the law that the energy of the critical refraction longitudinal wave in the cladding layer decays; the time difference between the critical refraction longitudinal signals is used for representing the change amount of the propagation speed of the cladding layer in the critical refraction longitudinal wave caused by the stress and taken as the characteristic parameter to evaluate the stress of the cladding layer to build a stress-time difference relation; a liner function is adopted to fit results to obtain an acoustoelastic equation used for representing the stress of the cladding layer, and therefore the nondestructive evaluation of the stress of the cladding layer based on the critical refraction longitudinal wave is realized.


Nonstationary filtering techniques (Margrave, 1997) can be used to apply nonstationary deconvolution operators designed directly from the seismic data. Such operators can be continuously time variant and have any desired amplitude and phase spectra. The operator design uses time variant Fourier spectra measured directly from seismic data, which are smoothed, inverted, and combined with a minimum phase spectrum, if necessary. This method of deconvolution approximately corrects the seismic data for the effects of anelastic attenuation, frequency dispersion, and source signature. The result is a one dimensional nonstationary operation which extends the range of stationary deconvolution to a type of data-driven inverse Q filter.


In an effort to understand the possibility of using PET as a tool for dose verification after proton therapy in ocular melanomas, a Lucite phantom was irradiated at the proton therapy facility at TRIUMF with a raw and spread-out Bragg peak of 74 MeV protons and scanned in two different PET scanners at UBC. A tantalum clip, used as a marker during patient treatment, was attached to the phantom. Irradiation with the raw Bragg peak results in a different activation profile than with the spread-out Bragg peak. The difference is easily observable in the PET scan. In addition, one patient treated for choroidal melanoma was scanned. In the patient scan the activity in the irradiated tumor is clearly visible. A FLUKA simulation of the facility is currently being validated against experimental measurements.


Barriers put up by people's traditional ideas,marketing mechanism and interference of government are the main ones in the course of property-right circulation.There are three kinds of ways to smooth the path of right circulation: 1.proper attitudes and ideas about property-right should be adopted;2.theproperty-right circulation market must be regulated;3.efficient legal system is needed to protect the benefit of the property owners.


The traditional Droop control method is a well-developed control technique for parallel, independent, distributed energy sources. However, this method faces many challenges such as non-constant output voltage and frequency, and the trade-off between dynamic response and steady state accuracy. Many attempts have been made to improve the method at the expense of increased complexity, cost, or additional equipment. The authors have proposed a new control technique for autonomous operation of parallel inverters that can overcome some of the inherent challenges that exist in the Droop control. This paper compares the response of the proposed technique and the traditional Droop method. The method uses the output current of each inverter to regulate the voltage of the capacitor of the LCL filter. The dynamic response, voltage accuracy, and circulating current are used in the comparison.


Abstract Data showing the efficiency of using the new flux-cored wire, Veltek-N285C, for reconditioning rapidly worn crane wheels are presented. The metal deposited with this wire contains metastable austenite, reinforced with carbides and undergoing dynamic deformation martensitic transformation during loading in service (the self-quenching effect in loading). Consequently, the internal resources of the material can be utilized.


Phase shifter networks (PSN) are now widely used in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems for its low cost and analog signal processing capability. In practice, the phase shifters may be subject to phase deviations, which needs to be properly estimated and calibrated. This paper proposes a novel over-the-air (OTA) approach to estimate the deviations of the phase shifters at each gear. We formulate the PSN calibration model by the so-termed quasi-neural network (quasi-NN). In training the quasi-NN using the back propagation (BP) algorithm, the phase deviations are automatically estimated. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm by showing that the root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the phase estimates are close to the Cramer Rao Bounds (CRBs).


FIELD: weapons and ammunition. SUBSTANCE: support unit (6) comprises a support element (8) with a board edge (7) and a trigger mechanism for ignition of the main cap of a mortar shell (1), and also comprises a connecting facility (10) for fixation of the connecting element (8) on a tail assembly (4) of the mortar shell (1). The connecting facility (10) for fixation of the support element (8) on the tail assembly (4) of the mortar shell (1) comprises at least one elastic part (13, 20, 30), made for fixation on the tail assembly (4) of the mortar shell (1) with the help of elastic forces. EFFECT: increased reliability of shell retention. 6 cl, 7 dwg


In 2008 the introduction of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN), combined with the publication of the international comparative analyses of student achievement data (such as the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA) developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)) highlighted a significant priority for Australian education by identifying low levels of equity.


A semiconductor device according to an embodiment of the present invention includes: a first region having patterns formed based on grid points as intersections of grid lines; and a second region including a plurality of layout cells an outer edge of which is defined by the grid points, the layout cells having patterns formed based on a wiring rule with patterns connected to patterns of the first region among the patterns being formed based on the grid points at a boundary with the first region.


Robots, unmanned vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely used as mobile platforms to facilitate the scanning range and coordinate positioning of vision and recognition for analyzing surrounding environmental information. However, during the night, image recognition is not efficient. In this study, a UAV equipped with a LiDAR sensor was used to detect night-time environmental information and recognize human characteristics. The point data of the foreground and background were separated using the background difference method and density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN) to automatically distinguish and classify objects by the distance difference between adjacent points. Root mean square error (RMSE) was calculated by surface fitting, and the surface state of the object was summarized as a condition to determine whether the object is human. Image processing was performed on point cloud data, and skeleton recognition was performed using the surface image of the object and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm. Thus, an automatic recognition system was established. Hyperparameters were adjusted for optimal modeling. Finally, VGG16 was used for feature extraction to obtain a mean average precision (mAP) of 95.3%. Human body recognition using skeleton recognition based on RMSE surface analysis approached 93.8% during the night. The website information of recognition results was established through the server terminal computer to present the current measured environmental state and recognize a human body in the night-time environment. This technology can be used to search for victims during disaster relief scenarios and reduce the difficulty and time required for night-time search and rescue operations.


This study was conducted to evaluate the effect of dietary supplementation of dairy cows with yeast culture (YC) on immune transfer to their calves during first days after birth and on some blood constituents of calves from birth to 15 wk of age. Total of 15 Friesian cows (weighing 500-520 kg and 2-4 parities) and 15 Friesian heifers (weighing 400-420 kg) at late pregnancy (3 mo pre-partum) were used in this study. All experimental animals were randomly allocated in randomized design to three experimental groups (n=10, 5 cows and 5 heifers in each), fed on the same diet. Animals in 1st group were without treatment, while those in the second (T2) and third (T3) groups were orally administrated with 20 and 40 g/h commercial yeast culture (Thepax) for 90 days pre-partum and 90 days post-partum. After parturition, newborn calves were fed on colostrums of their dams, and then suckled milk up to weaning (105 d of age). Blood samples were collected from all newborn calves at first, second and third day after birth, then at 4, 8, 12 and 15 weeks of age. Hematological parameters including count of red (RBCs) and white (WBCs) blood cells, hemoglobin (Hb) concentration and packed cell volume (PCV) were determined in the whole blood. Concentration of total proteins (TP), albumin (AL), globulin (GL), total lipids (TL), cholesterol (CH), glucose (GLU), creatinine (CR), and thyroid hormone (T3) as well as AST and ALT activities were determined in blood serum. Results showed insignificant effect of dam parity (cows and heifers) on count of WBCs, Hb concentration and PCV value in the whole blood, serum concentration of immunoglobulines (IgG, IgM and IgA), TP, AL, GL, GLU, CR and T3, and ALT activity in serum of calves. Concentration of TL and CH, and AST activity were higher, while count of RBCs was lower (P<0.05) in calves of heifers than in those of cows. Concentrations of IgG, IgM and IgA were higher (P<0.05) in calves of T3 than in T1 by 32, 81 and 112%, respectively. Count of RBCs, Hb concentration and PCV value, and concentration of TP, AL and GL (P<0.05) and WBCs (P≥0.05) were higher in calves of T3 than in those of T1 and T2. Calves of T3 showed the highest (P<0.05) concentration of TL, CH and GLU and the lowest CR concentration and AST and ALT activity (P<0.05). Concentration of T3 was lower (P<0.05) in T2 and T3 than in T1. Concentration of IgG, IgM and IgA in serum and WBCs count of calves decreased (P≥0.05) on the 3rd day after birth. Count of RBCs, Hb concentration and PCV value increased (P<0.05) by advancing post-calving week.  Only, TP, AL, TL, CH, GLU, CR and T3 concentrations and activity of AST and ALT showed different trends of changes by advancing post-calving week (P<0.05).In conclusion, pre- and post-partum yeast culture treatment at a level of 40 g/h/day for heifers and cows is able to enhance their newborn immunity response and improve calf performance with good health status, which allow for raising good male calves of breeding or female calves of milk production.


The paper is devoted to the study of a nonlinear
wave equation with nonlocal boundary conditions of integral forms. First, we establish two local existence theorems by using Faedo-Galerkin method. Next, we give a sufficient condition to guarantee the global existence and exponential decay of weak solutions.


The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea states that repressive actions against piracy can only be carried out by warships or other ships that are clearly marked and identifiable as being on government service and authorised to that effect. In principle, merchant ships are thus not empowered to resort to such actions. This fairly reasonable requirement gives rise to some problems. Warships are obviously seldom targeted and, because of the large range of modern pirates, they are not often able to catch the pirates in the act, causing serious difficulties with regard to evidence. Apart from the evidentiary issues, hypothetical situations wherein the crew of a merchant ship succeeds in averting an attack and eventually overpowers the pirate
suspects also need to be considered. Is the crew then obliged to let the pirates escape without consequence, in the absence of any competence to apprehend them, or is there a way to realise adequate arrest and prosecution of these suspects?


Introduction:
 The search for potential new targets to improve outcomes in patients with CML is ongoing, with a view to improve treatment efficacy for those with refractory disease and increase the proportion of those eligible to attempt TKI discontinuation. CML is recognised as a particularly immune sensitive tumour and as such immune checkpoint inhibitors, which can enhance inherent immune surveillance mechanisms are an attractive proposition.
 Methods:
 We performed flow cytometric analysis of peripheral blood mononuclear cells for expression of PD1, CTLA-4, TIM-3 and LAG-3 on T effectors and regulatory T cells. T effectors included CD4+ and CD8+ subsets and a gating strategy of CD4+/CD25+/CD127 lo/FOXP3+ cells for Tregs was employed, whilst FOXP3 hi/CD45RA-ve cells denoted effector Tregs. FMO controls were used to determine positive populations for each immune checkpoint molecule under investigation.
 Results:
 Samples from 22 patients were analysed, including samples from two different time points in 4 patients. This included patients at diagnosis (n=8), those with refractory disease defined as <CCyR (n=3) and those with a response of MMR (n=6) and MR4 or greater (n=9). Patients with a response of MMR or greater were considered to have low disease burden.
 Patients at diagnosis had higher Tregs as proportion of total CD4+ cells compared to those with low disease burden with a mean of 6.3 vs 4.6 (p=0.048). Similarly, effector Tregs, the most functionally suppressive Treg subset, were also higher at diagnosis at 10.3 vs 5.4 (p=0.05). No differences were observed in frequency of Tregs between refractory and low disease burden groups.
 PD1 expression was higher at diagnosis in CD4+, CD8+ cells and Tregs when compared to those with low disease burden (4.75 vs 2.75, 5.85 vs 2.43 and 5.2 vs 2.78, p=0.034/p=0.003/p=0.002). Similarly, TIM3 expression was significantly higher at diagnosis compared to at low disease burden; in CD4+ at 6 vs 1.9, CD8+ at 15.71 vs 4.41 and Tregs at 5.15 vs 1.88 (p=0.027/p=<0.001/p=0.002). LAG3 expression was higher at diagnosis in CD8+ 6.67 vs 1.4 and Tregs 2.13 vs 0.68 (p=0.031/p=0.025). No significant differences were observed in CTLA4 expression between these groups although a trend towards significance was observed in Tregs with 2.36 vs 0.67 (p=0.055).
 Despite low sample size, PD1 expression was also significantly higher in refractory patients compared to those with low disease burden, in CD4+ cells at 5.34, and Tregs at 5.6 (p=0.031/p=0.026). TIM3 expression was higher in CD8+ subset only at 11.74 (p=0.028). LAG3 showed higher expression in CD4+ cells at 1.56 vs 0.45 and in CD8+ cells at 8.81 (p=0.004/P=<0.001). Finally, CTLA-4 also showed higher expression in CD4+ cells at 1.59 vs 0.47 and Tregs at 1.99 vs 0.67 (p=0.026/p=0.032).
 One patient was analysed at diagnosis and then again after achieving MMR following dasatinib treatment for 11 months. A significant trend of downregulation of immune checkpoint expression with successful TKI treatment was observed. For example, Treg expression of PD1 decreased from 7.03 to 4.86, TIM3 decreased from 2.57 to 0.83 and LAG3 decreased from 2.23 to 0.16 (Figure 1a), with CTLA4 remaining at a similar level. Similarly, another patient was analysed whilst in MMR and then again following haematologic relapse, one week after regaining CHR with ponatinib. In contrast, this patient showed evidence of upregulation of checkpoint molecules, particularly in TIM3 expression increasing from 9.2 to 22.2 in CD4+ cells and from 12.6 to 20.1 in CD8+ cells (Figure 1b).
 Discussion:
 We have shown through an extended analysis of immune checkpoint expression on lymphocytes from blood samples of patients with CML, that expression correlates strongly with leukaemia disease burden. We provide the first report, to our knowledge, to describe the increased expression of TIM3 and LAG3 in peripheral blood lymphocytes, which is of significance given the recent development of inhibitors of these molecules.
 These data support the potential future use of immune checkpoint inhibitors in certain patients with high-risk disease at diagnosis as well as addition in those with inadequate response, alongside conventional TKI therapy. Moreover, these data provide a potential basis for the use of combination immune checkpoint blockade which has proven highly efficacious in other settings. Further laboratory and clinical studies evaluating these agents in CML are warranted.
 Figure 1 Figure 1.

 Harrington: Bristol Myers Squibb: Research Funding; Incyte: Honoraria. Dillon: Shattuck Labs: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Menarini: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Astellas: Consultancy, Other: Educational Events , Speakers Bureau; Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Session chair (paid to institution), Speakers Bureau; Pfizer: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: educational events; Jazz: Other: Education events; Amgen: Other: Research support (paid to institution); Abbvie: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Research Support, Educational Events. Radia: Cogent Biosciences Incorporated: Other: Study Steering Committee; Blueprint Medicines Corporation: Consultancy, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Study steering group member, Research Funding; EXPLORER and PATHFINDER studies: Other: Member of the Response Adjudication Committee; Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Other: Education events. Kordasti: Novartis: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding; Celgene: Research Funding; Alexion: Honoraria; Beckman Coulter: Honoraria. Harrison: Shire: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Keros: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Roche: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Gilead Sciences: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Galacteo: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Geron: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Janssen: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; CTI BioPharma: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Celgene: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Novartis: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; BMS: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Abbvie: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Constellation Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding; Incyte Corporation: Speakers Bureau; Sierra Oncology: Honoraria; AOP Orphan Pharmaceuticals: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau; Promedior: Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees, Speakers Bureau. de Lavallade: Incyte: Honoraria, Research Funding; Novartis: Speakers Bureau; Bristol Myers Squibb: Research Funding.


The Western Indian Ocean (WIO) has been identified as a global hotspot for chondrichthyan diversity (Dulvy et al. 2014), with 130 shark, 86 batoid (wedgefishes, skates and rays) and 11 chimaera species identified to date. The WIO is one of four global hotspots for chondrichthyan evolutionary distinctiveness (Dulvy et al. 2014), giving the region's chondrichthyans a high irreplaceability index (Stein et al. 2018), and highlighting the need for their conservation


This paper reviews the Oppenheimer, Volkoff and Snyder's arguments about the formation of black holes from the collapse of Neutron Stars. It is found that such a collapse is inconsistent with microscopic causality and Heisenberg uncertainty principle.


Objective To investigate compound angelica tincture combined with Halometasone cream and NB-UVB in the treatment of vitiligo.Methods 64 cases of unusual vitiligo is divided into two groups,treatment group of 33 cases,the self-made compound angelica tincture for external use every morning,Halometasone cream every night use,NB-UVB every other day irradiation.Control group of 31 cases,the use of 8-MOP every morning for external use,Halometasone cream per night applied,NB-UVB every other day irradiation.Results The efficiency of treatment group was 76.79%,control group was 64.52%(χ2 test,P0.05).Conclusion Compound angelica tincture combined with Halometasone cream and NB-UVB might be safe and effective in the treatment of vitiligo vulgaris.


This study aimed to map and characterize the vegetation of the National Park of Serra de Itabaiana, with emphasis on the most abundant plant species, evaluating strategies for their conservation. There was a predominance of open formations of grassy fields, characterized as high-altitude grassland (3,289ha), mainly in areas of slopes. The forests are characterized as ecotones between Lowland Dense Rain Forest and Semideciduous Forest (2,643ha), mostly as secondary forest. The habitat called the White Sands (347ha), previously characterized as salt marshes, only occurs on the eastern side of Itabaiana and Comprida Serras, and it has a type of physiognomy normally associated with high-altitude grassland. The disturbed areas are concentrated at the edges of the park, roads and trails used by human visitors. Of these areas, regions with exposed soils are the most abundant, occurring in a total of 699ha; the brushwood (586ha) is more frequent at the forest's edge, originating from fi res caused by the cultivation of sugar cane; plantations and withdrawals of soil (131ha) occur in areas close to settlements.


A spatial technique providing global size and velocity data over a two-dimensional region of a spray is often preferred for rapid optical characterization of sprays. The Generalized Scattering Imaging (GSI) approach for droplet sizing, based on both the Lorenz-Mie theory and the Finely Stratified Sphere Scattering Model can be applied to both homogenous droplets and inhomogeneous and/or absorbing droplets. A new system has been developed using the GSI approach, with the capability to measure the velocity and size of droplets with non-uniform and/or varying refractive index, even in regions of high particle number density. A windowed FFT based approach was used to identify the presence and location of a droplet oscillation pattern, and an optimized frequency-based algorithm was used to extract the droplet size. A two-frame tracking algorithm was devised to measure the velocity of droplets from the two consecutive image frames. The size range and droplet concentration limits were investigated using simulated out-of-focus images. A maximum measurable diameter range from 10µm to 600µm was obtained for the range of magnification and defocus recommended here. The maximum droplet concentration is expected to be about 3000 #/cc. Sizing accuracy was verified using monodisperse droplets and a graded index optical fiber. Results obtained for a swirl type pressure atomizer operating on water and fuel oil depicted well the near-nozzle spray angle and diameter characteristics in various parts of the spray structure. Velocity vector maps were obtained, and when combined with the size measurements, size-velocity correlations were constructed. Data was also acquired for a gasoline direct injector (G-DI) operating at a limited range of conditions, and the resulting droplet size distributions were analyzed.


of these discussions are effective in introducing these conceptual debates to uninitiated readers, but they fail to make much of a case for how the internationalization of education offers particular insights into the structuring of mobility and the processes of transnationalism, or how it speaks back to Massey's conceptualizing. It is also slightly odd that these frameworks are not written through the earlier empirical chapters, which remain a descriptive material for potential future theorizations rather than opportunities for conceptual development in this volume. The remaining chapters are wide ranging, drawing out some of the important themes that have emerged in the volume and considering their implications. The discussion ranges from the youth dimensions of student mobility, to connections with other forms of migration in policy and student plans, right through to pedagogy, curriculum change and suggestions for mediating the inherent inequality of increased student mobility. The discussion certainly reflects the complexity of issues involved in the processes of internationalization of education and student mobility. This makes for a useful resource for students and scholars to regularly return to, but the discussion also reads like a collection of small separate entries rather than an overarching argument that might highlight the particular conceptual contribution of this volume to the field. Overall, then, this is a well-presented introduction to the internationalization of higher education and the increasing mobility of students across borders, but it is also one that struggles to move beyond being an overview to establish new arguments or theorizations. The authors set out from the beginning to put the geography front and centre, but it is rarely clear what focusing on the geography of these processes means except for highlighting the inevitable, and well known, spatial unevenness of international student mobilities. Perhaps, this should not be surprising, as the authors certainly illustrate here that the multiple processes, actors and institutions involved in what is called internationalization are extraordinarily complex, and it is unlikely that there is a specific conceptualization that can account for all that is involved in constituting this phenomenon. Notwithstanding, Student Mobilities, Migration and the Internationalization of Higher Education is an important contribution to the field because it will allow students, scholars and (hopefully) policy-makers to get to grips with some of this complexity.


In order to seek a rapid and effective algorithm of distribution network reconfiguration,a hybrid algorithm combined with Bayesian statistical-inference and distribution estimation is proposed.Via the algorithm for optimization and adjustment of distribution network,the probability distribution model through the theory of Bayesian inference is established,then a posteriori probability model with the prior distribution and the conditional distribution is produced,and new individuals are generated into advantage of group with the posteriori probability of sampling,updating these probability model by advantage of group.It will be sampled continuously with the updated posterior probability until the optimal solution can be otained.Finally,the comparative result with estimation of distribution and immune binary particle swarm proves that the hybrid algorithm is rapid and effective.


The features or characteristics of the corona around wires brought out by oscillograms of the charging and leakage currents may be thus summarized: 1. The distortion in the current wave form, which results from copious ionization at the time of the voltage peak, is observed simultaneously with the hissing sound and bluish discharge from the wire. 2. At air pressures below 20 cm. of mercury, copious ionization,-as indicated by the hump on the current oscillograms,-sets in at a lower voltage during the half cycle for which the wire is the cathode than during the half cycle for which it is the anode. 3. From the oscillograms thus far obtained at atmospheric pressure it has been impossible to determine whether there is any difference in the voltage at which the distortion appears in the two half cycles, at pressures near atmospheric. 4. The boundary of the ionized region does not gradually expand outward from the wire with the increase in voltage during the half cycle. The loss of insulating properties in the air surrounding the wire must be conceived of as taking place with extreme suddenness. The evidence of this is the oscillation in the current shown on the oscillograms. 5.


It is well known that since abrupt faults in induction motors tend to lead to subsequent faults and deterioration of the drive apparatus, motor faults may lead to several operating restrictions, such as security problems and economic loss. A lot of research has been done in the area of diagnosis to detect machine faults and to prevent catastrophic hazards in the motor drive system. This paper presents a new method of motor current signature analysis in which the DC-link current of the inverter-driven induction motor system, where a single current sensor is employed instead of three AC current sensors, is measured, and fast Fourier transform analysis is performed. This proposed method makes it possible to easily discern and clearly separate the motor fault current signature from the normal operation current flowing through the stator and rotor windings.