Materials with novel properties and compounds of intelligent material combinations are a key to innovation in various successful sectors of the global industry as well as for its export. Magnetorheological elastomer materials have interesting physical properties; most of these properties are modified and adapted under the influence of external parameters such as the magnetic field. In this work, an experimental characterization of the magnetorheological elastomers (MRE) loaded with 20% of the iron particles was made. The results showed that the properties of these materials can be modified very selectively and reversibly under the influence of magnetic field, where the stiffness of the material varies depending on the magnetic field intensity that influences the attractive force between iron particles.


With the reformation and open of China,the velocity of Urbanization in our country become much quickly.However,the policy of Urbanization which apply f or a long time hamper the higher development of city in China.It's not a goo d way to develop small town as our choice to urbanize,The rapid development o f big city is a tendency which can ont be stop in the course of Urbanization.W e have to take more attention to the development of big city in the course of Urbanization.


The approach of this monographic work traverses about the theme of evangelization. The image of God on the scientific, politic and economic panorama it not the same comparing to the beginnings of faith. There was a time that God was response to unexplained situations. All passed through the bias of faith, but in the secularized world, the faith has no importance. However, what Evangelii Nuntiandi and Evangelii Gaudium have to contribute in the framework of evangelization, not discarding the reality that the Church it finds? The objective is to understand, from these documents evangelization action of the Church. The methodology used in this research is bibliographic effective for a hermeneutics theological. It is constituted by three chapters. The first makes a return to the missionary foundation of the Vatican Council II. The second approaches aspects about the history of the Church, both in the early phase and the period of Christianity; and the third discusses the identity of the Church from the Evangelii Nuntiandi and Evangelii Gaudium. We conclude our work showing that the identity of the Church is to evangelize. It becomes Church if it evangelizes.


The main bridge of the Jiujiang Changjiang River Highway Bridge is a two-pylon hybrid girder cable-stayed bridge.A double-wall steel suspension box cofferdam with dimension of 84.9 m×32.9 m×16.0 m is used as the provisional water retaining structure for the dumb-bell-shaped pile cap of the pier No.22.The delivery of the cofferdam is supposed to be risky with a floating distance of approximately 166 km,and the hoisting and installation also face great challenges,for the hoisting weight is up to 1 761 t.According to the calculation results of the floating resistance in different unfavorable load cases under the effect of the flow velocity and the wind force during the delivery of the cofferdam,in view of the actual field condition,three pushing vessels were deployed to tow the cofferdam by the way of incremental launching and assisted dragging,and a tugboat was also dispatched to follow and assist the pushing vessels to assure that the cofferdam would be safely delivered to the construction site on time.In addition to the aforementioned facilities,considering the practical condition of the resource of large-scale lifting cranes in China,three floating cranes were used for the hoisting and installation of the cofferdam.Through the control of the synergy of the three floating cranes,the cofferdam was put into place successfully.


The present invention provides a method for managing personal data of the highly secure systems, methods and apparatus individuals. The system and the personal device having complementary, both of which can provide a highly secure personal data and a large, reliable and secure data access, storage, and management solutions. By the device securely connected to the service provider using the system independent of the device. The device uniquely identified by a unique user includes a sensor module including a plurality of user for reading a biometric sensor of the plurality of individual biometric parameter; and authentication means for the authentication of the unit personal biometric parameters stored positive authentication. The owner of the device, the method support its reliable and safe operation, and to access the system with an external pre-registration service providers and other users registered in the system highly secure exchange of personal data.


Fast breeder reactors (FBR) nuclear fuel cycle is needed for long-term nuclear sustainability while preventing global warming and maximum utilizing the limited uranium (U) resources. The 'Framework for Nuclear Energy Policy' by the Japanese government on October 2005 stated that commercial FBR deployment will start around 2050 under its suitable conditions by the successive replacement of light water reactors (LWR) to FBR. Even after Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident which made Japanese tendency slow down the nuclear power generation activities, Japan should have various options for energy resources including nuclear, and also consider the delay of FBR deployment and increase of LWR spent fuel (LWR-SF) storage amounts. As plutonium (Pu) for FBR deployment will be supplied from LWR-SF reprocessing and Japan will not possess surplus Pu, the authors have developed the flexible fuel cycle initiative (FFCI) for the transition from LWR to FBR. The FFCI system is based on the possibility to stored recycled materials (U, Pu)temporarily for a suitable period according to the FBR deployment rate to control the Pu demand/supply balance. This FFCI system is also effective after the Fukushima accident for the reduction of LWR-SF and future LWR-to-FBR transition. (authors)


: PIT (Pile Integrity Testing) is a non-destructive test and performs foundation investigation and also known as Low Strain Dynamic Test, providing assurance of structural integrity of deep foundations. The PIT is performed quickly, potentially making it possible to test every pile on a job site with no pre-planning required. The PIT test consists of attaching one or two accelerometers to a foundation and using a hand-held hammer to impact the pile top. The PIT collects the acceleration data and displays curves that reveal any significant changes in cross section that may exist along the shaft. The impact of the hammer generates a stress wave that propagates down the foundation and reflects back up. The accelerometer collects data that reveals the pattern of wave propagation and reflection. Piles without defects typically show a reflection from the pile toe at the expected time, which corresponds to the pile length. If a defect is present along the shaft, its size and location affect the propagation and reflection time of the wave. This paper presents "cases" of job sites with dangerous defects in Continuous Flight Auger Piles, Franki Piles, Root Piles, Strauss Piles, Bored Piles, Driven Concrete Piles and all of them submitted to the PIT test. The Reflectograms (velocity signals) were compared against field investigations in order to check and validate the PIT test. Construction features of each pile tested were discussed and considered during the analyses of the Reflectograms. This paper also covers theoretical concepts, advantages and limitations, view of the Tester Engineer and contribution for PIT standardization.


Distributed consensus has been intensively studied in recent years as a means to mitigate state differences among dynamic nodes on a graph. It has been successfully employed in various applications, e.g., formation control of multirobots, load balancing, and clock synchronization. However, almost all the existing applications cast an impression of consensus as a simple process to iteratively reach agreement, without any clue on possibility to generate advanced complexity, say shortest path planning, which has been proved to be NP-hard. Counterintuitively, we show for the first time that the complexity of shortest path planning can emerge from a perturbed version of a min-consensus protocol, which as a case study may shed lights to researchers in the field of distributed control to rethink the nature of complexity and the distance between control and intelligence. Besides, we rigorously prove the convergence of graph dynamics and its equivalence to shortest path solutions. An illustrative simulation on a small-scale graph is provided to show the convergence of the biased min-consensus dynamics to shortest path solution over the graph. To demonstrate the scalability to large-scale problems, a graph with 43 826 nodes, which corresponds to a map of a maze in 2-D, is considered in the simulation study. Apart from possible applications in robot path planning, the result is further extended to robot complete coverage, showing its potential in real practice such as cleaning robots.


There is temperate climate and soil suitable for blueberry growth in Huangdao district, Qingdao city. Recently, in the process of large-scale, standardized development of blueberry industry, the author continued to accumulate and improvement measures for the production technology and management experience. By the measures of fine varieties selection, tissue culture, formula fertilization, efficient water-saving irrigation, green control damage measures, gradually formed more mature blueberry modern standard of cultivation mode. In this paper, the author summarizes the standard production management techniques, aiming to guide the production of farmers.


We present our work in the intent classification of chat utterances. We use several recurrent neural network (RNN) architectures of different complexity levels; basic RNN, GRU, LSTM, and BiLSTM. Experiments are performed on e-commerce smartphone sales chat in Bahasa Indonesia. We found that GRU gives the best performance, with 87.10% accuracy and 86.67% F1-measure. In comparison to the other architectures, GRU is also fast to train.


The fast development of Chinese economy and international communication brings higher requirement for English lev-els of higher vocational college students. This paper is to have a discussion on the training of English translation ability for high-er vocational college students and to discuss with those who are interested in the topic and make more progress.


Most of hi-tech equipments are very sensitive to microvibration.The active microvibration isolating platform is intensively investigated for years.For the ambient excitation in the active vibration control experiment cannot reappear,the response of the platform without control was simulate with the ground excitation measured in the experiment.The velocity spectrum was used to evaluate the responses of the control platform and the uncontrolled platform.The interaction force between the piezoelectric actuator and the platform was simulation with the measured responses of the structure and the constitutive equation of the piezoelectric actuator,and the obtained response is closed to the measured one therefore this method for interaction force calculation is validated.Also,with the root mean square of the interaction force and the electric field force,the efficiency of the control force is discussed.


Food exports remain one of the few bright spots in the US trade balance. While the US balance of trade in many sectors continues to be negative, food exports continue to outstrip food imports. Efforts to maintain this competitive advantage requires a good understanding of the food preferences of consumers in countries in emerging markets such as Ghana. Such improved knowledge will help US food exporters to remain competitive and improve their market share as competition from other countries such as China and the European Union intensifies. A market survey was conducted to elicit responses from 750 respondents in Accra, Ghana, in West Africa. Respondents were screened for prior poultry purchase experience. All respondents were persons responsible for meat purchasing in their households. Information was obtained from the respondents on their preference for poultry from countries such as the US, EU, Brazil, China and South Korea. Information was also obtained on the perceived quality and tastes of poultry from each of the countries. The data were collected by using a five-point Likert rating scale questionnaire. The percent of consumers that expressed preferences for poultry from different countries were compared. Almost 70 percent of the respondents expressed a preference for poultry from the US. About 57 and 30 percent of the respondents expressed the same preference for poultry from the EU and China, respectively. The percent of respondents who ranked the quality of US poultry products as high exceed those that gave the same ranking to the quality of poultry from the EU and China. US poultry products also received the highest ranking based on the taste. The results suggest that Ghanaian consumers are receptive to US poultry products and associate poultry quality with the country of origin.


To achieve adverse reaction free human blood transfusion over a prolonged time is remarkable. This paper is about a female patient who has B thallasaemia major and who has received about 722 units of blood over the last 33 years in our hospital. During this period she did not contract any of the transfusion transmittable diseases and is currently active and academically accomplished. We wish to emphasise that in this case prudent selection of healthy voluntary donors, parental care and proper quality control in donor blood screening and transfusion processes are the major factors contributing to the successful outcome.


Coleus sp. is one of the most important tuber crops of South East Asia. Pollen grains being sterile in the plant, vegetative propagation are the only method to carry out reproduction. However morphological and genetic variability are relatively absent by normal vegetative reproduction. Thereby tissue culture techniques of micropropagation through axillary shoot proliferation, organogenesis and shoot embryogenesis can improve the genetic constitution of the crops. For axillary shoot proliferation, nodal explants and for organogenesis and callusing leaf explants of Coleus parviflorus and Coleus forskohlii were used. Furthermore salt tolerant lines were tried to raise using different concentration of NaCl with normal MS media. Morphological and biochemical changes associated with the in vitro regenerated types were investigated to maintain the "true to type" propagation. RAPD analysis to find out variation between DNA of both in vivo and in vitro plants were carried out using OPA 11 and OPB 07 primers. The rate of multiplication was found to be higher in media supplemented with NAA, BA and GA3. Callusing from leaf explants was found to be very low in media supplemented with only GA3. Bud break and shoot multiplication was affected by higher concentration of NaCl at 10gm/l and 20gm/l. Evaluation of biochemical constituents revealed no variation in dry matter, starch and sugar content of regenerants and conventionally grown plants. RAPD analysis exhibited no variation in DNA between the in vivo and in vitro plants.


This 3414 field experiment of formula fertilization by soil testing was conducted in Dingcheng District to test how N, P and K fertilizers could affect lettuce growth and to optimize the fertilizer applying model to simulate the maximum and optimum fertilizer rates in lettuce. The results show that that of the N fertilizer was the best in the yield-increasing effect, increased lettuce yield by 3 825 kg/hm2 and 16.9%, and followed by that of the K and P fertilizers; and that of the P fertilizer was the highest in the yield-increasing effect per unit nutrient and 34 kg/kg, and followed by that of the N and K fertilizers. The optimum fertilizer rates of N, P2O5 and K2 O for lettuce grown in river sandy soil in the district were 143, 65 and 105 kg/hm2, respectively.


The diabetic foot (DF) was traditionally considered a local foot problem due to diabetes; however many observations support the concept that the DF is actually a part of a more complex diabetes related syndrome which includes several long-term complications and co-morbidities. In recent years, an increase in the incidence of ischemic diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) amongst dialyzed subjects has been observed, going up from approximately 5-10% fifteen years ago to the current rate of approximately 30-35%. Today it is well recognized that end stage renal disease (ESRD) is an independent risk factor for non-healing ulcers and amputation in diabetic subjects. In clinical practice, the presence of foot problems in ESRD diabetic patients is identified as a specific entity termed "renal-diabetic foot". The aim of this study is to describe the angiographic characteristics of peripheral arterial disease (PAD) in patients with DFUs receiving chronic dialysis treatment.

 The study group was composed of patients with DFUs and PAD who referred to our diabetic foot unit. All patients have been managed with a pre-set limb salvage protocol including revascularization of the affected limb. Arterial lesions (stenosis between 50-99% and occlusions) were retrospectively evaluated through angiogram analysis. According to the presence of dialytic treatment, patients were divided in two subgroups: renal-diabetic foot (RDF) and diabetic foot (DF). Patterns of PAD and immediate revascularization outcome (technical revascularization outcome) for RDF and DF were separately reported and compared

 The demographic and clinical characteristics were reported in Table 1.RDF reported greater number of affected vessels (n= 5±1.6 vs 3.9±1.5, p<0.0001), greater involvement of the superficial femoral artery (90.2 vs 75.8%, p=0.003), tibial-peroneal trunk (53.7 vs 25.5%, p=0.01), anterior tibial artery (93.9 vs 80.9%, p=0.03) and below-the-ankle arteries (70.7 vs 35.7%, p=0.0001) than DF patients. RDF showed a higher rate of revascularization failure (43.9 vs 15.3%, p<0.0001) in comparison to DF patients (Table 2). Below-the-ankle (BTA) arterial disease [OR 9.5 (CI 95% 3.5-25.4) p=0.0001] resulted as the only independent predictor of revascularization failure.

 It was interesting to highlight that the above mentioned findings could be specifically related to the effect of renal disease on the arteries of the lower extremity because the two groups, RDF and DF, did not report any difference in terms of other traditional cardiovascular risk factors (age, smoke, arterial hypertension, dyslipidemia, diabetes duration) which could influence the characteristics of PAD. RDF patients showed a widespread distribution of arterial lesions with a higher involvement of foot arteries in comparison to DF subjects. BTA arterial disease is an independent predictor of revascularization failure.


The nonlinear dynamics characteristic of air spring suspension was studied by the method of nonlinear dynamics.From the thermodynamics analysis,based on the test,the stiffness characteristics of the air spring were presented.The vehicle vertical movement was considered only,and the vibration equation was gained.An investigation of sinusoidal excited was studied for the forced vibration of a single-degree-of-freedom system;the first-order approximate solution to the main resonance was obtained by the average method.So the amplitude frequency relationship was presented.The bifurcation set was analysed based on singularity theory.It was shown that the response was the universal unfolding of the fork bifurcation.The results show that excitation amplitude and nonlinear stiffness have great affect on the nonlinear characteristic of air spring suspension,and only the cube nonlinear characteristic is contributing in nonlinear stiffness.


This study aims to provide a better fundamental understanding of the gas-sensing mechanism of In2O3-based conductometric gas sensors. In contrast to typically used polycrystalline films, we study single crystalline In2O3 thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as a model system with reduced complexity. Electrical conductance of these films essentially consists of two parallel contributions: the bulk of the film and the surface electron accumulation layer (SEAL). Both these contributions are varied to understand their effect on the sensor response. Conductance changes induced by UV illumination in air, which forces desorption of oxygen adatoms on the surface, give a measure of the sensor response and show that the sensor effect is only due to the SEAL contribution to overall conductance. Therefore, a strong sensitivity increase can be expected by reducing or eliminating the bulk conductivity in single crystalline films or the intra-grain conductivity in polycrystalline films. Gas-response measurements in ozone atmosphere test this approach for the real application. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of EUROSENSORS 2015.


After collisions with impinging particle, a density fluctua tion of nuclear matter may turn into a multibaryon (MB) with chiral symmetry restored in its inter ior. This method of observation of the chiral phase transition has its advantages due to a relat ively moderate number of secondary particles to be measured. We suggest to use a cumulative part icle as a trigger for a detection of MB decay products. Estimations show that its appearance is a sign ture of "deep cooling" of MB, which brings it close to the unexcited state. This gives a cha n e to separate MB from the secondary particle background. For separation of events with M B production, a role of intranuclear collisions of MB decay products should also be evaluated. We study experimental data taken with the EVA spectrometer at BNL as a simplified form of the problem . Analysis of intranuclear interactions before and after hard scattering of protons from SRC leads to a plausible conclusion that there wereπ-mesons missed in the experiment. Other logically permissi ble possibilities such as a coloranti-transparency effect and a presence of states reminding a fu siform (ellipsoidal) body in the wave function of 12C are briefly discussed too. Then we show that the short range c orr lation mechanism is not the only reasonable explanation of the expe rimental data. Interpretations based on dibaryons pre-existent in nuclei before its interaction with the projectile, or created during this interaction are also possible. Some examples of detection o f MB production by the cumulative particle method are given with estimations of their feasibi lity.


The traditional mass on a moving belt model without external force excitation is considered. The displacement and velocity amplitudes and the period of the friction induced vibrations can be predicted using a friction force modelled by the mean of friction characteristics. A more precise look at the non-smooth transition points of the trajectories reveals that an extended friction model is looked-for. In present job, two so-called polynomial and exponential friction functions are investigated. Both of these friction laws describe a friction force that first drops off and then raises with relative interface velocity. An analytical approximation is applied in order to derive relations for the vibration amplitudes and base frequency and in parallel a stability analysis is performed. Moreover, results and phase plots are illustrated for both analytical and numerical approaches.


The scaling up of antennae and terminals in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems helps increase spectral efficiency at the penalty of prohibitive computational complexity. In linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) detection, this complexity is mainly resulted from solving large-scale linear equations. Admittedly, iterative approaches such as conjugate gradient (CG) method have theoretically demonstrated their capability in balancing both performance and complexity for massive MIMO detection. Their convergence rate turns out to be really slow for common applications where the base station-to-user antenna ratio decreases. To this end, by introducing a pre-conditioner based on incomplete Cholesky (IC) factorization, this paper proposes a pre-conditioned conjugate gradient (PCG) method, which successfully speeds up the convergence even for small station-to-user antenna ratio scenarios. The analytical as well as numerical results have indicated that the proposed PCG method outperforms the conventional CG method due to the 50% reduced spectral condition number κ. Complexity analysis shows that the proposed PCG method achieves over 75% reduction compared to the conventional Cholesky factorization scheme when N = 40.


Breeding rice for abiotic stress tolerance is very important objective for rice breeders. Significantly reduce in yield due to drought-stress in most world countries, especially suffering from water lace as well as Egypt. Evaluating combining ability effects would provide valuable information that can be used for developing new drought tolerant lines. This study was conducted at Sakha Agricultural Research Station during 2014 to 2016 rice growing seasons to determine combining ability and gene action for grain yield and other important traits to identify the superior varieties/parents and crosses under both drought and optimum conditions. Six F1 hybrids were generated by crossing four rice genotypes in a half diallel mating scheme in addition to their six F2 populations after self-pollination. The four populations (P1, P2, F1 and F2) for all the six crosses were evaluated in a replicated field trial under drought and normal conditions. Drought stress significantly decreased the mean values of all the studied traits for parents and their hybrids compared with the control condition. Significant differences were observed among parents and their hybrids for most traits under both research conditions. General combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) means squares were highly significant for grain yield and most traits under test environments. The non-additive gene action played an important role in the inheritance of most studied traits. The parental genotypes NERICA3 and NERICA4 appeared to be the best general combiners for earliness and grain yield. The cross combinations; Giza178×NERICA3; Giza178×NERICA4 and NERICA3×NERICA4 in both F1 and their F2 generations were distinguished as specific combiners for grain yield and other related traits under normal and drought conditions. These results emphasized by positive heterosis over high parents followed by high values of inbreeding depression. Hence, these hybrids would be valuable in rice breeding for improving grain yield under drought stress condition.


In This work are presented the results obtained in the tecnique hidraulic evaluation of the emittter type dropfeeed model DRIPNET autocompensating made by the firm NETAFIM FROM Israel .The values reached by the variation coefficient (VC) varies between 1,2| % verifying that the quality of the emitter can be evaluated as good. The greater variations of the flow of the emitter occured when the charge reached valves higher to 20 mca and the lesser variations were present when the charge was only of 5 mca. This aspect was evidenced by the compensation level of the emitter studied. Besides, the hidroedaphologics characteristics of the different types of soils were studied in order to design these systems, determining the forms and dimensions of the wet bulb, obtaining a stabilization of the moisture diameter at 5,2 liters at 48 cm in red ferralitic. so the space of the emitter can guarentee a continuoos flow of moisture between bulbs of 10 %.determining the forms and dimensions of the wet bulb, obtaining a stabilization of the moisture diameter at 5,1 liters at 46 cm sandy and muddy. so the space of the emitter can guarentee a continuous flow of moisture between bulbs of 8 %. Finally, a study was performed in order to know the amount of water supplied to the soil by the emitter, obtaining good results due that this technology gives high efficiency with minimum consumption of water and energy, preserving in this way our environment and natural resources.


The attempt to comprehend a culture temporally and geographically distant from one's own is fraught with difficulties. One will often stand baffled before exotic customs whose purpose and function are seemingly incomprehensible and, as any anthropologist can tell, even a long fieldwork period may not always be sufficient to dissipate the sense of bafflement. It is justified to regard contemporary cultural anthropology as the most consistent and determined attempt so far to make sense of customs and social structures that initially appear to be beyond comprehension. However, attempts – perhaps less sustained and certainly less systematic attempts – were definitely made in premodern cultures as well when travellers, scholars or just ordinary men going abroad confronted a culture that was very dissimilar to their own. The frequently voiced generalisation that mediaeval Muslim intellectuals had little interest in the cultures of non-Muslim peoples, which they perceived as vastly inferior to their own, is definitely not true of quite a number of such authors. Perceive as inferior they certainly did these non-Islamic cultures, but that did not mean a lack of interest, and attempts at comprehending the cultural significance of many exotic customs and phenomena are all too conspicuous in many mediaeval Arabic sources. Such attempts at comprehension or interpretation faced a number of inevitable difficulties. First, like modern anthropologists, mediaeval Muslim authors also had to cope with the potential inadequacy of the vocabulary of their own language and the cultural repertoire of their own society to describe the function and meaning of customs existing in a very different social context. Second, these premodern authors obviously did not have the benefit of a vast pool of comparative data similar to that collected later in the colonies of the main European powers. Third, they also lacked the methodological insights that anthropologists of the postMalinowski era can now freely draw on – indeed, as will be argued below, many of them did not have (or seek) direct access to native informants. And finally, most of them did not speak the languages of the peoples that they described. In spite of all these significant shortcomings, they would often make honest – and, as we will observe, at times surprisingly successful – efforts to come to terms with utterly exotic customs and understand the social context of these.


This article reviews the development of income presentation found in the authoritative accounting pronouncements since 1941. During this period, within the historical cost reporting model for presentation of income, emphasis has shifted from the all-inclusive concept of net income and the current operating performance concept to a hybrid approach which substantially incorporates the two concepts.


The present invention relates to a check card payment authorization processing method and system and a program recording medium, a check card payment authorization method according to the present invention, after receiving a request payment authorization specialized according to the check card settlement processing at the card company server, wherein after sending a debit processing authorization requests specialized corresponding to a payment authorization request specialized in the check card settlement account management means and reading the debit processing authorization requests specialized in the check card settlement account management means, the debit processing authorization requests and performing an authorization process corresponding to, in the check card settlement account management means for withdrawing a predetermined amount corresponding to the debit processing authorization requests amount contained in the debit processing authorization requests professional further from the debit card payment account specified period the additional amount withdrawn in step with the debit card settlement account management means And a step of processing a second variant of the account. Billing, merchant, approved


We report the growth and optical characterization of CdTe/CdMnTe single quantum wells with well thicknesses ranging from 60 down to 6 A. The single quantum wells were grown by standard molecular beam epitaxy without growth interruption and investigated by reflection, photoluminescence (PL), and excitation PL. All structures including the 6‐A‐thick quantum well exhibit extraordinarily narrow photoluminescence lines. From an analysis of linewidth and Stokes shift of the photoluminescence lines informations on the structure of the CdTe/CdMnTe interfaces are derived. The good quality of those structures made it possible to identify for the first time recombination of two‐dimensional free exciton magnetic polarons.


An experiment on drag reduction by injection of microbubbles within the boundary was carried out in a turbulent water channel flow at a Reynolds Number, Re = UbH/ν = 5128 (considering half height of channel, H and the bulk velocity, Ub). Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurement technique was used to obtain instantaneous velocity fields in the x-y plane close to the upper wall. One dimensional spectra (Euu(k1)) in the streamwise wavenumber was calculated. The information of the spectra with a dimensionless wavenumber (k1H) lower than 2.3 was evaluated using the temporal information and assuming Taylor's frozen hypothesis while the information of higher wavenumbers values was obtained from the spatial information. Good agreement between the results obtained from both methods was observed in the overlapping region and it allows an increase of the wavenumber information. Moreover, the energy contain of spectra results for single phase flow within the buffer layer is larger than the energy contain of the flow when microbubbles are injected within the boundary layer over the whole wavenumber range. However, the opposite trend is observed outside the buffer layer. It suggests that the effect of the microbubbles within the buffer layer is different from the one occurring outside it.


BACKGROUND: Medical therapy with methotrexate is a standard practice for the commonly encountered problem of ectopic pregnancy. Methotrexate is excreted predominantly by the kidney and should be used with extreme caution in renal insufficiency. All physicians who administer methotrexate must understand its mechanism of action, distribution, and elimination to minimize potential risks to the patient. CASE: A young, dialysis-dependent woman received a standard dose of methotrexate for an ectopic pregnancy. Prolonged methotrexate exposure resulted. The consequences—pancytopenia, desquamation, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and profound bowel ischemia—ultimately led to her death. CONCLUSION: Methotrexate, even at extremely low doses, can be fatal in patients with renal insufficiency. Alternative means of therapy should be sought for women with ectopic pregnancy and renal failure.


A method for determining the rechargeable battery charge acceptance capacity method (ICA), and calculating the battery into a predetermined number (n) of intervals (i) having a respective maximum charge capacity (Ci), which through a resistor (Ri ) are connected in parallel, based on the charging capacity (C1) adjacent to the spaced end of the battery and a resistor (R1) determining the charge acceptance of the battery capacity (ICA). The present invention further relates to a method for charging the rechargeable battery.


A secondary battery, such as being reliable without solid electrolyte is useful Li-containing cracking or abnormal discharge of a target phosphate compound film generated as, and can be formed at a high deposition rate, and also combined with a high relative density and a fine grain size, together, to provide a containing the defect (voids) are suppressed, such as Li pore phosphate compound sintered body. Li-containing phosphate compound sintered body of the present invention, there is no defect in the above 50㎛ 1㎟ sectional area inside the sintered body, the mean grain size 15㎛ below, has the gist that a relative density of 85% or more.


The molecular details of immunoregulatory phenomena associated with CD8' T lymphocytes have not been clearly elucidated. We tested the hypothesis that the cell surface glycoprotein CD8 is itself essential in mediating the inhibitory effects associated with CD8' T cells. For this purpose we utilized a T-cell clonal pair, consisting of a human CD8' T-cell clone and a specific CD8phenocopy of this clone obtained via antisense RNA mutagenesis, to modulate allogeneic responses in vitro. Our findings indicate that the expression of the CD8 molecule by the inhibitory cells is essential for down-regulation of both allogeneic proliferation and generation of cytotoxicity in mixed lymphocyte cultures. These results define an immunomodulatory function for the CD8 molecule and provide insights into the molecular basis of immunosuppression. CD8+ T lymphocytes have been implicated in an array of immunoregulatory phenomena such as antigen-specific immunosuppression (1) and veto cell-induced tolerance (2); however, the mechanisms of down-regulation at a molecular level have not been described. The cell surface glycoprotein CD8 functions as an essential accessory molecule in class I major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-restricted antigenic recognition (3-5). Since immune cells capable of diverse types of cellular inhibition share CD8 positivity as a common feature, we considered the possibility that CD8 might in fact have a second function in mediating immunoregulation. Specifically we conjectured that the CD8 molecule, which is known to physically associate with class I MHC molecules (6, 7), may itself serve as a cell surfaceassociated inhibitory ligand and thereby constitute an essential part of the immunoregulatory pathway. In previous reports we described the linking of antisense RNA mutagenesis and human T-cell cloning technologies (4, 5), which has permitted us to derive T-cell clonal phenocopies for null mutations corresponding to selected Tcell-associated molecules. JH.ARL.1 is a CD8+ human T-cell clone with allogeneic specificity for HLA-B35. To study the accessory function of CD8, we previously derived an antisense CD8 (a-CD8/REPl) transfectant of this line that is markedly and selectively inhibited in its expression of the CD8 molecule (4, 5). Since CD8+ cells have also been associated with the capacity to inhibit immune responses in a variety of contexts (1, 2), we have used JH.ARL.1 and its CD8variant to determine whether the CD8 surface molecule itself functions in an immunoregulatory capacity. MATERIALS AND METHODS Human T-Cell Clones and Transfectants. JH.ARL.1 and its transfectants have been derived and maintained as described (4, 5). Proliferation Assays. Responder (105) and stimulator (5 x 104) peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) or EpsteinBarr virus (EBV)-transformed B cells (lymphoblastoid cell line, LCL) were added to quadruplicate wells of a 96-well flat-bottom microtiter plate in RPMI 1640 medium with 10% fetal bovine serum. For allogeneic responses stimulator PBMC received 5000 rads (50 Gy), and for EBV-specific responses stimulator LCL received 15,000 rads prior to culture. Inhibitory cloned T cells (104 per well) received 5000 rads prior to addition to the culture. After incubation at 370C for various periods of time, 1 jCi (37 kBq) of [methyl3H]thymidine was added to each well and the cultures were incubated an additional 18 hr. The cells were harvested, and the radioactivity incorporated (dpm) was measured as described (8). Cytotoxicity. Allogeneic cultures were established in 24well plates in a volume of 2 ml of RPMI 1640 containing 10% fetal bovine serum. One million responder PBMC from donor MW [MW(PBMC)], 5 x 105 irradiated stimulatorPBMC from donor JH [JH(PBMC)], and 105 irradiated cloned JH.ARL.1 cells were added per well. After incubation for 6 days at 37°C, cells were harvested, and dead cells were removed by Histopaque density gradient centrifugation. A 51Cr-release assay was performed as described (8) with JH(LCL) as targets. Spontaneous release was 30%. HLA Haplotypes. The HLA haplotype of JH(PBMC), JH(LCL), and JH.ARL.1 and its transfectants is A2,3; B7,44; DR2,4. The HLA haplotype ofDK(PBMC) is A2,24; B13,50; DR2,7. The HLA haplotype of MW(PBMC) is A1,31; B8; DR3.


The energy and parity eigenstates for quadrupolar, triple δ-function potential are analysed. Using the analytical solutions in specific domains, simple expressions are obtained for even- and odd-parity bound-state energies. The Heisenberg uncertainty product is observed to have a minimum for a specific strength of the potential. The scattering states have a transmission resonance for some energies, and the poles of the transmission coefficients correspond to bound-state energies. These features are of considerable pedagogical interest in the understanding of quantum-mechanical properties of bound and scattering states, for graduate and general physicists.


We measured respiratory parameters in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) without clinical signs of respiratory involvement and assessed the influence of methotrexate (MTX) treatment and disease activity on lung function.


—Distributed key generation (DKG) is a fundamental building block for a variety of cryptographic schemes and protocols, such as threshold cryptography, multi-party coin tossing schemes, public randomness beacons and consensus protocols. More recently, the surge in interest for blockchain technologies, and in particular the quest for developing scalable protocol designs, has renewed and strengthened the need for efficient and practical DKG schemes. Surprisingly, given the broad range of applications and available body of research, fully functional and readily available DKG protocol implementations still remain limited. This paper hereby aims to close this gap by tailoring Gennaro et al.'s [1] well known protocol design towards being efficiently implementable within public cryptocurrency ecosystems such as Ethereum. Our theoretical improvements are supported by an open source, fully functional, well documented DKG implementation 1 that can employ any Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible smart contract platform as a communication layer. We evaluate the efficiency of our protocol and demonstrate its practicability through the deployment and successful execution of our DKG contract in the Ethereum Ropsten testnet. Given the current Ethereum block gas limit, all steps required for the key generation process, even in demanding scenarios tested with up to 256 nodes, can be verified at the smart contract level.


Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)is the commitment of business to contribute to sustainable economic development – working with employees, their families, the local community and society at large to improve the quality of life for the business and public. In Ethiopia, companies are spending portion of profit for developing the society and corporate under different verticals. This paper highlights the demographic and company characteristics of corporate social activities performed by the organizations in the areas of Employee, Community, Environment, Customer and Suppliers. To meet these objectives, a- stratified-random sampling design was used, followed by proportionate technique. The primary data were collected from the merchandising; manufacturing and service render business organizations. To keep representativeness of the sample units, 142 business organizations were chosen based on the category A Tax payers. The data collected are analyzed by using Simple percentage and Likert scaling techniques to find out the participating companies in CSR activities. Thus the paper concludes that CSR contributions relating to community are more compare to other activities like environmental protection, customer and supplier support, employee motivation and social development.


In this paper, we propose a pulse ordered time hopping multiple access (PO-THMA) ultra-wideband (UWB) system using modified Hermite polynomial (MHP) pulses. The MHP pulses have a mutually orthogonal property between different ordered pulses and that property makes simultaneous transmission at the same time slot without collision in the THMA UWB system, and this result in increasing transmission capacity or improving bit error rate (BER). We analyze BER of the proposed system and show that the BER performance and the transmission capacity are improved dramatically when compared with those of conventional THMA UWB system.


Some general procedures for synthesizing filters using only RC elements and grounded voltage and current unity-gain amplifiers (GVTJGA's and GCUGA's) are discussed. Filters are designed according to theories with respect to minimum sensitivity to parameter variations by Calahan and Horowitz,. State-variable technique is also used to yield the optimal result in terms of the number of capacitors used and the spread of clement values. Another method, a coefficient-matching technique, leads to low-sensitive results with only three active elements. Sensitivity is investigated in each case and is found to be low for high value of the quality factor in most cases, and independent of element values in some cases ; thus high Q poles of bandpass filters are realizable in practice. Filters so designed also possess the desirable property of having a common ground for both the input and output ports.


The algebraic model (ALG) proposed by the authors has sufficiently high accuracy in calculating the motion of a test particle with all the field particles at rest. When all the field particles are moving, however, the ALG has relatively poor prediction ability on the motion of the test particle initially at rest. None the less, the ALG approximation gives a good results for the statistical quantities, such as variance of velocity changes or the scattering cross section, for a sufficiently large number of Monte Carlo trials. For a 108-body problem, which corresponds to full three-dimensional Coulomb interactions within the Debye sphere in a fusion plasma, the ALG approximation is 263 times as fast as the 6-stage 5-th order Runge-Kutta-Fehlberg method with an absolute error tolerance of 10−16.


A unified thermomechanical framework is presented for the theory of mechanically elastic
materials the physical description of which requires the consideration of additional variables
of state and of their gradients (weak nonlocality). This includes both the case of
additional degrees of freedom carrying their own inertia and the case of diffusiw internal
variables of state. In view of practical applications to fracture and propagation of phasetransition
fronts. special attention is paid to the construction and immediate consequences
of the equations of balance of canonical momentum (on the material manifold) and energy
at regular points and at jump discontinuities. In particular. the general expression
of the dissipation at, and of the driving force acting on. phase-transition fronts is formally
obtained in such a broad framework. Brief applications include thermoelastic conductors
(e.g. shape-memory alloys) and elastic ferromagnets in which both spin inertia and
ferromagnetic exchange forces (magnetic ordering) are taken into account.


10525. Asch, Michael 1. SOCIAL CONTEXT AND THE MUSICAL ANALYSIS OF SLAYEY DRUM DANCE SONGS. Ethnomusicology. 1975, 19(2):245-257. An illustration of the utility of isolating the concept of musical event for an analysis of music sound structure is presented. This is done by providing the results of an examination of the relationship between variation in the musical events and the musical forms of compositions associated with a single musical occasion: the Drum Dance of the Slavey Indians of Northern Canada.


ABSTRACT Objective: to assess the impact of using a surgical checklist and its completion on complications such as surgical site infection (SSI), reoperation, readmission, and mortality in patients subjected to urgent colorectal procedures, as well as the reasons for non adherence to this instrument in this scenario, in a university hospital in Ottawa, Canada. Methods: this is a retrospective, epidemiological study. We collected data from an electronic database containing information on patients undergoing urgent colorectal operations, and analyzed the occurrence of SSI, reoperation, readmission, and death in a 30 day period, as well as the completion of the checklist. We conducted a descriptive statistical analysis and logistic regression. Results: we included 5,145 records, of which 5,083 (98.8%) had complete checklists. As for the outcomes evaluated, cases with complete checklists displayed higher SSI rate, 9.1% vs. 6.5% (p=0.466), lower reoperation rate, 5% vs.11.3% (p=0.023), lower readmission rates, 7.2% vs. 11.3% (p=0.209), and lower mortality, 3.0% vs. 6.5% (p=0.108) than cases with incomplete ones. Conclusion: there was a high level of checklist completion and a larger number of the outcomes in the reduced percentage of incomplete checklists found, demonstrating the impact of its utilization on the safety of patients undergoing urgent operations.


Sixteen cases of nasopharyngeal cancer who were given radiotherapy at Siriraj Hospital between 1959 - 1986 and had survived 5 years or longer, were studied. There were 10 females and 6 males. Pre-treatment histopathological examination revealed 8 cases of squamous cell carcinoma, and 8 cases of undifferentiated type. The youngest patient was 17 year old when diagnosed where as the oldest was 55 year old. All 16 cases were regularly followed and examined for the purpose of evaluation of treatment in which the tumour dose of 6,000 rads was given in 6 weeks. The longest survival period was 22 years. Pigmentation of skin exposed to irradiation disappeared within 6 months. Post-irradiation hair loss also fully recovered within the same period. Teeth were in fairly good condition in all cases. Radiation - induced eye changes were not found. There were no effects on pregnancy and delivery in two female patients who gave birth to normal, healthy babies. Difference in the survival rates by ages, sexes and types of cancer cannot be studied since the number of cases is too small for statistical analysis.


The SU(2) flux-tube model proposed by Patel is used to calculate the effective string tension sigma(T-italic) as a function of the temperature T-italic. The main results are (i) sigma(T-italic)/sigma(0)approx. =1-const x T-italic for T-italic near 0, (ii) sigma(T-italic)/sigma(0) vanishes like (T-italic/sub c-italic/-T)/sup 1/2/ as T-italic approaches a critical temperature T-italic/sub c-italic/, and (iii) the mean length of the string spanned between a static quark-antiquark pair with distance r-italic behaves like const x r-italic(T-italic/sub c-italic/-T)/sup -1/2/ as T-italic..-->..T-italic/sub c-italic/ from below, implying a scaling law that /r-italic is independent of r-italic for large r-italic and T-italic near T-italic/sub c-italic/.


The aim of this research was to ascertain the influence of the faculty's intellectual endowment on student academic performance at Unidad Experimental Puerto Ordaz of the Universidad de Oriente. The research was methodologically designed along descriptive and correlating guidelines. The universe consisted of 107 teachers. Stratified sampling was used to work with a 42 strong group comprising 10 teachers from the basic area and 32 teachers drawn from the professional roster. A Likert-type rating scale instrument and an open questionnaire were designed for the collection of the data. Once collected, the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics techniques and by means of the Pearson Product Moment correlation. The sample was characterized as a group whose age ranged from 25 to 40, 66% being in the instructor category and 69% having no graduate degree. The research found no relevant correlation between the intellectual capital of the teachers and the academic performance of the students. The teacher's intellectual endowment was rated at 2.9, a mean value according to the accepted operational criteria to measure intellectual endowment, namely, knowledge, information, experience, intellectual propriety, capacity for information retrieval, horizontality, and time allocation.


Lumbar spine surgery has been registered on a national basis in Sweden since 1993 but the register became widespread after 1998 when the protocol was made patient-based and a support function for participating units was created. The surgeon completes data on diagnosis, type of operation, implant, hospitalisation time and complications. All pre- and postoperative data are completed by the patients, including pain on the VAS scale, pain drawing, and the SF-36 and EuroQol questionnaires. Data are presented yearly in an aggregated form while individual departmental data are reported to the individual departments. A participation rate exceeding 85% of lumbar spine surgery in Sweden was calculated for 2002 and the one-year follow-up rate from the previous year was almost 85%. The national registration provides a basis for evidence based lumbar spine surgery, documenting indications for surgery, variation over time and region, complication reporting as well as patient reported outcomes. The mean reduction of VAS pain for the individual diagnoses (disc herniation, lateral and central spinal stenosis, spondylolisthesis and disc degenerative pain) demonstrates the outcomes of surgical treatment for these diagnoses to be favourable. Current projects are expansion of follow-up to 5 and 10 years postoperatively, the creation of a web based protocol version and the development of a cervical spine register.


______________________________________________________________________________ United States teacher education programs stand at an important transitional period within the context of a complex multicultural society. An increasingly diversifying student population contrasts with teaching professionals whose demographics haven't changed as rapidly. Preservice teachers from seven institutions in the State University System of Florida were surveyed to assess their current state of intercultural-mindedness. The results suggest that dominant groups exhibit lower intercultural sensitivity and global competence compared to the rest of the population. ____________________________________________________________________________


Ongoing review of RIs by the QAGs in a climate of everchanging assay performance has highlighted not only the importance of being vigilant with analytical performance but also that the correct reporting of results is often beyond the control of laboratory scientists and pathologists. A common problem is the difficulty of implementing change once it has been agreed, which emphasises the importance of vigilance in auditing the reporting of results. It is increasingly apparent that there is a requirement for Laboratory IT expertise either within QA groups or easily available to them. It seems that while harmonisation is a noble principle, in practice it is difficult to achieve and the realisation of 'National' or 'Australasian' Harmonisation may still be some way off. It is widely recognised that some analytes, notably immunoassay results from different platforms, cannot be readily harmonised and, in the interim, should be differentiated in any central result repository. However it is often difficult to ensure that this happens. While harmonisation is the goal, ways of managing less amenable analytes must also be considered carefully.

The cessation of dual reporting of HbA1c in New Zealand highlighted the differences in reporting formats from different laboratories for a supposedly harmonised analyte with 'agreed upon cutpoints'. This exercise has served to broaden the focus of laboratories from results and RIs to how the results appear for our end users, as well as the context in which they appear. It has also demonstrated the importance of communication between laboratory staff, IT staff and GP PMS vendors, as well as regulatory bodies that access data from GP PMS databases for statistical purposes. The care and attention paid to pre-analytical and analytical issues can easily be unwittingly undone by careless or uninformed IT, and patient safety could be compromised by misinterpretation of cumulative results.


This paper presents a novel discriminative visual tracking algorithm with an adaptive incremental extreme learning machine. The parameters for an adaptive incremental extreme learning machine are initialized at the first frame with a target that is manually assigned. At each frame, the training samples are collected and random Haar-like features are extracted. The proposed tracker updates the overall output weights for each frame, and the updated tracker is used to estimate the new location of the target in the next frame. The adaptive learning rate for the update of the overall output weights is estimated by using the confidence of the predicted target location at the current frame. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed tracker can manage various difficulties and can achieve better performance than other state-of-the-art trackers.


Information Centric Network(ICN) is not based on server location. It is purely information oriented. Instead of locating the server, ICN locates the information. Many of the disadvantages of current networks can be mitigated by ICN approach. It gives better performance than our current TCP/IP network in many ways including security. Various disadvantages of TCP/IP network as well as solutions to those disadvantages with approch of ICN are listed out in the book.


Thin films of amorphous carbon, germanium and silicon have been examined by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy at 120 kV using bright-field axial illumination. Despite an interpretabl...


As a flow model for so-called "secondary instability" in a three-dimensional boundary layer, a flat plate boundary layer with artificially generated embedded streamwise vortices embedded in it is examined using a hot-wire anemometer and flow visualization in order to determine the onset conditions of the secondary instabiliy and its response to acoustic excitation. The results show that the nondimensional parameter, with which the onset conditions of the secondary instability can be predicted, is the product of critical inflection point height and inverse of maximum shear at critical conditions. Transition seems to start when this value reaches about 0. 2. Acoustic disturbance seems to excite the secondary instability at certain conditions. Direct response to the disturbance frequency was observed within a frequency range of 290Hz-450Hz. Below 280Hz, the spectral peak of velocity fluctuation was held constant at 345Hz.


The problem in this study is the process of intercultural communication that occurs in foreign students at UIN Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar between students from Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia and Minangkabau students while at UIN Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar. This study looks at the point of view of verbal and non-verbal communication as well as various supporting and inhibiting factors in the daily life of foreign students at UIN Mahmud Yunus Batusangkar by using field research (Field Research) which is descriptive qualitative. The results obtained are that at least foreign students have cultural similarities because they are still in the same clump, namely the Malay family in Southeast Asia, the greetings done by Thais and Cambodians tend to wait for greetings from other people, while Malaysians and Indonesians - Minangkabau tend to be friendly and polite. precede the conversation when communicating and greeting. Meanwhile, Minangkabau students use a pattern of adjustment by blurring cultural identity, reducing stereotypes and high openness. The supporting factors for this research are positive values, such as being a student who is tolerant and harmonious with each other, while the inhibiting factor is language.


Learning points for clinicians Pulmonary artery aneurysms (PAA) have a diverse differential diagnosis. Vasculitic features, without evidence of infection, suggests Hughes – Stovin syndrome (HSS) or Behc¸et's disease (BD). In solitary peripheral PAA, we recommend operation or embolization for rapidly growing or high-pressure aneurysms. Multiple, small PAA warrant early immunosuppression. Anticoagulation is typically contraindicated by bleeding risk.


Hypothesis / aims of study Prior research identified many bacterial components of the bladder microbiota. The viral fraction, however, is largely unknown. Viruses in the human microbiome far outnumber bacteria; the most abundant viruses are those that infect bacteria (bacteriophages). Bacteriophages (phages) play key roles shaping bacterial metabolism and community structure. Thus, previously observed links between urinary bacteria, clinical symptoms and outcomes may be due, in part, to phage activities. The study's aim was to isolate and characterize phages from the urinary microbiome of females with and without symptoms of urgency urinary incontinence (UUI).


It is well known that the enzyme catalyzes the first step of branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) catabolism is branched-chain amino transferase (BCAT), which is involved in the synthesis and degradation of leucine, isoleucine and valine. There are two main subtypes of human branched chain amino transferase (hBCAT), including cytoplasmic BCAT (BCAT1) and mitochondrial BCAT (BCAT2). In recent years, the role of BCAT in tumors has attracted the attention of scientists, and there have been continuous research reports that BCAT plays a role in the tumor, Alzheimer's disease, myeloid leukaemia and other diseases. It plays a significant role in the growth and development of diseases, and new discoveries about this gene in some diseases are made every year. BCAT usually promotes cancer proliferation and invasion by activating the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B/mammalian target of rapamycin pathway and activating Wnt/β-catenin signal transduction. This article reviews the role and mechanism of BCAT in different diseases, as well as the recent biomedical research progress. This review aims to make a comprehensive summary of the role and mechanism of BCAT in different diseases and to provide new research ideas for the treatment, prognosis and prevention of certain diseases. Graphical Abstract The mechanism of branched chain amino transferases (BCATs) in related diseases.There are two main subtypes of human branched chain amino transferase (hBCAT), including cytoplasmic BCAT (BCAT1) and mitochondrial BCAT (BCAT2). High expression of BCAT1 promotes gastric cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, glioma, hepatocellular carcinoma, urothelial cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, and nasopharyngeal carcinoma. It also aggravates liver disease, inflammatory disease, myeloid leukaemia, and Alzheimer's disease. Low expression of BCAT1 exacerbates Parkinson's disease. In contrast, high levels of BCAT1 protect the heart and help treat acute myocardial infarction. BCAT2 overexpression aggravates pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Inhibiting the expression of BCAT can treat the above diseases. BCATs: branched chain amino transferases; hBCAT: human branched chain amino transferase; BCAT1: cytoplasmic BCAT; BCAT2: mitochondrial BCAT. "+" stands for promotion and "-" for inhibition.


Some states are providing immunity to those willing to voluntarily provide health care for the poor. The proposal is a modest and questionable step toward solving the health care access dilemma.


In late September 1995 NASDA began a new phase of operations for the JERS-1 SAR the Global Rain Forest Mapping project. The first rain forest area to be mapped was the Amazon Basin, during October and November of that year (the low flood season for much of the region). This data acquisition was repeated nearly six months later to acquire a second map of the Amazon, during the high flood season in May/June 0f 1996. The main objective of this project is to map inundation over the Amazon basin by comparing data from the highand low-flood seasons. Most of the data collected during these two phases of this project, a total of ~5000 frames of data, was received and processed by the Alaska SAR Facility, then sent to JPL and NASDA for postprocessing and analysis. The quality of the data processed by ASF for this project is exceptional. It has proved to be very well calibrated, easy to mosaic together, and to have the level of information content required. We have been able to complete a 100 m mosaic from 1500 frames of the entire Amazon basin from the 'lowflood season' and to perform a simple land-cover classification on the resulting 3 GByte data set using a supercomputer at JPL. First results from our analysis of the multi-season data appear to confirm that inundation beneath the canopy can be mapped using this data. A simple classification scheme was used to classify different forest types (i.e., forest, hill forest, flooded forest), disturbed areas such as clear cuts and urban areas, and river courses in the Amazon basin. The algorithm used is a standard maximum-likelihood classifier, using the radar image local mean and standard deviation of texture as input. Rivers and clear cuts are detected using edge detection and region-growing algorithms. Results on forest/non-forest classifications are reported by geographic region.


Objective To explore genotoxic mechanism of formaldehyde(FA) and the effect of formaldehyde(FA) the damage of DNA and RNA of V79 Chinese hamster cells. Methods V79 Chinese hamster cells were exposed to formaldehyde at different concentration of 75、150、300、600μmol/L and incubated for 1、2、4h respectively.The effect of FA on DNA and RNA in V79 Chinese hamster cells was detected by using the assay of radioactive compounds ( 3H-thymidine and 14 C-Uridine)incorporation. Results The decrease of 3H-thymidine and 14 C-Uridine incorporation (dpm) of DNA and RNA in all FA-treated cells and a significant dose-dependent decrease were observed ( P 0.01).The incorporation(dpm) of 75、150、300、600 μmol/L FA-treated cells at 4h was significantly lower than that of ones at 1 h and 2 h ( P 0.01). Conclusion The results suggest that FA may affect DNA and RNA synthesis in V79 Chinese hamster cells and indicate that FA can contribute to FA-induced carcinogenesis.


Background/Objectives: Senescence is associated with changes in body composition and body mass index (BMI) that are considered essential indicators in the assessment of the nutritional status of hospitalized elderly persons (HEP). The objective of this study is to describe the nutritional status and body composition of Moroccan HEP in public hospitals in the Greater Casablanca. Methods/Statistical analysis: A total of 120 persons aged 60 years and over hospitalized in public hospitals care services. A questionnaire for the screening of sociodemographic characteristics, clinical indicators, biological, anthropometric, body composition, and finally indices of nutritional composites, namely, the Geriatric nutritional Risk Index (GNRI), and the Mini nutritional Assessment (MNA) Findings: The mean age and BMI were respectively 80.96 ± 6.7 and 22.5 ± 4.5. 46.7% (n = 56). Significant differences were found between the two classes of BMI (<21 kg / m2 versus> 21 kg / m2) and protein intake, fat mass and C reactive Protein Negative correlations were found between BMI and age ,duration of hospitalization (r = -0.5, p <0.001) and CRP (r = -0.3, p <0.001), and positive between BMI and a set of clinical and biological parameters. .


Magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) measurements have been performed in ferromagnetic semiconductors to characterize the ferromagnetism and band structures. Indeed, the band structures of GaMnAs has been discussed from the results of MCD measurements [1] [2]. However, MCD spectra are strongly dependent on the sample structures. In particular, in reflection MCD measurements, MCD spectra are influenced by multiple reflection effects [2]. To solve this problem and obtain the intrinsic properties of materials, we must evaluate an off-diagonal element εxy of dielectric tensor ε~ . Determination of εxy is important, because MCD is expressed by εxy which is inherent to a material. In this study, we grew GaMnAs thin film samples with various thicknesses d, and we estimated εxy of GaMnAs. To estimate εxy, we assumed that the diagonal element εxx of ε~ is equal to the dielectric function in ref [3], and that the magnetization of the samples is perpendicular to the film plane. We adopted the dielectric dispersion equation based on Kubo formula [4], in the estimation of εxy. We took into account the multiple reflection in the calculation of MCD spectra. We estimated ε~ and calculated MCD spectra to fit to the experimental d dependence of MCD spectra. Schematic sample structure is shown in the inset of Fig. 1 (a). Ga0.98Mn0.02As (d nm)/ GaAs (100 nm) structure was grown on a semi-insulating GaAs (001) substrate by low temperature molecular beam epitaxy. The Curie temperature TC of the samples was estimated by the Arrott plot using the MCD intensity vs. magnetic field characteristics. Because TC was about 45 K and was nearly constant among the samples with various d, the influence of the fluctuation of Mn content and crystallinity of the samples is negligible. The main graph of Fig. 1 (a) shows the reflection MCD spectra of GaMnAs with d = 10 nm, 20 nm, and 100 nm measured at 5 K at a magnetic field of 1 T applied perpendicular to the film plane. As shown in Fig. 1 (a), MCD spectra were strongly dependent on d. Fig. 1 (b) and Fig. 1 (c) show calculated MCD spectra and estimated εxy, respectively. In the calculation, we shifted d for better fit. In Fig. 1 (c), εxy' and εxy'' represent the real part and the imaginary part of εxy, respectively. As shown in Fig. 1 (a) and (b), we semi-quantitatively succeeded in explaining the d dependence of MCD spectra with estimated εxy. We can conclude that εxy of Ga0.98Mn0.02As was estimated with good accuracy. This work was partly supported by Grant-in-Aids for Scientific Research including Specially Promoted Research, and Project for Developing Innovation Systems of MEXT.


Assessment of the response of the Himalayan river flows to climate change is complex due to multiple contributors: rainfall, snowmelt, and glacier‐melt. The number of studies is limited in this direction due to lack of data availability as well as non‐availability of models considering all the above‐mentioned components. As for example, the state‐of‐the‐art variable infiltration capacity (VIC) model does not account for the glacier melt. Here we integrate a glacier‐melt model with VIC and validate the model output with observed streamflow in five river basins in the Himalayas, at daily scale. Our model simulates the streamflow with Nash‐Sutcliffe estimates greater than 0.65 in all basins. The sensitivity analysis shows that the contribution from snowmelt decreases substantially in all the five basins with highest decrease of 36% in Dudh Kosi (DK), in a warm and dry scenario. The glacier‐melt increases (15%–70%) in a warmer environment with its present volume, but decreases (3%–38%) substantially, when the volumes are reduced to half. However, such a decrease is found to be compensated by increased precipitation in a wetter scenario with a net increase of 3%–13%. Climate model simulations show a decrease in the spring onset times for Sutlej basin while increase for DK basin for both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios. Sutlej and Arun basins show decreases of more than 6 days in the center of volume of streamflow, which suggests that there will be increased flows in the early part of year and reduced flows later in the year.


Abstract The irregular winds of the middle atmosphere are commonly attributed to an upwardly propagating system of atmospheric gravity waves. Their one-dimensional (in vertical wavenumber m) power spectrum has been reported to exhibit a nearly universal behavior in its "tail" region of large m: both the form (∼m−3) and the intensity of the tail are approximately invariant with meteorological conditions, time, place and height. This universality is often described as resulting from "saturation" of the system, with the physical cause of saturation being left for separate identification and analysis. Here the cause is attributed to nonlinear interaction between the waves of the full spectrum, most specifically to the advective nonlinearity of the Eulerian fluid-dynamic equations. This nonlinearity has the effect of Doppler shifting the local intrinsic frequency of any given wave in the wind field imposed by all waves. Only an approximation to its effects is sought here, the wind field of the full spectrum be...


Abstract We describe the roles and duties of a director in developing an introductory actuarial program. Degree plan design, specialized exam courses, internship classes, coordination of efforts with Economics and Finance Departments, opportunities for creating a minor in actuarial mathematics, actuarial clubs, career advice, and interaction with actuarial societies are discussed.


Researchers have conducted field and empirical studies to determine how the anonymity component of Group Support Systems (GSSs) effects group process and outcomes. This dissertation was a field experiment in which the author analyzed the interaction of status of group members and the anonymity component of a GSS. Subjects, consisting of professionals and managers, used the GSS software product called VisionQuest$\sp{\rm TM}$ to perform an idea generating task. The author measured the process outcomes of number of total comments and unique ideas, ideas of higher rarity, number of critical comments, and group member satisfaction to determine the interaction effects of anonymity and status, as well as the effects caused solely by status or anonymity.
Using the VisionQuest$\sp{\rm TM}$ GSS, groups generated as many ideas as possible to solve an insurance fraud problem, which was a hidden profile task. Each group member possessed some unique information and some information common to other members.
Results from the study supported the research hypotheses that anonymous groups will generate more total comments, more unique ideas and ideas of higher rarity than identified groups, and group members of equal status will be more satisfied than group members of unequal status.


A new fully digital and home-built NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectrometer working at very-low magnetic field (4.5 mT) is presented. This spectrometer was initially dedicated for the in situ measurement of the absolute polarization of hyperpolarized 129Xe. It allows detection and acquisition of NMR signals of proton (1H) at 190 kHz and of hyperpolarized xenon-129 (HP 129Xe) at 50 kHz. In this new NMR instrument, we replaced as much analog electronics as possible by digital electronic and software. Except for the power amplifier and the preamplifier, the whole system is digital. The transmitter is based on the use of a Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) board. The receiving board allows direct digitalization of the NMR signals thanks to an 8-bits analog-to-digital converter (ADC) clocked at 100 MHz. Decimation is preformed to dramatically improve the ADC resolution so as the final achieved effective resolution could be as high as 14-bits at 5 MHz sampling frequency. NMR signals are then digitally downconverted (DDC). Low-pass decimation filtering is applied on the base-band signals (I/Q) to enhance much more the dynamic range. The system requires little hardware. The transmitter and the receiver are controlled using Labview environment. It is a versatile, flexible and easy-to-replicate system. This was actually one of underlying ideas behind this development. Both 1H and hyperpolarized 129Xe NMR signals were successfully acquired. The system is used for the measurement of the absolute polarization of hyperpolarized 129Xe in hyperpolarizing experiments for the brain perfusion measurements. The high degree of flexibility of this new design allows its use for a large palette of other potential applications.


This paper presents a new and general procedure for designing special elements called {lambda} elements for one dimensional singular problems where the strength of the singularity is know. The {lambda} elements presented here are of type C{sup 0}. These elements also provide inter-element C{sup 0} continuity with p-version elements. The {lambda} elements do not require a precise knowledge of the extent of singular zone, i.e., their use may be extended beyond the singular zone. When {lambda} elements are used at the singularity, a singular problem behaves like a smooth problem thereby eliminating the need for h, p-adaptive processes all together. One dimensional steady state radial flow of an upper convected Maxwell fluid is considered as a sample problem. Least squares approach (or least squares finite element formulation: LSFEF) is used to construct the integral form (error functional I) from the differential equations. Numerical results presented for radially inward flow with inner radius r{sub i} = 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001, 0.00001, and Deborah number of 2 (De = 2) demonstrate the accuracy, faster convergence of the iterative solution procedure, faster convergence rate of the error functional and mesh independent characteristics of the {lambda} elements regardless of the severity of the singularity.


Frozen rivers in the Arctic serve as critical highways because of the lack of roads; therefore, it is important to understand the key mechanisms that control the timing of river ice breakup. The relationships between springtime Interior Alaska river ice breakup date and the large-scale climate are investigated for the Yukon, Tanana, Kuskokwim, and Chena Rivers for the 1949‐2008 period. The most important climate factor that determines breakup is April‐May surface air temperatures (SATs). Breakup tends to occur earlier when Alaska April‐May SATs and riverflow are above normal. Spring SATs are influenced by storms approaching thestatefromtheGulfofAlaska,whicharepartoflarge-scaleclimateanomaliesthatcomparefavorably with ENSO. During the warm phase of ENSO fewer storms travel into the Gulf of Alaska during the spring, resulting in a decrease of cloud cover over Alaska, which increases surface solar insolation. This results in warmer-than-average springtime SATs and an earlier breakup date. The opposite holds true for the cold phaseofENSO.IncreasedwintertimeprecipitationoverAlaskahasasecondaryimpactonearlierbreakupby increasing spring river discharge. Improved springtime Alaska temperature predictions would enhance the ability to forecast the timing of river ice breakup.


Porous nanocrystalline thick Ti (CxN1-x) films which bond firmly to the substrate are obtained on commercially pure titanium and Ti6Al4V alloy by plasma electrolytic carbonitriding (PECN) treatment. The microstructures and compositions of the modified layer on different substrates were compared. The results showed that the modified layer is composed of the outer Ti (CxN1-x) film and the diffusion layer. When discharge-treated for 150 min, the thickness of the Ti (CxN1-x) film is ~15μm, irrespective of the different substrate. The TiH2 riched diffusion layer which is 40-45μm thick is located beneath the Ti (CxN1-x) film for the pure titanium substrate, while for Ti6Al4V alloy it is the β-Ti-riched layer which is ~100 μm thick.


Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive motor neuron disease, fatal within 1 to 5 years after onset of symptoms. About 3 out of 100'000 persons are diagnosed with ALS and there is still no cure available [1, 2]. 95% of all cases occur sporadically and the aetiology remains largely unknown [3]. However, up to now 16 genes were identified to play a role in the development of familial ALS. One of these genes is FUS that encodes for the protein fused in sarcoma (FUS). Mutations in this gene are responsible for some cases of sporadic as well as of inherited ALS [4].
FUS belongs to the family of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins and is predicted to be involved in several cellular functions like transcription regulation, RNA splicing, mRNA transport in neurons and microRNA processing [5] Aberrant accumulation of mutated FUS has been found in the cytoplasm of motor neurons from ALS patients [6]. The mislocalization of FUS is based on a mutation in the nuclear localization signal of FUS [7]. However, it is still unclear if the cytoplasmic localization of FUS leads to a toxic gain of cytoplasmic function and/or a loss of nuclear function that might be crucial in the course of ALS.
The goal of this project is to characterize the impact of ALS-associated FUS mutations on in vitro differentiated motor neurons. To this end, we edit the genome of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) using transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) [8,9] to create three isogenic cell lines, each carrying an ALS-associated FUS mutation (G156E, R244C and P525L). These iPSC's will then be differentiated to motor neurons according to a recently established protocol [10] and serve to study alterations in the transcriptome, proteome and metabolome upon the expression of ALS-associated FUS.
With this approach, we hope to unravel the molecular mechanism leading to FUS-associated ALS and to provide new insight into the emerging connection between misregulation of RNA metabolism and neurodegeneration, a connection that is currently implied in a variety of additional neurological diseases, including spinocerebellar ataxia 2 (SCA-2), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), fragile X syndrome, and myotonic dystrophy.
[1] Cleveland, D.W. et al. (2001) Nat Rev Neurosci 2(11): 806-819
[2] Sathasivam, S. (2010) Singapore Med J 51(5): 367-372
[3] Schymick, J.C. et al. (2007) Hum Mol Genet Vol 16: 233-242
[4] Pratt, A.J. et al. (2012). Degener Neurol Neuromuscul Dis 2012(2): 1-14
[5] Lagier-Tourenne, C. Hum Mol Genet, 2010. 19(R1): p. R46-64
[6] Mochizuki, Y. et al. (2012) J Neurol Sci 323(1-2): 85-92
[7] Dormann, D. et al. (2010) EMBO J 29(16): 2841-2857
[8] Hockemeyer, D. et al. (2011) Nat Biotech 29(8): 731-734
[9] Joung, J.K. and J.D. Sander (2013) Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol 14(1): 49-55
[10]Amoroso, M.W. et al. (2013) J Neurosci 33(2): 574-586.


We construct pseudorandom generators for combinatorial shapes, which substantially generalize combinatorial rectangles, ε-biased spaces, 0/1 halfspaces, and 0/1 modular sums. A function f:[m]n -> {0,1} is an (m,n)-combinatorial shape if there exist sets A1,...,An ⊆ [m] and a symmetric function h:{0,1}n -> {0,1} such that f(x1,...,xn) = h(1A1(x1),...,1An(xn)). Our generator uses seed length O(log m + log n + log2(1/ε)) to get error ε. When m = 2, this gives the first generator of seed length O(log n) which fools all weight-based tests, meaning that the distribution of the weight of any subset is ε-close to the appropriate binomial distribution in statistical distance. For our proof we give a simple lemma which allows us to convert closeness in Kolmogorov (cdf) distance to closeness in statistical distance. As a corollary of our technique, we give an alternative proof of a powerful variant of the classical central limit theorem showing convergence in statistical distance, instead of the usual Kolmogorov distance.


An analytical trial function method (ATF) was developed based on the quadrilateral area coordinate system (QAC-II) for plane elements (ACATF). These two powerful tools were combined to develop accurate, robust elements, to overcome problems induced by the Cartesian coordinate system in the ATF method so that the QAC method can be more widely used. The ACATF method was used to develop a 4-node plane element, AATF4, and a 5-node plane element AATF5, with explicit stiffness matrices. Each of these two elements has the least number of possible terms in the trial function which is equal to their DOFs. Numerical results show that they are free of the trapezoidal locking of MacNeal's beam element and can give exact solutions for pure bending problems. The success of these elements showed that the ACATF method is an efficient tool for developing elements.


Combined with practical work,the application of dynamic compaction method on the collapsible loess foundation treatment was introduced in this paper,meanwhile,the problems existed in the processes of construction were analyzed.The effect of dynamic compaction to the soil mass density,compressibility,collapsible and so on was analyzed.The project effect to the application of dynamic compaction method on the collapsible loess foundation treatment was also discussed.There provide certain reference value to the loess area engineering construction.


This research aims to determine the influence of Economic Value Added and Market Value Added on Tobin's Q and the impact on Stock Price in the Food and Beverages Industry. There are 10 companies that will be used as sample in this study, that selected using the purposive sampling method. This research uses secondary data and to collect the data by using library research. This research is a descriptive quantitative research and uses an analytical tool, namely path analysis. The first path analysis stucture shows that the direct effect of Economic Value Added (X1) and Market Value Added (X2) on Tobin's Q (Y) is 43,19%, indirect effects descreased by 12,52%, so the total effect is 30,67%. The second path analysis stucture shows that the direct effect of Economic Value Added (X1) and Market Value Added (X2) on Stock Price (Z) is 42,89%, indirect effects descreased by 14,04%, so the total effect is 28,85%. The third path analysis stucture shows that the effect of Tobin's Q (Y) on Stock Price (Z) is 62,88%. The fourth path analysis stucture shows that the total effect of Economic Value Added (X1) and Market Value Added (X2) on Stock Price (Z) through the Tobin's Q (Y) is 15,01%, and the research beyond the variabel is 84,99%, which is the contribution of other variables beyond the existing research variables.


p -CumylphenolwassynthesizedbyFriedel-Craftsalkylationofphenol with α -methylstyrene in the presence of D 72 strong acid type cationic exchange resin catalyst.The effects of molar ratio of phenol/ α -methylstyrene,amount of D 72 strong acid type cationic exchange resin catalyst,reaction temperature and reaction time on the yield of p -cumylphenol were investigated.The optimum reaction conditions were molar ratio of phenol/α-methylstyrene,85 ℃,5 h of reaction time and 5% of catalyst.The yield of p -cumlphenol was 97 0%.The D 72 strong acid type cationic exchange resin catalyst can be recovered easily,regenerated and reused to give almost the same yield as that given by fresh catalyst.


A process is disclosed to authenticate subscribers to one or several exchanges of a digital communications network, in particular an ISDN network, as described in the first claim, as well as a device for authenticating subscribers according to claims 6 and 8. Since the lines of communication between the subscriber connections and the exchanges are not protected, there is a danger of intrusion or eavesdropping by unauthorised persons. The object of the invention is therefore to make misuse of the exchange by unauthorised persons difficult or even impossible. For that purpose, a device for authenticating subscribers to one or several exchanges of a digital communications network has at least one subscriber network termination to which at least one data terminal may be connected. The invention is characterised in that at least one first authentication module is provided for each subscriber and can receive a first identification carrier, and in that at least one second authentication module that can receive a second identification carrier is provided at the exchange. Alternatively, a supplementary system is connected between the network terminations associated with the exchange and the exchange itself. The supplementary system contains at least one second authentication module that can receive a second identification carrier. The authentication modules can code and/or decode information by means of an individual, subscriber-specific code, in order to authenticate it unilaterally and/or bilaterally, and can exchange information with each other.


The Forecaster in the Field section of Foresight features an interview with Russian forecaster Igor Gusakov--an S&OP planning consultant in Moscow and author of an article in this issue--about his experiences in that field and culture. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2014


"Inducibility" of amylase in Drosophila melanogaster was defined and investigated in a natural population from Japan. Inducibility represents the effects of factors remote from the structural gene that control the amount of enzyme produced. Inducibility of an isogenic line is measured as the ratio of the enzyme's specific activity in two different inducing environments. There was considerable genetic variability with respect to inducibility of amylase in 44 isogenic lines derived from a natural population of D. melanogaster. Net fitness and its components in these isogenic lines were also measured. The results indicated that, although the inducibility of the enzyme was positively correlated with the net fitness (r, = 0.63 f 0.2), the enzyme activities in the normal medium were not (r, = 0.12 & 0.37). The analysis of the data shows that the differences in inducing factors are mainly responsible for the differences in the fitness of lines and are the genetic materials for the adaptive evolution of organisms. HE raw material for the adaptive evolution of organisms is polymorphic T genetic variation. The existence of polygenic variation related to the fitness of individuals is known from extensive studies of natural populations (DOBZHANSKY and SPASSKY 1968; TRACEY and AYALA 1974; MUKAI and YAMAGUCHI 1974). This genetic variation must have a significant role in adaptive evolution. Understanding the molecular basis of fitness-related genetic variation is essential. Since the discovery of allozyme polymorphisms in natural populations of many organisms (HARRIS 1966; LEWONTIN and HUBBY 1966; AYALA, POWELL and DOBZHANSKY 197 1 ; SELANDER, HUNT and YANG 1969; YAMAZAKI 198 la), population geneticists have been trying to elucidate the maintenance mechanisms for these polymorphisms and their evolutionary significance, hoping that these enzyme polymorphisms are the materials for adaptive evolution (YAMAZAKI and MARUYAMA 1972; MUKAI, WATANABE and YAMAGUCHI 1974; LEWONTIN and KRAKAUER 1973; AYALA and GILPIN 1973; YAMAZAKI et al. 1984). ' To whom correspondence should be addressed. Genetics 108 223-235 September, 1984 224 T. YAMAZAKI AND Y. MATSUO Recent findings in experimental studies of polymorphisms and molecular evolution seem to indicate the selective neutrality of these allozyme polymorphisms in natural populations (KIMURA and OHTA 1971; YAMAZAKI 1977; MUKAI, TACHIDA and ICHINOSE 1980; MIYATA and YASUNACA 1981). In this study we show that there is indeed genetic variation in the inducibility as well as the specific activities of amylase in a natural population of D. melanogaster. Also, differences in fitness result from differences in the inducibility of this enzyme. On the other hand, differences in the specific activity of amylase have little effect on the fitness of individuals. These results indicate the importance of regulatory gene polymorphisms for the fitness differences of individuals. A preliminary report of this work was published elsewhere (YAMAZAKI 198 1 b; YAMAZAKI and MATSUO 1983). MATERIALS AND METHODS Materials: D. melanogaster collected from Akayu in northern Japan in 1977 were used in this study; 430 male flies collected from nature were each mated to Cy/Pm;Sb Ser/Pr (or Zn(2LR)SMZI In(2LR)bw"'; Zn(3LR) TM3/Pr ) females. A single male progeny with the Cy; Sb Ser phenotype was again mated with Cy/F"; Sb Ser/Pr females. The resulting Cy; Sb Ser F2 progeny were mated with each other. Wild-type Fs progeny from this mating were maintained as an isogenic line. In this way, 200 isogenic lines homozygous for both chromosome 2 and 3 were established. These lines had neither lethal nor sterile genes on any of their chromosomes [see YAMAZAKI et al. (1984) for details of these materials]. T h e sex chromosome and chromosome 4 were likely to be homozygous since inbreeding for ten generations was done by single brother-sister mating. However, the origin of these two chromosomes cannot be determined because no marker was used on them. Of the 200 isogenic lines established, 44 were randomly selected for this experiment. Each line had the amylase phenotype of 1.00 [equivalent to type 1 of KIKKAWA (1964)l. It is known that the amylase loci are inducible by particular substances that are related to the starch metabolism of the fruit fly. Therefore, each isogenic line was raised under three different media: (1) normal (or cornmeal) medium, (2) starch medium, and (3) sucrose medium. Compositions of three inducing media: Normal medium: agar, 0.6 g, molasses, 2.8 ml; sugar, 1.4 g; Ebios, 2.0 g; cornmeal, 11 g; propionic acid, 0.4 ml; distilled water, 100 ml. Starch medium: agar, 0.6 g; starch (Electrostarch Company), 15.2 g; Ebios, 2.0 g; propionic acid, 0.4 ml; distilled water, 100 ml. Sucrose medium: agar, 0.6 g; sucrose, 15.2 g; Ebios, 2.0 g; propionic acid, 0.4 ml; distilled water, 100 ml. Cornmeal medium is the normal food used in our laboratory. Starch is known for its inducing effects on amylase loci (ABE 1958), since it is the substrate of the amylase enzyme. Sucrose is considered to be a suppressor of that locus (DICKINSON and SULLIVAN 1975). Measurement of enzyme activity: A Simazu UV 240 spectrophotometer was used throughout the experiment for the measurement of amylase activity. T h e wavelength used was 550 nm. Ten female adult flies of about 60 h r posthatching were used for each measurement. T h e ten flies were ground together with a glass rod with 50 PI of 0.1 M Tris-HCI (pH 8.9) and 0.1 M MgC12; then 1 ml of additional buffer was added to the mixture and centrifuged with an Eppendorf microcentrifuge for 8 min. A portion of the supernatant (0.15 ml) was kept in a -70" deep freeze until the protein content could be measured by the LOWRY method (LOWRY et al. 1951). Another 0.5 ml of supernatant from the mixture was used for the measurement of enzyme activity: it was mixed with 3 ml of 0.025% 12-Kl, 0.1 M Tris-HCI (pH 8.9) and 1% starch. Every 30 sec the transmission rate was measured for 1 min by the spectrophotometer. As a control, a similar quantity of buffer and starch without the supernatant was measured. T h e increase of transmission rate of the sample (as a percentage) was subtracted from that of the control. This value was defined as the amount of enzyme activity. T h e approximate linearity of this value was confirmed by measuring it in different amounts of enzyme. T h e amount of enzyme was changed by putting different amounts of supernatant of the same line in a test tube to be examined. Values for specific activity were obtained INDUCIBILITY, AMYLASE, FITNESS 225 by measuring the enzyme activity per unit amount of protein. Similar values for specific activity were obtained in other experiments (Y. MATSUO and T . YAMAZAKI, unpublished data) in which measurements were made by a different method (NELSON 1944), indicating that the amount of specific activity in this experiment properly reflects the amount of enzyme present. Detection of genetic variability with respect to inducibility: The term "inducing factors" is used to denote factors at all levels (i.e., transcriptional, translational and posttranslational) that control the amount of amylase produced. "Inducibility" measures the effects of the inducing factors. We are proposing a new method of analysis to isolate the inducibility, which is free of the effects of the structural gene for amylase. In this analysis it is assumed that the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme does not depend on the environment in which the fly was reared and that there is no interaction between the structural gene and the inducing factors in regard to the expression of the structural gene. Specific activity (SA) is expressed by the catalytic efficiency of the structural gene (STE) times the amount of enzyme produced (PRE) as follows. SA(i,k) = STE(k) X PRE(i,k) where SA(i,k) is the specific activity of line k at the structural gene under environment i. STE(k) indicates the catalytic efficiency of the enzyme product of line k at the structural gene. PRE(i,k) indicates the amount of the enzyme produced in line k under environment i. The effect of the structural gene can be eliminated by taking the ratio of specific activity (SA(j,k)/SA(i,k)) in two different inducing environments (e.g., starch and normal foods). SA(j,k)/SA(i,k) = (STE(k) X PRE(j,k))/(STE(k) X PRE(i,k))