PURPOSE: A hydraulic forklift is provided to improve the startability by adopting two pumps and two motors, to reduce the radius of swiveling, and to use a hydraulic brake as a common brake. CONSTITUTION: Front wheels(3A,3B) are connected to hydraulic motors(21A,21B). Hydraulic pumps(26A,26B) driven by an engine(25) are installed. The hydraulic pumps are connected to the hydraulic motors, respectively. Speed is controlled by changing the oil flow direction of the hydraulic pumps, changing the rotational direction of the hydraulic motors, controlling the rpm of the engine and the oil flow rate of the hydraulic pumps, and changing the rpm of the hydraulic motors. The swiveling is controlled by controlling the rpm or rotational direction of front wheels(3A,3B) based on the steering angle of a steering wheel or rear wheels.


This chapter provides an introduction to the clinical management of respiratory failure. Clinical management comprises both assessment and treatment, topics covered in more detail later in this book, and here the aim is to provide background knowledge on the definition of respiratory failure, and an understanding of the basic pathophysiological principles involved. The chapter concludes with some worked examples. After reading this chapter you should be able to:


The characteristics of dipole antenna with resistance loading are analyzed;including the comparison of input impedance and frequency in different resistance loading and impulse radiation in continuous and discrete resistance loading.The result shows that these different style resistance loadings have the similar characteristics of Wu-King resistance loading.As compared with no loading dipole antenna,these antenna have wide impedance bandwidth and less impulse radiation distortion.


As the indications for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) continue to expand, understanding appropriate patient selection is becoming an area of growing interest. The presence of Liver cirrhosis has been previously proven to increase perioperative morbidity and mortality in patients undergoing general surgical procedures. However, there is limited research articulating clinical outcomes in TAVR patients with known liver disease who are actively undergoing orthotopic liver transplant evaluation (OLT).


This study explored attachment, social support, and well-being among 237 emerging adults. The model predicted that social support would (a) mediate the relationship between attachment anxiety and well-being and (b) moderate the relationship between attachment avoidance and well-being. All hypotheses were supported. Implications for counselors are discussed.


Since the BLLD was formed by the amalgamation of the NCL and the NLL, it has been able to satisfy a high proportion of requests for English language and current foreign language monographs from stock. However, a union catalogue is necessary in order to supplement the central lending stock because demand for older items is still high.


Jussila, Juha HTTP Cookie Weaknesses, Attack Methods and Defense Mechanisms: A Systematic Literature Review Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2018, 61 pp. Computer science, master's thesis Supervisor(s): Siponen, Mikko & Semenov, Alexander HTTP cookie has been a commonly used technique in the world wide web. Several widescale data breaches have shown that cookies can be compromised with multiple attack types. It was inevitable to identify the weaknesses of cookies. Researchers in the ICT field have emphasized several vulnerabilities and weak points in cookies. Cookie protocol has been based on a draft that was signed over two decades ago. By means of systematic literature review the weaknesses of cookies, the attack methods that exploit the weaknesses, and defense methods to mitigate the attacks were disclosed in this research. Literature addressing cookie specification, attack methods, and defense methods, was examined and evaluated. Based on the literature the research indicated that cookies and the transmitting protocols contain weaknesses and vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. The research addressed that cookies lack confidentiality and integrity. Cookie protocol should be updated to a new level of security. In the current form, cookies are exposed to poisoning, hijacking, manipulation, cross-site scripting, cross-site request forgery, TCP/IP hijacking, and session fixation. Several defense methods should be applied to mitigate the attacks.


1. Role of inter-domain water clusters in large-scale dynamics of proteins; 2. Description of large-scale dynamics of proteins based on generalized Stokes-Einstein and Eyring-Polany equation; 3. Dynamic model of protein-ligand complexes formation; 4. The life-time of quasiparticles and frequencies of their excitation; 5. Mesoscopic mechanism of enzyme catalysis; 6. The mechanism of ATP hydrolysis energy utilization in muscle contraction and protein polymerization; 7. Water activity as a regulative factor in the intra- and inter-cell processes; 8. Water and cancer.


Background Unplanned extubation is associated with adverse outcomes in intensive care unit.The massive burn patient differs from other critically ill patients in many ways.However,little is known about the unplanned decannulation (UD) in Burn Intensive Care Unit.This paper describes the special features of the circumstances and outcome of UD of tracheotomy tube in massive burn patients.Methods A case series study was performed between January 1999 and December 2008 and UD of tracheotomy tube was analyzed retrospectively.A total of 21 patients with 29 UD events were identified.Demographic data,diagnosis,intervention,UD events and outcome of UD patients were collected.Differences in proportions were compared using the chi-square (X2) or Fisher's exact test.Results Patients with UD were often burned with head and neck (67%) and combined with inhalation injury (62%).The majority of them (76%) were transferred patients,occurred early (55%) and were accidental UD (79%).UD events tended to happen in day shift (90%) and to be associated with the medical procedure that was performing by caregivers at besides (79%).Loose of the stabilizing rope,medical procedure and tracheotomy malposition were the main causes of UD.Early UD and reintubation failure were associated with patients' death.Conclusions UD happened to massive burn patients can lead to patient death.Careful management of respiratory tract was essential for massive burn patients.


The tendency to anti-Korean Wave could be a by-product that the democratic stance of the people is reflected. In other words, The Korean Wave could be misunderstood as a cultural imperialism because it is brought into the world only one way, from Korea to other countries. In this situation, we have to design a new strategy to reflect the distinct characteristics of Korean culture and the universality that all of the culture on the world has. It also means to have a plan letting the Korean Wave localized on the World. The distinct characteristics stated above means that Jeung-san Kang(姜甑山) had an advent as human body in the eastern area while the universality means that he has shown his will of a great salvation for the people through his sacred behavior called Cheojigongsa(천지공사(天地公事)). Daesoon ideology which involves his great thought, accomplishment and contribution for all of the people on the world could be an alternative that anti-Korean Wave should consider. Through Sang-saeng(상생(相生)), a main principle of his thoughts which means all of the people can live with harmonious and peaceful life, the anti-Korean wave could not be a subject that we have to keep away but we have to embrace for all of the people to have a harmonious and peaceful life.


Disclosure, describes a pressure vessel (10 ') having a first end having a first boss (16) and the cylindrical portion (30). Container (10 ') includes a liner (20), the liner (20) disposed over the composite shell (18), first disposed between the liner (20) and the composite shell (18) and a first longitudinal outlet (22). The first longitudinal outlet (22) has an elongated outlet defining element (23, 23 ', 23 ") comprises, extending from at least the cylindrical portion of the container (30) to the first boss (16).


Splines are the standard tools in computer aided design for geometric representations and have been recently integrated into the finite element analysis of structures and fluids [1]. As the biomedical engineering is making progress, there is a need for an integrated tool for expanding the geometrical representation to include the microstructural details specific to soft tissue, e.g. fiber alignment, orientation, crimp and stiffness. In this work, a spline-based method is presented for aortic valves which facilitates mapping of the fiber structure from any aortic valve specimen to any other aortic valve geometry through a common parameter space. This techniques also has the ability to calculate mean tissue microstructure of representative population. Also strain and pre-strain from in-vivo state to the in-vitro state, where all the mechanical tests are done, are calculated for forward and inverse modeling of aortic valves.Copyright © 2013 by ASME


The ever-increasing need for real-time 3D perception for autonomy has resulted in development of a new generation of high-resolution perception sensors paired with powerful edge processors and advanced perception algorithms. However, processing of the large data volumes generated by such high-resolution sensors still imposes a great challenge for resource-limited edge devices and systems. In this work, we visit this problem in the context of pedestrian gait analysis using high-resolution mm-Wave sensors with application in autonomous driving. We propose reducing the total computational load of a resource-limited perception system by dynamically controlling the mm-Wave sensor's resolution on the fly. We provide results on three dynamic sensor adaptation approaches including an end-to-end Deep Q-Learning approach that can overcome the resource and performance limitations inherent to conventional static methods.


The application of ultrafiltration in rice wine refining could make clearer wine, dainty taste, and longer shelf period by removing macromolecular impurity and microbes. Tests indicated that we should select HPM64 as ultrafiltration membrane with its effective area 0.64m2, and the apparatus working pressure and the flow rate and temperature of material liquid would influence the ultrafiltration. Meanwhile, the application of active carbon could also remove the pigment and eliminate off flavour in raw wine.


A novel umbrella‐shaped wideband circular polarization (CP) antenna with a wide half‐power beamwidth (HPBW) and a wide axial ratio (AR) bandwidth is proposed in this article. Two pairs of symmetrical patch dipoles are attached to the surface of an umbrella‐shaped substrate to broaden both the impedance bandwidth (IBW) and the HPBW. A parasitic metallic ring is located immediately above the umbrella substrate to provide further enhancement of the HPBW. Each patch dipole is excited via a coaxial line, while a conductor balun with length of λ0/4 (where λ0 is the wavelength of the center frequency) is introduced to obtain a feeding balance. Measurement results indicate that the proposed antenna has a −10 dB IBW of 71.3% (from 1.03 to 2.17 GHz), and a 3 dB AR bandwidth of 55.6% (from 1.13 to 2.0 GHz). Additionally, an HPBW of more than 110° is obtained over the whole CP bandwidth, 48.2% of which has an HPBW of more than 120°. The antenna has dimensions of 100 × 100 × 28 mm3, which corresponds to (0.52 × 0.52 × 0.14)λ03.


An exact discrete-time, finite-buffer, closed-form expression for the cell loss probability (CLP) in a 2/spl times/2 ATM switch is obtained in the case of heterogeneous cell traffic at the two inputs: one source is Bernoulli and the other is correlated over time.


Since the foundation of WTO,China's exports have frequently met the antidumping,and China has become the country subjecting to and suffering from most antidumping cases for 16 successive years over the world.Meanwhile,facing the increasing dumping of imports on the Chinese market,China has also gradually intensified the antidumping against the imports.Correspondingly,the antidumping frictions between China and other countries have exacerbated,and there have existed some characteristics and their causes which are quite different from other countries' or regions'.China's antidumping frictions under WTO have provided helpful enlightenment for China's dealing with the future global antidumping against China.


The purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically test a conceptual model showing the effect of consumer responses (cognitive and emotion) towards tie-in brand purchase intention in event sponsorships. Tie-in brand refers to the brand which is sponsoring any event. Consumer responses are generated towards both event and tie-in brand simultaneously as both brand and event are connected. In the model, the cognition and emotion generated by both event and brand are modelled as the major antecedents to develop consumer's hedonic experience and utilitarian value judgements which in turn direct consumer's purchase behaviour towards the tie-in brand. Data was collected through structured questionnaire-based surveys from spectators aged 18 and above, at two major events held in India. Structural Equation Modelling was employed to validate and test the conceptual model. The study findings show that in event sponsorships spectators' cognitive and emotional responses towards both the events and the sponsoring brands play a key role in the formation of hedonic-utilitarian value judgements. The hedonic-utilitarian evaluation of event further leads to the development of affective and cognitive evaluation of the brand, which in turn predicts consumer's purchase intention towards the brand. A model showing the mechanism of spectators' cognition-affect transfer from event to sponsor brand is relatively scarce and inconclusive in the prior literature. Thus, this study is the first attempt to show how spectators' cognition-affect transfer can occur in event sponsorships, and provide the marketers with insights about the psychological process through which event sponsorship would generate spectators' purchase intentions toward the tie-in brands.


It is not simple to calculate the impact of illegality on the expenses of the health protection system both because of the nature itself of the phenomenon (largely hidden) and of the widespread presence of indirect phenomena that are difficult to define (i.e. useless or inappropriate consumptions). Less unfair evaluations could be obtained by gradually quantifying the different illegality forms and by distinguishing the phenomena having a mainly economic impact on the healthcare system accounts, such as overinvoicing, fraudulent "fringe benefit", or contracts, as well as those with mainly clinical- scientific effects on the health of citizens-patients, such as the supply of unnecessary services. The document shortly shows the main features of four Italian local health authorities put under a commis - sioner because of the infiltration of the organized crime that can be useful alarm bells for those who are responsible for the healthcare management.


Finding the optimal coalition structure is an NP-complete problem that is computationally challenging even under quite restrictive assumptions. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for the Coalition Structure Generation (CSG) problem, which provides good enough quality solutions and that can be run with hundreds of agents. The Fast code-based Algorithm for Coalition Structure generation (FACS) uses a novel representation of the search space of coalition structures and a new code-based search technique. We devise an effective heuristic search method to efficiently explore the space of coalition structures using our code-based technique. Results show that our method outperforms existing state-of-the-art algorithms by multiple orders of magnitude while providing high-quality solutions.


Optomechanics studies the interaction between light and mechanical motion. This PhD thesis reports on optomechanical experiments carried with miniature disk resonators fabricated out of distinct III-V semiconductors: Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), Aluminium Gallium Arsenide (AlGaAs) and Indium Gallium Phosphide (InGaP). These materials are compliant with optoelectronics functionalities and provide giant optomechanical coupling. In order to boost performances of GaAs resonators, we implemented surface control techniques and obtained a ten-fold reduction of optical dissipation, attaining a Q of six million. On top of GaAs, we performed a comparative investigation of optomechanical interactions in InGaP and AlGaAs disk resonators, and demonstrated their operation as optomechanical oscillators. Finally, we carried out optomechanical force sensing experiments with GaAs resonators, analyzing a new sensing principle in light of the phase space trajectory and phase noise of the corresponding oscillators


In statistical quality control, X bar control chart is extensively used to monitor a change in the process mean. In this paper, X bar control chart for non-normal symmetric distributions is proposed. For chosen Student, Laplace, logistic and uniform distributions of quality characteristic, we calculated theoretical distribution of standardized sample mean and fitted Pearson type II or type VII distributions. Width of control limits and power of the X bar control chart were established, giving evidence of the goodness of fit of the corresponding Pearson distribution to the theoretical distribution of standardized sample mean. For implementation of X bar control chart in practice, numerical example of construction of a proposed chart is given.


This study aimed to identify the effective factors on Saudi audience like reading electronic and printed newspaper. The study used the method of media survey in which using in input uses, satisfaction and media richness theory. The study used a questionnaire which applied on sample includes (400) individual. The results of the study indicated that study sample of Saudi audience read Saudi newspapers by 44% (sometimes) and what Saudi audience prefer, electronic newspapers came first by 49. 5%, local topics came first in electronic and printed newspaper, factors affecting in audience reading, the readability of the content to show in large parts came first stage at the electronic newspaper average 3. 91. The ease of using newspaper's website came at the first order for electronic newspaper average 4. 44. In the light of results, there were a lot of recommendations and proposals to overcome the negative factor which disable audience to read printed and electronic newspapers. In the light of results, several studies were recommended to measure the Saudi audiences' reading for printed and electronic newspaper in order to monitor audience's attitudes toward method and the degree of audience's confidence and to know the impact of social media on both of them and work on putting strategies by press and media institutions to face challenges and threaten its future through working on several discussion meetings with intellectuals , interested and experts in the field of journalism.


AdvanCE is a useful device in patients who cannot swallow capsule endoscopes, or when these remain in the patient's stomach without passing into the duodenum. A net or snare may be used to guide the capsule endoscope into the duodenum when the capsule endoscope becomes stuck in the stomach, but it may be difficult to guide the capsule into the duodenum in some cases, particularly in those of waterfall stomach. In such cases, AdvanCE is found to be an effective guidance tool.


Organic farming is gaining momentum in world owing to the concerns expressed on the safety of environment, soil, water and food chain. A concern about the potential increase in weed population due to non use of herbicides is rated as serious problem in organic farming. Since chemical intervention is not permitted for weed management, non chemical weed management is the major limitation in field crops like ragi, paddy and other cereals under organic farming. Finger millet is one of the major staple food of farming communities of southern Karnataka. It is one of the important crops both in terms of grain and fodder in southern parts of India for its value added products and nutritious fodder.


Bimetallic castings are widely employed as working elements in winning machines which work in conditions of intensive friction wear. The main features of wear are: dynamic percussive loads, intensive abrasive wear caused by erosion and corrosion. Three cylindrical rods cavities of the same dimensions of φ 20x200 mm were made in sand mould. Different amount of liquid iron alloy with carbon equivalent of 4.14, Mn of 0.58 and Cu of 0.17 wt% was poured into the three rod cylindrical cavities over the solid 304 stainless steels cylindrical desks inserts. Good coherent interfaces for all liquid/Solid volumes (16 to 24) are produced and multi-layers interfacial microstructure bimetal are produced. Increasing the liquid/solid volumes from 16 to 24 increases the thickness of transient layer from 52 to 89 μm and decreases the amount of ledeburite in the structure of solidified gray cast iron.


ABSTRACT We have demonstrated that enteral glutamine provides protection to the postischemic gut, and that peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor-&ggr; (PPAR&ggr;) plays a role in this protection. Using Cre/lox technology to generate an intestinal epithelial cell (IEC)–specific PPAR&ggr; null mouse model, we now investigated the contribution of IEC PPAR&ggr; to glutamine's local and distant organ–protective effects. These mice exhibited absence of expression of PPAR&ggr; in the intestine but normal PPAR&ggr; expression in other tissues. After 1 h of intestinal ischemia under isoflurane anesthesia, wild-type and null mice received enteral glutamine (60 mM) or vehicle followed by 6 h of reperfusion or 7 days in survival experiments and compared with shams. Small intestine, liver, and lungs were analyzed for injury and inflammatory parameters. Glutamine provided significant protection against gut injury and inflammation, with similar protection in the lung and liver. Changes in systemic tumor necrosis factor-&agr; reflected those seen in the injured organs. Importantly, mice lacking IEC PPAR&ggr; had worsened injury and inflammation, and glutamine lost its protective effects in the gut and lung. The survival benefit found in glutamine-treated wild-type mice was not observed in null mice. Using an IEC-targeted loss-of-function approach, these studies provide the first in vivo confirmation in native small intestine and lung that PPAR&ggr; is responsible for the protective effects of enteral glutamine in reducing intestinal and lung injury and inflammation and improving survival. These data suggest that early enteral glutamine may be a potential therapeutic modality to reduce shock-induced gut dysfunction and subsequent distant organ injury.


We study multi path routing with traffic assignment in selfish networks. Based on the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) auction, an optimal and strategy-proof scheme, known as optimal auction-based multipath routing (OAMR), is developed. However, OAMR is computationally expensive and cannot run in real time when the network size is large. Therefore, we propose sequential auction-based multi path routing (SAMR). SAMR handles routing requests sequentially using some greedy strategies. In particular, with reference to the Ausubel auction, we develop a water-draining algorithm to assign the traffic of a request among its available paths and determine the payment of the transmission in approximately constant time. Our simulation results show that SAMR can rapidly compute the allocations and payments of requests with small sacrifice on the system cost. Moreover, various sequencing strategies for sequential auction are also investigated.


The invention relates to a treatment method of mine wastewater. The method comprises the following steps: (1) mixing acidic mine wastewater and flotation wastewater in a volume ratio of (1:1)-(2:1), stirring to mix the wastewater uniformly, adding H2O2, continuously stirring to react, and then standing for layering; and (2) taking the layered supernatant, adding lime milk to adjust the pH value of the wastewater to 6.0-8.0, adding a polyacrylamide (PAM) solution after the generation of precipitates, stirring, and standing for layering to obtain a supernatant which can be discharged according to the standard. By utilizing the method provided by the invention, the defects of the prior art can be overcome, the quality characteristics of raw water is fully utilized, and waste is treated with waste; and the pollutants in the water can be removed efficiently, the cost is low, and the method has a good application prospect.


We report on the magnetic behavior of RRhB (R = La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Gd, Tb and Tm) and RRhC (R = La, Ce, Pr and Gd) compounds crystallizing in the cubic perovskite type structure with space group Pm3m. The heat capacity data on Pauli-paramagnetic LaRhB and LaRhC indicate a high frequency vibrating motion of boron and carbon atoms in the unit cell. Ce is in -like nonmagnetic state in both the compounds. Pr compounds show a dominant crystal field effect with a nonmagnetic singlet ground state in PrRhB and a nonmagnetic quadrupolar doublet in PrRhC. Compounds with other rare earths order ferromagnetically at low temperatures except TmRhB in which the zero field evolution of magnetic interactions is relatively more complicated. The electrical resistivity of GdRhB decreases with increasing temperature in the paramagnetic state in the vicinity of T, which is rarely seen in ferromagnets. The behavior is discussed to be arising due to the short range spin fluctuation and a possible contribution from Fermi surface geometry.


This article describes the use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for treatment-resistant delusional systems in a cohort of three service users with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Key stages of CBT are outlined, including engagement, the use of scaffolding to reinitiate social functioning, improving coping styles and metacognitive techniques (such as rumination postponement). These were followed by the use of formulation, examination of the antecedents/timeline to identify core schema vulnerabilities and schema-focused techniques to deal with underlying unbearable affect. Systematization, conviction, overall symptomatology, clinically significant improvement, schema profile and social functioning are described pre and post-therapy. Following a 50-session course of CBT, all parameters including social functioning and schema vulnerability improved in two of the case examples; however, recovery was limited in the other. The authors recommend a synthesis between expert CBT and psychodynamic understanding, to improve engagement and schema change in the psychotherapy of delusional systems.


Twenty new chiral (aminoalkyl)phosphane ligands have been prepared from four enantiomerically pure advanced chiral compounds. We describe their use for asymmetric hydrogen-transfer reduction of three prochiral ketones. Enantioselectivities up to 90% were obtained. We investigated the influence on the enantioselectivity of each part of these new (aminoalkyl)phosphane ligands. (© Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2003)


Objective To establish a tissue culture system of Pueraria thomsonii and to cultivate a new breed autotetraploid.Methods Using the MS medium as the basic medium,the explants shoot apexes and stem segments were cultured to differentiate the regenerations.The autotetraloid with genetic material doubled was achieved by treating shoot tips with colchicine of different concentrations for different long times.Results The proper media MS+6-BA 1.0 mg/L + 2,4-D 1.0 mg/L+NAA 0.2 mg/L is for pro-(tocorn) inducing,MS+6-BA 1.0 mg/L+2,4-D 0.2 mg/L for diffrentiation and propagation,and 1/2(MS+) IBA 0.2 mg/L for rooting.The best effect of the autotetraploid induction can be achieved by treating the 0.3-0.5 cm shoot tips cut from the 1 cm plantlets with 0.4%-0.5% colchicine for 48 h,and it is unlikely to succeed by treating shoot tips with colchicine of very low or high concentration or for very long or short time.Conclusion The autotetraploid gives a chance to improve the content of medical materials in the root of P.thomsonii.


We used dung surveys to estimate population size and extracted an age structure from boli diameters for the elephants living in the Maputo Elephant Reserve. Our estimate was based on published defecation rates, dung decay rates, distance-sampling techniques and 1,672 dung piles encountered on 204 line-transects. The reserve had at least 311 (95% CI: 198–490) elephants at a density of 0.60 (95% CI: 0.38–0.94) per km 2 . However, observer bias reduced effective strip widths and inflated estimates and their confidence limits. The age structure extrapolated from dung measurements indicated few newborn calves compared with other populations. To detect population changes of 2–5% at 80% power, dung surveys should be carried out every second year for the next 20 years using 100 transects of at least 500 m each. Comparison with a 1995 dung survey suggests that the population is stable and that previous fears of a major population decline during the civil war have no foundation.


The present invention relates to an apparatus for removing moisture from a vehicle headlight. The apparatus for removing moisture from a vehicle headlight can efficiently remove moisture from the head light at low costs by discharging the moisture to the outside using a dehumidifying agent according to increase in temperature when the headlight power is applied by coupling a heating unit equipped with a hot wire with the reusable dehumidifying agent which discharges and absorbs the moisture according to increase and decrease in temperature and automatically controlling the intake and discharge of the moisture according to the operation of a headlight; can increase the speed of moisture removal from the headlight by efficiently conducting, to the dehumidifying agent, heat conducted from a reflective mirror on a rear surface and in the head light when the headlight is operated by having a conductive connection unit made of metal and connected with the rear surface of the head light; can efficiently and continuously discharge moisture in the headlight with less power during driving the vehicle by allowing the dehumidifying agent to constantly maintain temperature in operation of headlight by controlling the power supply of the heating unit in consideration of the temperature increase pattern of the dehumidifying agent according to the operation elapsed time of the headlight of the vehicle; and can increase the range of application in vehicle by being easily mounted without the headlight structure and the configuration of the conventional vehicle by being configured as the rear cap of the head lamp housing in the headlight and sharing the power supply of the hot wire with source of power supply of the headlight. [Reference numerals] (1) Absorbing moisture; (10) Head lamp; (110) Dehumidifying unit; (120) Heating unit; (2) Heating; (3) Exhausting moisture


The Global Weather Experiment (FGGE) provided unique data on the interesting phenomenon of cross-equatorial flow. Such motion is a key element of the seasonal cycle of the tropics, especially in monsoonal regions. The IIb obserations, IIIb assimilations, and implied dynamics of the flows are reviewed. Additional emphasis is given to the low level branches concentrated in the planetary boundary layer, including air sea interaction and vertical turbulence processes. The results of a recent MONEX Boundary Layer Workshop are summarized.


Based on the characteristic of "Computer Network Foundation" in vocational education and teaching practice, the thesis presents a teaching pattern based on workgroup and task-driven methods, and gives some examples for tasks. The achievements in Skill Competition show that the educational reform will help improve the motivation, interest and result for learning and promote the change of studying methods.


We present Chandra and XMM-Newton observations of the composite star-forming/Seyfert galaxy IRAS 20051-1117. The X-ray imaging and spectral properties reveal the presence of an active nucleus. The Chandra image shows a strong nuclear point source [L ≈ 4 × 1042 ergs s-1]. The nuclear X-ray source coincides with a bright, also unresolved, UV source that appears in the XMM-Newton Optical Monitor images. The XMM-Newton and Chandra spectrum is well represented by a power law with a photon index of Γ ≈ 1.7-1.9 and a thermal component with a temperature of ~0.2 keV. We also detect an Fe line at 6.4 keV with an equivalent width of ~0.3 keV, typical of the iron lines that have been detected in the X-ray spectra of "classical" active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We find no evidence for short-term variability in the X-ray light curves, while we detect no variations between the XMM-Newton and Chandra observations, which are separated by about 20 days. Optical spectroscopic observations that were performed ~2 months after the XMM-Newton observation show that the optical spectrum is dominated by a star-forming galaxy component, although a weak broad Hα component is present, in agreement with the results from past observations. The lack of strong AGN signatures in the optical spectrum of the source can be explained by the dilution of the nuclear AGN emission by the nuclear star-forming component and the strong emission of the underlying, bright host galaxy.


The use of multi-user multiple input multiple output (MIMO) processing algorithms in wireless communication systems requires new channel allocation algorithms that can intelligently assign users to channels that can best take advantage of the spatial processing available at both transmitter and receiver. The availability of spatial processing at the receiver adds yet another variable to the classic channel allocation problem, making it very difficult to find the optimal solution for a particular set of users at a reasonable computational cost. We propose a two-step heuristic solution. The first step is the computation of a metric that quantifies the spatial compatibility of two users. The second step is to group the users into shared channels based on optimizing the sum of the compatibility metrics over all groups. we also propose a modified version of the algorithm in which the sub-channels (from different multipath components) of a single user are not required to share the same time-domain channel. In simulations, these algorithms come reasonably close to the optimal solution at a moderate computational cost.


The stability of isolating integrals against the perturbation of potential function was studied by the method of surface of section in the classical dynamical system of two degrees of freedom with the hamiltonian, \begin{aligned} H{=}\frac{1}{2}\left(\dot{x}^{2}+\dot{y}^{2}+x^{2}+y^{2}+2x^{2}y+\frac{2}{3}y^{3}-\frac{4}{3}\varepsilon y^{3}\right), \end{aligned} in the range -1< e <1. This system has isolating integrals in this range. Their structure is found to change discontinuously at e =-1/2 and e =0.


The empirical factors dependences on the process parameters for the welding wires of various chemistry are obtained for the empirical formula permitting to calculate the wire melting rate (feed) in a wide range of currents, preheat temperatures, electrode diameters, and stick-outs under the welding in carbon dioxide on the reversed polarity current. The calculation accuracy by the empirical formula and by the known computational melting model of the same wires is comparatively appraised. The effect of stick-out and preheat temperature increase of the welding wires on the productivity-boosting features of their melting is assessed.


A feeling of uncertainty about the future as well as the perception that the past classical securities are gone are widely spread among people. Criticism or disaffection affects the majority of the traditional political forces of the European continent. It is not possible to talk about the European crisis without referring to the crisis of the wage-based society. All political options of the past century have de facto put labour at the centre of society. The post-classical era got its start in the '80s when, for the first time since World War II, the phenomenon of mass unemployment affected Europe. The crisis of wage labour cannot be regarded as a temporary economic conjuncture of an otherwise unlimited growth, all consequences of the phase must be contemplated in order to design at once a society based on new principles. For years, after the end of the Fordist system, nothing has been done to cope with the conditions of precarious workers. The issue of a guaranteed income is, therefore, crucial and inescapable in order to exit this long-term European crisis. The European Union should take a stand on the protection of human dignity and on the "right to exist". Could basic income at the continental level be the basis for a social Europe? We are looking forward to it. It is not possible to talk about the European crisis without referring to the crisis of the wage-based society. All political options of the past century, liberalism or laissez-faire, progressivism, socialism, communism or the social democratic systems, and even the most radical ones, have de facto placed labour at the centre of society. They all not only regarded labour as the main engine of growth and economic well-being, but also as the driving force for the emancipation of the masses and the individuals. Even in the so-called "real socialist" economies, wage labour was one of the pillars on which the material constitution of society was based. All individual and collective rights pivoted on workers—by virtue of their own concrete social position—in order to protect and enhance their specific role as producers. Just a few decades ago, the expectation of access to social life by finding an appropriate and stable job with planned career progression, and with consistency between training and employment was legitimate. Labour was exactly at the centre of the social system; it was a link between the public and private sectors: in reference to the public sphere, labour represented the contribution each subject offered to collective well-being, although remaining, on private


One of the essential qualities of the clinician is interest in humanity, for the secret of the care of the patient is in caring for the patient. FRANCIS WELD PEABODY, "The Care of the Patient" The bond between physician and patient is both a powerful healing force and the ultimate source of the satisfaction we derive from our profession. This link should be used more often than it is to educate our patients and to modify their behavior. I want to share a few thoughts on this subject with you today. This is the time of year when some of our patients come to the office bringing the greetings of the season and, occasionally, bearing gifts for their doctors. For many physicians, this is a very pleasant experience and it brings back memories of the time when caring for patients was a simpler task. Enjoyable as these moments may be,


Is psychology a source of oppression for disabled people, or a resource for enabling individual and collective empowerment? Historically, psychology's impairment focus has risked presenting a personal tragedy view of disabled people. This must not remain the case.
British disability studies – the radical academic and social movement that has given rise to the social model of disability – demands that psychologists rethink their understandings and practices in relation to 'impairment' and 'disability'. If psychology is to be of relevance to disabled people then it needs to discard its view of impairment-as-tragedy; question why people with impairments are socially excluded; and, crucially, include disabled people in research processes that aim to challenge this exclusion. We suggest that such challenges can be met through bringing together the ideas of community psychology and disability studies.


The U.S. net national saving rate reached a postwar peak of 12.3 percent in 1965 and has since trended downward to 1.2 percent in 2007. Consequently, many analysts claim that saving is too low. Since 1983, the Social Security program has been in surplus, and the trust funds have been building up to pay for the retirement benefits for the baby boom cohort. Several recent studies have concluded that the increases in the trust funds have been more than offset by reductions in surpluses elsewhere in the federal budget. These studies therefore conclude that public saving has fallen as a result of the trust fund buildup since the mid-1980s. This study reexamines this issue. In the results, the authors cannot find evidence that the trust fund surpluses have had an impact on the rest of the federal budget.


Clean, efficient, green energy utilization demand put forward new requirements for the traditional mining. Based on the theory of elastic development, taking coal resources development and utilization as the leading factor, the paper explores the coal resources production mode, coal mining enterprise management and coal mining area elastic development in the background of post-industry age from the perspective of technological development, realistic requirements and field cooperation. Conclusion: (1) Changes in production methods, in the post-industrial age, the coal exploitation and utilization will achieve green precision mining for less consumption and less ecological disturbance, circular economy for clean and efficient utilization, zero emissions and harmless disposal of waste; (2) Management innovation of coal mining enterprise, the coal mining enterprises will realize the mine system intelligent management for the new technologies emergence of artificial intelligence, virtual simulation, internet sensing and all-round, visual real-time dynamic monitoring et al; (3) Elastic development of coal mining area, the coal mining area will realize the all-round development of engineering elasticity, economic elasticity, social elasticity and ecological elasticity for the more completed structure and functions, the more improved ability of self recovery and resist external risks, and more enhanced integrity and completeness of system.


Oil spills are seriously affecting marine ecosystem and cause political and scientific concern. In order to implement an emergency in case of oil spills, it is necessary to monitor oil spill using remote sensing. Techniques for monitoring oil spills includes optical, microwave, and radar approaches using aircraft or satellites. However, Satellites have wider coverage and lower price. Recent years, with more sensors launching, correctness and real time of oil spills monitoring using satellites are improved. Based on many successful experiences in oil spills monitoring, sensitivities of different bands to different oil types are analyzed using AVHRR and TM data, and methodologies to extract oil spills information, especial oil thickness, are presented. In addition, with regard to requirements of customers, position, area, drifting trajectory and velocity can be calculated, which supports marine oil spill fast emergency response effectively. It is believed that it is possible to establish an oil spill monitoring network using satellite covering main sea area in China.


Long-term shoreline changes around a cuspate foreland behind Okinoshima Island in Tateyama Bay were investigated, and beach survey was carried out using RTK-GPS on May 2, 2018. Then, numeri-cal simulation of the formation and deformation of the cuspate foreland during 65 years was carried out using the BG model (a model for predicting 3-D beach changes based on Bagnold's concept). It was found that sand, which was deposited on the shallow sea associated with the uprise in ground level during Kanto Earthquake occurred in 1923, accumulated to form a cuspate foreland.


Aim: To evaluate the testicular changes in rats in chronic alcohol intake with liquid diet. Material and Methods: In this study adult male Wistar rats were used. They were fed by a modified liquid diet containing 7.2 % of ethanol for 60, 120 and 180 days. The rats in the control groups were also fed by the same liquid diet without alcohol. At the end of the experiment the rats were sacrificed by cervical dislocation. Testes was dissected and fixed in Bouinas solution and the sections were stained with hematoxylin-Eosin staining technique for histological evaluations. Results: Histochemical staining demonstrated, decreased body weight gain, gonadal atrophy, desquamated spermatocytes in the lumen of seminiferous tubules, in the cytoplasm of the Leydig cells deposits of fat droplets and tubular degenerations when compared with control in the alcoholic groups. Conclusion: The intensification of the above described changes were observed to bedependent on the duration period of alcohol intoxication. These testicular changes might be due to malabsorbtions, lipid peroksidations and endocrine imbalance.


The present invention provides a multimedia broadcast multicast service continuity method for reporting, comprising: when the multimedia broadcast multicast service reception state changes, the user equipment is currently connected state, decide whether to report to the network a multimedia broadcast multicast service reception state information. The present invention further provides a user equipment for realizing MBMS service continuity. The present invention, when receiving the MBMS service status changes, the current status of connection with a UE, reporting or not reporting the MBMS receiving state information, the network side is switched with reference to the MBMS service may receive status information, to ensure continuity of the UE receiving the MBMS.


This article draws upon data collated from September 1999 until June 2000, which relates to 40 games played in continental Europe involving the English national team and English club sides. Post-match reports filed with the Football Association and interviews conducted with senior police and other officials suggest a much greater level of disorder associated with matches played by the national team than with club fixtures. Three causal factors that emerge from the reports are outlined and assessed in this respect, namely the role of alcohol, the influence of xenophobia and nationalism and their portrayal by the media and the limitations of intelligence-led policing in the context of national teams playing abroad. The article concludes by arguing that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the dynamics between police and supporters, rather than concentrating largely or exclusively on the real or imputed characteristics of the supporters themselves.


Fish farming activities are a relevant economic resource in coastal waters,
which have grown in a significant way in recent decades, often with deleterious environmental
effects. The sustainability of the activity requires proper management
and especially an appropriate site selection, which avoids use conflicts and considers
adequately the potential effects before they occur. For this purpose numerical
modeling is a key tool for a sustainable aquaculture.
Aquaculture is a complex activity that has environmental effects at different scales
and influences and it is also influenced by the surrounding environment. Therefore
the correct modeling of the activity must consider the different scales at which the
aquaculture could influence, as well as the effect of environment on the activity and
the interference of cultured fish over themselves.
This work describes the application of a modeling protocol to assessing the carrying
capacity of fish culture in marine waters. It is a sequential process which consider the
critical condition for environmental factors and culture characteristics.


This paper documents the structural transformation in employment that has taken place in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the past 15 years. In contrast to Asian economies, where at least half of the labor flows out of agriculture have gone into industry, in SSA, most of the workers have ended up in the service sector, especially household enterprises. Rwanda has been one of the stellar performers in SSA in terms of structural transformation with the strongest movement of workers out of agriculture. Contrary to conventional wisdom, except for the very top of the distribution of consumption in Rwanda, families in household enterprises now consume as much as non-agricultural wage earners.


Over one half of young adults have lived or will live with a partner before marriage. Many studies indicate that the majority of cohabitors plan to marry their partners, yet research examining relationship progression is rare. This article deciphers the processes underlying entrance into informal unions. Data are from 25 open-ended interviews with cohabitors who had lived together for at least 3 months. For many, the relationship progressed rapidly; over one half moved in with partners within 6 months of initiating romantic relationships. Primary reasons for cohabiting included finances, convenience, and housing needs; cohabiting as a trial marriage was not mentioned as the principal reason for moving in together. Plans for marriage remain abstract even when respondents determine that they and their partners are compatible. Key Words: cohabitation, living arrangements, relationships, union formation, young adult transitions. Over the past few decades, the courtship process has changed dramatically. Among the most notable societal shifts is the growing prevalence and acceptance of cohabiting relationships-couples living together in intimate heterosexual unions without being married. Today, the majority of young adults approve of nonmarital cohabitation (Axinn & Thornton, 2000; Bumpass & Sweet, 1989; Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). More than half of all young adults who were in their 20s and 30s in the 1990s had shared a home and a bed with an opposite sex partner without being married (Bumpass & Sweet, 1995). Further, the majority over one half) of all recent marriages were preceded by a period of cohabitation (Raley, 2000), and many more individuals lived with a partner without subsequently marrying him or her (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989; Bumpass, Sweet, & Cherlin, 1991; Raley, 2000). Even as cohabitation has become a normative step in the transition to adulthood, relatively little is known about how young adults decide to enter into cohabitation, when in their relationships such a transition occurs, and what such a step means to them. Common portrayals of cohabitation, reinforced by quantitative research strategies, have frequently viewed cohabitation as a precursor to marriage. Many contemporary young adults indicate that living together is a good way to "try out" a relationship, and many intend to cohabit if they have not already (Bumpass et al., 1991; Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). Studies focusing on cohabitors themselves also report that the majority have definite plans to wed their partners (Brown, 2000; Lichter, Batson, & Brown, 2004; Manning & Smock, 2002). These studies often convey the impression, perhaps mistakenly, that marriage is a clear goal for those entering cohabiting unions. Whether that is the view of cohabitors themselves is debatable, as this study will show. Today's young adults have opportunities for education, employment, and intimate relationships that are far more abundant than were available to previous generations. The majority continue to expect marriage in their future (Thornton & Young-DeMarco, 2001). In a time of rapid social change-economic shifts, childhood experiences with family disruption, and questioning of gendered family roles-trial coresidential unions may be viewed as an increasingly important way of moderating the risks inherent in romantic relationships (Cancian, 1987; Clarkberg, Stolzenberg, & Waite, 1995; Raley, 2000). Many young people express the belief that living together will help them pick out a better life partner for marriage (Bumpass et al., 1991; Thornton & Young-DeMarco). The research reported here asks whether cohabitation serves such a purpose. Notwithstanding repeated calls to pay more attention to the courtship process (Bolton, 1961; Smock & Manning, 2001; Surra, 1990), surprisingly little research has focused on the factors that individuals consider when deciding to live together. …


A generalized symmetry transform evaluates evidence of local symmetry, yet it has no selective attention capability for corner angles. Therefore, a symmetry transform is proposed that can recognize symmetric features tuned to specific corner angles. Experimental results with synthetic and real imagery confirm the effectiveness of the proposed transform in discriminating polygonal objects.


Abstract The Chandra X-ray Observatory is the only X-ray facility with sub arcsec resolution, permitting detailed studies of radio galaxies and quasars. We review a short list of projects contributing to our goal of obtaining Chandra observations of all 3C extragalactic sources. Radio source samples, unlike most surveys at other wavelengths, should be completely unbiased with respect to viewing angle: the radio lobes are sign posts indicating the location of AGN (obscured or unobscured nuclei). The X-ray data allow us to estimate excess absorption towards nuclei, to find new examples of X-ray emission from jet knots and hotspots, and to isolate sources in clusters of galaxies together with signatures of feedback (e.g. cavities in the ICM). This work is supported by NASA grants GO1-12125A and GO2-13115X.


The purpose of this study was attempted to identify the relationship between exercise performance, isometric leg muscle strength and BMD, total T and Z score in menopause women(n=22) and men(n=12) in older Adults. Participated subjects age range was 43 to 75 years old. Measured parameters included m...


The aim of this paper is to explain relative prices divergences among cities within the same currency area, such as Italy. According to our results, we find relative prices mean reverting, but at a very slow rate. The measure of persistence is high also in a well-established "monetary union" such as Italy, where some of the standard reasons behind deviations from the parity are minimised or negligible. In this work, we suggest two main explanations. First, arbitrage impediments due to transportation costs, account for part of this divergence. Second, the Harrod-Balassa-Samuelson effect is also found to be partially responsible for such persistence.


bution which, in part, includes this depreciation factor and to the investor represents a return of part of his capital investment. The item of amortization of mortgage in the amount of $115,646 represents a cash outlay but is not an expense for accounting or income tax purposes. It is rather a reduction of an indebtedness encumbering the real property and so reduces the cash available, which the partnership may distribute to its investors.


Examines the challenges of leading and managing in a networked, learning organization context. Provides theoretical prescription as to how middle managers might be motivated and assisted to operate effectively in such contexts. Includes real‐world illustrations of network‐type organizations.


Knowledge on immunogenicity of the bivalent Omicron BA.4/5 vaccine in dialysis patients and the effect of a previous infection is limited. Therefore, vaccine-induced humoral and cellular immunity was analyzed in dialysis patients and immunocompetent controls with and without prior infection. In an observational study, 33 dialysis patients and 58 controls matched for age, sex and prior infection status were recruited. Specific IgG, neutralizing antibody activity and cellular immunity towards the spike-antigen from parental SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron subvariants BA.1, BA.2 and BA.4/5 were analyzed before and 13-18 days after vaccination. The bivalent vaccine led to a significant induction of IgG, neutralizing titers, and specific CD4 and CD8 T-cell levels. Neutralizing activity towards the parental strain was highest, whereas specific T-cell levels towards parental spike and Omicron subvariants did not differ indicating substantial cross-reactivity. Dialysis patients with prior infection had significantly higher spike-specific CD4 T-cell levels with lower CTLA-4 expression compared to infection-naive patients. When compared to controls, no differences were observed between individuals without prior infection. Among infected individuals, CD4 T-cell levels were higher in dialysis patients and neutralizing antibodies were higher in controls. Vaccination was overall well tolerated in both dialysis patients and controls with significantly less adverse events among dialysis patients. In conclusion, our study did not provide any evidence for impaired immunogenicity of the bivalent Omicron BA.4/5 vaccine in dialysis patients. Unlike in controls, previous infection of patients was even associated with higher levels of spike-specific CD4 T cells, which may reflect prolonged encounter with antigen during infection.


Drugs can modify gene expression in hepatocytes through binding to nuclear receptors. Organic anion transporting polypeptides 1B1 and 1B3 (OATP1B1 and OATP1B3) are polyspecific transporters that mediate uptake of a variety of drugs into human hepatocytes. Thus, we tested the hypothesis that nuclear receptor ligands are substrates of OATP1B1 and OATP1B3. Using Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells stably expressing human OATP1B1 or OATP1B3, we measured uptake of the model compound estradio‐17β‐glucuronide in the absence and presence of nuclear receptor ligands and determined inhibition kinetics or direct uptake for selected compounds. Besides the known inhibitor rifampicin, all tested nuclear receptor ligands inhibited OATP1B1 and OATP1B3 mediated uptake of 1μM estradio‐17β‐glucuronide at 10 and/or 100 μM. Competitive inhibition of OATP1B1‐mediated uptake was determined for the PXR ligands mifepristone (Ki = 2.8μM), clotrimazole (Ki = 7.8μM) and lovastatin (Ki = 12.7μM). Additional strong inhibitors of OATP1B1‐mediated uptake were the PPARγ ligands troglitazone and ciglitazone, which inhibited 94% and 69% at 10 μM; the PPARα ligand WY‐14643, which inhibited 86% at 10 μM; and the PXR ligand paclitaxel, which inhibited 87% at 5μM. In general, inhibition of OATP1B3‐mediated uptake was less pronounced. Furthermore, we could demonstrate direct transport of paclitaxel by both, OATP1B1 and OATP1B3. These results demonstrate that nuclear receptor ligands are potent inhibitors or substrates of human liver OATPs, and thus might affect bioavailability of other drugs cleared by OATPs.


The present paper is a summation of results obtained leading to the conclusion that the pituitary gland may be concerned in neoplastic extension. Preliminary reports (1, 3, 3) of our earlier findings have been presented, and it was originally inteiided that further publication should be withheld until the results warranted some degree of finality as to conclusion. In the meantime others (4, 5, 6) have entered the field and new relations ( 7 ) of the anterior lobe hormones to each other have been established. It appeared timely, therefore, to present our evidence demonstrating the effect of the pituitary, since it is now clear that more ground must be covered before the mechanism of the hormonal influence of the pituitary upon neoplastic extension is elucidated.


Field research was conducted for 2 yr to evaluate response of corn and rice to simulated drift rates of a commercial premix of imazethapyr plus imazapyr [3:1 (w/w)]. Drift rates of the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix represented 0.8, 1.6, 3.2, 6.3, and 12.5% of the usage rate of 63 g ai/ha (0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 7.9 g/ha, respectively). The imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix applied to six-leaf corn at 7.9 g/ha reduced height 11% compared with the nontreated control 7 days after treatment (DAT) but did not affect corn height 14 and 28 DAT. Corn yield was equivalent regardless of imazethapyr plus imazapyr rate and ranged from 10,200 to 11,500 kg/ha. At 28 DAT, rice height was reduced 12% when 7.9 g/ha of the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix was applied early postemergence (EPOST) at two- to three-leaf and 14 and 5% when the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix at 7.9 and 4 g/ha, respectively, was applied late postemergence (LPOST) at panicle differentiation. Reductions in mature rice height of 11 and 6% were observed when the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix was applied LPOST at 7.9 and 4 g/ha, respectively, and a 5% reduction was observed for 7.9 g/ha of the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix applied EPOST. Application of the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix EPOST at 7.9 g/ha delayed heading in only 1 yr, but heading was delayed both years when applied LPOST. Rice yield was reduced 39 and 16% when the imazethapyr plus imazapyr premix was applied LPOST at 7.9 and 4 g/ha, respectively, compared with a 9% yield reduction for 7.9 g/ha applied EPOST. Nomenclature: Imazapyr; imazethapyr; corn, Zea mays L. 'Dekalb 687'; rice, Oryza sativa L. 'Cypress'. Additional index words: Crop injury, herbicide drift, off-target movement. Abbreviations: IR, imidazolinone-resistant.


The cyclic steam stimulation is a recovery method of super heavy oil in Liaohe oilfield.The porosity of Du84 block of Xinglongtai oilfield in super heavy oil reservoir is generally 25% to 30%,air permeability is generally higher than 1306 × 10-3 μm2.Because of its high porosity and high permeability,steam channeling easily occurs to cause that heat energy of the injected steam can not be fully utilized,which can reduce production effect of the steam injection well.Water cut in adjacent well after the steam channeling increases,temperature rises,which can affect the production or cause to shut in well.Steam channeling aggravates casing deformation or damage.The high temperature resistant plugging agent can effectively block high permeability layer,adjust the steam absorption difference between low permeability layer and high permeability layer,change the flow direction of injected steam,which can alleviate the steam channeling,eliminate interference among wells,expand the injected steam swept volume,improve cycle oil production.


Finally, I can stop writing about the Medicare SGR formula and efforts to reform it, and you can stop worrying about whether you're going to get whacked with untenable payment cuts about this time every year.


The size and changes in population determine the extent of the market or the volume of demand for goods and services. Even if the per capita disposable income does not change, a larger population means a large volume of demand and an expansion in the size of the market. In an economy where the production is for sale, the size and changes in population influence the scale of production and indicate the extent to which the economies of scale may be reaped. They determine the supply as well as the efficiency of labour. Choice of techniques and technology too is dependent on the size and qualitative standard of population.


yetmezlik virüsü, seroprevalans, tonsillektomi. ABSTRACT Objectives: This study aims to investigate the seroprevalence of hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in patients undergoing tonsillectomy. Patients and Methods: Between January 2012 and December 2018, a total of 751 patients (389 males, 362 females; mean age 27 years; range, 12 to 58 years) who underwent bilateral tonsillectomy under general anesthesia in our clinic were retrospectively analyzed. The seropositivity of hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg), anti-HCV, and anti-HIV was investigated in all patients. Results: Positive serology for HBsAg was detected in 12 patients (1.5%) including eight males (1%) and four females (0.5%). Two male patients (0.2%) and two male patients (0.2%) had anti-HCV positivity and anti-HIV positivity, respectively. According to the age groups (≤18 vs. >18 years), all serology-positive patients were >18 tonsillectomy patients preoperatively, particularly those who are older than 18 years and males. All otolaryngologists should be aware of transmission via occupational exposure and must take necessary precautions to protect themselves against contamination by wearing a mask or goggles, particularly


In this work, we investigate the generation of second-harmonic light by gold nanorods and demonstrate that the collected nonlinear intensity depends upon a phase interplay between different modes available in the nanostructure. By recording the backward and forward emitted second-harmonic signals from nanorods with various lengths, we find that the maximum nonlinear signal emitted in the forward and backward directions is not obtained for the same nanorod length. We confirm the experimental results with the help of full-wave computations done with a surface integral equation method. These observations are explained by the multipolar nature of the second-harmonic emission, which emphasizes the role played by the relative phase between the second-harmonic modes. Our findings are of particular importance for the design of plasmonic nanostructures with controllable nonlinear emission and nonlinear plasmonic sensors as well as for the coherent control of harmonic generations in plasmonic nanostructures.


s/97-197.html). 6. Hardwick J. An efficient implementation of nested data parallelism for irregular divide-and-conquer algorithms. Proc 1st Int Workshop on High-Level Programming Models and Supportive Environments, p 105–114, 1996. 7. Jájá J. An introduction to parallel algorithms. Addison–Wesley; 1992. 8. Namajima D, Fujimoto N, Hagihara K. A compilation technique for effective parallelization of divideand-conquer algorithms. Proc IPSJ SIGAL 71-4, p 25–32, 2000. (in Japanese) 9. Snir M, Otto SW, Huss-Lederman S, Walker DW, Dongarra J. MPI: The complete reference. MIT


To explore research status and development trend for Chinese universities of power,we used with CiteSpace software to draw the visual map of research hotspots about Chinese university of power in 1988-2012.It is observed that our university research of power began in the 1990s,there are hot topics that administrative power and academic power, the power of the students and academic freedom and academic management,especially in the research on the academic power and administrative power,and there is few research on the power of the students or others interest groups. An outstanding group of higher education researchers,high-level management personnel,and related research institutions become the main force of university of power research.


The gait feature is non-invasive remote feature and does not require high-resolution images, which has attracted widespread attention and has great potential as a security recognition. As an emerging biological feature, gait recognition still has many challenges, such as the recognition of complex background, perspective change and occlusion. This paper proposes a neural network based on Siamese structure, which takes the gait energy image (GEI) as the input of the network. At the same time, attention mechanism is added to the network, and self-attention is used to establish the connection between the distant pixels so as to better learn the non-local long-distance information. In the training stage, using Multi-Layer Side-Output (MLSO) as a reference, companion loss is added to the intermediate layer to supervise the middle layer. The experiment is carried out on the CASIA-B database, and it is comprehensively compared with the unimproved network and other methods which work well by setting up different training sets and test sets. Experimental data show that the network proposed in this paper has improved the average recognition rate in gait recognition across perspectives.


The present knowledge concerning laryngeal idiopathic amyloidosis, taking into account the various bio-logical and clinical aspects in the light of the latest advances, is reported. The importance of an early diagnosis, which may be histochemical but preferably electron microscopic, is emphasized. It appears indispensable for a therapy which today cannot be otherthan conservative surgery.


G. F. Holmes, a Virginian, was the most original theorist among those ante-bellum proslavery writers who attempted to create a "sociology" sanctioning a paternalistic slave system along Aristotelian lines and directly opposed to nineteenth-century liberalism. An early, if hostile, critic of both Comte's positivism and Spencer's individualism, he later summarized his position in a pioneer textbook, The Science of Society, which appeared in 1883, simultaneously with Ward's Dynamic Sociology.


Open access impacts both the general public's good will and the ability to satisfy the public good that is inherent in creating new scholarship. Although it offers an alternative to the traditional publishing model that makes scholarship freely available digitally without common copyright and licensing restrictions, open access has garnered significant debate.


Suitable for a self-teaching on your own, this title gives explanations of grammatical structures and their correct usage, with exercises and a key.


BACKGROUND
In the motor rehabilitation of individuals with neurological disorders, including cerebral palsy (CP), Neurodevelopmental treatment (NDT) one of the most used approaches worldwide.

OBJECTIVE
To verify muscle activation in NDT handling in individuals with severe CP using electromyography.

METHODS
This was a controlled, cross-sectional, quantitative clinical trial. The individuals were evaluated using electromyography to analyze the muscular activation of the spinal erector, gluteus medius, rectus abdominis and multifidus during different NDT handling. We evaluated 59 individuals: 39 with spastic quadriparesis CP (Gross Motor Function Classification System, level IV-V) and 20 typically-developing individuals (control group). These groups were homogeneous with respect to age and gender.

RESULTS
There was a significant difference in muscle activation of the spinal erector, gluteus medius, rectus abdominis and multifidus in the six NDT handling used in this study: side-sitting for kneeling; supine for lateral decubitus, prone position for lateral decubitus, "sitting on horseback", sitting on the roll, and proprioceptive stimulation sitting on the ball.

CONCLUSION
The results show that all NDT handling analyzed in this study were effective for muscle activation of the spinal erector, gluteus medius, rectus abdominis and multifidus in individuals with severe spastic quadriparetic CP.


Abstract This article describes an Nd:YAG laser altimeter for use on board a spacecraft. The laser altimeter instrument is described along with the specifications. The instrument can be used to provide data of terrain heights as an input to digital terrain models. A discussion of the feasibility of the satellite-borne laser altimeter and safety of the laser radiation is included.


In the modern social product activity,engineer undertakes the environment ethics responsibility is necessity of the realistic summon and the theory logic.Therefore,proposed a brand-new topic to our country engineering course education,namely engineer environment responsibility consciousness education question.Trains engineer and strengthens engineer the environment responsibility consciousness mainly depends on environment ethics education and in practice correct behavior guidance.


Objective To investigate the effects of selenium chitosan on the release of cytokines and nitric oxide(NO) in human skin fibroblasts in vitro. Methods The levels of transforming growth factor-α(TGF-α),TGF-β1,interleukin-1β(IL-β),IL-6,IL-8,tumor necrosis factor(TNF) and NO in the supernatants of cultured fibroblasts containing selenium chitosan 25,50,100,200 and 400 mg·L-1,respectively were assayed.In control group equal volume of media was used instead. Results Compared with control group,the levels of TGF-α,TGF-β1,IL-1β,IL-6,IL-8 and TNF in the supernatants of cultured fibroblasts added with selenium chitosan were significantly higher(P0.05 or P0.01).However,selenium chitosan markedly decreased the level of NO in a dose dependent manner(P0.01). Conclusion Selenium chitosan could promote the proliferation and collagen synthesis of human skin fibroblasts through secreting TGF-α,TGF-β1,IL-1β,IL-6,IL-8,TNF and inhibiting the release of NO.


Different structural models for solid argon clusters with more than 500 atoms, that have been proposed previously on the basis of energy considerations, but whose origin and growth histories are not well understood, are compared with other models that have been devised mainly to overcome these difficulties, at the expense, however, of a smaller binding energy. Diffraction functions have been calculated for a variety of structures and sizes, and are compared with the observed electron‐diffraction patterns obtained by Farges et al. [Adv. Chem. Phys. 70, 45 (1988)]. Since the nonsplitting of the first peak in these patterns up to N∼3000 suggests the absence of the— energetically most favorable— decahedra, and other features reflect an increasing fraction of clusters with— at that size unfavorable— bulklike fcc structure, it seems appropriate to relax the energy criterion and to consider other properties as well, notably the rate of growth. Defect‐fcc clusters, obtained from perfect fcc crystallites by introd...


The economic crisis affected the size and quality of employment in most economic and social activities, but in different proportions. The health care sector faced a lower dynamics of employment diminution, but the personnel flows to better paid jobs continued at a higher rate than before the crisis. The failure of some countries to create quality jobs in the public health system caused the migration of specialists to the private sector or other countries. A factor that intensified the flows was the severe austerity policy in the public sector during the crisis, consisting mainly of layoffs and wage diminution. Such anticrisis measures, in cases like Romania, were uniformly taken for the whole personnel paid from the state budget, without taking into account the lasting deficit in employment (in absolute number, but mainly structurally, by specialties) in fields such as health and education. We intend to present in this paper the main features of the mobility of the medical personnel (focusing on the physician brain drain) and the impact on the human capital and the labour market in Romania. We further identify several political measures to retain specialists in the country of origin and to create quality jobs.


Aimed at the problems of slow check speed and low accuracy in the existing safety helmet wearing detection methods, an improved YOLOXs helemt wearing detection method was proposed. First, to be able to make the model's overall construction lightweight and its size smaller, the YOLOXs backbone feature extraction network CSPdarknet is replaced with MobileNetV2, and the basic convolution procedure is the depthwise separable convolution. Secondly, in order to enrich the network feature information and make full use of the available network capacity, a lightweight ECA attention mechanism is added to the inverted residual structure of MobileNetV2. Finally, through knowledge distillation, the model is fine-tuned to obtain Mbv2E-YOLOXs. The experimental results on the public data set SHWD shows that compared to YOLOXs algorithm, the improved algorithm reduces the amount of model parameters and model calculation by 13% and 18.9% respectively; the average accuracy, safety helmet detection accuracy, and worker head detection accuracy increased by 7.6%, 9.25%, and 5.8% respectively, and the detection speed of the model reaches 60frame/s. Therefore, the improved YOLOXs model has good real-time performance and better accuracy for helmet wearing detection, which can meet the detection needs of practical application scenarios.


Through investigating soil tiny aggregate,the mechanical composition,the bulk density and the natural moisture content in 0-20 cm and 20-40 cm soil layer,effects of L.leucocephala hedgerow on the physical properties on sloping farmland were studied in the purple soil area.Results indicate that under the 10°slope condition,the hedgerow in agricultural plot has more influences on soil tiny aggregate than that of economical plot.In the agricultural plot the hedgerow has remarkable impacts on quality percentage of soil tiny aggregate in grade 0.05~0.02,0.01~0.005,0.005~0.002,0.002 mm respectively in 0-20 cm soil layer;To the economical forest plot it has remarkable impacts on 0.25~0.05 mm soil tiny aggregate in 20-40 cm soil layer;To the agricultural plot the hedgerow has great influence on quality percentage of 0.002 mm soil tiny aggregate.Under the agricultural land use condition,the hedgerow also has great influences on vertical direction distribution of soil tiny aggregate for 10° and 15° gradient plots,effects of the hedgerow on soil tiny aggregate of various grades in 0-20 cm level soil layer are much better than that of 20-40 cm soil layer.The hedgerow in 10° plot has more influences on soil mechanical composition than that of 15° plot.Impacts of hedgerow on soil moisture content and bulk density is not obvious regarding the agricultural and economical plot.It is very obvious that the hedgerow improves soil structure and enhances soil structure performance.


It is inconvenient to collect traffic data from Sydney Coordinated Adaptive Traffic System(SCATS) by using special software.In order to solve this problem,this paper proposes a software solution for data collection system,which uses ITS interface to collect traffic data from SCATS and stores them into SQL Server 2000.Result shows that it can successfully collect traffic data from SCATS,and it is convenient to collect traffic data form the database.


certainly appears as if the authors had in the end become thoroughly disenchanted with their own methodology. Given its results, this is hardly surprising. For a failed search for the unholy grail of predicting gambling behaviour, the reader will have to fork out £8.25. At that price, the odds are that, libraries apart, more copies of this book will be stolen than bought. MICHAEL LEVI University College, Cardiff


The article presents results of research into correlations among academic activeness, cognitive characteristics and academic achievements of primary and secondary school students. It was found that cognitive characteristics and academic activeness have a significant influence on students' academic performance. The largest contribution in both the age groups is that of academic activeness. Effects of academic activeness of primary and secondary school children on variation of cognitive characteristics is also discussed.


The Agent Construction System (ACS) for government investment project is a primary solution for investment system reformation in China mainland. However, ACS has encountered some problems in its implementation. By analyzing the institutional issues in ACS and the contractual structure in Agent Construction Project (ACP), it identified Critical Governance Factors (CGFs) with project governance analysis framework at three levels of institutional design. On the basic of these CGFs, it analyzed the current implementation situation of ACS in some regions and main problems of ACS implementation at three different levels. In addition, the article has presented some institutional innovation methods for those problems in relation to these levels. It can be concluded that the ACS reformation should took these methods into account and formulated more suitable measurements for the sound development of ACS.


A multi-dimension adjustable working platform used to regulate the position and state of instrument features that three arms extending from top of base have guide rod holes, in which guide rod slideswithout sway, the top of guide rod is fixed to rotation mechanism, translation mechanism is between rotation mechanism and platform and is used for rotation regulation by cooperating with axles in rotation mechanism or translation regulation by cooperating with guide track mechanism, three legs extending from bottom of base are equipped with supporter for pitch and deflection regulation, and a leading screw mounted to the center of base is used for height regulation.


Solid oxide fuel cells have been developed for many years and continuous improvement in materials, cell design and manufacturing processes have been made resulting in a high technical standard. But successful commercialisation of traditional SOFC technology has not been achieved so far. In recent years alternative metal-supported SOFC designs (MS-SOFC) have attracted high interest driven by their low materials cost, ruggedness, tolerance to rapid thermal and redox cycling, and manufacturability benefits, showing significant advantages over conventional ceramic cells.

The presentation provides an overview of the metal-supported SOFC developments including manufacturing strategies, materials for cell components and functional layers and technical achievements. The choice of the metal support for cell manufacturing is of eminent importance; requirements and candidate materials are outlined. Advantages of the metal-supported cell concept are emphasized and the different cell designs and manufacturing processes of different developers including both thermal spray and sintering techniques are reported. The current status of development including electrochemical performance data of some MS-SOFC developments is summarized.


performed and body-parts used. During the first month after birth, manipulation by the mouth was dominant, whereas the use of hands was sporadic. Kinds of actions performed were limited. During the second and third months after birth, the palmar hand became dominant in manipulation. The variety of action increased also in this period. From the fourth month on, fingers were used for fine manipulation. Results were also related to the other non-human primates' data on manipulation, indicating that the primate-common modes of manipulation developed first and that those modes characterizing the old world monkeys developed thereafter.


Several diseases can generate diagnostical problems in head and neck region. Diseases produced by Leishmania microorganisms are some of these posible diagnostical situations. Leishmania are obligate intracellular parasites of the reticuloendothelial system of several mammals species; in the female sandfly of genus Phlebotomus is the vector that transmites the disease. The clinical expresion of the diseases depends of the parasit species. This case report is caused by leishmaniasis afecting oral mucosa without afection of others locations. The patient was a midle age female without inmunodepresion situation, she was diagnosticated of oral cavity squamous cell carcinoma. Clinical manifestation, diagnosis and treatment are exposed.


Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste S.C.p.A. is a multidisciplinary international laboratory, specialized in generating high quality synchrotron and free-electron laser light and applying it in materials science. The main assets of the research centre are two advanced light sources, the electron storage ring Elettra and the free-electron laser (FEL) FERMI, continuously (H24) operated supplying light of the selected "colour" and quality to more than 30 experimental stations. In this paper, we are giving an overview on the status of the infrastructure plants devoted to ensuring the operation of Elettra and FERMI machines. We will also analyse the systems that mostly have impacted on the performance of both accelerators and their downtime.


We introduce a new constructive method for establishing lower bounds on convergence rates of periodic homogenization problems associated with divergence type elliptic operators. The construction is applied in two settings. First, we show that solutions to boundary layer problems for divergence type elliptic equations set in halfspaces and with infinitely smooth data, may converge to their corresponding boundary layer tails as slow as one wish depending on the position of the hyperplane. Second, we construct a Dirichlet problem for divergence type elliptic operators set in a bounded domain, and with all data being $C^\infty$-smooth, for which the boundary value homogenization holds with arbitrarily slow speed.


Depletion of abiotic resources is a much disputed impact category in life cycle assessment (LCA). The reason is that the problem can be defined in different ways. Furthermore, within a specified problem definition, many choices can still be made regarding which parameters to include in the characterization model and which data to use. This article gives an overview of the problem definition and the choices that have been made when defining the abiotic depletion potentials (ADPs) for a characterization model for abiotic resource depletion in LCA. Updates of the ADPs since 2002 are also briefly discussed. Finally, some possible new developments of the impact category of abiotic resource depletion are suggested, such as redefining the depletion problem as a dilution problem. This means taking the reserves in the environment and the economy into account in the reserve parameter and using leakage from the economy, instead of extraction rate, as a dilution parameter.


Food restricted lactating rats show a prolonged period of lactational infertility. Previous studies suggest that at least part of this effect is due to prolonged suppression of pulsatile release of luteinizing hormone (LH) that results from the combined effects of high circulating levels of progesterone and some, as yet unidentified, neurohormone. There is converging evidence to suggest that Neuropeptide Y (NPY) acting through its Y5 receptor subtype inhibits the reproductive axis. The hypothesis that Y5 receptor activation prolongs lactational infertility was tested in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, the combined effects of Y5 receptor inactivation and administration of the progesterone receptor blocker RU486 were investigated. In both experiments production of the Y5 receptor was blocked by administration of antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) targeted to the Y5 receptor from days 13-20 postpartum to food restricted (FR) dams. Vehicle-, scrambled ODN- treated FR and ad libitum (AL) fed dams served as controls. In Experiment 2, Y5 antisense and scrambled ODNs were co-administered with RU486 (5mg/kg). Length of lactational diestrous was significantly shorter in FR dams treated with Y5 antisense ODNs than any other FR groups. Maternal weight gain and pup growth was also reduced in Y5 antisense ODN treated dams. All females treated with RU486 displayed a length of lactational infertility similar to that seen in AL dams. Together these results suggest that both progesterone and Y5 receptor inactivation is effective in reducing the length of lactational anovulation, although whether they have direct effects on LH secretion remains to be determined.


Abstract : Access control of information objects is complicated by the need to establish a common set of access requirements, bind those access requirements to the information object, and compute whether or not the criteria are met for allowing access. An information object can be an e-mail, a Word document, a spreadsheet, or a series of sensor readings. In the simplified case, objects that need to be controlled will be stored in an encrypted file. The file will be decrypted when access criteria are verified. With increasing requirements for records management and maintenance of more and more electronic objects, the number of controlled information objects is rising dramatically. In the past key management has been extensive with little efficiency available when encrypting large numbers of information assets. Often, grouping and segmenting objects by type is done to reduce the number of keys needed and hence reduce management of keys. This approach compromises a large number of content files when exploits manage to extract cryptographic keys. Yet maintaining distinct keys for each content object makes key management a serious issue. The proposed process uses a hybrid symmetric/asymmetric keying approach that provides a unique key for each information object while minimizing the key management requirements. This method reduces losses to individual information objects when keys are compromised, but with a greatly reduced key management process that relies on PKI processes.


Strongly correlated fermionic many-body systems are ubiquitous in nature. Their theoretical description poses challenging problems which are further complicated when imbalances in, e.g., the particle numbers of the involved species or their masses are introduced. In this thesis, a number of different approaches is developed and applied in order to obtain predictions for physical observables of such systems that mutually support and confirm each other.

In a first step, analytically well-founded mean-field analyses are carried through. One- and three-dimensional ultracold Fermi gases with spin and mass imbalance as well as Gross-Neveu and NJL-type relativistic models at finite baryon chemical potential are investigated with respect to their analytic properties in general and the occurrence of spontaneous breaking of translational invariance in particular.

Based on these studies, further methods are devised or adapted allowing for investigations also beyond the mean-field approximation. Lattice Monte Carlo simulations with imaginary imbalance parameters are employed to surmount the infamous sign problem and compute the equation of state of the respective unitary Fermi gases. Moreover, in-medium two-body analyses are used to confirm and explain the characteristics of inhomogeneously ordered phases. Finally, functional RG methods are applied to the unitary Fermi gas with spin and mass imbalance. Besides quantitatively competitive predictions for critical temperatures for the superfluid state, strong hints on the stability of inhomogeneous phases with respect to order parameter fluctuations in the regime of large mass imbalance are obtained. Combining the findings from these different theoretical studies suggests the possibility to find such phases in experiments presently in preparation.


The linearization curve generation is an important step in printer color characterization. The typical purpose of the linearization curves in conventional four ink printing is to compensate for dot overlapping and dot size variations and therefore to accommodate the non-linearity of the printing process. In CcMmYK "photo" printing, the introduction of light cyan and magenta inks presents new challenges for printer color characterization and linearization. In this paper we propose an alternative architecture for CcMmYK printer image processing in which the linearization curves also take responsibility for the separation of the light /dark inks. We address the importance of linearization, and propose strategies for how to best take advantage of the additional inks. The proposed methods are confirmed by experimental results.


Recent surging demands for larger (>50") TVs rapidly driving display processing technologies toward bigger substrate sizes up to 10m2 range. Meanwhile, high performance displays (OLED TV, iPad, iMac and 4K monitors...) have stretched a-Si mobility (<1), and metal-oxide semiconductors such as Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide (IGZO) have emerged as the preferred TFT solution for advanced displays 7" to 70"+, with advantage of high TFT mobility 10~65 m/(V·s), extremely low Ioff, low Vth, few masks and high manufacturing yield. Applied Materials has recently made key technical advances in AKT Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) equipment enabling super large substrate PECVD processing, Key AKT PECVD progresses solving large area challenges includes higher plasma power handling (up to 40kW), plasma confinement and arcing prevention, plasma distribution engineering, gas flow distribution engineering, large and thin glass handling, and ultimately deposition thickness uniformity control over substrate ~10m2. In addition, AKT has recently developed large area MOx PECVD solution packages for Gen 8.5 (2500mm x 2200mm) and beyond, enabling reliable manufacturing of IGZO metal-oxide TFTs in major Fabs worldwide driving most advanced LCD and OLED TVs, monitors and tablets. AKT's MOx PECVD technology produces reliable large area manufacturing of high quality low Hydrogen SiOx dielectrics serving as critical gate insulator, etch-stop, buffer layer, interlayer dielectrics, or passivation layers, in particular those directly interfacing IGZO semiconducting layer very sensitive to Hydrogen, moisture and temperature. Gas flow distribution and plasma distribution has been particularly optimized for excellent uniformity across large glass substrates for film thickness and property for both SiOx and SiNx films using the same chamber. Applied Materials AKT PECVD equipment has recently established global leadership in large area PECVD processing technology in producing core TFT layers powering >85% LCD TVs in the world, supported recent starting of over a dozen largest TV factories worldwide Gen 8.5 and above, in particular enabled >95% of advanced IGZO metal-oxide TFT display products including all latest OLED TVs, Apple iPads, iMac 5K or 4K displays, Microsoft Surface Pro 4, as well as major brand 4K or 8K monitors.


Design of a broadband center-fed single-layer reflectarray antenna is presented, in this paper. The elements of the reflectarray, are circular patches and rings. By optimizing the element, more than 600 degrees linear phase range is achieved at center frequency (18.5GHz). The maximum gain of this antenna is 30.8 dB with a 1-dB bandwidth of 14.6% and 3-dB bandwidth of 25%.


Effective communication within a multicultural society necessitates an understanding of how people's values might vary according to their cultural background and immigration history. Etic approaches to the study of culture have indicated that national cultures are differentiated on the dimension of power-distance. Power-distance refers to the degree of inequality or hierarchy that people believe to be appropriate in societal and organisational authority structures. Recently, researchers have begun to investigate power-distance at an individual level. However, psychologists have not yet investigated systematic variation in power-distance within multicultural communities. This study examined whether power-distance varies within Australian society according to race/ethnicity. Based on previous research, we hypothesised that systematic variation in power-distance values would emerge within a university sample surveyed in Sydney, Australia. Results indicated that participants' power-distance values varied across ethnic groups, but did not always correspond with power-distance indices of participants' reported racial/ethnic backgrounds, qualified by length of residence in Australia. The power-distance variations described in this paper are discussed in terms of their implications for multicultural communities, and in particular, the way that people of different ethnic backgrounds within Australian society comprehend and evaluate their interactions with authority figures, such as employers.


This paper analyses the subgame perfect Nash equilibrium of a two-stage price-setting duopoly. The demand functions are classified into four cases in terms of the goods' relevance and strategic relevance between two firms. All four cases are correlated with two opposite prior commitments that generate kinks in the reaction curve. This paper assumes that only one firm can execute the prior commitments. In the model, we find that the firm can increase its payoff with one of the prior commitments in each of the four cases. We also find that our equilibrium outcomes are different from those of Matsumura (1998) in this Journal, and that they occur at the Stackelberg point in all four cases if, and only if, the firm's reaction curves shift to the Stackelberg point as a result of the prior commitments. As a consequence, the effectiveness of strategic commitments is proved. Copyright 2000 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University of South Australia