Moose Alces alces suffering from Moose Wasting Syndrome (MWS) have been observed in Sweden since 1985. In this study a population characterisation of MWS is done based on moose delivered to the National Veterinary Institute of Sweden during 1985–1989, public reports of non-traumatic moose deaths during 1991–1998, and radio-collared moose in one high- and one low-report frequency area. Moose suffering from MWS have been observed nationwide, but deaths from non-traumatic causes, including MWS, are most frequently reported from the county of Älvsborg. Nationwide reports of non-traumatic deaths peaked in 1992, but no peak was observed in Älvsborg. We suspect that the temporal as well as the spatial patterns observed were largely due to information about the MWS by the media, research activities and local concern. The age-specific mortality pattern of non-traumatic deaths did not differ, in either sex, between one high- and one low-report frequency area. The risk of dying from non-traumatic causes increased with moose age. Reports of female moose either suffering from MWS or having died from other non-traumatic causes largely outnumbered reports of males (1,349 and 387, respectively). Our results of age-specific risks suggest, however, that females are less vulnerable to non-traumatic mortality than males. The discrepancy between report frequencies and death risks is explained by the fact that the population sex ratio is female-biased (by sport harvest), and few males reach the age at which the risk of dying from non-traumatic causes increases. In the area from which most of the reports came the non-age-specific yearly risk of dying from non-traumatic causes, including MWS, was estimated to be 3.5% for females and 3.0% for males. Because there are other non-traumatic causes of death, the risk of dying from MWS exclusively is lower than our risk estimates indicate. There is no immediate risk of local extinction of moose due to MWS, as we estimate that the population would increase if culling was stopped.


Immunoproteasome subunit β5i regulates cardiac hypertrophy. Pathological cardiac hypertrophy eventually leads to heart failure without adequate treatment. The immunoproteasome is an inducible form of the proteasome that is intimately involved in inflammatory diseases. Here, we found that the expression and activity of immunoproteasome catalytic subunit β5i were significantly up-regulated in angiotensin II (Ang II)–treated cardiomyocytes and in the hypertrophic hearts. Knockout of β5i in cardiomyocytes and mice markedly attenuated the hypertrophic response, and this effect was aggravated by β5i overexpression in cardiomyocytes and transgenic mice. Mechanistically, β5i interacted with and promoted ATG5 degradation thereby leading to inhibition of autophagy and cardiac hypertrophy. Further, knockdown of ATG5 or inhibition of autophagy reversed the β5i knockout-mediated reduction of cardiomyocyte hypertrophy induced by Ang II or pressure overload. Together, this study identifies a novel role for β5i in the regulation of cardiac hypertrophy. The inhibition of β5i activity may provide a new therapeutic approach for hypertrophic diseases.


BACKGROUND
Environmental temperatures in the fresh food industry vary from 0°C to 10°C, and go below -20°C for the frozen food industry, representing risk for the health and safety of workers involved.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this work was to evaluate the cold thermal stress risks for workers working in a frozen food industry.

METHODS
A total of 27 acclimatized workers (13 male and 14 female) participated in a study which was conducted during 11 working days. The thermal sensation questionnaire and the cold work health questionnaire (CWHQ) were applied to all participants. Additionally, 4 workers were chosen to be fully monitored with a thermometer telemetry capsule for measuring the intra-abdominal temperature and 8 skin temperature sensors.

RESULTS
The lowest recorded hand temperature was 14.09°C, lowest forehead 18.55°C, mean skin temperature had variations of 1.10 to 3.20°C along the working period. Highest and most frequent fluctuations were found in the hand and forehead skin temperatures, small changes were found in mean skin temperature.

CONCLUSIONS
Answers to the CWHQ increase concern on clinical forms of "a frigore", and in two cases the mean body temperature decreased below 35.0°C, which is defined in the current literature as a mild form of hypothermia.


Bai Xian-yong is a rather influential writer. His works establishes his identity in the literary world of Taiwan for its unique perspective in narrating and a mixed way of expression of both the east and the west. The author of this paper tries to interpret his late works in a favorable way so as to get a higher degree of understanding the connotation of the works and meanwhile have a further study of the writer.


A standing-wave envelope detection technique is applied to detect breath and heart-beat rates. The breath and heart-beat periodic motions modulate the envelope of received RF standing-wave waveform in addition to the well-known Doppler phase modulation of the RF carrier. Therefore, a new vital signal radar is developed for detecting the breath and heart-beat rates and compared with the conventional Doppler radar.


Embodying users through avatars based on motion tracking and reconstruction is an ongoing challenge for VR application developers. High quality VR systems use full-body tracking or inverse kinematics to reconstruct the motion of the lower extremities and control the avatar animation. Mobile systems are limited to the motion sensing of head-mounted displays (HMDs) and typically cannot offer this.We propose an approach to reconstruct gait motions from a single head-mounted accelerometer. We train our models to map head motions to corresponding ground truth gait phases. To reconstruct leg motion, the models predict gait phases to trigger equivalent synthetic animations. We designed four models: a threshold-based, a correlation-based, a Support Vector Machine (SVM) -based and a bidirectional long-term short-term memory (BLSTM) -based model. Our experiments show that, while the BLSTM approach is the most accurate, only the correlation approach runs on a mobile VR system in real time with sufficient accuracy. Our user study with 21 test subjects examined the effects of our approach on simulator sickness and showed significantly less negative effects on disorientation.


F R COPLESTON'S recent volume on mediaeval philosophy sums up the Bonaventurian concept of creation in the following way; 'The eternity of the world is impossible and God could not have created it from eternity: if it is created, then time necessarily had a beginning' (p. 263). Similarly, according to Dr Hawkins, in his Sketch ef Mediaeval Philosopo/, -P: 67, St Bonaventure 'maintains that it can be established that all being is from God, and that, if this is so, it follows very' c1ear!Jr that the world had a beqinninp", (Italics mine throughout this article.) These two quotations are given as samples of what can be found in practically all books that touch upon the question: they but reproduce the usual way of understanding St Bonaventure's doctrine on creation. It is, then, startling enough to contrast them with the following text of St Bonaventure himself: 'A divine action is to be considered from two points of view, either as taking place in God, or as achieving something outside. It follows that the will of God is the proximate and immediate cause of the production of things from the standpoint of the divine nature and intention and of the action that takes place in God; but not from the standpoint of its external achievement, unless it be at a free!Jr chosen time. The divine will is both almighty and utterly free. Wherefore, although from all eternity it had decided to make the world, nevertheless it did not want the world to be made from all eternity, but only "in time". Hence, the world was made "in time", but the divine will had not changed. The result


Project management within the automotive production in specific departments is still done separately and does not interact with engineering process. Our work aims on providing flexible data insights on collaboration tasks within such environments. We apply semantic technologies RDF, OWL and SPARQL with a specific domain related ontology PROTARES (PROject TAsks RESources) to interlink, describe and query domain knowledge. As proof of concept we are introducing an experimental visualisation interface called TaskRadar. Our application resides on domain ontology and allows knowledge based browsing and visualisation of tasks in development process. With this example we want to show, how semantically driven customized views can support monitoring and reflection as well as decision-making within the early phases of the automotive product lifecycle.


Iron deficiency is a major worldwide health problem. There is recent evidence that anemia is the last manifestation of the syndrome. Advances in outlining the physiology of iron deficiency have been made; gaps remain in the current understanding. While oral iron supplement remains the mainstay, some indications for intravenous (IV) administration have developed. In this review, we will highlight the indications and prerequisites of IV iron therapy, dosage, safety, and method of administration.


Hydrophilic modification with polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) increases the biocompatibility profile of synthetic dialysis membranes. However, PVP may be eluted into the patient's blood, which has been discussed as a possible cause for adverse reactions rarely occurring with synthetic membranes. We investigated the content of PVP and its elution from the blood‐side surface from commercially available dialyzers, including the novel FX CorAL, with PVP‐enriched and α‐tocopherol‐stabilized membrane, and link the results to the level of platelet loss during dialysis as a maker of biocompatibility.


This paper reviews findings from empirical researches on happiness and evaluates the extent to which these findings can be synthesized to guide economic policy. Unlike other studies on the similar topic, this paper focuses on the connections between empirical findings, the way they are interpreted, and the policies that have been recommended. From the review, it can be concluded that despite sound arguments calling for government involvement, more information is needed to determine the appropriate policy to improve the happiness of the society. Directions for future empirical researches are therefore suggested.


Aquaria must have regulations regarding the intensity levels of anthropogenic noise that make their way into their captive belugas' tank, thus affecting the animals' ability to hear and vocalize naturally. My research focuses on the sound transmission across the acrylic and cement boundary that separates the beluga tank from the ballroom in the Georgia Aquarium. This ballroom hosts many social events which are often accompanied by high levels of noise that cross the barrier into the animal enclosure. I focus on the intensity range of 90‐100dBA and experiment with a variety of frequencies, specifically those that are included in the range of beluga hearing. Though the data will be specific to the Georgia Aquarium, the results will apply to all aquaria that keep beluga whales, as high intensity sound will always travel through the exhibit boundaries and affect the animals living on the other side.


Abstract Terebratella sanguinea and T. incollSpicua have been differentiabed on foramen position and ornament. Further comparison shows that the valves of T. sanguinea are more strongly curved than those of T. inconspicua, a condition resulting in a longer pedicile, a larger beak, and hinge plates with greater elevation. The relationship between hinge plate ccndition and shell curvature is evident in other terebratellid genera.


The mathematical model of the toggle clamping unit of the hydraulic stress machine was gotten based on the research of a real hydraulic stress machine.By regarding the amplification on clamping force,stroke ratio and efficiency coefficient as the object,the external penalty function method was used for optimizing design of the toggle clamping unit.The optimal results were simulated by SolidWorks software.The results show that it works well without any interference,the optimizing design of the toggle clamping unit is feasible and reasonable,and it is of great importance for the engineering design application.


PURPOSE: A head of an inkjet printer is provided to integrally form electrode and resistant thermal body of a heating unit with same material and to improve productivity by reducing process. CONSTITUTION: A head for an inkjet printer comprises a film electrode layer(220) plied on a silicon base plate(210) to form an ink passage by installing a recessed groove pattern; an ink chamber barrier(230) installed on the electrode layer to form a heating unit(221) by exposing a floor of the recessed groove; a nozzle plate(240) mounted on the ink chamber barrier; a nozzle hole(241) mounted on the nozzle plate; an ink chamber(250) mounted on a middle portion of the ink chamber barrier; and an electrode unit(222) installed on the film electrode layer. The ink chamber is formed by removing an upper portion of the heating unit. The heating unit increases resistance by reducing section to be operated as a thermal heater. The heating unit is heated by applying power into the electrode unit of the electrode layer.


Blended communities represent innovative educational contexts. By merging virtual and real interactive environments, they trigger specific learning and psychosocial processes based on a multilayered sense of belonging of the group's members. Our research work focuses on the psychosocial dynamics of participation and identity produced by the double interactive context of blended communities. In order to identify different participation trajectories and identity positionings of the group members, we used a qualitative version of Social Network Analysis to examine the interactions of two blended learning communities. The results show that the combination of interactive environments generates participation strategies in which members can choose distinctive trajectories and shape their original identity positionings.


In Zeche Zollverein near Essen in the Ruhr Area, the old plants are rebuilt as culture & recreation places such as museum, restaurant and theater and so on, they get the rebirth. The industrial feel was conserved, and the buildings continue the history with immitting of new blood at the mean time. Symbiosis of old and new building proposed new ideas.


OBJECTIVE
To develop a three-dimensional porous film of human hair keratin (HHK)-collagen sponge complex for use as a dermal substitute.

METHODS
The three components F, B, and Z derived from healthy human hair were weaved into a meshwork and integrated with purified soluble type I collagen extracted from bovine tendons to prepare a highly porous film with vacuum freeze-drying followed by secondary cross-linking with glutaraldehyde. The film was grafted beneath the dorsal skin in 21 SD rats (experimental group), with simple collagen sponge serving as the negative control. The rats receiving surgical operation but without graft served as the blank control. The graft and its surrounding tissue were harvested on days 3, 7 and at weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 after implantation for evaluation of tissue compatibility, vascularization and degradation.

RESULTS
The prepared collagen sponge film was semitransparent and porous. Three to 7 days after grafting, inflammatory reaction was relieved gradually, and several fibroblasts and blood vessels were found adherent to the grafts in the experimental groups. At week 4, the wounds healed in the experimental groups, and the fibroblasts were actively secreting collagen and the film degraded obviously with the appearance of elastic fibers. At weeks 6 and 8, new collagen fibers thickened and assumed regular arrangement, and the collagen sponge films disappeared completely. In the control groups, the changes were less obvious and total HHK degradation occurred till week 12.

CONCLUSION
The degradable and absorbable HHK-collagen sponge film has relatively satisfactory tissue compatibility and can accelerate wound healing by stimulating cell proliferation and vascularization, showing the potential as an optimal dermal substitute.


Two types of intercalated and exfoliated silicate platelets were allowed to disperse in phenol-cured epoxy matrixes. The different dispersing forms of these silicate platelets in the composites may alter their hardness, transparency, thermal stability, and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE). In particular, the presence of silicate platelets in the epoxy substantially enhances the hardness of the pristine epoxy from 2 to 6 H by loading only 0.5 wt % of the exfoliated platelets but only to 4 H hardness by loading the intercalated form (pristine 58 A d spacing). Analyses by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), differential scanning calorimetry, thermal mechanics, and thermal gravimetry were performed to characterize these silicate-added epoxies. Physical properties including CTE and Tg were correlated with the silicate platelet dispersion in a matrix revealed by the TEM observations.


The construction of the embankment dams involves many complex factors that make the design and implementation of these massive structures one of the most important projects in geotechnical engineering. During the construction phase and the operation of the embankment dams, various types of stresses are exposed, including the stresses caused by the dam settlement and the stresses of the necessary considerations, and the safety plan is implemented. Changing variables in terrestrial environments such as calculating the amount of water loss in the dam, controlling critical output gradients, graphical drawing of intensity, magnitude, and direction of movement of the dam body or foundation, calculating the type and dimensions of drainage systems and water was performed by software Plaxis2D and compared the exact instrument results. In this study, static analysis of soral embankment dam is performed using hardening soil model (HS), which is an elastoplastic model. The results of the research show that the maximum total of vertical stress and effective stress at the end of the construction of dam structures is equal to 1480 and 977 kPa and the maximum total of vertical stress and effective stress in the steady-state leakage stage is equal to 1150 and 887 kPa, which will occur on a rocky bed in the core area. The vertical stress curves indicate changes in the stress values in the transition from the upstream pebble shell to the core and the core to the filter and the downstream pebble shell. The reason for this is the difference between the hardness of the deformation (elastic modulus) in the core and filters and shell areas. The areas with greater hardness have less settlement than softer areas, leading to unequal settlement between the two areas. The consolidation analysis has shown that the proposed timeline is suitable for construction (20 cm thick embankment layers per day) and that the pore pressure values are such that there is no sustainability problem for the dam. In general, the results of static analysis confirm the proper behavior of the dam structure for post-construction conditions and stable leakage conditions. The displacement and stresses and the permeable water pressure are acceptable and ensure the stability of the dam.


Photothermal therapies have shown promise for treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma when they can be applied selectively, but off‐target heating can frustrate treatment outcomes. Improved strategies leveraging selective binding and localized heating are possible with precision medical approaches such as functionalized gold nanoparticles, but careful control of optical dosage and thermal generation would be imperative. However, the literature review revealed many groups assume liver properties for pancreas tissue or rely on insufficiently rigorous characterization studies.


Neural variational inference-based topic modeling has gained great success in mining abstract topics from documents. However, these topic models usually mainly focus on optimizing the topic proportions for documents, while the quality and the internal construction of topics are usually neglected. Specifically, these models lack the guarantee that semantically related words are supposed to be assigned to the same topic and are difficult to ensure the interpretability of topics. Moreover, many topical words recur frequently in the top words of different topics, which makes the learned topics semantically redundant and similar, and of little significance for further study. To solve the above problems, we propose a novel neural topic model called Neural Variational Gaussian Mixture Topic Model (NVGMTM). We use Gaussian distribution to depict the semantic relevance between words in the topics. Each topic in NVGMTM is considered as a multivariate Gaussian distribution over words in the word-embedding space. Thus, semantically related words share similar probabilities in each topic, which makes the topics more coherent and interpretable. Experimental results on two public corpora show the proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art baselines.


The aim of this research is to determine the correlation between organizational commitment and organizational culture with Organizational Citizenship Behavior at the Santo Nicholas School Medan. The hypotheses propose that there is a positive and significant correlation between organizational commitment and organizational culture with Organizational Citizenship Behavior on educators and education staff at the Santo Nicholas School Medan. The population in this research are 40 people. The sampling technique is total sampling. Data analysis is using multiple regression analysis. Research results are: 1. There is a significant correlation between organizational commitment and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. This is indicated by the coefficient value of 0.554 with the value of sig. 0.000 < 0.05 and Ha statement is accepted with correlation is enough. 2. There is a significant correlation between organizational culture and Organizational Citizenship Behavior. This is indicated by the coefficient value of 0.535 with the value of sig. 0.000 < 0.05 and Ha statement is accepted with correlation is enough. 3. There is a significant correlation between organizational commitment and organizational culture with Organizational Citizenship Behavior. This is indicated by the value of coefficient R = 0.628 with a value of sig. 0.000 < 0.05 and the Ha statement is accepted with correlation is strong. The total effective contribution of organizational commitment and organizational culture with Organizational Citizenship Behavior is 36.7% and it stated to be low.


We present a Logspace Approximation Scheme (LSAS), i.e. an approximation algorithm for maximum matching in planar graphs (not necessarily bipartite) that achieves an approximation ratio arbitrarily close to one, using only logarithmic space. This deviates from the well known Baker's approach for approximation in planar graphs by avoiding the use of distance computation - which is not known to be in Logspace. Our algorithm actually works for any "recursively sparse" graph class which contains a linear size matching and also for certain other classes like bounded genus graphs.

The scheme is based on an LSAS in bounded degree graphs which are not known to be amenable to Baker's method. We solve the bounded degree case by parallel augmentation of short augmenting paths. Finding a large number of such disjoint paths can, in turn, be reduced to finding a large independent set in a bounded degree graph. The bounded degree assumption allows us to obtain a Logspace algorithm.


Physico-chemical characterisation and fertility rating of surface soils (0-15 cm) was studied in 130 representative samples of different locations from maize growing areas from hilly zone of Shivamoga district of Karnataka.The soils were sandy loam to sandy clay loam in texture with bulk density varying from 1.43 to 1.49 Mg m-3. The study revealed that the majority of the soils were medium to highly acidic with non-saline nature and high in organic carbon status. The available nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium were low in fertility status. The exchangeable calcium and magnesium contents were marginal to adequate and varied from 2.10 to 6.90 cmol (p+) kg-1 and 0.50 to 3.30 cmol (p+) kg-1, respectively. The available sulphur ranged from 6.25 to 24.86 ppm. The soils were comparatively low to high in iron and manganese contents and were low in copper,zinc and boron contents. Hence, the nutrient management of maize growing soils plays an important role in maintaining the soil fertility and high productivity in hilly zone of Karnataka.


Objective To evaluate the e ff ects of long-term tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibition on the risk and age at onset of Parkinson disease (PD), we performed a 2-sample Mendelian randomization study using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics.


As David Burchell has shown in this issue of the journal, neoAristotielian moral philosophy constructs its conception of civic virtue and civil duties using a unified and unifying moral anthropology.' The citizen is conceived in tenns of "man's" moral nature which, because it is incomplete, requires participation in the state to reach its full perfection. This construction thus establishes a reciprocal relation between the telos of human completion and the exercise of political governance, thereby making civil sovereignty morally conditional on the realisation of this telos. In the hands of Alasdair MacIntyre, this results in a political philosophy that extols an integrated exercise of the virtues and duties, denounces the partitioning of these into distinct spheres of life as a loss of full humanity, and conceives of politics in terms of self-realising participation in a moral community. Burchell also notes that several scholars have questioned the accuracy of MacIntyre's attempt to locate this conception of politics and citizenship in the ancient Polis, and Burchell's essay itself makes an important contribution to this questioning. In this paper I find a more recent and less noble origin for this kind of moral and political communitarianism, and show that the partitioning of duties so vehemently decried by modem moral philosophy played a central role in the emergence of religious toleration in early-modem Germany.


ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Here I stand with my piccolo but the orchestra plays much more sweetly… My thanks is humbly offered: • To my committee – Tom, Javed, Curt, and Marty, who have guided me through the years leading up to this process and through this long, messy labor. Like midwives everywhere, I made the problems and you were there to help me push, 'though you rarely got more than cursing for your efforts. • To Mike for many moments of calm guidance. Your words helped me learn to be a student and a scholar. • To Bill and Bob, who went there first. • To Gene, for two very well timed and well placed boots. • To Sasha, who got me started on the right track. • To Rob, for wicked humor and deep understanding. I miss you. • To Lee, for understanding my ramblings and making these things work. • To Harvi for starting me out and Javed for helping me understand and continually sharing insights while keeping me going. • To Tom, for friendship, guidance, too many books, and many hours of wonderful chats – I guess you finally got me hooked on this scholarship thing. • Dr. Ajit Mukherjee – for guiding me through the statistics and accomplishing the impossible – helping me understand what the statistics say. • To William Cooper for an idea too long kept waiting. • To Mom and Dad, for continued love, support, guidance, and the belief that I could do this, even when I doubted it. You each made this possible. • To Susan, who has been through so much for so many years…with great love. There ARE a million things to be – aren't there? • And finally, to Paul, who came all the way to Indiana for no good reason except so we could stay together…who was there through the tensions, fears, frustrations, and silences with your quiet, solid, love. You have been entirely patient with me & incredibly good. ..I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. S. Learning objects have stirred great controversy in the educational community over the past few years. Some embrace the idea as a new wave in education, allowing customization of instruction on the fly. Others flatly reject the concept of objects. If learning is constructed (either internally or socially), then the idea of objectified learning contradicts over …


This study attempts to construe the Appraisal System of Jokowi's speech at the APEC CEO Summit on 10 November 2014 in Beijing China. The analysis focused on Engagement, Attitude, and Graduation systems of the speech. The data were analyzed using the Appraisal theory proposed by Martin and White (2005), and the method used is descriptive which provides a detailed profile of an event, condition or situation using either quantitative, qualitative or a combination of methods. The results revealed that the most dominant Appraisal device was Attitude system, and Jokowi positioned himself at the same level as the participants of the APEC conference who were mostly the top leaders in their countries. The readers of the speech text are positioned as the ones who accept Jokowi's assessment about the infrastructure's conditions in Indonesia and what he plans to do to improve that conditions. Key words: Appraisal System, Engagement, Attitude, Graduati


This article is a
literature review on institutional environment and technology innovation. The
author discusses the origin and classification of the institutional
environment, has a through understanding of the institutional environment, and
examines studies about institutional environment and technology innovation from
different perspectives to reach some constructive suggestions to better promote
technology innovation.


The article deals with the genesis and definition of «genocide» in international and Russian law and the legitimacy of its use for qualification the Georgian aggression against South Ossetia.


Public space has been a defining feature of modern homosexual subcultures. Like most western cultures, Queensland outlawed sex between men during the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century; the local scientific community considered homosexuals as perverse and mentally-ill. But despite this opprobrium, certain men enacted public codes and behaviours as part of their identity, using them to attract likeminded others. At the turn of the nineteenth century, these markers began to coalesce; creating the beginnings of urban male subculture and informing a common sense of self. Patterns in Brisbane were paralleled, in part, by developments in rural areas and small towns with travel between the city and country diffusing shared ideas and experiences. Only the rich could afford their own privacy, and this helps explain why most of the remaining court evidence appears to be the domain of the working classes. The records reveal that 116 definitive charges of male-only sex appear in the courts between 1890 and 1914.


Sorption and diffusion of some aldehydes and ketones into interpenetrating polymer networks (IPNs) of polyurethane-polystyrene (PU-PS) have been investigated in the temperature interval of 25-60°C. Transport data were found to be affected by the nature of the interacting solvent molecule rather than its size. The diffusion coefficient of ketones range from 9.2 x 10 -8 to 645 x 10 -8 cm 2 /s and for aldehyde from 11.5 x 10 -8 to 154.5 x 10 -8 cm 2 /s. For all solvents, the polymer remained intact. From the temperature dependence of sorption data, the Arrhenius activation parameter and the thermodynamic parameter, such as entropy and enthalpy for the process of equilibrium sorption, have been estimated.


Abstract:This study investigates the effects of establishment of a marine reserve on the coral reef fish communities at Mayotte Island, Western Indian Ocean, after three years of protection. Both total species richness and global abundance did not differ significantly between protected and non-protected areas. Nevertheless, there were significant differences for numerous families and species. Most of the big carnivorous fishes (Serranidae, Lutjanidae, Lethrinidae) were more diverse and more abundant in the marine reserve. Conversely, other fishes, mainly in the families Pomacentridae, Scaridae and Acanthuridae, presented the opposite pattern. The mean biomass of commercial fish species was significantly higher in the reserve (202 g.m-2) than in non-protected areas (79 g.m-2). This pattern was also evident for carnivorous fishes, such as Epinephelus microdon, and semi-pelagic fishes, such as Caesionidae. In contrast, other commercial species, such as Scarus caudovittatus and Acanthurus nigricauda had highe...


Development projects are a core element of Software Engineering education because they help students to put theoretical knowledge in practice. As in real practice, retrospective reflection workshops can help to improve learning outcomes by having students re-evaluate their project experiences and relate them to core challenges of Software Engineering project work. One of the challenges connected to reflection workshops in SE education is related to the limited experience of students and the consequent lack of input that they can bring into the reflection process to complement the specific experience of the project on which they reflect upon. In this paper we propose the use of reflection workshops organized with participants from different project teams, e.g. cross-team reflection workshops, in order to offer opportunities to learn from experiences made in other projects, increasing the breadth of input to the reflection process. Based on a case study from a Software Engineering project course this paper addresses the particular benefits of cross-team reflection workshops. We outline what we see as important considerations through a set of lessons learned about the workshops.


Objectives\ To prepare nylestriol implant and investigate its release characteristics in vivo and in vitro in order to provide a new choice for estrogen replacement therapy(ERT) of postmenopausal osteoporosis. Methods\ Nylestriol implants in the form of Norplant implants were prepared.Their release system in vitro and method of reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography(RP\|HPLC) for the determination of release quantities in vitro were established. At the same time, the release quantities of nylestriol implants in SD rats were computed according to the residual drug in the implants.Finally,the relations of accumulative release quantities of nylestriol implants in vivo and in vitro and release time were analyzed by linear regression analysis;in addition,release curve in vitro and accumulating release quantities\|time(Q\|t) curve in vivo and in vitro were plotted. Results\ The release quantities of nylestriol implant were greater in the first week,then kept steady.The linear correlation of accumulative release quantities(Q\|μg) in vitro with release time(t\|day) was high(r=0\^996,P=\^000),and the average release quantity in vitro was 33\^0566 μg/day·rod.The linear correlation of accumulative release quantities(Q\|mg) in vivo with release time(t\|month) was also good(r=0 985,P=0\^015),and the average release quantity in vivo was 19\^65 μg/day·rod. Conclusion\ (1)Nylestriol implants have blast effects in the first week of release in vitro, and then tend to be in line with zero dynamic release;and their release in vivo in SD rats also conforms to zero clynamic release,the implants being long\|acting and release\|controlled.(2)Periodic or continuous addition of progestin to nylestriol implant provides a new choice for ERT if needed for a long time.\;


The adult butterflies were collected from 28 different localities from three districts of Poonch Division of Azad Kashmir. The localities visited were ten from district Bagh, ten from district Poonch, and eight from district Sudhnoti, throughout the summer season (April to October) from 1998 to 2001. A total of 32 species belonging to 3 families (5 Sub-Families), under 15 genera were identified from 28 localities. Out of these 32 species, 27 species in district Bagh, 28 species in district Poonch and 19 species in district Sudhnoti were identified. Relative abundance was calculated by using Maria's method. Diversity was calculated by using Shannon-Wiener's diversity index and Simpson's index. Richness was calculated by Margalef's and Menhinick's Indices and evenness was calculated by Shannon-Wiener's Equitability Index, Pielou's index and Nakamuras's RI index. The calculated values showed the lowest diversity from Nammanpura (Bagh), Topa and Paniola (Poonch), Palandari city (Sudhnoti), and the highest values of diversity indices were calculated from Sudhan Gali and Mongbajri (Bagh), Khaigalah (Poonch), and Azad Pattan (Sudhnoti), The fauna of the area under study in not well documented and this study is first attempt to explore the biodiversity of butterflies in the area and it will serve as a base line study of changes in the biodiversity of butterflies in future.


Background: One of the major adverse effects of maternal ethanol consumption is intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR). Previous studies demonstrated that ethanol-induced IUGR is mediated by impaired placentation. Chronic gestational ethanol exposure reduces trophoblastic cell motility and invasiveness through inhibition of insulin/IGF signaling leading to impaired vascular transformation at the implantation site. Furthermore, ethanol reduces the number of secondary giant cells that mediate vascular invasion in rat placenta. However, the degree to which ethanol inhibits progenitor cell survival and differentiation is not known.
Study Design: To determine the effects of ethanol exposure on trophoblastic cell resilience, pregnant Long Evans rats were fed isocaloric liquid diets containing 0% or 8.2% (v/v) ethanol. The diets were initiated at different embryonic days (E) corresponding to stem cell activation (E6), appearance of secondary trophoblast giant cells (E10), accumulation of glycogen cells (E14), and prior to (E15) and after (E16) trophoblast invasion of the implantation site. Pups were harvested on E19 to evaluate growth parameters. Placental tissue was used for histological, immunohistochemical, and molecular studies.
Results: Severity of fetal growth impairment correlated with early ethanol exposures (E6, E10). Vascular transformation was inhibited by ethanol with more profound effects in earlier exposure groups. Correspondingly, invasive trophoblastic cells and their precursor secondary giant cells were reduced in ethanol groups and degree of reduction was increased by earlier exposures. The mRNA expression levels of genes encoding stem cell, trophoblast giant cell, and invasive trophoblast were significantly reduced by ethanol in accordance with timing of their activity.
Conclusion: Gestational ethanol exposure impairs placentation by reducing progenitor cells and compromising trophoblast invasion.


The indexes to the journals of the American Jewish Historical Society are reviewed from the perspective of recent indexing standards. The significance of the journals is great, and they clearly merited indexing, but there are many flaws in the execution of the project. Inconsistency of coverage, poor vocabulary control, a lack of continuation headings, and imprecise filing are among the problems noted. The detailed indexing is praiseworthy, and these tools should be useful to librarians and researchers. References to recent indexing manuals and standards are provided.


CASE PRESENTATION A 59-year-old woman presented with left shoulder pain and stiffness of 12 months' duration. She had previously undergone an anatomic left total shoulder arthroplasty four years ago for avascular necrosis of the humeral head with advanced secondary glenohumeral osteoarthritis. The patient had actively participated in a postoperative rehabilitation programme, with good pain relief and restoration of function of the left shoulder. However, over a period of 12 months prior to the current clinical presentation, the patient began to experience increasing left shoulder pain and stiffness, which limited her activities of daily living. A physical examination revealed significant reduction in motion of the left shoulder, which included limitation of active forward flexion of about 40°. There was also difficulty in initiating shoulder abduction. Radiographic (Fig. 1a) and arthrographic (Fig. 1b) assessments of the left shoulder were performed. These were followed by dual-energy computed tomography (DECT) of the left shoulder, which was performed without intravenous contrast immediately following the left shoulder arthrogram (Figs. 1c & d). What do these images demonstrate? What is the diagnosis? Fig. 1 Anteroposterior (a) radiograph and (b) fluoroscopic arthrogram image of the left shoulder. (c) Coronal and (d) sagittal monoenergetic 80 keV dual-energy computed tomography images of the left shoulder acquired immediately after the left shoulder arthrogram. 1a 1b


This paper analyzes the chemical substances known as teratogens, their consequences in the human fetus, and the knowledge level of 16 and 17 year-old students from the Bilingual High School of Grecia about the aforementioned agents. Alcohol, tobacco, and street drugs are excluded from this work due to the abundant exposure against human intake of these during pregnancy. The purpose was to demonstrate the cohort's understanding level about the topic, outline which chemicals are dangerous, apply a questionnaire to determine how much they know, and identify the daily-use products which contain these elements. In conclusion, teratogenic materials are present in a wide variety of artificial goods. Exposure to these may harm the neonate in formation. The majority of youngsters who participated do not know what a teratogen is, its implications in pregnancy, how to recognize it, and they live in areas that could be affected by teratogenic ingredients.


This document outlines a simple method for benchmarking a parallel communication library and for using the results to model the performance of applications developed with that communication library. We use compositional performance analysis - decomposing a parallel program into its modular parts and analyzing their respective performances - to gain perspective on the performance of the whole program. This model is useful for predicting parallel program execution times for different types of program archetypes, (e.g., mesh and mesh-spectral) using communication libraries built with different message-passing schemes (e.g., Fortran M and Fortran with MPI) running on different architectures (e.g., IBM SP2 and a network of Pentium personal computers).


This paper examines sexuality and the social construction of the sexual binary divide, illustrating how sexual identities have progressed, developed, and transformed.  Social categories have been created as a form of social control and have therefore perpetuated stereotypical attitudes and discriminatory acts.  This paper will illustrate how institutional and individual level harms have occurred due to the continued dichotomization of sexuality; and simultaneously how such categorizations have, in contrast, helped to form supportive and cohesive communities. Concluding, this paper will contend that dichotomous categories leave no room for individuals to question or explore their own sexuality; the sexual divide ignores the changing sexualities within today's modern western perspective.  Deriving from a social work perspective, this paper argues that a narrative epistemological framework remains the best practice to recognize and address the complex and multifaceted nature of sexual identity.


LAWRENCE N. BADER is vice president-research at Salomon Brothers Inc. nvestors generally have accepted the paramount importance of asset allocation in determining investment performance. They first determine their overall allocation, committing as much to equities and other risky assets as their risk tolerance permits; the balance of the find is generally invested in bonds as a "buffering" asset, because of their lower volatility and their diversification benefits. The bond portfolio typically is managed with a strict duration target a market duration of four to five years if the investor is concerned primarily with performance relative to a market peer group; a shorter duration if the concern is with asset-only risk; and a longer duration if the objective is the management of surplus relative to a long-duration liability. Tight credit constraints also commonly apply, either explicitly in the form of quality constraints or implicitly via the benchmark specification. In t h s article, we show that for most pension plans and other equity-oriented funds, the severe constraints placed on the management of the bond portfolio are not only unnecessary but also counterproductive. We begin by reviewing the performance of Treasury bond portfolios spanning a range of durations, by themselves and mixed with 60% equity. The past ten years rewarded longer durations in the all-bond portfolios quite generously; as we would expect, the returns of the 60/40 portfolios reflected about 40% of those rewards. Of course, the longer durations also carried higher volatdities, but only 23%


Innovative design features of the present invention differs from the prior art has, and is composed of a gas, liquid and solid flow in the liquid burst pressure of more than 500Mpa with supersonic jet impinging broken Ganoderma lucidum spores increase rate, in particular to a super high-pressure jet and unbroken spore oral liquid means belonging bioengineering, herbal extracts BACKGROUND cell blast innovation, is to improve the process and apparatus dedicated Ganoderma spores broken rate, by the process of Ganoderma lucidum spores 80%, grass Harvest mushrooms 5%, 5% propolis, selenium-enriched South candle 5%, Se-rich purple potato juice and 5% purified water 30% to 45% composition, the ultra-high pressure accumulator, a supersonic jet hits broken, filtered, and concentrated by the means EHV generator, an accumulator, a high pressure jet, nozzles, two-way impact the target, coagulation, air compressors, the system control computer and other major components, the sensor is connected, via a line pressure indicator system and other accessories process plant .


The present invention relates to prevention and treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). More specifically, the invention relates to use of a non-wild type protofibril or compound(s) with protofibril forming activity for active immunisation in the purpose of treating or preventing AD. The invention further relates to a peptide, A²-Arc, with high protofibril forming activity as well as several applications thereof, such as antibodies against said peptide for passive immunisation against AD.


An up-to-date knowledge of water depth is essential for a wide range of coastal activities, such as navigation, fishing, study of coastal erosion, or the observation of the rise of water levels due to climate change. This paper presents a coastal bathymetry estimation method that takes a single satellite acquisition as input, aimed at scenarios where in situ data are not available or would be too costly to obtain. The method uses free multispectral images that are easy to obtain for any region of the globe from sources such as the Sentinel-2 or Landsat-8 satellites. In order to address the shortcomings of existing image-only approaches (low resolution, scarce spatial coverage especially in the shallow water zones, dependence on specific physical conditions) we derive a new bathymetry estimation approach that combines a physical wave model with a statistical method based on Gaussian Process Regression learned in an unsupervised way. The resulting system is able to provide a nearly complete coverage of the 2–12-m-depth zone at a resolution of 80 m. Evaluated on three sites around the Hawaiian Islands, our method obtained estimates with a correlation coefficient in the range of 0.7–0.9. Furthermore, the trained models provide equally good results in nearby zones that lack exploitable waves, extending the scope of applicability of the method.


The Secretariat finished the drafting of the Framework on Integrated, People-centred Health Services (IPCHS) in late 2015. The Framework calls for reforms to reorient health services, putting individuals, families, carers and communities at their centre, supported by responsive services that better meet their needs and respect social preferences, and that are coordinated both within and beyond the health sector, irrespective of country setting or development status. Making progress towards the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 3, including target 3.8 on universal health coverage, requires countries to move towards ensuring that all people and communities have access to health services that are high quality, safe and acceptable. Cost-efficient, effective approaches to service delivery must be maximized for this to be attainable and sustainable. An integrated, people-centred approach is crucial to the development of health systems that can respond to emerging and varied health challenges, including urbanization, the global tendency towards unhealthy lifestyles, ageing populations, the dual disease burden of communicable and noncommunicable diseases, multimorbidities, rising health care costs, disease outbreaks and other health-care crises.


11 ABSTRACT IN FINNISH – TIIVISTELMA 13IN FINNISH – TIIVISTELMA 13 INTRODUCTION 15 REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 19 1. LUNG CANCER 19 1.1 Epidemiology 19 1.2 Histology 21 1.3 Genetics and epigenetics 22 1.3.1 Methods used in the detection of genetic alterations and gene expression 26 1.3.2 Gene Ontology (GO) 28 2. ASBESTOS 28 2.1 Characteristics 28 2.2 Use 29 2.3 Toxicity and carcinogenicity 32 2.4 Asbestos and tobacco smoke as co-carcinogens 35 3. ASBESTOS-RELATED LUNG CANCER 35 3.1 Lung cancer risk associated with asbestos exposure .... 36 3.2 Clinical features 37 3.3 Molecular alterations attributable to asbestos exposure in lung cancer 38 3.3.1 Genetic alterations 38 3.3.2 Signalling pathways 41 AIMS OF THE STUDY 43 MATERIALS AND METHODS 44 1. LUNG CANCER PATIENTS AND DNA SAMPLES (I, II and III) 44 2. CELL LINES (IV) 47 2.1 Asbestos exposure 47


This Mini Note examines the times of day respondents prefer to answer online surveys. The results show that evenings seem to be the time of day most respondents prefer. Further, it is revealed that respondents also have a slight tendency to state that they prefer the time of day when they actually received their e-mail invitation, and that the short-term participation rate is higher when matching respondents' preferred response time to when they receive the survey invitation. Lastly, responses collected during weekends seem to follow respondents' preferred answer times less closely and have another logic.


Data telemetry is a critical element of successful unconventional well drilling operations, involving the transmission of information about the well-surrounding geology to the surface in real-time to serve as the basis for geosteering and well planning. However, the data extraction and code recovery (demodulation) process can be a complicated system due to the non-linear and time-varying characteristics of high amplitude surface noise. In this work, a novel model fuzzy wavelet neural network (FWNN) that combines the advantages of the sigmoidal logistic function, fuzzy logic, a neural network, and wavelet transform was established for the prediction of the transmitted signal code from borehole to surface with effluent quality. Moreover, the complete workflow involved the pre-processing of the dataset via an adaptive processing technique before training the network and a logistic response algorithm for acquiring the optimal parameters for the prediction of signal codes. A data reduction and subtractive scheme are employed as a pre-processing technique to better characterize the signals as eight attributes and, ultimately, reduce the computation cost. Furthermore, the frequency-time characteristics of the predicted signal are controlled by selecting an appropriate number of wavelet bases "N" and the pre-selected range for pij3 to be used prior to the training of the FWNN system. The results, leading to the prediction of the BPSK characteristics, indicate that the pre-selection of the N value and pij3 range provides a significantly accurate prediction. We validate its prediction on both synthetic and pseudo-synthetic datasets. The results indicated that the fuzzy wavelet neural network with logistic response had a high operation speed and good quality prediction, and the correspondingly trained model was more advantageous than the traditional backward propagation network in prediction accuracy. The proposed model can be used for analyzing signals with a signal-to-noise ratio lower than 1 dB effectively, which plays an important role in the electromagnetic telemetry system.


Planning a trip needs to consider many unpredictable factors along the route such as traffic, weather, accidents, etc. People are interested viewing the places they plan to visit and the routes they plan to take. This paper presents a system with an Android mobile application that allows users to: (i) Watch the live feeds (videos or snapshots) from more than 65,000 geotagged public cameras around the world. The user can select the cameras using an interactive world map. (ii) Search for and watch the live feeds from the cameras along the route between a starting point and a destination. The system consists of a server which maintains a database with the cameras' information, and a mobile application that shows the camera map and communicates with the cameras. In order to evaluate the system, we compare it with existing systems in terms of the total number of cameras, the cameras' coverage, and the number of cameras on various routes. We also discuss the response time of loading the camera map, finding the cameras on a route, and communicating with the cameras.


AbstractDrinking water systems provide consistent and safe supplies of water across urban areas through the use of treatment and distribution infrastructure. Design of drinking water infrastructure...


Intramuscular fat(IMF) content is one of major determinants of pork quality.Intramuscular fat affects pork quality by flavor,juiceness and muscle tenderness,and so on.Therefore,it' s an effective way to improve meat quality by altering the content of intramuscular fat.The deposition of intramuscular fat can be regulated by many factors such as gene,nutrition,environment,and so on,in which the factors of gene and nutrition are often researched,in the contrary to the effect of environment and sex which have a certain extent effect on deposition of intramuscular fat.In this article,the advance in the research of regulation of intramuscular fat for commercial pigs was summarized for higher quality pork and guiding the production.


Two-dimensional materials (2DM) has been already applied for bio- and chemical sensing[1],[2]. Even individual 2D materials often outperform bulk analogues, showing strong response and being compatible with flexible technologies, thus opening horizons for wearable and Point-of-Care applications[3]. Most recently, emergent need to achieve better, more precise and sensitive drug detection in medicine and health care has been addressed by developing new types of biosensors[4]. Extending properties of individual 2DMs by constructing their van der Waals heterostructures, either lateral or vertical, offers new response and/or transduction mechanisms and further improvement of device performance. Such heterostructures have potential for label-free biosensing and could be designed and/or integrated together to generate several signals in response to a single analyte. Such a capability enables a multimodal detection, which exceeds single-mode biosensing through its higher throughput, as well as by better ability to differentiate the analyte from background signals in a complex media, and potentially allows multiplexing (responding by several channels to a group of substances in parallel).
 Despite significant efforts were invested into discovery of newer and better 2D materials with biosensing capabilities, there is only limited knowledge of factors that could limit its performance. Indeed, atomically thin 2D materials have an ultimate surface-to-volume ratio which helps sensing, but may result in surface non-uniformities at the nanometer scale such as: atomic impurities, adsorbates, single atom and lattice defects, wrinkles and ruptures – to name just a few. Such defects may modulate their sensing properties. Here, a new multidimensional optical imaging technique will be presented which is capable to detect lattice mismatch and work function difference in the heterostructure material. Those result in strain and charge transfer and vary optical response at the nanometer scale, hard to detect and study by normal characterization tools.
 We present a vertical heterostructure comprised of monolayer graphene and single layer flakes of MoS2. An optical label-free detection of doxorubicin, a common cancer drug, is reported via three independent optical detection channels (photoluminescence shift, Raman shift and Graphene Enhanced Raman Scattering). Non-uniform broadening of components of multimodal signal correlates with the statistical distribution of local optical properties of the 2DM heterostructure. It will be shown how mapping of distribution for doping and strain (taken with sub-diffractional resolution) allows one to understand the role of those for modulation of electronic properties of 2D material.
 Acknowledgement: partial support is acknowledged from NSF CHE-2032582, CHE-2032601, DMR-1539916 and DMR-2011839 grants.

 [1] Oh, S.-H.; et.al, Nature Communications 2021, 12, 3824.

 [2] Bolotsky, A.; et.al, ACS Nano 2019, 13, 9781.

 [3] Pang, Y.; et.al, Small 2020, 16, 1901124.

 [4] Moradi, R; Small (2021). doi: 10.1002/smll.202104847


An ubiquitous computing network is being developed to assist persons with vision loss in finding their way around buildings and other indoor public spaces. It is based on the "Cyber Crumb" concept: the idea that tiny, inexpensive solar-powered digital chips can be used to store relevant pieces of information that can be placed along building walkways like a trail of crumbs to follow. A wireless network of "crumbs" provides access from any point in the building to a central server that provides orientation and wayfinding information. Initial hardware and consumer tests verify feasibility and benefit.


Objective:To explore MR findings of the fibrous and lipid components of carotid atheromatous plaques in vivo with high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging.Methods:37 patients with carotid atheromatous plaques revealed by color doppler ultrasound underwent high-resolution MR scanning using the protocol of time-of-flight MR angiography,DIR T1WI,PDWI and T2WI sequences.The total vessel wall area,the fibrous and lipid components and fibrous cap of carotid atheromatous plaques were determined by two observers,9 carotid endarterectomy specimens were acquired and the corresponding regions fibrous and lipid components of the pathologic specimens were compared with MRI findings.Results:52 carotid plaques were found in 37 patients,calcification was present in 40.4%(21/52),lipid core was present in 44.2%(23/52),lipid necrotic core in 6%(3/52),intraplaque hemorrhage was present in 10%(5/52),fibrous cap rupture(ulceration or fibrous cap rupture) was present in 6%(3/52).The lipid components manifested isointensity on TOF,isointensity or slight hyperintensity on T1WI and PDWI,isointensity or hypointensity on T2WI.However,the lipid necrotic core presented hyperintensity on four sequences;the fibrous components manifested isointensity or hypointensity on TOF,hyperintensity or slight hyperintensity on T1WI,isointensity or slight hyperintensity on PDWI,slight hyperintensity on T2WI.The mean fibrous cap thickness of calcified plaque was(1.1±0.4)mm,the mean fibrous cap thickness of non-calcified plaque was(0.7±0.3)mm,there was statistical significance between them.Conclusion:High resolution MRI can manifest plaque fibrous components,lipid components and the fibrous cap.


Alluvial fans at the front of the Soda Mountains at Zzyzx, in the Mojave Desert, California, have responded differently to late Pleistocene to Holocene climatic changes. The alluvial fans have been mapped in the field and the depositional facies interpreted as debris-flow and fluvial channel and sheetflood sediments. The relative age relationships of the fan segments have been determined primarily on the basis of soil development. The overall sequence has been established in relation to dated shorelines of late Pleistocene pluvial Lake Mojave, and the ages suggested by regional correlations. Six sets of alluvial fan deposits have been identified and labeled, oldest to youngest, Qf0–Qf5. Qf0 and Qf1 sediments predate pluvial Lake Mojave I (18.5–16.5 ka). Qf0 sediments are seen only in sections in fanhead trenches. Soil characteristics and regional correlations suggest an age for Qf0 much greater than for Qf1. Qf1 appears to date from the late Pleistocene, but prior to the Lake Mojave I highstand. Qf2 dates from the period following the Lake Mojave I and II highstands (18.4–16.6–13.7–11.4 ka) but prior to the youngest dated shoreline of pluvial Lake Mojave (10–9.3 ka). Fan depositional phases Qf3–Qf5 postdate the youngest lake shoreline, and are therefore Holocene in age. From the late Pleistocene to the Holocene there was a switch from deposition dominantly by debris-flow to fluvial channel and sheetflood processes, which was accompanied by changes in fan style from fan aggradation to progradation and dissection. However, during the mid Holocene (ca. 4.3–3.5 ka) the Qf4 sediments suggest a shortlived reversal of this trend with a local increase in sedimentation and a short-lived reversion to debris-flow deposition on some fans. Different fans along the mountain front responded differentially to climatic change over the period since the late Pleistocene, with the largest fans switching from debris-flow to fluvial processes first, and some of the smallest fans becoming inactive during the Holocene. The results indicate that the fan processes are controlled by water and sediment supply from the hillslopes, switching as these processes changed in response to climatic changes. There is no evidence for tectonically induced change over this period, and changes in fan geomorphology induced by base-level change are restricted to the toe areas of some fans. At the local level, topographic catchment thresholds control the response of individual fans to climatically induced changes in runoff and sediment supply. Harvey, A.M., and Wells, S.G., 2003, Late Quaternary variations in alluvial fan sedimentologic and geomorphic processes, Soda Lake basin, eastern Mojave Desert, California, in Enzel, Y., Wells, S.G., and Lancaster, N., eds., Paleoenvironments and paleohydrology of the Mojave and southern Great Basin Deserts: Boulder, Colorado, Geological Society of America Special Paper 368, p. 207–230. © 2003 Geological Society of America.


Introduction There have been uncertainties about the appropriate aortic diameter for bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) patients to be used for repairs [1]. On one hand, it is suggested structural weakening of the wall in BAV patients may make these patients more vulnerable to dissection and/or rupture than those with tricuspid aortic valve (TAV). In contrast, the mean aortic diameter for acute type A dissection patients may be greater in BAV patients than in TAV patients. Therefore it is unclear whether BAV patients should be treated differently from those with TAV; we answer the question with our micromechanical and microstructural approach. Here, we measured the micromechanical properties, biochemical properties and elastin microstructural properties of aortic tissue from two aneurysmal groups and a non-aneurysmal group; bicuspid aortic valve with associated aneurysm (BAV-A), idiopathic degenerative aneurysm (DA), and coronary artery by-pass graft (CABG) respectively. Methods Aortic tissue was obtained from 39 patients (mean age=62.8±11.8 years) undergoing elective surgery. Dynamic nanoindentation was applied to the medial layer using a 100μm flat probe, as reported previously [2]. The same tissues were enzymatically or chemically digested and measured for glycosaminoglycan (GAG) levels using 1–9 dimethylmethylene blue, for collagen using hydroxyproline, and for elastin using fastin elastin kit. To quantify the elastin microstructure, all the tissues were formalin fixed and paraffin embedded, then stained for elastin using Verhoeff Van Gieson. The imaged tissue cross-sections were portioned into 10 sections, and quantified for elastin content, number of elastin segments and their lengths. Results The CABG tissues were found to be significantly compliant (p=0.005) relative to BAV-A tissues. However, from the biochemical data, only collagen levels from DA tissues appeared to be significantly higher compared to CABG tissues. BAV-A tissues were found to be significantly (p=0.048) stiffer than DA tissues, while their biochemical levels were the same. CABG and BAV-A tissues had significantly more elastin content for majority of the sections (p<0.02) relative to DA tissues. DA tissues had low number of segments, and each segment was shorter in comparison to CABG and BAV-A tissues. Although CABG and BAV-A tissues had similar elastin content for majority of the cross-section, from the outer media to adventitia, the aneurysmal tissues had a significant reduction in content (p<0.04). Furthermore, it was noted that there were more elastin segments in BAV-A tissues in comparison to CABG tissues. Conclusion The elastin microstructures for both aneurysmal groups differ enormously. Our data show that BAV-A tissues are more structurally intact than DA tissues. As current patients with DA have surgical interventions later than patients with BAV-A, we have shown that proposed early surgical interventions may not be necessary for patients with BAV-A. Conflict of interest None declared


The flower sterile stability of four genetic male sterility lines were observed byfield investigation and testing pollen vitality undermicroscope in the laboratory in Wuhan.The resultsshowed that sterile instability existed in all four genetic male sterility lines.1355A'was the best male sterility lines with the lowest instability-plant ratio with 14.3%,while LangA' was the linewith the highest instability-plant ration of 38.9%.The changes of sterile instabilities were quite different on different dates,which meant that the sterile instability wasinfluenced by the environment.The sterile line 1355A'was more stable than Zhong12A'and GA3'on different observation dates.The fertile flower all had high pollen vitalityand showed stability on two different observation dates,except for GA3 which showed different pollen vitality performanceon different dates.In addition,there existed significantlypositive correlations between the length of stigma over the anther and sterile degreeof the flowers in GA3',LangA'and Zhong12A'.


With the democratic movements in Africa since 1989 the research on political parties got a new momentum. Competitive political parties are the "children of democratisation". This introductory article begins with a review of the first foundations of political parties at the time of the independence struggles and explains then why the importance of political parties declined during the era of neo-patrimonial rule. Now it is time to recognize the various functions of competitive political parties for the young democracies in Africa, for example the importance of reliable, stable opposition parties. Political parties develop in a specific social and political context, and often they reflect the typical social cleavages (between town and village, centre and periphery, state and civil society etc.) which characterize the modernisation of society. A typology of political parties is presented for discussion and some examples serve to illustrate some problems with party formation and democratic consolidation. Finally the political experiments with democracy, dictatorship and sharia-oriented no-party-systems in the Sudan - a country with a long history of party formation - show the difficulties which parliamentarians face in multiparty-systems when politicians are not prepared to accept the rules of democratic procedures. Political parties - so the thesis of this introductory article - are indispensable for the consolidation of democracies. What follows is a short introduction into the following articles (by Basedau, Erdmann and Emminghaus) dealing with different aspects of modern party systems in Africa.


The ruined temples within Thailand have been increased averagely 75 temples each year since 1971. Until Now Thailand have the ruined temples about 37,689 temples all over country. There are the severed rate of ruined temples and there also have impact to Buddhism and the country. For Thai people, temples are the major place to disseminate the Buddhism education, knowledge and enlightenment for monks and interested persons. Temples are the important place to create good monks and enlighten peoples as the good Buddhists. Temple also the best place for community for setting up meeting and cultivate Thai culture. Temple is also the perfect place for the unity of Thai Society. Unfortunately, at the present many temples had been ruined because there had none of monk to stay at such temples. It means the decreased rate of Thai man who needed to enter the Monks as compared with the former time. Some Thai people called themselves Buddhists only their name, but they were lack of Buddhist practices. They had never gone to temple for doing merit or any Buddhist activities. Some temples have been invaded and possessed as the domestic or misappropriated facilities for some Thai people. They also made up strike as they had been expelled. They claimed temple as their property as their living there for long time. The solution is the Government, monk and community nearby temple must set up the serious policy to solve this issue. For example, on the Buddha era, there had been used the higher authority of billionaire and baron as the core leader to solve the same issue. Therefore they could change ruined temple to be brilliant temple.


Based on the analysis of the current situation of comprehensive utilization of phosphogypsum(PG) in recent years,sulfuric acid production from PG is considered as the approach for utilizing PG in a large scale.The Chinese patents about the sulfuric acid production from PG are reviewed.The new process of the production of sulfuric acid by reducing PG with sulfur is put forward.The technical advantages of the processes reduced by sulfur and coke are compared in detail.The results suggest that the former process has more promising application in the production of sulfuric acid for PG.


Brazil has regions where the potential for wood supply is substantial and the lack of knowledge about forest species becomes a possible barrier to its acceptance, as is the case of the wood from the Caatinga biome. This research aims to identify the highlights attributes of wood from this biome in the perception of producers of small wooden objects as a premise for market studies. For this purpose, nine species of this biome were used as study objects for exploratory research with semistructured interviews and use of word cloud and similarity analyses with the IRAMUTEQ software. As a result, it was found that, in the perception of the producers, Caatinga biome species have peculiarities with the "color" aspect of the wood, which is the attribute considered important in adding value to products and, moreover, making it possible to group the woods according to their subjective peculiarities. It was found that a more effective participation of little-known species and an increase in demand due to greater acceptance in the market could enable the use in association with and/or as a replacement for traditional woods. In addition, the analysis of qualitative data with IRAMUTEQ is still incipient in the scientific forestry area; the present research contributes methodologically, demonstrating that its use increases the rigor of the investigation and the identification of prominent attributes of wood species, specifically those of the Caatinga studied, as alternatives for the market beyond firewood and charcoal.


The invention discloses a big screen commanding and dispatching system, comprising a network service terminal Expemesa used for collecting real-time state data of an SCADA system, a network client terminal Power Real Info used for receiving data from the network service terminal Expemesa and saving the data locally, an SVG module, an Auto CAD expansion module and a Power View display processing module used for reading the data saved by the network client terminal Power Real Info, loading SVG files provided by an SVG module and DXF files provided by the Auto CAD expansion module, and providinga user with functions of interaction user interface, displaying graphs, graph preview, recovering historic data, manual hanging charts and so on. The system can realize high-performance dynamic vectorgraph display and helps dispatchers to quickly look over real-time state of various nodes on the big screen.


During the past years, the emergence of asymmetric warfare and the occurrence of targeted killings has been preoccupying politics, military and academia continuously. In general, it is illegal in armed conflicts to attack non-participating civilians. Targeted killings, however, are increasingly carried out against civilians who are alleged to have lost their immunity from attack because they take a direct part in the hostilities. The qualification of what precisely constitutes such participation is therefore of particular interest for the purposes of international humanitarian law and international criminal law. The definition which is proposed by this study is, on the one hand, a combination of existing definitions and of independent sources, and on the other hand, a supporting tool to the established case-by-case-approach.


prolongednetworklifetime, scalability, and load balancing areimportant requirements formanywireless sensor networkapplications. Clustering sensornodesisan effective approach forachieving thesegoals. Inthispaper, we proposea Distributed Energy-efficient Clustering-based Hierarchy Protocol (DECHP),whichdistributes theenergydissipation evenly amongallsensornodestoimprove network lifetime and averageenergysavings. Theperformance ofDECHP isthen comparedtodifferent clustering-based schemes.Simulation results showthatDECHP reduces overall energyconsumption andimproves network lifetime overitscomparatives. Index TermssSensor networks, clustering, routing, energy- efficiency, network lifetime.


The authors studied the changes of heartbeat rate and swimming ability when swimming wearing both clothing and swimsuit.With the method of experiment,the subjects were divided into two categories randomly.The changes of heart rate and swimming ability before and after swimming wearing both clothing and swimsuit were measured and compared by the means of mathematical statistic.The results testified that the exercises of swimming wearing clothing played an important role both in self-saving when falling into the water unexpectedly and in life saving wearing clothing.Based on it,the method and the exercise content of how to improve the ability to self-saving and life saving were given.


Fipronil is an N-phenylpyrazole insecticide, a second-generation insecticide which is relatively new and now commonly used in cotton growing community of rural Central India. Farmer suicide and deliberate self-poisoning is menace to the Vidarbha region of rural Central India. There is paucity of research published on fipronil poisoning, clinical features, complications and treatment data. It is scarcely documented worldwide. Agricultural insecticides are common household items in rural areas of developing countries. Because of their easy availability, insecticides became a major source of deliberate self-poisoning. As per World Health Organization (WHO), around 3 million poisoning cases with around 0.2 million deaths are noted annually in the world. 1 About 99 % of these deaths occur in developing countries. Insecticide poisoning is an important public issue in India.Around 168,000 deaths occurred from pesticide self-poisoning which totals to almost 19.7 % of the global suicides.2 The most common cause of self-poisoning in Central India is ingestion of organophosphorus compounds (OPC). Poisoning with organophosphorus compound insecticides has high mortality rate.1 In the last 20 years, there is development of a new class of insecticides in view of mortality due to accidental exposures of organophosphorus and organochlorine compounds. Fipronil being one of these chemicals, is considered less harmful to humans. According to WHO classification fipronil is class II moderately hazardous pesticide.3 Fipronil, an N-phenylpyrazole with a trifluoromethyl sulfinyl substituent, one of the first second generation insecticides, acts at the γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) receptor and blocks the chloride channel. Fipronil is often used to control pests, fleas and ticks on pets. There is, however, very less evidence or research on human beings on their toxicity; thus, post marketing surveillance is important to detect any undesirable health issues associated with these chemicals. Until now only 3 case reports are published regarding fipronil poisoning, two cases form India and others from Sri Lanka. Hence, we are reporting a case of acute fipronil poisoning which presented as acute gastritis and sinus bradycardia.


This essay examines the Ibero-American history producers who were killed for political reasons during the past century. It presents sixty victims from eight countries. Of these, 83% were killed by state forces, 17% by non-state forces. Dictatorships had the worst scores (58% of the victims), while flawed democracies also saw considerable casualties (32%), in contrast to emergent (7%) and stable democracies (3%). Much evidence was found for the thesis that killing these history producers did not necessarily mean the erasure of their names or achievements. Out of the sixty victims, nine (15%) were killed for political reasons that were mainly or partly related to their historical works. Six of these, however, occurred under democracies, particularly flawed or emergent democracies, and not under dictatorships. This finding leads to the hypothesis that well-entrenched dictatorships, wielding ruthless power, deter and block incriminating historical research – making the killing of history producers for history-related reasons relatively rare – whereas freer conditions in flawed and emergent democracies prompt or encourage such dangerous historical research. Those investigating past systemic violence or the crimes of previous dictatorships then risk becoming targets of the military seeking to install or restore authoritarian rule.


There is provided an audio signal transmitting apparatus including: a channel mapping unit which determines the audio signals allocated to each of the channels and generates channel mapping information representing types of the audio signals allocated to each of the channels; an audio signal transmitting unit which transmits the audio signals allocated to each of the channels by the channel mapping unit to the external connection apparatuses by a first transmitting scheme or a second transmitting scheme; and a connection management information providing unit which provides connection management information including the channel mapping information and transmitting scheme information representing the transmitting scheme of the audio signals to the external connection apparatuses.


The objective of this paper is to develop and evaluate a micro-economical microworld which will allow policy makers to gain more insight in parameters that influence the Belgian fishery fleet structure. In a later stage, this microworld may contribute to the process of developing a long-term strategy for the Belgian fishery sector, serving as a laboratory for ex-ante evaluation of possible strategies. (Keys, Fulmer, and Stumpf 1996; De Geus 1997) By visualizing decisions and strategies (Morecroft 1999), it generates insights about fleet dynamics in response to a changing environment and policy changes.


During epithelial–mesenchymal transition IP3Rs relocate from tight junctions to the leading edge of migrating pancreatic cancer cells and regulate dynamics of focal adhesions. STIM1-competent ER–PM junctions position closely behind IP3Rs and, together with IP3Rs, regulate cell migration.


The principle and die structure of equal channel angular pressing(ECAP) are briefly described and development of ECAP is viewed.Effects of processing parameters of ECAP on materials microstucture and mechanical properties are discussed and the bright prospects and directions of ultrafine-grained materials' fabricated by ECAP are also indicated.


Anticancer drugs have been developing, and side effects of those drugs should be prevented. Many kinds of side effects have been reported, but we do not predict them. Side effects, including cardiac toxicity, nephrotoxicity, and neurotoxicity are known. As DNA microarray techniques has been developed well it is now applicable to predict side effects using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP). To prevent side effects, development of new drugs or novel drug delivery system will provide us possibilities for future. Monoclonal antibodies or tyrosine kinase inhibitors are novel modalities to predict efficacy and side effects. Drug resistance or infusion-related syndrome has to be analyzed, For instances, CD 13 is a molecule that degrades the N-terminal residues of endothelial interleukin-8 and will be resistant to apoptotic signal. In this case we add CD 13 inhibitor, such as ubenimex, and it will give us a new therapy to treat CD 13-positive leukemia cells. Such research will be important to circumvent resistance or side effects. Liposome technologies for doxorubicin or cisplatin will give us less side effects. Small molecules that interferes cell cycle will be researched quickly.


Background The purpose of this study was to compare two methods of adherence calculation using administrative data for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) who are prescribed disease-modifying drugs. Methods Pharmacy-billed disease-modifying drug prescription claims were selected from the 2007–2008 LifeLink™ Health Plan Claims Database. The index date was the first disease-modifying drug prescription claim. Two cohorts were created: all patients with a disease-modifying drug claim in 2007 and a subset with continuous eligibility for 12 months post-index. Adherence was calculated across all disease-modifying drugs for 12 months post-index. Medication possession ratios (MPRs) with variable (start to end of therapy) and fixed (365 days) duration denominators were calculated. Variable MPR was calculated by summing days supply from the first to the last prescription (inclusive) divided by time between the last prescription date plus days supply and the first prescription date. Variable MPR was evaluated for all patients and the continuously eligible cohort. Fixed MPR used the same numerator but divided by 365 days of follow-up and evaluated only for the continuously eligible cohort. Results There were 3405 patients with MS and a disease-modifying drug claim in 2007 and 2145 in the continuously eligible cohort. Means for variable MPR ranged from 87.5% ± 16.6% for the continuously eligible cohort to 90.5% ± 16.0% for the 2007 cohort. The comparable value for fixed MPR was 78.0% ± 28.2% for the continuously eligible cohort. Fixed MPR gave a consistently lower rate of adherence than variable MPR at an 80% adherence threshold. Conclusion Different adherence measures can yield different outcomes, especially when using different eligibility criteria. These results demonstrate the importance of full disclosure of methods used for calculations and specification of the study population.


In managing, regenerating, and fixing the operational performance of university required an information systems. IT division responsible to provide the proper information systems based on business and user perspective with decent quality IT service. Therefore, it is pertinent to measure the IT service performance must matching with the user needs and make users satisfied for using information systems. This research purpose is to identify and analyze the service maturity level that provided by IT division of BINUS University to information systems users, so that an evaluation of IT service performance is obtained. This research methodology is a questionnaire, literature study, and a data analysis of BINUS University, designing and measuring the maturity level by using the COBIT framework and the ITIL framework, as well as testing the relationship between the COBIT and ITIL maturity level results.


also contribute to the prevalence and horizontal transmission of antibiotics resistance. [6-7-8] They are genetic elements with a site-specific recombination system for capturing, expressing and exchanging gene cassettes. [9] They are characterized by conserved features, namely an intI gene encoding an integrase, a recombination site (attI), a promoter (P) and the ability to integrate gene cassettes comprised of a single open reading frame (orf) and a specific recombination site, attC. [6-10] Gene cassettes exist either in a linear form inserted into an integron or as a free circular cassette that is not dependent on an integrin. [10-11] At least nine classes of integrons have been described and class 1 integrons are associated with antibiotic resistance in clinical isolates. [12] These commonly reported classes are found in a wide variety of hosts and environments, highlighting a high level of horizontal dissemination among bacterial populations and species. In Burkina Faso, there is a few data on integrons in bacteria strains isolated from clinical and environmental settings. There is very little known about the clinical samples reservoir of integron-borne genes. In this study, we investigated the prevalence of classes 1, 2 and 3 integrons, their association with antimicrobial resistance Escherichia coli and Proteus spp. strains ABSTRACT Introduction: During the 1980s, genetic elements that could acquire or lose genes for antibiotic resistance were identified and referred to as integrons. The aim of this study was to genotypically characterize integron in extended-spectrum beta-lactamase producing E. coli and Proteus spp. strains. Materials and methods : 125 Extended Spectrum Beta Lactamases producing strains isolated from various biological products in 3 hospitals in Ouagadougou were used for this study. Isolates were subjected to antibiotic susceptibility test using the disc diffusion method: Class 1, 2 and 3 integrons investigation was performed by conventional Polymerase Chain Reaction. Results: 59.2% (74/125) strains including 61.5% (72/117) E. coli and 25% (2/8) Proteus spp. ESBL producers carried class 1 integrons. No isolates carried class 2 and / or 3 integrons. Strains carrying the resistance integrons showed 97.6% resistance to amoxicillin, 97.6% to cefotaxime, 98.4% to ceftriaxone, and 93.6% to cefepime, compared to those without integrons. Conclusion: This study revealed 59.2% of ESBLs strains which carried class 1 integrons. The link between resistance integrons and high levels of antibiotic resistance found in these strains poses a risk to public health and hence the need for increased surveillance and control of the indiscriminate use of antibiotics.


To explore thymosin and antibiotic treatment to acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis view of the efficacy and safety.Methods Elderly patients with chronic bronchitis patients with acute exacerbation of 60 patients were randomly divided into thymosin group of 30 patients and the control group of 30 patients,were given thymosin 80 mg intravenous drip,one time perday,5 to 7 days for a course of treatment,Both groups were using conventional anti-infective,phlegm,cough,and other symptomatic therapy.Results Thymosin for the group were 70.0%,43.3% for the control group,Thymosin group,the total efficiency of 86.7%,66.6% for the control group,the difference between the two groups was significant(P0.05).Conclusion Thymosin and antibiotic treatment of acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis efficacy.


Why do some people resolve disputes through the state, while others use religious or customary justice? We address this question by conducting a vignette experiment in Kosovo. We design hypothetical situations in which fictitious characters are involved in disputes regarding inheritance, debt, domestic violence, and murder. We vary information concerning (i) vignette characters' resources, (ii) their beliefs about the efficiency of state justice, and (iii) dispute settlement customs in the characters' communities. Survey respondents assess whether a vignette character is likely to seek informal justice, given the described circumstances. We find that respondents associate informal justice with characters who believe that the state would resolve their disputes very slowly, and whose other community members would not use state justice. These findings generalize to respondents' own justice preferences and patterns of actual informal dispute settlement in Kosovo and beyond. Our article highlights efficiency concerns and local conventions as explanations of informal justice.


Partial cutting is common in mature even-aged stands in southern New England because the level of disturbance associated with even-aged regeneration methods is unacceptable to many private owners of small forest properties. This cutting often consists of high-grading, but foresters seeking an alternative generally turn to the selection method to begin the conversion of these stands to uneven-aged structure. However, the single-tree or small-group selection methods used may produce long-term results that are similar to high-grading in shifting stand composition toward shade tolerant species (many of which have low timber value). A review was made of the extensive research on the use of the selection method in northern New England and central Appalachian forest types, as well as of the limited research in the southern New England transition hardwood-white pine (Pinus strobus)-hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) type. Recent management experience in a Massachusetts public watershed forest was also reviewed. These provide general guidelines for using selection cutting in the region to regenerate species of a wide range in shade tolerance: (a) use patch selection (rather than single-tree or group selection) with a minimum patch size of 0.3 ac, and with understory as well as overstory trees removed in the patches; (b) use area control (proportion of stand to be harvested) rather than a target diameter distribution (q-value or other method) to regulate the stand cutting level. This approach is likely to be effective in meeting regeneration goals and in being logistically feasible, given the intensity of management possible on most of these properties. North. J. Appl. For. 20(3):109–116.


A developing trend of aircraft guns both in China and foreign countries is to improve aviation guns in service and keep raising their shooting speed. The article, based on the formula counting the action cycle of aircraft guns, according to the working circulation curves of different kinds of aircraft guns, makes a theoretical analysis on the aircraft guns'shooting speed improving potentials , and draws a conclusion of the shooting speed improving on the basis of aviation guns in service.


It analyzed the changes of creatinekinase(CK),bloodurea(BU),testosterone(T),cortisol(C) and T/C of the boxers in the Chinese National Men's Boxing Team preparing for the 29th Olympic Games in the heavy-load-training week of the winter training period,in order to probe into the effects of heavy load training on their physical functional state.The results show that CK and BU significantly increase in the middle part of heavy load training period,while they come down to the pre-training level in the latter part of it;T and C don't change remarkably and the ratio of T/C in the latter part of the training is prominently lower than the pre-training one.It put forward that during the winter training, heavy load training can make serum CK and BU of boxers increase significantly,the ratio of T/C decrease prominently and physical functional state produce adaptation.Through active recovery and elimination of fatigue,this kind of training can improve and enhance boxers' physical functions


Two strains of bacteria were isolated from haemolymph, liver, ascites and muscle of the diseased Eriocheir sinensis, which were cultured in the ponds in Zhuantang, Hangzhou. Both of the isolates were Gram-negative rods, motile by means of single polar flagella, and were facultatively anaerobic. Glucoce was catabolized with production of acid and no gas. Oxidase, Esculin, Catalase were positive, and nitrite was prodused from nitrate. Morpholohic, physiological and biochemical characteristics of the present isolates were the same as those of Aeromonas caviae, therefore, the pathogens isolated from the diseased Eriocheir sinensis were identified as Aeromonas caviae. The mortality of artificial infection was 100% , which ascertained that the bacterial isolates were the pathogens of the Eriocheir sinensis. The pathogens were highly sensitive to streptomycin, kanamycin, neomycin, ciprofloxacin, norfloxacin, chloramphenical, gentamicin, tobramycin, ofloxacin, ceftazidime, cefuroxime, ceftriaxone, nalidixic acid, nitrofurantoin.


This article presents beach management in Brazil and its tools. It intends to discuss the issue and possible guidelines to a better management. Brazil has a long coastline and many beaches, of many kinds too. All Brazilian beaches are public places and everyone has the right to come and go. This right should always be guaranteed, letting theses areas available for everyone on equal terms. However, it is noticed that in Brazil there is an overlap of administrations in the management of beaches, leading to possible conflicts and inefficient management, as well as private use of the public space. Many challenges are presented to beach management in Brazil such as: land ownership, tourism and urban projects control, beach bars and restaurants regulation, accessibility, biodiversity conservation, cultural aspects maintenance, erosion process control, among others. A part of that Brazilian legislation do not take in account sand dunes as part of the beaches, leading to a fragmented management of beach ecosystems. Even tools designed for beach and shoreline management in Brazil, such as Projeto Orla a governmental project, and Blue Flag Programme an instrument of non-governmental initiative, demonstrate to be of difficult implementation due to the lack of a solid institutional and administrative basis and lack of financial support as well. As an example it is presented the case of Spain and its Coast Act dated of 1988. As the Spanish Coast Act define beach as a public space as well, it could provide some guidelines for Brazil. It is discussed some aspects of the Spanish Coast Act and their parallel with the Brazilian norms. It is exposed the need of legislation improvement in order to achieve efficient and


Thermal energy from mirror arrays that focus solar radiation not only generates electricity but also could be used to synthesize fuels from water and carbon dioxide. Intermittent sources of renewable energy, such as solar and wind power, pose a "storage problem." They must generate more energy than the immediate demand, so that stored energy can be used when the resource is unavailable. Aside from pumped hydropower, large-scale storage of electricity is still technically and economically challenging. For solar energy, concentrating solar power (CSP) plants in regions in the sunbelt of Earth offer ways to store this energy on a large scale, either thermally or as chemical fuels.