Infectious complications in children treated for cancer contribute to their morbidity and mortality. There is a paucity of studies on the incidence, microbiological etiology, risk factors, and outcome of serious bacterial infections in African children treated for cancer.

 The aim of the study was to delineate the epidemiology of infectious morbidity and mortality in South African children with cancer.

 This prospective, single-center, longitudinal-cohort study enrolled children one-19 years old hospitalized for cancer treatment at the Paediatric Oncology Unit, Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Soweto, South Africa. Children were investigated for infection as part of the standard of care.

 In total, 169 children were enrolled, 82 with hematological malignancy (HM), 87 with a solid tumor (ST), median age was 68.5 months and 10.7% were living with HIV. The incidence (per 100 child-years) of septic episodes (SE) and microbiologically confirmed SE (MSCE) was 101 (138 vs. 70, P < 0.001) and 70.9 (99.1 vs. 47.3; P < 0.001), respectively; higher in children with HM than ST. The incidence of MCSE in children with high-risk HM (137.7) was 4.32-fold greater compared with those with medium-risk HM (30.3; P < 0.001). Children with metastatic ST had a higher incidence (84.4) of MSCE than those with localized ST (33.6; aOR: 2.52; P < 0.001). The presence of an indwelling catheter was 3-fold (P < 0.001) more likely to be associated with MCSE compared with those without. There was no association for age group, nutritional status or HIV-status, and incidence of MCSE. The incidence of gram-positive (GPB) and gram-negative (GNB) SEs was 48.5 and 37.6, respectively, and higher in children with an HM. The most commonly identified GPB were Coagulase-negative Staphylococci, Streptococcus viridans and Enterococcus faecium; while the most common GNB were Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter baumannii, and Pseudomonas species. The median CRP was higher in children with MSCE compared with those with culture-negative SE (CNSE) (116.5 vs. 92; P < 0.001) in both HM (132.5 vs. 117; P < 0.001) and ST (87.5 vs. 46; P < 0.001). The procalcitonin was higher in those with MSCE compared with those with CNSE (2.30 vs. 1.40; P < 0.001) in both HM (2.95 vs. 1.60; P = 0.002) and ST (2.10 vs. 1.20; P < 0.001). The case fatality risk was 40.4%; 80% was attributed to sepsis. Of these, 35 (72.92%) had HM and 34 of the 35 (97.14%) had HR-HM. Children with HM had an overall sepsis CFR of 42.68%. Four (30.77%) of the 13 sepsis-related deaths in STs had metastatic disease and 8 (16.67%) of the total number of sepsis-related deaths were in children living with HIV. There was no association between malnutrition or HIV-positivity and death. The odds of dying from sepsis were higher in children with profound (aOR 3.96; P = 0.004) and prolonged (aOR 3.71; P = 0.011) neutropenia. Pneumonia (58.85% vs. 29.23%; aOR 2.38; P = 0.025) and tuberculosis (70.83% vs. 34.91%; aOR 4.3; P = 0.005) were independently associated with a higher CFR.

 The current study emphasizes the high burden of sepsis in African children treated for cancer, and especially HM, and highlights the association of tuberculosis and pneumonia as independent predictors of death in children with cancer.


Abstract. Having passed more than three years since the 2011 Tohoku tsunami attacked the coastal communities, the devastated areas have moved forward to reconstruct their communities. Though the recovery processes are still underway, local municipalities completed the draft of reconstruction plan including infrastructure design, transportation, land use management, urban design, relocation, and economic and industrial outlooks. This study aims to summarize the impact of the 2011 Tohoku tsunami disaster, with particular regard to structural vulnerability, to understand the lessons towards reconstruction of Sendai city, Miyagi Prefecture. First, to identify the tsunami impact, the author's team conducted an integrated study of field inspection, remote sensing and numerical modeling with the approach of spatial information sciences. The findings lead to understandings of structural vulnerability with a form of tsunami fragility curve, i.e. the tsunami flow depth over 2 m will cause severe damage on houses and more than 6 m flow depth will cause total devastation, and to obtain an implication for land use management to reconstruct resilient coastal communities. Second, we conducted the tsunami numerical modeling to evaluate Sendai city's reconstruction plan with the concept of multiple protection which consists of the combination of structural prevention/mitigation, urban planning, preparedness, and suggest their land use management, relocation, housing reconstruction and tsunami disaster mitigation plans. We found that the multiple protections with 7-meter sea wall and 6-meter elevated prefectural road will contribute on substantial reduction of the tsunami inundation zone and flow depth on Sendai plain. Using this result, Sendai city determined the land used plan and the area of housing reconstruction and relocation. Keywords: Tsunami, coastal, land use management


Low-temperature silicon-oxide films were grown on n-type Si surfaces using the liquid-phase deposition (LPD) method. Various temperature annealing was employed to improve the electrical properties of LPD-oxide. Metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) capacitors were fabricated to characterise the annealing effects on the n-type Si/LPD-oxide interface using current–voltage and capacitance–voltage measurements. Observations showed that the MOS capacitor with as-grown LPD-oxide has a large leakage current density of 2.1×10−5 A/cm2 and fixed oxide charge density of 2.8×1012 cm−2. After 500°C annealing in N2 environment for 30 min, the leakage current density and fixed oxide charge density are drastically reduced to 3.2×10−8 A/cm2 and 1.2×1012 cm−2, respectively.


The article considers issues of labor migration, primarily in the light of Russian-Chinese relations. The author emphasizes that quite significant experience in the development and implementation of migration policy has been accumulated in China. For modern Russia, the migration issue is also very relevant. The authors come to the conclusion that there is a need to change migration policies so that labor migration contributes to the development of the Russian labor market, and in this connection measures for mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Russia in the field of migration are proposed.


From the Division of Plastic, Maxillofacial, and Oral Surgery, Department of Surgery, Duke University Health System, Durham, N.C. Received for publication November 11, 2020; accepted December 2, 2020. Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of The American Society of Plastic Surgeons. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License 4.0 (CCBY-NC-ND), where it is permissible to download and share the work provided it is properly cited. The work cannot be changed in any way or used commercially without permission from the journal. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open 2021;9:e3443; doi: 10.1097/ GOX.0000000000003443; Published online 18 March 2021. Related Digital Media are available in the full-text version of the article on www.PRSGlobalOpen.com. Disclosure: Dr. Marcus receives royalties for intellectual property from Stryker for the SmartLock Hybrid MMF and royalties from Thieme Medical Publishing and KLS Martin. No funding was recieved for this article. The other authors have no financial interest to declare in relation to the content of this article. Commonly Used Flaps for Cutaneous Reconstruction of the Nasal Distal Third


Some changes of serum lipid in mice were observed by the intraperitoneal injection of endotoxin extracted from Vibrio parahaemolyticus. A remarkable increase in the serum triglyceride content was shown in the poisoned mice after 12-24 hr. FFA level in the control mice gradually increased in response to the fasting periods for 12-24 hr whereas the level of FFA in the endotoxin-posioned mice was lower than that in the control mice. Total cholesterol, however, did not show an appreciable difference in the level of the control animals. The hepatic triglyceride content in the poisoned mice increased at 14 hr postintoxication, and the lysosomal triglyceride lipase activity slightly increased 3 hr after intoxication, and declined after 14 hr. There was not very much change of the triglyceride level in the serum in cortisone plus endotoxininjected mice. An increase of serum triglyceride in CCl4-poisoned mice was not observed at 14 hr postinjection of endotoxin in spite of its high level in the serum of endotoxin-injected mice. The mechanism responsible for the development of the hypertriglyceridemia in mice after injection of endotoxin is unkown at present.


This paper presents a numerical and experimental study of the combustion and emission characteristics of a gasoline direct-injection compression ignition engine using intake preheating. The gasoline direct-injection compression ignition engine was predicted to reduce emissions compared with the emissions from a conventional diesel engine. To compare the combustion and emission characteristics of the gasoline direct-injection compression ignition and diesel engines, numerical modelling was conducted using the KIVA-3V release 2 code, which is integrated with the Chemkin chemistry solver II. Numerical simulations were performed under a variety of conditions to determine the optimal conditions for gasoline direct-injection compression ignition engine operation. In order to achieve the gas pressure in the cylinder and the emission characteristics, experiments were performed using a single-cylinder engine. The simulation results agreed well with the experimental data. The gasoline autoignition was in the parcels with a lower equivalence ratio of 0.6–0.8 as opposed to the diesel autoignition parcels with a high equivalence ratio of greater than 1. The ignition delay of gasoline was longer than that of diesel; therefore, the gasoline direct-injection compression ignition engine could reduce the soot emissions. The nitrogen oxide emission levels for gasoline direct-injection compression ignition were increased because of the intake preheating.


Deep learning has contributed greatly to many successes in artificial intelligence in recent years. Today, it is possible to train models that have thousands of layers and hundreds of billions of parameters. Large-scale deep models have achieved great success, but the enormous computational complexity and gigantic storage requirements make it extremely difficult to implement them in real-time applications. On the other hand, the size of the dataset is still a real problem in many domains. Data are often missing, too expensive, or impossible to obtain for other reasons. Ensemble learning is partially a solution to the problem of small datasets and overfitting. However, ensemble learning in its basic version is associated with a linear increase in computational complexity. We analyzed the impact of the ensemble decision-fusion mechanism and checked various methods of sharing the decisions including voting algorithms. We used the modified knowledge distillation framework as a decision-fusion mechanism which allows in addition compressing of the entire ensemble model into a weight space of a single model. We showed that knowledge distillation can aggregate knowledge from multiple teachers in only one student model and, with the same computational complexity, obtain a better-performing model compared to a model trained in the standard manner. We have developed our own method for mimicking the responses of all teachers at the same time, simultaneously. We tested these solutions on several benchmark datasets. In the end, we presented a wide application use of the efficient multi-teacher knowledge distillation framework. In the first example, we used knowledge distillation to develop models that could automate corrosion detection on aircraft fuselage. The second example describes detection of smoke on observation cameras in order to counteract wildfires in forests.


Abstract van het Mind the gap! Building bridges to better health for all young people, EUSUHM (European Union for School and University Health and Medicine) congres 2017, Leuven.


We present results from the deep XMM-Newton observations of the two brightest X-ray sources in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS), PID 203 (z=0.544) and PID 319 (z=0.742). The long exposure of 2.5 Ms over a 10 year period (net 4 yr with a 6 yr gap) makes it possible to obtain high quality X-ray spectra of these two Type I AGN with X-ray luminosity of 10^44 erg/s, typical luminosity for low-redshift PG quasars, track their X-ray variability both in flux and spectral shape. Both sources showed X-ray flux variability of ~10-20 per cent in rms which is similar in the soft (0.5-2 keV) and hard (2-7 keV) bands. PID 203, which has evidence for optical extinction, shows modest amount of absorption (nH~1e21cm^-2) in the X-ray spectrum. Fe K emission is strongly detected in both objects with EW~0.2 keV. The lines in both objects are moderately broad and exhibit marginal evidence for variability in shape and flux, indicating that the bulk of the line emission come from their accretion disks rather than distant tori.


Successful networking requires: • Perspective Understand the goal of the event from the host perspective Know who will be attending this event Form your perspective and your plan • Preparation RSVP if a response is requested Plan your attire Research the host company, industry or association Prepare 'small talk' Practice your elevator pitch/positioning statement(s) Develop and project a genuine interest in others Eat something before attending – the event is not about the food • Performance You have 10 seconds to make a first impression, be ready


In holographic near-eye displays, the generation of computational holograms requires using various free-space propagation numerical methods. Traditional free-space propagation is mainly focused on the propagation calculation between parallel planes, which is widely utilized in on-axis holographic displays. But for practical usage of the wearable holographic near-eye displays, the propagation between non-parallel planes is crucial for the hologram generation of off axis projection to the holographic-optical-element (HOE) based combiner. However, at current few methods are reported for generating holograms with non-parallel-plane propagation. This paper proposes a novel method with Wirtinger derivatives to solve the problem of phase hologram retrieval between non-parallel planes. Using the Wirtinger derivatives can transfer the hologram phase retrieval to a quadratic problem. With different loss functions and stochastic optimization methods, this quadratic problem can be minimized by first-order optimization, resulting in a phase-only hologram of the tilted plane. The proposed method using the Wirtinger derivatives to calculate the tilted plane phase hologram can improve image quality significantly. The proposed method can achieve better PSNR and lower computational cost in the simulation than the traditional GS algorithm. The diffraction calculation of the tilted plane can further extend the propagation from two-dimensional(2D) to three-dimensional(3D), which will provide a new way for the hologram generation of 3D scenes.


The notion of (intersection preserving, global) Γ-ideal expansion of a Γ-ring is introduced, and several properties are investigated. AMS Subject Classification: 13A15


The goal of the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) program at the National Science Foundation is to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education for all students. The activities funded seek to improve student learning environments, course content, curricula, and educational practices. The program has four tracks. "Adaptation and Implementation" projects adapt and implement exemplary educational materials or practices or laboratory experiences that were originally developed at other institutions, whether academic or commercial. "Educational Materials Development" projects either develop "proof of concepts" for new textbooks, software, or laboratory materials or else fund the complete development and national dissemination of such products or practices. "National Dissemination" projects involve the development of workshops, short courses, or similar activities to allow faculty to learn new content or educational practices to incorporate into their classes or laboratories. And "Assessment of Student Achievement" projects look at the development of new assessment tools and procedures.


studies. A 2016 single-center, randomized crossover trial (N531) compared three slow expiratory airway clearance techniques in adult males and females with bronchiectasis. Patients had noncystic fibrosis bronchiectasis diagnosed via high-resolution computed tomography (mean age 59 years old) and were clinically stable over the previous 6 weeks, producing sputum at a mean volume of at least 15 mL per day and were not using tobacco. The intervention techniques were autogenic drainage, ELTGOL, and temporary PEP. Each intervention was provided for three sessions over the course of 1 week with a 1-week washout in between interventions. Expectorated sputum volumes during treatments were compared and sputum expectoration in the 24 hours after treatment was compared with a pretreatment baseline. Autogenic draining and ELTGOL increased expectorated sputum during treatment more than temporary PEP (see TABLE 1). All three techniques decreased sputum volume in the 24 hours after treatment compared with baseline (see TABLE 2). No treatment harms were reported and no one involved in the trial was blinded.


In this study, we investigated the production of vinegar using domestic wheat and mugwort and their antioxidant activity. Alcohol fermentation of saccharized whole wheat powder suspension was carried out by inoculation of Saccharomyces cerevisiase KCCM 11215. After 4 days of static fermentation at 30°C, 6% of alcohol was produced. Acetic fermentation was carried out using Acetobacter pasteurianus A8 by static condition for 20 days. Optimum conditions for acetic fermentation of alcoholic substrate were 35°C, and 5%(v/v) of seed inoculation rate, respectively. After 20 days of static fermentation at optimal condition, 5.6% of acetic acid equivalent was produced. Total organic acid contents of the domestic wheat vinegar with mugwort were 5.63 g%. Free amino acid contents of the domestic wheat vinegar with mugwort were 485.8 mg%. The DPPH radical scavenging activity and total phenolic contents of domestic wheat vinegar with mugwort was higher than those from domestic wheat vinegar. These results suggest that the production of domestic wheat vinegar with mugwort which contains rich free amino acid and phenolic compound was possible and this vinegar may be use as a functional food.


The purpose of this study was to identify the psychological factors affecting the quality of sleep and to understand the aspect of sleep in students at the department of nursing. The period of data collection was from June 1, 2016 to June 15, 2016. The subjects were 3rd and 4th grade nursing college students of an university in Busan. The data of 186 students who voluntarily participated in the self filling questionnaire were analyzed. According to the results of the study, the quality of sleep according to the general characteristics was poor in the fourth grade, BMI of 23.0 kg/m 2 or more and not to drink coffee at all. The ESS, GASS, CES-D, and MOCI were higher in poor sleeping more 5 points than those of good sleeping less than 5 points in PSQI. Regression analysis showed that ESS and CES-D had an explanatory power of 29.8% in sleep quality. Nursing students are inevitably exposed to stress due to excessive academic capacity and irregular practice. It can cause serious problems after graduation. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the sleeping and psychological problems of individual students as well as institutional improvement to ensure adequate rest and sleeping time. Received (April 3, 2017), Review Result (April 17, 2017) Accepted (April 24, 2017), Published (June 30, 2017) 1 46265 Dept. of Nursing, College of Nursing, Catholic University of Pusan, Korea email: email@example.com This paper was supported by RESEARCH FUND(2015) offered from Catholic University of Pusan. Factors influencing Quality of Sleep in Nursing Students Copyright c 2017 HSST 474


Deep processing of fruit and vegetables is one of the most important tasks to ensure the population of functional foods. This article presents analyzes of literature data and our own studies on the possibility of using the recognized varieties of Jerusalem artichoke for inulinsoderzhaschegoand apples pectin extracts for food fortification produktov.Dlya obtain inulinsodezhaschego extract selected varieties cultivated Jerusalem artichoke "interest", "Skorospelka", and pectin extract apples "Golden Delicious -gold excellent" and "Zarya Alatau".so, in studies to determine the content of inulin in Jerusalem artichoke released varieties "interest" and "Skorospelka" most suitable for the development of high-value technology for active substances inulinsoderzhaschego extract is a sort of "interest", which contains inulin in the spring study at 7.84%, and in experiments to determine the content of pectin in the released varieties of apples "Golden Delicious -gold excellent" and "Zarya Alatau" most suitable for the development of high-value technology for production of biologically active substances pectin extract is a sort of "Golden Delicious -gold excellent", which contains pectin spring study period at 1.30%.In further in our research, released varieties of Jerusalem artichoke "interest" will be used to develop technology for inulinsoderzhaschego extract and apple variety "Golden Delicious -gold excellent" extract pectin for food fortification.


PURPOSE
The aim of this study was to evaluate the validity of lower limb chronic venous disease (CVD) diagnoses entered in a large electronic health record database in primary care in Catalonia, Spain; to investigate the reliability of these data for research purposes; and to estimate the prevalence and incidence of CVD, chronic venous insufficiency (CVI), and venous leg ulcer (VLU).

DESIGN
Real-world data analysis based on a large electronic health record database in primary care in Catalonia, Spain.

METHODS
We used a primary care research database (Information System for the Development of Research in Primary Care [SIDIAP]), which contains anonymous data on some 5.8 million people from 279 primary care centers, accounting for more than 80% of the Catalonian population and 15% of the Spanish population. We evaluated the validity of the ICD-10 codes for CVD in SIDIAP for 200 adult patients through the responses of 20 primary care physicians to a questionnaire.

FINDINGS
The positive predictive value of CVD in SIDIAP was 89.95% (95% confidence interval [CI] 84.99-93.40). The prevalence rates for CVD, CVI, and VLU were 9.54% (95% CI 9.51-9.56), 3.87%, and 0.33%, respectively. The incidence rates for CVD, CVI, and VLU were 7.91/1,000 person-years (95% CI 7.82-8.00), 3.37/1,000 person-years (95% CI 3.31-3.43), and 0.23/1,000 person-years (95% CI 0.21-0.24), respectively.

CONCLUSIONS
The Catalonian SIDIAP database contains valid CVD diagnoses. The prevalence and incidence rates found using real-world data are low compared with those in the literature, possibly because CVD is an underdiagnosed entity.

CLINICAL RELEVANCE
Real-world data can inform clinicians on lower limb venous health in a population, show changes as individuals age, and reveal aspects where healthcare can be improved.


Abstract: Farmers in developing nations, such as India, cultivate small-scale maize. It is sold on the cob, and the individual kernels cost around twice as much as the cob. Therefore, if farmers can de-husk the corn and sell the kernels on the market, they can generate more income. The issue is that there are not enough affordable, manually operated, and efficient maize shellers in the country. This is a major problem in India for maize production. Maize first emerged in the Americas, and by 1250 BC it had spread to all areas of the region. As populations increased, a trading network developed, based on surplus and varieties of maize. They tend to sell the corn with the cob attached, but doing so leads to an average kernel price that is twice the price of the cob. If farmers decorticated the corn and sold the kernels separately, they could generate more income. The challenge is that there is a lack of inexpensive, manual and efficient corn Shellers, making it difficult for farmers to process their corn. This is a major problem facing corn production, particularly in India. Examine the factors that determine the performance of the maize sheller and identify the design elements that have the greatest impact on its operational efficiency.


A 92 days feeding trial was conducted with 36 growing Pigs to evaluate the effect of replacing soybean mean with maggots in their diet. The Pigs were randomly allocated to three treatments groups in a complete randomizes design. Each treatment was replicated four times having three Pigs per replicate. Three experimental diets were formulated in which soybean meal was progressively replaced with maggots at 0%, 50%, and 100% and identified as T1, T2, and T3 respectively. T1 served as the control diet. Each of the diets was offered ad libitum to the Pigs. Parameters measured included, weight gain, feed conversion ratio, The result showed a non significant (P > 0.05) difference in all the parameters measured among treatments. Thus the inclusion of maggots in diets up to 100% had no adverse effect on the performance, and carcass characteristics of the animal. Result also showed that replacement of soy bean with yam maggot meal caused a significant (P < 0.05) reduction in the cost of feed/kg weight gain of pigs.


Luminance properties of external electrode fluorescent lamps and optical components in backlight unit (BLU) and optical transmission rates of optical sheets, are investigated for LCD-TV of 32" in diagonal with WXGA level resolution (1366768). The luminance is measured in 12-lamps and 18-lamps of BLU. The luminance uniformity preserves about 85 % in the 12-lamps backlight, while the luminance of optical components and the efficiency of backlight in the 12-lamps are lower than those in the 18-lamps backlight. When the lamp luminance in BLU having 12-lamps and 18-lamps is normalized as 100 %, the relative luminance of a diffusion plate, a diffusion sheet, a prism sheet (BEF), a polarization sheet (DBEF), has a constant value without dependence on a lamp luminance. The relative luminance of optical components in 12-lamps BLU is lower than that in 18-lamps backlight. The light transmission rate, the relative luminance of liquid crystal display panel with the luminance 100 % of backlight, is 7.14 % in the use of DBEF and BEF, 6.12 % in the use of only DBEF, and 3.21 % in the use of only BEF. Those Data obtained in this experiment for the lamps and optical components, are the design parameters for the LCD backlight.


This chapter is concerned with two processes which are central to language variation and change. The processes are related but separate and usually do not coincide temporally. The first of these, dissociation, can occur at any time, given appropriate external triggers whereas the second, supraregionalisation, is an historical process which normally happens once, at a particular time in the development of a country. The data for the present study stem from Ireland and were collected by the author between the early 1990s and the time of writing (2011). It is important to stress that Ireland does not have any privileged position vis à vis dissociation and supraregionalisation – these processes can occur anywhere. However, they are clearly attested in Ireland in its recent history and hence well documented. There is another reason why these two processes can be well illustrated by examples from English in Ireland: this is a country which does not have an overtly codified standard of English and in which standard British English is not a model which is accepted publicly in Ireland. So whatever changes in Irish English take place, or have taken place, the results are never an approximation to standard British English.


Objective: Emergence of extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) production poses another clinical problem with Gram-negative bacterial infections. The present study was aimed to evaluate the ESBL producers among various clinical samples of clinically suspected patients. Methods: A total of 1279 samples (urine [918], pus [207] and stool [154]) were collected and 465 isolates ( Escherichia coli [320], Enterobacter aerogenes [119] and Klebsiella pneumoniae [26]) were isolated and screened for the presence of ESBL producers using combination disc method and double disc synergy test. Results: Of the 465 culture positive isolates, 130 ( E. coli 93 [29.06%], E. aerogenes 35 [29.41%] and K. pneumoniae 2 [7.69%]) were identified as ESBL producers. Among the three Enterobacteriaceae members, E. coli 93 (29.06%) was found to be predominant ESBL producer next in order E. aerogenes 35 (29.41%) and K. pneumoniae 2 (7.69%). Maximum number of ESBL producers were recovered from urine (n=111) followed by pus (n=14) and stool (n=5). All the ESBL-producing isolates were subjected to antibiotic sensitivity test using 10 different antibiotics. ESBL producers were chiefly resistance to ceftriaxone followed by ceftazidime and cefotaxime. Of 130 ESBL producers, 15 ( E. coli (8), E. aerogenes (6) and K. pneumoniae (1)] strains were selected for genotypic identification. Among, only two strains of E. aerogenes were positive isolates for CTX-M type ESBL in polymerase chain reaction. Conclusion: This study concluded that among Enterobacteriaceae members, E. coli was the predominant ESBL producers and urine was noted as the prime source for the ESBL positive isolates when compared to other source. Genotypic identification was the best method to differentiate ESBL types which were essential to provide proper treatment.


Flat plate particle collections have revealed the presence of a remarkable variety of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial material in the stratosphere. It is found that the ratio of terrestrial to extraterrestrial material and the nature of the material collected may vary significantly over short time scales. These fluctuations may be related to massive injections of volcanic ash, emissions from solid fuel rockets, or variations in the micrometeoroid flux. The variations in particle number density can be of great importance to the earth's atmospheric radiation balance, and, therefore, its climate. With the objective to assess the number density of solid particles in the stratosphere, an examination has been conducted of all particles exceeding 1 micron in average diameter for a representative suite of particles obtained from a single flat plate collection surface. Attention is given to solid particle size distributions in the stratosphere, and the origin of important stratospheric particle types.


Abstract The transverse motion of fabrics in domestic tumble dryers plays an important role in fabric heat and mass transfer using hot air. However, owing to a lack of effective and accurate experimental methods, little attention has been paid to this dynamic behavior. This paper describes how a high-speed detection system was utilized to track a tracer fabric dyed yellow as it was tumbled amongst other fabrics under different drying conditions, with the aim of identifying transverse fabric motion in a domestic tumble dryer. The experimental results demonstrate that fabric motion is complicated and can be affected by the size of fabrics as well as by drying load mass. Most fabrics inhabited two main regions, the bulk region and the disperse region. Increasing the size of the disperse region, where fabrics are projected into the air by the motion of the rotary drum, also expands the contact area between the fabric and the surrounding air, and augments the mixing motions of textiles. This contributes positively to the mass and heat transfer, and to the prevention of wrinkling. A higher drying efficiency together with a better smoothness appearance was observed with a fabric size of 80 cm 80 cm and a mass of 3 kg. The high-speed detection system identified that specific ranges of fabric size and load mass led to increased fabric mixing and air-fabric contact.


This report presents information on why people do not us transit in large numbers in both the United States and the State of Florida. The report contains demographics of the non-user public according to age, gender, automobile ownership, income, and ethnicity. In addition, it contains a synthesis of Florida Transit Surveys, an examination of most appropriate questions and methodologies for data gathering and suggestions about how to improve overall transit service and to attract choice non-users to public transit.


[0.808646,0.828714] [-0.00003,0.000030] [0.067 817,0.087916] [0.740 78,0.740 8441 [0.180 303,0.182 2421 [0.942 074,1.064 1431 H" = ([0.180 286,0.182 2561 'dg(tf) = ([0.941969,1.064 2641)). From the simulation results shown in (17) through (21), we observe that all the interval solutions are quite close (i.e., xe(tf) ?dcd,(tf))_and ?&(t~) 3 ?~~(tf) xdg(tf). Also, we observe that G$ 3 Gi4 3 Gf4 and Hiz 3 Hj4 3 Hi4. Hence, the proposed enclosing interval model yields less conservative enclosing bounds on the exact interval solution than the Pad6 enclosing interval model. zdp(tf)


Lipid metabolism plays a key role in human health and longevity. Dysregulation of lipid metabolism has been implicated in many age‐related diseases. As a major site of lipid metabolism, adipose tissue exerts crucial endocrine effects on aging. However, it remains poorly understood how lipid metabolism is coupled to lifespan control. We found a lysosomal acid lipase that promotes lifespan and healthspan in C. elegans. The underlying molecular mechanisms will be discussed in the talk.


First HIVseropositive individual in India was identified in 1986 among the prostitutes of Madras city. Since then the surveillance has revealed progressive increase in prevalence rate of seropositivity from 0.2% in 1986 to 0.7% in 1992. Upto 31 Oct 1992, out of a total of 242 AIDS cases in India. 55 were females [1]. The number of AIDS cases in women is increasing and by the year 2000 A.D. it is estimated that the annual number of fresh AIDS cases in women and men will be equal [2]. Most of the women don't know that they are infected and HIV infection does not reduce fertility. The increasing incidence of HIV infection among women will result in a corresponding increase in the number of babies acquiring the infection from their mothers, as 20 to 50% infected pregnant women will pass the virus to their off-springs [3]. before, during or shortly after birth, by transplacental passage of virus. exposure to infectious maternal blood and vaginal secretions during labour. or breast feeding [4]. We still don't know why some of the children will be infected while many of them will not be. Almost all the infected infants will succumb to the disease by the age of 5 years 'and ofthe uninfected 75% are likely to be orphaned by 5 years of age. It is important that the baby's risk of HIV infection through breast feeding be weighed against its risk of dying of other causes. if breast feeding is denied. Therefore. where the primary causes of infant death are infectious diseases and malnutrition. infants who are not breast fed run a particularly high risk of dying from these conditions and breast feeding should remain the standard advise to HIV infected women [3). Pregnancy outcome for both mother and baby is not significantly different between HIV positive and matched HIV negative women [5). The Obstetric management of HIV seropositive women is not much different from sero-negative women. Pregnancy does not affect the course of HIV infection in the asymptomatic individual but women with AIDS are at risk of severe opportunistic infection whilst pregnant [6). Whether these women will benefit from antiretroviral therapy is controversial but foetal malformation, excess prematurity or foetal toxicity have not yet been attributed to the use of this drug [7). If a women of reproductive age gets infected with HIV. she should be advised for prevention of pregnancy or if she gets pregnant. she should be informed that her baby has a chance of being infected and should be given medical, social and psychological support for her decision to either carry or terminate the pregnancy. When an infected pregnant woman desires an induced. abortion, or sterilisation as a means of permanent contraception or has to be delivered. theobstetrician is at a greater risk of exposure to infected blood and amniotic fluid entering through exposed skin or mucous membranes. Therefore it is imperative that surgeon should take precautions against HIVinfection even if the patient is sera-negative because


This paper presents analyses of data collected with three ground‐based Doppler radars during the Mesoscale Alpine Programme (MAP) Intensive Observation Period (IOP) 2b from 1900 UTC 19 September until 1100 UTC 20 September 1999. During this period, the synoptic situation was characterized by the propagation of a deep upper‐tropospheric trough towards the Alps, as often observed when heavy precipitation occurs on the southern slopes of the Alpine massif. A frontal cloud system with embedded convective cells passed over northern Italy in association with the trough moving rapidly eastwards. Ahead of the advancing cold front, a strong south to south‐easterly low‐level flow impinged on the mountains near Lago Maggiore and produced copious amounts of rain (<200mm at several locations).


Despite the excellent characteristics and results in all MMIC implementations, high power has remained a challenge. The low-power output of solid state sources along with their low-impedance, further hindered by conventional transmission line characteristics, results in even lower efficiencies. From a device performance point of view, it is obvious that traditional planar line techniques introduce high losses due to the excitation of substrate wave modes. While parasitic radiation is inherent to microstrip and cannot be suppressed, ground connections can be achieved by use of via hole technology. Via holes, however, result in high parasitic inductance and parasitic radiation leading to a substantial device gain degradation which has a detrimental impact on circuit operation at millimeter-wave frequencies. Conventional coplanar technology also provides limited solutions to some of these problems by bringing the ground plane to the proximity of the active devices at the cost of additional parasitic effects such as the excitation of parallel plate and microstrip modes, thus resulting in increased fabrication complexity. All solutions which have been proposed to eliminate parasitic modes have been proven quite ineffective, thus making conventional microstrip and coplanar transmission line approaches less attractive for use in millimeter wave MMICs. In an effort to increase generated power, reduce loss and design cycle, a new generation of MMICs is needed. RF Si micromachining is an excellent approach that provides solutions to the above problems.


The detection of changes in spatial positon was examined for random-dot visual patterns for sequences of 2 to 16 successive display fields. The results show that operators integrate displacement information across successive display fields; detection is nearly invariant with a fixed total displacement over successive display fields, whether the status of a particular dot is queried or whether the observer must indicate only whether any dot in the field has been displaced. The critical variable is identified as the interval between successive display fields. Display aiding, represented by a trail of displacements, is extremely effective; strikingly large performance changes—from near chance to near perfect—are observed as a function of the length of the trail, especially at long intervals between successive displacements. The rate of trail fading proved to be a relatively insensitive variable. Three forms of visual interference were distinguished: clutter, or stationary noise; jitter, or stationary noise modified by a random walk; and random noise. Random noise was substantially more interfering than clutter. Implications for the design of displays are briefly discussed.


Consider a slotted communication channel which carries packetized voice and which can transmit exactly one packet every timeslot. Assume that every conversation routed over this channel generates exactly one packet every N timeslots. We study, for the case of an infinite buffer and an N-periodic strongly interchangeable input process, buffer behavior and packet delays as functions of the number of calls routed over the channel, as long as that number is less than or equal to N. Among our results are a simple algorithm which computes the marginal distribution of the buffer content and an algorithm with complexity of order N 4 which computes the distribution of the maximal buffer content (over a period of N timeslots).


Stroke ranks third after ischemic heart disease and cancer as a cause of lost disability in high-income countries and as a cause of death worldwide [1]. The incidence of stroke varies among countries and increases exponentially with age. In Western societies, about 80% of strokes are caused by focal cerebral ischemia, and the remaining 20% are caused by hemorrhages [2]. Ischemic brain injury is thought to result from the cascade of events from energy depletion to cell death. Intermediate factors include an excess of extracellular excitatory amino acids, freeradical formation, and inflammation [3,4].


Background: We previously reported that the Ki-67 labeling index (LI) in primary tumors and the thyroglobulin (Tg)-doubling time (DT) were potent prognostic indicators in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC). Objectives: To elucidate the relationship between these two factors. Methods: A total of 390 patients with PTC who underwent total thyroidectomy between 1998 and 2004 and in whom the Tg-DT was calculated were enrolled. We determined the Ki-67 LI in primary tumors and compared these values with the patients' clinicopathological factors, postoperative Tg status, Tg-DT, and prognosis. Tg status was categorized by postoperative serum Tg values: biochemically persistent disease (BPD), equivocal state, and biochemical remission. Results: The Ki-67 LI was ≤5% in 312 patients (80%), 5%-10% in 48 patients (12%), and >10% in 30 patients (8%). Ki-67 LI was significantly associated with BPD (p < 0.0001). The proportion of BPD patients increased with the higher Ki-67 LI category: 24, 67, and 87%, respectively. The Ki-67 LI had a significant inverse correlation with the Tg-DT (Spearman's ρ = −0.5267, p < 0.0001). Of the 378 patients without distant metastasis at surgery, 68 patients had recurrence, and 6 of the 390 patients died of PTC during the follow-up (mean 88 months). On multivariate analyses, the Ki-67 LI remained an independent predictor of disease-free survival and disease-specific survival when Tg-DT and Tg status were excluded from the analyses. Conclusions: Evaluation of the Ki-67 LI in primary tumors may allow the prediction of the postoperative Tg status, Tg-DT and prognosis of patients with PTC.


Let $X_\lambda$ and $X_\lambda'$ be monomial deformations of two Delsarte hypersurfaces in weighted projective spaces. In this paper we give a sufficient condition so that their zeta functions have a common factor of positive degree.
This generalises a results by Doran, Kelly, Salerno, Sperber, Voight and Whitcher where they showed this for a particular monomial deformation of a Calabi-Yau invertible polynomial. It turns out that our factor can be of higher degree then one of Doran et. al.


This paper examines interest rate spreads in the Eastern Caribbean and seeks to explain why they are persistently high by comparison with other low-inflation countries. The paper concludes that operating costs appear to be a key determinant of observed interest rate spreads, giving rise to the policy recommendation that efforts to expand the market size of efficient banks might help pave the way for greater efficiency.


This is the first article in a series describing the LATEX package feynMF for easy drawing of professional quality Feynman diagrams with METAFONT (or MetaPost). This time the design principles and the basic usage will be discussed.


Welcome to the 5th International Conference on Building Materials and Construction, ICBMC 2020, held in Tokyo, Japan from February 26 to 29, 2020. ICBMC 2020 is at providing an avenue for academicians, students, researchers, professionals, engineers, and scientists from the academia and industry to share their research findings for further collaborative research in their respective areas. The theme of the conference is "Innovations in Building Materials and Construction". proceedings of ICBMC 2020 consist of 27 selected papers from the conference which were submitted from universities, research institutes and industries. All papers were subjected to peer-review by conference committee members and international reviewers. The papers were selected based on their quality and relevancy to the conference. I would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the Conference Technical Committee for their great contribution in organizing this conference. Moreover, I wish to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation to plenary speakers, Prof. Nuno Dinis Cortiços from Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, Prof. Kyoung Sun Moon Yale University, USA, and Prof. Ho Chee Cheong, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia, for sharing their knowledge with the rest of the participants. I hope the experience of ICBMC 2020 was intellectually stimulating to all participants. Last, I hope that the contents of this volume will prove useful for researchers and practitioners in developing and applying new technologies and processes in the field of building materials and construction. Prof. Tan Kiang Hwee National University of Singapore, Singapore March 11, 2020


The approach for the proposed concrete tie research under the NEXTRANS Center funding was to characterize the abrasion demand on the concrete-tie rail seat, as well as the abrasion resistance of different rail seat materials and designs (e.g. concrete strength, porosity, admixtures, surface treatments, etc.) and tie pad materials (e.g. polyurethane, plastic, steel, etc.). The approach and methodology for this project included a thorough literature review, interviews with industry experts, concrete tie performance data collection, modeling, experimental testing, and ultimately the development of laboratory tests to objectively evaluate different rail seat materials based on their resistance to abrasion. The investigators are confident that the abrasion-related knowledge gained in this project will benefit other modes of transportation that utilize concrete as a construction material, as well as the field of materials engineering.


Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar, assisted by millimeter-wave band virtual MIMO techniques, provides great promises to the high-resolution automotive sensing and target detection in unmanned ground/aerial vehicles (UGA/UAV). As one long-standing challenging problem, however existing subspace methods may suffer from either the low resolution/accuracy or the high time complexity. In this study, we propose two computational efficient methods to accomplish the high-resolution estimation of angle of arrival (AoA) information. By leveraging randomized low-rank approximation, our fast-MUSIC approaches, relying on random sampling and projection techniques, would speed up the subspace computation by orders of magnitude. At the same time, we establish the theoretical bounds of our proposed approaches, which ensure the accuracy of approximated pseudo-spectrum. As shown, in the case of high signal-to-noise ratio, the pseudo-spectrum acquired by our fast-MUSIC is highly precise, when compared to the exact MUSIC. Comprehensive numerical study demonstrates that our new methods are tremendously faster than MUSIC, while the AoA estimation accuracy are almost as good as MUSIC. As such, our fast-MUSIC enables the high-resolution yet real-time sensing with massive MIMO radar, which has great potential in the emerging mobile computing and automotive applications.


A controlled experiment was performed to assess the usefulness of portions of a usability-supporting architectural pattern (USAP) in modifying the design of software architectures to support a specific usability concern. Results showed that participants using a complete USAP produced modified designs of significantly higher quality than participants using only a usability scenario. Comparison of solution quality ratings with a quantitative measure of responsibilities considered in the solution showed positive correlation between the measures. Implications for software development are that usability concerns can be included at architecture design time, and that USAPs can significantly help software architects to produce better designs to address usability concerns. Implications for empirical software engineering are that validated quantitative measures of software architecture quality may potentially be substituted for costly and often elusive expert assessment.


We describe our information retrieval system which allows a convivial access to databases. It is based on a multi-expert architecture using a database management system and a blackboard to control the progressive analysis of the user's sentence. We have integrated a numerical method based on fuzzy rules to deal with uncertainty. This method is used to optimize the analysis process and the cooperation between the different experts. On the other hand, the goal of our recent research is to ease or eliminate the knowledge-acquisition bottleneck for expert system creation and to make a connectionist model behave as much as possible like an expert system. We describe our experience using neural networks to represent the knowledge bases of the different experts (i.e., lexical entries expert, homographs expert, template expert, grammatical word expert and words expert).


The method of rank reduction has been proposed for electrodynamically weighing systems for non-parametric modeling. The algorithms are based on the rank reduction paradigm with emphasis on signal subspace techniques. The general principle of rank reduction for signal synthesis modeling and signal whitening has been treated. In this very application where the method of rank reduction was applied to the electrodynamically weighing system, the order of the system was known to be two. We also knew the source(s) of the different heterogeneous inputs. Thus, the prior knowledge which is subject to the optimal rank of the objective function was known beforehand and so it was incorporated into the model. From this application specific perspective, we showed that if we are able to incorporate a good knowledge about the optimal rank into the overall system model, the signal estimate obtained can outperform the general principle of rank reduction which is based on the trade off between the model bias and model variance. On the other hand, if the rank was unknown, we might have had the difficulty of choosing the best signal estimate since the signal estimate obtained from the signal synthesis modeling is very different from signal estimate obtained from the model based on signal whitening. The addition of prior knowledge into the model of rank reduction algorithms can improve upon the performance in terms of both accuracy and speed since the computational resource(s) that is spent in the determination of the rank may also be reduced.


The kinetic study for the formation of Schiff base from 5-chlorosalicylaldehyde with aniline have been studied in ethanol in the temperature range 303 to 318 k .The rate of reaction is first order with respect to 5-chlorosalicylaldehyde and first order with respect to aniline. The rate of reaction increases with increases in temperature. The thermodynamic parameters are used to explain the nature of reaction .Suitable reaction mechanism has been suggested for the formation of the Schiff base. From the effect of temperature on the rate of reaction various thermodynamic parameter have been evaluated.


Objective To study the etiology,clinical manifestations,diagnosis and treatment of postpartum cerebral angiopathy(PCA).Methods We present one case of PCA,including the symptoms,signs,diagnostic examination,treatment and prognosis.We also include a review of 38 PCA cases reported in the literature.Results All patients experienced sudden onset of symptoms.Thunderclap headache was a common complaint,which could be accompanied by transient hypertension.Most patients' MRI exams showed multiple patchy high-signal-intensity lesions in bilateral cerebral cortex and subcortex white matter on T2WI and FLAIR,high signal intensity on DWI and low or high signal intensity on ADC.Cerebral angiography or TCD exams showed multi-segmental functional vasoconstriction of intracranial large arteries and their branches.No vascular inflammatory changes were found in histopathologic analysis.Most patients followed a relatively benign course.Follow-up MRI exams showed the abnormal signals disappeared.Conclusions(1)The etiology of PCA was unknown.Thunderclap headache is the main clinical manifestation.(2)In the majority of PCA cases,MRI exams showed reversible posterior leukoencephalopathy syndrome,which could be accompanied by subarachnoid hemorrhage,lacunar cerebral infarction and/or minor cerebral hemorrhage in cortex,subcortex or watershed area.(3)Functional vasoconstriction of intracranial large arteries and their branches is the primary pathophysiologic process in PCA.(4) Treatment for vasoconstriction is essential to improve outcome.


SUMMARYAntheridal production was induced by the addition of 1,000 units/ml of hormone A to hyphae of Achlya ambisexualis. Electron microscopy of nuclear divisions within hyphae demonstrated the pre...


Di-, tri-, and star block copolymers from polybutadiene (PB) and polydiethylsiloxane (PDES) have been synthesized by sequential anionic polymerization, using mono-, di-, and tetrafunctional terminating agents. The tri- and star block copolymers were crosslinked by hydrosilylation of the PB double bonds with chlorodimethylsilane, followed by condensation of the chlorosilane groups with ambient humidity. The thus obtained rubbers showed elastomeric tensile behavior and stress-induced mesophase formation. Both the block copolymers and the rubbers showed microphase separation into PB and PDES domains.


Optically transparent nanostructured SiO2 glassceramics containing a high density of monodispersed, nanometer sized clusters of SnO2 were obtained by phase separation from sol-gel synthesized xerogel. This material was produced either as bulk samples or as thin films on silicon and it can be easily doped with rare earth ions during the sol-gel synthesis. Spectroscopic measurements were carried out on bulk samples, demonstrating an effective energy-transfer between nanoclusters and rare earth ions. A particular sol-gel derived synthesis was employed, producing silica-based films with relatively low electrical resistivity and thickness ranging between 300 and 1000 nm. Suitable sol features allowed thick single-step deposition by spin-coating techniques, assuring the homogeneous nanosized clustering of the semiconducting SnO2 phase. Refractive index and thickness were analyzed in films produced in different conditions of synthesis and thermal treatments of densification. The current-voltage response and the electro-induced optical emission in this material were investigated, suggesting potential technological applications in photonics and UV-emitting devices.


This article offers a comparative theological analysis of the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles. It highlights the absence of theologically attentive comparison of these works in biblical scholarship, in spite of the work begun by Sara Japhet in the late 1970s (in Hebrew; 1989 in English). As a theological probe, I examine how each work conceptualizes monotheism, a topic that Japhet largely ignored in her study. My concern is to understand how each work configures Yhwh's sole divinity in relation to the people, the temple, and the particular geography of the nation. I suggest points of comparison and departure that stem from the particular theological perspectives of each work.


The need for an integrated approach to ecological conservation and natural resource development is becoming widely recognized as environmental and social problems become more and more acute with human population pressures and depletion of resources. While a number of academic programmes addressing environmental problems have been operating for several decades, comprehensive approaches that integrate conservation with development issues are only just beginning to occur. These innovative, cross-disciplinary problem-solving approaches still face a number of traditional constraints to successful programme development. Obstacles occur in every major aspect of academia — including structure, communication, reward systems, research, curriculum, and evaluation.


Machine for picking up and pressing of agricultural crop material, such as hay, straw, wilted or the like. With a bale chamber (7) for forming a Erntegutballens and with a winding device (11) for enclosure of the Erntegutballens with a winding material, said winding device (11) a comprises wrapping material roll (12), the wrapping material transporting feeding apparatus (14) as well as the wrapping material web (13) severing cutter (16) with a the wrapping material prior to entry into the bale chamber (7) wide executing means (17) transversely to the direction the wrapping material web (13) is oriented and is assigned to the feeding apparatus (14), wherein the the wrapping material prior to entry into the bale chamber (7) extending spreader forming means (17) from an at least approximately over the width of the wrapping material web (13), conically in their end regions to a reduced diameter compared to the central region roller (18) is formed which is associated a freely rotatable or by a lock (21) secured against rotation of the feed device (14).


Wireless ad hoc networks can be modeled as small world networks based on the complex network theory. In this letter, we propose a new energy efficient small world network model which considers the battery energy of the wireless nodes, the multi-hop transmission distance and the geographical distance between wireless nodes. In order to quantify the energy efficiency of the proposed model, we propose a new energy efficiency metric which jointly considers: 1) the energy efficiency of the wireless links, and 2) the impact of a wireless node on the entire network. By adopting the proposed metric, we evaluate the energy efficiency of each wireless node and the entire network. Our results show that the proposed model: 1) follows the small world feature, and 2) is more energy efficient compared to a random network.


H2 production from water splitting by a photocatalytic process is one route that can be used to solve global issues related to energy depletion and environmental pollution, and it has attracted a great amount of attention in both the academic and industrial fields. TiO2 nanotube arrays are intensively investigated as TiO2 catalysts. In comparison to a TiO2 powder catalyst, the nanotube arrays have specific advantages, including a large surface area, easy retrievability, uniformly ordered structure, and size-dependent properties, all of which make them attractive in wide applications including H2 generation. In recent years, a large amount of work has been done and great progress has been achieved in this field. In this review, we summarize synthetic strategies to prepare TiO2 nanotube arrays and their modification methods, and we highlight recent progress in the generation of H2 on TiO2 nanotube-array-based materials. Finally, challenges associated with industrial application of this photocatalytic technique are also emphasized.


Objective To study the early diagnosis method for bone-metastasis of lung, breast and prostate carcinoma. Methods A total of 102 patients with lung, breast and prostate carcinoma were selected into the study and 35 patients with benign ill selected as controls. The whole-body bone scintigraphy was performed on them by SPECT, and before that their blood samples were collected to measure the serum concentrations of ALP and B-ALP. Results The bone metastasis rate was 62.8%, including single spot (21.8%) and multi spots (78.2%). There was a highly significant difference of ALP concentration and a highly significant difference of B-ALP between the carcinoma and benignant groups. Furthermore, thepatients with multi spot bone metastasis had higher concentration of ALP and B-ALP(P0.01). B-ALP had certain value to confirm the malign bone-metastasis when its concentration was more than 20 U/L. Conclusions It is more accurately and fully reflecting the bone-metastasis character to measure serum ALP and B-ALP and perform SPECT whole-body bone scintigraphic examination at the same time.


Currently, the VENUS-7 series of critical experiments is evaluated within an OECD/NEA benchmark activity for the validation of nuclear data and codes for MOX fuel. Measurements are available for various cold square lattice cores, consisting of an inner MOX and an outer UO2 zone, moderated and reflected by light water. In addition to the multiplication factors, reactivity changes for substitution or removal of a small number of fuel pins, as well as radial pin-wise fission rate distributions are known from the experiments. Results obtained with the MCNP code, using point-wise cross section libraries processed from the JEF-2.2 and JEFF-3.1 evaluated data, are presented. Concerning the reactivity differences and fission rate distributions, satisfactory agreement between the calculated and measured results is obtained. The absolute values of the multiplication constants are underestimated with the JEF-2.2 data by approximately 700pcm, which is consistent with the results of earlier calculations for the KRITZ-2 LWR lattice UO2 cores. When using the new JEFF-3.1 data available from the NEA data bank, the calculated multiplication constants increase by a statistically significant amount of about 200pcm. The results supplement a series of benchmark calculations with the Monte Carlo method on critical experiments performed for the validation of evaluated nuclear point data libraries.


A novel status update system is designed by combining adaptive modulation and coding, and truncated and layer-coded hybrid automatic repeat request (T-L-HARQ). With the channel state information (CSI) at transmitter (CSIT), which is obtained from the receiver by using pilot-assisted estimation, the source adaptively selects its transmission rate. Due to the delay, the CSI at receiver (CSIR) is the outdated version of the CSIT, and the decoding error is inevitable. Firstly, since the backtrack decoding used in the T-L-HARQ, the classical age of information is insufficient to quantify the status update freshness, we propose the age of error information (AoEI), which is defined as the elapsed time since the generation of the lastly successfully backtrack-decoded status update. Secondly, we characterize the interdeparture time duration of two consecutively successfully feedforward transmissions and the backtrack decoding depth of a successful T-L-HARQ transmission cycle. As a result, the closed-form expression of average AoEI is derived. The simulations show that a tradeoff design between throughput and AoEI is essential by controlling backtrack decoding depth.


A megawatt power conversion component comprises an IGBT (insulated-gate bipolar transistor) radiator module, wherein support plates I are arranged at the left end and the right end on the back of the IGBT radiator module; the IGBT radiator module is fixed on a backing plate through the support plates I; an IGBT composite busbar is fixed on the outer side of the IGBT radiator module; an absorption capacitor is directly connected between the positive pole and the negative pole of an IGBT module through a laminated busbar; a capacitor busbar and the IGBT composite busbar are fixedly connected with each other; a positive terminal and a negative terminal are respectively connected; one end of a filter capacitor is fixedly connected with the capacitor busbar, and the other end of the filter capacitor is fixed on a capacitor mounting plate; the capacitor mounting plate is fixed on the backing plate through a support plate II; an AC terminal at the left end of the capacitor busbar is fixedly connected with an IGBT AC busbar; a water faucet is arranged on the IGBT radiator module; the IGBT module is arranged on the IGBT radiator module; and a driver board, a voltage-sharing resistor and a DC supply filter are further arranged on the IGBT radiator module. The megawatt power conversion component has the advantages of compact structure, reliability in operation, convenience in disassembly and installation, and wide application range.


Aiming at the problem that the existing asynchronous motor parameter identification method only identifies the parameters of the motor itself, ignoring the parameters of the asynchronous motor load, this paper proposes a particle swarm optimization algorithm combined with spatial disturbance to realize the integrated parameter identification of the asynchronous motor, machine and pump. On the premise of identifying the parameters of the asynchronous motor itself, the load parameters of the pump are identified, and the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to realize the integrated identification of the asynchronous motor and the load. By combining the particle swarm optimization algorithm (PSO) and the spatial disturbance (SD), the six equivalent parameters of the asynchronous motor and the pump load factor can be accurately and effectively identified. Compared with the traditional PSO algorithm, the global search method is increased. Excellent ability. An example proves the effectiveness of the algorithm.


Heavy-ion research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) during the first decade of data collection, approximately during the years 2000–2010, was primarily focused on the study of Au+Au collisions. The search for evidence of quark-gluon plasma (QGP), a state of matter where quarks and gluons become unbound within a high energy density environment, which was at the forefront of research efforts. However, studies of the azimuthal anisotropy parameter v2 in p/d+Pb collisions from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) yielded results consistent with the hydrodynamic flow, one of the signatures of quark-gluon plasma formation in heavy-ion collisions. Since the publication of these findings, the field of heavy-ion physics has made subsequent measurements in small system collisions to study cold nuclear matter effects as well as look for additional evidence of hot nuclear matter effects. Quarkonia, a bound state of a cc¯ or bb¯ pair, has often been used to probe a wide range of nuclear effects in both large and small collision systems. Here we will review recent quarkonia measurements in small system collisions at RHIC and LHC energies and summarize the experimental conclusions.


We developed a CUDA-based parallelization of the annealing method for the inverse Laplace transform problem. The algorithm is based on annealing algorithm and minimizes residue of the reconstruction of the spectral function. We introduce local updates which preserve first two sum rules and allow an efficient parallel CUDA implementation. Annealing is performed with the Monte Carlo method on a population of Markov walkers. We propose imprinted branching method to improve further the convergence of the anneal. The algorithm is tested on truncated double-peak Lorentzian spectrum with examples of how the error in the input data affects the reconstruction.


This study on the effect of Self Assessment System to compliance by employers to pay PPN taxable in Lhokseumawe. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of the Self Assessment System to compliance by employers to pay PPN taxable in Lhokseumawe. The data used in this study are primary data by dividing questionnaires to 58 employers taxable motorcycle repair shop in Lhokseumawe were used as samples. The data processing is done with the help of a simple linear equation model SPSS version 16. The results showed that: Self Assessment System have a relationship (correlation) is very strong compliance by employers to pay PPN taxable in Lhokseumawe. Self Assessment System has the ability to explain its influence to pay PPN compliance by employers taxable in Lhokseumawe. Self Assessment System significantly influences compliance by employers to pay PPN taxable in Lhokseumawe.


Quick Response Code Abstract: The purpose of this study is to find out:the perceived value of customer loyalty to stay and investigate the influence of trust on customer loyalty to stay, the perceived value on customer satisfaction overnight, trust on customer satisfaction overnight, customer satisfaction on customer loyalty to stay, perceived value on consumer loyalty through overnight customer satisfaction and trust on customer loyalty through customer satisfaction staying at the Hotel.The object of this research is the perception of value, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty to stay overnight. The results of the study prove that descriptively the perception of value, trust, customer satisfaction and consumer loyaltyis positively perceived by consumers, or all variables of this study get a good response from consumers. It also indicated that perceived value and trust have a significant influence on brand loyalty staying in the hotel either directly or indirectly through moderating variable of customer satisfaction. In addition, it also confirms that there is an indirect effect of perceived value, trust in consumer loyalty through consumer satisfaction of Grand Nanggroe Hotel Banda Aceh.


TOP210 is an integrated PWM converter used in low power with the following advantages: simple circuit and convenient applications. This paper introduces a kind of Flyback Switching Power Supply based on TOP210, and gives the concrete design scheme.


Under the context of the criminal law of risk, the discussion of whether or not the legal interests are the object of protection of criminal law has taken force. This paper is an approximation and it argues for a material notion of the legal interests from a liberal political perspective. The paper focuses on the discussion about the scope and content of the legal interest, the harm principle and the current state of the concept of the legal interests on the called criminal law of risk or criminal law of security.


The stellar wind of the rapidly rotating early-B supergiant, 7 Am, is studied using time series, high-resolution IUE spectn3scopy secured over ,-, 6 days in 1993 March. Re_lts are presented based on an analysis of several line species, including Nv, C Iv, Si Iv, Si Ill, C II, and AI [lI. The wind of this star is grossly structured, with evidence for latitude-dependent mass loss which reflects the role of rapid rotation. Independent, co-existing time variable features are identified at low-velocity (redward of ~ -750 km st) and at higher-speeds extending to ~ 1500 lan st. The interface between these structures is "defined" by the appearance of a discrete absorption component which is extremely sharp (in velocity space). The central velocity of this "Super DAC" changes only gradually, over several days, between --, -400 and -750 km s -t in most of the ions. However, its location is shifted redward by almost 400 kill S -1 in AIIII and Clt, indicating that the physical structure giving rise to _is feat,arc has a substantial velocity and ionization jump. Constraints on the relative ionization properties of the wind structures are discussed, together with results based on SEI line-prolile-fitting methods. The overall wind activity in 7 Ara exhibits a cleat ion dependence, such that low-speed features are promoted in low-ionization species, including AIIII, C lI, and Si lII. We also highlight that in contrast to most OB stars thereare substantial differences in the epoch-to-epoch time-averaged wind profiles of 7 Ara. We interpret the results in terms of a two-component wind model for 7 Ara, with an equatorially compressed low ionization region, and a high speed, higher-ionization polar outflow. This picture is discussed in the context of the predicted bi-stability mechanism for line-driven winds in rapidly rotating early-B type stare, and the formation of compressed wind regionsin rapidly rotating hot stats. The apparent absence of a substantial shift in the wind ionization mixture of 7 Am, and the normal nature of its photospheric s13ectrmn, suggests wind-compression as the likely dominant cause for the observedequatorial density enhancements. Sendoffprint requests to: R.K. Prinja


This paper presents a normalized probabilistic min-sum algorithm for low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, where a probabilistic second minimum value, instead of the true second minimum value, is used to facilitate fully parallel decoder realization. The comparators in each check-node unit (CNU) are connected through an interconnect network based on a mix of tree and butterfly networks such that the routing and message passing between the variable-node units (VNUs) and CNUs can be efficiently realized. In order to further reduce the hardware complexity, the normalization operation is realized in the VNU rather than in the CNU. An early termination scheme is proposed in order to prevent unnecessary energy dissipation for both low and high signal-to-noise-ratio regions. The proposed techniques are demonstrated by implementing a (2048, 1723) LDPC decoder using a 90 nm CMOS process. Post-layout simulation results show that the decoder supports a throughput of 45.42 Gbps at 199.6 MHz , achieving the highest throughput and throughput-to-area ratio among comparable works based on a similar or better error performance.


Due to the frequency of the association of drugs for the treatment of various diseases, it is necessary to consider situations arising from the simultaneous administration of drugs. Nowadays, is recognized the existence of a variety of drug interactions that occur by different mechanisms. Therefore, it is important that Nursing Professionals perform continuous monitoring to assess the therapeutic goals set, in order to prevent Adverse Drug Reactions and/or toxicity and Therapeutic Failure. For that reason, the aim of this reviewing is to present the major drug interactions that occur with the administration of antacids, mucosal protective agents, gastric antisecretory and its consequences. The compromise of Nursing and Health Care Professionals, should go towards empowerment of knowledge of this topic, in order to deal with responsibility, the monitoring of therapeutic safety and effectiveness, recognizing that there are many unknown pharmacological interactions that will occur as soon as the new active ingredient appears. At the same time, it is important to consider the clinical impact that produces the use of antacids, gastric mucosal protective and antisecretory drugs.


Examines global aspirations of operators that have chosen to increase their global reach via a process of take‐over rather then joint venture, considering their prospects. Discusses recent cell phone trends and concludes that it is difficult to pick winners at this point in history as their industry structure changes on an almost daily basis.


A total of 65 yeast strains were screened for their ability to grow and ferment lactose in a standard DURHAM tube test at 30 °C. Based on the kinetic parameters for lactose and whey lactose fermentations in shake flask cultures, the strain Candida psedotropicalis 65 was chosen for further studies.

Some of the cultural parameters affecting ethanolic fermentations on lactose were standardized. At an initial lactose concentration of 100–120 g/l in the medium containing concentrated whey or lactose, at 40 °C and within 48 h, the selected strain reached an ethanol concentration of 41–59 g/l, an ethanol productivity of 1.3–3.0 g/l/h, a lactose consumption of 99%, an ethanol yield 0.4–0.49 g/g and a biomass yield of 0.027 g/g.


It is not surprising that Lowry feels like a little boy, unwanted and alone "in the dark" about the future of public health.1 Woodall rails against public health "mediocrity" and longs for people to come to his aid "to clean up the mess."2 I have described the way that many professionals in 21st century public health feel like "orphans"3: rejected and then angry …


ABSTRACT Blast furnace (BF) ironmaking system is a complex industrial system so this paper proposes a BF state causality analysis method based on the use of convergent cross-mapping method (CCM). This method can accurately describe the causal relationships between states at different locations in the BF system. It can also be used as a feature selection method for prediction models. After obtaining accurate causal characteristics of the BF state covariates, the BF system process theory is used for validation. The causal characteristics are used as input variables to the extreme gradient boosting model (XGboost) for predicting BF state parameters. After testing with industrial data, the model predicted an absolute error control within 2% with an accuracy of over 88%. The CCM approach mentioned in this paper is more suitable for state causal impact analysis and predictive model feature selection for BF systems.


Fuzzy set theory is adapted here to handle decisions on selection of sites for nuclear power plants. The approach is demonstrated by considering a choice of a site for the first nuclear power plant in Saudi Arabia. The approach allows for accommodation of imprecision in evaluation of the factors impacting site selection such as the site geology; hydrology; seismology; topography; meteorology; and availability of cooling water, services, and transportation. Based on the criteria used, preference of the East Coast site over the West Coast site is found within the fuzzy environment surrounding the decision. The approach is quite adequate in situations where precise data are not available and when the decision maker prefers to resort to verbal ratings rather than to use the tedious course of sensitivity analysis. The alternate sites under consideration, however, must meet at least a minimum level of acceptance from the nuclear safety point of view.


AIMS To conduct an audit and evaluate treatment procedures currently employed in treatment of AO type C distal femoral fractures and to assess outcome as measured by time to union, knee range of motion and associated complications. METHODOLOGY- An audit of patients who were admitted who were admitted with type C open distal Femoral fractures between July 2008 and October 2009 were evaluated. A total of eight open distal femoral fractures in seven patients were available for audit and assessment. Results- Optimum results were accomplised in patients who underwent early debridement, rigid stabilisation and mobilization. Outcome parameters were suboptimal in patients who had developed postoperative infection and in those who required immobilization in view of unstable fixation.


Introducing noise standards or limits at night is necessary to prevent sleep disturbance due to environmental noise, such as transportation noise. In general, noise standards should be based on robust exposure-response relationships derived from many human response data, and subjective
 evaluation obtained from large-scale socio-acoustic surveys can provide reliable scientific evidence. However, it is also necessary to investigate an easy method to collect objective data on sleep effects with little cost and effort. In the present study, we conducted a laboratory study and
 investigated how accurately wearable devices can estimate the sleep stage. Participants wore a smartwatch installed with photoplethysmography (PPG), a portable ECG, and equipment of PSG simultaneously. As a result, the agreement of the sleep stage between the estimations by PPG and by PSG
 was moderate (kappa coefficient = 0.47). Furthermore, we estimated the sleep stage by random forest using the data measured by the ECG, and it was highly agreed with the sleep stage by the PSG (kappa coefficient = 0.75). It is suggested that we could easily estimate the sleep stages such as
 waking, REM, and non-REM with a certain level of accuracy by these wearable devices.


Interior permanent magnet motors have desirable characteristics for electric vehicle drive like high efficiency, wide speed range for flux weakening, relative ease for sensorless control as rotor position information can be obtained from saliency and the possibility of reluctance torque usage in the field weakening range. This paper presents a model and analysis of a nine-phase IPM motor for electric vehicle application. It demonstrates the high torque capability of the IPM motor using controlled third, fifth and seventh harmonic currents and possibility of controlling an n-pole IPM motor as a 6n-pole, 10n-pole or 14n-pole machine which is desirable for low speed range sensorless control.


This paper analyses reconfigurations of play in newly emergent material and digital configurations of game design. It extends recent work examining dimensions of hybridity in playful products by turning attention to interfaces, practices and spaces, rather than devices. We argue that the concept of hybrid play relies on predefining clear and distinct entities that then enter into hybrid situations. Drawing on concepts of the 'interface' and 'postdigital', we argue the distribution of computing devices creates difficulties for such presuppositions. Instead, we propose an 'aesthetic of recruitment' that is adequate to the new openness of social and technical play.


OBJECTIVE We evaluated the influence of two types of calorie restriction, total fast or very low calorie diet, on GH responsiveness to GHRH in severely obese patients.


We have fabricated and characterized lateral current injection (LCI) ridge-waveguide lasers with implanted contacts. Comprehensive optical and electrical measurements have been performed over a wide temperature range (10 K to 300 K) on two sets of lasers with differing ridge widths and active region structures. Several new phenomena unique to the LCI mechanism have been observed and explained, including a positive differential resistance kink at threshold, and an inverse temperature-dependence of quantum efficiency and threshold current at cryogenic values. Electron/hole mobility disparity, local carrier nonpinning above threshold due to photon-assisted carrier diffusion, and intrinsically higher current densities have been experimentally identified as the major factors governing LCI laser characteristics. The results have important implications for optimum LCI laser design and ultimate performance.


The research that has been carried out on blogs focused on blog posts only, ignoring the title of the blog page and the comments contained in the comments section. Also, in summarization only a set of representative sentences are extracted resulting in Text summarization. Some analysis has been done and it has been found that the blog post contains the content that is likely to be related to the topic of the blog post. Also, the comments section is very important. The proposed system of summarization makes use of both the title and the comments contained in the comments section of the blog page. Also, the comments are validated, so to ignore those comments which are written casually and are not important for consideration. The system has been implemented and evaluated experimentally. The system has shown promising results.


A considerable body of evidence has implicated cells and products of the lymphoid system in the genesis of acute viral hepatitis and in a group of progressive forms of chronic hepatic disease; however, the precise elements of the multifaceted immune systems that may participate in mediation of diverse forms of injury have not been delineated. In a comparable state is the delineation of the responsible cellular targets, specific antigens or not. Viral and nonviral antigens have been clearly implicated, seem reasonable, but have not been quite proven. It should be noted that specific antigens are not requisite for forms of antigen nonspecific immunologically mediated injury, such as that produced by NK cells. Concerted efforts have long been underway to elucidate the types and specificities of the immune response that may serve to mediate, facilitate, or modify the cause of those hepatic diseases with an immunologic aura. This topic has received general acceptance and broad awareness. Another issue, perhaps of equivalent ultimate significance in immunologically mediated hepatic disease, but independent of the precise immunologic pathways and their cellular specificity, is the existence and effect of a limited array of suppressive substances or cells. The mechanisms that these put into play may ameliorate the pathogenesis by suppression of the apparent limits of the immune response or the efficacy of the effector limits including the metabolism of various forms of the melange of cytolytic cells that can be thrown into the fray. The subject of a study encompassed by two articles in this issue of Hepatology (1, 2) and an additional article in a subsequent issue (3) is a liver-derived suppressor of immunologic responses. This emphasizes a little appreciated issue that not all target organs are passive participants in immunologically mediated attack. Whereas tumors may evade immunologic attack by a variety of mechanisms including the induction of antigen-specific suppressor T cells, for nearly a decade there has been a limited body of information that the liver may contain substances that in one way or another


Breast cancer cell lines are widely used as an in vitro system with which to study the mechanisms underlying biological and chemotherapeutic resistance. In the present study, two novel breast cancer cell lines designated as PC-B-142CA and PC-B-148CA were successfully established from HER2-positive and triple-negative (TN) breast cancer tissues. The cell lines were characterized by cytokeratin (CK), α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), fibroblast-activation protein (FAP) and programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1). Cell proliferation was assessed using a colony formation assay, an MTS assay, 3-dimensional (3-D) spheroid and 3-D organoid models. Wound healing and Transwell migration assays were used to explore the cell migration capability. The responses to doxorubicin (DOX) and paclitaxel (PTX) were evaluated by 3-D spheroids. The results showed that the PC-B-142CA and PC-B-148CA cell lines were α-SMA-negative, FAP-negative, CK-positive and PD-L1-positive. Both cell lines were adherent with the ability of 3-D-multicellular spheroid and organoid formations; invadopodia were found in the spheroids/organoids of only PC-B-148CA. PC-B-142CA had a faster proliferative but lower metastatic rate compared to PC-B-148CA. Compared to MDA-MB-231, a commercial TN breast cancer cell line, PC-B-148CA had a similar CD44+/CD24− stemness property (96.90%), whereas only 8.75% were found in PC-B-142CA. The mutations of BRCA1/2, KIT, PIK3CA, SMAD4, and TP53 were found in PC-B-142CA cells related to the resistance of several drugs, whereas PC-B-148CA had mutated BRCA2, NRAS and TP53. In conclusion, PC-B-142CA can serve as a novel HER2-positive breast cancer cell line for drug resistance studies; while PC-B-148CA is a novel TN breast cancer cell line suitable for metastatic and stemness-related properties.


ABSTRACT Microbacterium paludicola CC3 exhibits the capability to produce polysaccharide bioflocculants. Here, we report the whole-genome sequence of M. paludicola CC3, which may be helpful in understanding the genetic basis of the biosynthesis of polysaccharide bioflocculants as well as in promoting its production and application in industrial fields.


The wireless hand gesture controlled robotic arm is a wireless system that can convey the information between two or more points and it is not physically connected by any electrical conductors. It will convey movement information from a real person's hand to the robotic arm wirelessly. Some common controllers used to control a robotic arm system include mouse controllers, keyboard controllers, joystick controllers, keypad controllers and so on. Although all of these controllers are the most common controller to control a robotic arm system, there are still some difficulties to use these controllers. The objective is to ease the control of the robotic arm with hand gesture by using flex bend sensors and servo motors for humanitarian aid purposes. Two Arduino NANO is used, one on the real person's hand and the other on the robotic arm as the microcontroller in this project since it is easy to change and the programming language of this microcontroller is more familiar rather than other microcontrollers. A pair of NRF24L01 transceiver module is used for the wireless communication between both Arduino NANO microcontrollers. This project results in a much easier and reliable controlling method of the robotic arm.


For 20 years, as of 1991, multiple rounds of negotiations took place between Syria and Israel. These negotiations revolved around the entire gamut of problems separating the two countries: borders, recognition, finality of the conflict, normalization, security arrangements, the Israeli civilian population in the disputed territory, water, Lebanon, the Palestinian issue, Iran, and terrorism. Israeli Prime Ministers, Syrian presidents, foreign ministers, and senior generals from both sides participated in the talks, and third parties such as the United States and Turkey were also involved. Yet peace was not achieved, although not for a lack of effort. This article tries to shed light on some of the reasons for this continuing failure.


Medical tourism industry is one of the most fast-growing new tourist industries.Through domestic and foreign literature retrieval,the definition and categories of medical tourism,the current status of researches are synthesized,and the necessity of the international medical tourism development is analyzed objectively,and the researches on domestic medical tourism are prospected.For the future research,we propose to pay more attention to this field,strengthening normative and micro-level researches and meanwhile expanding the research scopes.

Key words:
Medical tourism;  Development;  Research review


The paper proposes a method that helps clients to select a web service among several ones with the same functionality based on their quality of service properties (QoS). It provides a mechanism for integrated QoS assessment of web services taking into account all measured QoS properties of interest. The method estimates the strength of the mutual dependency of the QoS properties based on the data set of QoS values accumulated during the web service monitoring. It is summarized in a step-by-step assessment procedure and is proved through a real web service selection scenario.


This article deals with the robust control problem of the motion axes of milling machine tools subjected to perturbation forces induced by the metal machining process. A position output feedback control scheme is proposed for robust rejection of unknown cutting and friction perturbation forces and robust tracking tasks of motion trajectories planned for a three-axis milling machine tool. The Coulomb friction, viscous damping and cutting forces are considered as terms of an unknown time-varying disturbance input signal affecting the dynamics of the motion axes of the milling machine. In the motion control design, the perturbation signal is modeled locally by a fourth degree Taylor time-polynomial family. Then, a state observer is designed to estimate the disturbance and velocity signals required for implementation of the proposed motion controllers. Simulation results are included to show the robust performance of the proposed motion control scheme and the fast and effective estimation of the perturbation and velocity signals.


ABSTRACT In the past 20 years, there has been a staggering increase in the use of Bayesian statistical inference, based on Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, to estimate model parameters and other quantities of interest. This trend exists in virtually all areas of engineering and science. In a typical application, researchers will report estimates of parametric functions (e.g., quantiles, probabilities, or predictions of future outcomes) and corresponding intervals from MCMC methods. One difficulty with the use of inferential methods based on Monte Carlo (MC) is that reported results may be inaccurate due to MC error. MC error, however, can be made arbitrarily small by increasing the number of MC draws. Most users of MCMC methods seem to use indirect diagnostics, trial-and-error, or guess-work to decide how long to run a MCMC algorithm and accuracy of MCMC output results is rarely reported. Unless careful analysis is done, reported numerical results may contain digits that are completely meaningless. In this article, we describe an algorithm to provide direct guidance on the number of MCMC draws needed to achieve a desired amount of precision (i.e., a specified number of accurate significant digits) for Bayesian credible interval endpoints.


A 62-year-old man with weight loss and dysphagia developed 3 cutaneous nodules. Fine needle aspirate of one of the nodules identified squamous cell carcinoma, which was found to be a metastasis from esophageal cancer.


Thin film stress has turned out to be a limiting factor for the fabrication of dielectric membrane based microsystem using commercial CMOS processes. Due to the compressive stress in the CMOS dielectrics, membranes tend to buckle and - in the extreme case - to break, i.e., the sensor yield is reduced and consequently production costs rise. In this paper we report the results of the stress analysis of a commercial 1 micrometers , single poly, double metal CMOS process. All dielectric layers from the field oxide to the passivation were analyzed. We investigate several methods to taylor the stresses in the dielectrics to the needs of microsensor fabrication. The most mature method was to change the stress in the passivation layer by adjusting the deposition parameters. We investigated two passivation layers in more detail. With the standard passivation the dielectric sandwich has a total thickness of nearly 4 micrometers and an average stress of -162 MPa. The second passivation layer is thicker and more tensile than the standard passivation. It reduces the average stress to -15 MPa. The critical buckling lengths of CMOS dielectric membranes were determined experimentally. We found the critical buckling lengths of such membranes containing these two passivation layers to be (194 + 26) micrometers and (967 + 103) micrometers , respectively.


We have conducted a detailed electron-microscopic investigation of the structure and morphology of α-hexathienyl (α-6T), a hexameric homologue of polythiophene that shows great promise as a thin-film-transistor material. In ordinary films for device applications prepared by vacuum sublimation, α-6T crystals are very small (<100 nm), irregular, and preferentially oriented parallel to the substrate. By crystallization from the melt, very broad (tens of micrometers) and thin lamellar crystals are obtained, with their molecules perpendicular to the lamellar surfaces. Single-crystal electron-diffraction patterns from a variety of zones allow resolution of the main-chain repeat at 2.38 nm, recording of over 30 orders of intramolecular reflections, discrimination among the four proposed unit cells, and determination of the preferred crystal-growth direction (which corresponds to the unique b-axis of the monoclinic cell). In addition, we have shown that the lamellae undergo splaying and warping about an axis corr...


Information filling of the databases created on the basis of offered models of the description of physical effects is considered. Quantitative distribution of effects according to the main sections of physical knowledge in invariant is given to subject domains of equipment the massif and in a row object-oriented funds. The assessment of quality of information filling of databases on physical effects is given. The general technique of modification of databases on the physical effects, intended for adaptation of information support to changing needs of users is presented.


The electrochemical behavior of the β,β-dimethyl-acry-lalkannin and a novel differential pulse voltammetric method for the determination of the β,β-DAL content were studied.Experiments indicated that the β,β-DAL has excellent adsorbability and the electrochemical reaction is a reversible two-electro and two-proton process.In phosphate buffer solution(pH 4.6),the differential pulse voltammograms for β,β-DAL reduction signals from +0.8~-0.4 V were monitored.The relationship between reduction peak current and concentration of β,β-DAL is linear in the range of 1.3×10-7~ 1.7×10-6 mol/L(r=0.9996).The detection limit is 4.0×10-8 mol/L.This method is sensitive and reliable for the determination of the β,β-DAL in radix with satisfactory results.


The effect of oxygen-related structural defects on generation of thermal donors in Czochralski grown silicon (Cz-Si) was investigated by the authors. The results presented here confirm the stress-stimulated enhancement of creation of thermal donors.