The most forward elements of the bureaucracy, dealing directly with farmers and spearheading the development of agriculture is the agricultural extension. Its presence is very important in determining the success of development activities of farmers. The purpose of this study to (1) determine the effect of emotional intelligence and motivational variables on the performance of agricultural extension; (2). determine the effect of emotional intelligence and motivation variable partially on the performance of agricultural extension (3). proving variables emotional intelligence has a dominant influence compared to the performance of agricultural extension motivation. The research is a kind of survey of the Department of Agriculture agricultural extension Tanggamus. The analysis technique used: multiple regression analysis to determine the effect of the independent variable (X) studied both together and partially to the dependent variable (Y). As for the multiple linear regression model should qualify the common assumptions of regression to test heteroscedasticity, autocorrelation and multicollinearity. Based on the analysis of F test proved that the independent variable in the form of emotional intelligence (X1), motivation (X 2) has a significant influence on the performance variable (Y) so that the first hypothesis is accepted. While based on t test results proved that the X variable partially significant influence to variable Y so that the second hypothesis is accepted. The dominant independent variables affect the performance is not a variable motivational variables emotional intelligence so that the third hypothesis is rejected.


Attempts have been made to measure the Information Society, globally or partially, ever since computing and telecommunications became ICTs, some twenty to thirty years ago. The least we can say is that it has not been easy. Though this complexity lessens when measuring specific features for local appraisal goals or benchmarking them within a broader framework, measurement of the socio-economic value of ICTs is particularly controversial. Here the challenge is not only to count possessions, connections or usages, but assess to what extent ICT investments trigger new valued added and increase overall performance.
 This paper aims to highlight various types of measuring contributions, putting them in perspective within a new paradigmatic requirement. More specifically, we claim that ICTs can only be "measured" when the measuring objective and context are coupled with:
 1. reflexive questioning (how do we know that we know what we know regarding ICT efficiency and effectiveness?), and
 2. modelling design and research (how do we represent that efficiency and effectiveness, with what computing modelling techniques and within which kind of assumption and theoretical debates?).
 After examining traditional views on ICT measurement, this paper suggests some concrete steps forward in measuring-modelling and discusses the most promising ways to tackle grand challenge level issues (ICT impact is not about small improvements only). The paper builds upon the hypothesis that there is a need to develop meta-measuring and multi-modelling approaches which address macro-economic needs as well as micro-economic indications. The paper concludes by outlining how user-driven dynamics and broader transformational signals can lead us to a better understanding and measurement of critical Information Society dynamics such as participation and democracy, computer literacy and wellbeing, governance and inclusion to mention just a few.


Despite the significance of capacity utilisation in the production process, it received little attention from development economists especially in Nigeria where capitals were both scarce and under utilised. This present study examined the effect of capacity utilisation on manufacturing firms' output in Nigeria using time series data covering the period of 1981 to 2016 through an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model approach. The study found positive but insignificant relationship between capacity utilisation and manufacturing firms' output since capacity was grossly under utilised in virtually every productive firm in Nigeria. Thus, the study concluded that there was substantial under utilisation of capacity in Nigerian manufacturing firms and this under utilisation made positive effect of capacity utilisation less significant in explaining manufacturing firms' output growth in Nigeria. The study therefore recommended that government and policymakers should make policies that would increase capacity utilisation in manufacturing firms by ensuring appreciation in foreign exchange rate, discouraging uncoordinated imports of goods and services, facilitating access to modern machineries with affordable cost implication, and making stable power supply a priority in Nigeria.


(cid:633) Hippolachnin is a polyketide natural product isolated from the marine sponge Hippospongia lachnein in China 2013 , which has shown highly potent antibacterial activities against several pathogenic fungi. It features a highly substituted cyclobutane, six contiguous stereocenters, one of which is quaternary carbon and bears an unusual array of four ethyl groups on its convex face. In this review, total syntheses of hippolachnin by four groups are described.


Michel Foucault (2004) once used vaccination as an analyser of society. As he had done before with the prison institution, he considered it to express the general economy of power prevailing at a given historical moment. Foucault (2004) thus identified a shift from a "disciplinary society" to a "security society". The disciplinary logic that produced docile bodies started to give way to – or to co-exist with – the actuarial logic of late modern societies, increasingly based on risk management (Simon 1998; Petersen [1997]2006). But this insight can be developed in yet other ways. If we are to consider not so much "mechanisms" of power, as the philosopher did, but the people who are their object, immunization can be an analyser of society inasmuch as it also reveals them in their agency, as political subjects. Vaccination is deeply anchored in relations of power and authority between the State, expert systems, and citizens (Moulin 2007). These relations however, are not limited to matters of health, trust and risk. They are connected to other areas of citizenship involving the body, personhood and individual identity. They form coherent patterns of political participation which are central for understanding the production of consent and dissent. We thus set out to approach current engagements with vaccination both as an object in themselves and as a window onto these processes. Immunization is one of the most globalized techniques of securitization used to address public health problems such as epidemics and infectious diseases, especially since the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the Expanded Programme on ImDrawing on narrative interviews and ethnographic research in French and Portuguese settings, we examine a contemporary form of vaccine acceptability as it emerges in routine vaccination. Against a backdrop of manifestations that are circumscribed to particular cultural scenes or bounded systems of ideas, we focus on a diffuse tendency which resonates with wider contemporary transformations. Its analysis cannot be framed within the narrow limits of health and risk management. Health and the body are but one of the domains in which a same pattern of production of dissent arises. It is by exploring the political dimensions of such pattern that the production of consent and that of dissent stand in relation to one another as two sides of the same coin.


Summary The rural landscape in Poland has been changing for the past several dozen years. The changes are visible in the land use and land cover. Technological progress, changes in people's outlook and a low profitability of agriculture resulted in transformations of rural landscapes, especially in the areas of high level of land fragmentation, as it is the case in the south part of Poland. These changes are accompanied by growing awareness of environmental or cultural landscape protection related issues. Recent years have also brought new forms of environmental protection, for example the programme Natura 2000, being the result of agreements with European Union. The network of Natura 2000 cover the areas of special protection of birds, habitats, and according to the Act on Nature Conservation – areas of special interest for the Community. The goal of this form of protection is a preservation of valuable or engendered elements of biodiversity. The question arises then whether in the era of landscape transformations and changes of land cover qualifying a particular area as part of Natura 2000 network has any influence on the way of land use. The aim of the article is an analysis and evaluation of land cover changes, also in the areas covered by Natura 2000 programme, within the piedmont commune of Nowy Targ in Malopolskie Voivodeship. Moreover, a thesis is proposed that submontane lands, specifically used, due to large terrain height differences, are faced with less intense urbanization pressures and land transformations. Is it also the case of the Nowy Targ commune, covered in more than 22% by the Natura 2000 areas?


The aim of the study is to examine the syntactic pattern of the frequency of use of simple, complex and compound sentences focusing on different subordinate clauses as critical features in the written learner text corpora at different English and French language acquisition levels in the texts produced by secondary school test-takers in Latvia. The theoretical basis of the research is Pienemann's Processability theory. For the purpose of quantitative and contrastive analysis of syntactic structures written learner text corpora in English and French have been compiled, in which different clauses have been marked by manual annotation and afterwards classified according to different syntactic patterns. Subordinate clauses have been grouped applying Dik's taxonomy of embedded constructions. The preliminary research has discovered some similarities and differences between the syntactic pattern usage at the same language acquisition levels.


In SSc, skin involvement of the face is frequent and extremely disabling, resulting in limited mouth opening, an altered dentition, difficulty in teeth care, as well as having a strong impact on the emotional and psychological well-being, thus impairing quality of life.to evaluate the efficacy of a self-treatment protocol (created by AMURR A Multidisciplinary Association of Rheumatological Rehabilitation) for face and tempomandibular joints (TMJs) rehabilitation with two devices used in the dental field.40 SSc patients (37 female and 3 male) with a mouth opening ≤ 40 mm, were recruited and randomized in two groups of treatment: Group 1 (20 patients: mean age 50,650 yrs ± 13,937 SD, mean disease duraton 10,45 yrs ± 7,877 SD, opening mouth 32,250 mm ± 5,590 SD) treated with a home self-treatment protocol consisting of 23 exercises carried out at home in front of a mirror, 22/23 exercises were performed once a day, one of these using a device to obtain uniform stretching of the buccal rhyme, another one usingused three times a day to reduce tension of muscles of the TMJs, facilitating the mouth opening; group 2 (20 patients: mean age 58,05 yrs ± 18,103 SD, mean disease duration 17,4 yrs ± 15,017 SD, opening mouth 34,950 mm ± 5,753) without physical rehabilitation, only drugs as treatments of SSc and its complications. All patients underwent a baseline (T0) and 45 days (T1) clinimetric assessment by self-assessment of quality of life with SF-36 (Short-Form 36 Health Survey), of the degree of disability of the mouth with MHISS (of the Mouth Handicap in Systemic Sclerosis scale), Muscle pain evaluated by numerical rating scale (NRS) of the temporomandibular joint with TMD (Temporo mandibular Disorders), evaluation of mouth opening and ROM of the cervical spine. Statistical analysis was performed using the t-test or the Mann-Whitney test for assessing changes in all measurement scales between treatment groups.The protocol of home physiotherapy exercises resulted in a statistically significant improvement in the treated group compared to group 2 both for mouth opening (T0: 32,250 ± 5,590, T1: 35,650 ± 6,046) vs (T0: 34,950 ± 5,753 T1: 34,300 ± 6,001) (p<0.001), cervical flexion (T0: 2,950 ± 1,939 T1: 1.700 ± 1,525) vs (T0: 4,450 ± 2,282 T1:4,075 ± 2,238) (p<0.01), cervical extension (T0: 17,025 ± 1,895 T1: 17,625 ± 1,605) vs (T0: 17,050 ± 2,089 T1: 16,525 ± 3,110) (p<0.05), cervical right lateral flexion (T0: 14,075 ± 2,386 T1:13,400 ± 2,431) vs (T0: 14,200 ± 1,765 T1: 14,425 ± 1,742) (p<0.01), cervical right rotation (T0: 14,200 ± 3,416 T1:13,750 ± 3,206) vs (T0: 14,900 ± 1,683 T1: 15,550 ± 2,188) (p<0.01), cervical left rotation (T0: 14,725 ±3,640 T1:14,450 ± 3,710) vs (T0: 15,900 ± 2,614 T1: 16,450 ± 2,964) (p<0.05), mouth disability at MHISS (T0: 19,100 ± 10,356 T1: 16,000 ± 9,989) vs (T0: 20,950 ± 9,950, T1: 21,100 ± 10,775) (p<0.01).The use of the home exercises protocol associated with the two devices has shown a significant improvement of the disability linked to skin involvement of the face. This highlights the fundamental role that home rehabilitation self therapy has in practice. These data will need to be confirmed in a larger cohort of patientsMauro Passalacqua: None declared, Cristian Foggi: None declared, Nicola Mauro: None declared, Lorenzo Tofani: None declared, Serena Guiducci: None declared, Cosimo Bruni Speakers bureau: Actelion, Eli Lilly, Gemma Lepri: None declared, Jelena Blagojevic: None declared, Khadija El Aoufy: None declared, Ginevra Fiori: None declared, Francesca Bartoli: None declared, Susanna Maddali Bongi: None declared, Marco Mitola: None declared, Marco Gizduloch: None declared, Marco Matucci-Cerinic Grant/research support from: Actelion, MSD, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Speakers bureau: Acetelion, Lilly, Boehringer Ingelheim, Silvia Bellando Randone: None declared


this paper presents the radiation characteristics and beam-width control features of a 2–18 GHz, cavity-backed, two-arm, elliptical Archimedean spiral antenna. 12We first discuss a precise microwave instrumentation and measurement technique to accurately characterize the frequency dependent complex permittivity and permeability of a wide variety of microwave materials. Using the method, we have designed a lightweight, multi-layer absorbing structure to be inserted in the cavity. For optimum performance, we have used a genetic algorithm approach to derive the optimal thickness of each layer. We then varied the ratio of the major axis to the minor axis of the spiral antenna to create an elliptical structure and observed changes in the radiation pattern. Our results show that by using an elliptical configuration, it is possible to regulate the beam-width in the two orthogonal planes by compromising to some extent the purity of the circular polarization.


Formulae for predicting snout-vent length from 17 other body measurements and vice versa were derived from data collected on 1073 wild Crocodylus novaeguineae. Equations for predicting live body attributes from dried skulls also are presented. Relative growth and general growth form are described. A 1:1 sex ratio was found for animals between 50 and 167 cm snout-vent length (SVL). Current laws in Papua New Guinea are based on size criteria and protect wild breeding males. However, the laws do not take into account the smaller breeding size of females and thus subject about 36% of adult females to legal hunting mortality. Of all girth-related measures, neck girth was found to be the best predictor of commercial value. New Guinea crocodiles have shorter tails, longer trunks and wider hind feet than saltwater crocodiles, C. porosus; these differences may be related to ecological niche and habitat separation in Papua New Guinea. The morphological characteristics of New Guinea crocodiles better adapt them for life in marshes and swamps, while those of C. porosus better suit them for life in large, open rivers and estuaries.


Objective To investigate the clinical effect of pain of patients after breast augmentation by injecting Botulinum toxin type A.Methods The 83 cases in our department from December 2010 to April 2011 were studied.Two groups were randomly divided: therapy group(43 cases) and control group(40 cases).The patients in therapy group were given intramuscular injection of BTXA into pectoralis major muscle in the operation,the dose is 100U,and those in control group were only given the same dose of 0.9% sodium chloride solution,Every patient pain after operation was evaluated by using Numerical Rating Scales(NRS) and the scores of every grate patient were recorded.Results The number of the pain patients and the pain level in control group were obviously higher than them in therapy group(P0.05).Conclusion The injection of BTXA into pectoralis major muscle can relieve the pain after breast augmentation,it's a safe and effective method.


The aim of the study is to compare the results of laboratory experience with sunflower on the ef-fect of different doses and forms of glycoluryl on the development of the aboveground and under-ground parts of the plant. The results of the experiment show a difference in the development of plant organs on the 3rd, 7th and 10th day, depending on the dose of the drug being administered, as well as the form of its application. Glycoluryl had a positive effect on the germination of sugar beet plants. The introduction of glycoluryl in liquid and solid form allowed sugar beet plants to form a large mass of 100 seedlings. The best effect on the germination and weight of 100 sugar beet seedlings was shown by variants with the introduction of glycoluryl in the norm of 100 kg / ha and its solution in the nomes of 50 and 100 kg /ha. According to the length of the plants, there was no significant difference between the control and the variants with the introduction of glyco-luryl in solid and liquid form.


This paper deals with the reliability analysis of a compliant offshore tower in the presence of stochastic seismic sea environment, i. e. a load combination due to long crested random sea and earthquake. Firstly, a nonlinear dynamic analysis of the said structure has been carried out for its time-domain responses. The response histories so obtained at the critical joint have been employed for its reliability analysis under ultimate shear demand. Hamilton variational principle is applied and the Lagrangian is fully developed. The analysis includes the effect of both horizontal and vertical components of large (MW ≥ 7.0) earthquakes with near and far fault characteristics. Using the derived limit-state, reliability assessment of the joint has been carried out with computationally efficient algorithm (First order reliability method, FORM). Results are presented in terms of reliability indices and probability of failure for different seismic sea environments. The obtained results are compared with Monte Carlo simulation method. Design point, important for probabilistic design of articulated joint, located on the failure surface has been worked out.


BACKGROUND
 Although it is widely recognized that physical activity is an important determinant of health there is considerable challenge in assessing this complex behavior. Tools for the objective assessment of the frequency, intensity, and duration of physical activity in adults and children have largely been developed for short-term use within research or public health surveillance environments. However, recent advances in microtechnology, data processing, wireless communication, and battery capacity have resulted in the proliferation of low-cost, non-invasive, wrist-worn devices with attractive designs that can easily be used by consumers to track their physical activity over long periods of time.

 OBJECTIVE
 The purpose of the present systematic-review and meta-analyses is to examine, quantify, and report on the current state of evidence for the analytical validity of energy expenditure, heart rate, and steps measured by recent combined-sensing Fitbits.

 METHODS
 Systematic-review and Bland-Altman meta-analyses of validation studies of combined-sensing Fitbits against reference measures of energy expenditure, heart rate and steps.

 RESULTS
 A total of 52 studies were included in the systematic review. Among them, 41 were included in the meta-analyses, representing 203 individual comparisons between Fitbit devices and a criterion measure (i.e., 117 for heart rate, 49 for energy expenditure, and 37 for steps). Overall, the majority of authors of the included studies concluded that recent Fitbit models underestimate heart rate, energy expenditure, and steps compared to criterion measures. These independent conclusions aligned with the results of the pooled meta-analyses showing an average underestimation of, respectively, -2,99 bpm, -2,77 kcal/min and -3,11 steps/min of the Fitbit compared to criterion measure (results obtained after removing high risk of bias studies).

 CONCLUSIONS
 Fitbit devices are likely to underestimate heart rate, energy expenditure, and steps. The estimation of these measurements varied by quality of study, age of the participants, type of activities, and by model of Fitbit. The qualitative conclusions of the majority of studies aligned with the results of meta-analyses. Although the expected level of accuracy might vary from one context to another, this underestimation can be acceptable, on average, for steps and heart rate. Information about energy expenditure however are likely to be too unprecise.


Preclinical studies using currently available
 in vitro
 and
 in vivo
 models fail at fully recapitulating the
 in vivo
 human heart microenvironment and its pathophysiology, limiting their translation from the bench to the bedside. Our laboratory has developed cardiac spheroids (CSs) as advanced
 in vitro
 models of the human heart using cardiac myocytes, endothelial cells and fibroblasts at ratios approximating the ones found in the human heart. Thanks to patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), we have quickly moved to personalized CSs to establish advanced pathophysiological
 in vitro
 models of heart failure (HF). CSs have been used to evaluate short- and long-term effects of ischaemic/reperfusion (I/R) injury typical of myocardial infarction (MI), drug-induced toxicity, SARS-CoV-2 exposure and pregnancy-induced HF. This was achieved using our established protocols to induce I/R-mimic injury, as well by exposing CSs to doxorubicin (DOX), SARS-CoV-2 virus and pre-eclampsia blood samples, respectively. First, our analyses of cell toxicity ratios using calcein-AM and ethidium homodimer (staining live and dead cells, respectively) demonstrated treatment-specific loss in cell viability and increase in cell death compared to control (untreated, healthy) CSs. Other CSs stained with ethidium homodimer and cell-specific antibodies were imaged and further used for 3D rendering analyses using IMARIS software. This enabled us to identify cell-specific responses in each pathological condition. Then, our measurements of fractional shortening and contraction frequency in CSs showed a statistically significant loss of contractile function in treated CSs compared to controls. Finally, new potential targets to prevent myocardial injury were evaluated using transcriptomics analyses, with a focus on changes in expression levels for genes regulating sarcomere structure, calcium transport, cell cycle, cardiac remodelling and signal transduction. Current studies are evaluating novel potential therapeutic targets to prevent and treat myocardial injury in HF patients using CSs. This has the potential to pave the way to prevent and treat HF in a safer and personalised way, hopefully preventing undesired effects due to non-specific care.


Background and purpose:Multidrug resistance(MDR) is the dominating obstacle to the chemotherapy.There is strong evidence that the phosphoinositide 3-kinases(PI3Ks) signaling pathway is involved in MDR phenotype,however,the mechanism of MDR occurrence is still unknown.This study tended to investigate the regulating effect of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway and its downstream target genes in P-glycoprotein(P-gp)(ABCB1 gene encoding)-mediated MDR in human colon carcinoma HCT-116/L-OHP cells.Methods:Pretreatment with PI3K selective inhibitor LY294002(20 μmol/L) for 2 h,the sensitivity of L-OHP was evaluated by the CCK-8(cell counting kit-8) assay in HCT-116/L-OHP cells,and the expressions of P-gp,LRP,MRP-2,Akt,p-Akt,IκB and p-IκB were evaluated by Western blot.The activity of ABCB1 promoter was evaluated by chromatin immunoprecipitation analysis(CHIP).Results:After inhibiting the activity of PI3K/Akt signaling pathway,the IC50 value of L-OHP decreased from(157.48±16.73) μg/mL to(53.68±3.18) μg/mL in HCT-116/L-OHP cells,and the reversal index was 2.93(P0.01).The expressions of P-gp,p-Akt and p-IκB were down-regulation compared with the concrol group(P0.01),but the expressions of LRP,MRP-2,Akt and IκB didn't change significantly.CHIP result has confirmed that NF-κB protein could bind to the region of ABCB1 gene promoter in HCT116/L-OHP cells.Conclusion:Blocking of PI3K/Akt/NF-kB signal pathway could increase the drug sensitivity to MDR cells,inhibit the phosphorylation of p-Akt and p-IκB,and reversing ABCB1/P-glycoprotein–mediated multidrug resistance in colon carcinoma cells.


Objectives To investigate the technique and efficacy of endovascular aortic repair(EVAR) in treating type Ⅲ aortic dissection. Methods Clinical data of 21 patients with DeBakey type Ⅲ aortic dissection hospitalized in Jiangxi Provincial Hospital in recent 3 years were retrospectively analyzed. Among them, 2 patients were treated only by drugs, 19 patients were performed endovascular graft exclusion(EVGE) through right femoral artery. During the procedure, aortography was operated by left subclavain artery firstly to understand the true lumen, false lumen and the position of tear, as well as relation to the important branches. Then EVGE was performed through right femoral artery. Aortography was performed again after the operation in order to observe the change of blood flows in the true and false lumens. Results All the patients received safe and successful EVGE. The achievement ratio of operation was 100%. There was no death or severe procedure-related complications. After three to six months, all the patients were rechecked by computed tomography(CT), and there was no false lumen in the picture, the stent-graft was patent and smooth. No distortion or movement was found. Conclusions EVAR is safe and effective in treating DeBakey type Ⅲ aortic dissection, but further observation is necessary for evaluating the long-term results.


Despite the widespread use of server virtualization technologies in cloud data centers, system administrators experience multiple challenges in configuring the hypervisor's scheduler parameters to optimize its performance. Manually tuning the scheduler's parameters is a common practice, however, this approach is not effective particularly when dealing with dynamically changing workload and resource utilizations on the host machines. This problem becomes even harder if cloud resources are overbooked while hosting both latency-sensitive and batched applications. To address these issues, this paper presents iTune, which is a framework for engineering the performance of a hypervisor intelligently via autonomous scheduler configurations. Concretely, iTune optimizes the Xen hypervisor's scheduler configuration parameters autonomously through a three phase process comprising: (1) Discoverer, which monitors and saves the resource usage history of the host machines and groups set of related host machine workloads, (2) Optimizer, where optimum Xen scheduler configuration parameters for each workload cluster are explored by employing a simulated annealing machine learning algorithm, and (3) Observer, where iTune monitors the resource usage of host machines online, classifies them into one of the categories found in the Discoverer phase, and loads the optimum scheduler parameters determined in the Optimizer phase. Experimental results validate our claims.


This paper presents the realization of feedforward Zero Phase Error Tracking Control (ZPETC) for real-time XY table application. Using different sampling times in system identification technique, a minimum and nonminimum phase mathematical models can be obtained from input-output experimental data to represent the true plant of the XY table. These two models are used to test the effectiveness of designed controllers. In this paper, two types of feedforward ZPETC controller are developed. Conventional ZPETC introduced by Tomizuka is tested and then the technique is modified by eliminating the factorization of zero polynomials. This is done by changing the gain compensation filter by Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. The gain adaptation mechanism is done using Recursive Least Square (RLS) algorithm. The contour error is used as indicator for tracking performance effectiveness. The experimental results show that the modified controller can effectively enhance the tracking performance of the system and provide superior two dimensional contour plots for the XY table for both types of system. Keywords— Feedforward ZPETC; Real-Time Control; System Identification; Tracking Control; XY Table


The increase in the aerosol loading over Indian sub continent thanks to the growing population, industrialization and urbanization, has a significant impact on the ambient air quality, local weather and global climate. Thus the potential role of aerosols on the radiative forcing that tunes variation in climate is to be explored with the aid of modeling studies. This work describes analysis of ground based observation of spectral Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) carried out during a period of three years (2009-2012) at a rural coastal location, Kannur (11.9 o N, 75.4 o E) in South India. This investigation reveals that AODs are influenced by seasonal variations at this site. One of the significant features is that AODs are quite higher in April (~0.401 at 440nm) and relatively low during November-December (~0.208 at 440nm). Thus this observation throws light to the mounting concentrations of particulate matter present in the atmosphere during the coordinate fireworks associated with the Vishu festival in the month of April which causes a abrupt rise in AOD which persists for 2-3 days. The analysis of last twelve years MODIS data indicates an increasing trend of AOD over this location which is one of the methods to estimate air quality. 1. INTRODUCTION Atmospheric aerosols are particles of solid or liquid phase dispersed in the atmosphere. [1]. Aerosols are produced by a variety of natural and anthropogenic processes [2-4]. They vary in size from 10-3 to 10 2 µm depending upon the source and production mechanism. Small aerosols (<1µm in size) are formed mostly through gas to particle conversion process. They often grow in size due to coagulation and by condensation of water vapor. Large aerosols (>1µm in size) are formed directly by mechanical processes such as windblown dust, sea salt droplets produced by breaking air bubbles on the sea surface, pollen grains etc,. Aerosols can both scatter and absorb the solar radiation and is termed as direct effect [5]. The extinction of sunlight reaching the ground by a vertical column of atmosphere due to aerosols is often termed as aerosol optical depth (AOD). The scattered intensities of various wavelengths present in the solar radiation depend on the size of the particles dispersed in the atmosphere. The angstrom parameters, alpha (α) and beta (β) are usually classified to retrieve the relative abundance of fine to coarse mode particles and turbidity of the atmosphere [6-8]. Aerosols have an indirect effect on …


The next generation of banking applications won't be on desktop or mainframes but on the small devices we carry every day. In this project authors have focused on, how biometric mechanism provides the highest security to the mobile payment. Secured e banking on the mobile is the latest issue for all mobile users. The present security issues surround the loss of personal information through the theft of the cell phone. The use of biometrics has been virtually eliminated the possibility of someone gaining access to a third party cell phone directly. It is therefore important that the biometric identification templates are not certainly stored on the phone but will gather at run time. The proposed biometrics mechanism secure the mobile payment also provides the security at the wireless transmission level. Mobile payment is used for banking and various M-commerce applications. Here authors are using the Android mobile for taking the real time fingerprint image for login the Mobile Banking Application. The main research focus on the online fingerprint matching algorithm for the run time finger images captured by 5 mega-pixel mobile camera for authentication. A newly proposed Fuzzy Logic Based fingerprint matching algorithms is implemented for matching the run time finger images. Mangala R. Belkhede, Veena A. Gulhane, Dr. P.R. Bajaj, The International Journal of Computer Science & Applications (TIJCSA) ISSN – 2278-1080, Vol. 1 No.3 May 2012 © 2012, http://www.journalofcomputerscience.com TIJCSA All Rights Reserved 73 KeywordsBiometric security, Mobile banking, Mobile Payment, Android, M-commerce


In this chapter, we deal with the question of ethnic minorities in Croatian Istria, with Istrian multiculturalism as well as with those social processes which have influenced the rise to power of the regional political options and the strengthening of a regional identity in Istria. We discuss how the notion of multiculturalism is used in constructing regional Istrian identity, but we also identify groups that are perceived as socially distant.Our ambition is to go beyond this generally positive image of Istria and examine the limits of Istrian multiculturalism.


Sharp lossless discontinuities in the walls of a rectangular waveguide operating in the dominant mode are commonly introduced for the sake of matching the waveguide to a given termination or for the transmission and distribution of microwave power. The presence of such discontinuities, however, gives rise to reflected waves and storage of reactive energy in the vicinity of the discontinuity because of the excitation of higher order evanescent waveguide modes. A reliable method for predicting the scattering coefficients at the plane of the discontinuity is naturally of great interest in the design or application of waveguide discontinuities.


Sleeping pills are among the most widely used of all drugs, particularly in the elderly. Moreover, despite good intentions to the contrary, hypnotics are often prescribed for years rather than for short courses of treatment. Hence these drugs need careful use and should not be given unnecessarily. Insomnia may be related to physical ailments, specific causes, psychiatric illnesses, normal extreme variations, and drug-related problems. When physical causes of insomnia such as pain, cough, and pruritus are apparent the primary symptom should be treated so that hypnotics are indicated only if this proves intractable. Specific causes are uncommon and comprise nocturnal myoclonus, the restless legs syndrome, and sleep apnoea. The commonest psychiatric conditions associated with insomnia are anxiety and depression, but some patients with schizophrenia and other psychoses may have insomnia. In patients with psychiatric illness the medication for the primary psychiatric condition may be chosen and adapted to exploit the sedative actions of the medication, so that sleep is encouraged. In patients with anxiety diazepam may be given as one dose (10-30 mg at night). It is rapidly absorbed, attaining high peak concentrations in the brain that will induce sleep. It is then rapidly redistributed so that bodily concentrations drop, and then a protracted phase of metabolism to desmethyldiazepam ensues.' The long half life (over 50 hours) of this metabolite will therefore produce a sustained anxiolytic action the next day, but some "hangover" is inevitable in the morning. Desmethyldiazepam itself is not available for prescription but in an acid pH such as is found in the stomach clorazepate dipotassium (Tranxene) is changed to form desmethyldiazepam. Residual effects with desmethyldiazepam itself are minor2 3 and patients complaining of hangover with diazepam may prefer clorazepate. Nevertheless, because of their long half lives, some accumulation of both diazepam and desmethyldiazepam is inevitable and this may produce side effects such as potentiation of alcohol. Typically, depressed patients complain of broken sleep or early wakening and a sedative antidepressant such as amitriptyline, doxepin, or dothiepin is appropriate. Among the newer antidepressants, mianserin (a tetracyclic compound) is also soporific. One or other of these drugs may be given as a single dose at night and the sedative actions will help the patient sleep. Nevertheless, in the middle-aged and elderly, especially those with any history of heart disease, amitriptyline should not be used in one large dose because of its possible adverse effects on the myocardium and conduction tissues. Severely depressed patients, however, may still wake early and the use of a very short-acting hypnotic such as the benzodiazepine triazolam, taken after they wake early, may give them two or three hours' extra sleep. Patients with psychiatric illness who are taking antipsychotic medication may also have their medication tailored to maximise its hypnotic properties. For example, chlorpromazine and thioridazine are much more sedative than fluphenazine, trifluoperazine, and haloperidol. A large dose of chlorpromazine taken before going to bed will act as a hypnotic. During the day a less sedative compound may be given, and mixing antipsychotic medication in this way does not lead to problems of drug interaction. Some people intermittently or continuously complain of poor sleep and yet are not overtly psychiatrically ill. Such patients may ask the doctor to prescribe hypnotics to take occasionally. Thus, if sleep has not supervened an hour after going to bed they can be instructed to take a sleeping pill. An essential criterion for such a hypnotic is that it should be effectively cleared from the body before the next dose is given -that is, its half life should be less than 8-10 hours. Two drugs currently available fulfil this criterion, temazepam only just and triazolam quite easily. Neither drug in moderate dosage is associated with much detectable hangover next day.4 5 Two other benzodiazepines marketed as hypnotics, nitrazepam and flurazepam, do not meet this criterion and produce definite residual effects.6-9 Nitrazepam has a half life of over 24 hours. Flurazepam itself has a short half life but its major active metabolite, N-desalkylflurazepam, has an average half life of about 100 hours. The latter drug in particular accumulates with appreciable hangover effects. Both nitrazepam and flurazepam are particularly inappropriate for people doing skilled activity the next day such as driving. Drug-related insomnia may be due either to stimulants such as caffeine and sympathomimetic amines or to alcohol, which, although inducing sleep initially, is associated with broken sleep later in the night. A common cause of insomnia is "drug rebound," when attempts to wean a person habituated to hypnotics results in a temporary increase in broken sleep and wakefulness. This is an additional reason why these drugs should be reserved for specific indications and administered for finite, short periods oftime.


This study was undertaken in Holy Cross Hospital Kottiyam, Kollam, Kerala in response to an increase in overall Caesarean section rate. The incidence of active medical and surgical intervention in cases of primigravidas with floating head at onset of labour is quiet high. In this series of study of 100 primigravidas with floating head at onset of labour some sort of interference was required in 40% of cases. However 66% of total cases delivered vaginally when proper supervision and early decision when required was undertaken. Cephalopelvic disproportion, occipitoposterior position and placenta praevia should be suspected in most cases of floating heads. The attitude of watchful expectancy and timely intervention is used in all cases, especially in those in which no aetiological factor is found, by plotting progressive labour on a partogram and using oxytocin judiciously when labour appears to be taking a protracted course. If this is followed most of these cases will deliver vaginally with minimal maternal and foetal morbidity. In 64% of the cases labour lasted more than 12 hrs. Parturition, encompasses all physiological processes involved in birthing. There are 4 phases from uterine quiescence, awakening, active labour and the puerperium. It has been the traditional concept of obstetrics that engagement of head occurs by 38 weeks in primigravida. This traditional concept is not correlated in clinical practice. In majority the engagement occurs between 38-42 weeks or even during first stage of labour. The incidence is very variable in different studies. The aims and objectives of this study were for the following. To find the aetiological factors for primigravida 1. with floating head at onset of labour and their incidence. Partographic analysis of progress of labour in a 2. primigravida with floating head at onset of labour with regard to duration of labour and type of uterine action Role of active medical or surgical intervention 3. MATERIALS AND METHODS From a total of 944 deliveries from August 1999 to July 2000 with 479 primigravidas, 100 primigravidas with floating head at the onset of labour were selected. All cases were studied in detail with reference to course of labour, mode of delivery, interference required and maternal and foetal outcome. A detailed history was taken and general and systemic examination was done. The Muller Munro Kerr(6) manoeuver was used to assess the adequacy of the pelvis and diagonal conjugate was accurately measured. Intrapartum ultrasonography was done for exact gestational age, BPD, placental position and to rule out any congenital anomalies. The course of labour in all these cases was recorded on a partogram. OBSERVATION AND RESULTS The incidence of primigravidas with floating head at the onset of labour in our series was 20.87% (Table-1). 60% of the patients were between 21 and 25 years. Most common aetiological factor was deflexed head, the most important of which was occipitoposterior position. The next common was cephalopelvic disproportion. In 40% of cases no aetiological factor was found (Table II). Primigravidas With Floating Head At Term Or Onset Of Labor 2 of 4 Figure 1 Table 1: Showing the incidence of Primigravidas and the incidence of Floating head at term Figure 2 Table 2: Showing distribution of the cases according to Aetiology Vaginal delivery occurred in 66% of cases and lower segment caesarean section in 34% of the cases (Table III). No interference by ventouse or forceps was required in 60% of cases. Vaginal trial failed mainly in cases of cephalopelvic disproportion, premature rupture of membranes, Cases with loops of cord around the neck and occipitoposterior position. In our study it failed in 16 cases. In 64% of cases labour lasted more than 12 hours. Foetal and maternal outcome was good (Table IV) The outcome of cases according to the apparent aetiology of the floating head at onset of labour is shown in table V. Figure 3 Table 3: Showing the distribution of cases according to the mode of Delivery Figure 4 Table 4: Foetal Outcome (Apgar Scores at 5 minutes) Figure 5 Table 5: Showing outcome of cases according to apparent aetiology


AbstractHigh early strength (HES) portland cement concrete (PCC) is widely used in pavement preservation because it permits a quick reopening to traffic. However, these repairs often deteriorate fa...


We present two Suzaku observations of the Galactic center microquasar 1E 1740.7−2942 separated by approximately 700 days. The source was observed on both occasions after a transition to the spectrally hard state. Significant emission from 1E 1740.7−2942 is detected out to an energy of 300 keV, with no spectral break or turnover evident in the data. We tentatively measure a lower limit to the cutoff energy of ∼380 keV. The spectra are found to be consistent with a Comptonized corona on both occasions, where the high energy emission is consistent with a hard power-law (Γ ∼ 1.8) with a significant contribution from an accretion disk with a temperature of ∼0.4 keV at soft X-ray energies. The measured value for the inner radius of the accretion disk is found to be inconsistent with the picture whereby the disk is truncated at large radii in the low-hard state and instead favors a radius close to the ISCO (Rin ∼ 10 − 20 Rg).


The analytical usefulness of hybrid nanostructures formed by magnetic-gold nanoparticles (Fe2O3-DTAuNPs) into liposomes as on-flow micro-containers for the improvement of the reagent preconcentration and the in-situ development of the analytical reaction/detection is presented. The system supposes the use of an electromagnetic device incorporated into a flow injection system for the development the preconcentration analytical reagents, followed by the liposome release and the "in-situ" development of the analytical reaction/detection. The useful of the system was tested by its application to determination of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity in foods. A previous synthesis of the hybrid liposomes containing the magnetic-gold nanoparticles and an appropriate target enzyme substrate was also required. For the production of the hybrid liposomes a step-by-step synthesis process which including the following stages: (1) Synthesis of Fe2O3-DT-AuNPs, (2) Covering the magnetic nucleus with a gold layer to form magnetic-gold NPs, which were also modified to produce non-polar Fe3O4-AuNPs using 1dodecanethiol. Finally, these Fe2O3-DT-AuNPs were also encapsulated into liposomes with an appropriate surfactant during the liposome formation using the rapid solvent evaporation method. Finally, the hybrid liposomes were slighting resized using mechanical shaking and separated from the un-entrapped NPs using sucrose density gradient centrifugation (SDGC). A flow injection system equipped with an electromagnetic device was used for develop the automatic preconcentration and enzymatic determination method. The calibration graph of the method was defined in a linear range which covered concentration values from 6.4 – 250 mU·L -1 , (r 2 =0.993, n=7, r=3), with a detection limit of 1.1 mU·L -1 . The precision, expressed as relative standard deviation (RSD %) was lower than 2.4 %. The overall method shows a sampling frequency of 10 h -1 . The features of the method was also compared with those features obtained using two more conventional system developed in batch and flow-injection ways. The method was applied to the determination of the enzymatic activity of ALP in milk samples with recovery values ranging between 87.5 and 104.6 %. The method also have been used for the determination of residual ALP activity in milks subjected to temperature treatments with excellent agreement with the conventional method and also provided acceptable recoveries in all instances.


We discuss constraints on soft CP-violating couplings of axion-like particles with photon and fermions by using data on electric dipole moments of standard model particles. In particular, for the axion-like particle (ALP) leptophilic scenario, we derive bounds on CP-odd ALP-photon-photon coupling from data of the ACME collaboration on electron EDM. We also discuss prospects of the storage ring experiment to constrain the ALP–photon–photon coupling from data on proton EDM for the simplified hadrophilic interactions of ALP. The resulting constraints from experimental bounds on the muon and neutron EDMs are weak. We set constraint on the CP-odd ALP coupling with electron and derive bounds on combinations of coupling constants, which involve soft CP-violating terms.


The natural radionuclide (Ra, Th andK) concentrations for 14 brands of gray Ordinary Portland Cement and 9 brands of white cement used as building and construction material in Saudi Arabia were measured by using gamma spectrometry method. This subject is important in environmental radiological protection, since cement are widely used as building materials.The average value of Ra, Th, and K for gray cement is 32.21 Bq/kg, 23.30 Bq/kg and 177.32 Bq/kg respectively. The average values for the white cement are 23.90 Bq kg, 25.60 Bq kg and 125.64 Bq kg for Ra, Th and K, respectively. The total average content of Ra, Th, and K for all the cement brand samples are 28.59 Bq kg, 24.30 Bq kg, and 154.85 Bq kg respectively. These values obtained are lower than the world average values for building materials. The estimated radium equivalent activities (Raeq), representative index (Iγ), absorbed γ-dose rate (D), the annual effective dose rate (AEDE) and external and internal hazard indices are lower than the recommended safe limit and are comparable with results from similar studies conducted in other countries. The measurements help in the development of standards and guidelines for the use and management of building materials. [Shadiah S. Baz. Evaluation of natural radioactivity and the associated radiation hazards in local cement used in Saudi Arabia. Life Sci J 2015;12(2):189-195]. (ISSN:1097-8135). http://www.lifesciencesite.com. 30


(57) Abstract: When a semiconductor layer and a device constructed from SiC is rendered conductive in the forward direction, at least one pn junction are two charge carriers across between successive such layers carried bipolar semiconductor devices having, as the voltage drop amount across the device increases with temperature, has a resistance to reduce the current substantially having components disposed on the pn junction in series (2) .


The development of diets with high nutritive value, economic viability and correct environmental is dependent of amino acids nutrition requirements and knowledge. This study was conducted with the objective of estimating the amino acids requirements for fish, based on body composition and the ideal amino acid pattern. In order to define body amino acids content, fingerlings with 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35 days old, after the yolk absorption were used. The experimental design was the entirely randomized, with four repetitions. Body dry matter, crude protein and amino acids content were determined. For ages ranging from 28 to 35 days, crude protein was higher than the others, but not different between them. For the estimative of amino acids requirements, the body composition of fingerlings of 100% of lysine was established, then body composition and ideal amino acid pattern methodology was used. Both estimative were similar for the requirements determined by dose response.


To the Editor, We read with interest the recent paper by Barakat et al entitled "An exercise program throughout pregnancy: Barakat model" (in this issue), which introduces the need for professional supervision of physical exercise during pregnancy. The author puts forward the importance of the training of specialists in this perspective (Barakat, 2020). Indeed, the author presents scientific evidence of the advantages of supervised exercise programs compared to autonomous exercise programs on perinatal health outcomes. The results of the latter—that is, without supervision—being inconclusive, the approach of supervised programs is an interesting option for health authorities. Optimizing the content of these programs is a challenge, to which Barakat's model provides a framework. The universal acceptance of such a model, however, may have limited feasibility considering the current context of health inequality (The Lancet, 2018)? The goal of the World Health Organization is that every pregnant woman receive quality care throughout pregnancy, in particular by promoting health including physical activity (WHO, 2016). Health promotion through primary health care can generate positive, although not large, changes in health outcomes and physical activity levels. These health promotion programs are feasible and acceptable to all pregnant women using sustainable resources (Zinsser, Stoll, Wieber, Pehlke-Milde, & Gross, 2020). The involvement and skills of health professionals can contribute to the success or failure of such programs (Lion et al., 2018; Yaghoubi, Karamali, & Bahadori, 2019). The health promotion approach alleviates barriers to physical activity such as cost and the availability of exercise professionals trained specifically to promote and oversee exercise in pregnant women. Indeed, the lack of information/advice as well as the lack of training/resources are reported, respectively, by pregnant women and health professionals (Coll, Domingues, Gonçalves, & Bertoldi, 2017; De Vivo & Mills, 2019). These two approaches, are they really exclusive from one another? We do not think so. We believe that a physical activity promotion approach is just as important when considering future lines of research and public health practice. In a practical sense, the physical activity promotion may reach more women and have the potential to synergize with programs supervised by professionals when they are accessible and available. Subsequently, physical activity promotion should be integrated together with Barakat's model within a larger strategy, addressed to impact women with a range of socioeconomic status, health behaviors, and health systems.


To the Editor: I am writing to comment on the article "Effects of a Developmental Physical Therapy Program on Oxygen Saturation and Heart Rate in Preterm Infants" from the June 1989 issue of Physical Therapy . Although the study seems very well done and the article is well written, I feel that the authors are skirting a more basic issue, which is, should we be doing this sort of physical therapy in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at all? I think not, for the following reasons:

1. The treatment is of uncertain efficacy. We lack evidence on how developmental programs done in the NICU affect long-term motor outcomes. The authors mention "the benefits and risks…in terms of developmental gains. …" What developmental gains? Are there demonstrable improvements at, say, age 1 or 2 years, or do untreated infants catch up to them?

[ ARTICLE][1]

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This study examines how emotional intelligence impacts process and outcome in negotiating groups. We measured the negotiators emotional intelligence before they participated in a negotiation simulation. Results indicated that emotional intelligence was negatively related to group performance. Interestingly, the group members self emotional appraisal was the emotional intelligence dimension that was most negatively associated with performance. Group performance was significantly affected by the level and type of interpersonal conflict in the group, but these process measures did not mediate the effect of emotional intelligence


Objective: to analyze the influence of the nutritional status on the estimation of the chronological age from radiographs through the degree of dental calcification using the methods of Demirjian et al., Willems et al., Nolla and Haavikko in children of both sexes from Tucuman, Argentina. Methods: 223 children (115 females and 108 males) who assisted to radiological studies previous to dental treatment were selected. Panoramic X-rays were taken. Dental ages were calculated using the corresponding tables of the methods of Demirjian et al., Willems et al., Nolla and Haavikko. Chronological ages were calculated between the date of birth and the date of the study. Children were grouped according to their sex and nutritional status. Results: For normal weight girls, the mean difference between dental and chronological age was: Demirjian et al.: 0.26±0.93; Willems et al: 0.43±0.95; Nolla: -0.31±0.84; Haavikko: -0.13±0.82. For normal weight boys: Demirjian et al.: 0.16±0.77; Willems et al.: 0.20±0.79; Nolla: -0.23±0.65; Haavikko: -0.255±0.73. For overweight girls: Demirjian et al.: 0.53±0.91; Willems et al.: 0.31±0.88; Nolla: -0.44±0.69; Haavikko: 0.09±0.81. For overweight boys: Demirjian et al.: 0.38±0.86; Willems et al.: 0.36±0.80; Nolla: 0.06±0.75; Haavikko: 0.06±0.94. For obese girls: Demirjian et al.: 0.92±0.75; Willems et al.: 0.83±1.37; Nolla: -0.47±0.57; Haavikko: 0.31±0.16. For obese boys: Demirjian et al.: 0.85±0.95; Willems et al.: 0.50±0.94; Nolla: 0.32±0.82; Haavikko: 0.50±0.77. For underweight boys and girls: Demirjian et al.: -0.36±0.82; Willems et al.: -0.25±0.70; Nolla: -0.85±0.87; Haavikko: -0.85±0.92. Conclusion: In normal boys and girls the methods of Demirjian et al. and Willems et al. overestimated the chronological age; those of Nolla and Haavikko underestimated it. In overweight boys and girls, the overestimation (Demirjian et al. and Willems et al.) doubled the chronological age, while in obese boys and girls, both methods tripled it.


A process and apparatus is disclosed for finishing long strips of thin glass web material. The process and apparatus provide for the movement of the thin glass web material in a downward vertical direction and preforming various finishing process for example slitting, taping, and testing before the thin glass web material is wound on to a roll. The process and apparatus operate such that the thin glass web material is not contacted by the apparatus and is thus protected from potential damage.


: In this paper, the On-chip DC-DC converter is implemented in order to improve the performance of the Multicore processor. A single input voltage is converted using on-chip SC DC-DC Converter into variable output voltage. Switched Capacitor plays a major role in DC-DC conversion. The significance of this conversion process is to improve the overall performance of the multi-core as well as to reduce the number of pins used for the power supply. This paper is designed in Verilog HDL code and is widely used in Multicore Systems.


Two‐channel quadrature mirror filter banks can be efficiently established by the combination of real‐valued infinite impulse response all‐pass filters without incurring aliasing and magnitude distortions. The design problem of filter banks is therefore to seek for the phase error minimization of the all‐pass filter coefficients. In this paper, a neural network‐based Lyapunov energy function is used to relate to the objective function of the designed all‐pass filter coefficients. Based on the architecture of neural networks and suitable selection of Hopfield‐related parameters, the all‐pass filter coefficients are obtained when the networks reach convergence. By further using the suitable combination of the designed all‐pass filters, the 2‐channel quadrature mirror filter banks with perfect reconstruction can be efficiently accomplished. Simulation results indicate that the neural network‐based approach has the advantage of satisfactory performance in magnitude and group delay responses in a parallelism manner.


Apparatus for supporting the self-locking of an adjusting (1) with a drive-side rotor shaft (5), the output side cooperates with a driven shaft (8) of a gear unit and the motor housing (2) of the variable displacement motor (1) connected to the transmission housing (20) of the gear unit articulated with on the armature shaft (5) of the variable displacement motor (1) carriers (12), characterized in that the drivers (12) through a gap between the permanent magnets (15, 16) and the armature packets (19) acting restoring moment (24) stretched in a Mitnehmerlage (26) can be transferred.


Amendments used in sand-based root zones are typically native peats, composts, or inorganic materials of diverse mineralogy. Literature-based guidelines for amendment inclusion include root zone capillary porosity (CP) values exceeding 0.2 m m or soil surface water contents exceeding 0.1 m m. It is also suggested that the cation exchange capacity (CEC) need not exceed 4 cmolc kg. Summarizing published data, native peat added to a U.S. Golf Association (USGA) guideline sand yielding organic matter (OM) content values of 15 g kg would typically yield benchmark values of CP = 0.2 m m, surface water content = 0.1 m m, and CEC values between 3 and 4 cmolc kg. This OM content is roughly equivalent to 15% by volume of a fibric sphagnum or 7.5% by volume of a hemic reed-sedge. By comparison 15% by volume of an inorganic amendment would likely result in CP and surface water content values less than the benchmark values, and CEC values between 1.5 and 4 cmolc kg. However, the CP benchmark measured at 30 cm of soil water suction should be re-evaluated because it may bias against the use of biosolids compost and inorganic amendments that reduce the thickness of the capillary fringe and create a broader pore size distribution. Also a weak relationship has been observed between longer-term turfgrass quality and 30-cm CP values. Measurement of CP at 40-cm suction would be a better indication of water retention in sand-based root zones for all amendment types. Lastly, inorganic amendments produce a drier root zone that may be preferred for both playability and long-term agronomic concerns.


This report presents a pilot study concerning the need of "car terminals" (park and ride) in Sweden and their function as a link between individual and public transport systems. The conclusion of this pilot study is that car terminals are essential for relieving the inner cities from car traffic. Successful park and ride schemes exist in both Europe and the USA, which experience can be of use for further studies. The most important factors to make the car terminals attractive enough are the location, public transport service, size and design. To achieve the desired effects, different kinds of restrictions such as car tolls or subsidies of public transport are probably needed. (Author/TRRL)


Mating behavior of the diamondback moth, Plutella xylostella (L.), was observed under laboratory conditions, and the relationships between mating and egg maturation were examined. Under a 16:8h light:dark photoperiod at 25°C, 1- to 4-day-old moths showed a similar pattern of mating behavior: mating occurred almost always in dark period, with a peak between 1 and 2 hours after "light-off"; multiple matings in a day, with a maximum of 4 times, occurred in 25% of pairs; the mean duration of mating was about 75 minutes. In the case of mated females, the number of mature eggs produced by each female, i. e. the number of eggs laid by the female plus the number of mature eggs found in its ovaries, was at least 30 regardless of age. Using this minimum value of egg maturation rate as a criterion of sexual maturity in females, the estimated proportions of individuals having mating ability for 1-, 2-, 3- and 4-day-old females were 54, 40, 68 and 98%, respectively.


Circular synthetic aperture radar (CSAR), with high resolution and multi-angular apertures, is an innovative mode which can perform consecutive surveillance and target tracking. The important purpose of moving target tracking is parameter estimation. In this paper, we present a method to estimate the motion parameters and refocus imaging of three-dimensional (3D) moving target. Doppler information and interferometric phase term are the basic of motion parameter. And the estimated results serve as the prior knowledge of refocus imaging. Simulation results demonstrate the correctness of the analysis and the performance of the proposed approach.


The utility model provides an automatic ash removing device applied to an industrial furnace and aims to solve the technical problems of the existing ash removing devices, such as poor controllability and safety and incomplete ash removal. The technical scheme adopted by the utility model is as follows: the ash removing device comprises a gas bag which is communicated with a blowing head through a blowing pipe. The automatic ash removing device is characterized by further comprising a gas pump which is communicated with the gas bag through a gas supplement pipe and a valve which is controlled by an electric control unit, wherein one end of the valve is communicated with the gas inlet of the gas bag and the other end thereof is communicated with the gas outlet of the gas bag. The automatic ash removing device has the benefits that the furnace works normally while the production efficiency of the furnace is greatly increased, the potential safety hazard occurring manual operation of ash removal is eliminated, and besides, since the dust deposits on the inner wall of the furnace can be removed in time, the service life of the furnace is prolonged.


After the entertainment potential of virtual reality (VR), the last years have seen a rapid growth of industrial, educational and scientific applications for virtual environments (VE). In theory, the virtual reality or virtual environment computer technology is imitating real world objects and environments and the user may even feel to be 'present' in the stimulated world. Disabled people can use normal computers for many purposes, such as learning, education, environment control, rehabilitation etc. relatively free from the limitations imposed by their disability. The next step may be the use of virtual environment computer technology. The paper: Virtual Reality, Disability and Rehabilitation' focuses on the possibilities of the VR applications for disabled persons. Only some limitations of the technology and ethical concerns are discussed. Those aspects are however important in practice and should be discussed before the VR is an important part of the rehabilitation practice for disabled persons. This paper is a good start for discussions of the value of VR and its applications for rehabilitation purposes. The author has collected a very good list of references for further studies. Various learning programmes are now mainly used for rehabilitation purposes. People can orient themselves in virtual environments, learn shopping, crossing the road etc. There are already first papers concerning the most important question: does skill or knowledge acquired by a disabled person in a VE transfer to the real world? However, more studies and papers are needed to consider various aspects of the use of VR. There are unsolved difficulties how to measure the real effect of use of VR. Systematic knowledge about the efficacy of rehabilitation intervention for an individual is almost entirely dependent on research conducted within experimental or a quasi-experimental framework. Rehabilitation research often yields an ambiguous mix of results and all papers have not yielded convincing support for the efficacy of rehabilitation interventions. Mildly disabled persons may get easier benefits of rehabilitation, also of the use of the VR, but those, who are multiply disabled, have more difficulties with social life and interactions. Without new technology they may live really in a social isolation. The possibilities of the VR are fascinating but somehow also very dangerous. What kind of virtual environments and who does make the decision of the use, programmes and applications? The disabled people are perhaps the last ones when discussing about the power and ethics of new technology and its applications. At the same time one can ask very seriously, are all people, including disabled ones, divided into two groups : those who can use and those who have no resources to use new technology? World wide the use of VR is nowadays possible only for a very small elite group of disabled people. Many of the disabled people have problems with the social environment and the rehabilitation of the social competence is therefore very important. Is there a real fear, that human-human interactions are replaced by new technology? In the metaphysical stage only very young children can wonder whether computers can think, feel and be alive. But new applications of VR can give even tactile, force, taste and smell feedback. There is a danger that some people become addicted to virtual reality experience and withdraw from real world interactions increasing their social isolation. The ' good ' use of the new technology will however provide the disabled with more freedom, independence and possibilities to participate. One must however remember that all problems concerning disabled persons cannot be solved by using new technology. I suspect that the use of VR is too late for those people suffering from a persistent vegetative state. As a member of a rehabilitation team also my next questions are very practical. When and how can one choose those disabled children who can be potential users of advantaged technology? This paper does not give any exact answer. The provision of a computerbased application includes evaluation of needs, testing, providing, and teaching how to use and maintain them. This process may be very difficult, consuming many kinds of resources. The user interface may be increasingly complex styles of interactions between the user and the


Buses have been the preferred interconnection in most of the processorbased systems in the past thirty years. They have also been the basic building blocks of almost all implemented system-on-chips (SoC). Buses offer a simple and efficient way to transfer data between the components of a system. Their simple signaling and structure facilitate both manual and automatic generation of bus-based architectures. Moreover, the simple programming model of bus-based systems has been favored by the application designers and has led to the development of advanced programming tools. A single bus is a good choice for many systems when the number of connected components is small. However, in the future SoCs, the complexity of a single component is not likely to significantly increase because only relatively simple components can be scaled with technology [1, 2]. Therefore, the number of components in a SoC is increasing. On the other hand, there has been only a modest increase in the ability of physical wires to transfer signals, although the performance of logic gates has been rapidly improving. The delay of a fixed length wire is even estimated to increase with decreasing feature sizes [1, 3]. Based on this analysis, it seems that a simple bus is no longer a preferable solution for SoC interconnection requirements. Sometimes network-on-chips (NoC), such as the one depicted in Figure 8-1, are proposed to solve this problem. In this Chapter, a SoC architecture that is based on more complex structures than a single bus or fully connected point-to-point links is defined as a network-on-chip.


This research announcement is about the dynamics of non-autonomously perturbed homoclinic solutions. Results reported in this article come in four groups. The first group is on a Melnikov-like method for non-autonomous equations that are not timeperiodic; the second group is on the overall dynamical structures of homoclinic tangles formed by the intersections of the stable and unstable manifolds of a dissipative saddle fixed point in periodically perturbed equations, where we answers a list of important questions that are not resolved in previous studies; the third group is on the non-intersecting case, for which we now present an array of dynamical scenarios ranging from attractive integral manifolds to strange attractors with SRB measures; and finally, the fourth group is on the applications of the theories of the first three groups to a non-autonomously perturbed Duffing's equation.


This study was performed to identify the factors affecting the dementia attitude of university students, and to provide basic data on dementia education program. It was conducted from 1 to 31, March, 2018 for 230 students of C university. The questionnaire consisted of the knowledge, attitudes, and needs of dementia preventive education on dementia. Analysis was done using SPSS 21.0 version, discriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe test, pearson's correlation coefficient, stepwise multiple regression. The results: there were statistically significant differences in dementia attitudes according to gender, thought of supporting parents, interest in dementia problems, presence of dementia among family members, and disclosure of family member's dementia (p<.05). The most important factor affecting the dementia attitude Received (December 10, 2018), Review Result(January 22, 2019) Accepted(February 25, 2019), Published(March 30, 2019) 151352 Department of Nursing, Changshin University, Changwon, Korea E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Corresponding Author) 151352 Department of Nursing, Changshin University, Changwon, Korea E-mail: email@example.com 151352 Department of Nursing, Changshin University, Changwon, Korea E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com * 이 논문은 2017학년도 창신대학교 교내연구비에 의해 작성되었음(과제번호 창신-2017-교내-33). Factors influencing the attitudes of dementia for University Students Copyright c 2019 HSST 562 was the need for dementia prevention education (β= .391, p<.001), followed by the interest in dementia problems (β=-.322, p<.001), disclosure of family member's dementia (β=-.322, p<.001) and dementia among family members (β=-.322, p<.001). The explanatory power was 40.6%. In conclusion, this study is expected to provide the basic data for the development of dementia education programs for university students.


In this paper we describe the estimation result of sound power radiated from a circular plate with a solid shaft and a solid cylinder, which is a simple model of an aircraft gear blank and is excited axially, radially or three dimensionally. The three parameters for estimation, the radiation loss factor, the driving point mobility and the total loss factor, were calculated according to the formulae derived in the first paper. Using these calculated parameters and measured excitation force spectrums, the sound powers radiated due to the excitations were estimated and compared to the measured values obtained by means of the sound intensity method. The estimated frequency spectrums of sound radiation power coincided with the measured values. Consequently, the estimation theory and the associated formulae are valid.


following Darnton, the late post-Voltairian popular journalism of the 1780s. He vividly portrays this diverse collective endeavor of well-known giants, litde known liberal censors, clandestine book dealers, and anonymous writers of Encyclopedia articles. While they cannot be charged with having brought about the French Revolution, they succeeded in eroding ideological loyalty to the ancien regime, secularized Europe, helped liberate humanity from its past, and bequeathed to us, their children, the techniques of social analysis, humanistic values, and scientific expertise—the very tools we employ in our effort to solve the new problems that arose because of them. One might quibble along die way with Porter—he plays with words when he claims that the philosophes created "a new religion of their own" and Gay has convincingly shown that the Enlightenment did not project "an idea of indefinite future progress"—but it is in fact remarkable that he managed to say so much in so litde space. This self-contained Enlightenment brochure would be a helpful handbook in a course on eighteenth-century British and French philosophical fiction.


In optical fibers,cross-phase-modulation will lead to nonlinear birefringence which results in polarization unstability. This paper investigates the relationship between incident angle and the beat length of nonlinear birefringence.The results show that when incident polarization light approaches the fast axle, nonlinearity makes birefringence stronger and beat length shorter.This conclusion is contray to Winful's theory in reference [2].


Many data gathering systems require the deployment of heterogeneous sensors to detect various aspects of the target and the use of wireless networks to transmit sensed data to the control center. The data rates of the heterogeneous sensors may range from a few bytes per minute to megabytes per second. To support the transmissions of such diverse rates of data through the wireless network, we propose a novel MAC scheduling scheme, CyclicMAC. CyclicMAC assigns each sensor a cyclic MAC schedule according to the data rates of its sensed as well as relaying data, without causing any channel contention. As far as we know, CyclicMAC is the first to address at the same time all three design issues in MAC scheduling: heterogeneous data rate, end-to-end latency, and storage for scheduling table, for multihop wireless sensor networks.


Nowadays the most used applications are the web based applications, for instance long range informal communication, shopping, e-learning, banking and social networking are all an examples of web based applications. It is commonly known that these Web applications are publicly available for all users around the world. This leads us to new challenges in securing these applications and exposing them to many Web-based attacks, one of the most common attacks is SQL injection (SQLi) which has a big impact on Web applications back-end databases, SQL injection working principle is by injecting a malicious code in SQL statements that can give hackers unauthorized access to the back-end database. In this paper, we make an overview of SQLi in addition; we take a look at some of the recent approaches that aims to prevent this type of attack. Then we propose a novel approach that is based on hashing using the fast and secure SHA-1 algorithm and syntax-awareness then we make a comparison between our solution and the surveyed solutions, our efficient approach was able to prevent all types of SQLi attacks and it did not fail in any situation.


KAPTON polyimide insulation layers and nylon plates are two insulation materials. They are commonly used in the superconducting tapes winding. The objective of this paper is to compare their heat diffusion abilities and sizes quantitatively. In this paper, the recovery time test was done to compare their heat diffusion abilities. Based on KAPTON polyimide insulation layers and nylon plates, two winding samples were made. The result shows that nylon plates can provide superconducting tapes a shorter recovery time than KAPTON polyimide insulation layers. Nylon plates have a better heat diffusion ability. Therefore they can be used in both AC and DC superconducting tapes winding. The size of KAPTON polyimide insulation layers is smaller. They can be used in some DC superconducting tapes winding when size is the first priority.


The availability of an objective clinical evaluation in the diagnosis and monitoring of parkinson's disease is a primary importance objective in neurology. Furthermore, in many patients next to resting tremor typical of the disease are also found other types of tremor as kinetic and postural tremor so making the diagnosis difficult. The ability to classify the different types of tremor specific for each patient through an examination of the instrumental, non-invasive and very simple and fast is a great tool to aid the clinical diagnosis of the disease. Our system meets the above requirements. It consists of an inertial sensor that allows the acquisition of the quantities of interest, and by a series of algorithms able to provide an objective and quantitative assessment of the type and severity of tremor in patients with Parkinson's disease. The availability of an objective report on the severity of the disorder developed according to a strict correlation with the valuation provided by the UPDRS scale is a good starting point towards the personalization of care as well as being a useful tool in the analysis of the course of the disease.


The behavior of image analysis based drape tester is evaluated by analyzing the test results.The accelerating and decelerating method is used to make testing samples with the same initiate condition before draping.The exponential relationship between drape coefficient and rotating speed is obtained to describe the dynamic drape.Finally,the stability of the test results of the image analysis based system is studied.


The upregulation of HoxB4 promotes self‐renewal of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) without overriding the normal stem cell pool size. A similar enhancement of HSC self‐renewal occurs when signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) is activated in HSCs. In this study, to gain insight into the functional organization of individual transcription factors (TFs) that have similar effects on HSCs, we investigated the molecular interplay between HoxB4 and STAT3 in the regulation of HSC self‐renewal. We found that while STAT3‐C or HoxB4 similarly enhanced the in vitro self‐renewal and in vivo repopulating activities of HSCs, simultaneous transduction of both TFs did not have additive effects, indicating their functional redundancy in HSCs. In addition, activation of STAT3 did not cause changes in the expression levels of HoxB4. In contrast, the inhibition of STAT3 activity in HoxB4‐overexpressing hematopoietic cells significantly abrogated the enhancing effects of HoxB4, and the upregulation of HoxB4 caused a ligand‐independent Tyr‐phosphorylation of STAT3. Microarray analysis revealed a significant overlap of the transcriptomes regulated by STAT3 and HoxB4 in undifferentiated hematopoietic cells. Moreover, a gene set enrichment analysis showed significant overlap in the candidate TFs that can recapitulate the transcriptional changes induced by HoxB4 or STAT3. Interestingly, among these common TFs were the pluripotency‐related genes Oct‐4 and Nanog. These results indicate that tissue‐specific TFs regulating HSC self‐renewal are functionally organized to play an equivalent role in transcription and provide insights into the functional convergence of multiple entries of TFs toward a conserved transcription program for the stem cell state. Stem Cells 2014;32:1313–1322


A Pareto concept-based max-min ant system algorithm for the bi-objective traveling salesman problem is proposed.By modifying the state transition rule,pheromone updating rule and the local search rule;as well as employing an adaptive-grid based diversity maintenance approach and the pheromone trail smoothing mechanism,we find the approximate Pareto front which is uniformly distributed on the objective space.Simulation on 6 benchmark functions and application to a hot rolling batch planning problem indicate that the proposed algorithm has desirable performance and practicability.


The present invention relates to their use as compounds of formula I, their preparation, and to antibacterial agents: Formula I Wherein R


Risk of dam break not only depends on the probability of dam failure events,but also on consequences.When the dam break probability is known,the more serious the dam break consequence,the higher the dam break risk.The consequence is the direct impact of the dam break,including health effect(e.g.,death,injury),property loss,environmental impact,and social impact.Up to now,there are many researches in the field of life loss and economic loss induced by the dam break,but the researches on social and environmental impacts are relatively less.The index system is presented for the evaluation of the social and environmental effect of dam break,based on the analysis of the influence of the dam break on the society and environment.Multi-target methods and stage division are also proposed.The analytic hierarchy process is used to elicit the weight of each target.The fuzzy mathematics method is used to assess the degree of dam break impacts on the society and environment with the principle of maximum degree of membership.


Degree Programme in Electrical Engineering Mubashir Ali: Implementing Carrier Recovery for LTE 20 MHz on Transport Triggered Architecture Master of Science Thesis: 49 pages March 2013 Major subject: Radio Frequency Electronics Examiners: Professor Jari Nurmi, Professor Mikko Valkama, MSc Omer Anjum


This paper presents the development of a rehabilitation robotic platform to research on the adaptation of the complexity of robot assisted therapy and the real-time displays of a virtual reality system in accordance with specific patient requirements. First, a kinematic analysis of the human arm during typical daily activities is presented to justify the design requirements of the robotic rehabilitation platform. Then, the other necessary components to monitor multi-sensory data from the subject and robotic side and to stimulate the subject during the task are described. Finally, first experimental results with the platform are presented to show that the therapy can be modulated in function of the patient state.


The photometric characteristics, especially the transmission and reflecting light factors of the materials are used widely and require accuracy and unity measurements during manufacture, usage and at studying their change under various factors. All the photometric devices and instruments intended for measuring the transmission and reflection light factors of the materials are graduated and checked in the period of operation with the use of sets of light filters and plates with known transmission and reflection factors respectively. Referred to the requirements to be met by these photometric devices and measuring facilities are spectral composition of light source radiation and spectral correction of the radiation flux falling onto the receiver. These requirements should be in compliance with the curve of relative spectral light effectiveness V (A) . That is why, the standard light filters and reflecting plates employed for the metrological control of these types of measurements must possess nonselectivity with respect to the spectral composition of radiation falling on them, as well as chemical and light damage resistance, heat resistance and mechanical strength. The sets of the neutral light filters used in the USSR are principally plane-parallel plates made of neutral homogeneous glass having various thickness and sizes. The filters reveal various transmission factors in a range from 0.0 1 to 0.92 and serve to check the photometric scale of devices and instruments.


Four new species of Korean Amynthas are described from Mt. Palgong, Korea: A. palgongensis sp. nov., A. minjae sp. nov., A. pagyeiensis sp. nov., and A. paiki sp. nov. All materials were from collections gathered by Song between 1969 and 1971. The first 3 species have 3 pairs of spermathecae, and the last has 2 pairs of spermathecae. Descriptions of the new species are provided, including illustrations of the ventral view, male pore region, and spermathecae.


Abstract The text aims to analyze the circulation of the works of Lourenço Filho in Mexican libraries, in the period between 1933 and 1963. It is possible to affirm that the presence of these works in Mexico is indicative that they were part of the collections destined for the formation of normal schoolteachers, Primary Education leaders and school administrators, especially for offering readers principles of educational psychology, rural teacher training, experiences in Brazil and an overview of educational systems on a global scale. It can be concluded that the circulation of Lourenço Filho works in Mexican libraries is due to a network of relationships that he established with Mexican intellectuals, mediated by UNESCO and Crefal.


Introduction: The TCL are chemotherapy resistant neoplasms associated with a poor outcome. Recently, mutations in a number of important genes controlling epigenetic functions have been reported, including mutations in TET2, IDH1/2 and DNMT3. As a class, HDAC inhibitors have exhibited activity leading to regulatory approval only in TCL. Collectively, these observations suggest that combinations of hypomethylating agents (HoMe) and HDAC inhibitor (HDACi) should be explored as a potential new backbone in TCL. Methods : In vitro and in vivo models of TCL were used to evaluate the preclinical merits of combining HoMe and HDACi using standard cytotoxicity assays (CellTiter Glo and Anexin V staining) and well established murine NOG models. Gene expression array (GEP) using Affymatrix were performed to identify unique gene sets perturbed by the combination. Patterns of methylation and DNA fragmentation were determined using the LINE-1 Assay and APO alert DNA fragmentation assay . A Phase 1 study in patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) lymphoma has enrolled all cohorts. Detailed PK and PD studies were performed. Results: In vitro , all 4 HDACi inhibitors (romidepsin [R]; vorinostat [V]; belinostat [B]; panobinostat [P]) exhibited marked class synergy with HoMe agents, including decitabine and azacytidine. Cell Titer Glo and Anexin V staining confirmed that the combination was potently synergistic as determined by the relative risk ratio (RRR). The synergy was more dependent on the concentration of the HDAC inhibitor, and was most pronounced with romidepsin versus other HDACi. In vivo , the combination of belinostat and decitabine produced a marked inhibition of TCL growth that was highly statistically significant compared to the single arm treated and untreated controls. GEP and methylation profiling revealed differentially expressed genes and modulated pathways for each of the single treatment conditions and combination. 944 unique genes were modulated by the combination supporting the idea of 9molecular synergism9. There was no methylation affect seen in the HDACi treated cells. Quantitation of DNA methylation and fragmentation suggested that concentrations of AZA from > 1 nM to Conclusions: A laboratory to bench translational initiative focused on identifying novel doublet combinations in TCL has confirmed that targeting epigenetic operations in TCL is effective in both the preclinical and clinical setting. Present efforts are directed towards accruing the Phase 2 component of the study in patients with PTCL, and completing all PK and PD studies from the Phase 1. We believe this combination could form the basis of a new backbone in TCL. Disclosures O9Connor: Seattle Genetics: Consultancy; Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company: Consultancy; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; Takeda Millennium: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Spectrum Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Mundipharma: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; Bayer: Consultancy, Honoraria; Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, INC: Consultancy. Off Label Use: Oral Azacitadine is not approved for lymphoid malignancies. Romidepsin is not approved for B-NHL and HL.. Deng: TG Therapeutics, Inc.: Honoraria, Research Funding; Seattle Genetics: Research Funding. Sawas: Seattle Genetics: Research Funding. Colbourn: Benitec Biopharma: Equity Ownership; PDL Biopharma: Equity Ownership; Merk: Equity Ownership; Eli Lilly: Equity Ownership; Celgene: Equity Ownership; Biogen Idecc: Equity Ownership; Novartis: Equity Ownership; Seattle Genetics: Equity Ownership. Neylon: Seattle Genetics: Speakers Bureau; Celgene: Speakers Bureau; Genentech: Speakers Bureau; Gilead: Speakers Bureau. Amengual: Acetylon Pharmaceuticals, INC: Consultancy, Research Funding.


Abstract:
 Two laboratory trials were conducted to determine the required host fish for the Carolina heelsplitter (Lasmigona decorata (Lea, 1852)), an endangered freshwater mussel (Unionidae). The first trial used glochidia from a female collected from the Yadkin-Pee Dee River basin, and the second trial used the glochidia of an adult collected from the Catawba River basin. Two different techniques were utilized for glochidia extraction: flushing and serotonin-induced release. The first female tested (Yadkin-Pee Dee) packaged most of its glochidia attached to unfertilized eggs, and extraction of glochidia by flushing the marsupia with a syringe yielded few glochidia and caused extensive tearing of the gill tissue. In the second trial (Catawba) the female was immersed in 500 mg/L serotonin creatinine sulfate, and the glochidia were readily released without injury to the adult. Several species of minnows (Cyprinidae) from both basins served as hosts. Some sunfish species (Centrarchidae) supported transformation of a few juveniles, but differences in transformation success were observed between the two basins on these species.


Because of the large quantities of carbon dioxide released during cement production, the concrete industry is a major emitter of greenhouse gases worldwide. Inorganic polymer cement has the potential to replace Portland cement as a binder in concrete, which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions due to cement production by approximately 85%. This paper assesses the performance of three interior beam–column joints constructed using inorganic polymer concrete. The joints tested were designed using existing standards, and their performance was compared with the performance of a companion joint constructed from Portland cement concrete. Inorganic polymer concrete mixed at a precast concrete factory using conventional equipment was found to have predictable properties and to behave similarly to Portland cement concrete. Cyclic testing of beam–column joint subassemblies showed that the hysteretic, bond and energy dissipation characteristics of inorganic polymer concrete joints were identical to respective charac...


ABSTRACT BACKGROUND: Vancomycin-induced nephrotoxicity is characterized by acute tubular necrosis (ATN) or interstitial damage (ATIN). Vancomycin-resistance among Enterococci has been escalating in recent years in many countries. Linezolid (LNZ), an oxazolidinone is one of the novel drugs that promised effective therapy of infections caused by vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE). OBJECTIVES: The present work aimed to experimentally compare the nephrotoxicity induced by linezolid and vancomycin (VCM) on adult albino rat both biochemically and histopathologically. Methodology: Thirty rats were randomly divided into three groups (10 rats each) Group (I) Control group, Group (II) LNZ group and Group (III) VCM group. To study the toxic effect of linezolid on the kidney in comparison with vancomycin. The level of serum creatinine, urea and malondialdehyde (MDA) were measured. RESULTS: It was found in this study that VCM significantly increase serum creatinine, urea and MDA concentrations compared to the control group, and LNZ insignificantly increase serum creatinine, urea and MDA compared to the control group, with no significant difference between the effects of two drugs. Histopathological study of VCM-treated rat kidney showed marked interstitial nephritis with tubular necrosis and desquamation of tubular epithelial cells. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATONS: Nephrotoxicity in linezolid-treated rats was less than vancomycin-treated rats. Further studies are needed about effect of linezolid on kidney.


During a survey conducted from 1993 to 1995 in Normandy affinities between woodland and bocage avifauna were highlighted (eight of the ten most common species in each habitat are identical). Comparisons were drawn between species at different seasons (presence/absence) and in various habitats (density/diversity). The importance of preserving small woodlands still present within the bocage in view of future restoration is highlighted.


Mrs.Dalloway,written by Virginia Woolf,is known and liked for its exertion of stream of consciousness.but the lesbin-polt in the novel was less noticed and understood by audience.After reading and analyzing this novel,we can find that even under the heterosexuality is the leading role circumstances,Woolf started to use a moderate way to support lesbin and give her identification to the fluid political sexual distinction of human beings.What's more,she had a advanced realization and understanding to the Queer Theory.


Visual servoing based on photometric data is of great interest since it does not necessitate any image processing or visual tracking steps. A vital issue in such methods is the change in the image resulting from the appearance and disappearance of portions of the scene from the camera field-of-view during the visual servo. In this paper, we propose a spatial weighting scheme to counter this problem. A general model for photometric moments that allows for inclusion of spatial weights is presented. A custom weighting function is then chosen and specific properties of its derivative are exploited in order to develop the interaction matrix in analytical form. The resultant effects on the invariance properties are discussed. Experiments have been performed to validate the visual servoing with the proposed weighting scheme on a 4 dof robot arm.


Objective: The aim of this study is to determine the effect of aprotinin, on calcium activated and magnesium dependent adenosine 5' triphosphatase (Ca2+-Mg2+/ATP ase) levels. Methods: Twenty patients who had elective coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) were randomly divided into two groups (n= 10, in each). Group A patients received full dose aprotinin (20 000 lU/kg as pretreatment followed by 7500 lU/kg for 6 hours) and Group B patients received normal saline as control group. Erythrocyte membrane Ca2+-Mg2+/ATP ase levels were measured. Results: Ca2*-Mg2+ /ATPase levels were protected in aprotinin group, 807.60+32.62 vs 634.28+22.91 (p<0.05) at post-operative 24th hour. (p<0.05). Conclusion: Aprotinin protected the erythocyte membrane Ca2<-Mg2+ ATP/ase from oxidant stress thus it might affect the cell membrane stabilization. Key Words: Aprotinin, Ischemia-Reperfusion injury, Ca2t-Mg2+/ATPase.


This statement was prepared jointly by the two scientific advisory boards "Consumer and Food Policy" and "Agricultural Policy" at the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. The work group was made up of Dr. Ulrike Eberle (Chair), Prof. Dr. Achim Spiller (Co-Chair), Prof. Dr. Tilman Becker, Prof. Dr. Alois Heissenhuber, Prof. Dr. Ingrid-Ute Leonhäuser and Prof. Dr. Albert Sundrum.


We show that the singular values σm of the fractional integration operator of order α>0 acting from weighted L 2 spaces of functions defined on the interval (−1,1) or (0,∞) may, in both cases, have asymptotics m -α or m -α/2, as m→∞, depending on the specific choice of weight functions. Some questions of singular value decompositions are also investigated for Riesz potential operators in weighted L 2 spaces of functions defined on R n .