The authors examine the dependence between multifrequency/multipolarization synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data and mangrove forest parameters. AIRSAR data at P-, L-, and C-band were acquired over French Guiana in June 1993. Structural parameters, namely, tree height, tree diameter at breast height (DBH), tree density, basal area, and total above-ground biomass were estimated in 12 stands representative of different mangrove forest stages. At the study site, total biomass ranges from about 5 to 437 tons of dry matter per ha (t DM ha/sup -1/). Strong relationships were found between most forest parameters and radar data, with P-HV showing the greatest sensitivity to total biomass. Estimation of the forest parameters was performed through multiple stepwise regression techniques. While /spl sigma//sup 0/ at P-HV saturated at about 160 t DM ha/sup -1/, the use of several frequencies and polarizations allowed total biomass to be accurately estimated up to about 240 t DM ha/sup -1/. Furthermore, the use of polarization ratios at different frequencies has provided useful information about the penetration capability of the radar wave as well as the dominant mechanisms occurring between the radar wave and the mangrove canopy.


Caption reads: "AAM C-130, Long Tieng (LS-20A)." Front portside view of Lockheed C-130 Hercules parked on runway at Lima Site 20A. Another aircraft parked on the left. People running.


This paper examines animation from several different views – historical through the modern computer generated. It covers a short history of animation with a detailed look at some of the early examples with an emphasis on the techniques and tricks used in their creation. It also looks at how computers have changed the animation industry and expanded it into other occupations such as architectural modeling. A comparison between traditional and computer animation processes is noted as well as a look at software, its components, usability, and more. Types of and processes for rendering are also described and compared. Degree Type Open Access Senior Honors Thesis Department Technology Studies


The life of Indigenous people has an interesting social situation and religiosity to study. This paper aims to examine: (1) Religiosity (2) Religious patterns, (2) Conservation of religious values of Cireundu traditional village communities. This study uses a qualitative approach with descriptive analytical methods about local religious struggles, namely Sunda Wiwitan with the influence of the surrounding environment, in the perspective of sociology it focuses more on religious phenomena that occur between modernization and adherents of local religions. Data collection is done through: (a) Participatory observation (participant observation), (b) In-depth interviews. (c) Documentation. Religion as "mode is for reality" provides a "framework" for seeing reality, religion provides "system of meaning" for its socially produced followers. The Cireundeu indigenous people tend to make "religion" as "the ultimate concern". They make religion a fundamental philosophy in their lives. Almost all activities in their lives are based on religious values.


Most infiltrations of a wetting phase have an imbibition front that is diffuse at
the pore-scale, allowing the common use of continuum formulations to model the
macroscopic flow. But for macroscopic flow phenomena such as preferential flow,
this continuum approach fails as the imbibition water front is sharp at the pore-
scale. Pore-scale network models are ideal for handling sharp fronts due to their
inherent discreteness, but many models produce only sharp fronts contrary to
observations. Here we modify the physically-based static network model of Valvatne
and Blunt to add viscous effects in a quasi-static manner. We find that at low
imbibition velocities, that the imbibing front is diffuse due to flow within the
layers of the model, and the majority of the elements filling through snap-off. At
high imbibition velocities, the front becomes sharp at the pore-scale due to the
viscous forces enhancing collective piston-like pore filling. The width of the
transition between diffuse and sharp fronts in terms of velocity matches well what
is observed in experimental measurements. We discuss how the initial layer
conductivity, pore-size distribution, and the wetting properties of the media
control the absolute magnitude of the transition.


This paper presented a simple model calculation of photofield emission current (PFEC) from tungsten. For evaluation of the matrix element, Kronig-Penney potential model for the crystal is used for deducing the required wavefunctions. Interpolation method is used in the dielectric model for calculations of vector potential of interest.


This article tries to analyse the concepts and processes of laicization andsecularization. With this objective we examined the difference existent between this processes, emphasizing that both appear with modernity and express a civilizational project, a conception of the world that seeks to build a social order based in secular values. We also distinguish the laicity from laicism, demonstrating that the last is a violent way of laicity that tries to extirpate religion from social life. The laicism reveals itself as an anticlerical and antireligious ideology. We conclude that laicity is a phenomenum which needs to be placed and understood according to the historical and cultural characteristics of each nation.


Consumption structure imbalances may lead to economic and social problems.Consumer credit structure imbalance is an important reason of the financial crisis in the United States.Under the conditions of financial crisis,China's consumption structure problems of the passive upgrade,the gap widening between the consumer subject,the irrational credit structure is strengthened.To deal with financial crisis,policies and measures should be taken to impact the psychological expectations of customer,to promote the upgrading of consumption structure in rural areas,and to guide appropriate credit consumption.


This paper proposes a distributed authorization architecture for Internet of Things adopting a hyperledger fabric framework. This paper also applies Genetic Algorithm to enhance the consensus component, traditionally used for Kafka, in order to determine the best configuration over different parameters, such as input transactions and their success rates. The experimental results confirm our superior performance in that the transaction transfer rate of our optimization, called GA Kafka, outperforms the traditional Kafka by 69.43%, and 89.97% for transaction transfer success rate.


Objective To understand and analyze the prevalence and characteristic of HIV infection among male patients attending STD clinics.Methods The male patients who attended the STD clinics from Jan.2009 to Dec.2010 were questioned and tested for STD.And those who accepted the serological test voluntarily would be tested for HIV infection with ELISA,and would be confirmed with Western blot.Result Among the 1 653 patients,332 were infected with STD,including syphilis(107),gonorrhea(56),chlamydia infection(67),condyloma acuminatum(72) and genital herpes(30).And 14 HIV infected patients co-infected with other STDs were MSM.The proportion of syphilis patients with HIV infection was 35.29%(6/17) and the proportion of CA patients with HIV infection was 32.0%(8/25).Conclusion STD patients from MSM are important high risk population who are susceptible to HIV infection.Enhanced HIV infection test should be clinically focused on male patients who are infected with syphilis and CA around anus and are homosexual.


With the development of sensors, it is possible to embed many sensors within a certain space, which makes the monitor and alarm system with multisensor possible. There are two important parameters in a monitor and alarm system, namely, the false alarm rate and the missed alarm rate. In this work, a method for selecting optimal number of sensors in the sensor array is presented to improve the credibility. The influence factors of the weights and the false alarm rate and the missed alarm rate of one sensor and total number of sensors are discussed. An experimental setup was developed. The monitoring methods of common strategies and the proposed optimal number of sensors strategy are compared graphically by the receiver operating characteristic curves and the area under receiver operating characteristic curve values. The receiver operating characteristic curves graphically prove that the optimal number of sensors' method presents the best performance, and it is shown that the optimal number of sensors' method has the highest area under receiver operating characteristic value (0.9631). This method may aid future users of the monitor and alarm system by providing an optimal number of sensors strategy for high credibility.


Thorsten Hippe: Editorial: Social Science Education in the Financial Risk Society .............................................. 2–5 Gertraude Mikl-Horke: Social Knowledge for Financial Markets – Soziales Wissen für Finanzmärkte ....................................................................................................................... 6–15 Walter Otto Ötsch, Jakob Kapeller: Perpetuating the Failure: Economic Education and the Current Crisis ..................................................................................................... 16–25 Mary Koutselini: The Financial Crisis in the Light of Modern – Meta Modern Discourse: Re-Conceptualising the Modern Knowledge and Financing System ............................................................... 26–31 Udo Reifner, Anne Schelhowe: Financial Education ............................................................................................ 32–42 Michael Schuhen: A Didactic Reconstruction of the Financial and Economic Crisis .................................. 43–51 Country Report Elisabeth Chatel: Economics as a social science in French lycées: a programme shaped by the evolution of a school discipline ........................................................................ 52–63


Purpose: The aim of the present study was to evaluate the long-term survival of implants retrospectively and determine the risk factors associated with implant failure. Materials and Methods: Of all implants that were placed at the Department of Periodontology of the Dental Hospital of Gangneung-Wonju National University from January 1998 to December 2012, 2265 implants that were followed up until June 2013 were included in this study. Data were collected from clinical and radiographic examinations from previous visits. The information gathered included gender, age, smoking status, implant diameter, implant length, surface of implant, location of implant within the dental arch, surgical techniques and existence of complications. Results: The survival rate before loading was 98.9%. The cumulative survival rate after 5 years of loading was 97.2%, and after 15 years of loading was 95.2%. In a simple logistic regression analysis, gender (P = 0.016), smoking status (P = 0.001), location of implant (P = 0.020) and existence of complications (P = 0.002) were statistically associated with implant failure and included in the multiple regression analysis. As a result of multiple logistic regression analysis, the variables statistically associated with implant failure (P < 0.05) were smoking status (P = 0.049) and existence of complications (P < 0.001). Conclusion: The cumulative survival rate of dental implants after 15 years of loading was 95.2% and that the variables statistically associated with implant failure were smoking status and existence of complications.


ABSTRACT In high security forensic institutions, patients are sometimes placed on small-scale wards to be treated individually if their psychiatric condition and behaviour do not allow for them to live and interact more freely with other patients. On these so-called individual wards, there is little contact between patients and more security measures are in place, such as higher numbers of staff members per patient than on group wards. The present study investigated the experienced safety of staff members (n = 41) and patients (n = 21) of such individual wards, compared to staff members (n = 55) and patients (n = 55) of group wards with the Essen-CES. The mean item score on the scale experienced safety of the Essen-CES for the entire sample was 2.1 (SD = .9) with a range from 0 to 4 and higher scores reflecting a higher experienced safety. Staff on individual wards had a significantly lower experienced safety than patients on both ward types and staff on group wards. It is advised, therefore, to implement additional measures to support professionals who work on these individual wards.


ArF lithography which is a leading technology for 100nm node device fabrication is approaching the stage of practical use, where resolution enhancement techniques (RET) represented by attenuated phase shift mask (att.PSM) are expected to be used from the beginning. ON the other hand, in order to obtain higher depth of focus and resolution, it is said that att.PSM with high transmittance (HT-PSM) will be adopted to KrF and ArF lithography. We have developed zirconium silicon oxide (ZrSiO) att.PSM and reported its utilities toward practical use of ArF lithography. In this paper, we present examination results of possibility of ZrSiON att.PSM to be applied to HT-PSM for KrF and ArF lithography. Consequently, we confirmed the possibility and effectiveness of ZrSiON for HT-PSM as follows; ZrSiON films are convenient to control optical properties required for HT-PSM because of its distribution of optical constants (n;refractive index, k;extinction coefficient) with deposition conditions. Bi- layer HT-PSM having transmittance of 15% for ArF of KrF lithography show such good spectral transmittance that they can be inspected with currently available inspection tool. ZrSiON blanks are also proved to have high durability against cleaning chemicals of not only acid but alkali. Moreover, ZrSiON shifter has good dry-etching durability against Cr dry-etching stacked on ZrSiON film, which makes it easy to control phase angle in fabricating tri-tone-type HT-PSM.


Abstract : Future Combat System (FCS) is planned as a multi-functional, multi-mission reconfigurable system of systems to maximize transportability and commonality of mission roles. The FCS-MRASS (Multi-Role Armament & Ammunition System) program seeks to aid the Army in determining its needs and then to identigy and advance armament and ammunition technologies that will meet those needs. This briefing reports on a new cannon and accompanying ammunition currently under development.


In this book, Jared Diamond reveals how tribal societies offer an extraordinary window into how our ancestors lived for millions of years and how they provide unique, often overlooked insights into human nature. Diamond argues the West achieved global dominance due to specific environmental and technological advantages, but Westerners do not necessarily have superior ideas about how to live well. Michael Yorke is impressed by the book's beautifully crafted prose style but has doubts about its methodological validity.


This article will discuss Teaching of the subject Descriptive Geometry and Engineering Graphics in AutoCAD within the framework of laboratory classes The aim of the classes is to learn the methods applied for representation of the three dimensional (3-D) space on the picture plane as well as mastering the ability of creating engineering drawings in the AutoCAD software. To intensify the teaching process a series of tutorials has been developed and uploaded to the Moodle platform and made available on the Internet. It has been emphasized that the introduction of the ICT and multimedia technologies into a teaching process requires not only a careful selection of the visual aids but also careful examination of the problems encountered in didactics.


Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care, Jagiellonian University, Collegium Medicum, Kraków, Poland Background and Goal of Study: This study compares the effectiveness of 3 methods of traditional antiemetic prophylaxis (metoclopramide vs metoclopramide enhanced with dexamethasone vs metoclopramide plus dexamethasone plus ondansetron). The purpose was to achieve a cheap and good method of eliminating PONV in patients scheduled for gynaecologic laparoscopy. Materials and Methods: With approval of the local ethics committee for this 8 yrs lasting trial, the ASA I and ASA II patients, aged 15–45, received a standardized general anaesthesia (propofol, fentanyl and succinylcholine after 3 min oxygenation, 66% nitrous oxide in oxygen, atracurium; IPPV supplied patients with 10 mL kg 1 of tidal volume via endotracheal tube; during the 1995–98 years halothane and isoflurane were used as supplemental volatile anaesthetics while in 1999–2002 both were replaced with sevoflurane). Before the emergence from anaesthesia the patients were blindly randomized to be administered i.v. either metoclopramide 10 mg (group 1), or metoclopramide plus dexamethasone 8 mg (group 2), or metoclopramide, dexamethasone and ondansetron 8 mg (group 3). The patients were followed up for emetic symptoms for 24 hrs. Data were analyzed using chi-square and the logrank tests. Results: The demographic parameters were similar between the groups.


THIS paper assesses the impact of Britain's accession to the EEC on her imports of manufactures. It argues that account must be taken of the substitutability of imports for home production, and that price effects must be modelled consistently. It applies Deaton and Muellbauer's "Almost Ideal Demand System" to annual data on UK home sales and imports from ten sources. It identifies considerable trade creation, but little or no trade diversion. This paper has two objectives: first to assess the effect of accession to the EEC on the UK's pattern of imports of manufactures, and second to explore certain methodological issues in the estimation of such effects. It is now ten years since the UK acceded to the Common Market and the time is ripe for an assessment. So far this matter has attracted remarkably little attention from economists despite the continuing debate about membership among politicians-Daly (1978), Fetherston, Moore and Rhodes (1979) and Morgan (1980) are the main sources. Obviously imports are only half of the issue, but we concentrate on them here because they illustrate the methodological points we make. A corresponding study of exports would require substantially more data than we currently have and is left over to another paper. The principal methodological issue of the paper is whether or not one can consider import flows alone in assessing the effects of economic integration or whether one should simultaneously consider home sales of domestic output. It is our contention that the latter is correct and that the distinction is important. A further, minor, methodological contribution is the model of trade that we use: we explain the allocation of British purchases of manufacturing over competing suppliers by means of Deaton and Muellbauer's (1980) Almost Ideal Demand System. To our knowledge ours is the first application of this system to international trade data.


The long development process of novel pharmaceutical compounds begins with the identification of a lead inhibitor compound. Computational screening to identify those ligands, or small molecules, most likely to inhibit a target protein may benefit the pharmaceutical development process by reducing the time required to identify a lead compound. Typically, computational ligand screening utilizes high-resolution structural models of both the protein and ligand to fit or 'dock' each member of a ligand database into the binding site of the protein. Ligands are then ranked by the number and quality of interactions formed in the predicted protein-ligand complex. It is currently believed that proteins in solution do not assume a single rigid conformation but instead tend to move through a small region of conformation space [14]. Therefore, docking ligands against a static snapshot of protein structure has predictive limi-tations because it ignores the inherent flexibility of the protein [14]. A challenge, therefore, has been the development of docking algorithms capable of modeling protein flexibility while balancing computational feasibility. In this paper, we present our initial development and work on a molecular ensemble-based algorithm to model protein flexibility for protein-ligand binding prediction. First, a molecular ensemble is generated from molecular structures satisfying experimentally-measured NMR constraints. Second, traditional protein-ligand docking is performed on each member of the protein's molecular ensemble. This step generates lists of ligands predicted to bind to each individual member of the ensemble. Finally, lists of top predicted binders are consolidated to identify those ligands predicted to bind multiple members of the protein's molecular ensemble. We applied our algorithm to identify inhibitors of Core Binding Factor (CBF) among a subset of approximately 70,000 ligands of the Available Chemicals Directory. Our 26 top-predicted binding ligands are currently being tested experimentally in the wetlab by both NMR-binding experiments ( 15 N-edited Heteronuclear Single-Quantum Coherence (HSQC)) and Electrophoretic Gel Mobility Shift Assays (EMSA). Preliminary results indicate that of approximately 26 ligands tested, three induce perturbations in the protein's NMR chemical shifts indicative of ligand binding and one ligand (2-amino-5-cyano-4-tertbutyl thiazole) causes a band pattern in the EMSA indicating the disruption of CBF dimerization.


Border twin towns are locations of particular symbolic importance for governing projects aimed at the creation of national and international spaces. Local and central authorities have utilised public monuments and other symbols there as a way of «inventing tradition» [15], and narrating about conflict, cooperation and even collaboration legacies. The metaphor of «integration laboratories» [13] makes them perfect places for border (re)negotiation [5]. Referring also to Reinhart Koselleck's [27] ideas concerning war memorials we argue that monuments represent symbols exhibited in public space: they have a specific function, in hinting something, «which does not exist as a thing or matter immediately perceptible to the senses» [38, p.40]. Moreover, a symbol «tells about some other reality and is the crystallization of a linguistic description» [38, p. 40]. In this way, «materially existing objects are often useful in embodying and presenting abstract ideas, such as unfriendly relations, international socialism or EU integration, as well as strengthening a populace in their convictions toward these ideas» [5, p. 204]. The aim of this paper is to investigate historiographicallypublic space symbolism i.e. monuments, cultural memory and politics in three border twin towns (Narva-Ivangorod, Imatra-Svetogorsk and KirkenesNickel). It will, however, concentrate on the western part of the border. On the basis of these representations the paper aims to discuss broader foreign policy orientations, and in particular those after WWII: being the sites of intensive interactions they reveal a historic legacy of conflict between «Scandinavian space» and Russia. Further, they have recently employed (accordingly) three variants of historic-political (re)interpretations: new economic neighbourhood relations, EU common border and conflictive revival of Swedish historic legacy.


Microfinance Institutions are intended to bridge the financial gap usually created by the dearth of capital created by the inability of the conventional banks to support the Small and Medium Scale Enterprises in the country. This has however provided the compelling reasons why issues relating to Microfinance Institutions have to be taken more seriously in Nigeria than ever before.This paper therefore focused on the identification of the causes of poverty in Nigeria and the extent to which microfinance institutions have helped in reducing poverty in the Nigerian economic development.. The researcher used Chi- square, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the method of regression analysis for investigating the contribution made by the microfinance institutions to poverty reduction in the Nigerian context. The study revealed that exclusion of the poor from the financial system seriously contributed to their inability to participate in the development process. Equally with no access to funding therefore, the household finds in extremely difficult to take advantage of economic opportunities to improve their lots and their children and protect them against financial imbalances, thereby making them to be permanently within the vicious circle of poverty. The analysis revealed that increase microcredit finances drastically reduced poverty level in Nigeria and also the poverty index. The study also revealed that microfinance institutions contributes most considerably to the empowerment of the masses, majority of whom were women, rural dwellers and this has translated in business and financial development in Nigeria. Key w ords: Microfinance, Financial empowerment, Entrepreneurial functions, Development Finance Institutions(DFIs), Poverty.


Aulacoseira taxa are the most abundant members of diatom assemblages in Prášilské Lake (Czech Republic) during the Holocene. These dominant diatom taxa were studied in freshwater lacustrine sediments in order to harmonize data for subsequent diatom-based palaeoecological reconstruction. Nine taxa were distinguished within the genus, six of them (A. alpigena, A. lacustris, A. laevissima, A. lirata, A. perglabra, A. valida) showed clear features for identification, the rest three taxa (A. nivalis, A. pfaffiana, A. aff. tenella) required deeper analysis. We decided to use taxa in species rank, A. nivalis (W. Smith) English et Potapova and A. pfaffiana (Reinsch) Krammer, in spite of their hardly odds and the earlier suggested merging. Morphology of A. aff. tenella was also discussed in detail. Despite all endeavours, to distinguish some specimens belonging to the A. distans species complex using light microscope is impossible and a classification into the aggregates is needed. We suggested counting the valve face views and the valve mantle views separately, in order to repair subsequent potential misidentifications more simply.


We introduce some new path-following methods for the solution of the linear complementarity problem. We call these methods noninterior continuation methods since, in contrast to interior-point methods, not all iterates have to stay in the positive orthant. This is possible since we reformulate certain perturbed complementarity problems as a nonlinear system of equations. However, similar to interior-point methods, we also try to follow the central path. We present some conditions which guarantee the existence of this central path, prove a global convergence result for some implementable noninterior continuation methods, and report some numerical results obtained with these methods. We also prove global error bound results for the perturbed linear complementarity problems.


A generous Introduction fills a third of the extra number of the Harvard Theological Review in which Professor Casey's text is published. The manuscripts of Adversus Manichaeos are listed and evaluated. There is a vivid characterization of Serapion himself. Next, his style and literary method are analyzed. Extended examples are given of his introductions, transitions, and conclusions, his epigrammatic expressions, and his technical vocabulary.


An edge chipping experiment system by single indenter for engineering ceramics was established,and energy transformations and the energy releases during the fracture process were analyzed,the fracture micrographs were observed by SEM to study the fracture regulars and mechanisms of edge chipping from the aspect of energy.The results showed:There ' s obviously catastrophe characteristics for engineering ceramics during the failure process of edge chipping;During the process of slow fracture,the cracks propagate slowly,and the modes of crack propagations are mainly transcrystalline rupture,most of the mechanical energies convert to elastic strain energies by grain deformations;While during the process of rapid fracture,the cracks propagate quickly,the elastic strain energies would convert to kinetic energy,surface energy,damage energy and so on by intergranular fracture,relative motion and slipping.Amplitude and energy can describe the energy release properties of engineering ceramics during the failure process of edge chipping well.


Turbomolecular pump (TMP) is widely used to obtain and maintain high vacuum by spinning turbine rotors to migrate gas molecules to the exhaust of the pump. However, performance of the TMP has not been well observed when it is influenced by strong magnetic field. Such study may give useful information about magnetic field tolerance of TMP, development of magnetic shielding technique for key components of TMP, etc. For this purpose, magnetic field induced by a circular current source was firstly designed and investigated. Using spherical coordinates and vector potential, magnetic field throughout the space including axis of rotation was calculated. Due to the rotational symmetry of the circular current source, induced magnetic field is azimuthally symmetric and, thus, is analyzed by radial and polar components of the magnetic fields. In order to enhance the numerical accuracy for the calculation, magnetic field was expressed by complete elliptic integrals of first and second kinds. According to the calculation, when 1 A of DC-current passes through a 1 turned circular wire with 50 cm of diameter, overall magnitude of the inducedmagnetic field was about 0.02 Gauss, which was used to the determination of the current and the number of turns of wires to fabricate the coil for the study on the magnetic field tolerance of TMP.


The Software Development Assistant (SDA) is an exploratory software development environment. It employs new hardware and software technology to help developers of the Definity® 75/85 communications system manage the complexities of software design. We describe an integrated set of tools to be used during the design and implementation stages of the development process, and the architectural components on which these tools are based. We then discuss current work to develop new user capabilities and to incorporate new technology. The Software Development Assistant prototype is general enough to be adapted for use by other software development projects with modest effort.


We study how acquisitions influence a firm's strategy and performance. Using a rich panel of Medicare claims data for nearly one million dialysis patients, we document several pronounced changes at the approximately 1,200 independent facilities acquired by large chains during our sample period. Most notably, acquired facilities increase patients' doses of highly reimbursed drugs, replace high-skill nurses with less-skilled technicians, and waitlist fewer patients for a kidney transplant. Although adopting the acquiring firm's strategy results in higher Medicare payments for the acquired facility, it leads to worse patient outcomes for hospitalizations and mortality. ∗We thank nephrologists Matthew Ellis and Ruediger Lehrich for providing valuable industry insights and numerous seminar participants for their useful feedback. We gratefully acknowledge research support provided the Social Sciences Research Institute. We thank Alexander Marsh, Lily Liu, Zilan Yang, Sungwoo Cho, and Hanmeng Wang for their research assistance. The data reported here have been supplied by the United States Renal Data System (USRDS). The interpretation and reporting of these data are the responsibility of the authors and in no way should be seen as an official policy or interpretation of the U.S. government. †Department of Economics, Duke University, email@example.com ‡Department of Economics, Duke University, firstname.lastname@example.com §The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, email@example.com ¶Department of Economics, Duke University and NBER, firstname.lastname@example.com


Asymptotic (in the geometric limit) phase errors associated with parabolic approximations to the one‐way Helmholtz equation are investigated. In order to estimate the phase accuracy of various parabolic approximations, the canonical Hamiltonian formalism is used to derive ray equations. It is shown that among the class of parabolic approximations that allow the split‐step Fourier algorithm to be used, the wide‐angle c0‐insensitive approximation [Tappert et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 2771–2782 (1995)] has full second‐order accuracy. Other approximations in this class, such as the Thomson–Chapman and the Berman–Wright–Baer approximations, are shown to have second‐order errors, as does the standard first‐order parabolic approximation. Numerical calculations support the expectation that among this class of parabolic approximations the wide angle c0‐insensitive approximation is superior.


The relativistic effects for static polarizabilities α and hyperpolarizabilities γ of rare gas atoms (Ne through Rn) are investigated theoretically with the third-order Douglas–Kroll method. The results yield interesting trends of relativity in going from Ne to Rn: The relativistic effect decreases α values of Ne and Ar and increases the values of Kr, Xe, and Rn, and it decreases γ values of Rn slightly and increases the values of other rare gas atoms, while the electron correlation effect increases α and γ of all rare gas atoms.


This article,in reference to the generalized χ~2 distribution,on the changing the original Lorenz curve,we set up a new Lorenz curve model,and the simplified model is:L_0(p) = e~(-0.5)p~3-pe~(-0.5p)+p.By calculating the mean absolute error,and the simple model is superior to the existing referenced models.


Objective To explore the optimal condition of primary culture for anterior cingulate cortex(ACC) neurons in neonatal rats and identify their purity and viability.Methods Neurons were isolated from the ACC of neonatal rats,and then digested with a low concentration of tripsin for a long time.When the cells were cultured till day 4,Ara-c was added to purify them.The cultured ACC neurons were identified by the microtubule-associated protein2(MAP2) immunocytochemical method.Viability of ACC neurons in the cell cycle(about 14 d) was investigated by the measurement of optical density(OD) values at 570 nm using the MTT method.Results ACC neurons from neonatal rats were successfully cultured under the present experimental condition.On day 5 of culture,most cells appeared multi-polar and had more than two ecptoms and their interlacing looked like a piece of a net.On day 7,many kinds of connections presented among these cultured cells and even aggregation of cells appeared.The cultured neurons were stained by immunocytochemistry(ICC) and the green immunoreactive product was seen in neurons under a fluorescence microscope,indicating that the cultured neurons were positive.The MTT experiment shows that viability of ACC neurons cultured from day 7 to day 9 was the best.Conclusion ACC neurons in neonatal rats can be cultured in vitro,and primary cultured ones may serve as a cell model in vitro for research into ACC,indicated by the result of purity and viability in ACC neurons.


The detection results for manuscripts of "Journal of Xi'an University of Technology"(natural edition) through "academic misconduct detection system"(AMLC) are analyzed.As a detection tool,AMLC can limit the academic misconduct,but we can not simply rely on AMLC's test results to determine whether a paper or article is of the phenomenon of plagiarism or not.Editors and experts must play a gatekeeper role to make a comprehensive evaluation of a paper or article.


For over 20 years, a combination of aspirin and a P2Y12 inhibitor has been the mainstay antithrombotic strategy in patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). This drug combination, referred to as dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT), has been proven superior to aspirin alone in preventing cardiovascular events after stent implantation, although at the expense of increased bleeding. Contemporary advances in device technologies and pharmacological strategies have allowed PCI to be extended to older and more vulnerable cohorts. As such, an increasing number of patients undergoing PCI have high bleeding risk (HBR) conditions, which make a standard DAPT regimen clinically undesirable. The TWILIGHT trial recently demonstrated that ticagrelor monotherapy after a short course of DAPT is an effective and safe bleeding avoidance strategy among high-risk patients undergoing PCI. This Focus Issue on Interventional Cardiology contains the Fast Track contribution 'Ticagrelor monotherapy in patients at high bleeding risk undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention: TWILIGHT-HBR' by Javier Escaned from the Complutense University of Madrid in Spain, and colleageus. This pre-specified analysis of the TWILIGHT trial evaluated the treatment effects of early aspirin withdrawal followed by ticagrelor monotherapy in HBR patients undergoing PCI with drug-eluting stents. After 3 months of ticagrelor plus aspirin, event-free patients were randomized to 12 months of aspirin or placebo in addition to ticagrelor. A total of 1064 patients (17%) met the Academic Research Consortium definition for HBR. Ticagrelor monotherapy reduced the incidence of the primary endpoint of Bleeding Academic Research Consortium (BARC) 2, 3, or 5 bleeding compared with ticagrelor plus aspirin in HBR [6.3% vs. 11.4%; hazard ratio (HR) 0.53] and non-HBR patients (3.5% vs. 5.9%; HR 0.59) with similar relative risk reduction (P for interaction = 0.67) but a trend towards greater absolute risk reduction in the former [-5.1% vs. -2.3%; difference in absolute risk differences (ARDs) -2.8, P = 0.130]. A similar pattern was observed for more severe BARC 3 or 5 bleeding with a larger absolute risk reduction in HBR patients (-3.5% vs. -0.5%; difference in ARDs -3.0%, P = 0.008). There was no significant difference in the key secondary endpoint of death, myocardial infarction (MI), or stroke between treatment arms, irrespective of HBR status (Figure 1). The authors conclude that among HBR patients undergoing PCI who completed 3-month DAPT without experiencing major adverse events, aspirin discontinuation followed by ticagrelor monotherapy significantly reduced bleeding without increasing ischaemic events, compared with ticagrelor plus aspirin. The absolute risk reduction in major bleeding was larger in HBR than in non-HBR patients. The contribution is accompanied by an Editorial by Zuzana Motovska from the Charles University and University Hospital Kralovske Vinohrady in Prague, Czech Republic, and colleagues. The authors note that the TWILIGHT-HBR analysis raises new questions in the field of antithrombotic therapy management. How should we deal with longterm (>15 months) antiplatelet treatment after PCI? Should we continue with ticagrelor monotherapy, or rather switch to clopidogrel or aspirin? Or even aspirin plus rivaroxaban? Before deciding, it is essential that the patients' risk profile is re-evaluated. It should also be emphasized that carefully considering the patient's preference, whose compliance with treatment fundamentally affects its benefits, is crucial when deciding on the long-term treatment plan. The value of elective coronary revascularization plus medical therapy over medical therapy alone in managing stable patients with coronary artery disease is debated. In another Fast Track Clinical Research article entitled 'Cardiac mortality in patients randomized to elective coronary revascularization plus medical therapy or medical therapy alone: a systematic review and meta-analysis', Eliano Navarese from the University of Alberta in Canada, and colleagues reviewed all trials comparing the two strategies in this population. From inception through


HITLER'S attack on the Netherlands on May 10, 1940 was wholly unexpected by the Dutch people, who up to the last moment had believed in the possibility of maintaining peace. Nevertheless the country had been uneasy for a very long time. When Hitler, ignoring Roosevelt's urgent appeal to substitute discussion for' violence, bluntly asked the Dutch Government whether the country felt threatened, he received an emphatic denial. But this answer did not in fact reflect the truth, for the people knew the danger of living so near to Germany's increasing and unscrupulous might. The country's neutral position, however, forbade them to say so openly; and in any .case it is doubtful whether they would have voiced their fears since public opinion was not in a position, for reasons which will be described, to judge the situation clearly. Having enjoyed more than a century of peace, the country had developed an extremely well balanced, but at the same time a very intricate and vulnerable, political and social structure. This alone had made it possible, to create and maintain a high standard of living for a steadily growing population on an area of no more than 34,000 square kilometres. By the middle of the nineteenth century the population was roughly 3 mnillion; at the beginning of the first world war it had doubled; and at the outbreak of the second world war 9 million were crowded into this tiny part of the globe. Of these, almost 30 per cent lived in cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants, and well over 50 per cent in cities of 20,000 or more inhabitants. Four million people lived in the provinces of north and south Holland, a total area of under 6,000 square kilometres. The density there thus reached the extremely high figure of roughly 700 per square kilometre. The yearly increase was about 17 per cent, and though it was apparent that this high rate would not be maintained, the population was steadily increasing. Estimates of future population varied between 10.2 and 12 million by 1970. Because of this internal situation, the nation instinctively realized that to become involved in war would expose the country's structure to mortal danger. But, again instinctively, public opinion stopped there; it dared not construct a clearer picture of what war would mean. Love of country, pride in the happy circumstances resulting from the painstaking efforts of many generations, made it almost sacrilegious to contemplate the possibility of such a disaster. A further factor contributing to the vulnerability of the Netherlands in-


Al2O3 bicrystals containing [0001] symmetric tilt grain boundaries were fabricated to investigate atomic structures at their grain-boundary cores. Σ7 and Σ21 boundaries studied here have crystallographically equivalent grain-boundary planes of although they have different Σ values. Grain-boundary structures were studied by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) and static lattice calculations based on ionic potentials. HRTEM observations showed that the Σ7 and Σ21 boundaries exhibited asymmetric core structures with respect to their grain-boundary planes. From static lattice calculations, it was found that these two grain boundaries have similar rigid-body shifts normal to the tilt axis and also contain open spaces at their core. The similarity of their core structures indicates that characteristics of grain-boundary cores strongly depend on features of grain-boundary planes.


OBJECTIVES
Differences in talar articular morphology relative to locomotion have recently been found within Pan and Gorilla. Whole-bone talar morphology within, and shared variation among, Pan and Gorilla (sub)species, however, has yet to be investigated. Here we separately analyze talar external shape within Pan (P. t. troglodytes, P. t. schweinfurthii, P. t. verus, P. paniscus) and Gorilla (G. g. gorilla, G. b. beringei, G. b. graueri) relative to degree of arboreality and body size. Pan and Gorilla are additionally analyzed together to determine if consistent shape differences exist within the genera.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Talar external shape was quantified using a weighted spherical harmonic analysis. Shape variation both within and among Pan and Gorilla was described using principal component analyses. Root mean square distances were calculated between taxon averages, and resampling statistics conducted to test for pairwise differences.

RESULTS
P. t. verus (most arboreal Pan) talar shape significantly differs from other Pan taxa (p < 0.05 for pairwise comparisons) driven by more asymmetrical trochlear rims and a medially-set talar head. P. t. troglodytes, P. t. schweinfurthii, and P. paniscus do not significantly differ (p > 0.05 for pairwise comparisons). All gorilla taxa exhibit significantly different talar morphologies (p < 0.007 for pairwise comparisons). The more terrestrial subspecies of G. beringei and P. troglodytes exhibit a superoinferiorly taller talar head/neck complex.

DISCUSSION
P. t. verus exhibits talar morphologies that have been previously related to more frequent arboreality. The adaptations in the more terrestrial G. beringei and P. troglodytes subspecies may serve to facilitate load transmission.


Conditions are derived under which a probability measure on the Borel subsets of [0, ∞) is a stationary distribution for the content {Xt } of an infinite dam whose cumulative input {At } is a pure-jump Lévy process and whose release rate is a non-decreasing continuous function r(·) of the content. The conditions are used to find stationary distributions in a number of special cases, in particular when and when r(x) = x α and {A t } is stable with index β ∊ (0, 1). In general if EAt , < ∞ and r(0 +) > 0 it is shown that the condition sup r(x)>EA 1 is necessary and sufficient for a stationary distribution to exist, a stationary distribution being found explicitly when the conditions are satisfied. If sup r(x)>EA 1 it is shown that there is at most one stationary distribution and that if there is one then it is the limiting distribution of {Xt } as t → ∞. For {At } stable with index β and r(x) = x α , α + β = 1, we show also that complementing results of Brockwell and Chung for the zero-set of {Xt } in the cases α + β < 1 and α + β > 1. We conclude with a brief treatment of the finite dam, regarded as a limiting case of infinite dams with suitably chosen release functions.


Abstract. Under the plenary power, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature has emended the spelling of the family-group name Charinidae Gray, 1849 (Reptilia, Squamata, Serpentes) to remove homonymy with Charinidae Quintero, 1986 (Arachnida, Amblypygi). The stem of the generic name Charina Gray, 1849 has been emended to Charina- to give the family-group name Charinaidae for the former while the latter family-group name based on Charinus Simon in Raffray, Bolivar & Simon, 1892 remains unchanged. The Commission has also used its plenary power to emend the spelling of the family-group name Ungaliopheinae McDowell, 1987 to Ungaliophiinae McDowell, 1987.


This research analyzes the measurement of personal shopping value. Research in
marketing which measure the relationship among construct have similar problems. The
correlations among construct is very low or different from the theory. This problem occur
due to problems in validity and reliability of the construct. This research overcome this
problem by conducting scale purification of PSV instrument. PSV instrument is the
measurement of personal shopping value. Personal shopping value contains of two
dimensions, they are hedonic value and utilitarian value. The respondents of this research
are undergraduate student in business. We use convenience sampling methods. The tools
of analysis in this research are EFA and SEM. The result shows that PSV is not a
recommended measurement in analyzing the shopping value behavior.


China has traditionally focused on teaching legal knowledge to undergraduate and graduate students rather than providing professional skills education; however, since the end of the twentieth century, legal education in China started to fundamentally change both institutionally and pedagogically. The first part of this paper will describe the basic characteristics of legal education embraced in China as traditionally continental countries. The second part will introduce the trend of reforms of legal education since the end of last century. In part three I will make some comparisons on the approaches to reform of legal education with U.S. The fouth part will depict the endeavors of the pedagogies for nurturing lawyers provided in new Jurist Programs. The last part will concentrate on the opportunities and challenges that the legal educators are facing after drawing the key features of different approaches in terms of education reform.


The synthesis of a set of monofluorinated, difluorinated, and non-fluorinated N-acetylated-b 3 -arginine esters, potential inhibitors of trypsin-like proteases, is described. Elaboration to the target compounds from previously reported enantiopure precursors derived from 3-hydroxypropanal involved 6–7 steps and was achieved in 48–65% overall yield. The a,a-difluoro-b 3 -arginine derivative was found to be particularly prone to hydrolysis. Three b 3 -arginine derivatives were tested for their ability to inhibit trypsin, the a,a-difluoro compound being assayed in the form of a carboxylate zwitterion.


The development of a concept of an unmanned glider-tug and cargo unmanned aerial vehicle with electric drive Abstract: The article presents a few selected ideas for AUV usage which are being developed in Poland as well as the description of a project of an unmanned tug, a new technological solution which was submitted to the Patent Office in December 2017 and which has been being developed since then. The proposed towing system consists of a universal ground-based air traffic control station for unmanned flights, an AUV-tug and an additional control system placed on the towed object. The proposed solution aims at maintenance costs reduction and increase of performance of aircrafts with electric drive. Keywords: UAV; Tug; Global Positioning System (GPS); Galileo


The relative stability and electronic structure of the MgO (001), (111)‐Mg, and (111)‐O surfaces have been studied with the Harris–Foulkes total energy functional. The computed energies of the (001), (111)‐O, and (111)‐Mg surfaces of MgO are 2.64, 12.80, and 13.02 J m−2, respectively. Our calculations exhibit a qualitative distinction between the Mg‐terminated polar (111) surface, which has a nonzero density of one‐electron states at the Fermi level, and the other (001) and (111)‐O surfaces which retain the band gap properties of the bulk material. The projected local density of states for atoms in the bulk and at the various surfaces are presented, and used to explain the relative stability of different surfaces in terms of the properties of surface bonds.


Organizational Climate means personality of an organization. Like personality of one person differs from other likewise the personality of one organization differs from other. There are several factors on the basis of which one organization can be differentiated with others. In this research the factors that are used to differentiate one organization from other are based on standard tool MAO-C developed by Pareek (2002). These factors consisted of dimensions like orientation, interpersonal relationships, supervision, problem management, management of mistakes, conflict management, communication, decision making, trust, management of rewards, risk taking, and innovation and change. The main aim of this study is to analyze perception of employees of their organization climate. The sample size was 252 and stratified random sampling was used. Descriptive statistics mean and SD were used. Inferential statistics ANOVA was used to reach conclusion. Employees were partitioned on the basis of demographic profile like gender, qualification, designation, and department. This is because the concept of organizational climate is a cognitive process and likely to be affected by employees of different groups. The main findings of the study were that except for employees partitioned on the basis of designation there was significant difference in the perception of employees categorized on the basis of qualification, age, and department concerning organizational climate. Beside, this several other conclusions were reached.


By only using spectral theory of the Laplace operator on spheres, we prove that the unit 3-dimensional sphere of a 2dimensional complex subspace of C 3 is an Ω-stable submanifold with parallel mean curvature, when Ω is the K¨ ahler calibration of rank 4 of C 3 .


This paper considers the problem of developing specialized software designed to support small businesses. It substantiates the relevance of creating such systems; architecture has been offered; and the results of development have been given. For practical use, a specific subject area has been considered, which allows to clearly understand the purpose and outcome of the work. These materials can be used to obtain ready-made solutions during the development of a software package on this topic. This document can be considered as an introductory material for the various stages of the project to develop a system of effective support of small business.


Polymer composites reinforced by hydrophilic clay aerogels were produced and found to possess interpenetrating cocontinuous structures, not the exfoliated structure often observed in clay nanocomposites. An efficient process for producing these clay aerogels was recently reported; in-situ polymerization of N-isopropylacrylamide within the clay aerogels was readily accomplished. The resulting composites have low densities, are stable, and exhibit a new synergistic effect of interpenetrating organic−inorganic phases in which the organic polymer prevents loss of aerogel structure in water by encapsulation, while the inorganic filler increases the structural integrity of the polymer. The composites undergo phase transition and show LCST behavior similar to unmodified poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) despite the presence of reinforcing clay aerogels. Reversible changes in morphology of the aerogel hydrogel composites are observed with varying degrees of hydration.


The proposed work deals with the robustness of electromagnetic time reversal (ETR) process. Many studies were achieved covering a huge diversity of domains: communication (A. Tourin et al., Nato Sciences Series, II, 2003), imaging (D. Liu et al., IEEE Trans. on Ant. and Prop., 2005), focusing (M. Davy et al., Comptes Rendus Physiques, 11, 2010, pp. 37–43). In this framework, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) may take large benefits from ETR (H. Moussa, PhD thesis, Univ. Paris 11, 2011) since it allows a potential control of electromagnetic (EM) waves. This could potentially decrease time and costs during EMC standard tests assuming external conditions (antennas location, environment, devices under test properties) are perfectly known (ideal case rarely encountered). Few studies (G. Papanicolaou, SIAM, 2004, pp. 1133–1155) were achieved to assess the potential impact of randomness on ETR. The purpose of this paper is to put the focus on the robustness and the diversity of using TR for EMC: shielding effectiveness, EM field controlling, wire diagnosis for instance.


In our autumn edition in 2014 we published articles from a conference on 'Writing Jews in Contemporary Britain'. They were guest edited for the issue by Axel Stähler and Sue Vice, the organisers of the conference. In their joint introduction they wrote:Contemporary British Jewish writers are being credited with an 'attitude' and their fiction is perceived to celebrate 'the anarchic potential of the Jewish voice'.It will come as no surprise, particularly given what they quoted about 'attitude' and 'anarchic potential', that the first Jewish author they mentioned, because of his recent award at the time of the Man Booker Prize, was Howard Jacobson. One of the contributors to that issue was David Brauner writing on 'Fetishizing the Holocaust: Comedy and Transatlantic Connections in Howard Jacobson's Kalooki Nights'. When Bryan Cheyette and David Brauner approached the editor of this journal with the proposal to mark and celebrate Howard Jacobson's eightieth birthday, the editorial board readily accepted the offer. The contents are introduced by Bryan Cheyette, and David Brauner contributes a new interview with Jacobson. The issue also contains a book review by Howard Cooper of David's recent monograph on Jacobson in the Manchester University Press series Contemporary British Novelists.


The topological property of urban transit network rises from its intrinsic evolutional growth mechanism.Taken four domestic transit networks as objects,the degree distribution,clustering coefficient and average path length of these networks in space L and P were calculated and analyzed respectively.It is found that in transit networks the distribution of number of transit line that passes stations is power distribution and the degree distribution of nodes obeys exponential distribution.Based on this,the evolutional growth mechanism of transit network-preferential attachment of lines and mechanism of random walk of stations were proposed,and an evolutional model of transit network was established.Numerical simulation results show that the model reflects the key elements in the evolution of transit network.


Normal physiological changes which occur in the circulatory system of infants at birth was described. The relevancy of these changes for understanding the hemodynamic responses and disturbances which accompany congenital heart lesions in the newborn was emphasized. During the transference of gas from the placenta to the lung there is a 1) decrease in pulmonary vascular resistance; 2) an increase in total systemic vascular resistance and 3) closure of the ductus arteriosus the ductus venosus and the foramen ovale.


Distributed generator (DG) is widely used and applied due to the energy and environment issues. Distributed photovoltaic generation is a typical kind of DG. Its output power is random and fluctuant, which has great influence on the safe, stable and economic operation of power system. Thus it is necessary to identify the power generated by the distributed photovoltaic generation. This paper proposes a power identification method based on BP Neural Network. The sample data comes from simulation by PSCAD and consists of current and active power that are measured in the branch of distributed network connected with DG and active power generated by the DG. The training is based on Matlab. Simulation results verify that the BP Neural Network can identify active power of DG accurately.


Type 1 and type 2 diabetes mellitus are the most frequent causes of end-stage renal disease in the United States (1). The natural history of diabetic nephropathy starts with microalbuminuria, which may progress to macroalbuminuria, gradual deterioration in glomerular filtration rate (GFR), and eventually end-stage kidney disease. Microalbuminuria in diabetes strongly predicts end-stage renal disease and adverse cardiovascular events (24). Although inhibitors of the reninangiotensin system (RAS) have become the mainstays of treating established diabetic nephropathy (5), the role of these agents in the early phases of diabetic nephropathy is unclear. Kidney damage may occur in diabetics who do not have albuminuria. We do not know whether patients with a high burden of vascular disease but no albuminuria are less likely to develop renal disease if they take RAS-blocking agents. Two articles in this issue examine the effect of angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs) on microalbuminuria in 2 different patient groups: diabetics at an early phase of nephropathy (6) and adults with known cardiovascular disease or diabetes with end-organ damage but no albuminuria at baseline (7). Bilous and colleagues (6) used data from the DIRECT (Diabetic Retinopathy Candesartan Trials) randomized trials to examine the effect of candesartan on microalbuminuria and albumin excretion rates, either before renal disease began or in its earliest stages. The primary outcome in these 3 related studies was retinopathy, and the studies were powered to determine whether candesartan could prevent the development of diabetic retinopathy in type 1 diabetes (n= 1421) or the progression of mild to moderate retinopathy in type 1 diabetes (n= 1905) or type 2 diabetes (n= 1905) (810). The median follow-up was 4.7 years. The incidence of microalbuminuria in the pooled sample (n= 5234) was a prespecified primary end point. Because type 1 and type 2 diabetes are really 2 different disorderstype 1 being an insulinopenic condition first diagnosed at a young age and type 2 being a disease of insulin resistance in older peopleexamining the data separately for each disorder may be preferable. The incidence of microalbuminuria in the 2 studies of type 1 diabetes was 5% in both the candesartan and placebo groups. The 95% CIs for the hazard ratios were wide, but the event rate was low, suggesting that even if a bigger study revealed a beneficial effect, the number needed to treat to prevent a microalbuminuria-related event would be prohibitively high. The incidence of de novo microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetics was 12% in the candesartan group compared with 13% in the placebo group. Candesartan did not prevent microalbuminuria in these diabetic patients. The study largely measures up to critical appraisal, but with several concerns. Nearly all the participants in DIRECT-Renal were white (with 50% coming from Russia and Central and Eastern Europe). Although only 1.9% of patients were lost to follow-up, a high proportion (9.6%) withdrew consent. Furthermore, a high proportion took open-label RAS inhibitors in addition to their assigned medication. A significantly higher proportion (15.2%) of patients randomly allocated to placebo received open-label RAS inhibitors during the trial than did those randomly allocated to candesartan (10.5%), which is surprising because most people would find themselves in equipoise about whether RAS inhibitors prevented retinopathy and microalbuminuria. Decisions to withdraw or to prescribe open-label RAS-blocking agents could undermine the trial. Patients who withdrew were likely to have had progressive disease and higher event rates, leading to a lower event rate in patients remaining in the trial. Using open-label RAS-blocking agents in patients in the placebo group diminished the power of the trial to identify an effect attributable to candesartan. Fortunately, statistical adjustment for the different rates of using open-label RAS-blocking agents in the candesartan and placebo groups did not change the microalbuminuria outcomes, nor did censoring the data from patients when they first used open-label RAS-blocking agents. The study makes a substantial contribution to the evidence base about managing microalbuminuria, in part because it enrolled many more type 1 diabetics than did similar trials (such as EUCLID [Eurodiab Controlled Trial of Lisinopril in Insulin-Dependent Diabetes] [11]) and in part because the case mix of type 2 diabetics differed from that in previous trials (1214). The results in type 2 diabetics differ from those in similar studies (2272 in the HOPE [Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation] Study [12], 1204 in BENEDICT [Bergamo Nephrologic Diabetic Complications Trial] [13], and 7877 in ADVANCE [Action in Diabetes and Vascular Disease: Preterax and Diamicron-MR Controlled Evaluation] [14]), in which an angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor reduced the incidence of microalbuminuria. Bilous and colleagues speculate that the diabetic patients had a relatively low burden of vascular damage and therefore perhaps had limited vascular RAS activation relative to patients in previous studies. The null effect is unlikely to be the result of ARBs having a lower efficacy than ACE inhibitors, because many studies have shown them to have equivalent effects. We can speculate that longer follow-up or a higher dose might have shown that candesartan can reduce microalbuminuria. Dose may matter, as suggested by SMART (Supra Maximal Atacand Renal Trial) in proteinuric renal disease, in which titration up to 128 mg increased the antiproteinuric effect (15). The DIRECT trials showed that ARBs do not prevent microalbuminuria in type 1 diabetics or in type 2 diabetics at relatively low risk for vascular damage. Control of blood glucose level, blood pressure, and probably serum lipid levels are mandatory in these patients, and drugs to prevent microalbuminuria are not yet indicated. In the second article in this issue, Mann and colleagues (7) examined the long-term renal effects of another ARB, telmisartan, in adults at high risk for vascular disease but without albuminuria at baseline. In their randomized, placebo-controlled trial (TRANSCEND [Telmisartan Randomised Assessment Study in ACE Intolerant Subjects with Cardiovascular Disease]), investigators enrolled 5926 adults who had either cardiovascular disease or diabetes with end-organ damage. All patients were intolerant of ACE inhibitors. None had heart failure, 36% had diabetes, and only 10% had microalbuminuria. The average follow-up was 56 months. The primary outcome was a composite of cardiovascular events. Telmisartan had no statistically significant effect on the primary outcome but moderately reduced a secondary composite outcome of cardiovascular death, myocardial infarction, and stroke (16). The authors also prespecified a composite renal outcome of dialysis or doubling of serum creatinine, reported here (7). Mean estimated GFR was 72 mL/min per 1.73 m2 at baseline, indicating well-preserved renal function that persisted during the trial. Only 17 (0.3%) participants required dialysis. Serum creatinine levels doubled in 1.7%, more often with telmisartan than with placebo and, surprisingly, more often in patients with low baseline serum creatinine levels (89 mol/L [<1 mg/dL]). The more interesting outcome measure was urinary albumin excretion. Telmisartan significantly reduced the risk for new microalbuminuria, macroalbuminuria, or both (11.4% vs. 14.8). However, the mechanism of this antiproteinuric effect may have been hemodynamic because it was associated with an initial decrease in estimated GFR and blood pressure. The reduction in albuminuria was not associated with less progression of renal disease (dialysis or doubling of serum creatinine). Therefore, in this group of patients with vascular disease, microalbuminuria was not a valid surrogate marker of subsequent deterioration in renal function (17), although longer follow-up would be helpful in confirming this conclusion. The ONTARGET study (18) measured the renal effects of ramipril (an ACE inhibitor), telmisartan, and their combination in people at high vascular risk (n= 25620). Dialysis or doubling of serum creatinine was similar with telmisartan and ramipril (2.2 vs. 2.0%) and was more frequent with combination therapy (2.5%). Because very few TRANSCEND patients had progressive renal disease, detecting an effect of telmisartan on nephropathy progression compared with placebo would have been difficult. The decision to use ARBs in this group should be determined by their effect on cardiovascular outcomes. The 2 articles in this issue show that ARBs do not have clinically important renal effects in 2 complementary groups of patients who were free of renal disease at study outset. The diabetic patients in DIRECT were in an early phase of vascular disease but were at high long-term risk for diabetic nephropathy. In these patients, candesartan at the dose prescribed (32 mg) is not indicated to prevent microalbuminuria in type 1 diabetes, nor is it indicated to prevent or treat microalbuminuria in type 2 diabetics at low risk for vascular disease. However, in type 2 diabetics at higher risk for vascular disease, ACE inhibitors prevent microalbuminuria (1214). The patients in TRANSCEND were quite different from those in DIRECT. They had later-phase vascular disease but were at low risk for long-term progressive renal disease. Angiotensin-receptor blockers provided no renal benefit in these patients. Before deciding to use inhibitors of the RAS system in patients at risk for vascular disease, whether diabetic or nondiabetic, one must assess the degree of the patient's vascular and renal risk and then take into account the relative efficacy of these agents on the functions of the cardiovascular system, the kidney, or the retina.


Product performance specifications often require monitoring of signal lines for minimum and maximum dc levels and pulse amnplitudes. Monitoring is usually done on a Go/No-Go basis since a recorded value is not required. This type of signal monitoring can be done with an analog-type voltage comparator. The integrated circuit analog voltage comparator is widely used in this application since it is both accurate and economical. The accuracy of the voltage comparator will depend on the accuracy of the instrumentation used in setting the comparator threshold level (limit value) and the comparator threshold stability. The threshold stability can be determined by reconding the as-found threshold level during the calibration check. A closed-loop ramp-generator calibration technique has been developed to provide digital-voltmeter readout of the comparator threshold level. The as-found comparator threshold level is automatically determined during the calibration check when this calibration technique is employed. This technique minimizes the time spent in conducting the calibration and provides an accurate measurement of comparator hysteresis. (auth)


Lentil ( Lens culinaris M.) is an important dietary source of protein and other essential nutrients in South and West Asia, North and East Africa. Lentil crops are susceptible to a number of diseases caused by fungi and other parasites. Among them, the most significant and serious soil-borne disease is Fusarium wilt ( Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. lentis : Fol ). Systematic studies in laboratory, cage house and field trials were conducted (2016-17 to 2017-18). Laboratory experiments were carried out in completely randomized design with four replications and field trials were carried out consecutively during 2016-17 and 2017-2018 crop season in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with four replications using L9-12, a susceptible cultivar. Under in vitro, bio efficacy of selected bio agents, maximum 81.33 per cent mycelial growth inhibition of pathogen was recorded in Trichoderma harzianum (local isolate) and minimum mycelial growth inhibition 55.00 per cent was recorded in Bacillus subtilis . Under in vivo condition, effect of selected bio agents and organic amendments on disease incidence, percent disease control, pathogen spore in per gram soil and yield ha -1 of lentil was recorded. Application of Trichoderma harzianum (Local isolate) @ 6g/Kg seed was found most effective with maximum seed germination 91.95 and 90.62 per cent, lowest disease incidence of 24.22 and 25.39 per cent and higher pooled mean grain yield 774.31 kg/ha over check during 2016-17 and 2017-18, respectively. Among organic amendments, maximum disease control (42.02 per cent), minimum average disease incidence (36.33 per cent) and minimum pathogen spores (1.3x10 4 per gram soil) were observed in neem cake amendment followed by poultry manure and vermicompost amendments. This indicates that these treatments can be effectively used for controlling Fusarium wilt disease under organic mode of lentil cultivation in Rajasthan.


In our modern world, where science, technology and society are tightly interwoven, it is essential that all students be able to evaluate scientific evidence and make informed decisions. Energy Choices, an agent-based simulation with a multiplayer game interface, was developed as a learning tool that models the interdependencies between the energy choices that are made, growth in local economies, and climate change on a global scale. This paper presents the results of pilot testing Energy Choices in two different settings, using two different modes of delivery.


People are special. The importance and need for the research and development into medical and healthcare devices can never be overstated. In the 21st century, medical and healthcare devices play a more vital role in our lives than ever before. A wide range of materials are being used for producing numerous medical and healthcare devices for a variety of end use. In this manuscript, historical development of wound care dressings and products are reviewed. The characteristics and requirements of modern wound dressings are summarized. A core part is devoted to the description of the materials used in medical and healthcare devices. Selected synthetic polymers are listed with their applications in medical and healthcare devices. The advantages and limitations of fibres, metals, ceramics and composites are denoted. Textile structures are highlighted with their applications in medical and healthcare devices.


Considering the recent expansion of the golden jackal's (Canis aureus) range, we set out to determine its interspecific interactions at potential food sources with other mesocarnivores in Ljubljansko barje, the area where the first territorial groups in Slovenia were recorded. We set bait and camera traps at six different locations. When analysing the recordings, it seemed that red foxes (Vulpes vulpes) were in all probability avoiding jackals at stationary food sources on a fine spatial scale. In addition, we recorded a case of the possible interference competition between the golden jackal with the European badger (Meles meles).


Ⅰ. Introduction 1
Ⅱ. Literature review 5
1. Measures and mechanism of health inequality 7
2. European Union's health inequality indicators 11
3. UK's health inequality indicators 15
4. US's health inequality indicators 17
5. Health equity indicators as presented some previous studies in Korea 18
Ⅲ. Health Inequality Index (HII) for Korea and results 21
1. RIIs and SIIs for the elderly 25
2. Life expectancy by income 28
3. Life expectancy estimates by income and sex 35
4. Healthy life expectancy by income level in Korea 38
Ⅳ. Reducing health inequality in Korea 41
References 49


Identifies a major training problem for the electronics industry and develops an innovative solution. Electrostatic discharge remains a major problem for the industry today despite the excellent training materials available. What is required is a systematic method and training materials which are designed with the learner in mind. Such a method is described. >


The concrete arch bridge that had carried U.S. Route 1 over the James River in Richmond, Virginia, since 1934 was replaced by the Robert E. Lee Bridge, a segmented box girder structure which was designed to emulate the arches of the original predecessor. The paper describes the replacement bridge design and construction.


Abstract : The report covers the effects of extended mission lengths on the performance of airborne command and control teams, wherein complex cognitive components consisting primarily of information collection, interpretation, and communication constitute the bulk of the workload. The survey centers on investigating general categories of performance-related factors, such as overall fatigue, rather than specific task performances such as long-term memory, sensory motor reaction time, or information processing.


A method of producing fiber having functional mineral powders comprises the steps of a first pulverizing functional mineral which crystal form of is pinacoid, a second closely pulverizing the first pulverized functional mineral powders to be less than 1/3 granularity of desired fineness, mixing and synthesizing 0.1-10 weight% of the second pulverized functional mineral powders and 90-99.9 weight% of a chemical resin, and spinning the mixture of functional mineral powders and the chemical resin. Also disclosed is use of the method in producing a fiber wherein a second additional functional mineral selected from prism, pyramid, cube, octahedron, rhombohedron and dodecahedron crystal form is used.


We studied 47 consecutive thoracotomies carried out for 37 lung carcinomas and 10 for other causes (excluding mesothelioma). Before surgery, posteroanterior and lateral chest x-rays were performed and read by two experienced physicians. A standardized questionnaire was completed for occupational history to detect possible exposure to asbestos. During thoracotomy, the surgeon carefully examined and palpated visceral, parietal and diaphragmatic pleura for pleural plaques and/or any abnormal changes in the pleura. The operative findings were reported on a schema.


We present an extended theoretical library of over 800 synthetic stellar spectra, covering energy distribution in the optical range (λ = 3500 − 7000Å), at inverse resolution R=500 000. The library, based on the ATLAS 9 model atmospheres, has been computed with the SYNTHE code developed by R. L. Kurucz. The grid spans a large volume in the fundamental parameters space (i.e. T eff , log g, [M/H]), and can be profitably applied to different research fields dealing both with the study of single stars and stellar aggregates, through population synthesis models. A complementary project, in progress, will extend the wavelength range to the ultraviolet, down to 850Å, at an inverse resolution of R=50 000.


The level of open unemployment is the percentage of unemployment to the total labor force. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effect of population, GRDP, and education level on the level of open acquisition in Indonesia in 2013-2017. The type of data used in this study is secondary data, data collection in this study uses multiple linear regression methods. The data used consists of panel data. The population has a negative and significant effect, while the GRDP has a positive and significant effect, and the level of education has a positive and significant effect on the level of open acquisition.


is not a matter of self-conscious improvisation, but simply of how music is performed, being different from time to time, depending upon the social situation and social interactions that take place within the performance. Perhaps if our children were encouraged to adopt this kind of interactive approach in group performance that would achieve Sawyer's objective and facilitate the positive outcomes of music education he envisages. But the problem is, what kind of music should be used for this purpose in the Western classroom?


Efficient use of paper raw materials in the printing business is simple but important. This research was conducted to provide information that to get a low production price, the amount of raw materials and the selection of raw materials used must be precise. One of the raw materials needed in printing production is paper. The results of testing the efficiency of the use of paper for printing brochures Informa with 5000 sheets of brochure is the use of flipchart paper with a size of 65x100 cm. It takes 117.98 kg or Rp. 1,651,650, - to buy raw materials of paper. Waste from the use of paper raw material is 24.73 kg or Rp. 346,150. In addition to the very small waste generated, the price of brochure printing is also cheaper compared to the other flip size of Plano is Rp. 1,023.15,-..


Recent reports have investigated the nascent role of induction chemotherapy for sinonasal undifferentiated carcinoma (SNUC). The goal of this study was to ascertain trends in treatment pattern changes for SNUC at a single institution and design a treatment algorithm utilized at our institution.


PreviewDelirium is increasing in frequency among the elderly as the US population ages. Left untreated, delirium can cause injury and progress to coma, dementia, and even death. The authors discuss how primary care physicians can easily reverse delirium by correct diagnosis and treatment of the underlying cause.


Temporal logic is a formalism that is well suited to describing the behaviour of ongoing concurrent programs. There has been much interest in automating reasoning about the correctness of such programs using the satisfiability and validity problems of temporal logic. However, the complexity of these problems is exponential time or worse for all extant temporal logics. In this thesis, we consider temporal logics with a restricted syntax and show that useful mechanical reasoning can be done efficiently.
We exhibit a temporal logic, SCTL (Simplified Computation Tree Logic), whose satisfiability problem is efficiently decidable, in quadratic time, and which is useful for reasoning about an interesting class of programs, the history-free ones. It follows from our results that the method proposed by Emerson & Clarke to mechanically synthesize concurrent programs from temporal specifications is decidable in polynomial time for history-free programs. We go on to present a quadratic time algorithm for the validity of inference problem for SCTL and show how it can be used to automate the verification of program correctness properties.
We also study the limits of efficient temporal reasoning for arbitrary programs. We consider temporal logics which permit conjunctions of such important kinds of program assertions as initiality, safety, liveness, succession, and precedence. By suppressing the role the boolean connectives play in determining lower bounds on the complexity of decision procedures for temporal logics, we show that some of these classes of programs properties are efficiently decidable in general. However, a finite line separates such tractable classes from intractable ones, and there are certain combinations of temporal operators which cannot be efficiently decided.
Finally, we extend SCTL to an indexed temporal logic, Indexed SCTL, which permits quantifications over the constituent processes of a program. Thus, we can specify programs with arbitrarily many similar processes. With a view to automating the synthesis of such programs, we pose two new decision problems for indexed temporal logics: almost always satisfiability and almost always unsatisfiability. We show that both these problems can be decided in exponential time for Indexed SCTL, and, in fact, every Indexed SCTL specification is either almost always satisfiable, i.e., it can be realized by a concurrent program with arbitrarily many processes, or is almost always unsatisfiable, i.e., no program with more than a certain number (which is determined by our decision procedure) of processes can realize the specification. We also show how these results could be used to automate the synthesis of a program that meets a desired Indexed SCTL specification which is almost always satisfiable.


References 1 Weibel L, Harper JI. Linear morphoea follows Blaschko's lines. Br J Dermatol 2008; 159: 175–181. 2 Zivkovic SA, Lacomis D, Medsger TA. Muscle cramps associated with localized scleroderma skin lesions: focal dystonia, neuromyotonia, or nerve entrapment? J Rheumatol 2006; 33: 2549. 3 Krause T, Gerbershagen MU, Fiege M, Weisshorn R, Wappler F. Dantrolene–a review of its pharmacology, therapeutic use and new developments. Anaesthesia 2004; 59: 364–373. 4 Ross MH, Charness ME, Lee D, Logigian EL. Does ulnar neuropathy predispose to focal dystonia? Muscle Nerve 1995; 18: 606–611. 5 Auger RG, Litchy WJ, Cascino TL, Ahlskog JE. Hemimasticatory spasm: clinical and electrophysiologic observations. Neurology 1992; 42: 2263–2266. 6 Taniguchi T, Asano Y, Tamaki Z et al. Histological features of localized scleroderma 'en coup de sabre': a study of 16 cases. J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol 2014; 28: 1805–1810. 7 Layzer RB. The origin of muscle fasciculations and cramps. Muscle Nerve 1994; 17: 1243–1249. 8 Birdsall TC. Therapeutic applications of taurine. Altern Med Rev 1998; 3: 128–136. 9 Fett N, Werth VP. Update on morphea: part II. Outcome measures and treatment. J Am Acad Dermatol 2011; 64: 231–242; quiz 243– 234.


With the rapid growth of genomic data, the need for scalable data mining algorithms has increased. Frequent contiguous sequence mining is a technique that can help biologists to better understand the function and structure of our DNA, by capturing the common characteristics among related sequences. Many sequence mining algorithms have been developed over time. However, most of them suffer from scaling issues when dealing with big data or give no warranty for the completeness of their result. In this paper, we propose a distributed sequential pattern mining algorithm implemented on Apache Spark. Specifically, the algorithm exploits the Apriori Property and information about each patterns location within the original sequence, to drastically reduce the number of candidates at each iteration. Experimental results on real-world datasets confirm our performance expectations, showing a better scalability when compared to other distributed solutions.


All-optical photonic networks oiler the potential for bit-rate and format transparent communications. In this class of network, signals traverse the network without oplo-electronic conversion at the routing nodes and may encounter multiple liber links, multiple routing and regenerative components, and signals transmitted on other wavelengths. Due to the analog nature of these networks, the network capacity in terms of number of wavelengths and bit-rate per wavelength that can be supported will depend on the characteristics of the devices and the network they are embeded in. This limitation comes about from a complex interaction between the network architecture and its physical implementation and can lead to degradation in signal-tonoise-ratio and the usable optical bandwidth. Physical limitations that must be considered include bandwidth of the fiber and components, interchannel crosstalk (between wavelengths) due to nonlinearities in the optical fiber and optical amplifiers, incoherent and coherent interchannel crosstalk, and optical and electronic noise.


The climate crisis calls for a massive and rapid retooling of our economy and society. I argue that we have reasons to doubt that capitalism, even reformed, could meet that challenge. As an alternative solution, authoritarian socialism such as existed in the former Soviet Union or China would be neither attractive nor effective; by contrast, a democratic form of socialism might be both. In a democratic socialist society, we would govern democratically both our enterprises and our economy as a whole. Democratizing the governance of enterprises would help them make better tradeoff decisions and internalize some important externalities. But if they remain at the mercy of capitalist competition in product, labor, and financial markets, many enterprises will be economically unable to retool fast enough, so we also need to pool the country's economic resources and manage them democratically, collectively, and strategically towards our shared environmental, social, and economic goals. Organizational research on corporate strategic management offers insights into how such an economic system could satisfy four key requirements for a successful fight against climate change—democracy, innovation, efficiency, and motivation.


The problem of human adaptation is so funda-mental that many textbooks appeared so far.The author briefly took up this subject previously (Ueda, 1984), so the topics will be reiterated not from the same point of view, but from the other angles.Most physiologists tend to investigate only a short period of phenomena, though anthropologists seem to take a long period of changes into consideration.Thus by means of physiological anthropology, the study of human will be better developed.


Results of the toxicological investigation in vivo and in vitro of nanosubstances and nanomaterials obtained at the Institutes of the Siberian Branch of the RAS are presented. It was established that, on the basis of acute toxicity value, the nanopowders of the oxides of aluminium, zinc, titanium, and carbon materials may be related to the class 3 (moderately toxic) or the class 4 (low toxicity), while nanopowders of copper correspond to the class 2 of toxicity. It is demonstrated through the in vitro investigation involving titanium nanopowder as an example that metal nanopowders can be highly toxic for various primary (healthy) cells but cause no death of cancer cells.


The further processing and comprehensive utilization is the key factor of sustainable development for tea industry in the future.The development of tea products brings considerable economic benefits to the whole tea industry.Nowadays the main categories of tea products include:tea beverage which contains tea drink(tea soup),flavored tea beverage,compound tea beverage and other kinds of tea drinks,flavored Tea Food such as tea meals,tea flavored nuts,tea flavored candy and tea flavored pastry,health care products with tea polyphenols,caffeine,theanine which extracted from tea leaves as functional ingredients,commodity like tea flavored toothpaste,tea pillow,tea socks and others.In summary,the tea resource will be used more widely and deeply with the development of the modern food process technology.In the future,there will be three kinds of trends of tea products:the first is the enrichment of the available tea tree resource;secondly,to exploit the health care products mainly containing the functional ingredient of tea;thirdly is the diversification of products.


Sigma-delta ADC(AD Converter) is usually used in data acquisition system.It is necessary to research the process in which the power spectrum of quantization noise is shaped in ADC so that we can match the signal's bandwidth between the ADC's output and the next module's input.The higher-order sigma-delta modulator was modeled and the power spectrum shaping for quantization noise was analyzed.The theoretical analysis and the simulation result show that the quantization noise can be largely suppressed by over-sampling in higher-order sigma-delta ADC.


In this paper,a delay SEIS epidemic model with birth pulse and vertical infection is investigated.Using the discrete dynamical system determined by the stroboscopic map, the exact infection-free periodic solution is obtained.We also obtain two thresholds R~* and R_*,if R~*1,the disease will die out;whereas if R_*1,the disease will be permanent.


The measurements of complex dielectric permittivity for liquid systems with large, medium and small losses in microwave diapason are carried out by waveguide and resonance methods. The test bench of reflecting type for measuring CDP in liquids with high absorption is presented.


This paper aimed on showing how efficient a Fuzzy-PID controller can control the speed and vibration of an Induction motor and how it can replace the conventional PID controllers. This testing is performed in MATLABSimulink software. The three phase Induction motor's transfer function is framed and the PID controller values are auto-tuned. The output of PID and Fuzzy-PID Inference system controller show the Speed-Time waveforms. From these waveforms, the properties can be found leading to the conclusion which helps us decide which control system is efficient over the other. Wave properties such as rise-time, peak time, settling time and maximum overshoot values of the control systems are calculated and tabulated. The end comparative results show us that the Fuzzy-PID Inference system has better and safe wave characteristics compared to PID controller. This way Fuzzy-PID controller is much preferred and safe in the long run compared to PID controllers.


Two cases of congenital malformation of the urethra with coexistence of other disturbances or repercussions on the urinary and genital tracts have been presented. The pre-operative evaluation of the presence of other urinary malformations or from other systems together with the repercussion that any lower urinary malformation can report on the upper urinary tract (renal insufficiency) have also been discussed.


The WakeScene-D software package (Wake Vortex Scenarios Simulation Package for Departure) has been developed for comprehensive airspace simulations of take-off and departure. WakeScene-D consists of modules that model traffic mix, aircraft trajectories, meteorological conditions, wake vortex evolution, and potential hazard area. The software package estimates the probability to encounter wake vortices in different traffic and crosswind scenarios using Monte Carlo simulation in a domain ranging from the runway to an altitude of 3000 ft above ground. The operating sequence of WakeScene-D, the employed sub-models and data bases, the simulation environment and evaluation tools together with the so far accomplished validation work are introduced. The current departure situation with a two-minute aircraft separation is compared to (i) a scenario with reduced separations of one minute, (ii) the mitigation effects of crosswind and (iii) the situation prevailing during approach and landing.


Employing an ensemble Monte Carlo transport simulation, we self-consistently analyze the spectral gain for different terahertz quantum cascade laserstructures, considering bound-to-continuum as well as resonant phonon depopulation designs. In this context, we investigate temperature dependent gain broadening, affecting the temperature performance of terahertz structures. Furthermore, we discuss the influence of the individual scattering mechanisms, such as electron-electron, impurity and interface roughnessscattering. A comparison of the simulation results to experimental data yields good agreement.


The author summarys the questions of the capital cycle of constructive industry and analyze the reasons with the help of Marx's Capital Cycle Theory. At the same time,the author puts forward some suggestions to deal with the problem.


An improved CO coverage-dependent electrochemical interface model with an explicit solvent effect on Cu(100) is presented in this paper, by which theoretical insights into the potential-dependent C–C bond formation pathways occurring in CO2 electrochemical reduction to C2 products can be obtained. Our present studies indicate that CHO is a crucial intermediate toward C1 products on Cu(111), and dimer OCCO is found to not be a viable species for the production of C2 products on Cu(100). The reaction pathway of CHO with CO and CHO dimerization into dimers COCHO and CHOCHO may be C–C bond formation mechanisms at low overpotential. However, at medium overpotential, C–C bond coupling takes place preferentially through the reaction of COH with CO species and COH dimerization into dimers COCOH and COHCOH. The formed dimers COCHO, CHOCOH, and CHOCHO via reactions of CHO with CO, COH, and CHO species may lead to C2 products, which are regarded as C–C bond formation mechanisms at high overpotential. The difference of obtained adsorption isotherms of CO on Cu(100) with that of Cu(111) may be able to explain the effect of the crystal face of Cu on product selectivity. The excellent consistencies between our present obtained conclusions and the available experimental reports and partial theoretical studies validate the reasonability of the present employed methodology, which can be also used to systematically study potential-dependent CO2 electroreduction pathways toward C2 products on Cu(100) or other metal catalysts.


This paper has been prepared with the main motive of going through the various models of the service quality and their importance. Through the study various important dimensions of the service quality models have been revisited also. The further aim of the paper extends to identify issues for future research based on in-depth literature review. Research Design - The paper has been worked out by focusing on the past available literature in respect of various service quality models and their application in various setups. Through the models a sequence has been developed as per their chronological order and what where the modifications that were made in each model with each passing phase. Findings - The review of the service quality models as propounded by various eminent researchers from time to time concluded that service quality is highly volatile term and changes or advances with every business setting, the situation in which it is used and the nature of the service provider and off course the user as well. Service quality as an evaluative approach is the gap that arises between the expectations and perceptions of the customers, about the services consumed by them. The dynamic nature of the service quality exhibits that it changes with every factor like time, frequency in the number of encounters, competitive environment and off course the usage rate. Research Limitations - The research has been carried out in light of the available literature and it fails to address the empirical evidence for the same


A simply approach of table motion performance optimization driven by servo motors is proposed in this paper. The analysis method of grey relational analysis for optimizing the table motion performance is introduced. Various responses of table motion performance, such as position accuracy, position time accuracy and the standard deviation of torque are considered. An orthogonal array is used for the experimental design. Optimal parameters are determined by the grey relational grade obtained from the grey relational analysis. Experimental results have shown that the position accuracy, position time accuracy and the standard deviation of torque can be improved effectively through this proposed approach in this paper.


The purified condition of flavonoids from seed shell of Juglans mandshurica was investigated by macroporous resin,and antioxidant activity of flavonoids were evaluated.Absorption and desorption of macroporous resin on flavonoids were investigated as recovery yield of total flavonoids as index.Additionally,scavenging ability of flavonoids on ABTS+·,DPPH·,·OH and chelating effect on ferrous ions were determined by spectrophotometry to evaluate antioxidant activity.Results showed that using HPD-600 resin to purify flavonoids from seed shell of Juglans mandshurica,the optimal conditions were as follows:quantity of liquid sample 1/3BV,time of absorption 2h,pH6,concentration of liquid sample 1.2mg /mL,bed of macroporous resin were eluted using 4BV distilled water and 2BV 90% ethanol,purity of flavonoids was increased from 18.6% to 37.7%.Flavonoids from seed shell of Juglans mandshurica could significantly scavenge ABTS+·,could scavenge DPPH· and ·OH,and had chelating effect on ferrous ion,there were dose-effect relationship.Compared with VC,Na2EDTA and BHT,antioxidant activity was stronger than BHT,weaker than VC and Na2EDTA.Flavonoids from seed shell of Juglans mandshurica had significantly antioxidant effect.