background): "In this study, we identified and evaluated the usability of software tools that support T&Ab screening for systematic reviews within healthcare research." Abstract (results): "Their usability scored highly across a range of metrics, with all surveyed researchers (n=6) stating that they would be likely (or very likely) to use these tools in the future."results): "Their usability scored highly across a range of metrics, with all surveyed researchers (n=6) stating that they would be likely (or very likely) to use these tools in the future." Abstract (conclusions): "Based on this study, we would recommend Covidence and Rayyan to systematic reviewers looking for suitable and easy to use tools to support T&Ab screening within healthcare research. These two tools consistently demonstrated good alignment with user requirements."conclusions): "Based on this study, we would recommend Covidence and Rayyan to systematic reviewers looking for suitable and easy to use tools to support T&Ab screening within healthcare research. These two tools consistently demonstrated good alignment with user requirements." Background (3rd paragraph): This scoping review aims to identify, describe and evaluate the usability of the available software tools that support the T&Ab screening process for healthcare research to enable researchers to select the most appropriate for their work. Discussion (key findings): "The six highest scoring tools were trialled by a group of six healthcare researchers with experience of systematic reviews. Out of all the software tools considered, Covidence and Rayyan emerged as the most suitable tools to support T&Ab screening for systematic reviews in both the feature analysis and the user survey." Discussion (strengths and limitations, 3rd paragraph): "Collecting both quantitative and qualitative data in the user survey improved our understanding of the usability of the screening tools." Discussion (strengths and limitations, 4th paragraph): "There are several limitations of this study, which should be considered when interpreting its findings. This study only considers the features offered by each tool and the user experience they provide. There has been no assessment of any other performance measures, such as the accuracy, sensitivity or reliability of these screening tools. Readers who are considering using the tools discussed in this study should consider these properties in addition to considering the user experience." Conclusions: "The results of this study suggest that Covidence and Rayyan provide the best user experience for systematic reviewers carrying out T&Ab screening." Reviewer 2 (Brian Hutton): Comments to the author In this article the authors have performed an assessment of available software tools for title and abstract screening in systematic reviews, a clearly vital component to the systematic review process. The authors have looked at a feature assessment (to assess availability of key components considered important for tools of this nature) as well as a small user survey across tools. I have provided thoughts below regarding the manuscript. General comments: The authors have presented a generally clear and readable document summarizing their approach and findings. I think spelling out the target audience for this work (it would seem to be focused not toward systematic review producers on a grander scale but perhaps junior researchers new to SR and perhaps graduate students gaining exposure to knowledge synthesis?) would be beneficial as I do not believe this will be of interest to all researchers who perform reviews. We are pleased that the reviewer considers our manuscript to a clear and readable document. With regards to their suggestion to spell out the target audience for the work, we have added a line to the introduction highlighting the readers who we think would be most interested in this study. "This work may be of particular interest to researchers who are new to systematic reviews, looking to change their approach to screening or those in the position of selecting an appropriate tool for a collaboration." I feel that in not considering some of the more well known tools and some of the significant gains that can be acquired in adopting platforms that support the entire review process and which may contain additional highly relevant capabilities (advanced data collection, artificial intelligence capabilities, data security and other elements), the study is perhaps not as relevant and pertinent as it could be for a wider audience. Addressing this as a limitation of the study in the discussion section would also be worthwhile, perhaps this could be a means of focusing to whom the article is geared. We have mentioned in the text why we have not been able to consider the tools DistillerSR, EROS, SluRp and SLR-tool: "For two tools, DistillerSR or EROS, it was not possible to obtain a free trial, so these were not investigated further. Additionally, SluRp and SLR-Tool were excluded as they required the setup of an SQL server." Other than this, we believe our search to have captured most of the available tools (see the supplementary file providing a full list of the software tools). However, some tools – which people using systematic reviews may be familiar with – were not captured by our search (such as RevMan) or were excluded by our inclusion criteria (such as JBI SUMARI as it does not support full text screening). We have added a line to our search results, explicitly stating why this type of software was not included: "The most common reason for excluding a tool from the study was that it did not have T&Ab screening functionality, for example the tool JBI SUMARI only supports full text screening and RevMan5 does not provide any screening functionality beyond what is offered by a reference manager." Additionally, several of the tools we considered were platforms from which users could manage the whole systematic review process. We have added a line to the search results section clarifying this variability: "The included tools ranged from those providing a basic system exclusively for T&Ab screening (for example Abstrackr) to platforms able to offer support for several stages of the systematic review process (for example EPPI-reviewer)." This information is also shown in Fig.2 (traffic light diagram), where the section on "screening support" (see table 1 for key to the codes used) indicates other stages of the systematic review process supported by each tool. Additionally, although we are not evaluating the additional capabilities mentioned in the commnets above (e.g. AI capabilities) – several of these features are also indicated in the traffic light diagram (e.g T7-F8: indicates machine learning (AI) ranking capabilities and T8-F1: indicates website security). The collection of information portrayed by this figure could be used to help guide decision-making processes for researchers with a range of different needs. We agree that considering a review platform tool (e.g. Covidence/EPPI-reviewer) alongside a single purpose tool (e.g. Abstrackr) is not a perfect comparison, however, as the screening process can dominate the time spent on a systematic review we feel that considering this element in isolation is valuable in and of itself. To reflect this in the paper, we have added a line to the limitations section to indicate that this study does not consider the wider benefits/difficulties of adopting a single platform for the whole process, as we have instead chosen to isolate the T&Ab screening stage. "The tools identified by the search displayed considerable heterogeneity, which makes drawing comparisons between them more difficult. Additionally, in this study, we have chosen to consider the T&Ab screening stage in isolation. While this means we were able to compare a wide range of tools that offer that function, our finding do not consider the potential advantages or disadvantages of using a simple tool just for T&Ab screening or a platform that supports multiple stages of the systematic review process. The small nature of the user survey and the close ties of respondents in terms of setting also do not carry great weight. Given the size of the user sample, we have taken several steps to try to limit the bias. This included: -Recruiting researchers with a range of experience levels/roles (Table 2) -Using a predesigned spreadsheet for survey responses, which survey participants were required to fill in independently of each other. We have acknowledged the bias introduced by the close ties of the participants in the discussion section: "The six respondents were all drawn from the same research community and all but one work in the same department." We have also added a line to this section specifically addressing the small sample: "The number of participants in the user survey was small (n=6), therefore caution is required when interpreting the findings." However, given the lack of research in this area to data, we consider the survey findings to be informative to researchers in similar environments. I am unfamiliar with the approach they've used to consider weights in the analysis, and thus perhaps other reviewers will be able to comment on concerns they might have (if any). We hope this has been addressed in our response to reviewer 1 (see above). Overall I did not consider the study to present details that will be of high interest to a wide range of readers. We thank the reviewer for the time spent considering this paper. While we acknowledge his points regarding the various limitations of this work we believe that this study is of value to healthcare researchers. This is the first review of this kind within healthcare research, and it was designed so that the needs of these researchers were considered at every stage. Whilst the findings may not be applicable in different research areas or in settings with different resources, many healthcare researchers often at e


The gasification behavior of coke-CO2 gasification with kalium-,calcium-and iron-based catalysts was examined with Setaram's TGA 92 Thermogravimetric Analyzer,and it was found that kalium-based catalyst has the best catalytic performance.Under the temperature of 900—1 050 ℃,the gasification characteristic of coal char with CO2 was investigated in a fixed bed test facility.The effects of operation temperature,alkalis content and the kind of raw coal on the reaction of coal char with CO2 were analyzed.The results show that temperature has an obvious effect on the gasification performance and that the reaction rate and the conversion rate increase as operation temperature rises.The coal char,which comprises of different fractions of raw-coal,has various reaction characteristic.The catalyst has fewer effects on gas coal.


This paper focuses on the analysis of reactions captured by the face analysis system. The experiment was conducted on a sample of 50 university students. Each student was shown 100 random images and the student´s reaction to every image was recorded. The recorded reactions were subsequently compared to the reaction of the image that was expected. The results of the experiment have shown several imperfections of the face analysis system. The system has difficulties classifying expressions and cannot detect and identify inner emotions that a person may experience when shown the image. Face analysis systems can only detect emotions that are expressed externally on a face by physiological changes in certain parts of the face.


For over two decades photoacoustic (PA) imaging has been tested clinically, but successful human trials have been minimal. To enable quantitative clinical spectroscopy, the fundamental issues of wavelength-dependent fluence variations and inter-wavelength motion must be overcome. Here we propose a new real-time, spectroscopic photoacoustic/ultrasound (PAUS) imaging approach using a compact, 1-kHz rate wavelength-tunable laser. Instead of illuminating tissue over a large area, the fiber-optic delivery system surrounding an US array sequentially scans a narrow laser beam, with partial PA image reconstruction for each laser pulse. The final image is then formed by coherently summing partial images at a 50-Hz video rate. This scheme enables (i) automatic laser-fluence compensation in spectroscopic PA imaging and (ii) inter-wavelength motion correction using US speckle tracking, which have never been shown before in real-time systems. The 50-Hz video rate PAUS system is demonstrated in vivo using a murine model of drug delivery monitoring.


Abstract Purpose In this contribution, we want to detect the document type profiles of the three prestigious journals Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) with regard to two levels: journal and country. Design/methodology/approach Using relative values based on fractional counting, we investigate the distribution of publications across document types at both the journal and country level, and we use (cosine) document type profile similarity values to compare pairs of publication years within countries. Findings Nature and Science mainly publish Editorial Material, Article, News Item and Letter, whereas the publications of PNAS are heavily concentrated on Article. The shares of Article for Nature and Science are decreasing slightly from 1999 to 2014, while the corresponding shares of Editorial Material are increasing. Most studied countries focus on Article and Letter in Nature, but on Letter in Science and PNAS. The document type profiles of some of the studied countries change to a relatively large extent over publication years. Research limitations The main limitation of this research concerns the Web of Science classification of publications into document types. Since the analysis of the paper is based on document types of Web of Science, the classification in question is not free from errors, and the accuracy of the analysis might be affected. Practical implications Results show that Nature and Science are quite diversified with regard to document types. In bibliometric assessments, where publications in Nature and Science play a role, other document types than Article and Review might therefore be taken into account. Originality/value Results highlight the importance of other document types than Article and Review in Nature and Science. Large differences are also found when comparing the country document type profiles of the three journals with the corresponding profiles in all Web of Science journals.


To understand how the brain works, it is necessary to explore the behavior of the micro-scale neural network with a high spatial resolution. Here, we propose silicon growth-based microneedle-electrode arrays with the minimum electrode's interval of 150 µm. To evaluate the spatial resolution of the neuronal signal, a 1 × 7 array of microneedle-electrodes penetrated into barrel cortex of a mouse. The spike signals recorded via the needle-electrode array were analyzed using the spike firing-rates. As the results, spatial resolution of the spike signals in the mouse's cortex is smaller than the electrode interval of 150 µm. Therefore, such high-density array of needle-electrodes are necessary to study the micro-scale neuronal network in the brain tissue.


FIELD: process engineering. SUBSTANCE: invention relates to metal forming, in particular to deep drawing from thin-skeet blanks. Thin-sheet blank is arranged in clamping cavity. Blank flange is held down. Tractive force is applied to central part of the blank on the side of fixed punch. Blank is fitted to punch. Said tractive force can be generated by either magnetic field or vacuum. Press tool comprises fixed punch, collet, female die and blank cavity. Blank is locked at the center. In one case, punch is mounted on electromagnet of permanent magnet, in the other case, punch center has a bore communicated with vacuum system. Punch working face has annular groove accommodating elastic sleeve. EFFECT: no corrugations, higher quality. 5 cl, 2 dwg


Teknologi Quran International is a startup company that runs on the education of Islam religion especially in Al-Qur'an recitation. Since this company was founded in 2015, there has been no significant profit from applications that can sponsor the operational cost of the company. This then led to the unfocused development of the Learn Quran Tajwid application because most of the employees now have other external projects outside the company. Therefore, the evaluation of the business model is provided to suggest the monetization model so that the company can gain more profit on its side. The challenged-based learning (CBL) methodology is conducted through qualitative data collection with contextual interviews in order to assess the learning theory which has been implemented and finding the perfect in-app purchasing as well as an organic marketing technique that wants to be implemented in the future. The application that is examined by 20 most convenient user samples and stakeholder's recommended domain or subject expert, is available on both platforms, Android, and iOS. The evaluation results show that the monetization model of Learn Quran Tajwid needs to be improved completely since right now there are so many possibilities from the active users who have an opportunity to be taken advantage of by the company. This research can also give benefits to a startup company that wants to have a combination of more sustainable monetization models.


Ten adults suffering from salicylate overdosage were treated successfully with a combination of sodium bicarbonate and acetazolamide to exploit the increase in salicylate clearance which is known to occur in very alkaline urine. The advantages of the method include the absence of important complications and the small volume of fluid required.


The harmonic expansion is a useful tool for analysing the CSL triple junction distribution in a randomly oriented polycrystalline aggregate. By using this approach, a general form of the distribution has been derived. It enables us to calculate in a very effective way the frequencies of occurrence of various CSL triple junctions. The estimated frequency for the Σ1-Σ1-Σ1 junctions is in very good agreement with its theoretical value determined analytically.


Abstract This paper describes the development of a communicative test of Reading and Language Use for Classical Greek, aimed at students at CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) levels A1 and A2. A discussion is first provided of traditional pedagogical approaches which have for many decades dominated the teaching of classical languages, followed by suggestions why these may be supplanted with more modern communicative approaches. Focus then moves to assessment, where, it is suggested, methods are equally rooted in traditional, form-focused methods. If teaching is to become more communicative, it is argued, so should assessment. Against this backdrop, the development of a test of Reading and Language Use for students of Classical Greek at CEFR levels A1 and A2 is described.


of work. Although homework can be part of a survival strategy for working women, its advantages to employers—from cost-cutting to union avoidance to flexibility in the face of fluctuating needs for labor—far exceed those to the workers themselves. Although the preference of many women for homeworking over the limited alternatives open to them leads most of the contributors to this volume to reject the notion of an outright ban on paid work at home, their analyses also suggest that the overall impact of homework is to discourage the development of child care and, more broadly, to reinforce the traditional sexual division of labor and women's subordination within the home. As Boris puts it, "while some individual women consider homework their best option, homework may not be beneficial to women as a group" (p. 236). This volume offers no easy resolution of this contradiction, but it effectively maps the terrain for future research and debate. Indeed, scholars interested in the topic of homework in the past and present will be indebted to Boris and Daniels for years to come.


It is important for grasping the development of the frozen soil temperature during the construction processing to ascertain the sensitivity of the influencing factor.In this paper,a new artificial intelligent method is brought forward considering the whole influencing factors.It has important meaning for predicting the development of the artificial frozen soil temperature to analyze the sensitivity of the factors.


The invention discloses an HRB500 anti-seismic reinforcing steel bar and a production method, which belong to the technical field of iron and steel smelting and are used for improving the intensity, yield ratio and stable yield strength of the anti-seismic reinforcing steel bar. The anti-seismic reinforcing steel bar is characterized by comprising the following chemical components: 0.17 to 0.25 percent of C, 0.40 to 0.80 percent of Si, 1.20 to 1.60 percent of Mn, 0.05 to 0.30 percent of Cr, 0.05 to 0.09 percent of V, less than or equal to 0.035 percent of P, less than or equal to 0.035 percent of S and the balance of Fe. In the product of the invention, Cr and V are used as microalloying elements, the adding amount of the Cr is small, the solution strengthening effect of the V is enhanced, the precipitation strengthening and fine-grain strengthening effect of the V is reduced, the excessive refining of the steel grains is avoided, and the tensile strength is improved greatly at the same time of improving the yield strength; and the HRB500 anti-seismic reinforcing steel bar which meets the requirement on the performance can be produced by control over the technological parameters such as initial rolling temperature, finish rolling temperature, rolling speed and the like in the production process.


A complex relationship exists between an ecosystem and pollutants ill the surrounding air. In order to better understand this relationship, the mixture of air pollutants must be characterized. The term "Pollu tion climate" is used to describe the mixture of pollutants that are found in a particular area. In different areas, different pollution climates can occur, and thus a different ecosystem response will result. With respect to studies of effects of air pollution on terrestrial eco&ystems, the pollution climate should be characterized on the basis of information on "key components". These key components, identified on the basis of their known effects on plants, soils etc •• should be used as far as the present analytical methodologies per mit. Such components could be: 502' N0 2 , 03 and inorganic ions in wet precipitation. On the other hand, improved measuring techniques need to be developed for substances such as HN03 , peroxyacetyl nitrate, H20 2 • NH3 and others, beforp they can be used as "key components". Routine measurements of the components used to characterize pollution climates should provide information relevant with respect to the evaluation of possible effect$. Biologists involved in studies of air pollution effects must determine the necessary parameters. For in stance, relevant parameters for ozone could be:


The paper aims to develop a framework which helps to reveal the shareholders' expectations on the issuing company's growth using comparative analysis of time series of the share price and the dividend per share. A procedure developed in the paper is based on the dividend discount model modification for continuously increasing expected dividends and limited period when investor is going to own the share. The authors have shown that if stockholders expect a constant average rate of the corporation's growth as the classical Gordon's model supposes the price of the firm's shares and their dividends should increase proportionally. Performing the analysis of price-dividend dependence using econometric technologies, one may characterize shares as "Gordonian" or as "speculative" or as "pessimistic". The developed technique is applied for a number of shares which are traded on developed market and, in contrast, on emerging market. The analysis of P/E ratio permits to complete the research and helps to reveal stockholders expectations for "Gordonian" shares.


Objective To assess the association between preoperative neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio(NLR) and necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes of gastric cancer patients.Methods Ninety-two patients with gastric cancer who had undergone surgery in the General Hospital of Armed Police Forces from October 2008 to October 2010 were retrospectively analyzed.All the patients had confirmed gastric tumor with lymph nodes metastasis after the diagnostic slides were reviewed.Of these patients,50 had necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes while 42 did not.Laboratory analysis including preoperative blood count results and other clinical data were collected.Results As revealed by univariate analysis,age,tumor diameter,TNM classification,lymphocyte count(LC),and neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio(NLR) were significantly correlated with necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes of gastric cancer.Multivariable analysis showed that age,LC and NLR were independent prognostic factors of necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes.Conclusions NLR3 has much effect on necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes of gastric cancer,and lymphocyte count(LC) may be a cause of necrotic changes in metastatic lymph nodes of gastric cancer.


This research work proposes the creation of a marketing plan to boost tourism in the San Lorenzo area, specifically in the Cauchal community located in the Ecological Reserve Cayapas - Mataje. Given that the main problem is that there is no established tourism product, establishing the need to design and promote a new alternative tourism with ecological and experiential approach, analyzing the trend worldwide ecotourism that takes more force, the path is born "Sun and Mangrove ", a tour that focuses on the vulnerable population including the Cauchal, where members looking for a sustainable income source, that allows to improve their quality of life while conserving natural resources, creating environmental awareness and other hand them to invite the world to know Afro- Ecuadorian culture, rich in history, folklore, music, traditions, festivals , myths and gastronomy. This project was created in order to enable visitors to know the habits of life of a fighter and hardworking people who have preserved their ancestral knowledge. Additionally, the product has a natural basis, leveraging the diversity of fauna and flora that has the mangrove and the extraordinary attractions that can be visited during the tour, accompanied by complementary activities that will make this visit an enriching and unforgettable. The project is divided into five stages, beginning with an analysis of the birth and development of community tourism in the country, focusing mainly on the problems of this kind on the coast. In the second stage, the characterization of the study area in the geographical, environmental, socio- cultural, economic and tourism components. In the third stage analyzes the current situation of the sector to supply and demand, and market behavior. In the fourth stage raises the idea, designing the product, the costs and strategies to market the same. The fifth and last chapter deals with the conclusions and recommendations.


This paper focuses on how to increase the availability of a backbone network with minimal cost. In particular, the new framework focuses on resilience against natural disasters and is an evolution of the FRADIR/FRADIR-II framework. It targets three different directions, namely: network planning, failure modeling, and survivable routing. The steady state network planning is tackled by upgrading a sub-network (a set of links termed the spine) to achieve the targeted availability threshold. A new two-stage approach is proposed: a heuristic algorithm combined with a mixed-integer linear problem to optimize the availability upgrade cost. To tackle the disaster-resilient network planning problem, a new integer linear program is presented for the optimal link intensity tolerance upgrades together with an efficient heuristic scheme to reduce the running time. Failure modeling is improved by considering more realistic disasters. In particular, we focus on earthquakes using the historical data of the epicenters and the moment magnitudes. The joint failure probabilities of the multi-link failures are estimated, and the set of shared risk link groups is defined. The survivable routing aims to improve the network's connectivity during these shared risk link group failures. Here, a generalized dedicated protection algorithm is used to protect against all the listed failures. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate the benefits of the refined eFRADIR framework in the event of disasters by guaranteeing low disconnection probabilities even during large-scale natural disasters.


Metabolic correlates were related to room, core body and skin temperatures in 66 anaesthetized infants and children. Forty‐one who had normal cardiorespiratory function were undergoing minor lower abdominal surgical procedures and were spontaneously breathing O2/air mixture and halothane (body weight, 3.4–25.3 kg). Twenty‐five had congenital heart malformations; 14 were cyanotic (weight, 3.4–24.3 kg) and 11 were acyanotic (weight, 3.7–20 kg). These 25 had balanced anaesthesia with halothane and their lungs were mechanically ventilated. Oxygen consumption (V̇o2), i. e. heat production, and CO2 elimination (V̇co2) were measured by mass spectrometry. Indirect calorimetry was used for calculation of energy consumption. Temperatures were recorded in the lower third of the oesophagus (core temperature), at the mammillary level along the anterior axillary line (skin temperature), and in room air. Oesophageal temperatures ranged from 34.0°C to 38.1°C and skin temperatures from 32.1°C to 37.4°C (mean ± SD, 34.5°C ± 1.2°C). Heat production (V̇o2) was not related to body, skin or room temperatures. In concordance V̇co2 and energy expenditure were unrelated to the measured temperatures. Thermogenesis is thus eliminated in infants as well as in children, by the anaesthetic techniques used in the current study. This emphasizes the importance of prevention of heat loss in paediatric anaesthesia. Since the reduced skin and body temperatures in this study did not increase oxygen consumption, temperature regulation via an enhanced V̇o2 does not appear as a factor that aggravates hypoxaemia in cyanotic infants and children with congenital heart malformations.


This paper delineates key constraints on the formulation and implementation of old age support in developing countries (DCs), identifying specific institutional and organizational points of 'blockage'. The paper argues that these institutional and procedural constraints collectively underpin the continuing marginalization of older people within dominant agendas and existing policy programmes, presenting reformers with knotty problems of policy formulation, policy sequencing and policy implementation. A more appropriate and constructive international advisory regime, formed on the principles of organisational, stakeholder and policy inclusiveness, is proposed and outlined. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


An attempt is made to sketch a complete timeless theory of the universe and explain why time can nevertheless appear to flow in such a framework. 27.1 Is Time a Basic Concept? During the Workshop, I conducted a very informal straw-poll, putting the following question to each of the 42 participants: Do you believe time is a truly basic concept that must appear in the foundations of any theory of the world, or is it an effective concept that can be derived f rom more primitive notions in the same way that a notion of temperature can be recovered in statistical mechanics? The results were as follows: 20 said there was no time at a fundamental level, 12 declared themselves to be undecided or wished to abstain, and 10 believed time did exist at the most basic level. However, among the 12 in the undecided/ abstain column, 5 were sympathetic to or inclined to the belief that time should not appear at the most basic level of theory. Although my straw-poll probably broke all rules of scientific opinion polling, and, as was pointed out to me, the question itself was likely to elicit the response I myself favoured (nonexistence of time at the fundamental level) for what theoretical physicist will resist the challenge to reduce the world to the minimal number of basic concepts? I think it was worth establishing that a clear majority was inclined to do away with time. I also felt that, given the topic of the Workshop, this was a question on which we should be concentrating our minds more actively. I do believe that any theory of the world in which time is truly eliminated as a fundamental concept will have more startling consequences than many of even the most dedicated ' no-timers' appreciate. For example, a proposal made on the final day of our discussions for the cover design of the Workshop proceedings received widespread assent. Now the


This study investigated the effects of ownership structure and ESG performance on investment efficiency. The variable of investment efficiency was measured based on the research results of Biddle et al.(2009), and the study period was from 2013 to 2021. The results of the study are as follows.
First, as a result of empirical analysis of the effect of ownership structure on investment efficiency, the foreign ownership ratio has a positive effect on investment efficiency, and the ratio of largest shareholders also has a positive effect on investment efficiency. It was found that ownership structure had a positive effect on investment efficiency.
Second, as a result of empirical analysis of the effect of ESG performance on investment efficiency, it was confirmed that E performance had a positive effect on investment efficiency, and that 'G' grade also had a positive effect on investment efficiency. However, the 'S' grade did not appear significantly, but when viewed individually, the S grade also appeared to have a positive effect on investment efficiency. Third, as a result of empirical analysis of the effect of the interaction effect of ownership structure and ESG rating on investment efficiency, it was found that the interaction effect between foreign ownership ratio and 'E' rating had a positive effect on investment efficiency. Next, it was found that the interaction effect between the largest shareholding ratio and the grade 'E' also had a positive effect on investment efficiency. However, it was found that the interaction effect between the major shareholding ratio and the 'S' grade had a negative effect on investment efficiency.
The implications of this study are that the interaction effect of ownership structure and ESG performance, which are major variables affecting investment decision-making, was verified, and it is meaningful in that it can provide external information users with a direction in making investment decisions.


A rotated covariance extended Kalman filter algorithm which is very useful for emitter passive localization and tracking is presented in this paper.The rotation transformation on covariance matrix of extended Kalman filter subtly handles the nonlinear problem in stochastic estimation problems with simplicity.In this paper,principle of rotated covariance is derived first,then detailed algorithms for 2D passive localization are developed.Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is better than those linearization by differentiation based extended Kalman filter and universal linearization concept based extended Kalman filter.


The purposes of this investigation were to contrast the cardiovascular responses of sons of hypertensive and normotensive parents to tasks involving cognitive and isometric challenge, and lo examine the relationship of individual differences in heart rate (HR) reactivity to baseline blood pressure (BP) measurements. Thirty-six male, undergraduate volunteers (18 with and 18 without a parental history of hypertension) were scheduled for two, 1-hr experimental sessions (Days I and II). On Day 1, HR and BP measurements were obtained while subjects performed each of three laboratory tasks: a difficult test in concept formation, serial subtraction, and a sustained handgrip at 30% of maximum voluntary contraction. Each task lasted 3 min and was preceded by a 3-min baseline interval. On Day II, subjects were instructed to relax quietly while baseline measures of HR and BP were recorded. Relative to sons of normotensive parents, offspring of hypertensives exhibited higher mean Systolic BPs during all task periods; no corresponding group differences were observed on either Day I or Day II baseline recordings. Unlike SBP, Diastolic BP measurements did not vary reliably by parental hypertensive/normotensive status. Although the mean HRs of sons of hypertensives were significantly higher than in offspring of normotensives, these differences obtained uniformly across both the baseline and task intervals. Among subjects identified as High HR reactors during the two cognitive tasks, sons of hypertensive parents exhibited Day II baseline SBPs about 9 mmHg higher than did subjects without a parental history of hypertension. Among subjects identified as Low HR reactors, baseline SBPs did not differ reliably between sons of hypertensive and normotensive parents.


This paper focuses on a comparative study of a new estimation method applied on a wireless sensor network, installed in a closed space container. We would like to pick out the best method among the existing identification methods such as ARX, ARMAX, OE, BJ and SS. we are looking for a way to reduce power consumption due to measuring and transmitting data in some desired sensor nodes (DSNs) and using the models to predict parameters in a fault diagnosis system. The DSNs are either turned to sleeping mode for reducing battery-consumption or may be inactive due to the energy depletion. We will do the estimation procedure with the least amount of computation and high accuracy to estimate temperature, relative humidity, and air flow as environmental parameters (EPs) instead of direct measurement.


Continuation of application No. 1 1/881,911, filed on Jul. 30, 2007, now Pat. No. 7,932,375, which is a division of application No. 10/405,878, filed on Apr. 1, 2003, now Pat. No. 7.262,274, which is a continuation of application No. 09/871,291, filed on May 30, 2001, now Pat. No. 6,562,948, which is a division of application No. 09/577,800, filed on May 24, 2000, now Pat. No. 6,479,635, which is a continuation of application No. 09/466,496, filed on Dec. 17, 1999, now Pat. No. 6,528,482, which is a continuation of application No. 08/996,139, filed on Dec. 22, 1997, now Pat. No. 6,017,729.


Sir, We have read with great interest the article by Wu and Hallett (2013) entitled 'The cerebellum in Parkinson's disease'. These authors reviewed related anatomical, clinical and neurophysiological findings, and discuss the possible roles of the cerebellum in the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease. They pointed out that Parkinson's disease is associated with pathological and structural changes in the cerebellum, and also stated that functional neuroimaging has demonstrated increased activation of the cerebellum in Parkinson's disease. Furthermore, tremor and cerebellar involvement is discussed in Parkinson's disease, and a primary dysfunction in the cerebello-thalamo-cortical circuit, particularly the vermis/paravermis region, is thought to be responsible for the occurrence of resting tremor. Another assumption is that functional or structural changes in the cerebellum may contribute to non-motor symptoms …


Abstract: The composition of rumen microbiota during late gestation and early lactation was compared between cows receiving a close-up diet (1.43 Mcal net energy of lactation (NEl) kg-1 dry matter (DM)) throughout a 40 d dry period (SHORT) and cows receiving a far-off diet (1.28 Mcal NEl kg-1 DM) as well as the close-up diet (as above) for 39 and 21 d, respectively, during a conventional 60 d dry period (CONV). Rumen fluid was collected at weeks -2, -1, +1, +2, and +7 relative to calving. Extracted DNA was analyzed for taxonomic composition of the rumen microbiome using MiSeq Illumina sequencing of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. At week +1, this composition differed (P < 0.05) between treatments. In cows under the CONV treatment, this composition only differed (P < 0.05) between weeks -1 and +1. For SHORT cows, this composition tended to differ between weeks +1 and +2 (P = 0.09) as well as between weeks +2 and +7 (P < 0.03). The change of the taxonomic composition of the rumen microbiota after calving, mainly consisting of increases in the abundance of Firmicutes and decreases in that of Bacteroidites, was comparatively slower and less favourable under the SHORT treatment. This may have been due to more excessive grain intake before calving of cows on the latter treatment.


The key technologies of metallic fibrous burner are analyzed, based of these technologies and Chinese cooking hotplate characteristics, metallic fibrous burner is successfully applied to Chinese cooking hotplate. The energy efficiency has been increased over 100%, and the emissions of CO and NOx have been decreased over 90%.


The stability to β-lactamase hydrolysis of HR 756, a new cephalosporin antibiotic, was compared to the β-lactamase stability of cefoxitin and cefuroxime. HR 756, cefoxitin, and cefuroxime were not hydrolyzed by Richmond type I, III, IV, and V β-lactamases. Antibacterial activity of HR 756 correlated well with resistance to β-lactamase hydrolysis except against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. HR 756, cefoxitin, and cefuroxime inhibited type I β-lactamases, but not type III, IV, or V enzymes. HR 756 was the most active inhibitor.


Abstract Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) automates the transmission of data and documentation across supply chains. EDI has the potential to significantly improve control systems and increase efficiencies in supply chains in Less Developed Countries (LDCs). EDI can enhance regional and international stability by improving access to markets and thus stimulating economic development. However, the adoption of EDI in Africa has not received much attention in control engineering and international stability research. This paper presents findings of a country case-study which used institutional isomorphism theory to draw up theoretical propositions and tests the strength of this theory in explaining EDI adoption in Cameroon. Data was gathered from 26 companies, and findings are presented and interpreted. From this conclusions were drawn about important isomorphic institutional factors that facilitate the adoption of the EDI technology in Cameroon.


Background: B-cell lymphoma 2 (BCL-2) and BCL-2 associated X (BAX) polymorphisms are important in the apoptosis process, response to treatment and survival in Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) patients. We aimed to investigate the effect of these genes with other predictors corresponding to the survival of ALL patients with an appropriate frailty survival model. Methods: Our study was performed in 2020 on sixty-two cases of childhood aged 3–16 (year) with ALL disease who were selected by convenience sampling from the two hospitals of Tabriz, Iran. RFLPPCR method was used for genotyping the promoter region of the BAX and BCL-2 genes. We used different frailty survival models, to control heterogeneity between individuals due to unmeasured factors affecting their survival. All analyses were implemented using Stata 16. Results: Based on the result of log-logistic model along with frailty gamma, the proportional odds (standard error) of survival for a CC allele of BCL-2 patient compared to a AA allele patient were 6.0 (1.47); P<0.001 and for a AC of BCL-2 allele patient were 0.57 (1.23); P=0.009. Patients with AG allele of BAX had 2.05 (1.26) times greater odds of surviving than a AA allele patient (P=0.003). The odds of survival of patients with abnormal white blood cell (WBC) were 92% less than normal WBC (P<0.001). Conclusion: With controlling unmeasured factors affecting, the BCL-2 and BAX genes promoter polymorphism are effective in the survival rates for ALL.


The paper expatiates on the concept and describing method of logistics enterprise's growth,reviews the research situation on the decisive factors of logistics enterprise's growth respectively from internal and external part of the enterprises and focuses on discussing the decisive theory of logistics enterprise's growth capability.


Introduction If we define adolescence as the period between the ages of 10 and 18, there are approximately 9 million children in our country [1]. Since many of these children attend elementary, junior high, and high school, their health management is based on school medical examinations [2]. In terms of medical care, adolescents in elementary school are most likely to visit a pediatrician, but for junior and senior high school students, the decision of whether to visit a pediatrician or an internist varies depending on the region and circumstances. Many pediatric medical centers, which are classified as secondary or tertiary care institutions, require children to be 15 years old or younger for their first visit, although this may vary by department. This makes it difficult for high school students, for example, to know where to go to see a doctor. They are unlikely to go to the doctor's office easily and often do not have a relationship with the doctor that would motivate them to seek medical attention.


Organically bound oxygen is one of the most abundant elements in coal. However, the amount and quality of data covering its abundance, mode of occurrence and processing behavior have been relatively limited. This study has addressed this problem and provides an evaluation of two conventional ''oxygen-by-difference,'' two pyrolysis and three fast neutron activation analysis methods (FNAA) for the determination of the organic oxygen contents of coals. Methods based on pyrolysis or FNAA of demineralized coal are clearly superior to the outdated and error-prone ''oxygen-by-difference'' calculations. Fast neutron activation analysis has also been employed to study the effects of coal drying on liquefaction behavior and evaluate derivatization techniques for the characterization of oxygen functionality in coal. This document summarizes the research results obtained during the performance period of August 1, 1983 through October 31, 1985. The report is divided into three sections: (1) Comparison of Methods for the Determination of Organic Oxygen in Coals by W.D. Ehmann, D.W. Koppenaal, C.E. Hamrin, Jr., W.C. Jones, M.N. Prasad and W-Z Tian. (2) Effects of Coal Drying and Oxidation on Coal Structure and Liquefaction Behavior by C.E. Hamrin, Jr. and D.D. Randall. (3) Determination of Oxygen Functionalities in Coal by Derivatization and Fast Neutronmore » Activation Analysis by D.W. Koppenaal, W.C. Jones, W.D. Ehmann, M.N. Prasad and W-Z. Tian. 90 refs., 20 figs., 27 tabs.« less


12 We report for the first time, the development of a 3D optical random access memory material for neutron dosimetry. Detection of energetic neutrons is important in many applications, spanning from radioactive waste monitoring to space exploration. These anthracene-based photochromic dosimeters show a decrease in fluorescence intensity following exposure to energetic neutrons. Unlike current neutron dosimeters, where foreknowledge of the neutron energy is necessary to determine an exposure dose, these materials can be used in unknown environments (e.g. space exploration). A readout system has also been developed to determine the radiation characteristics (e.g. neutron energy) necessary for estimating dose. The results presented in this work, demonstrate the potential of these novel materials for space exploration and other applications where foreknowledge of neutron energy is unknown and current dosimeters are incapable of providing accurate dose information.


In India women constitute 50 per cent of the human resource and a great majority of them are illiterate. According to 1991 census, the overall literacy rate in India is 52.1 percent, the female literacy being 39.4 percent and the male literacy being 63.9 percent. To eradicate illiteracy, the Government of India launched the National Adult Literacy Programme all over the country on 2nd October 1978. This programme aims at providing nonformal education and developing skills in writing, reading and numeracy among the 15 to 35 year old women and men who are Illiterate. The National Literacy Mission aims at imparting functional literacy to 100 million people by the year 1995 through this programme.


The radar reflectivity, defined as the range squared corrected power of VHF radar echoes, can be used to monitor and study the temporal development of inversion layer, frontal boundaries and convective turbulence. From typical featurs of upward or downward motion of reflectivity structures, the advection/convection of cold and warm air can be predicted. High resolution color plots appear to be useful to trace and to study the life history of these structures, particularly their persistency, descent and ascent. These displays allow an immediate determination of the tropopause height as well as the determination of the tropopause structure. The life history of warm fronts, cold fronts, and occlusions can be traced, and these reflectivity plots allow detection of even very weak events which cannot be seen in the traditional meteorological data sets. The life history of convective turbulence, particular evolving from the planetary boundary layer, can be tracked quite easily. Its development into strong convection reaching the middle troposphere can be followed and predicted.


This study intends to analyze the pavement life data on the target ar- ea in consideration of load size and VI grade for determining the influence level. Here, VI grade is the road surface status investigation which indicates the defect status on the pavement surface, and the level of defect on the surface is divided into 7 grades, and these grades are divided into 3 grades again. For the case analysis, the road maintenance zone conducted by Daejeon Regional Construc- tion Management Administration in 2011 was analyzed. For the classification according to the load, Low level for MESAL 0.0-0.10, Medium level for 0.11- 0.30, and High level for over 0.31 are selected, and VI grades are classified as follows. (A level: 1(Good), B level: 2~3(Normal), C level: 4~7(Bad)) (Korea Institute of Construction Technology, 2010). The analysis result shows that the reliability of road pavement decreases according to the road quality and accu- mulated ESAL, the reliability of road decreases as the accumulated ESAL is higher even if the road quality is same. And also, the reliability of road decreas- es as the level drops even if the ESAL is same.


The interest for polymer based nanocomposite materials has increased exponentially in the recent years, the success being ensured by the special properties and the wide range of applications across multiple high-end industrial areas. This paper presents the main components needed for the synthesis of nanocomposite materials with particular characteristics and analyzes the development perspectives in order to extend the applications in the aerospace sector.Research has shown that there are great challenges and opportunities in the development of nanocomposites, with special efforts to improve their multifunctional features by identifying and selecting the main components.To select the constituent phases, the properties (chemical, mechanical, thermal, electrical, etc.), the accessibility of the polymer matrices and the particle characteristics (shape, agglomeration tendency, size distribution, specific surface, etc.), compatibility / synergy between components are key factors for nanocomposite materials structure and properties. For the formation of composites with applicability in the aerospace domain a nanoparticle type system (minor component of type M2Oxundoped / doped, SiC, graphene oxide etc.) and an organic one (major component - PMMA, PVA, PS, PI, epoxy resins, phenolic resins etc.) are currently used and with various types of additions, ensure synergy and compatibility between components. Current technological requirements have stimulated the development of nanocomposites with optimal properties for targeted applications.The interest for polymer based nanocomposite materials has increased exponentially in the recent years, the success being ensured by the special properties and the wide range of applications across multiple high-end industrial areas. This paper presents the main components needed for the synthesis of nanocomposite materials with particular characteristics and analyzes the development perspectives in order to extend the applications in the aerospace sector.Research has shown that there are great challenges and opportunities in the development of nanocomposites, with special efforts to improve their multifunctional features by identifying and selecting the main components.To select the constituent phases, the properties (chemical, mechanical, thermal, electrical, etc.), the accessibility of the polymer matrices and the particle characteristics (shape, agglomeration tendency, size distribution, specific surface, etc.), compatibility / synergy between components are key factors for nanocomposite materials str...


Abstract 2484 Diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a heterogenous disease, which has been subclassified into germinal centre (GCB) and activated B-cell (ABC) type using gene expression profiling. This has been shown to separate DLBCL into distinct prognostic sub-groups in patients treated with either CHOP or CHOP-R therapy. A number of published immunohistochemistry algorithms have attempted to replicate this subclassification using a limited number of markers, however, despite being widely adopted, the reproducibility of the algorithms has proven difficult, possibly due to the subjective nature of interpreting immunohistochemistry results. The aim of this study was therefore to evaluate the most widely accepted immunohistochemistry algorithms, and validate the results using RQ-PCR on RNA extracted from paraffin sections in a large series of well characterised formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) biopsies of R-CHOP treated DLBCLs. RNA was extracted using the Ambion Recoverall extraction kit. Applied Biosytems Taqman probes were used to evaluate gene expression of CD10, BCL6, GCET1, FOXP1 and IRF4. RQ-PCR was run on an Applied Biosystems 7500Fast cycler, and results were calculated using the deltadeltaCt method, using PGK1 as the reference housekeeper gene and either RAJI cell line or commercial RNA as the standard. Using the Hans criteria, 130/277 (47%) presentation DLBCL biopsies were classified as GCB and 147/277 (53%) were ABC. Further classification of a subset of cases using the Choi algorithm showed concordant results in 48/61 (78.7%) cases, with 1 (1.6%) case classified as GCB using Hans and ABC using Choi, and 12 (19.7%) cases classified as ABC using Hans and GCB using Choi. RQ-PCR data showed excellent correlation with immunohistochemistry for all genes incorporated into the algorithms (CD10, p In univariate Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, there was no difference in outcome when comparing either Hans (n=170, p=0.7) or Choi (n=60, p=0.3) algorithms using immunohistochemistry, however using RQ-PCR data to define GCB and ABC subgroups, both algorithms showed a poorer survival in the ABC subgroup. For the Hans algorithm, 6 month overall survival (OS) was 76% in the GCB group compared to 55% in patients classified as ABC (p=0.06), and similarly for the Choi algorithm, 6 month OS was 77% in the GCB group and 53% for patients classified as ABC (p=0.03). This data supports the use of gene expression algorithms to classify DLBCL patients into clinically relevant prognostic groups, with patients classified as ABC exhibiting an inferior outcome compared to the GCB group. RQ-PCR provides a quantitative method to determine expression and eliminates the subjective element associated with interpreting immunohistochemistry. Using RQ-PCR to define prognostic subgroups in DLBCL provides a realistic alternative to gene expression profiling, which is currently not applicable to the majority of diagnostic laboratories. Patients classified as ABC type using this approach show early treatment failure with CHOP-R, and alternative therapies should be considered in this group. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Abstract : Two systems using stored mechanical energy, rotational and translational (drop), were proposed for use in testing a high discharge, high-pressure-regulating valve. A computer-based dynamic analysis of those systems indicates the drop test system to be less costly, but near the practical limits of drop height and weight. The rotational system will exercise the valve for one-half of a pump cycle provided the pump begins at the start of a pump output cycle. The rotational system must be able to withstand very large forces. Neither system exercises the valve for enough time, but the rotational system appears to be capable of longer testing time.


2,3 This paper proposes a DC voltage equalizing circuit for a diode‐clamped linear amplifier (DCLA). The DCLA consists of series‐connected complementary MOSFETs and diode clamping circuits, with an experimental efficiency as high as 90% without switching operation. The DCLA requires a DC voltage equalizing circuit to divide the DC voltage into several levels. The proposed DC voltage equalizing circuit allows the use of a diode rectifier with a smoothing capacitor as a power supply for the DCLA. Zero‐sequence voltage control is proposed to improve the efficiency of the DCLA. As a result, a prototype 12‐series DCLA demonstrates an experimental efficiency as high as 94.7%. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 179(2): 55–63, 2012; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.21131


ABSTRACT. Glutamate was detected in the haemoplasm of adult male Periplaneta americana, adult male Schistocerca gregaria, adult male Locusta migratoria, larval Calliphora erythrocephala, larval Lucilia sericata and Carcinus maenas, in all cases at low concentrations only, i.e. below 10‐5M. This was confirmed by high‐voltage paper electrophoresis and, in the case of Lucilia sericata larvae, by the lack of pharmacological activity of the haemolymph. Glutamate was detected in appreciable concentrations in the haemocytes of all the arthropods analysed. It was found that levels of glutamine in the haemoplasm increased if the haemolymph had started to clot, if the haemolymph had been inadequately centrifuged, if the haemolymph was contaminated by other tissues and if acid protein precipitants were used which hydrolysed glutamine to glutamate. This finding removes a major argument against the acceptance of l‐glutamate as a neuromuscular transmitter.


The paper studied the concept of "brand identity" as a planned brand image that defines the direction for all marketing activities of a company. The authors developed an algorithm for constructing a system of characteristic features of the brand strategy, harmoniously combined with the corporate and business strategy which includes the market situation analysis, an analysis of economic conditions and activities of the organization, analysis of marketing affords, analysis of the marketing strategy, the brand strategy selection, the brand positioning choice, brand identity development. Based on the well-established brand identity models such as The Brand Identity System (D.A. Aaker, USA), The Brand Identity Prism (J.-N. Kapferer France), L. De Chernatoni's model (UK), 4D Branding (T. Gad, Sweden), The Brand Wheel (Bates Worldwide, USA), The Brand Platform (Young & Rubicam, USA) the authors have discussed the current approaches to the brand identity creation depending on which market (customer or B2B) a firm participates in perform and its capacity to serve the interests of both corporate and individual customers. The proposed approaches are needed for successful brand management.


ABSTRACT An analytical solution is developed in this paper to investigate the vertical time-harmonic response of a large-diameter variable-section pile, and it considers the radial inhomogeneity of the surrounding soil caused by construction disturbance. First, the saturated soil surrounding the pile is described by Biot's poroelastic theory and a series of infinitesimally thin independent layers along the shaft of the pile, and the pile is represented by a variable-section Rayleigh–Love rod. Then, the dynamic equilibrium equations of the soil and pile are solved to obtain an analytical solution for the impedance function at the pile top using the complex stiffness transfer method and impedance function transfer method. Finally, the proposed solution is compared with previous solutions to verify its reliability, and a parameter study is conducted to provide insights into the sensitivity of the vertical dynamic impedance of the pile and velocity response in low-strain integrity testing on defective piles.


In this paper, we obtained and characterized a composite film made of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) piezoelectric ceramic and nonpolar polyvinylidene fluoride (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\alpha $ </tex-math></inline-formula>-PVDF) as a functional material. The scanning electron microscopy results show this composite film to have mixed connectivity due to the agglomeration of some of the PZT particles. The response of the composite to an applied ac voltage at 4110 Hz has a slope of 0.074 nm/V. The measured displacement is in the range of 0–30 nm for electric voltages ranging from 0 to 400 V. The experimental results show the composite performance as an acoustic emission sensor to be in good agreement with the response of a commercial standard microphone in the frequency range of 2–6 kHz. By applying 2 kN of cyclic force at a frequency of 3 Hz, we obtained an 80-V peak signal and calculated a dissipated power equal to <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$158~\mu \text{W}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>.


PurposeCorporate-NGO partnerships are gaining increasing importance as part of a company's CSR effort. This study aims to understand which communication tactics (CSR motive, CSR message frame, CSR fit) lead to more positive consumer outcomes in the context of corporate-NGO partnerships, and whether consumer skepticism and consumer trust mediate the proposed relationships.Design/methodology/approachAn online experiment was conducted (N = 298) to examine the theoretical predictions, involving a 2 (CSR motive: firm-serving/public-serving) x 2 (CSR message frame: narrative/expositive) x 2 (CSR fit: high/low) between-subjects design.FindingsThe results confirmed that consumer attitudes and electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM) can be affected by CSR motives and CSR fit. Also, CSR skepticism and consumer trust both mediate the relationship of CSR motives and consumer outcomes.Practical implicationsThe results of this study make a strong case for expressing public-serving CSR motives and refraining from firm-serving CSR motives when communicating about a corporate-NGO partnership to consumers.Originality/valueFocusing on the communication tactics of corporate-NGO partnerships extends existing literature by uncovering whether and how the factors driving effective communication in other CSR activities can be applied to the context of corporate-NGO partnerships.


The Impact or a Performance Management lmervenlion on Work Processes and Operational Indicators (pp. 818). Marla E. Hacker, Oregon State University, Tygh J. Newton , Performance Center, and Akinyinka Akinyele, U.S. Postal Service. Often it is difficult todetermine whether changes initiated by menagement in~ name d perionnarce improvement, actually do conlribute to impI'OYelDl.'flG in performance. IIis diflkult lD obj«li,.]y assess what has changed following an improvement intmmtioo. In this paper Hackfr, Ne>1OO, and Altin)ele discuss an 3CIUa1 f~1d SIUdy undertaken to improve performance through the design and installation nf aperformance management intervention. Usingquasi-experimentation methods, they evaluate the impact of an intervention on managementwork processes and operational performance indicators, while concurrently demonstrati ng a more systematic method for analyzing management intmmtions. An exploratory study was oonductallD derennine deIemen. nf u.. managarent""" (lIIlO"'5 rould be identif~ that changed following an in"""'tion that irnp<lctOO peformanre. Seeal management elernents sere found to change, including the foll(1Wing:


The present account is a sequel to an earlier publication on the composition and feeding value of potato cossettes and meal. It deals with the composition, digestibility and nutritive value for pigs and ruminants of potato flakes and slices, theresults of a large-scale pig-feeding trial with potato slices and the composition and value for pigs of potato dust, a by-product of the manufacture of potato slices. Details of the processes of production of these various dried potato products are included in the text.


The paper covered the development of solution methods for model of eutrophication of shallow water in view the movement of the water flow, microturbulent diffusion, gravitational settling, spatially uneven distribution of temperature and salinity, and pollutants of nutrients, oxygen, phyto- and zooplankton, etc. Shallow waters of the Azov Sea and Taganrog Bay were selected as the object of simulation. Numerical solution of the problem is based on gradient method of variation type – the method of minimal corrections. The acceleration and efficiency of calculations is achieved with using multiprocessor computer system of Southern Federal University. The solution of the problem of water ecology will allow to predict changes of water quality of shallow reservoirs, and to study the mechanisms of formation of zones with low oxygen content.


OverviewLocated just 3 minutes' walk from Paddington Station, Royal Cambridge Hotel is a 3 star property offering accommodation for sport, leisure or business travelers. Among its amenities, the property features 24 hour check-in, concierge, dining room..


A novel 3-dB directional coupler using defected ground structure is demonstrated. The input impedances of even- and odd-mode are perfectly matched and the phase difference between even- and odd-mode is also enhanced. Equivalent models are developed to predict the characteristic impedance and dispersion curve of the proposed structure. A tested sample is fabricated on the Duroid substrate. 3.4 dB coupling level of the proposed coupler is measured at 1.5 GHz. Compared with the microstrip forward coupler, the proposed coupler can achieve about 95 % size reduction.


Tuberculosis is a common opportunistic infection that cause death in HIV/AIDS patients. Due to the high cost of treatment, protection against infection may be preferable in scarce resource settings. In this paper, we consider a deterministic model incorporating protection from infection for both tuberculosis(TB) disease and HIV/AIDS. Two cases are considered, namely, the case of maximum protection against TB and the case of maximum protection against HIV/AIDS. In both cases, an endemic state is shown to exist provided that


CDM ESD events can be a potential threat to SoC designs or heterogeneous 3D ICs with multiple power domains. Inter-layer (or interface) circuits may need a local CDM ESD clamp that can prevent the unexpected failure under CDM ESD stress. In this letter, two local CDM ESD clamp circuits are proposed. They show better clamping efficiency under 2-ns vfTLP stress.


An estimated 835,000 people are affected by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the UK, with a further two million remaining undiagnosed (Shahab et al, 2006). COPD is a chronic progressive lung disease, which makes breathing difficult due to partially obstructed airflow into and out of the lungs. It results from inflammation stimulated by exposure to toxins, primarily due to a history of smoking. It is the fifth largest cause of respiratory deaths in the UK (British Thoracic Society, 2006). The role of nutrition in the management of COPD patients


GPUs have become a very popular platform for accelerating the processing involved in deep learning applications. One class of popular variants, Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), have been widely deployed to run on GPUs. In many application settings, a GPU has sufficient computing power and memory space to accommodate the dense matrix operations performed during CNN training. However, few characterization studies have considered how CNNs can impact microarchitectural structures in a GPU. In this paper, we perform a characterization of one selected CNN workload as run on two different NVIDIA GPUs from distinct microarchitecture families, highlighting the impact that microarchitecture plays on this important class of workload. First, we analyze the performance implications of a CNN model using microarchitectural details on a layer-by-layer basis, and characterize the memory access behavior in the context of a typical GPU memory hierarchy, considering hardware resource utilization associated with each primitive in the CNN model. We identify major bottlenecks by considering the potential limits of using a single GPU. Additionally, we evaluate a number of optimization approaches, such as L1 cache bypassing and kernel fusion. L1 cache bypassing can achieve up to a 6.2% speedup for a single layer, but manipulating L1 cache provides very limited benefits in terms of application speedup, while kernel fusion provides an overall application speedup of 4.0%, on average.


It is shown that the anomalously broad resonances observed in inverse photoemission (bremsstrahlung isochromat spectroscopy (BIS)) from uranium-based heavy-fermion systems can be understood in terms of dynamic relaxation effects. The transient, nonadiabatic component of the conduction-electron response to BIS-promoted charge gives rise to final-state processes which show up as significant broadening and shifting of the spectra. Calculations based on the Anderson model give spectra which qualitatively agree with the measured ones.


Abstract The explanation of the Pontic policy of Mithridates II as offered in our scanty sources is hardly satisfactory. After the battle of Ankyra (240–239 BC), Mithridates' position appeared ambiguous to modern and ancient authors alike (Section I–II). A revision of all the evidence would be welcome. If the chronology proposed here is correct (notably, it puts the date of the Pontic attack on Sinope at c. 228 BC instead of the widely accepted 220 BC), the aggressive policy of Mithridates in Asia Minor can be revised. The siege of Sinope should not be understood as an isolated episode in the endless Anatolian warfare; it was part of a premeditated policy which well accorded with the ambitious schemes of Antiochos Hierax (Section III). However, after Hierax' defeat, Mithridates reverted to a policy of good relations with the main branch of the Syrian dynasty (Section IV).


Water scarcity is a crisis which threatens the development of China. Water institution innovation of water rights and water market is necessary for China to overcome water problems. Water rights should be viewed as natural resources property, with water resources (not water product), excluding ecological water demand, as its objects. water rights is thought to be private domain with the features of public domain and quasi-property with the features of typical one. In China, the country owns water resources. In the system of water rights, the property of water resources is the mother of the other water rights including possession right, use right, profitability right and disposition right, which could be departed completely or incompletely from the mother-body and transferred in the water rights market. In China, water is also called water-drawing rights, which could be divided into water-lifting right, water-ditching right, and water-sluicing right according to the methods of water drawing, or into water demand right of agriculture, industry, family and civicism activities according to the means of water utilization. The author don' t agree with the opinions that the use right of water body(or water suface), water-draining right and the administration of water sector belong to water rights.


Taking self-made MgCO3(magnesium carbonate) as the template,through high-speed stirring,gradually adding cerium nitrate solution,after fully stirring,slowly dropping NH3·H2O(ammonia) solution as precipitator,then the precursor can be obtained.Further after low-temperature calcination,removing template of magnesium carbonate with weak acid,then the objective product of mesoporous CeO2 was obtained.The material was characterized by small and large X-ray diffraction,nitrogen physisorption,high-resolution transmission electron microscopy(HRTEM) and FT-IR spectra.The results show that it is possible to synthesis mesoporous CeO2 with inorganic magnesium carbonate as template.The surface of the obtained product is 129m2/g and the average pore size of it is 5nm.


Abstract : For cases in which the foundation modulus varies proportionately to the mass per unit length of the beam, the principal mode shapes of the free bending vibrations of a non-uniform beam will be exactly the same as without the elastic foundation, and a simple exact result for the effect of the foundation on the natural bending frequency in any mode is obtained. Extensions of the analysis and results for such cases are then made to obtain the exact effect of the elastic foundation on torsional vibrations and on bending vibrations with damping and axial end loads. A general solution for forced bending vibrations is shown. When the foundation modulus does not vary exactly proportionately to the mass per unit length of the beam, a simple approximate result for the effect of the elastic foundation on the natural bending frequency in any mode is obtained by the Rayleigh method. (Author)


This paper,according to the method of solving conjugate gear profile by using gear enveloping principle,uses the VisualLISP embedded in AutoCAD to generate all gear profile of involute gear,obtaining an accurate 3D model of gear.The method of generating gear profile,including gear root,realize consistency of gear 3D models and the actual products.


In this era of Internet, many useful files are shared through internet. For this we need a secure system to protect our secret data from eavesdroppers. Two different technologies are used to make our information secure i.e. cryptography and steganography. In cryptography we do encryption of the secret message but we can't hide the existence of the secret message. But in steganography we hide the existence of the secret message. Steganography is the art which help us to hide secret information in different multimedia files. As a result, unauthorized users are not able to see and recognize the hidden information. It is a science that manages a secret path for sending information secretly using different multimedia carrier like in image, text, audio and video file. This Paper includes image Steganography, its basic working and insertion techniques used in Image Steganography such as LSB, Chaotic, GLM, Parity checking and Interpolation. It also involves Steganography applications and a set of parameters to test the imperceptibility of an algorithm.


s p Regulation of mRNA turnover is a critical control mechaism of gene expression and is influenced by ribonucleoprotein RNP) complexes that form on cis elements. All mRNAs have n intrinsic half-life and in many cases these half-lives can be ltered by a variety of stimuli that are manifested through the ormation or disruption of an RNP structure. The stability of -globin mRNA is determined by elements in the 39 untransated region that are bound by an RNP complex (a-complex) hich appears to control the erythroid-specific accumulation of -globin mRNA. The a-complex could consist of up to six istinct proteins or protein families. One of these families is a rominent polycytidylate binding activity which consists of two ighly homologous proteins, a-complex proteins 1 and 2 aCP1 and aCP2). This article focuses on various methodoloies for the detection and manipulation of aCP1 and aCP2 inding to RNA and details means of isolating and characterzing mRNA bound by these proteins to study mRNA turnover nd its regulation. © 1999 Academic Press


Laboratory experiment was carried out in Marshes Researches Center lab in University of Thi–Qar in Iraq during May 2019, to evaluate for three botanical powder effects, Cinnamon (Cinnamomum Cassia), Cubeb (Piper Cubeba) and Mint (Mentha spp.) against southern cowpea beetle Callosobruchus maculates on Mung bean stored seeds. The experiment carried out according to factorial precision in complete randomized design (CRD) to estimating the Mortality ratio and the complete randomized design (CRD) to estimating seed weight losses ratio and seed germination ratio. The results showed that there was significant effect for all treatment powders of Callosobruchus maculatus mortality ratio on the Mung Bean seeds except the mass fractions of Mint powders was not significant, the results showed that the highest average mortality ratios of insect was 52.58 and 62.47% to the mass fraction (4g powder) for Cinnamon and Cubeb powder respectively, For the exposure periods, the results showed that the highest mortality ratio of the insect was 100% for the periods 9-12, 8-12 and 10-12 days for Cinnamon, Cubeb and Mint powders respectively. The overlapping effect of exposure durations and mass fractions, the highest ratio reached 100% for all the mass fractions for the periods 9-12 days of Cinnamon powder and it reached 100% for mass fraction of 4grm powder for the periods 7-12 days and mass fractions 0.5, 1and 2g powder for the periods 8-12 days for Cubeb powder and it reached 100% for mass fractions 0.5, 1and 2g for the periods 9-12days and mass fraction of 4g for the periods 10-12 days. The effect of infestation with insect of Seed weight loss was significantly, the highest average of percentage loss in the weight of seeds and reached 5.62% after a period 35 of days of storage. The results showed that there were no significant effects in averages of germination ratio of Mung Bean seeds treated with vegetable powders under consideration.


SocialCar integrates carpooling with existing transportation modes in urban and peri-urban areas. The system is based on algorithms that plan routes for users and rely on a considerable amount of heterogeneous data. Social networks also play a role. Autonomous vehicles are emerging and will revolutionize transport. We try to understand the impact they could have in a system like SocialCar. Key-Words: Urban mobility, carpooling, public transportation, autonomous vehicles, self/driving cars, social media. 1 The SocialCar EU Project SocialCar is an EU H2020 research project that aims to develop an intelligent transport system based on an innovative approach to transport demand management, and more specifically to carpooling (also known as lift-sharing in the UK and ridesharing in the US) in urban and peri-urban areas. The overall objective is to develop a new communication network for intelligent mobility, sharing information on car-pooling integrated with existing transport and mobility systems. The SocialCar network is natively integrated into existing real-time public transport information and carpooling systems, ensuring an effective, highquality, and enriched multimodal travel planning system for travelers. The platform takes advantage of social media and crowdsourcing practices to communicate, share information, and exchange useful transport data by means of innovative algorithms in order to allow the best just-in-time notifications to travelers. WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS Roberto Montemanni, Luca Maria Gambardella, Francesca Cellina, Fabio Cartolano, Paola Cossu, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli E-ISSN: 2224-2872 136 Volume 18, 2019 Fig. 1. The SocialCar App. From left to right: the passenger indicates the desired starting and arrival points; the app outputs a list of available mobility options; the passenger selects one option and receives the full sequence of its legs; once the ride has taken place, both the passenger and the driver are requested to leave a feedback on each other. During its lifetime, the SocialCar project has integrated multiple (public/private/social) data sets by means of powerful planning algorithms as leverage for promoting an effective carpooling service for citizens, making it a complementary transport mode that extends public transport networks. The integration of carpooling with the public transport network has proven that a social and intelligent mobility network deployment is feasible and effective. Big Data related to public transport, carpooling, and crowdsourcing are integrated in a livable environment in order to provide final users with a positive travel experience allowing comparison and choice between multiple options/services. The Route Planner and Ride Matching components of the architecture are described in Jamal et al. (2017). Interaction between users and the SocialCar system is managed through social media and the mobile app, both of which support the living community of users, as depicted in Figure 1. A conceptual architecture of the project is depicted in Figure 2, while an example of the solutions proposed can be found in Figure 3. SocialCar is not developing or establishing carpooling or on-demand car service software or services, so it is not competing with existing and established products such as UberX [3], Lyft [4], and Carma [5]. Instead, it is developing enhanced features that can be adopted by these and other existing services. These enhanced features will deploy an effective integration of public transport with carpooling and on-demand car services. Recent studies have shown that the attractiveness of carpooling has sometimes been decreasing [6] because of low fuel prices, and strong incomes [7]. The psychological barrier of riding with strangers is also likely to play a role [8]. However, the idea of integrating carpooling with existing transportation modes can potentially invert this negative trend. This is also corroborated by the very recent EU study presented in Finger et al. [9]. The involvement of 10 European urban sites – some of which already offered carpooling services at different maturity levels when the project started, and others of which have developed it during the project – allowed SocialCar to prove the concept's validity and business case, making for easier acceptance of innovative concepts and the consequent application into citizens' everyday life. Testing and validation of the SocialCar system in these sites has been coupled with the development of innovative and transferable business models for the sustainability and scalability of service provision, including their impacts on legal framework. This is the result of the joint effort and expertise of social, transport, and economic professionals within the project team, taking into account environmental, ethical, and security implications. WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS Roberto Montemanni, Luca Maria Gambardella, Francesca Cellina, Fabio Cartolano, Paola Cossu, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli E-ISSN: 2224-2872 137 Volume 18, 2019 Fig. 2. The SocialCar architecture. 2 Autonomous Vehicles and Urban Transportation The development of autonomous vehicles (sometimes referred to as self-driving, driverless or robotic vehicles) has been rapid in the last few years, with remarkable progress motivated by both hardware and software improvements [10]. At the same time, intelligent transport systems are becoming increasingly cooperative and connected (C-ITS) thanks to new technologies (mobile telco, the Internet of Things, Big Data, and artificial intelligence among others and have enabled distributed computational processes in terms of locations and service provisions, all along the value chain. Hence, the emergence of autonomous cars adds another relevant hint to this evolving framework, increasing the relevance of a deep interaction among infrastructure, vehicles, users; therefore, C-ITS have been declined in more specific terms referring to the digital transformation of infrastructures (smart infrastructure, C-Road) and vehicles (driverless cars, automated vehicles). The C-ITS wording itself has been extended in cooperative, connected, and automated mobility (CCAM), emphasizing the relevance of recent innovative features. To date, most attention has been concentrated on the capability of autonomous vehicles to drive among human-driven vehicles, and to correctly interact with them on the road. Now the spectrum is enlarging and questions about the impact of such vehicles into general transport planning is becoming an important theme of discussion [11]. At the regulatory level, the European Commission is progressing in identifying suitable scenarios for this future mobility and industrial players (automotive, telco, infrastructure managers, telematics service providers) are strongly engaged in advancing the development of C-ITS and steering the public agenda in favour of services enabling cooperative, connected, and automated mobility, especially focusing on individual transport as key asset in respective markets. Their strategy is to reach and demonstrate effectiveness of new services in terms of traffic fluidity, safety, and comfort, and they aim to be well positioned in the future large take-up of driverless cars. For this reason, they have relevant influence toward the EU in bringing concrete demonstrations, setting standards, and promoting new regulations in favour of individual transports that can feed their markets. Other institutional organizations (such as UITP [12] and Polis [13]) that are traditionally more inclined to promote the sustainable mobility through reducing land use and car ownership and encouraging collective transport, have shown a certain degree of caution, and even fear, regarding a potential unmanaged uptake of commodities of individual transport and in the future of driverless cars that, by changing the way people will "consume their travel experience", may have dramatic negative effects in multiplying individual transports and at the expenses of public transport [14, 15]. For this reason, they are strongly warning EU and national agendas about activating strategies and long-term policies for an integrated vision of future mobility. WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMPUTERS Roberto Montemanni, Luca Maria Gambardella, Francesca Cellina, Fabio Cartolano, Paola Cossu, Andrea Emilio Rizzoli E-ISSN: 2224-2872 138 Volume 18, 2019 Fig. 3. Example of the benefits of the use of the SocialCar app. Therefore, it is evident that there is a creeping conflict between the two categories above presented both trying to influence the position of Member States and therefore the EU agenda. In addition, some authors have raised concerns about such an impact [16], and support the thesis that autonomous vehicles can be a benefit only if such vehicles are electric and shared among users. In the optic of the present article, we are mainly interested in the latter condition: carpooling is an intrinsic form of sharing vehicles. We move further and combine the results of these studies [11, 16] with those of [9], where it is forecasted that carpooling in urban areas is likely to be a reality only if integrated into other modes of transportation, in a Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) fashion. From an operational perspective, autonomous vehicles could be integrated in a platform like SocialCar as an ondemand transportation service. In the long term – studies refer to a period of approximately 30 years [11] – autonomous vehicles are likely to be the only ones left on the road, and in that case the role of applications like SocialCar, with their crucial carpooling component, will be likely to lose meaning. But before this relatively distant future, we believe that integrating carpooling into existing transportation modes (also including autonomous vehicles in the near future) is likely to be the only way to improve the liveability of our cities, while proving efficient transportation solutions for commuters. 3 Conclusions The


Source/Description: The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and allele specific oligonucleotide (ASO) hybridisation were used to detect a common polymorphism within the open reading frame (ORF) of the human prion protein (PRIP) gene. This polymorphism has previously been reported as a mutation (1). The oligonucleotide sequences for amplification of the ORF of the PRIP contained EcoRI and BamHI linkers respectively and were 5'-AAGAATTCTCTGACATTCTCCTCTTCA-3' and 5'-AAGGATCCCTCAAGCTGGAAAAAGA-3'. PCR mixtures (100 til) contained 1-2 itg genomic DNA, 250 ng of each primer and 2.5 units of Taq polymerase (Cetus) in the manufacturer's recommended buffer. Cycling conditions were: 95°C (1.5 min), 50°C (1.5 min), 72°C (3 min) for 35 cycles. ASO sequences were 5 '-CGGCTACATGCTGGG-3' (Met129) and 5'-CGGCTACGTGCTGGG-3' (ValI29). Prehybridization (3h) and hybridization (16h) were in 6xSSPE, 0.1 % BLOTTO, 0.5% SDS, 1 mM EDTA and 0.1 mg/ml denatured, sonicated, salmon sperm DNA at 35°C. Membranes were washed once at 35°C (15 min) and twice at 46°C (15 min) in 3M tetramethylammonium chloride, 50 mm Tris-HCl (pH 8.0), 2 mM EDTA and 0.1 % SDS. Polymorphism: A single base substitution in codon 129 of the PRIP gene (ATG to GTG) Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR): Two 20mer oligonucleotides 5'-GCAAGTTTGGCTTTTGGGGA-3' (nucleotides 308-327) and 5 '-CTGCCAAGAGGAGAAGAATG-3' (nucleotides 800-819) derived from exon 1 of the human tyrosinase gene (1, 2) were used to amplify the corresponding gene fragments from genomic DNA (0.1-1 jg) of the probands. Forty cycles of PCR were performed in 100 Al volumes of 10 mM Tris-HCl pH 8.3, 50 mM KCl, 1.5 mM MgCl2, 200 AM of each dNTP, 100 ytg/ml gelatin, 1 izM of each primer, and 2.5 units of Taq


OBJECTIVES
To compare emergency medicine resident performance on an ultrasound-oriented, American Board of Emergency Medicine-styled written examination with the following variables in resident education: number of ultrasound scans performed, presence of a formal, structured ultrasound rotation, presence of a mandatory ultrasound rotation, number of hours of didactic ultrasound education, and percentage of ultrasound education taught by emergency physicians.

METHODS
This was a prospective cohort study involving 14 residency programs. A 60-question multiple-choice test was completed by individual residents and returned for scoring.

RESULTS
262 residents completed the study. Average score was 39.1/60 +/- 6.5 (65%). Scores improved as residency year increased (year 1: 36.6, year 2: 39.3, year 3: 42.6) (p < 0.005). Scores improved as number of scans performed increased from 34.3 (57%) for those residents who had performed 0-10 scans to 45.4 (76%) for those with >150 scans (p < 0.005). The presence of an ultrasound rotation at an emergency medicine residency program also produced a statistically significant increase in test score (OR 1.82; 95% CI = 1.29 to 2.55). Residents at programs spending the least time (6 to 15 hours) on didactic education throughout the residency predicted examination failure (OR 0.60; 95% CI = 0.39 to 0.93). Increasing the amount of resident ultrasound teaching by emergency physicians improved the score, but this did not reach significance (p = 0.357).

CONCLUSIONS
Improved resident performance on an ultrasound written examination was associated with increasing resident year, number of scans performed, and the presence of an ultrasound rotation at the residency program. Increasing the number of didactic hours spent on ultrasound each year beyond 15 hours showed no improvement in resident performance.


It is obvious that fuzzy classification systems are important applications of the fuzzy set theory. Fuzzy classification systems can deal with perceptual uncertainties in classification problems. In recent years, many methods have been proposed to deal with fuzzy classification problems. In this paper, we present a new method to deal with the Iris data classification problem based on the concept of fuzzy compatibility relations for finding the cluster centers of training instances. The proposed method can get a higher average classification accuracy rate to deal with the Iris data classification problem than the existing methods.


Discovering electrocatalysts that are active, stable, and inexpensive for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is important for large-scale commercialization of proton-exchange membrane fuel cell te...


Henan regional trial data of cotton varieties in 2002 were analyzed by AMMI Model and the interaction of genotype and environment(G×E) were discussed in this paper.The results showed that the Data analyzed by AMMI Model could explain the interaction of G×E effectively and strikingly increase the ability to synthetically evaluate the yield stability of tested varieties.


A method for identifying the gear fault of the transmission system is presented,where the simulated annealing algorithm and genetic algorithm are combined in order to prevent the BP network going into the local minimum points during the training work.By using the wavelet energy spectrum of the signal measured from a certain transmission system,the symptom of the gears with damnification is detected.The results show that both the training efficient and the identifying precision are increased obviously.


Objective To investigate the applicability of somatosensory evoked potential (SEP) to assessment of CNS injuries in forensic practice. Methods 60 cases with trauma of nervous system and dysfunction were divided into two groups: group of spinal cord injury (33 cases ) and group of craniocerebral injury (27 cases). Physical examination on nervous system and evaluation by SEP were carried out. The data collected were analyzed by correlation analysis. Result Abnormal findings were detected in all the 33 cases in the group of spinal cord injury by SEP (100%). The abnormity of SEP findings depended upon deterioration of spinal cord dysfunction,which revealed a positive correlation (R=0.72,P0.01,n=33). Of 27 cases with craniocerebral injury,only 9 cases were found of abnormal SEP (33%). No significant correlation was found between abnormity of SEP and craniocerebral dysfunction. (R=0.36,P0.05). Conclusion SEP examination is a sensitive and acuity means for objective evaluation of spinal cord function,but it has a limited applicability to assessment of craniocerebral dysfunction.


The paper presents a method for computing the oxygen transfer speed in water in non-stationary conditions. The theoretical results are verified by experimental researches performed on a new type of fine bubbles generator; the variation of O2 concentration in water is measured electrically, using an oxygen meter.


Over the past few years, education professionals have become more pragmatic in their approach to technology-based media by using it to augment traditional forms of teaching delivery, such as classroom instruction and text-based materials. This trend has led to the rise of the term Blended-learning, which comprises both electronic and face-to-face interaction, creating opportunities that were not previously available (Petrova, 2002; Hollerer, 1999). Blended-learning model are implemented at the Chien-Kuo Technology University, Taiwan for upper-level-undergraduate English school students. In this article, the challenges and issues of designing next generation learning environments using current and emerging technologies are addressed. The flexible and practical approach proves that students with less English or computer-programming background can handle even an intermediate English course via blended learning, and the achievement, satisfaction and willingness of learning is significant increasing simultaneity.


This article described the importance of the curriculum system design and training goals in radiation oncology teaching. It highlighted the necessity of using the concept of synthetic tumor treatment and evidence-based medicine in radiation oncology teaching and discussed the teaching mode of how to improve the teaching quality,cultivate the innovative,thinking-based and scientific medical professionals in radiation oncology.


An improved laser-controlled land leveling system is discussed with the purpose of designing the system effectively and low-cost. The system is composed of three parts. A laser emitter can produce slopes. A laser receiver can receive the laser beam and filter the noisy light, and its incepting diameter is extended to about 400 m. A controller can process the altitude signals and control the hydraulic system for the leveling scraper. Many experiments have been done in different places, and the standard deviation of relative height is close to 2 cm after leveling. Experiments have shown that the system is effective and steady, and the cost is obviously decreased.


The focus of this project is to investigate how a crack propagates and grows in Structural/Mild steel & Epoxy material plate. Edge crack this case will be performed for both material to calculate stress intensity factor & J integral. FEA output will be compared with analytical calculation to validate results. Finite element method software (ANSYS16) will be used to simulate failure criteria and to compute the stresses and the stress-intensity factor. So we have performed FEA analysis for both Mild steel and epoxy material. So we can understand the propagation of crack & its growth in material plates. Keywords— Edge crack, mild steel, epoxy material, propagation and growth of crack.