Accurate extraction of structural edge information of aluminum foam is an important method to study the complex structural properties of aluminum foam, but the conventional single-scale edge detection method is difficult to achieve complete extraction of structural edge information of aluminum foam. However, the multi-scale fusion edge detection method based on Gaussian smoothing also has some problems, such as strong edge diffusion, weak edge degradation, edge pixel movement and so on. In order to solve the shortcomings of the above methods, this paper proposes a multi-scale edge fusion algorithm based on texture suppression, which can extract the edge information of aluminum foam structure more accurately and completely. Firstly, preprocess the image. The illumination component of the image is extracted by the multi-scale fusion method, and the luminance of the image is corrected by the adaptive luminance correction method based on the two-dimensional gamma function. Secondly, construct multi-scale space. It is proposed to construct the guiding image of the guiding filtering by using the bilateral texture filtering and construct the multi-scale space by changing the scale factor of the guiding filtering. Both bilateral filtering and guided filtering have the function of suppressing the texture information of the image while maintaining the structural edge features of the image. Finally, extract edge seeds and fuse multi-scale edges. A new multi-scale image edge fusion algorithm is proposed, which uses seed edges as a medium to gradually merge multi-scale image edges. In order to extract the edge information of the foam aluminum cross-section structure more accurately and completely, the algorithm further optimizes the edge using gradient direction consistency and non-maximum suppression. In order to verify the feasibility of the proposed algorithm, this paper uses the dataset to test the proposed algorithm and a variety of existing algorithms, and compare the results of various algorithms by quantitative analysis. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is feasible and effective, and its performance is better than the comparison algorithm.


In this study we document the biomass of Parrotfish and Surgeonfish in Christmas Island, Fanning Island, and Palmyra Atoll. The three islands exhibit a gradient of fishing pressure, which results in varying levels of apex predators affecting the biomass of herbivores. At three sites with comparable conditions between the islands, we identified species' and estimated fish size in order to determine a biomass density. We also observed the feeding rates of the most common herbivore fish species at each island to establish the grazing rate. We observed very high herbivore biomass at Palmyra and correspondingly high grazing rates which bring about questions of what exactly is the connection between these herbivores and the health of the reef. This question, in turn, must be considered for future management of reefs.


This paper studies salesforce compensation on a three-layer supply chain comprising a manufacture, a retailer and a salesperson. The salesperson"s sales effort is divided into two kinds. The problem is solved using a two-stage game. In the first stage, the firm gives the compensation contract and the salesperson decides two kinds of effort. In the second stage, sales are realized and payments are made. From our analysis of the symmetric and asymmetric information cases, we find that in the symmetric information case, long term effort is more than short term effort; both incentive coefficient and salary paid to the salesperson decline as discount factor increases. For the asymmetric information case, the relationship of the two kinds of effort depends on risk averse and discount factor parameters; incentive coefficient and commission have opposite changing trend; salary decreases in discount factor but increases in risk averse parameter.


A Dissertation Submitted to the University of Gezira in partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Award of Degree of Master Arts
In English Language Teaching (E L T), Department of Foreign Language, Faculty of Education – EL –Hasahisa, December 2015


Soil erosion is a slow and continuous process and one of the prominent problems across the world leading to many serious problems like loss of soil fertility, loss of soil structure, poor internal drainage, sedimentation deposits etc. In this study remote sensing and GIS based methods have been applied for the determination of soil erosion and sediment yield. Tel River basin which is the second largest tributary of the river Mahanadi laying between latitude 19° 15' 32.4"N and, 20° 45' 0"N and longitude 82° 3' 36"E and 84° 18' 18"E chosen for the present study. The catchment was discretized into approximately homogeneous sub-areas (grid cells) to overcome the catchment heterogeneity. The gross soil erosion in each cell was computed using Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). Various parameters for USLE was determined as a function of land topography, soil texture, land use/land cover, rainfall erosivity and crop management practice in the watershed. The gross soil erosion was computed by overlaying all the parameter maps of USLE in ArcGIS and compared with the observed sediment yield at the outlet. Different erosion prone areas of the study basins were identified so that conservation practices can be implemented on those areas to minimize erosion


Ischemia and following hypoxia are a common cause of acute kidney injury (AKI). Strategies for prevention and treatment of AKI are limited. In several animal models, ischemic preconditioning (IPC) has been established as an effective intervention to prevent ischemic organ injury. An IPC protocol of ischemia and reperfusion mediates organ protection for a few hours. This first phase of organ protection is followed by a second, protective phase occurring after 24–48 h. The second phase, named second window of protection (SWOP), persists for 3–4 d. Mechanisms and transcriptional mediators during SWOP are mostly unknown. The aim of the underlying study was to investigate effectors and target genes during SWOP and to identify a potential pharmacological therapeutic target.

 6–8-week-old C57BL/6 mice were undergoing an IPC intervention; five minutes of renal sinistra artery ischemia was followed by five minutes of reperfusion. This cycle was performed five times. Mice were sacrificed 2, 4, 8, 12, 25, 48, 72 h after IPC. Two additional groups of mice were pharmacologically preconditioned for 48 h with low dose FK506 and small molecule GPI1046. Analysis of murine kidneys were performed by SDS-Page and Western blot.

 The first phase after IPC (2–4 h) was characterized by an increasing expression of hypoxia inducible factor-1α (HIF1α); 48 h after intervention a significant increase of expression of aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator (ARNT) and consecutive activin receptor-like kinase 3 (ALK3) was observed. Comparable induction of ARNT and ALK3 expression was obtained by pharmacological preconditioning with FK506 or GPI1046.

 Affected by hypoxia, HIF1α activates transcriptional upregulation of ARNT 48 h after IPC. The increasing expression of ARNT, follows an increased ARNT homodimerization. ARNT homodimer binds to the palindromic E-box 5′-CACGTG-3′ of the proximal ALK3 promoter. By this it induces the expression of the renoprotective ALK3 during SWOP. The organ-protective effects of constitutively expressed ARNT during SWOP can be mimicked pharmacologically by administration of FK506 or GPI1046 and may be used as a future therapeutic target.


Educational buildings are one type of government asset that should be protected, and they play an important role as temporary communal meeting places for children, teachers and communities. In terms of management, schools need to emphasize fire safety for their buildings. It is well known that fires are not only a threat to the building's occupants, but also to the property and the school environment. A study on fire safety management has been carried out on schools that have recently experienced fires in Penang. From the study, it was found that the school buildings require further enhancement in terms of both active and passive fire protection systems. For instance, adequate fire extinguishers should be provided to the school and the management should inspect and maintain fire protection devices regularly. The most effective methods to increase the level of awareness on fire safety are by organizing related programs on the management of fire safety involving all staff, teachers and students, educational talks on the dangers of fire and important actions to take in the event of an emergency, and, lastly, to appoint particular staff to join the management safety team in schools.


Currently, mobile robots are developing rapidly and are finding numerous applications in the industry. However, several problems remain related to their practical use, such as the need for expensive hardware and high power consumption levels. In this study, we build a low-cost indoor mobile robot platform that does not include a LiDAR or a GPU. Then, we design an autonomous navigation architecture that guarantees real-time performance on our platform with an RGB-D camera and a low-end off-the-shelf single board computer. The overall system includes SLAM, global path planning, ground segmentation, and motion planning. The proposed ground segmentation approach extracts a traversability map from raw depth images for the safe driving of low-body mobile robots. We apply both rule-based and learning-based navigation policies using the traversability map. Running sensor data processing and other autonomous driving components simultaneously, our navigation policies perform rapidly at a refresh rate of 18 Hz for control command, whereas other systems have slower refresh rates. Our methods show better performances than current state-of-the-art navigation approaches within limited computation resources as shown in 3D simulation tests. In addition, we demonstrate the applicability of our mobile robot system through successful autonomous driving in an indoor environment.


Oil spill, a frequent pollution in the utilization of rivers, is receiving increasing attention in the study of river ecosystems. Taking the Zhuankou–Yangluo Reach (ZYR) of the Middle Yangtze River as an example, the spatial and temporal behaviors of leaked oil in the river under uniformly arranged piers with varying densities were studied based on a MIKE21 hydrodynamic and oil drift model. The results show that the oil spill spread is less affected by the piers when the upstream oil spill point is located on the other side of the shoreline with piers. However, the influence of the piers on the same shoreline of the oil spill point on oil spill transportation cannot be ignored. The piers significantly reduce the oil spill drift speed in the engineering area, resulting in a significant increase in slick retention time and slick area, especially when the density of piers is greater than 1.25 units/km. These results will provide useful reference for river management, for example, in the upstream river of the water conservation area, especially on the same bank as the water intake, where a large number of piers should not be built.


This research aims at producing interactive learning CD which is used in Science subject on animal and plant growth material grade IV. The method of this research uses Research and Development. The research and development process is adapted from research and development model by the version of Borg & Gall. This interactive learning CD is tested to students of elementary school grade IV. The test has three steps; they are initial field test with 10 students as subject, primary field test with 10 students, and field implementation test with 50 students. The data are obtained through observation and direct surveillance at school. The data analysis uses descriptive quantitative analysis technique. The development result is in the form of the interactive CD which can be used as a media in Science learning grade IV of Elementary School. The result of the research shows that this learning CD after the materials expert testing, media expert testing, and design expert testing, the learning media produced in the final materials testing stage is categorized as decent, with the assessment average of 93,3. In the stage of final media expert and learning design expert, the learning CD is categorized as felicitous, with the assessment average of 92,6. Then the final result of field implementation is categorized as felicitous with the score of 90. Moreover, in the effectivity test also emerged that the use of learning CD impacts on student's learning result. It can be concluded that the interactive learning CD on animal and plant growth materials for Science subject grade IV of Elementary School is declared as feasible and can be used as one of the learning sources.


An oil-free composition, notably a sunscreen composition comprises: a) at least one copolymer of styrene and acrylate, b) at least one solubilizing agent, solubilizing the copolymer of styrene and acrylate, wherein said solubilizing agent is selected from the group consisting of polyoxyalkylene ether of alkyl alcohols, polyalkylene glycols of saturated or unsaturated fatty acid, optionally hydrogenated, or a mixture thereof, and c) one or more UV-screening agents.


This study to obtain information on employee perceptions of the process, style and effectiveness of decision-making by the leadership at the Department of Dinas Pasar Kota Padang. This is a descriptive study. Total population of  respondents sample taken is 64% of the total population is 89 people. The technique used is Stratified Proportional Random Sampling Technique. Data collection tool used was a Likert scale. Thus it can be said that the employee perception of the Decision by the Dinas Pasar Kota Padang is performing quite well (3.57). Kunci : Kinerja Pegawai


Purpose The purpose of this article is to propose a strategy for ensuing simulation training following the implementation of a thorough Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety (TeamSTEPPS®) training initiative. The strategies include observing Teams in the workplace to facilitate the construction of organization-wide, follow-on simulation training. Design/methodology/approach A review of organizational change and instructional design practices is presented to facilitate TeamSTEPPS® to its fullest. This article serves as a continuation of steps to full implementation following an initial article introducing TeamSTEPPS® and a second article identifying the challenges and opportunities for success during preliminary organization-wide training. Findings TeamSTEPPS® is a patient safety tool developed by the U.S. Department of Defense that is based on four competencies. The TeamSTEPPS® competencies and simulation can be used to create a just culture, which is based on effective teamwork and communication. However, full implementation and facilitation of a just culture requires health care organizations to consider reinforcement and next steps in training, along with a new way of thinking about the use of observation and simulation to facilitate organizational change. Research limitations/implications The literature contains large gaps concerning full implementation of TeamSTEPPS®. Very little has been published on how to implement TeamSTEPPS® throughout a health care organization, particularly articles based on good instructional design and organizational change principles. These gaps can lead to piecemeal implementation of TeamSTEPPS® with few positive results for the organization. Originality/value Many organizations have implemented TeamSTEPPS®, but have not conducted follow-on training that uses direct observation, debriefing, and simulation to address or strengthen specific behaviors.


Its wide dynamic range makes the spectrum analyzer the test instrument of choice for measuring harmonic distortion, intermodulation distortion, adjacent channel power ratio, spurious-free dynamic range, gain compression, etc. Distortion measurements such as these are bounded on one side by the noise floor of the spectrum analyzer and on the other side by the signal power strength at which the spectrum analyzer's internally generated distortion masks the distortion being measured. The simultaneous low noise floor and low internally generated distortion products uniquely qualify the spectrum analyzer for making distortion measurements.


Java runtime frees applications from manual memory management through automatic garbage collection (GC). This, however, is usually at the cost of stop-the-world pauses. State-of-the-art collectors leverage multiple generations, which will inevitably suffer from a full GC phase scanning and compacting the whole heap. This induces a pause tens of times longer than normal collections, which largely affects both throughput and latency of applications. In this paper, we comprehensively analyze the full GC performance of the Parallel Scavenge garbage collector in HotSpot. We find that chain-like dependencies among heap regions cause low thread utilization and poor scalability. Furthermore, many heap regions are filled with live objects (referred to as dense regions), which are unnecessary to collect. To address these two problems, we provide , which contains two main optimizations: dynamically allocating shadow regions as compaction destinations to eliminate region dependencies and skipping dense regions to reduce GC workload. Evaluation results against the HotSpot JVM of OpenJDK 8/11 show that works on most benchmarks and leads to 5.6X/5.1X improvement at best in full GC throughput and thereby boost the application performance by up to 61.8%/49.0%.


In the paper, the authors find the best possible constants appeared in two inequalities for bounding the Seiffert mean by the linear combinations of the arithmetic, centroidal, and contra-harmonic means.


For investigating the effect of corn fiber feed on production performance in laying hens,in this experiment,500 240-days-old laying hens were randomly allotted to 5 treatments,with each treatment represented by 5 replicates of 20 birds each.Ⅰ to V groups experiment diets used 0,0.92%,1.84%,2.76% and 3.68%.Pre-feeding period was 7 days and the experiment lasted 60 days.The results indicated: ① Compared with the control group,there were no significant effect on the egg production rates,average egg weight,day-egg yields,feed conversion ratio and broken(soft) eggshell rates.V group decreased the day-feed intake by 5.48% significantly than the control group(P0.05).Ⅳ group decreased the mortality significantly by 87.5% compared with the control group(P0.05).② The apparent digestibility of CP of Ⅱ group was lower than the control group(P0.05),others were higher than the control group(P0.05).All the experiment groups were higher than the control group in the index of Ca,Ⅱ,Ⅲ and Ⅳ experiment groups were effective.The index of P were higher than the control group(P0.05).③ Every group increased the economic efficiency.


This article was crafted from data collected in Barcelona and Bali. The study uses an ethnographic approach to understand the everyday life of work teams of independent creative organisations and 'enterprising imaginative citizens' (Hjorth, 2013) engaged in relationally responsive future-making and, specifically, the idea of "food citizenship". The look is at spaces for work collaboration to foresee practical contributions in how creative narratives are conceived within open-source communities. Coupled relations steered by imagination and figurative language are demonstrated to inspire both changes in human behaviour, as well as playgrounds for civic action. Theoretical contributions on the dynamics of organisations put forth in Foucault's (1991) "spaces of possibility" are made.


Wireless sensor networks combine embedded computing technology,sensor and communication technology,can achieve the access and treatment of the information,and can finish the position of non-corporative target relying on other auxiliary position methods.The ranging technology of wireless sensor networks is the base of position,so in this paper,the two kinds of ranging technology,TOF and RSSI were deeply studied,and the ranging effect of the two methods in different range was compared,thus it could provide theoretic base for engineering application.


The purposes of this study were (1) by means of such a randomized controlled study to compare the effects of the guided tissue regeneration (GTR) procedure with conventional flap surgery (CFS) as a control treatment on the healing of deep intrabony and class II furcation defects, and (2) to determine factors affecting the clinical outcome of the GTR procedure using a multivariate approach.Sixty deep intrabony defects and 20 class II furcation defects were treated in 80 adult periodontitis patients aged from 35 to 60 years. After completion of initial therapy, those defects were assigned to either by a GTR or CFS procedure with matching age, gender, teeth and defect morphology. A postsurgery protocol emphasizing wound stability and infection control was used. Treatment effects were evaluated at 6 months and 1 year postsurgery.Both GTR and CFS for intrabony and furcation defects resulted in a clinically and statistically significant improvement in probing pocket depth (PPD), vertical and horizontal clinical attachm ent level (CAL-V, CAL-H), marginal tissue recession MTR) and radiographic bone loss (BL), at 6 months and 1 year postsurgery compared to baseline measurements. Moreover, there was a more favorable improvement in CAL-V, MTR and BL of the GTR group than in the CFS group at 6 months and 1 year postsurgery for intrabony defects. In addition, the GTR group showed greater improvement in CAL-H than CFS group at both 6 months and 1 year postsurgery for furcation defects. When multivariate analysis assessing the significance of the tested factors in determining the healing outcomes following GTR procedure was performed for intrabony defects, PPD at baseline was of predictive value for vertical clinical attachment gain (CAL-V gain) at 6 months postsurgery, and CAL-V gain and MTR at 6 months postsurgery were of predictive values for CAL-V gain at 1 year postsurgery. BL at baseline and at 6 months postsurgery was also of predictive value for bone fill at 6 months and 1 year postsurgery, respectively. In furcation defects, CAL-H and MTR at baseline were predictive values for horizontal clinical attachment gain (CAL-H gain) at 6 months postsurgery, and CAL-H gain at 6 months postsurgery was of predictive value for CAL-H gain at 1 year postsurgery.These findings suggest that initial PPD and BL in intrabony defects, and initial CAL-H in class II furcation defects might be useful in assessing the regenerative potential of a given site and the degree could be predictive values for a follow-up in tissue of improvement as early as 6 months postsurgery regeneration.


This article deals with the intermodal transportation problem for the commodities delivery between different locations. The time – dependent shortest path planning, in which the travel time along each arc is a known function of the departure time along the arc, is a very important problem and arises in many practical application such as a routing system of a container used in the time – dependent intermodal transportation. Given a fixed timetable of the bi – intermodal transportation network (using trucks and trains ), this article proposes a genetic algorithm – based method to route a container from a source to destination such that the total transportation time between these nodes to be minimum.


The bounded abrasive finishing process, known as the pellets grinding, is a technique that allows the surface treatment of optical components by the removing of the macro geometrical defects and the surface preparation for polishing. Several technological parameters can influence the grinding effectiveness and obtained surface quality, in this case the wear of the abrasive grain forming the pellets and the elaboration parameters. Consequently, a study of the pellets abrasive grains wear and the influence of the preparation conditions is required to quantify their influence on the grinding process. In this study, grinding pellets containing alumina abrasive grains were prepared with different conditions. After employs of the grinding pellets, the abrasive grains were recovered and their wear was investigated. Several techniques of optical and electron microscopy and other techniques of powder metallurgy were used. The results led to conclude that the abrasive powders undergo low wear during a grinding phase. In addition, the preparation parameters can influence the pellet wear, however only the compaction pressure can cause fracture of the grains during the pellets forming and thus influences their wear. Keys words: Alumina, Grinding, Pellets, abrasive wear


The dynamic aperture of the proton beam circulating in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to be limited by up to 120 long-range beam-beam encounters. In order to perfectly compensate the LHC long-range beambeam effect for nominal as well as for so-called 'PACMAN' bunches, i.e. bunches at the start or end of a bunch train, the strength of a wire compensator should be adjusted for each bunch individually. Here an RF-based compensator is proposed as a practical solution for the PACMAN compensation. We show that this approach also allows relaxing the power and precision requirements compared with those of a pulsed DC device, to a level within the state-of-the-art of RF technology. Furthermore it permits the use of a passive circulator in the tunnel close to the beam and thus a significant reduction of the transmission line length and of the associated multiple reflections. Simulations of dynamic aperture and emittance growth, issues related to RF phase noise, and first experimental results from laboratory models are presented.


Big Story argues that the American news media gave the public a basically false picture of the Tet offensive. Peter Braestrup attempts to show that the news media overreacted to the Tet crisis and presented it as a disaster for the U.S., when in fact it was a defeat for North Vietnam and the NLF. Braestrup was himself a Vietnam correspondent for the Washington Post during Tet, and the strengths and weaknesses of Big Story are in many ways parallel to those of the news media he is writing about. As a gatherer of facts, Braestrup is thorough indeed. Big Story is based on extensive interviewing and a reading of almost the entire Tet coverage of the AP and UPI, the television networks, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time and Newsweek. However, Braestrup's analysis has serious flaws. Braestrup's basic observation about media content is correct: the news media did indeed present the Tet offensive as a failure of U.S. policy in Vietnam. But his style is so unremittingly contentious that Braestrup seriously overstates his points. With each example he lets his readers know he is scoring a point, and he often presents the "exceptions" with the same triumphant tone, as though they somehow proved his argument as well ("CBS managed . . . without.. .")• If one reads Braestrup's material carefully, one sees that it is often so mixed that his simple characterizations are clearly inadequate. Braestrup's major criticism of the news media also contains a kernel of truth. The thesis that Tet was, at least militarily, a defeat for North Vietnam and the NLF is more plausible than most people realize, and the media did often make sweeping statements about the significance of Tet and presented dramatic incidents as though they somehow contained the "meaning" of Tet in microcosm, all with little solid analysis to back them up. But Braestrup himself treats complex questions of historical interpretation as though they were as simple as getting it straight whether the NLF did or did not actually enter the U.S. Embassy building on the first day of the offensive, "There is fairly broad agreement among historians today," Braestrup maintains, "that Hanoi suffered a military setback in the 1968 Tet offensive" (p. 119). But historians have barely begun to scratch the surface of the Vietnam war, and Braestrup does not cite a single historian to this effect. When historians do begin to analyze the Vietnam war, it seems likely that there will be disagreement about whether the question of "who won" the Tet offensive is even an important one to ask. After all, the U.S. was always able to kill more of the "enemy," hold any territory it chose, and keep the initiative militarily, yet North Vietnam and the NLF always seemed capable, politically and militarily, of continuing the struggle. Braestrup criticizes the media for getting the "score" wrong; it never occurs to him to question whether "scorekeeping" (which was always a top priority for the media) could really give people an adequate understanding of the Vietnam war.


Engagement is a multifaceted concept that has attracted recent attention by researchers both in Australia and internationally (Attard, 2012; Chan, Baker, Slee, & Williamson, 2015). For many years mathematics education has been seen as boring and dull, and students have disengaged from a relatively early age in learning and participating in mathematics (Grootenboer & Marshman, 2016). Therefore, there seems to be an imperative for research and action into this issue, as low levels of engagement among school students can put them at risk of decreased participation and, ultimately, low levels of academic achievement (Fredrick et al, 2004). It is evident that there are three types of engagement consistent across the literature; emotional, behavioural, and cognitive. However, it appears that there are no existing data collection instruments that specifically focus on capturing student engagement in mathematics. Thus, some tools have been designed that derive specifically from the theoretical framework on engagement with the aim of being theoretically robust, conceptually relevant, and practically manageable.


The seven-co-ordinate complex, [HMo(C2H4)2-(cis-Ph2PCHCHPPh2)]+, is pentagonal bipyramidal both in solution and in the solid state, and undergoes internal rearrangement by a pseudo-rotation process.


Information quality is critical for any business. It is particularly important for mission critical information systems that manage the lifecycle of an engineering asset. Quality of information or lack thereof in these systems can be traced to technical, organisation, as well as human sources. It is, therefore, extremely important to ascertain the causes that contribute to lack of information quality in asset lifecycle management systems. Depending upon the business area, organisations take proactive or reactive approach to establishing, maintaining, and enhancing their information quality. Among proactive approaches, the ability of the organisation to measure information quality dimensions forms the foundation of a solid information quality management initiative. Such a measurement, however, is an intricate task because these dimensions are subjective, can be context dependent as well as independent, and are interdependent, since each dimension impacts other dimensions. This research employs productive perspective to information and applies Six-Sigma methodology to assess its quality in information systems utilised to manage engineering asset lifecycle. It utilises analytical hierarchy process and quality function deployment to convert subjective information quality dimension into objective metrics, assesses the relationship between various information quality dimensions, and ascertains critical to quality factors. The results thus obtained form the basis for monitoring of information quality aimed at its continuous improvement. This study contributes to literature and practice by providing a method for assessing correlation of information quality dimensions, applying six sigma to information, and controlling quality of information. Sang Hyun Lee University of South Australia, Australia Abrar Haider University of South Australia, Australia DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-4892-0.ch007


A variety of benign and malignant neoplasms arise in the kidneys of adults and children. With the advancement in the recognition of newer variants and wide spectrum of appearances of these tumours especially of nephroblastoma and renal cell carcinoma, the diagnostic accuracy and assessment of critical prognostic indicators for these tumours pose challenges to the surgical pathologists. The present spurt of interest in grading the tumours on morphological and histological criteria and correlating them with AGNOR counts and to the clinical outcome in terms of survival rates is mainly attributable to the recent innovations in surgical and medical oncology. In the present study each of the renal tumour samples were subjected to an argyrophilic staining for the nucleolar organizer region according to the modified colloidal silver technique. In Grade I, II & III renal carcinoma cases the AgNOR index was 0.875, 1.301, and 1.710 respectively. It has been observed that mean AgNOR indices are directly proportional to grading. i.e., with increased grades the mean AgNOR count also increased and can be used for assessing the clinical outcome and prognosis of the cases. The mean AgNOR scores in epithelial, mesenchymal, blastemal areas for all cases of Wilms' tumour were 4.46, 4.82, and 5.76 respectively. Based on the mean AgNOR score it has been found that blastemal areas have higher score than mesenchymal and epithelial areas. The increased score in blastemal areas can be attributed to increased proliferative activity of the tumour. Prognostication is the most important contribution of the medical scientist to the suffering patient. The AgNOR scoring as a prognostic index helps the clinician in this.


Primates use social grooming to create and maintain coalitions. Because of this, individuals focus their time on a small number of individuals, and this means that in many cases group networks are not fully connected. I use data on primate grooming networks to show that three different social grades can be differentiated in terms of network structuring. These grades seem to arise from a glass ceiling imposed on group size by limits on the time available for social grooming. It seems that certain genera have managed to circumvent this constraint by a phase shift in the behavioural and cognitive mechanisms that underpin social relationships in a way that allows a form of multilevel sociality based on weak and strong ties not unlike those found in human social networks.


Scanned cw laser beams at different scan velocities from 10 to 400 cm/s have been used to study the interaction of thin metal films of molybdenum deposited by electron beam evaporation with single‐crystal silicon substrate. Backscattering technique has been used to investigate the growth mechanism of hexagonal silicide MoSi2 as a function of the number of repetitive laser scans. Silicide layers are found to grow at a rate proportional to the square root of the effective annealing time in the whole range of scan velocities. Effective annealing temperatures are calculated for each laser annealing condition, and from an Arrhenius plot a mean value of activation energy for MoSi2 growth is estimated.


We design various silicon nanowire embedded photonic crystal fibers (SN-PCFs) with different core geometries, namely, circular, rectangular and elliptical using finite element method. Further, we study the optical properties such as group velocity dispersion (GVD), third order dispersion (TOD) of x and y-polarized modes and effective nonlinearity for a wavelength range from 0.8 to 1.6 μm. The proposed structure exhibits almost flat GVD (0.8 to 1.2 μm wavelength), zero GVD (≈ 1.31 μm) and small TOD (0.00069 ps3/m) at 1.1 μm wavelength and high nonlinearity (2916 W-1m-1) at 0.8 μm wavelength for a 300 nm core diameter of circular core SN-PCF. Besides, we have been able to demonstrate the supercontinuum for the different core geometries at 1.3 μm wavelength with a less input power of 25 W for the input pulse of 20 fs. The numerical simulation results reveal that the proposed circular core SN-PCF could generate the supercontinuum of wider bandwidth (900 nm) compared to that from rest of the geometries. This enhanced bandwidth turns out to be a boon for optical coherence tomography (OCT) system.


Utilizing the harmonic state assessment technology to locate harmonic source is put forward as people attaching importance to harmonic problems. This method has the overall observability, which is suitable for application in the actual system. In this paper, firstly, the conception and mathematical descriptions of harmonic state assessment technology is introduced, then several current harmonic state assessment methods to locate harmonic source are summarized and reviewed. Lastly, this paper proposes several problems to be solved for using harmonic state assessment to locate harmonic source in the future.


Abstract : It has been observed that black powder made from ingredients of the same lot and fabricated using the same manufacturing procedure results in material exhibiting different burning rates. The current study was undertaken to determine if the physical properties of black powder affected burning rate and established if these properties varied from one production batch to another. Physical properties of black powder were measured including surface area, pore size distribution, and internal free volume. Black powder derived from oak and maple charcoals was compared, and the effects of processing the material by a jet mill or ball mill were contrasted. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that applied pressure, a manufacturing step used in making black powder, induced considerable plastic flow that resulted in a fused conglomerate, cohesive mass containing interconnecting passageways of about 0.1 micron diameter. Density, free volume, and surface area were found to be functions of burning rate. Based on these relationships, the conclusion was offered that the degree of openness of a grain of black powder is a significant factor affecting its burning rate.


The ability to anticipate how another individual will behave is a critical skill in the animal kingdom. Humans typically deal with this problem using their Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e. the ability to decipher beliefs and intentions of others. Although non-human primates (apes in particular) exhibit elaborate social behavior, there is no established consensus on whether this mirrors some form of sophisticated ToM. We suggest that ToM sophistication can be operationally defined in terms of the depth of recursive beliefs, as in "I think that you think that I think...". Importantly, mutual social interactions may call for highly recursive beliefs: not only do I think that you think, but I also think that you think that I think... This study aims at comparing how primate species (including humans) differ with respect to this form of ToM sophistication. The main novelty of our experimental approach is to estimate each primate's ToM sophistication from its performance in repeated interactive games that are calibrated using information theoretic models of (artificial) recursive ToM. We first validated our model in human subjects and then tested 6 species of captive non-human primates (3 species of great apes: orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and 3 species of old-world monkeys: lion-tailed macaques, rhesus macaques and collared mangabeys) in an adaptation of the task used in the human study. Our paradigm consisted in a "hide and seek" game in which individuals played against a human opponent (a familiar zoo keeper). In each trial, the individual had to infer where food had been hidden by the experimenter opponent (either in his right or left hand). In fact, the location of the food was chosen by learning algorithms, some of which endowed with artificial ToM. Critically, we varied the sophistication of these algorithms, yielding three conditions, ranging from a control (a simple random biased sequence) to a mildly sophisticated ToM agent (1-ToM). The profile of primates' performances against the different algorithms was then used to infer their ToM sophistication. Preliminary results show that the pattern of performance of nonhuman primates differ from those of humans. Although most nonhuman primates tended to win in the control condition, they lost against the 1-ToM agent, in contrast to the human group (that won). Surprisingly, comparing the performances between the non-human primates' species did not reveal any significant inter-species difference. Therefore, great apes did not perform better than monkeys in our task. Interestingly, variability in the performances actually seems more to rely on inter-individual differences rather than on inter-species differences. Moreover, in every species, at least one individual exhibited mild (but statistically significant) ToM sophistication. Taken together, these data indicate that the distribution of ToM sophistication within each of these non-human primate species is quite heterogeneous. Further analyses are in progress to identify predictive factors (e.g. familiarity with humans, age, motivation and frustration during the game) that could explain away inter-individual differences, thus eventually revealing (or not) inter‑species differences [Authors Aurore San‑Galli and Marie Devaine contributed equally to this work].


14 Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the form of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 –eq) from 15 two Western Australian finfish supply chains, from harvest to retail outlet, were measured 16 using streamlined life cycle assessment methodology. The identification of interventions to 17 potentially reduce the GHG emissions was determined from the results obtained. Electricity 18 consumption contributes to the highest GHG emissions within the supply chains measured, 19 followed by refrigeration gas leakage and disposal of unused fish portions. Potential cleaner 20 production strategies (CPS) to reduce these impacts include installing solar panels, recycling 21 the waste, good housekeeping in refrigeration equipment maintenance, and input substitution 22 of refrigeration gas. The results show a combination of these strategies have the potential to 23 reduce up to 39% of the total GHG emissions from fillet harvest, processing and retail. 24


The impulse reflection of a semiburied object is strongly complicated due to a multipath channel effect in a shallow‐water environment, and usually also mixed with unavoidable bottom reverberation. An efficient method of signal processing in order to obtain necessary characteristics of the object, which can be used for object identification, is discussed, and several experimental examples are given.


IMPORTANCE: Interhospital transfer (IHT) remains a largely unstudied process of care. OBJECTIVE: To determine the nationwide frequency of, patient and hospital‐level predictors of, and hospital variability in IHT. DESIGN: Cross‐sectional study. SETTING: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid 2013 100% Master Beneficiary Summary and Inpatient claims files merged with 2013 American Hospital Association data. PATIENTS: Beneficiaries ≥65 years and older enrolled in Medicare A and B, with an acute care hospitalization claim in 2013. EXPOSURES: Patient and hospital characteristics of transferred and nontransferred patients. MEASUREMENTS: Frequency of interhospital transfers (IHT); adjusted odds of transfer of each patient and each hospital characteristic; and variability in hospital transfer rates. RESULTS: Of 6.6 million eligible beneficiaries with an acute care hospitalization, 101,507 (1.5%) underwent IHT. Selected characteristics associated with greater adjusted odds of transfer included: patient age 74‐85 years (odds ratio [OR], 2.38 compared with 65‐74 years; 95% confidence intervals [CI], 2.33‐2.43); nonblack race (OR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.13‐1.20); higher comorbidity (OR, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.36‐1.37); lower diagnosis‐related group‐weight (OR, 2.02; 95% CI, 1.95‐2.09); fewer recent hospitalizations (OR, 1.87; 95% CI, 1.79‐1.95); and hospitalization in the Northeast (OR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.27‐1.55). Higher case mix index of the hospital was associated with a lower adjusted odds of transfer (OR, 0.36; 95% CI, 0.30‐0.45). Variability in hospital transfer rates remained significant after adjustment for patient and hospital characteristics (variance 0.28, P = 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: In this nationally representative evaluation, we found that a sizable number of patients undergo IHT. We identified both expected and unexpected patient and hospital‐level predictors of IHT, as well as unexplained variability in hospital transfer rates, suggesting lack of standardization of this complex care transition. Our study highlights further investigative avenues to help guide best practices in IHT.


To investigate the influences of wheelset misalignment on running safety of railway vehicles,a dynamic vehicle model with wheelset misalignment was set up.As an example of a high-speed train running on the tangent track,the influences of wheelset misalignment on running safety was analyzed by simulation.Analysis result shows that the influence of the parallelism error is significant,so that much care is necessary during installation;and that of the diagonal error is much less significant.


We obtain the central limit theorem for fluctuations of Young diagrams around their limit shape in the bulk of the 'spectrum' of partitions λ⊢n∈ (under the Plancherel measure), thus settling a long-standing problem posed by Logan & Shepp. Namely, under normalization growing like , the corresponding random process in the bulk is shown to converge, in the sense of finite-dimensional distributions, to a Gaussian process with independent values, while local correlations in the vicinity of each point, measured on various power scales, possess certain self-similarity. The proofs are based on the Poissonization techniques and use Costin–Lebowitz–Soshnikov's central limit theorem for determinantal random point processes. Our results admit a striking reformulation after the rotation of Young diagrams by 45°, whereby the normalization no longer depends on the location in the spectrum. In addition, we explain heuristically the link with an earlier result by Kerov on the convergence to a generalized Gaussian process.


Today, administrative systems, global systems that are their main task is to build relationships and improve communication. Communication of commercial information is important and your organization's survival and continued their activities with these organizations to competitive information age, communication tools, ie information systems and information technology. Inthe 1960s that more aspects of the application and the administrative and commercial activities beganto spread, despite the huge volume of information that an integrated system of appropriate administrative, include correspondence was clearly felt. This article discusses the different world of office automation systems to express the importance of information and information systems, development and evolution of information systems and office automation systems and ergonomic advantages and disadvantages of office automation and office automation system deals with different types of information systems is After analyzing the questionnaires, the final criteria were identified and a second questionnaire was prepared including tables of comparative data from Zhu Jandits criteri aforrating criteria were used. The AHP method, the results in dicate that the general features of the system, system management, facilities list, Dash boards, editable in the Editor, scanning and archiving is important in choosing the best office automations of tware.


Program design has been increasing significantly due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence and big data, which renders our need for highly qualified programmers extremely urgent. The traditional teaching mode is rigid, in which teachers mainly teach and students only use the examples given in class to further enhance their study. Therefore, besides an examination paper being crucial, it also greatly hinders the advance and development of students' innovative and practical ideas and skills. In this paper, we propose a new teaching mode of multi-mode assessment program design course that aims to solve these problems based on case scenario. More concretely, we put students in a real industrial field environment, and they simulate the actual scene and make corresponding feedback plan. In this way, we form a set of teaching process with students as the main body, teachers' and students' multi-stage mutual evaluation as the standard around the case scenario. In general, it is proved that this teaching mode can improve students' self-learning ability, teamwork awareness and innovative ability by the teaching practice of advanced program design course.


Use of the hesperidin compound or one of its derivatives selected from hesperitin, a methyl-hesperidine, a conjugate of hesperitin and sulfate or glucuronide and the alpha-glucosyl-hesperidine containing a chain of 1 to 20 glucose residues linked between yes by means of a 1,4 link, the chain of glucose residues being linked in turn by a type 1,4 link in position 4 of the rest of the hesperidin glucose, as an active compound in the stimulation of bone formation and / or in the inhibition of bone resorption, for the preparation of a composition intended to stimulate bone formation and / or inhibit bone resorption in humans or animals.


This article deals with the album recorded by Colombian pianist Blanca Uribe on the Iberia Suite by Isaac Albéniz, with which she received the Albéniz Medal in Camprodón (Spain) and which shows the highest musical level, commitment and respect for one of the most emblematic works of Spanish music and perhaps one of the most difficult in the piano repertoire of all time. It is the written recognition of a lifetime dedicated to the piano and its artistic consequences, which, through this interview, recalls the long road traveled by an interpreter and a great masterpiece of the piano literature. Palabras clave: Iberia, piano, música española, técnica pianística, grabación. Tomado de: http://www.senalmemoria.gov.co/index.php/caratulas-2012/item/543-pianistas-delsiglo-xx-mujeres-brillantes-desde-la-periferia


: Thyristor-controlled series capacitor (TCSC) characteristic curves of fundamental frequency impedance change with line current considering thyristor conduction characteristic, which results in experimental deviation when using the open-loop impedance control. To end this, this study derives the TCSC fundamental frequency impedance mathematic model to reveal the theoretical mechanism that fundamental frequency impedance changes with line currents. This study proposes two new look-up table approaches to mitigate deviation of the least square look-up table approach using the three-point quadratic interpolation and linear interpolation algorithms. The proposed methods have been validated via TCSC physical simulation experiments.


The Asymmetric Planetary Nebulae conference series, now in its sixth edition, aims to resolve the shaping mechanism of PN. Eighty per cent of PN have non spherical shapes and there is no self-consistent single star model to explain them. During this conference the last nails in the coffin of single stars models for non spherical PN have been put. Binary theories abound but observational tests are lagging. The highlight of APN6 has been the arrival of ALMA which allowed us to measure magnetic fields on AGB stars systematically. AGB star halos, some with the imprint of spiral patterns, are now connected to PPN and PN halos. New models give us hope that binary parameters may be decoded from these images. In the post-AGB and pre-PN evolutionary phase the naked post-AGB stars present us with an increasingly curious puzzle as complexity is added to the phenomenologies of objects in transition between the AGB and the central star regimes. Binary central stars continue to be detected, including the first detection of binaries with periods longer than a few days. However the PN binary fraction is still at large. Hydro models of binary interactions still fail to give us results, if we make an exception for the wider types of binary interactions. More promise is shown by analytical considerations and models driven by simpler, 1D simulations such as those carried out with the code MESA. Large community efforts have given us more homogeneous datasets which will yield results for years to come. Examples are the ChanPlaN and HerPlaNe collaborations that have been working with the Chandra and Herschel space telescopes, respectively. Finally, the new kid in town is the intermediate-luminosity optical transient, a new class of events that may have contributed to forming several peculiar PN and pre-PN.


During the last three years trolley-wire contact-wire techniques applied to lines carrying 120/130 km/h traffic, consistent stiffness having been achieved by simple suspension innovation and trials at 140 km/h show equal promise.


Many microgravity space-science experiments require vibratory acceleration levels unachievable without active isolation. The Boeing Corporation's Active Rack Isolation System (ARIS) addresses these isolation requirements on the International Space Station (ISS) at the rack level. Effective model-based vibration isolation requires: an appropriate isolation device; an adequate dynamical model of that isolator; and a suitable, corresponding controller. ARIS provides the ISS response to the first requirement. This paper presents the use of 'Kane's Dynamics' to develop a state-space, analytical (algebraic) set of linearised equations of motion meeting the second requirement, for use in addressing the third via optimal controller design.


A numerical simulation of a coaxial jet diffusion e ame with steam addition was performed by using an overall one-step chemical reaction. The effect of steam addition on the combustion characteristics, especially the effects of steam addition method on the decrease in the e ame temperature, was examined. The results assist in better understanding theeffectsofsteam additiononNO x reductionincoaxialjetdiffusione ame.Thee amestructureand the effects of the steam addition are found to be similar to the results of the countere ow diffusion e ame, simulated by meansof a detailed elementary chemical kinetics. The applicability of thelaminare ameletmodel forprediction of the local and occasional e ame structure in the turbulent jet e ame with steam addition has been considered.


According to the characteristics of knowledge in the computer field, in this paper, taking computer network course as an example, we design a Chinese question answering system against this course based on frequently-asked question (FAQ). The system mainly focuses on the construction of domain knowledge, question comprehension, sentence similarity calculation method and so on. In the construction of domain knowledge base section, we design the curriculum knowledge table structure, the means of FAQ storage and the preprocessing of FAQ, in question comprehension part, we mainly discuss Chinese word segmentation, keyword extraction and expansion, problem classification methods etc, in sentence similarity calculation part, we adopt semantic based similarity calculation method.


Objective: To report the uncommon association between neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and unroofed coronary sinus. Case description: Girl with four years and ...


OBJECTIVE To describe the infection of brucellosis in different population and determine the population at high-risk in non-epidemic area.METHODS Investigated the sheep from the main sources,mutton business men and sheep feeders,spot-checked randomly pig butchers.Selected and surveyed a general adult population according to geographical orientation(east,south,west,north and middle)of Yixing.Screened with RBPT,then tested Brucella antibody in positive people with SAT.RESULTS No infection of brucellosis was detected and diagnosed among general population and pig butchers.The infection rate of the workers in mutton trading markets was 6.82%.CONCLUSION Brucellosis in Yixing is caused by input of infected sheep,the mutton trading markets are epidemic spots with relatively high incidence and potential risk of brucellosis infection.Surveillance and management in the mutton trading markets should be enhanced,the workers should be educated,and intervention measures should be taken to control the spread of brucellosis.


Let (M^3+k, T) be an involution on a closed manifold such that its fixed point set is L^1 (p).In this paper, we determine the existence of (M^3+k, T) and give the equivariant bordism classification of such involutions.


An animation of a deformable surface with fixed topology is formed by a set of connected points (particles), which follow a trajectory over time. The transmission of such an animation is a task that consumes large amounts of bandwidth, as the position of each particle, in each time instant, needs to be transmitted. We propose a wavelet based compression and streaming mechanism that allows the minimization of the size of the animation data, hence decreasing the total transmission time. The proposed transmission scheme, based on the time-localized feature of the wavelet transform, will be able to stream the animation so that a receiver can immediately view the fraction of the animation received, while wavelet coefficients are still arriving.


In this paper, dangerous source of gas stations was identified by LEC method. Through reviewing literature and relevant information, carrying out field research, consulting experts and combining the features of LNG filling stations, a safety evaluation index system was established. Based on the analytic hierarchy process, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation was made to get its safety level and put forward corresponding security measures.


The basic requirement and corresponding measures for developing water-saving irrigation in the new rural reconstruction are introduced in this paper.


A fermentative hydrogen-producing strain KTSMBNL-01 was isolated from the sewage sludge and identified as Enterobacter sp. on the basis of the biochemical characteristics and 16S rRNA gene analysis. The optimization of batch conditions for the production of hydrogen by Enterobacter sp. was investigated. Various parameters namely initial pH, temperature and substrate concentrations were varied for hydrogen production. Maximum hydrogen yield (0.86 mol/mol G) and cell growth (1.59 g/L) was obtained at pH 7.0 and at 37 °C. The strain was capable of producing hydrogen in the presence glucose, fructose, xylose, maltose, lactose, cellulose and starch, where the best results revealed with glucose. This study showed that Enterobacter sp. can efficiently produce H2 and it is a one more model microorganism for biohydrogen production.


Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) is an emerging multiple access technique for multi-antenna networks that splits messages into common and private parts for flexible interference mitigation. Motivated by its robustness and scalability, it is promising to employ RSMA in integrated satellite-terrestrial networks (ISTN), where a satellite serves satellite users (SUs) broadly with a multibeam multicast transmission while terrestrial base station (BS) serves cellular users (CUs) with a unicast transmission, operating in the same frequency band. To avoid the data exchange between satellite/cellular networks via backhaul, we assume a coordinated ISTN relying on imperfect channel state information. We put forth a coordinated RSMA framework tailored to the coordinated ISTN by applying inter-network rate-splitting (RS) with a super-common message on top of intra-network RS with common/private messages. With the unified RS design for inter- and intra-networks, we jointly optimize the precoding and power allocation of the private/common/super-common messages to achieve max-min fairness among all SUs and CUs through successive convex approximation. By doing so, the power of the super-common message can be adjusted according to interference levels of the satellite towards CUs, thereby potentially mitigating inter-network interference. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority and robustness of our approach to cope with various interference and propagation conditions.


Background Individuals with physical comorbidities and polypharmacy may be at higher risk of depression relapse, however, they are not included in the 'high risk of relapse' group for whom longer antidepressant treatment durations are recommended. Aims In individuals with comorbid depression and type 2 diabetes (T2DM), we aimed to investigate the association and interaction between depression relapse and (a) polypharmacy, (b) previous duration of antidepressant treatment. Method This was a cohort study using primary care data from the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD) from years 2000 to 2018. We used Cox regression models with penalised B-splines to describe the association between restarting antidepressants and our two exposures. Results We identified 48 001 individuals with comorbid depression and T2DM, who started and discontinued antidepressant treatment during follow-up. Within 1 year of antidepressant discontinuation, 35% of participants restarted treatment indicating depression relapse. As polypharmacy increased, the rate of restarting antidepressants increased until a maximum of 18 concurrent medications, where individuals were more than twice as likely to restart antidepressants (hazard ratio (HR) = 2.15, 95% CI 1.32–3.51). As the duration of previous antidepressant treatment increased, the rate of restarting antidepressants increased – individuals with a previous duration of ≥25 months were more than twice as likely to restart antidepressants than those who previously discontinued in <7 months (HR = 2.36, 95% CI 2.25–2.48). We found no interaction between polypharmacy and previous antidepressant duration. Conclusions Polypharmacy and longer durations of previous antidepressant treatment may be associated with depression relapse following the discontinuation of antidepressant treatment.


Speaker Recognition is one of current researching hotspots of speech signal processing, which has many advantaged superiority at identity authentication field. The text-dependent speaker recognition method was presented, in which taking mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCC) and its first order differentiation as characteristic parameters, adopting vector quantization (VQ) to build template. This simpler and reliable method and its certain practicability on identity authentication of safe-precaution for intelligent house were proved by experiments.


Large-scale disaster response is a global issue. Planners must make effective logistics plans to deliver vital first-aid resources (e.g., medicine, food, clothing, machinery) to affected areas from all over the world. Furthermore, planners must consider surging demand and uncertain transportation situations. To explain the efficiency of distribution plans, this study addresses the resource allocation effectiveness losses, which are the losses caused by the mismatch between supply and demand in affected areas, and the emergency logistics time losses, which are the time losses caused by logistics processes under emergency conditions. A two-stage scheduling method is then proposed that considers random demand and travel time. In consideration of the incompleteness or lack of information in real situations, the scheduling method with Bayesian information updates is proposed by assuming that demand and transportation uncertainty are represented by population transfer rate (PTR) and road affected level (RAL), respectively. Next, a simulation study on Wenchuan earthquake response is conducted to illustrate the proposed method. Finally, the insights derived from the study are provided in the conclusion.


The paper describes initial efforts on creating a system for the automatic assessment of Swedish second language (L2) learner essays from two points of view: holistic evaluation of the reached level according to the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), and the lexical analysis of texts for receptive and productive vocabulary per CEFR level. We describe the data and resources that our experiments were based on, provide a short introduction to the algorithm for essay classification and experiment results, present the user interface we developed for testing new essays, and outline future work.


The System of Soil Fertility Control covers all factors determining soil fertility as well as the measures for soil fertility improvement. Its objective is to ensure high and stable crop production taking into account production economy and environmental protection. In the period of last 15 years, the System was insufficiently exploited in the agricultural production. With the intention of refreshing the interest of the professional public in soil analysis, an integral element of the System, a campaign has been conducted in the course of 2002 and 2003 in which soil analyses were done free of charge for private farmers. More than 27,000 soil samples were analyzed in the two years. Soil analyses covered pH and the contents of CaCO3, humus, available phosphorus and available potassium. Over 80% of the samples came from production fields, about 10% were from orchards and the remaining part were from greenhouses, vineyards, pastures, etc. Most of the samples belonged to neutral and slightly alkaline soils (about 90%). Although most of the samples were rich in humus, it remains as a matter of concern that almost one half of the samples were poor in humus. Roughly a sixth of the samples had low phosphorus contents. On the other side, about 10% of the samples had high or even toxic phosphorus contents. This situation was encountered in greenhouses and fields devoted to intensive vegetable production. The obtained potassium contents were within the range of optimum values for agricultural production. Soil analysis makes room for a more economic application of fertilizers in agricultural production.


The present study used a DSI pressure telemetry device to develop a system for servo‐control of renal perfusion pressure (RPP). Digitized pressure signals from lower abdominal aorta, reflecting RPP, is obtained by a DSI system and dynamically exported into Excel worksheet every 15s. A Digital Data Exchange program continuously reads the pressure data from Excel and inputs them into LabVIEW, an instrument control program. LabVIEW compares the pressure data with preset pressure values and then drives a bi‐directional syringe pump, which controls the inflation of an inflatable vascular occluder implanted round the aorta above the renal artery. In this way, the RPP can be servo‐controlled within desired range no matter what the systemic arterial pressure (SAP) is. In neropinephrine or angiotensin II‐induced acute increases in SAP (115–145 mmHg), this system was able to control RPP at a constant range of 100 – 110 mmHg within 0.5–1 min. In high salt‐induced chronic hypertension in Dahl S rats, this system maintained RPP at 110 – 120 mmHg over 14 days, while SAP was 150 ± 5.9 mmHg. This system also has ability of simultaneity and multiplexing to control multiple animals concurrently. Our results suggest that this is an effective and reliable system to servo‐control RPP in rats, which can be established with general computer knowledge due to user‐friendly LabVIEW. (Supported by NIH grants HL70726, DK54927 and HL89563)


Radiata pine was introduced to New Zealand from the USA in 1900s .With New Zealand peoples striving efforts , a complete industrialization system including breeding , management and processing was established , which set a good example in the world .The procedures and experience of radiata pine industry were introduced , especially its intensive cultivation , processing and utilizing .China should learn experience from New Zealand to develop plantation industry to protect natural forests and improve benefits of forestry industry .[ Ch , 6 ref .]


The invention discloses a uniform circular array direction-finder antenna receiving mutual impedance test and a mutual coupling compensation system. A method for achieving the system comprises receiving a mutual impedance model building unit, obtaining an antenna port voltage unit under array element mutual coupling, obtaining an antenna port voltage unit under non-array-element mutual coupling, building a mutual coupling voltage array unit, building a mutual coupling current array unit and building a uniform circular array receiving mutual impedance array unit. The uniform circular array direction-finder antenna receiving mutual impedance test obtains all antenna port voltage under array element mutual coupling effects and antenna port voltage after removing the mutual coupling effects by setting one horizontal wave incoming direction, and a uniform circular array receiving mutual impedance array is built according to a receiving mutual impedance theory. When direction-finding equipment works, the uniform circular array receiving mutual impedance array conducts mutual coupling compensation on a direction-finder terminal processing machine while meeting work frequency points, and accordingly direction showing degree output by the direction-finding equipment is accurate.


In view of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic, the following document has been developed by the Latin American Association of Paediatric Dentistry ALOP, in a collaborative and voluntary manner, carrying out the curatorship of the scientific information available up to the date of its elaboration.
The aim of this document is to provide technical guidance to paediatric dentists and dentists who treat mothers and children, specifically pregnant women and babies, to enable them to make informed decisions regarding screening, pre-care assessment and appropriate dental care during the COVID-19 pandemic, optimising the quality of care and minimising the risk of transmission of coronavirus between patients and the dental team carrying out the treatment.
It should be noted that this information is based on the best possible recommendations and can change rapidly, so we urge professionals to follow up on updates to this document. Likewise, many questions will remain unanswered, due to the fact that the articles available are not following the usual protocols for carrying them out, some are based on very low casuistry, others indicate a lack of verification or times that are too fast to achieve reliable results.


Electric vehicles, which are in high demand these days, emit no talipipe emissions, significantly reducing smog and greenhouse gas emissions. Electric vehicles use electricity to recharge their batteries rather than fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel. Electric vehicles are more efficient, and when combined with the cost of electricity, charging an electric vehicle is less expensive than filling up with petrol or diesel. With the growing demand for electric vehicles, there is a greater need for dependable and long-term charging infrastructure or systems. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sustainable and convenient charging solution for electric vehicles by utilizing renewable energy sources such as solar power. Furthermore, an electric vehicle charging station is created using an Arduino microcontroller, wireless charging coil modules, a solar panel, and an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module.


........................................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................ iii List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................. vii List of Appendices ..................................................................................................................... viii Chapter 1 Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 1 Adjudicated adolescents.................................................................................................... 1 Historical Overview of the Matching Law........................................................................ 2 Clinical Applications of the Matching Law ...................................................................... 7 The Generalized Matching Equation as an Evaluative Tool ............................................. 9 Traditional Interventions for Adjudicated Adolescents .................................................. 13 Behavior-Analytic Interventions in Juvenile Residential Settings ................................. 15 Juvenile Staff Members in Residential Settings .............................................................. 17 Training Staff Members to Implement Behavioral Interventions ................................... 19 The Present Study ........................................................................................................... 21 Chapter 2 ..................................................................................................................................... 23 Experiment 1 Methods ........................................................................................................... 23 Results ............................................................................................................................. 31 Discussion ....................................................................................................................... 33


This study uses E-SERVQUAL to measure e-banking service quality in Saigon Hanoi Joint Stock Commercial Bank. There are important findings on the relationship between inline service quality and customer satisfaction. Firstly, responsiveness is the most important factor influencing customer satisfaction. Thus, the bank should enhance its ability to provide appropriate information to customers. Secondly, efficiency and fulfillment are the second and third important dimensions of e-banking service quality influencing customer satisfaction. It should be noted that whereas the efficiency attributes deal with designing the website customer interface, virtually all the fulfillment attributes relate to the website's behind the scenes infrastructure. Thus, earning a high quality image for a bank's website involves much more than creating an excellent facade for the site. Thirdly, the system availability facet is the fourth important factor. The bank should be sensitive to potential deleterious effects of website designs on system availability that are beyond their control and devising appropriate communication scripts to appease complaining customers. Privacy is the least critical dimension. Experience may indeed mitigate concerns about website security. In this thesis, privacy perceptions do influence customers' overall quality perceptions, thus the department needs to continue to reassure customers through website design cues and external communications signaling the privacy of the site.


Precise identification of black spots can ensure the timely adoption of remedial measures to mitigate road accidents. The review of various trends of approaches towards identifying the black spots by studying the evolved-up techniques towards a pre-emptive investigation of crash events is the focus of the paper. This study contributes to briefing all the open research issues that existing researchers have merely explored. The paper also discusses addressing such open-end problems that offer more edge to the precise analysis of black spots, followed by a possible plan towards solving these issues to mitigate blackspots.


The advent of applications that need higher throughputs motivates wireless service providers and cellular operators to embrace newer technologies that can meet these demands. Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems have shown promise in their ability to deliver high throughput per bandwidth with reasonable constellation sizes. Adding antennas at the base station (BS) is practical due to reasons of size and cost amortization over users. However, adding antennas at the mobile station (MS), which does not have similar advantages, needs to be carefully evaluated. We therefore consider the more general class of techniques involving a multiple-element antenna (MEA) at one or both ends of the link (MIMO corresponding to the case of both). From a commercial standpoint, one needs to address the following questions: (i) What is the benefit of a second antenna at the BS or the MS relative to the single-input-single-output (SISO) case? (ii) What is the added value of a second antenna at both ends? (iii) If a second antenna is indeed used at both ends, which mode of operation --- spatial multiplexing (SM) or diversity (Div) --- is the preferred one? Using $(n, m)$ to denote a link with $n$ BS transmit elements and $m$ MS receive elements, we compare the downlink throughput performance of the SISO link with that of four MEA configurations: $(1, 2)$, \mbox{$(2, 1)$}, $(2, 2)$ with Div and $(2, 2)$ with SM. Our results indicate that, in the context of adaptive modulation with practical limits on constellation size, $(1, 2)$ is the preferred configuration. We also show this finding to be robust to assumptions used in the study.


Latent variable models have proven to be a useful tool for discovering latent structures from observational data. However, the data in social networks often come as streams, i.e., both text content (e.g., emails, user postings) and network structure (e.g., user friendship) evolve over time. To capture the time-evolving latent structures in such social streams, we propose a fully nonparametric Dynamic Topical Community Model (nDTCM), where infinite latent community variables coupled with infinite latent topic variables in each epoch, and the temporal dependencies between variables across epochs are modeled via the rich-gets-richer scheme. We focus on characterizing three dynamic aspects in social streams: the number of communities or topics changes (e.g., new communities or topics are born and old ones die out); the popularity of communities or topics evolves; the semantics such as community topic distribution, community participant distribution and topic word distribution drift. Furthermore, we develop an effective online posterior inference algorithm for nDTCM, which is concordant with the online nature of social streams. Experiments using real-world data show the effectiveness of our model at discovering the dynamic topical communities in social streams.


An uniform Lipschitz condition in Frechet space is introduced.By using the condition,the existence and extension of the solutions for the initial value problems in Frechet space are discussed.


The comparison on the NaOH and 3-glycidoxypropyltrimethoxy silane (GPS) modifications on the rice husk/epoxy composites was made to improve the interfacial interaction between epoxy resin and rice husk. An optimum concentration of NaOH at 6 wt% or GPS at 10 wt% was found based on the highest performance of mechanical properties at 70 wt% rice husk content. As for the effect of rice husk content, the maximum reinforcing effect was found at 50 wt% and 70 wt% of rice husk with NaOH and GPS treatment, respectively. This was attributed to the increased surface roughness after NaOH modification and silane interaction to enhance the interfacial reaction of rice husk for stronger adhesion, as evidenced by the morphology observation. The highest reinforcement and thermal stability was observed for GPS-modified cases. Silane treatment gave the lowest glass transition temperatures for the investigated cases due to the flexible alkyl group. For the water absorption property, GPS-modified cases conferred the lowest level in comparison with that in both unmodified and NaOH modified composites. This was mainly attributed to that the hydrophilic hydroxyl groups were reduced through the reaction of silanol/epoxy groups on GPS and hydroxyl groups on the rice husk, which again echoed the significance of silane surface treatment. POLYM. COMPOS., 2015. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers


Aiming at the denoising problem of nonstationary and non-linear signals such as rolling bearing vibration signals, a signal denoising method is proposed using wavelet packet transform (WPT) combined with ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD) to denoise the fault signals of rolling bearing. Firstly, the EEMD method is applied to decompose the vibration signals, and the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) are sorted and classified according to the frequency values. Then, the correlation analysis of the high frequency IMFs including noise is implemented, and the higher correlation IMFs are further processed by the wavelet packet denoising approach. Finally, the denoised IMFs are reconstructed with other IMFs to achieve signal denoising. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, the signal simulation analysis is implemented at first. The results show that the proposed method has a better denoising effect, which can effectively depress the noise of high-frequency signal compared with the traditional EMD and wavelet threshold denoising combination method, and ensure the integrity of the original signal to the greatest extent. Finally, the way is further applied to the denoising of bearing vibration signals, which further verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method.


The stable classification of quadratic forms over a field is given by the Witt group. Topology, via surgery theory, has embedded the Witt groups in a general theory of forms over any ring with involution. In this paper we use geometrically inspired methods to make computations. General results on the L-theory of a Laurent polynomial extension are used to study the Witt groups of genus 0 function fields.


A heterodyne receiver using an SIS (superconductor-insulator-superconductor) waveguide mixer with two mechanical tuners has been built and characterized over the frequency range of 460 GHz to 630 GHz. This receiver is designed for radioastronomy applications. The mixer uses high-current-density, 0.25- mu m/sup 2/, Nb/AlO/sub x//Nb SIS tunnel junctions with integrated superconductive RF circuits to tune the junction capacitance. A DSB (double sideband) receiver noise temperature as low as 200+or-17 K has been obtained at 540 GHz. In addition, negative differential resistance has been observed in the DC I-V (current-voltage) curve at 487-491 GHz.<<ETX>>


The article summarized the practice of health service command in military operations other than war.According to the characteristics of emergency medical support,such as sensitivity,time-limited,complexity,difficulties,the author put forward the contents of ability training of health service commander,which included rapid response,predicted action,scientific training,and etc.


A simple solution for a multilayer metallic optical waveguide by transforming it intoan equivalent three-layer slab waveguide is presented. The dispersion relation of the equivalentthree-layer slab waveguide is solved by using a simple iterative formula. This method itself isexact and can approach any accuracy desired. Moreover, the numerical results for four-layer andfive-layer structures show that the second-order solution is also accurate enough. It is simple andhas the same form of expressions for TE and TM modes and for different layer structures.


ABSTRACT This article addresses the problem of heterogeneity among various studies to be combined in a meta-analysis. We adopt quasi-empirical Bayes methodology to predict the odds ratios for each study. As a result, the predicted odds ratios are pulled toward the estimated common odds ratio of the various studies under consideration. With strong heterogeneity among the studies, we jointly consider the display of the 95% CIs of the ORs and a Dixon's test (1950) for "outliers" to exclude the "extreme" estimated ORs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methodology based on the data analyzed by Thompson and Pocock (1987) demonstrating the power of the new approach to meta-analysis to find statistical agreement in what looks like great disagreement via a chi-squared test. We believe our technique (i.e., minimum mean-square sense) will go a long way toward increasing the trustworthiness of meta-analysis.


Normal 0 false false false EN-IN X-NONE HI The effect of compact yarn on downstream process such as knitting has been studied. Weft knitted fabrics such as single jersey, single lacoste, double lacoste, honeycomb, popcorn, rib and interlock fabrics have been produced from regular and compact cotton spun yarns. These fabrics after dyeing and starfish relaxation treatment are investigated by Kawabata evaluation system for their low-stress mechanical properties. The results show that in a few cases the differences between regular fabric properties and the compact fabric properties are quite significant, while marginal in other cases. However, the surface roughness values show some interesting features.


With the development of power grid in China,more and more long-span power transmission towers are constructed.This type of structure is sensitive to environmental loads.Hence,it's very important to study health monitoring and safety evaluation of the tower.As one of the most essential issues of health monitoring,the investigation of original dynamic properties of the towers is necessary.This paper presented the dynamic testing and modal identification of a long-span power transmission tower which locates in Bengbu City,Anhui Province.The responses of the tower excited by the environment loads,mainly the wind,were recorded.Modal parameters of the low-order modes were identified using output-only modal identification methods.The results were also compared with those from finite element analysis.


The ecological survey of introduction biological properties of urban planting of maple to assess its resistance to urban conditions of the dry zone.


The fallibility of memory has important implications for various disciplinary fields, as well as societal interests. Research on false memory abounds in terms of the ability of researchers to impla...


Unlike the decisive occupations which facilitated the unambiguous naming of the agricultural and industrial societies, the present one which is tagged with an array of groupings—Post-Industrial, Service, Knowledge, Post-modern, Wired/Networked, Artificial, so on and so forth—can hardly ever be viewed from the perspective of a single occupation. With technology in the forefront working as the driver of information and knowledge, it supports and causes the rampant changes in the provinces of economy, occupation, spatial relations, and culture. And, together they signify the arrival of the 'Information Society'. The obvious shift of a considerable population from the landed labour to industrial labour to knowledge workers marks the transitional phase of the society from agriculture to manufacturing to knowledge society. Hence, this chapter proposes that the dominant phase of a society is not to be visualised as an independent system that is divorced from the other two, but to be understood as an extension of its past.


Williams banana plants were grown in (20012002) and (20022003) seasons under black saran condition to investigate the effect of shading on vegetative growth, leaf mineral content and bunch yield. Results indicated that, although there was no infections or shredding were occurred through the plant leaves and the number of total and green leaves/plant were increased under shading with black saran, the irradiance level was reduced by about 76% than open field condition which in turn negatively affected on vegetative growth, minerals and chlorophyll content in the leaves, number of emerged suckers/plant and yield of Williams banana plants. Also shading lengthened the period from sucker emergence to bunch shooting and to bunch harvesting.


"Science of Education"concept was affected by Chinese"scientific"ideas in Fourth Movement and diversification of education.Furthermore,controversy between sciences and metaphysics and the debate about the failure of education also play roles in the formation process of"Science of Education"concept.Along with the rise and decline of the Scientific education movement,"Science of Education"concept was widely disseminated and used.These factors led to the special form of"Science of Education"in China.Affected by American Experimental pedagogy,"Science of Education"concept appeared in China in1920s.On the theoretical side,the controversy about"Science of Education"in Europe and the United States were introduced to China.In this process,"Science of Education"was separated from "Pedagogy"and"Philosophy of Education".At the same time,"Science of Education"became the name of university faculties.Chinese educators' s cognition was effected by scientism deeply,and their understanding process was effected by Europe and America countries.At the same time,"A name has multiple meanings"affected the classification of education.These characteristics reflected the urgent needs of pedagogy to become an independent discipline.


The purpose of the study is to analyse the role of the cultural sphere in the modernisation of Ukrainian society, as well as to identify strategic problems of cultural policy in post-war Ukraine and ways to solve them. Research methodology. The research methods are based on the fundamental principles of cultural analysis of Ukrainian society from the perspective of modern scientific concepts. The methodological core of the study is based on such scientific fields as phenomenology and hermeneutics to reveal the creative potential of Ukrainian culture. By means of a systemic analysis, the determinants of the identity crisis in Ukraine are investigated and strategic directions of cultural policy for its overcoming are defined. The scientific novelty is to identify the priorities of cultural policy for the effective reform of Ukrainian society by forming a new cultural code of the nation and a new Ukrainian identity that corresponds to the modern socio-cultural paradigm. Conclusions. The article emphasises the importance of enhancing the role of culture for the successful modernisation of Ukrainian society. To implement this project, it is necessary to reform the ideology of the state cultural policy with an emphasis on the development of the creative potential of the people and its consolidation. The strategic guidelines of cultural policy as a value-based foundation for reforms are defined. It is proved, firstly, that the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the people is an important resource for the formation of a new identity of the nation, and the main mechanism of social development is the continuity of culture. Secondly, in order to create a sustainable cultural industry capable of competing at the national and international levels, it is necessary to focus on its innovative development and the introduction of digital and modern management technologies into the cultural sphere. It is substantiated that a key element of post-war cultural policy should also be the rehabilitation of people who have survived bombing, occupation, and forced migration.
Key words: cultural policy, identity crisis, memorial paradigm, cultural heritage, museification, digital technologies, visual culture.


A Wavelet-Galerkin procedure was introduced in a previous paper to exhibit the transient response of parametrically excited systems involving both irregular time-varying coefficients and a relatively large number of degrees of freedom. The main scope of the present study is to introduce a wavelet technique allowing to seek periodic orbits of such dynamical systems and the associated periodic initial conditions. A few academic instances including a 1 dof Mathieu oscillator and a 3-dof system illustrate the relevance of the method by comparison with well established numerical techniques such as Runge-Kutta for example. Prospective researches are finally set to extend the wavelet method to the nonlinear case.


An organic light emitting diode (OLED) transparent support substrate which is improved in the device, an organic polymer support film, and, positioned between the support film and the OLED diode includes a composite layer on the support film; composite layer , first and second have a separate coating layer of which is attached at the relationship facing together; these layers, consists of impermeable material to oxygen and water vapor, discontinuity of oxygen and water vapor including unexpected discontinuity causing part controlled transmission, provides a transparent supporting substrate.


D rilling fluid additives has a major impact on rheology behavior and other performances of the drilling fluid. The key to low temperature drilling fluids is choosing antifreeze and polymer agent which have a strong a2 bility in resisting low temperature. On the basis of determ ining glycol as antifreeze agent, the low2temperature2 performance and capacities of anti2collap se of regular validity mud agents have been studied, the mechanism of anti2caving of the partially hydrolyzed polyacrylam ide ( PHPA) , polyp ropylene potassium ( KPA) and PAC2141 polymer additives have been also analyzed. A p ilot study of compatibility between ethylene glycol and the poly2 mers has educed that the polymers, ethylene glycol and inorganic salt are compatible, and they can significantly reduce the freezing point of drilling fluid. Anti2collap se ability of the drilling mud is the results of synergistic


TO THE EDITOR: We read with interest the commentary by Harolds et al. (1) describing the current nuclear medicine job market in the United States, with a root cause analysis and possible solutions mainly from the educator's perspective. The purpose of this commentary is to provide young nuclear medicine physicians advice on the various options available that will help them prepare for the next logical step in their development. We have recently switched from a 2-y (PGY-2 and -3) nuclear medicine curriculum to a 3-y (PGY-2, -3, and -4) program in the United States. In the European Union (EU), the minimum duration of specialized nuclear medicine training is 4 y but may be extended beyond this period according to the requirements of training in other allied disciplines (for example, radiology). The European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM) and European Society of Radiology (ESR) have created a Joint Working Group with the aim of developing an interdisciplinary training program and establishing a certification in what they call hybrid imaging. This innovative initiative would require training in 1 of the 2 specialties (nuclear medicine and radiology), followed by specific training in hybrid imaging, extending the total duration of training to a minimum of 6 y (2,3). At the present time, as many of our trainees successfully prepare to advance their careers, an ever-increasing variety of options is available for recent graduates of nuclear medicine training programs. We remember the time in the late 1990s and early 2000s when jobs in nuclear medicine were few and far between and the mere thought of where to begin securing a nuclear medicine position was the cause of much apprehension. Although more diverse opportunities for an imaging physician are available in today's world, many trainees are experiencing limited job prospects. Several options are available for our young colleagues, and these may be divided into 2 main groups: additional training or independent practice. Additional training may be obtained in a radiology residency, clinical nuclear medicine fellowship, PET fellowship, or research fellowship. Independent practice options include clinical nuclear medicine academic or private practice options, academic research in clinical or small animal imaging, or employment with industry. We will tailor our advice to each of these options, along with some guiding principles. Our first advice would be for the young physician to be honest with himor herself. Those who genuinely feel ready to fulfill duties as an unsupervised practicing physician and follow the guiding principles of the Hippocratic Oath ("first, do no harm") should do so. Our second suggestion would be to follow one's heart. Some young physicians have dreamed of learning about other anatomical imaging modalities, and we would encourage these perennial students to pursue their dreams. Our third recommendation would be to be confident in one's ability to meet specific educational and personal goals ("if it is to be, it is up to me").


The temporary storage of hot water in openings excavated in rock may be worthwhile for multiple land-use applications, environmental safeguards, and energy conservation. When used for hot water storage, the rock mass around the openings will respond by coupled thermomechanical effects induced by the hot water. In this study, a submergence test of granite and sandstone at 20 and 95°C was used to examine the thermal behavior of the rock mass around the openings to obtain the mechanical properties of uniaxial compressive strength and elastic modulus. A uniaxial compression creep test of the rock at high temperatures was also performed and calculations with various constants for the creep were examined. With the results obtained in this work, the temperature and stress distribution around the openings when hot water is stored was analyzed by considering the creep properties. The thermal behavior and stability of the openings were also examined. The displacement of the openings was predicted to be approximatel...