Nowadays, RFID is an important element that provide an automatic physical objects identification without the need for line-of-sight communication. Currently, boarding school management have difficulty to monitor their student using the old-fashioned paper system; where the procedures were inefficient and brings difficulty to the hostel management to monitor the student movement . By using RFID technology, the looking for student movement is quick and easy. The application of RFID Matric Card system as a Boarding School students Monitoring System (E-ID ) will improve the school management procedure , monitor the interest group movement automaticly and increase the safety of students. In order to analyze and design the system, customer who wants to implement this application must have their matric card embedded with RFID tag .When matric card pass through the RFID reader; the system will trigger the data from the RFID tag to the database. Then the data will be sent online to the school management for monitoring purposes. The software used for developing this system includes Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 for designing Graphical User Interface (GUI), Microsoft Access Software for database management system and Dreamweaver for online networking system. This research work offer important implication for monitoring the boarding school students and ease the workload of the school management and save time for various student activities.


Regardless of the various theoretical approaches and definitions of a learning disability, it is evident that anxiety plays a role as a secondary factor involved in the learning process. Previous research (Chapman, Boersma and Janzen, 1978; Chapman, 1979) provided evidence to suggest that affective variables play a major role in the learning disabilities syndrome. The present research was designed to investigate the effects of a differential relaxation procedure in reducing anxiety levels in 9-to 12-year-old learning disabled male students and, further, to assess behavioural treatment effects on subsequent academic performance.


This paper presents a new technique for the fabrication of high resolution non-planar precision microshells for hemispherical resonating gyros via a poached-egg micromolding (PEM) method. In PEM, precision ball lenses are used as starting molds. Hemispherical shells are formed on the lenses using five major steps: (1) isotropic coating with sacrificial and shell layers, (2) stencil transfer of coated lenses to substrate, (3) shell top removal by anisotropic etching, (4) sacrificial layer etching and (5) release of the ball lens molds. Using PEM, we fabricated posted sputtered ultra-low-expansion glass hemispherical shells of 1 mm diameter and 1.2 μm thickness. The microshells have better than 120 ppm uniformity in thickness and less than ±0.125 μm deviation from a perfect sphere. The measured microshell resonant frequency at 100 mTorr was 17.32 kHz and the Q was ~ 20,000.


Service engineering and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) have recently been embraced by both industry and research, as they promise high reusability and maintainability, and a flexible environment for future changes in business requirements and workflows. In this paper, we present a model-driven service engineering approach called the SENSORIA Development Approach (SDA). The SENSORIA project has developed a number of formal techniques that support service engineering, e.g., quantitative or qualitative analyses of service artifacts. The main contribution of the SDA is the integration of these techniques in a process for engineering service-oriented systems.


This spring, Cybergeo has had a face-lift, for the third or fourth time in its long existence, since its birth in the last century, in 1996… Nothing has been changed as far as the editorial objectives are concerned: our priority remains to spread far and wide the gains and achievements of geographical research, with high standards, but without exclusivity, after validation by a multi-national committee. The new publications of the season are several series of articles of a living geography, i...


Oxygen uptake in the resting lingcod was 22.8 ± 0.6 mL O2∙h−1∙kg−1. During progressive environmental hypoxia lingcod maintained or elevated their provided the water oxygen tension was greater than ...


The aim of this study was to assess the applicability of VIS/NIR hyperspectral imaging in intelligently detecting postharvest quality of tomatoes. The postharvest quality of tomatoes was evaluated in terms of firmness, soluble solids content (SSC), pH and color (L*a*b*C*h). VNIR and NIR hyperspectral imaging (400-1700 nm) were used to build regression models using Partial Least Square (PLS). The effects of different preprocessing techniques, including moving weighted average smoothing, first- and second-derivative Savitzky Golay (S-G) and standard normal variate (SNV) on prediction performance were also evaluated. NIR spectra-based models performed the best at estimating the quality characteristics in tomatoes. Excellent prediction for SSC, firmness and pH (RPD > 3.0), and good prediction for color (RPD > 2.0) were obtained. Consequently, NIR spectra-based systems could be introduced in the manufacturing process of tomato industries as nondestructive method to monitor quality characteristics of tomatoes.


A new approach to the teaching and learning of Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) course had been developed for undergraduate students from multi-disciplinary background to be well-versed with HSE components and current affairs related to green issues, climate change and also societal issues related to civilization, history and politics, process safety, green energy and waste management. This gave a wider perspective for students to relate back to the specific discipline in their respective degree programs. The major value-added elements were in enhancing group dynamics skills in a multi-disciplinary and heterogeneous setting. At individual level, the critical and analytical thinking, creative problem solving and writing skills were sharpened.


A group of women in traditional Maori clothing. They are (from left to right standing), Mrs W Waitai, Mrs F Morrison, Mrs Raukura Tamahau, Mrs W Ngahana, Lady Mildred Amelia Woodbine Pomare, Mrs Kahui Grace, Mrs Te Puni, Mrs H Love (Ripeka Wharawhara Love).
(From left to right sitting), Mrs O Heketa (Raukura Heketa), Mrs W Uru, Miss Lily Love, Miss Ana Pomare
Photographed by Stanley Polkinghorne Andrew sometime between 1910 and 1920
Inscriptions: Verso - top centre - Standing, Mrs W Waitai, Mrs F Morrison, Mrs S Tamahau, Mrs W Ngahana, Lady Pomare, Mrs Grace, Mrs Te Puni, Mrs H Love.; Sitting, Mrs O Heketa, Mrs W Uru, Miss L Love, Miss A Pomare
Quantity: 1 b&w original negative(s).
Physical Description: Glass negative


The rotation of the Earth around its axis results in distinct changes in light and temperature during a 24-h day/night cycle. Plants being sessile are constantly and predictably exposed to these environmental changes. It is therefore critical for them to properly perceive environmental signals in order to effectively manage growth and development. Indeed, plants have developed an anticipation mechanism that enables them to keep track of time and to integrate this with the perception of external environmental cues to synchronize the internal metabolism to the most appropriate time in a day–night cycle. This internal time-keeping system is known as the circadian clock ( Bujdoso and Davis, 2013 ).


The topic of this bachelor´s thesis is financial analysis of the company XYZ Inc. Thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part defines general importance of accounting and its principles, legislative regulations, international harmonization of ac-counting and indicators which can be used to evaluate overall financial situation. The prac-tical part is firstly focused on accounting principles XYZ Company, Inc. This is followed by the calculation and interpretation of the various ratios whose sources are data from pub-licly available financial statements and data obtained from personal consultations. The conclusion of the financial analysis is to evaluate the financial health of the company in period 2010 to 2014 and compares it to industry.


We consider a price-taking equilibrium in the spatial setting for a broad class of shopping and shipping models (in shopping models transport costs are independent of purchases; in shipping models they are proportional to purchases). A (unique) pricing equilibrium is shown to exist for any set of firm locations. This equilibrium is then used to examine locational incentives in the two-stage process whereby firms first choose locations anticipating the subsequent price-taking outcome. The outcome is spatial agglomeration if demand is sufficiently inelastic and there are only two firms: agglomeration does not occur otherwise.


Synthesis of N-ethynyl-heterocycles by elimination, nucleophilic substitution, isomerization, benzotriazole intermediates and other methods are reviewed. The reactions of N-ethynyl-heterocycles including additions, cycloadditions and polymerizations are discussed.


The state of Ukrainian dairy products export, as one of the leading export oriented branches of food industry, was characterized in the article. The analysis of the state of export/import of dairy products allows identifying the opportunities and trends for further development at the present state of market economy. On the basis of observation data and statistical methods for economic analysis of activity of enterprises of the dairy industry of Ukraine, the main reasons for the decline in exports of dairy products of Ukrainian producers were identified. The analysis led to the conclusion that the EU countries are unlikely to be a priority market for Ukrainian enterprises in terms of deterioration of relations between Russia and Ukraine, but the certification of domestic dairy products according to the highest European standards will expand its presence in other regions, particularly in the markets of Asia and Africa.


This bibliography is a compilation of recent dissertations and master's theses in thearea of radio studies. All information was retrieved June 14, 2005, from DissertationsAbstracts International(DAI) via the online information service, FirstSearch. This ed-ited and reformatted list resumes where the most recent in a series of previous effortsended, using the same boldface format (see Vol. 10, No. 2, 2003, pp. 291–292).


This paper proposes an estimation method of missing data of showcase using autoencoder (AE). When various accidents such as frost formation in the refrigerators and refrigerant leakage happen, vendors of showcases have to treat the accidents as quickly as possible. Therefore, various measured data of showcases such as temperatures or pressures of some portions of showcases have to be gathered correctly and symptoms of the accidents should be estimated in advance. However, in rare cases, there is a possibility to miss to gather the data due to various on-site conditions. The proposed method is applied to missing data of actual showcase and the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.


We have derived formulations for the pressure derivatives of bulk modulus up to the third order and for higher order Grüneisen parameters using the generalized free volume theory, and the generalized Rydberg equation of state. The properties derived in the present study are directly related to the understanding of thermoelastic properties of solids. The third order Grüneisen parameter (lambda λ) in the limit of infinite pressure has been found to approach a positive finite value for lambda infinity (λ∞) equal to 1/3. This is a result shown to be independent of the value of K-prime infinity, i. e., the pressure derivative of the bulk modulus at infinite pressure. The results based on other equations of state have also been reported and discussed. We find a relationship between λ∞ and pressure derivatives of bulk modulus at infinite pressure which is satisfied by different types of equations of state.


This book examines the global, local, and specific environmental factors that facilitate illegal fishing and proposes effective ways to reduce the opportunities and incentives that threaten the existence of the world's fish.
 Humans are deeply dependent on fishing—globally, fish comprise 15 percent of the protein intake for approximately 3 billion people, and 8 percent of the global population depends on the fishing industry as their livelihood. The global fishing industry is plagued by illegal fishing, however, and many highly commercial species, such as cod, tuna, orange roughy, and swordfish, are extremely vulnerable.
 Through criminological analysis, The Last Fish Swimming emphasizes the importance of looking at specific environmental factors that make illegal fishing possible. It examines such factors as proximity to known ports where illegally caught fish can be landed without inspection (i.e., ports of convenience), fisheries monitoring, control and surveillance efforts, formal surveillance, and resource attractiveness in 53 countries that altogether represent 96 percent of the world's fish catch. The book calls upon the global community to address the illegal depletion of the world's fish stock and other similar threats to the world's food supply and natural environment in order to ensure the sustainability of the planet's fish and continuation of the legal fishing industry for generations to come.


"The public debate is at the same time necessary for our democracies and generally ineffective in its implementations: the televised debates don't have other finalities than the show itself, the politic debates are diverted in communication operations, and in the forums we don't find much more than juxtaposed opinions. In fact, the efficacy of public debate lies in the legitimacy that it confers to the citizen and in the impact of its speech over the decision-making processes. In practice, this can only be realized with a reduced number of participants within a deliberative process framework. Thus, the need to think about the deliberative situation in the public debate is asked".


21st century health care industry is different from the face of the old century. With the advanced medical technology, medical treatment arising from personal medical information also showed explosive growth. And more scattered in between the different medical units, the various medical units have health care database must be open at the same time maintain stability, as well as common information. In order to satisfy the hospital information system to the heterogeneity, interoperability, information sharing, and information integration, a kind of new software system architecture to came with the tide of fashion -Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) [3, 4, 8]. Our research take the SOA technology, combined with the grid based of the hospital for back-end platform—Co-allocation [15, 16, 17] MedicalGrid [5, 9, 20, 21], provides a powerful computing capabilities, and fit with a Cross Grid Information Service (CGIS) [5] that enables Resource Brokers [11, 12, 13, 14] to get information from cross grid environments for other components.


This paper introduces the technological process,system composition and automatic control mode of the gas station of Dalian Special Steel.According to the control requirements,it establishes the overall control scheme of the gas station system based on PLC.STEP 7 software is used to develop some important programs,such as conversion of analog input range,conversion of analog output range and temperature conversion,control loops,and interlocking programs.The control system for gas station is designed.


Land for humans has various dimensions and use. Its manifestations are space, as habitat and land in the form of soil itself. Men take birth on the earth/land somewhere, adopt land as a habitat and survive on its produce i.e. food from land. No other resource is important as land in real sense as other resources are related and find meaning because of land. The land use or the utilization of land for cultural activities is as important as land itself. Land decides the site and situation for habitation; and provides circumstances to develop accordingly. Development of the societies is heavily bound to the availability and nature of land to the men for use. Countries with suitable site and situation and with proper land utilizations develop efficiently as compared to the countries lacking such privileges. Sustainability and longevity of human on this planet earth is much more dependent on the appropriate and sustainable use of land. It is of immense magnitude to study the land utilizations of the places to find out the past, and present land use scenario, virtues and lacking of land resource utilization for better planning, management and execution of the such plans virtuously to fulfill the demands of the food and habitat for immensely increasing populations. Present paper is an endeavor to study the land use of Malihabad region in district Lucknow; where land use transformations are at great extent and mango orchards have changed the land use a lot with several positive and negative consequences.


Understanding wettability of porous media, namely the relative affinity of the fluids for the solid, and its influence on the efficiency of wetting-phase displacement of non-wetting phase is a key factor in estimating storage CO and recovery efficiencies of hydrocarbons. Hence, we want to achieve a systematic way to study the complex interplay between wettability and multi-phase trapping. It could be done by developing a time-efficient method for in-situ detection of pore-level wettability from massive number of high resolution micro-pore scale images that covers wide range of field of view (FOV) in the rock. In this report, we addresses an application of the deep-learning technique to classify automatically pore-level wettability. To achieve the objectives, we trained and optimized two deep-learning algorithms, fully connected neural network (FCN) and convolutional neural network (ConvNet), on the micro-scale FOV image data set collected using inhouse fabricated micro-fluidic device. The best FCN and ConvNet model shows the test set accuracy of 0.77 and 0.83, respectively, to classify the surface wettability (oiland water-wet) for two types of rock geometry including sandstone and carbonate-like pore structure.


Under these settled conditions:HRT was 15d,the ratio of inoculums to substrate was 40%, temperature was 35℃,an experimental study on single phase anaerobic digestion for the treatment of bacterial residues from clavulanate potassium production was conducted.The results showed:①At the stabilization stage,the original bacterial residues(no dilution)could be straightly put into the reactor, and COD of influent reached 40000mg ? L~(-1),volumetric loading reached 2.67 kg ? m~(-3)? d~(-1); COD of effluent was about 1500 mg ? L~(-1)and about 96%of COD removal was achieved;the quantity of methane per liter per day in theory was 0.9 L.②The system had a rapid start-up,and had been keeping steady even the loading was lifted.The concentration of VFA was low and no VFA saturation had been observed.The concentration of NH_3-N was high(about 1 800~2 000 mg ? L~(-1))and could be a factor in inhibition of anaerobic digestion.③The technology of anaerobic digestion was feasible to dispose the bacterial residues from clavulanate potassium production.


The study of the electronic properties of small particles is of major interest because of their intriguing physicochemical properties. The very small electron probes available in scanning transmission electron microscopes offer unique capabilities for investigating small particles with subnanometer spatial resolution. The correlation between electron-energy-loss spectra and energy-filtered images is of great help in pinpointing the excitations under study. This paper presents a theoretical and experimental study of collective excitation modes in the bulk and at the interfaces and surfaces of small spherical silicon particles covered with a thin oxide coating. Among other results, our experimental measurements have shown that there exists a surface-mode excitation at 3--4 eV, precisely localized on the external surface of the oxide layer. Classical dielectric theory is used in interpreting these results, by invoking the presence of an ultrathin conductive layer.


Abstract New pyrrolo[3,2-c]pyridine nucleosides (e.g. 2, 2, 4) have been prepared via solid-1iquid phase-transfer glycosylation. Additionally, building blocks for oligonucleotide synthesis are described.


The paper firstly analyzed the farmland protection status in Jiangxi Province,and then discussed its existing problems,and finally proposed some measures to improve the economic compensation mechanism for farmland protection in this area.


Direct reduced experiments were carried out by using ore/coal composite pellets which were compacted by BF flue dust and mill scale.The effects of different reduced atmospheres,different C/O in pellets,reduced time and temperature to the reduction results were investigated.The results show that high metallization degree can be gained by reduced the ore/coal composite pellets under high temperature in the air.Metallization degree increases steadily with reduced time when the C/O in pellet is more than 1.2.And it reaches to 96.94% after reduced 30 minutes under 1 350 ℃.The trend of metallization degree change suggests the reaction in pellet is first controlled by chemical reaction,and then it gradually changes to diffusion control.Iron reduced from pellet separates from slag when ore/coal composite pellet reacted for 30 minutes under 1 400 ℃ in the air.


The classification of unseen molecule in molecular data is done by taking the substructures of the molecule. The mining of interesting substructures in molecular data for classification contain subgraphs that are characterized by different classes. In this paper, authors suggest a Subgraph Relative Frequency (SRF) method that screens each frequency subgraph to determine whether the substructure that occurs frequently is an interesting one or not. SRF thus discovers interesting subgraphs for each of these classes which are calculated using relative frequencies. To classify an unknown molecule, SRF first finds the subgraph of the molecule and calculates the interestingness of the sub-graph for each class, based on the weight. The performance of SRF is compared against MISMOC and is found to be just as accurate as MISMOC. MISMOC approach requires probability calculations to find the absolute frequency, thus the complexity is increased. The proposed method decreases the above complexity by just calculating the relative frequency to determine the interestingness. The method was experimented on a small predefined molecular data and the analyses of the result were done. Thus the performance of the proposed SRF approach was found satisfactory and efficient.


Noise2noise is a classical algorithm for image denoising in neural network deep learning. In this paper, some improvements are made to Noise2Noise (N2N for short), such as changing the underlying network of the original network to empty convolution, using SRResNet in SRGAN to improve the image quality, and selecting an adaptive parameterized Relu activation function. At the same time, the improved N2N algorithm is trained and tested by using self-built watermark data set. Experimental results show that the improved N2N algorithm can achieve good watermark removal effect, and can not only remove single visible watermark, but also remove large-scale watermark images in batches, which has strong practical value for image restoration and other fields.


Currently, there is an urgent need for environmental studies of agricultural production. This is especially true for cattle farms. In the situation of uncertainty of the initial information, the most convenient research method is mathematical modelling based on the fuzzy-probability approach. An algorithm for extracting and formalizing expert knowledge and experience by analytical expression is presented. In contrast to foreign studies, the joint influence of seven variables in one model is considered. At the same time, the factor space systematically represents the phenomenon under study and contains not only quantitative, but also qualitative variables. The impact of only technological factors was assessed, so economic indicators were not considered. An example of constructing a fuzzy-probability model of the environmental sustainability of a cattle farm in a seven-factor space is given. The validity of the model is confirmed by the factual data for three farms. Quantitative estimates of the degree of influence of both the variables themselves and their interactions have been obtained. It is shown that the influence of the number of head on the farm and the fields is about twice as significant as the influence of the applied technologies. A numerical experiment is carried out and illustrated on the basis of an adequate fuzzyprobability model. At the same time, it was found that with a significant increase in the number of cattle, the ecological stability of the farm decreases on the scale of the attribute from the level of "high" to "medium".


Summary An immunofluorescent staining technique has been devoloped which specifically stains T. pallidum or N. gonorrhoeae in less than one minute. Application of the technique to direct smears of either organism has demonstrated its practicability as a diagnostic tool.


The desirability of using pedagogical acceleration as a means of meeting, at least partially, the problem of the superior pupil has again been emphasized by significant studies from the University of Buffalo.' The scholastic achievements of younger students in that university were superior, as were those of the students at Harvard University reported in a study over twenty years ago." The present study supplies additional information tending to show that pupils who are accelerated in the elementary school achieve more than satisfactorily in the secondary school. Through the co-operation of the school officials of Chicago, Kansas City (Missouri), Wichita (Kansas), East St. Louis (Illinois), Evanston (Illinois), and Kenilworth (Illinois), data were obtained for a group of 282 pupils (122 boys and 16o girls) in the last year of high school. All were chosen by the single criterion of graduation at least one month before the age of seventeen. At the time of graduation the group ranged in age from fifteen years and five months to sixteen years and eleven months. That only 282 pupils of these ages could be found in the rather complete sampling of high schools in these large communities is some evidence that acceleration, although advocated by such educators as Freeman, Holmes, and others,3 is not at present widely practiced. Many factors besides success in high school enter into the general


Predicting the number of cancer patients in the future is of great interest to society. Classical approach Age-period-cohort modeling should be used to generate cancer incidence projections. The number of predicted cases was calculated for these 160 combinations of gender and country. Averages vary from 10.4 percent to 15.3 percent for projections 10 years ahead, and from 15.1 percent to 32.0 percent for 20-year projections. Most cancer genes are physiologically inactive background of disease development. Tumors are the source of similar non-point mutations that are immunogenic and protected by tumors. Immunity. Cancer is classified as a heterogeneous disease with various subtypes. Early research – Cancer type and prognosis has become essential in cancer research because of the subsequent.


Sputtered-deposited Zn(S,O) is an attractive alternative to CdS for the window layer of Cu(In,Ga)Se 2 (CIGS) thin-film solar cells due to its higher band gap, which allows greater blue-photon collection. However, distortions to current-voltage ( J-V) curves are observed in some cases. A straightforward photodiode model with a secondary barrier at the Zn(S,O)/CIGS interface is employed to explain the physical mechanisms of the experimental J-V distortions. The primary contributor to the secondary barrier is the conduction-band offset (CBO), whose magnitude is determined by the oxygen fraction in Zn(S,O) and by the carrier density of Zn(S,O); the latter may be increased with indium-doping. Comparison of experimental and simulated J-V characteristics with variation in oxygen fraction, window carrier density, and temperature, allows a reasonably compelling test of the secondary-barrier model for this system.


The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the use of Quality Function Deployment (QFD) as a management tool to benefit project managers. The United States building construction of Engineers is one of the largest construction management organizations in the world, annually performing over 3.5 billion dollars worth of work. The project manager has primary responsibility within the construction, to ensure the design both fulfils user's requirements and is prepared correctly, and that quality control/assurance procedures are correctly administered. QFD was developed and to improve quality and lower costs in industrial and business related fields, by assuring all of building construction operational decisions are driven by owner needs. It uses a set of matrices to relate owner wants and needs with project specifications and requirements.QFD assists project managers to clearly identify and prioritize owner and labour requirements in development of the conceptual and final design. It is best suited to projects involving repetition of units or when higherthan-average quality is demanded. Managers are able to make better informed decisions made during the delivery process, resulting in a better owner satisfaction. To testing of required building construction materials and to determine the quality and quantity of our required area of the building construction The CQAP details the systems and controls that GE has put in place so that the quality of the project will meet the requirements specified in the report. GE provides definition and overall management of the quality approach to be followed by its contractors and consultants. The quality of the RA implementation will be ensured through an integrated system of quality assurance performed by the Construction Manager and quality control provided by the contractors. GE's Construction Manager is responsible for the day-to-day Coordination of quality assurance and quality control measures in the field. The growth in the significance of building maintenance (BM) as a proportion of the output of the construction industry has led to a growing awareness of the need to manage and maintain buildings effectively. In Saudi Arabia, practically the projects in Riyadh city based on the annual report from high commission for development of Riyadh City (HCDR) in 2014, the total governmental construction projects was (2824) with total cost around SR 181 billion that not include the operation and maintenance projects that cost SR 10 billion in 2014. However, this segment of the industry struggles for improving the building maintenance industry in proper way. During the last decades, different quality management concepts, including total quality management (TQM), six sigma, lean management, Lean Six Sigma and International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) series of standards have been applied by many different organisations to improve business performance. Introducing the Quality Management concepts (QMCs) into the Saudi maintenance industry might be a step in the right direction to improve the current situation and resolve its problems. The main purpose of the present study is to evaluate the degree of readiness of Saudi building maintenance industry towards the implementation of QMC and the most effective quality management concept to be used in the industry. Therefore, this study identifies and assesses the available QMCs for BM industry. Several interviews and four focus group sessions were conducted. The perception of managerial about QMC is investigated and analysed. Results show a high degree of misunderstanding of QMC approach, tools and methodology in public sector. The study indicates several barriers impeding the implementation of QMC in the Saudi building maintenance industry.


OBJECTIVES
RA damages the joints and increases the risks of total knee replacement (TKR) and total hip replacement (THR). However, the benefits of biologics in preventing TKR or THR remain unclear.

METHODS
This retrospective nationwide study used the 2000-2013 claims-based National Health Insurance dataset. Biologics are reimbursed for refractory cases. The risks of TKR and THR in the biologic cohort were compared with those of age- and sex-matched csDMARD cohort. A multivariate Cox regression model was used to investigate the benefits of bDMARDs for TKR and THR.

RESULTS
TKR was performed in 5979 biologic cases and 11,958 matched controls, of which 249(4.16%) and 871(7.28%) cases received TKR, respectively. THR was performed in 6245 biologic cases and 12,490 matched controls, of which 159(2.55%) and 516(4.13%) cases had THR, respectively. The biologic cohort had significantly lower incidence rates of TKR (11.73 vs. 16.33/1000 person-years, P < 0.001) and THR (7.09 vs. 9.16/1000 person-years, P < 0.001). After adjustment for confounding factors, the regular bDMARD subgroup (average dose >0.95 defined daily dose/day) had significantly lower risks of TKR (aHR: 0.55, 95% CI: 0.38-0.81) and THR (aHR: 0.63, 95% CI: 0.40-0.98). Those without methotrexate use, with steroid use, with biologic switch, and overlapping antiphospholipid syndrome had significantly higher risks of TKR and THR.

CONCLUSIONS
Compared with the csDMARD cohort, the risks of TKR and THR in the bDMARD cohort were the same as those in the low to moderate dose subgroups and significantly lower in those with regular bDMARD use.


based on the education evaluation theories and the practices of in undergraduate evaluation, this article sums up the key factors which should be emphasized in the process of self-evaluation. The factors are: explicit targets and organization supports, full understanding of the index systems, emphasis on the main self-evaluation sections, prominence to key points but improvement on the whole, gradual accumulation in construction and evaluation, and proper publicity and full participation.


The electrical conductivity and thermoelectric power of liquid Co–Sn alloys were investigated in a wide concentration and temperature range. It was shown that the electrical conductivity of the melts decreased with an increase of the Co content. The results are interpreted in the context of the s–d hybridisation model. The corresponding behaviour is caused by sharing electrons from one metal to another one. This is in agreement with the concept of Fermi enthalpy, according to which up to two electrons from Sn transfer to the uppermost bands of Co.


Jacobson et al. report the geographic distribution, minimum inhibitory concentrations, and a few clinical characteristics of childhood infections due to Haemophilus influenzae (Pediatrics 58:388, September 1976). These data are interesting and provide the reader with important epidemiologic information about the distribution of some of these resistant strains. The usefulness of this information is limited by the lack of a denominator to calculate the prevalence of such strains. Lacking prevalence figures and any evaluation of therapy, it is astounding that one half of the abstract of this article deals with therapy and comes to the conclusion that "chloramphenicol is recommended for the initial management of systemic illness definitely or probably due to H. influenzae type b."


Learning sentence vectors from an unlabeled corpus have attracted attention because such vectors are able to represent sentences flexibility. Simple heuristic methods using pre-trained word vectors are a strong baseline for machine learning tasks. However, they are not well understood from a theoretical perspective. We analyze sentence vector algorithms from a transfer learning perspective by using a PAC-Bayes bound, which enables us to understand existing heuristic methods and provides novel sentence vector algorithms. 1 Learning Word Vectors and Sentence Vectors Word Vectors: Word vector models aim to learn a map from each word w to d-dimensional vector representation hw given a sequence of words [w1, . . . , wT ]. This word vector is also called word embedding. In this paper, we mainly treat the continuous skip-gram model (skip-gram) [1], which is a widely used word vector model.1 Skip-gram learns two types of word vectors h and h′. We call h as an input word vector and h′ as an output word vector. The terms ĥ and ĥ′ define fixed input word vector and fixed output word vector trained on a corpus, respectively. Intuitively, skip-gram estimates word vectors by predicting word wc from its neighbor wt. A fast skip-gram model training method is negative sampling proposed by Mikolov et al. [2], whose loss function is defined by LSG = − T ∑ t=1 [ ∑ wc∈Ct lnσ ( hwth ′ wc ) + ∑ wn∈NS lnσ ( −hwth ′ wn )] , (1) where Ct represents a bag-of-words surrounding wt in a sequence, σ is the logistic sigmoid function, and NS is a bag-of-words including negative words sampled from a noise distribution [2]. Sentence Vectors from Pre-trained Word Vectors: In the same way as word vector models, sentence vector models aim to learn a map from a sentence2 from d-dimensional vector representation hS given sentences {S1, . . . ,SN}, where S is a sequence of words. Since sentences consist of several words, sentence representation is affected by word information, such as sentiment polarity. Given pretrained word vectors, the simplest way to obtain sentence vector hS is to average of pre-trained word vectors of words appearing in the sentence S , e.g., hS = 1 |S| ∑ w∈S ĥw, or hS = 1 |S| ∑ w∈S ĥw+ĥ ′ w 2 . Empirically, these simple methods can beat more complex methods in machine learning tasks for sentences [3, 4]. 2 PAC-Bayesian Analysis of Transferred Sentence Vectors We typically use pre-trained word vectors to learn sentence vectors because of the usefulness of their representations, which capture syntactic and semantics [2]. We formulate learning word vectors and Another popular model, Continuous Bag-of-Words [1], is described in Appendix A.1. We name a sequence of words as a sentence including phrase, paragraph, and document. Third workshop on Bayesian Deep Learning (NeurIPS 2018), Montréal, Canada. sentence vectors in terms of transfer learning [5]. In our transfer learning perspective, a source task minimizes the loss function of skip-gram with negative sampling on word sequences by updating input and output word vectors h and h′. Then, a target task minimizes the loss function by updating sentence vector hS with the fixed pre-trained word vectors ĥ and ĥ′ given a sentence. This formulation enables us to analyze generalization errors in learning sentence vector with PACBayesian theory, which can consider transferability to a target hypothesis from a learned source hypothesis through prior knowledge [6] (See general PAC-Bayes bound in Appendix A.2, and related work of PAC-Bayesian transfer learning in Appendix B.2). PAC-Bayes Bound: We define a PAC-Bayes bound to analyze sentence vector algorithms based on averaging of pre-trained word vectors. Given a sentence S and word vectors trained on the source task, let D be a data distribution over X × Y , where X := {xw|w ∈ N≤|V|} is input sample representing one-hot vector of word w, and Y is output space, e.g., {−1, 1} for binary classification. DS is a training dataset sampled i.i.d. from D, that means sentence S assumes bag-of-words. Let |DS | be the number of training samples, and |S| be the number of words in S. Our goal is to minimize generalization error RD(QS) = Eh∼QS E(x,y)∼D l(x, y, h), where l is a bounded loss function, and h is hypothesis parameterized by sentence vector hS . We give a concrete form of y, l, and h in a later analysis. We define prior distribution over hypothesis class F as PS ∝ ∏ w∈S N (; ĥw, σI), where σ is variance parameter, and I is identity matrix. This prior distribution is known as the product of experts [7] such that each expert is a Gaussian distribution parameterized by pre-trained ĥ′ of word appearing in the given sentence S. We also define posterior distribution over F as QS = N (;hS , σI). Theorem 1 shows the upper bound of generalization error of target task by empirical error of target task with the regulalizer by pre-trained output word vectors. Theorem 1 (PAC-Bayes Bound of Learning Sentence Vector with Pre-trained Word Vectors). Given a sentence S, ∀λ > 0, with probability at least 1− δ over training samples DS , ∀h ∈ QS , RD(QS) ≤ E h∼QS 1 |DS | |DS | ∑ i=1 l(xi, yi, h) + λ 2σ2 ∣∣∣∣ ∣∣∣∣hS − 1 |S|∑ w∈S ĥw ∣∣∣∣ ∣∣∣∣ 2 2 + C, (2) where C is a constant term that does not depends sentence vector hS . We prove Theorem 1 by using the PAC-Bayes bound [8]. The proof is shown in Appendix C.1. Sentence Vectors via Regression: We use Theorem 1 to analyze a heuristic sentence vector models. Let Y := {0}, hypothesis h be h(xw) = 1 2 ||Ĥxw − hS || 2 2, where the w-th column of Ĥ ∈ Rd×|V| corresponds to the w-th pre-trained input word vector ĥw. We introduce the loss function l(x, y, h) = h(x)− y = h(x), because y = 0.3 We can obtain the closed form of hS from Eq. (2), hS = 1 (1 + α)|S| ∑ w∈S ( ĥw + αĥ ′ w ) , (3) where α = λ σ2 . The details of this solution are shown in Appendix C.2. Corollary 1.1 (Sentence Vector by Averaging of Pre-trained Input Word Vectors). The sentence vector hS , estimated by minimizing Eq. (2) with α = 0, is equivalent to 1 |S| ∑ w∈S ĥw. Corollary 1.2 (Sentence Vector by Averaging of Pre-trained Input and Output Word Vectors). Empirically, the averaged vector of the input word vector and output word vector, ĥ+ĥ ′ 2 , can improve the performance of downstream tasks (e.g., Levy et al. [9]). This operation corresponds to the solution of Eq. (2) with the prior defined by the pre-trained output vectors and α = 1. We also introduce another heuristic method with inverse document frequency (IDF) weighting (The details are in Appendix C.3). We change loss function to sample-dependent weighted loss function l(x, y, h) = β(x)h(x) − y = β(x)h(x), where β is an weighing function from one-hot vector to R+. We also change the prior to PS ∝ ∏ w∈S N (; ĥw, σ wI). When we set β(x) = |S|IDF(x) and When we want to evaluate the upper bound, bounded loss l is in [0, 2] if we normalize each pre-trained word vectors and sentence vector by L2-norm.


This paper examines the interplay between discourses of exclusion and inclusion in the relationship between land law and human rights. It explores the common law conception of property in land and its relationship with the conceptual structure of property before suggesting that the particular form the conception takes in the English common law is problematic as a discourse of exclusion in the light of inclusive human rights considerations. However, further submerged exclusions in law are also explored, suggesting a problematic ideological continuity between land law and human rights law, notwithstanding identifiable surface tensions between them as contrasting discourses. Once the continuity of hidden exclusions is identified, the paper explores the theoretical unity between the deep structure of property as 'propriety' and human rights as 'what is due', and suggests their mutual potential for embracing more inclusive concerns. Finally, two modest proposals for future theoretical reform are offered: the need for a more anthropologically adequate and inclusive construct of the human being as legal actor, and the need for a more differentiated, context-sensitive formulation of the common law1 property conception, one capable of reconciling conceptually necessary elements of excludability with inclusive human rights impulses.


G. Legrand [1] studied a generalization of the almost complex structures [2] by considering a linear operator J acting on the complexified space of a differentiable manifold Vm satisfying a relation of the form J2 = λ2 (identity) where λ is a nonzero complex constant. Such structures are called π-structures. A π-structure is defined on Vm by the knowledge of two fields, of proper supplementary subspaces T1 and T2 of the complexified tangent space at x ∈ Vm, such that dim(T1) = n1; dim(T2) = n2; n1 + n2 = m. In the remaining case, λ= 0, H. A. Eliopoulos [3] introduced almost tangent structures and discussed euclidean structures compatible with almost tangent structures [4]. In a similar way the purpose of this paper is to study singular riemannian structures compatible with π structures, briefly Rπ-structures.


mystical vision of the risen Lord central to Paul. The remaining essays are clearly in the Wright camp. C. Quarles shows the implausibility of Crossan's claim that the Gospel of Peter has priority over the canon. Others tighten up the logical structure and metaphysical implications of the argument (G. Habermas, R.D. Geivett). For teachers seeking an overview of the resurrection debate this volume is invaluable. Selected chapters can be helpful to students.


Compares the software development cycle of traditional one and which one based on MDA, introduces the principle of development based on MDA, discusses the core technologies that this architeture adopted, the advantages of MDA and the problems should be solved in future.


Maintaining of high number of populations and efficient reproduction of waterfowl is provided with a complex of complementary adaptations (completion of nests when rising water level, repetitive reproduction, efficient defend reactions and dynamic spatial structure). They provide formation of population homeostasis system specific adaptation of all population at which it can support the long time a dynamic equilibrium with environment at the average level, referent for the concrete district.


We have developed a real-time speech visualization system called " KanNon" [1 , 2] which supports speech communication of hearing-impaired people. The Kan Non system presents informations of the speech such as loudness , pitch , sound spectrogram and characters by speech recognition system in real-time. 1n the present KanNon system , a word-unit speech recongniton system using large scale dictionary is adopted. However , the KanNon system is required quick and simple display of speech contents for smooth communication. For this purpose , we applied phonemic speech recognition system. Also , we have already proposed Japanese 5 vowels (j a/ , /i/ , /u/ , /e/ , /0/) recognition methods , applying L " 'Tim 問 e 守 -DelayN 巴山 a 叫 1 Network (TDNN)η [ロ 3]and s 討 ta 叫山tJ凶 s tical pattern rec ∞ og 叫 ion[4]. spectral features for phenemic recognition we apply the novel spectral estimation method called Burg-MCE[5] method combining Burg method and Minimum Cross Entropy method. apply human auditory property to pow 巴 rspectrum estimated by Burg-MCE method , and carry out phonemic recognition by using statiscal pattern recognition


The paper presents an eigenfunction solution to the canonical problem of diffraction of an obliquely incident plane elec- tromagnetic wave by a wedge with impedance boundary conditions. The expansion functions, which satisfy all the conditions of the boundary-value problem except for the radiation condition, are derived in an explicit form, whereas the expansion coefficients are numerically determined from the radiation condition. The diffraction coefficient is extracted from the series solution by employing the high-frequency asymptotic solution of the canonical diffraction problem.


Objective: Parkinson Disease (PD) is known the second most frequent neurodegenerative age-related disorder after Alzheimer's disease. Although over the six million people worldwide suffer from PD, the main cause of the disease remains are unknown. Speech and language impairments have emerged in most patients with PD during the course of the disease. However, clinical profiles or characteristics that might differentiate individuals with PD who are predisposed to speech and language deficits are generally overlooked. Moreover, factors that expedite language disability have still been remained elusive. It is thought that the awareness of speech and language impairments in PD can significantly help to maintain language abilities as the disease progresses and also may contribute to improving communication skills with patients. For this reason, the present study aims to constitute a comprehensive frame for the speech and language characteristics of individuals with PD


Circuits that perform the winner-take-all (WTA) function are essential building blocks in analog parallel signal processors. We observe that VLSI implementations of the WTA function rely almost invariably on voltage-follower (VF) circuits for the transmission of the inhibitory signal over the network. Basic VF circuits present low resolution, however, and several modifications have been proposed in order to enhance the system performance. These modifications add local feedback to the system, being the global feedback still transmitted by a nested VF circuit. In this paper, we examine the role of MOS/VF circuits in hardware realizations of the WTA function and derive a general method for estimating the resolution gain attained when such modifications are introduced onto a basic VF system. We also examine implementations that do not make use of this kind of inhibitory channel, often presenting lower resolution and/or bigger circuit size. >


This paper offers evidence to contradict employers' claims that scientific research supports their definition of unacceptable risk used to exclude women from jobs requiring exposure to toxic substances. Definitions of acceptable risk in fetal exclusion policies are not scientific or value-neutral, but are in fact socially constructed, and therefore reflect gender stratification, corporate control, and the culturally privileged position of the fetus. This is evident in three of these policies' effects: (1) they exclude only certain fertile women, not all workers at risk; (2) they give priority to fetal rights, at the expense of workers'rights; and (3) corporations see them as the least costly defense against damage suits. In addition, the paper examines problematic free choice rhetoric pervading the important U.S. Supreme Court case regarding the Johnson Controls Corporation's fetal exclusion policy. Finally, it examines conceptions and power relationships that underlie fetal exclusion, and suggests how issues of reproduction and risk in the workplace might be reframed.


Three censuses indicated that approximately 1220 harbour seals were at Sable Island at the beginning of whelping in 1970. About 270 pups were born, representing 18% of the total seal population after whelping. Maximum whelping occurred during the last week of May. Males represented 52% of the 118 pups examined. At least 12% of the pups died in the 1st month of life. Pups born with lanugo represented 16% of all pups born. Males and females averaged 80 cm long and 11 kg in weight at birth; 3 weeks later, the males averaged 91 cm and 24 kg and the females 86 cm and 20 kg.


The performance of the support vector machine models depends on a proper setting of its parameters to a great extent.A novel method of searching the optimal parameters of support vector machine based on chaos particle swarm optimization is proposed.A multi-fault classification model based on SVM optimized by chaos particle swarm optimization is established and applied to the fault diagnosis of rotating machines.The results show that the proposed fault classification model outperforms the neural network trained by chaos particle swarm optimization and least squares support vector machine,and the precision and reliability of the fault classification results can meet the requirement of practical application.It indicates that chaos particle swarm optimization is a suitable method for searching the optimal parameters of support vector machine.


Interferons (IFNs) have various roles in antiviral immunity, including curbing the immune system to prevent tissue damage and stimulating adaptive immunity. Due to its protective and destructive properties, IFN expression is tightly regulated. In contrast to its tight regulatory control, IFN expression is highly heterogeneous across many cell types upon pathogenic stimulus. The basis for this heterogenous IFN expression remains incompletely understood. Using single cell RNA-sequencing upon viral infection, we found that interferon expression is upregulated specifically in the late G1 phase of the cell cycle, and cell synchronization at the G1/S boundary boosts interferon expression. Furthermore, cell cycle arrest without any additional stimulus is sufficient to upregulate interferons and hundreds of other inflammatory response genes. Interferon upregulation at the G1/S boundary is cell type specific and not observed in non-immune cell types. Finally, we use ATAC-seq to identify potential transcription factors orchestrating this response. Together, these results uncover the cell cycle as a critical regulator of IFN expression in immune cells.


A Smart Warehouse (SW) usually employs an automated warehouse management system that integrates artificial intelligence and robotics to automate the warehouse processes. For instance, an Automated Retrieval System (ARS) is used in SW to retrieve products ordered by customers from shelves in order to speed up the product movement. Such a process is important because the product retrieval speed directly affects the subsequent processes, such as packaging and delivery, thus bringing a significant impact on the entire transaction duration between merchants and customers. In general, an order from a customer may contain several items and these items need to be retrieved from the respective shelves of the warehouse before the packaging process can be started. The retrieval delay of an order can then be defined as the duration from the time when the order being input to the system until the time when the last item of the order is retrieved. To reduce the retrieval delay of orders, we combine the integrality of order with the job scheduling of ARS. We introduce the concept of Order Tag and propose two Order-Based scheduling algorithms according to the greedy strategy to reduce the total retrieval delay of orders. Mathematical models are constructed to classify and evaluate the retrieval problems. Both algorithms take polynomial time and the ideal state is that all the retrieval jobs are evenly distributed to stackers. Simulation results demonstrate that these two strategies can reduce the total retrieval delay by approximately 30% comparing to the existing algorithms.


Unmanned aerial systems are increasingly used in geodesy and thus more and more advanced. The wish to achieve higher accuracy of photogrammetric products, which result from complex bundle block adjustments and multi-image matching, raises the question of stability of parameters of the digital camera's internal orientation in the aerial vehicle and their impact on the final product. The Bramor rTK aerial vehicle by the company C-ASTRAL and the Agisoft PhotoScan photo processing software were used for the purpose of this thesis. A geodetic network consisting of 20 stabilised points was established at the Petrol petrol station in Vipava to provide a calibration field. The network was condensed with a polar method to obtain more control points. To determine the stability of parameters of the camera's internal orientation, we conducted flights above the calibration field on three occasions. On every occasion, we carried out two flights, each at a different altitude, following the same flight plan. The acquired pictures were loaded to the Agisoft PhotoScan software, where internal and external camera orientation parameters were calculated through bundle block adjustments. The changing internal orientation parameters were analysed based on tests performed on different test blocks. The impact of the said parameters on the accuracy of photogrammetric products, i.e. orthophotos and point clouds, were assessed in line with control point discrepancies that were measured on the products using the Autocad Civil 3D software. Moreover, the discrepancies of the products on control points using different numbers of Ground Control Points were also observed.


Thinning of LSI is necessary for superior form factor and performance in dense cutting-edge packaging technologies. At the same time, degradation of thermal characteristics caused by the steep thermal gradient on LSIs with thinned base silicon is a concern. To manage a thermal environment in advanced packages, thermal characteristics of the thinned LSIs must be clarified. In this study, static and dynamic thermal dissipations were analyzed before and after thinning silicon to determine variations of thermal characteristics in thinned LSI. Measurement results revealed that silicon thinning affects dynamic thermal characteristics as well as static one. The transient variations of thermal characteristics of thinned LSI are precisely verified by analysis using an equivalent model based on the thermal network method. The results of analysis suggest that transient thermal characteristics can be easily estimated by employing the equivalent model.


Rock art was produced by non-literate societies and consequently no written records are available that can assist in clarifying the art. The literature points to a lack of interaction between the researchers of the various disciplines; diverse methods of approach are followed and contradictory results are obtained. After a hundred years of research, no consensus has been reached concerning the motivation for and meaning of the art. In order to reveal the meaning of rock art an alternative model of investigation must be found: Such a method must not rely on primary sources, and consideration must be given to all methods of investigation and to every interpretative hypothesis. This can be achieved by applying J. Heidema's structural model of meaning for the interpretation of the visual arts.


We summarise the approach to brane cosmology known as "mirage cosmology" and use it to determine the Friedmann equation on a 3-brane embedded in different bulk spacetimes all with one or more extra dimensions. Usually, when there is more than one extra dimension the junction conditions, central to the usual brane world scenarios, are difficult to apply. This problem does not arise in mirage cosmology because the brane is treated as a "test particle" in the background spacetime. We discuss in detail the dynamics of a brane embedded in two specific 10D bulk spacetimes, namely Sch-AdS 5 × S 5 and a rotating black hole, and from the dynamics—which are now rather more complicated since the brane can move in all the extra dimensions—determine the new "dark fluid" terms in the brane Friedmann equation. Some of these, such as the cosmological constant term, are seen to be bulk dependent. However, for both bulks we show that there exists a critical brane angular momentum, ℓ c , and discuss its significance. We then show explicitly how this mirage cosmology approach matches with the familiar junction condition approach when there is just one extra dimension. The issue of a varying speed of light in mirage cosmology is reviewed and we find a scenario in which c eff always increases, tending asymptotically to a constant c 0 as the universe expands. Finally some comments are made regarding brane inflation and limitations of the mirage cosmology approach are also discussed.


or the first time in history, the number of F overweight people approximately 1.1 billion rivals that of underweight people, according to a recent report from the Washington, D.C.-based Worldwatch Institute. Both groups suffer from malnutrition, an imbalance in the intake of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients needed for a healthy diet. Obesity, hunger and food insecurity (the state of being hungry or on the edge of hunger) are closely related public-health problems that cut across cultural and national boundaries. Genetic, socioeconomic, cultural and behavioral factors all contribute to these problems, and myriad academic disciplines and strategies are needed to address them. Yet work in these areas has suffered from a lack of collaboration among the relevant disciplines, some UC researchers strongly believe. In response, they have established an interdisciplinary research and outreach center to bring together experts from a variety of fields, including nutrition, public health, public policy, agricultural economics, genomics and psychology, with professionals outside academe who are working on nutrition and health problems in diverse communities. Center for Weight and Health. Established in 1998, the Center for Weight and Health is based at UC Berkeley. It promotes and coordinates new analyses and approaches to problems associated with the increasing prevalence of obesity, hunger and food insecurity, and it works to disseminate research findings to communities throughout California and the nation. Its codirectors are UC Berkeley nutrition experts Sharon Fleming, Joanne Ikeda and Patricia Crawford. "It is counterintuitive to connect hunger and obesity," Fleming says. "Yet there are strong indications of close connections." In populations receiving food and monetary assistance, for example, there is evidence that hunger and obesity coexist within individuals, she says. (Obese individuals often lack basic nutrition.) Additionally, some researchers believe that dieting, rather than reducing body weight, may actually lead to increased weight in the long term. "The center arose out of our recognition of the need for an academic unit looking at reasonable and sustainable interventions to address obesity and the closely related problems of hunger and obesity," Fleming says. The center includes researchers with the UC Agricultural Experiment Station and specialists and advisors with Cooperative Extension (CE), the university's outreach arm. This combination of renowned faculty members in nutrition, health and public policy, and CE personnel, with their expertise in working with minority groups, makes the center extremely well positioned to reach a broad spectrum of Californians, Fleming says. One such expert is Mary Fujii, Contra Costa County nutrition advisor and a member of the center's steering committee. Food insecurity in low-income communities has long been a focus area for that county's extension office. "Food insecurity includes hunger, but that's not all of it," Fujii says. "Our research shows that in low-income communities, access to nutritional foods is not available. Families may have an easier time buying a bucket of fried chicken than fresh melons. We must better understand the dynamics of access to nutritious food in low-income areas. The center will play a pivotal role in this work." Providing factual information to policymakers. Disseminating science-based information on malnutrition and food insecurity to policy-makers is another goal of the center. "We found there was no way to feed scientific information to state and federal policy-makers addressing problems of obesity, hunger or malnutrition," Fleming says.


An exhaust gas treatment system includes a particulate filter that has a filter substrate that is configured to trap soot contained in the exhaust gas. A regeneration system is configured to execute a regeneration operation of the particulate filter is regenerated by the fact that is burned away in the filter substrate of stored carbon black. A control module in electrical communication with the regeneration system to generate a first control signal that triggers the regeneration operation based on a comparison between at least one operating condition of the exhaust gas treatment system and a threshold value. The control module generates a second control signal in response to a detection of at least one diagnostic signal. The second control signal to trigger the regeneration operation, independently from the comparison.


Backbone wireless mesh network has been attracted much of attention due to a wide range of its application such as smart utility network, sensor network, etc. The employment of CSMA/CA based MAC protocols to mesh network, however, reveals high latency and low resource utilization due to problems of hidden terminal, exposed terminal, information asymmetry etc. Several alternative protocols including directional MAC, multichannel MAC only provide marginal improvement. In recent publication, a cross-layer design employing multiple antenna techniques and network coding called MIMO two-way relay is proposed for one dimensional mesh network. Owing to interference cancellation ability of MIMO, bi-directional flow multiplexing capability of network coding in combination with an efficient channel access scheme of TDMA/TDD, MIMO two-way relay provides significantly high end-to-end capacity. In this paper, we propose MIMO two-way relay as an alternative PHY/MAC protocol of CSMA/CA. A network simulator employing MIMO two-way relay is developed and more details on packet relaying mechanism of the algorithm are presented. Simulation results show that MIMO two-way relay achieves an extremely large improvement in network throughput, and packet delay reduction in comparison with CSMA/CA mesh networks.


Abstract Elizabeth Elstob, known as "the Saxon nymph", is much celebrated for her publications on Old English, Ælfric's homily on St Gregory (1709), for example. Her Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue (1715) was the first AngloSaxon grammar in English. It was also notable for introducing a new printing fount for Anglo-Saxon, one that reproduced almost every letter in an authentic imitation of that found in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, the first fount to attempt this degree of authenticity. This paper explores Elizabeth Elstob's publishing career through the medium of the means (and difficulties) of printing Anglo-Saxon. It also draws attention to another manuscript in Elizabeth Elstob's hand that is not generally known.


pure GM CBF (2 row), and net CBF image (3rd row) are shown for AD (left panel) and HC (right panel). Note the overall lower intensity of CBF in AD patients as compared to the age-matched HC. Also, note that pure GM CBF maps are independent of GM fractional volume at a given voxel thus reflecting voxel's GM flow density. Fig2: ROI-wise average CBF values for HC, MCI, and AD are shown in bleu, yellow, and red, respectively. Bars represent ± s.d.


In this new edition and translation of the Visio Anglie and Cronica tripertita, David R. Carlson and A.G. Rigg have made an invaluable contribution to studies of John Gower's profound engagement with the most important social and political upheavals of his era. As Carlson argues in the introduction, these poems represent Gower's foray into writing contemporary history, and he proposes that they may have circulated individually before Gower appended them to the Vox Clamantis. As Book 1 and the conclusion to the Vox, respectively, they transform the treatise on morality into a deeply satirical piece. The Visio depicts the peasants' uprising of 1381 and its aftermath; the poem is both an ostensible first-hand account and an apocalyptic vision in which the peasants are allegorized as monstrous beasts that threaten the state. The Cronica, written after the Lancastrian usurpation, addresses the events that led up to Richard II's deposition; throughout, Gower harshly criticizes the king as devious, unjust, and bent on the nation's ruin, while depicting Henry IV as the state's salvation. Together these two 'verse-essays' underscore how Gower uses poetry to critique historical events. Because the volume's focus is on Gower's contemporary response to events, Carlson has newly re-edited the poems from the earliest extant manuscripts (the previous edition by G.C. Macaulay used the latest manuscripts). Carlson's annotations provide variant manuscript readings, and his exhaustive explanatory notes are a veritable treasure trove for scholars. He presents valuable commentary on Gower's borrowings and adaptations from both classical literature and historical accounts, with direct quotations of relevant source material; he clarifies grammatically difficult Latin passages, with commentary on metre, style, and poetics; and he explains Gower's complex allegories, rich puns, and original passages, including identifying minor misrepresentations of events that likely point to Gower's unique interests. The appendix provides an edition and translation of the Latin 'Jack Straw' verses, which offer contemporary views on the uprising of 1381 and make a useful companion to the Visio. In addition to a general index, Carlson also provides indices of quotations and their sources and thorough bibliographical references. Rigg's verse translations aim for a balance of accuracy and readability, but they also deliver a text that is aesthetically pleasing and enjoyable to read. The Visio's unrhymed elegiac couplets are translated into blank verse, and the rhymed Leonine hexameters of the Cronica are presented in rhyming couplets. The resulting poetry brings Gower's vivid scenes to life with energy and grace. Rigg's translations allow the reader to 604 LETTERS IN CANADA 2011


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe key failure mechanisms observed during the development of the advanced packaging technology. Extensive accelerated stress tests are conducted to collect failure data and understand failure characteristics and failure trends. The results will be useful for design improvement and failure rate predictions.Design/methodology/approach – High density chip scale packages (CSP) are developed to meet the needs for high performance and small form‐factor products, but with reduced process procedures and product cost. Test‐to‐failure approaches are applied to evaluate the failure rate and reliability models instead of compliance qualification testing approaches.Findings – The study shows Cu‐trace cracking failure can be treated as random failures and analyzed using a constant failure rate approach. The acceleration factor for the Cu‐trace cracking failure mechanism exhibits a large power exponent comparing to the parameters used in reference models. In addition, the ...


Estimates are established for the number of integers of size N, in intervals of size $N^\theta$, that fail to admit a representation as the sum of s cubes (s = 5, 6). Thereby it is shown that almost all such integers are represented in the proposed manner. When s = 5 one may take $\theta = 10/21$, and when s = 6 one may take any $\theta >17/63$. Similar such conclusions are also established for the related problem associated with the expected asymptotic formula.


Moriyoshi volcano is situated between the inner volcanic zone (the Chokai zone) andthe outer one (the Nasu zone). The erupted materials cover an area of about 80 km2 and their total volume is estimated to be about 21 km3. The volcanic activity is divided into two main stages, earlier and later stages. In the earlier stage, pyroclastics with. small amount of lava flows erupted to form a cone-shaped stratovolcano. Rocks are augite-hypersthene andesite (SiO2 57-62%) accompanied with olivine-bearing augite-hypersthene andesite (SiO2 55-57%). The volcanism of the earlier stage terminated with a dacitic lava (SiO2 66%) flow eruption, thereafter an ellipse-shaped caldera (3.5×3km in size) was formed. In the later stage, lava flows effused and lava domes extruded nearby the caldera wall. At the eastern portion of the volcano, lava dome was accompanied by the formation of explosion crater. Rocks of the later stage include quartz-bearing hornblende-augite-hypersthene-olivine basalt (SiO2 52%), quartz-bearing olivine-aguite-hornblende-hypersthene andesite (Si02 55-61%) and quartz-augite-bearing hypersthene-hornblende dacite (SiO2 65%). Olivine+quartz phenocrysts assemdlage is common in the basalt and andesite. Major element analyses of 23 rocks indicate that the FeO*/MgO of the rocks from the earlier stage increases with increasing SiO2, while that from the later stage does a little. In the view of lateral variation of geochemical data, alkali contents of the rocks from Moriyoshi volcano show transitional values between those of the inner volcanic zone and the outer one.


Objective. To determine the frequency of stress and its impact on anxiety and depression in students of the Bachelor of Medicine of the School of Health Sciences of the University of Valle de Mexico, Campus Villahermosa. Methodology. An observational, analytical, cross-sectional and prospective study was conducted to relate stress, anxiety and depression in second-semester students of the Bachelor of Medicine at the University of Valle de Mexico, Campus Villahermosa in April 2018. Results. 128 students aged 20 ± 2.94 years were interviewed; finding a relationship between stress with depression and anxiety (p <0.05). Conclusion. Positive cases of stress are evident in the emerging university population


The current research presents a predicate logic based framework for formalizing various entities participating in Agent based Simulations. In the proposed technique the properties and actions of basic entities of Agent based Simulation (ABS) are represented using the axioms of Situation Calculus theory. The proposed framework has been used for the formalization of Agent based Simulation of Fire Emergency Response, and subsequently checked using SWI PROLOG SHELL.


This study was conducted to identify the combination of foods and foodservice menu patterns, food supply rankings and dietary quality through the a collection of school menus from the fifth week of October 2009, up to the fourth week of November 2009, in three American international schools in Korea. The results of analysis were as follows. For the basic pattern of American international school foodservice menu, dietary patterns comprised of rice, soup, five side dishes, Kimchi and snacks were 23.19%, while menu pattern comprised of rice, soup, four side dishes, Kimchi and snacks were 18.84%. The two dietary patterns accounted for 42.03%. For the foodservice frequency and food rankings from No. 1 to No. 5, vegetables and seasoned vegetables were the highest, followed by cooked rice, Kimchi, soup, and stir-fried foods. For nutrients, the intake ratio of carbohydrates, protein and fat for the calories provided at the three schools was 57:18:24, 53:18:29, and 55:18:27. Compared with 55~70:7~20:15~25 according to by Korean nutrition standards, carbohydrates and protein were adequate, but fat was high. For the recommended nutrient intake (RNI), the provided nutrient ratio was higher than the RI of nutrition standards in schools. For the average nutrient adequacy ratio (NAR), all three schools were above 1. School C had an above-average ratio for vitamin B-complex and vitamin A. Phosphorus showed a significant difference in the nutrient density. For DDS, school C provided all five main food groups every day.


The development of numerical models to describe physical problems with irregular boundaries frequently involves the use of very fine or variable Cartesian meshes when a more descriptive mesh might be appropriate. This paper describes the application of the transmission line matrix (TLM) technique to the analysis of orthogonal curvilinear mesh problems. Although very high levels of accuracy are possible, the computational efficiency may be reduced owing to the stub admittance factor, S, and the need for an accurate evaluation of the transmission line parameters.


ABSTRACT With increasing recognition being given to the importance of organizational boundary spanning activity, there is an associated need to determine, and ultimately manage, the stress experienced by those occupying boundary positions. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the individual and organizational consequences of employee stress, research considering the stress experienced by boundary role incumbents has been limited to one key set of influences commonly termed "role stressors." Additionally, there has been little direct consideration given to those factors or processes that precede, and ultimately determine, the design and implementation of targeted stress management programmes. Using a multiple case study research design, we present findings suggesting that boundary spanning employees are subject to a multitude of work-related stressors. Moreover, a large number of factors are identified that influence managerial responses to these stressors. These factors can be distinguished according to whether they influence managerial perceptions of the need for intervention, or the subsequent design and delivery of a potential solution.


Fast-hot patching for smelting furnace is a robot which can fast patch the convertor and flash furnace of copper-smelting to the partial areas from outer surface to inner wall.As the furnace operating,this robot can cut steel shell on the outer surface of furnace and remove the refractory bricks,patch up the open hole with new refractory material and so on.In this system,the electric circuit controlling direction of the main axle plays a key role in ensuring the system working smoothly.Based on the analysis of the hot patching craft for smelting furnace,this paper designs electric circuit controlling direction of the main axle of robot.It is proved after being put into practice that this electric circuit can fulfill the above mentioned functions very well.


what Stanley Fish termed an "epistemological criminal class" of those who carry their religious convictions into democratic politics. Like John Tomasi's Liberalism Beyond Justice (2001), which creates a hierarchy of citizens — or Lucas Swaine's The Liberal Conscience (2006), which consigns American "theocrats" to reservations, or Amy Gutmann's Identity and Democracy (2003), which envisions a class of quasi-colonial liberal administrators manipulating the "tribes" of America submerged in irrational religious beliefs or ascriptive identities in order to achieve universal justice — Pottenger's study places little trust in the rough and tumble of democratic politics and the pragmatic accommodations that result.


In this issue of epidemiology, Dowdy and Pai call for the creation of a new breed of epidemiologist they call "Accountable Health Advocates" (AHA). An AHA is someone, in their parlance, who "enables society to judge the value of research, develops new methods to translate existing knowledge into improved health, and actively engages with policymakers and society." It is not a new appeal. In 1989, Foxman called for a forum whereby epidemiologists would help policymakers formulate public health policy. A decade ago, Weed and Mink argued eloquently for "active participation in public health policymaking," using a definition that I adopt here: "making public health recommendations, implementing intervention programs, and participating as an advocate." The key question that Dowdy and Pai pose is: How can the profession of epidemiology support a few expert advocates in their successful pursuit as knowledge translators? Here, I reframe the question and instead ask: How can our profession not insist that all of us pursue, to the best of our abilities, not just knowledge generation, but knowledge translation? In other words, shouldn't a key, professional obligation be to engage in Weed and Mink's domains of making recommendations, implementing interventions, and participating as an advocate—what I will call "Universal Health Advocacy"? Such a restatement may seem audacious, particularly because, Foxman and Weed aside, other prominent epidemiologists have argued that professionally appropriate behavior confines us to science. How, then, do I reach this conclusion? Knowledge translation is epidemiology's raison d'etre, our reason-for-being. Epidemiology informs public health. Public health, in turn, has as its purpose to improve the health of populations. Ergo epidemiology moves from a cerebral exercise to a useful pursuit only when it directly affects its objective: the attainment of better population health. It is not enough to simply generate knowledge. Only when knowledge is transformed into rational and widespread practice and policy does it attain its usefulness. Despite its centrality, translating knowledge into action has been and continues to be deplorably slow. To be clear, the subset of "knowledge" to which I refer is that which is "established," that is, has attained the imprimatur of scientific consensus. Various studies suggest that it takes 1 to 2 decades for a scientifically accepted clinical intervention to become part of usual practice. On the occasion of his retirement from his position as director of the National Health Lung and Blood Institute, Lenfant described the painfully protracted uptake of established, secondary and primary prevention interventions that reduce the risk of heart disease (β blockers, antihypertensives, low-dose aspirin, and weight loss). He then said, "The practices no longer require research to demonstrate efficacy and effectiveness; as a practical matter, everything that needs to be known is already known." We, as the generators of much of the knowledge that could eliminate an estimated 40%–75% of all chronic illness, must ask ourselves, Is it acceptable to sit back and watch Americans be denied the benefit of progress? What obligation do we have individually and collectively?


Although Studies have examined variations in certain Physiological parameters during the different menstrual cycle phases, yet reports relating blood glucose level with the menstrual cycle is scanty. This study aimed at examining variations in blood glucose level during the menstrual cycle. 73 randomly selected apparently healthy young female subjects of age range 18-25 years were involved in the study. Their weight and height were measured from where the body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Their blood glucose level during menstrual, follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle was determined by colorimetric method. Results show that among normal weight and overweight subjects there is a phase dependent progressive increase in blood glucose level during follicular (insignificant) and luteal (significant) phases of the menstrual cycle when compared with the menstrual phase. We conclude that blood glucose level vary during the different phases of the menstrual cycle among non obese subjects.


In this article, a simple physical model describing the current transport mechanism in shallow Si p-n junctions containing silicide spikes is proposed and discussed. It includes analytical calculations of maximum electrical field around a silicide spike tip and tunneling probability of electrons at the silicide/silicon interface. The athermal behavior of the reverse current in shallow junctions containing silicide spikes is explained in terms of electric field enhancement at the sharp spikes and the resulting dominance of electron field-emission across the silicide/silicon Schottky barrier. The model also allows extraction of important parameters of such shallow junctions, such as the average radius of the silicide spikes.


Abstract * Presented before the Business and Economic Statistics Section at the 111th Annual Meeting of the American Statistical Association in Boston on December 27, 1951. It was not possible to take into account data and materials which became available after December 15, 1951.


The present invention provides stretchability and excellent in transparency, stretchability and excellent in the longitudinal direction of the support can be reduced and glossiness when formed into a composite fiber stockings and pantyhose and other stretchable fabrics. Further, the present invention also provides a fabric can be manufactured although large strength, it is difficult to break the fabric, but the fabric is easy to wear stretchable core-sheath composite fibers. One kind of core-sheath composite fiber, characterized in that it is a core part containing a thermoplastic urethane-based elastomer resin (A), and the sheath containing a thermoplastic polyester elastomer resin (B) core-sheath composite fiber, the core-sheath composite fibers obtained by a tensile test elongation curve rises tensile strength of 30 to 100%, and a core-sheath composite fiber, characterized in that it is a part of a thermoplastic urethane-based elastomer resin (a) in the core strong core and the sheath containing a thermoplastic polyester elastomer or a polyamide elastomer resin (B) of the sheath fiber, to unlock a woven fabric of core-sheath composite fiber obtained by a tensile test line extending obtained curve, the tensile load of 1.2cN degree of 12% or more and a tensile load of 8.0cN degree is 120% or less.


Objective To characterize a newly established human testicular carcinoma cell line that continuously produces α‐fetoprotein (AFP), and to investigate the effects of retinoic acid on AFP production.


During the last few years there has been in this country a spate of talk about scientific farming and carrying science to the farmer. The sum and substance of all this talk that is being made seems to me to be nothing but a lavish use of ammonium sulphate and insecticides. My ten years' study of agriculture has, however, given me a totally different idea of scientific farming. I am attempting to express here the essence of what I have learnt, in the hope that if I am wrong, some expert will put me right. I have gathered that the type of soil fertility which results in high productivity depends firstly, upon a certain physical condition of the soil. The physical properties of the soil which determine productivity are known collectively as "soil structure" by which is ment the state of aggregation of the soil particles on which depend the principal air and water regimes of the soil. In a structureless soil the separate particles tend to pack into the smallest possible space, producing a minimum of porosity, aeration, permeability, and water-holding capacity, which are qualities indispensable to the healthy growth of cultivated crops. We are told that experience has shown that the degree of granulation of a soil is a rough measure of its state of fertility, and that the higher the state of granulation of any given soil the more productive it will be, as measured by crap yields.


On the basis of the practical experience of building "digital pipeline" of the western pipeline project,the paper describes the basis and theoretical foundation of the digital pipeline construction,analyses the management and technical characteristics of the establishment of standards,systems development,data collection and data application,etc,explores a series of new ideas and methods of the pipeline construction and integrity management for long-distance pipelines.


Here, we developed a one-step method to prepare a highly tough and magnetic (1.2 emu g–1) polyacrylamide-Fe3O4-alginate (PAAM-Fe3O4-ALG) double-network hydrogel. Magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles (MNPs)...


Previous research indicates that dysfunctional attitudes wax and wane with shifts in mood, suggesting that they are more likely the result than the cause of depression. The present research examined the possibility that attitudinal precursors to depression exist but are difficult to detect because at-risk individuals are trying to suppress dysfunctional thinking. However, the lingering maladaptive beliefs should be reflected in attitude uncertainty. To test this idea, participants completed a measure of chronic thought suppression and the Dysfunctional Attitude Scale that was amended to include certainty ratings. Participants also reported current and past experiences with depression. The results indicated that although formerly depressed individuals—who are at high risk for relapse—reported relatively adaptive attitudes, they were more uncertain about those beliefs than were their never-depressed counterparts. Moreover, this greater uncertainty was associated with high levels of thought suppression that, in turn, were related to previous depression.


Abstract : A one-dimensional analytical model for axial deformation of continuous fiber reinforced metal-matrix composites under both thermal cycling and isothermal creep, with or without externally applied stresses, has been developed. Fibers in the model are considered to be non-creeping, therm-elastic solids, whereas the matrix is considered to be thermo-elastic-plastic and creeping. The model accounts for the strain history of the composite, and allows for changing matrix creep mechanisms via the use of unified creep laws. The use of unified creep laws allows separation of the overall instantaneous creep strain rate into dislocation creep and diffusional creep components, which can be further separated into power law breakdown, pipe diffusion controlled power law, volume diffusion controlled power law, Coble and Nabarro-Herring creep. Additionally, the model allows for the incorporation of time-dependent interfacial sliding near the extremities of the fiber due to the existence of interfacial shear stresses. Based on a recent study, interfacial creep has been represented as being controlled by diffusional flow with a threshold stress (Bingham flow). The interfacial creep law allows simulation of non-isostrain deformation across the interface, and thus the model is capable of explaining experimental observations of strain incompatibility across the interface near fiber-ends. It is envisioned that such a model will be useful in discerning the predominant matrix creep mechanism at a variety of time periods for a given applied stress and temperature, and thus make it possible for the generation of transient deformation mechanism maps for composites.


Many of Distance Learning systems studied currently attract attention how to secure the environment that is mechanical to do Distance Learning in lubrication. However, there are a few study examples to communicate the element which a class originally has as a classroom's atmosphere: Impression and interest that a lecturer wants to convey, degree of understanding, interest and sympathy of a student. So we study Distance Learning system which communicate an atmosphere, feelings, a nuance. Till now, we have proposed a method to try expression such as feelings or nuance of a lecturer, using a video e®ect and a method to try reproduction of sense of reality of class by feeding back by reaction of a student to other student and a lecturer. In this report, we implemented a proposed system and we used the system to test in a real Distance Learning class. As a result the video e®ect was not transmitted through the nuance of many lecturers, because a de¯nition of e®ect was not enough. On the other hand the feedback e®ect had reproduction of sense of reality of class of one degree from an experiment result.


Background: Recent studies show cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors have the tendency to intermingle. Integration between some biological and homodynamic risk factors have made the new hypothesis for etiology of CVDs. The aim of this study was to determine the clustering pattern of metabolic variables and left ventricular (LV) mass among smoker and non-smoker individuals and the interrelationship between these risk factors. Methods: 50 smokers and 50 non-smoker healthy males aged 20 to 60 yrs participated in the study. After completing a WHO standard questionnaire regarding smoking habits, medications and history of other diseases, physical fitness, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar, plasma insulin, total cholesterol, HDL, triglycerides and lipoprotein (a). A 12-lead electrocardiography and echocardiography studies were done to determine the LV mass. Results: No significant differences were found between smokers or non-smokers in regard to the studied metabolic variables except for LV mass (228.4±48.6 vs. 196.4±57.3 g; P<0.05). The interrelationship of metabolic syndrome variables and other CVD risk factors among smokers was greater than non-smokers (P<0.05). In the factor analysis, three components were retained both for smokers and non-smokers. A total of 59.5% of variance was explained in data for all subjects.


Most of the existing studies have investigated fixed-length CAPTCHA recognition. In this paper the authors propose applying convolutional neural networks trained with a special loss function to recognize dynamic character sequences. The paper studies the influence of individual color channels and their linear combination on the models' final quality. Each color channel importance was estimated using trained weighting coefficients in linear combination of color pixel values. The results obtained allowed us to reduce the resource requirements for model training without loss of recognition quality, and at the same time to accelerate training. Model error analysis allowed us to make proposals for improving CAPTCHA designs and ways to counteract automatic recognition are outlined.


The increasing reach of the Internet of Things (IoT) is leading to a world rich in sensors [3] that can be used to support physical analytics -- analogous to web analytics but targeted at user interactions with physical devices in the real-world (e.g. [2]). In contrast to web analytics, physical analytics systems typically only provide data relating to sensors and objects without consideration of individual users. This is mainly a consequence of an inability to track individual mobile user interactions across multiple physical objects (or across sessions of interaction with a single object) using, for example, an analogue of a web cookie. Indeed, such a "physical analytics cookie" could raise significant privacy concerns.
 However, in many cases a more "human-centric" approach to analytics would enable us to provide new and interesting insights into interactions between mobile users and the physical world [1]. In our work we endeavour to leverage synthetic user traces of human mobility, and data from real IoT systems, to provide such insights.


If not assessed properly, unstable crack growth in pipelines could result in detrimental leaks or ruptures. Fracture mechanics models are typically used to assess the susceptibility of pipelines to fail due to the presence of cracks or crack-like anomalies. To this end, an inelastic (or elastic-plastic) fracture mechanics model, known as CorLAS™ model, has been developed and frequently used by pipeline operators. This paper first reviews the development of the CorLAS™ model and derives the probabilistic characteristics, including mean and coefficient of variation (COV) associated with the CorLAS™ model using a collection of 94 full-scale burst test data from the literature. A comprehensive reliability assessment of cracked pipes based on the CorLAS™ model is performed through the Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) method. For each reported scenario, the probability of failure (PoF) is calculated by MCS that considers the uncertainties associated with various parameters such as pipe geometry, material properties, and the uncertainty due to the fracture model itself, namely, the model error. Finally, a sensitivity study is conducted considering various input parameters, including pipe grade, pipe diameter, wall thickness, ratio of crack length to depth, ratio of crack depth to wall thickness, and model error COV. The results suggest that the PoFs are highly sensitive to the COV, i.e., the PoFs increase significantly with the increase of the COVs, while the effects of other input parameters on the PoFs are insignificant. It is also shown that the model error COV of CorLAS™ with a value of 13% could serve as a reference value for future model error studies.


Objective To determine the extent to which genetic variation in the potassium channel gene KCNQ1 causes atrial fibrillation (AF). Design Case–control study. Setting National University Hospital, Singapore. Patients Han Chinese patients (n=111) with lone AF (onset <60 years and lacking risk factors) and 265 Han Chinese controls. Interventions Blood draw, 12-lead electrocardiogram and transthoracic echocardiogram were performed on patients with AF at enrolment. Main outcome measures DNA sequence variants in the coding region and exon–intron boundaries of KCNQ1 as detected by direct sequencing. Results Four previously reported coding variants were identified: I145I, S546S, P448R and G643S. An additional 19 non-coding variants were identified, nine of which are newly reported. None were predicted to create a cryptic splicing site. The allele frequencies of the two non-synonymous variants did not differ significantly in the AF cases compared with 265 Han Chinese controls (P448R: 10.8% in cases vs 8.6% in controls, p=0.41; G643S: 1.4% in cases vs 0.8% in controls, p=0.43). Conclusions Comprehensive mutation scanning of KCNQ1 did not identify novel pathogenic mutations or risk-conferring polymorphisms. As in Caucasians, genetic variation in KCNQ1 is not a common cause of AF in Han Chinese. Routine genetic testing of KCNQ1 for AF is, therefore, not warranted.


Each link of producing algae biofuel has a close relationship with the environment. In this paper, algae growth environment, artificial cultivation of microalgae with sewage were introduced as well as scale cultivation, harvesting, drying, extracting oil processes in microalgae biodiesel production. It's pointed out that the development of algal biofuel should be more conducive to alleviate the greenhouse effect and treat sewage, so microalgae biofuel should have broader development prospect.