CD36 is involved not only in the metabolism of lipids,but also in the inflammatory reaction,in the formation of foam cells and in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.Monocyte/macrophage CD36 has been shown to play a critical role in the development of atherosclerotic lesions by its capacity to bind and en-docytose oxidized low density lipoproteins(oxLDL),and it is implicated in the formation of foam cells.CD36 expression and regulation mechanism already provides a new understanding and the relevant drug research has attracted more attention of scholars.This article is to carefully review the importance of CD36 as an essential component in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis.

Key words:
CD36; Macrophage; Atherosclerosis


Higher multipoles due to magnetization of the superconductor in superconducting dipole and quadrupole magnets has been observed in over twenty years. This report presents measurements of the 12 pole and 20 pole multipoles in a model one-meter long four-centimeter bore SSC type quadrupole built at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). The measurements were compared with calculations of the field structure using magnetization theory. Good agreement was observed between the measured multipoles and the calculated multipoles. Under conditions equivalent to injection into the SSC at an energy of 2 TeV, about 1.0 unit of 12 pole was observed and 0.05 units of 20 pole was observed. (One unit of field error is a field error of one part in ten thousand). Magnetization multipole measurements were also done on the first full length (5 meter) SSC quadrupole prototype. Measurements of flux creep decay were made on three one meter quadrupoles and the first five meter long quadrupole. 7 refs., 9 figs.


Ideally a country (region, city, etc.) is covered with homogeneous data sets. Unfortunately, this ideal situation does not often present itself. Frequently, we have a number of different existing data sets with varying characteristics at our disposal. One then has the choice between starting all over from scratch in order to get a new homogeneous coverage or trying to combine the existing data and filling in the gaps. The decision between the two options is a matter of a number of "pushing" and "pulling" factors as for example available production means, urgency, required precision, market situation, etc. At the Belgian National Geographical Institute a project was started in 2001, aiming at the maximum use of the existing data sets in order to quickly set up a DEM with medium-scale accuracies for the whole country. Overall, we used more than five different sources and methods for the collection of digital elevation data, resulting in a nationwide DEM-patchwork. In one of these workflows we combined different powerful commercial softwares for the automatic generation and filtering of a DSM. When different sources of data are available for the same area, it can be very useful to combine the different characteristics and exploit the diversity of the data in order to improve the quality. An example of this is the combination of automatically generated DSMs with DTMs derived from digitized contour lines. In a densely populated area like Belgium, with highly irregular man-made landscapes, it is not always feasible (in a cost-effective way) to filter the DSM down to a DTM. A second DTM based on digitized contour lines serves as an additional information source for solving this problem. The overall accuracy of the latter DTM is lower in places where the DSM describes the earth surface, but on the other hand it helps to detect where the DSM does not coincide with the ground surface. Tests were performed for the automated and semi-automated exploitation of this diversity.


A pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (PCWP) ≥25 mm Hg following volume load or exercise has been proposed as a partition value for detection of HfpEF. However, the hemodynamic response to volume challenge in heart transplant (Tx) recipients has never been studied.

 24 heart Tx recipients (age: 65 years) with normal LV function (55±7%) and without rejection and graft vasculopathy underwent right heart catheterization to measure hemodynamic response to volume loading before and after a rapid saline infusion of 7mL/kg over 10 min. PCWP, right atrial pressure (RAP), mean pulmonary artery pressure (AP) were obtained and the PCWP and indexed (i) stroke volume (SV) data were used to construct Starling (SVindex/PCWP) curves. Pts were categorized in those with elevated filling pressures (Group A, n=13 pts) defined by a PCWP ≥15 mm Hg at rest or ≥25 mm Hg following volume loading vs those without (Group B, n=11 pts).

 No difference in age of donor and transplant heart, baseline hemodynamics and EF was noted between both groups. Saline infusion significantly increased PCWP and mean AP in both Groups (table 1) without any significant change in BP and heart rate. Interestingly saline infusion was associated with a significant rise in SV and SVi in Group B not in Group A pts. Moreover, in Group B pts the Starling curves revealed a larger SVi at any give PCWP compared to Group A pts (Fig.1).
 Table 1 All (n=24) Group A (n=13) Group B (n=11) Baseline Volume Loading Baseline Volume Loading Baseline Volume Loading RAP (mm Hg) 5.3±4.1 9.2±4.8* 7.6±4.8 11.4±5.2* 3.8±2.5 7.3±1.9* Mean AP 18.4±5.4 24.1±5.9* 21.7±5.1 26.8±6.5** 14.9±2.4 20.8±2.6* PCWP 12.1±4.9 16.8±6.7* 15.0±4.9 19.8±6.5** 8.4±1.9 14.6±3.7* SV 71.4±19.6 72.5±23.6 73.2±6.2 72.4±6.2 69.2±14.6 79.2±3.9 SViml/m2) 37.4±9.2 37.9±11.2 36.7±7.1 38.7±9.9 35.3±6.0 40.5±5.2* *p<0.01 compared to baseline; **p<0.05 compared to baseline.
 Figure 1

 In the transplanted heart volume loading increases filling pressures and is able to unmask left ventricular diastolic dysfunction. Interestingly, those with HFpEF are characterized by a blunted Frank Starling response as evidenced by higher PCWP and failure to increase SV for any given PCWP. Further prospective studies are warranted to unravel the underlying mechanisms.


Article History Published Online: 15 May 2018 History of Dalit politics in Utter Pradesh has been a fascinating topic for academic and public imagination in the recent past. As a part of this process this paper attempts to capture the Dalit politics by examining the ides and activities of associations established by Dalits and for Dalits in colonial and post colonial Utter Pradesh. The main proposition this paper advances is that Dalit collectivist activism was actively promoted by several caste associations established by Dalits in Utter Pradesh. It was this process that actively promoted the identify formation process of caste and class among Dalits. This duel identity process remained to be centrality of Dalit politics in colonial and post colonial India. In sort, this paper attempts to trace the plurality of Dalit politics in Utter Pradesh.


Objective: The aim of this study was to determine if children exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) via parental smoking (ETS+) developed more respiratory symptoms resulting in longer recovery times following surgical outpatient procedures compared with children of nonsmoking parents (ETS−).


The ionic polymer–metal composite (IPMC), a type of electroactive polymer (EAP) actuator, has created a unique opportunity to design robots that mimic the motion of biological systems due to its soft structure and operation at a low voltage. Although this polymer actuator has strong potential for a next-generation artificial muscle actuator, it has been observed by many researchers that supplying actuation voltages in multiple locations is challenging. In robotic applications, a tethered operation is prohibited and the battery weight can be critical for actual implementation. In this research, the remote unit can provide necessary power and control signals to the target mobile robot units actuated by IPMCs. This research addresses a novel approach of using a wireless power link between the IPMC and a remote unit using microstrip patch antennas designed on the electrode surface of the IPMC for transmitting the power. Frequency modulation of the microwave is proposed to selectively actuate a particular portion of the IPMC where the matching patch antenna pattern is located. This approach can be especially useful for long-term operation of small-scale locomotion units and avoids problems caused by complex internal wiring often observed in various types of biologically inspired robots.


Subsea flowlines that transport hydrocarbons from wellhead to the processing facility face issues from solid deposits such as hydrates, waxes, asphaltenes, etc. The solid deposits not only affect the production but also pose a safety concern; thus, flow assurance is significantly important in designing and operating subsea oil and gas production. In most subsea oil and gas operations, gas hydrates form at high pressure and low temperature conditions, causing the risk of plugging flowlines, with a undesirable impact on production. Over the years, the oil and gas industry has shifted their perspective from hydrate avoidance to hydrate management given several parameters such as production facility, production chemistry, economic and environmental concerns. Thus, understanding the level of hydrate risk associated with subsea flowlines is an important in developing efficient hydrate management techniques. In the past, hydrate formation models were developed for various flow-systems (e.g., oil dominated, water dominated, and gas dominated) present in the oil and gas production. The objective of this research is to extend the application of the present hydrate prediction models for assessing the hydrate risk associated with subsea flowlines that are prone to hydrate formation. It involves a novel approach for developing quantitative hydrate risk models based on the conceptual models built from the qualitative knowledge obtained from experimental studies. A comprehensive hydrate risk model, that ranks the hydrate risk associated with the subsea production system as a function of time, hydrates, and several other parameters, which account for inertial, viscous, interfacial forces acting on the flow-system, is developed for oil dominated and condensate systems. The hydrate plugging risk for water dominated systems is successfully modeled using The Colorado School of Mines Hydrate Flow Assurance Tool (CSMHyFAST). It is found that CSMHyFAST can be used as a screening tool in order to reduce the parametric study that may require a long duration of time using The Colorado School of Mines Hydrate Kinetic Model (CSMHyK). The evolution of the hydrate plugging risk along flowline-riser systems is modeled for steady state and transient operations considering the effect of several critical parameters such as oil-hydrate slip, duration of shut-in, and water droplet size on a subsea tieback system. This research presents a novel platform for quantification of the hydrate plugging risk, which in-turn will play an important role in improving and optimizing current hydrate management strategies. The predictive strength of the hydrate risk quantification and hydrate prediction models will have a significant impact on flow assurance engineering and design with respect to building safe and efficient hydrate management techniques for future deep-water developments.


In order to improve the irrigation water use efficiency and the level of intelligence of the equipment,a wireless sensor network based on the intelligent water control network system is proposed.The sensor network routing protocols are analyzed.The algorithm design is realized,by which various sensors constitute an intelligent sensor network.Solar power battery is used to improve the level of automation and intelligence.The use of network simulation method to the proposed algorithm is validated.The simulation results show that the design based on content networking intelligent water-saving irrigation control network can improve the accuracy of irrigation,improve irrigation water use efficiency.


Apatite (U-Th)/He dating provides unique constraints on low-T thermal histories of rocks, but in some settings produces anomalous ages. Possible (nonanalytical) origins of this include complications arising from alpha ejection and implantation or reheating. Here we present observations from several settings suggesting a role for secondary grainboundary phases with high parent nuclides. Detrital apatite from Paleogene clastic sediments that have not been heated above ~30-40 °C from the Sierra Nevada, the Bighorn Basin, and the Pyrenees shows anomalous ages that are often younger than depositional age and inversely correlated with U and Th across large ranges of U-Th concentrations. In several cases, single-grain analyses from individual conglomerate clasts show correlations that are distinct from those of other clasts, suggesting parent nuclide mobility at the cm-scale. Many apatites in these samples are similar to those in soils, showing several features distinct from those in most unweathered crystalline rock. These include secondary clayoxyhydroxide phases on grain exteriors and filling cleavage fractures and c-axis-parallel dissolution pits. Induced fissiontrack distributions indicate that the secondary weathering phases often have high U relative to apatite. Given relatively low U-Th concentrations (~10s of ppm) in most apatite and often high concentrations in oxyhydroxides, late-stage addition of secondary phases may have a significant influence on the parent nuclide budget and therefore age of a grain. If the secondary phases have higher U-Th than the grain on which they precipitate, then regardless of when they form relative to cooling-age closure, measured ages will be "too-young" and U-Th concentrations relatively high. If, however, the secondary phases are not analyzed with the grain (e.g., due to removal during mineral separation), apparent ages will be "too-old" due to He implantation. The U-Th concentration of secondary phases is likely to vary by setting, but may be higher in old (e.g., Precambrian) rocks with radiation-damaged U-Th-rich phases such as zircons. In such cases grain boundary secondary phases may have the potential to implant significant amounts of He into apatite. Oxidative weathering and the Fe-S balance of the late Archean ocean C. REINHARD, R. RAISWELL, A. ANBAR AND T. LYONS Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA (firstname.lastname@example.com) School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK (email@example.com) Dept. of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA (email@example.com)


Nanoplastics can enter into the aquatic environment as primary nano-sized or fragmented from larger-sized plastic particles, and their ecological effects and environmental fate have aroused increasing public concerns. Here, we identified the disruption of ATP-binding cassette (ABC) efflux after polystyrene (PS) nanoplastics (76 ± 7 nm) exposure in larval Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes). Nanoplastics (0.001–10 μg/mL) caused 3–6-fold higher lipid peroxidation in fish larvae than the control, with concomitant downregulated expression of efflux transporter-related genes (abcb6a, abcc2, abcg2). Two probes of rhodamine (indicative of p-glycoprotein function for parent compounds' efflux, P-gp) and fluorescein (indicative of multidrug resistance-associated protein function for metabolites' efflux, MRP) were further used to verify the inhibited ABC efflux ability, via rhodamine and fluorescein bioaccumulation results. Three-fold higher accumulation of rhodamine was observed following treatment with 10 μg/mL of nanoplastics. Excessive accumulation also occurred for fluorescein, with 1.7–1.8-fold higher concentrations than controls in larvae treated with 0.01–0.1 μg/mL of nanoplastics. Although the inhibition of ABC transporters diminished after two hours of depuration, the co-existence of nanoplastics and other contaminants still raises concerns. Collectively, this study suggests that nanoplastics can negatively impact ABC transporters' efflux ability and could cause unanticipated accumulation of co-existing organic pollutants in aquatic organisms.


PURPOSE
To assess the effectiveness of inside-out TVT-ABBREVO in the surgical treatment of female stress urinary incontinence (SUI) with mean two-year follow-up.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Fifty-six women underwent surgery for moderate-severe SUI. The technology used was the TVT-ABBREVO inside-out. Each woman at 12 and 24 months underwent postoperative evaluation by means of urodynamics, Q-tip test, CST, transperineal ultrasonography, and administration of "King's Health Questionnaire" (KHQ).

RESULTS
The mean age of the women was 57.03 +/- 11.1 years (range 42-75). Postoperative urodynamics (12 months follow-up) resulted to be normal in 43/56 patients (76.79%), in 10/56 (17.86%) cases resulted in a considerable improvement of the symptomatology, and only 1/56 (1.78%) case had de novo overactive bladder (OAB), in 2/56 (3.57%) symptomatology unchanged. After administration of the KHQ 43/56 cases (76.79%) had resolution of the symptomatology, 10/56 cases (17.86%) improvement of the symptomatology, and no change in 3/56 cases (5.36%).

CONCLUSION
In the authors' experience, the TVT-ABBREVO resulted technically simple. The TVT-ABBREVO procedure provides high objective and subjective long-term efficacy, a clinically meaningful improvement in patient quality of life, and an excellent safety profile.


The rapid development of Culture and creative industries has been promoted by "Internet+". However, the lack of talent of Culture and creativity has become a bottleneck restricting the development of industries. The development of industry can be aided by the quantitative evaluation system of the design ability of the designer, based on its monitoring, feedback and incentive functions. Based on the study of the existing competence evaluation index system, an evaluation index system for the design competence of creative designers of Culture was constructed by comprehensively investigating the three factors viz. design, ethics and sports. Subsequently, the subjective and objective combination weighting method was used to determine the weighted index of the design competence. Moreover, the fuzzy Topsis method was used to obtain the evaluation model, while the operability and scientificity of the evaluation index system and the evaluation method were verified by an example.


In this paper, we investigate the use of fuzzy rules for efficient intrusion detection. We use evolutionary algorithm to optimize the set of fuzzy rules for intrusion detection by constructing fuzzy decision trees. For efficient execution of evolutionary algorithm we use supervised clustering to generate an initial set of membership functions for fuzzy rules. In our method both performance and complexity of fuzzy rules (or fuzzy decision trees) are taken into account in fitness evaluation. We also use evaluation with data partition, membership degree caching and zero-pruning to reduce time for construction and evaluation of fuzzy decision trees. For performance evaluation, we experimented with our method over the intrusion detection data of KDD'99 Cup, and confirmed that our method outperformed the existing methods. Compared with the KDD'99 Cup winner, the accuracy was increased by 1.54% while the cost was reduced by 20.8%.


Detection of highlights is a prominent issue in computer vision, graphics and image processing. Applications that require object properties' measurement or rendering are affected by specular reflection since the models assume matte diffusing surfaces most of the time. Hence, detection, and sometimes removal, of specular reflection (highlights) in an image may be critical. Proposed work takes the help of global color information of an image to effectively recover specular and diffuse reflection. We take help of a dichromatic reflection model to get insights into specular and diffuse reflection. To detect illumination chromaticity (specular reflection regions) we have effectively used a k-means algorithm. Pixels in an image are spread over the entire image and their distances to the illumination chromaticity give the number of specular reflection components. With such non-local overall information from these color lines, our method can effectively separate specular and diffuse reflection components using the repaint() method. We have taken the help of the Imglib2 library.


Jacobson and Rosenberg comment on aspects of the U.S. Army's Biological Defense Research Program and propose shifting some responsibility for biological defense research to a civilian agency such as the National Institutes of Health. They call for more openness in the conduct of such research, and report on Congressional efforts to reinforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. Finally, they suggest ways in which physicians can be sure that research on biological agents is conducted safely and appropriately and can work to decrease the threat of a biological arms race.


This workshop will explore how defamiliarization - a process of slowing down perception - can be exploited as a bridge between usability and innovation. This workship will investigate: 1) how to use defamiliarization to support innovation; 2) how to evaluate defamiliarization by means of user testing; and 3) reflection around the creation of design guidelines specific to defamiliarization.


1. A method for ultra low titanium content in the ultra low regulation AlSi-killed steel, wherein the weight percent of the chemical composition of AlSi ultra low carbon killed steel is: S≤0,005, Si 0,1-3,4, Mn 0,1-0,5, P≤ 0,2, S≤0,002, A1 0-1,2, N≤0,005, Ti≤0,0015 and the rest - essentially, Fe and unavoidable impurities; molten steel having a specified chemical composition, obtained by hot pretreatment, smelting, RH- purified melting and casting, the upper ladle slag is modified by this modifier is added to calcium-aluminum base in an amount of 0,6-1,7 kg / t steel so as to guarantee the performance monitoring requirements, in accordance with which when purified RH decarburization is completed, the content of total iron (T.Fe) in the top slag composition should be ≥5%, content AlO≤23%; RH-cleaned when decarburization is complete, is used ferrosilicon, ferromanganese or ferroaluminum for deoxidizing and alloying, is then performed with the deep desulfurization of 50 to 70% desulfurization efficiency .2. Method ultra low titanium content regulation in ultra low Al-Si killed steel according to claim 1, characterized in that the desulfurizer comprises (wt.%: CaO 65-75, AlO15-30, CaF0-10.3 control method ultra low titanium content in the ultra low carbon Al. -Si-killed steel according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the desulfurizer is added in the following amount: if the initial percentage of sulfur in the ladle is 0,0021-0,0025, the required amount of desulfurizer is 3,3-4,0 kg / t steel, if the percentage of the initial sulfur content of the ladle is 0,0026-0,0030, the required amount desulfur


The change of surface sediment composition, shoreline and transection of geography were studied to investigate the Typhoon(Maemi) effect in Naa Beach located in the south area of East sea. In the backshore the volume of gravel is do creased, and increased in the volume of sand. The erosion in the sediment occurred to 4 m in the thickness and effected to 10 m in depth. And the coastline retreated to 12 m after typhoon. During typhoon conditions, higher amplitude waves deepen the wave base, causing much of the lower beach face and the offshore. The upper beach face is extensively eroded during typhoon and sand sediment is redeposited.


Most previous 2-D and 3-D image quality evaluators were based on shallow architectures. Their shallow architectures cannot model phenomenon occurring in human visual systems sufficiently. Disparities between left and right views have been importantly used for 3-D image quality assessment (IQA), but single disparity, depth, or cyclopean maps made from the disparities cannot thoroughly reflect the depth sense. In this paper, we propose a blind stereoscopic image quality evaluator using stacked auto-encoders (SAE). The proposed method is based on two theories on initial stages of stereopsis. One is cyclopean channel theory and the other is binocular summation/difference channels theory. Especially, a cyclopean image that models the former theory is computed to consider binocular suppression, whereas summation and difference images that model the latter one are utilized to treat the depth sense. We train three SAEs for quality-aware features from the three images in an unsupervised manner. Through the SAEs, the features are transformed into more meaningful features, and they are used to train two regressors. The regressors are used to obtain a final predicted score. Experimental results conducted on popular 3-D IQA databases prove that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art 3-D IQA methods.


To investigate template effect on physicochemical properties of zeolite and enhance the molecular sieving properties, adsorption of methionine amino acid was studied by spectroscopic methods. Four zeolites such as methionine templated analcime, methionine templated zeolite P, N, N-dibenzyl N,N,N,N-tetramethylethylenediamine (DBTMED) templated analcime and free template analcime were synthesized as adsorbents and characterized with scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transformation infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and N2 adsorptiondesorption analyses. The influence of methionine concentration and pH on the adsorption ability of zeolites was examined; furthermore, the adsorption isotherms of methionine on zeolites were studied and the experimental data were fitted with Freundlich and Langmuir equations in order to obtain sorption parameters.The results indicated that the adsorption of amino acid was not only depended on zeolites surface areas but also on their pore size. The existence of template in zeolite synthesis could help enlarging the pore size and enhancing the adsorption ability.


In a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), significant amount of data flows through the nodes near the sink, than the nodes away from the sink. As a result, the limited energy available with the nodes around the sink becomes a bottleneck in the performance of the WSN. The nodes in the bottleneck zone determines the lifetime of the WSN. So, there is a need to investigate the effect of the size of the bottleneck zone on the lifetime and collectible information of the network. In this paper, analytically, we study the effect of bottleneck zone radius on the network lifetime. Further, the effect of the bottleneck zone radius on the upper bound of the collectible information has also been studied.


Investment tax credits are increasingly viewed as a privileged way of encouraging private responsibility in cultural heritage conservation. However, an overview of the empirical investigations into the effects of tax credits on investment in cultural heritage reveals that research is only at its beginning, and suggests that further inquiry is necessary in order to offer a sound guide to effective tax policy. Within a conceptual framework that relies on the increasingly shared view of cultural heritage as a capital asset, this chapter discusses the main issues that arise when evaluating the welfare consequences of indirect public support to conservation, and reviews the most frequently encountered tax credit mechanisms for private investment in cultural heritage.


Described herein are two brothers, both with a congenitally bicuspid aortic valve-one of which was stenotic and one of which functioned normally-and one with associated aortic isthmic coarctation. Summarized also are previously reported families with more than one member with a congenitally bicuspid aortic valve.


Background: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the world prevalence of psoriasis is between 0.9-11.4 % according to the geographical area, in Mexico the prevalence is 2%; the frequency is higher in the Caucasian population, this disease can appear at any age but is more common in the 5069 age group. The affectations of the physical, mental and social areas are frequent in this disease. Aim: The purpose of this study is to know the relationship between depression and quality of life in patients with psoriasis from the family medicine unit #27 (FMU 27). Design and Setting: Analytic cross-sectional study. Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was carried out in patients with psoriasis older than 18 years. Quality of life was measured using the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) questionnaire and depression using the Hamilton scale. The data was analyzed using the SPSS version 21; the chi-square test was used to determine the association between qualitative variables, the Shapiro-Wilk test was applied for data distribution and correlation using the Spearman test. Results: 59.3% of the patients have an alteration in the quality of life, 85.2% with depression and a positive correlation between DLQI and Hamilton score. Conclusion: There is a high prevalence of alterations in quality of life in patients with psoriasis and a high prevalence of depression; The impact on the quality of life is correlated with depression.


After 1918, millions of refugees from the former Russian and Ottoman Empires found themselves without citizenship. To facilitate refugee travel and work, Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, League of Nations HCR, established an international identity certificate, generally known as the "Nansen passport" This document identified the refugee but did not give him the same rights as a legal passport, most notably, the right of return. After the war, racism in Canada's immigration program and a concern for potential public charges affected the way in which Canada dealt with the Nansen passport, her participation at international conferences dealing with refugees, and the entry of refugees qua refugees. These developments occurred at a time when Canada was trying to establish an international presence and a measure of independence from Britain.


For the original article see ibid., vol.38, no.11, p.1603-8 (1990). The commenter notes the existence of earlier published work related to the above-named work by D.A. Goldberg et al. The authors' reply is included. >


In the present work we calculate the allowed $\beta^-$-decay half-lives of nuclei with $Z = 20 -30$ and N $\leq$ 50 systematically under the framework of the nuclear shell model. A recent study shows that some nuclei in this region belonging to the island of inversion. We perform calculation for $fp$ shell nuclei using KB3G effective interaction. In the case of Ni, Cu, and Zn, we used JUN45 effective interaction. Theoretical results of $Q$ values, half-lives, excitation energies, log$ft$ values, and branching fractions are discussed and compared with experimental data. In Ni region, we also compared our calculated results with recent experimental data [Z. Y. Xu {\it et al.}, \emph{Phys. Rev. Lett.} \textbf{113}, 032505, 2014]. Present results showing good agreement with experimental value of half-lives in comparison to QRPA.


Abstract The type specimens of Gerridae described by Distant (1910,1915) were discovered in the general collections of the Zoological Survey of India, Calcutta. Their type-status is fixed here in accordance with the rules of nomenclature.


In recent years, online channel becomes a platform to generate sales. Before deciding to purchase customer will consult with reviews on internet. As customer tend to participate in the internet of things, this paper applies the factors impact customer decision on booking intention. The purpose of this experiment approach is to examine the influencing factors of occupancy rate in order to analyze performance of hotel. The research presents the result of regression that has been tested through the paper along with hypotheses related to the booking intention. As deluxe hotel could impact customer who prefer quality rather concern about the cost. The customer who decide to purchase a room would concern more on quality of service, positive brand image would increase brand awareness. This study finds that the effect of other factors is important to enhance occupancy rate of Centara.


We have studied a local deposition method based on dynamic-mode AFM using a hollow tip with an aperture. In this method, liquid droplets are deposited onto a conductive substrate through the aperture by applying an electric voltage pulse and are imaged using the same AFM tip immediately after the deposition. In this study, we applied this method to local deposition of a glycerol solution, which can be utilized in the printed electronics and the biosensor fabrication technology. The solution in the hollow was covered with a hydrophobic ionic liquid with an extremely low vapor pressure to prevent the evaporation of the solution because the quick evaporation heavily affected the dynamic-mode AFM operation. We succeeded in the stable deposition of an array of ultrasmall droplets, which contained an added salt and possible involatile residues in the glycerol solution.


This is the Spanish translation of HS1358, Recommendations for the Detection and Mitigation of Laurel Wilt Disease in Avocado and Related Tree Species in the Home Landscape. Avocado trees are a popular choice for homeowners in Florida, with over 600,000 growing in Florida home landscapes. However, avocado trees as well as others in the Lauraceae family are susceptible to laurel wilt disease, which can kill a tree in as few as three weeks. This new 8-page publication of the UF/IFAS Horticultural Sciences Department provides home owners recommendations for identifying and mitigating laurel wilt disease in the home landscape. Written by Jonathan H. Crane, Jeff Wasielewski, Daniel Carrillo, Romina Gazis, Bruce Schaffer, Fredy Ballen, and Edwards Evans.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/hs1384


A new cell architecture for high performance digit-serial computation is presented. The design of this cell is based on the feed forward of the carry digit, which allows a high level of pipelining to increase the throughput rate with minimum latency. This will give designers greater flexibility in finding the best trade-off between hardware cost and throughput rate. A twin-pipe architecture to double the throughput rate of digit-serial/parallel multipliers is also presented. The effects of the number of pipelining levels and the twin architecture on the throughput rate and hardware cost are presented. A two's complement digit-serial/parallel multiplier which can operate on both negative and positive numbers is also presented.


We study the error of the number of unimodular lattice points that fall into a dilated and centred ellipse around 0. We first show that the study of the error, when the error is normalized by √ t with t the parameter of dilatation of the ellipse, when t tends to infinity and when the lattice is random, is reduced to the study of a Siegel transform S(ft)(L) that depends on t. Then, by making t → ∞, we see that S(ft) converges in law towards a modified Siegel transform with random weights S(F )(θ, L) where θ is a second random parameter. Finally, we show that this last quantity converges almost surely and we study the existence of the moments of its law.


This article proposes a new modeling approach for traffic flow using bond graphs. The objective is to provide a new description of the dynamic phenomena which govern traffic flows starting from a phenomenological representation of vehicle flow transfers in a traffic network. Among the attractions of using a bond graph approach are, the underlying graphical vision which contributes to crystallizing the analysis, the systematic formulation of the analytical models of traffic flow and its broad applicability across all engineering's fields. As such, bond graphs enormously facilitate the integration task of road activity in the supply chain.


The requirements for capital and government role are among the important factors in generating economic growth.The main objective of this study is to analyse empirically the impact of capital factor which is made up of foreign direct investments (FDI) and domestic investment (DI); as well as the state government development expenditure (DEV) on the states' real gross domestic product (KDNK) for lesser developed states in Malaysia by employing the time series data for years 1980-2005.Result of study shows that Sarawak recorded the highest nominal KDNK among the lesser developed states,followed by Sabah, Terengganu, Kedah and Pahang.Kelantan and Perlis are the lowest contributors to
nominal KDNK as compared to other states.The statistical analysis result shows that FDI has no significant relationship on economic growth for Sarawak, Sabah, Terengganu, Kelantan, and Perlis except for Kedah dan Pahang.Domestic investment is positively related and significant to the Sarawak and Pahang's KDNK.The state's government development expenditure is also positively and
significantly related to the real KDNK of Sarawak, Pahang and Kedah.The regression analysis shows that DEV influences economic growth of Sarawak, Kedah, Sabah and Pahang.Meanwhile, the foreign direct investment is unable to explain significant variation on real KDNK of the lesser developed states.The Granger causal analysis indicates that real KDNK has unidirectional relationship with FDI and DI
for Sarawak.However, all independent variables have unidirectional relationship with real KDNK for most of the lesser developed states.


The true incidence of coital injuries is difficult to ascertain. A report from Calabar, Nigeria showed 0.7/100 gynecological emergencies while, 32 and 30 cases per year were mentioned in reports from Dakar, Senegal and New York, USA respectively. Vagina injury due to coitus remains one of the most common causes of non-obstetric trauma to the female genital tract in the non virginal womanSome of the predisposing factors to coital injuries include intercourse during pregnancy and peurperium, after gynecological surgery and at menopause.The associated problems with coital injuries are those of lack of disclosure and late presentation especially in religiously and culturally closed societies. Practicing physicians and Gynecologists should develop a high degree of suspicion and institute prompt and efficient intervention measures when faced with similar circumstances.


In order to improve the fixation rate of reactive dyeing of silk and reduce the dosage of accelerant,with dioctyl dimethyl ammonium bromide( DODMAB) as accelerant,the accelerating rule of dyeing of silk with three reactive dyes was studied. The results showed that DODMAB was a high efficiency accelerant for silk dyeing with reactive dyes. When the concentration of DODMAB was 4 g / L,dye uptake rate of Reactive Red B-3BF,Reactive Yellow B-4RFN and Reactive Dark Blue B-2GLN reached 98. 7%,95. 32% and 94. 96%,and fixation rate was 96. 3%,89. 18% and 90. 28%,respectively; soaping fastness of the silk dyed with the three reactive dyes was all up to 4-5 grade; and the adsorption kinetics of the three reactive dyes on silk with DODMAB as the accelerant were found to follow the pseudo second-order kinetic model.


SATISFACTORY integral controllers and integrators for use in d-c servo systems and computers now exist. Unfortunately good counterparts do not exist for use in a-c servo systems and computers. Band-pass filters may be used, but they are unsatisfactory if the carrier frequency changes. The usual integral controller consists of a phase-sensitive detector which converts the a-c input signal into a direct voltage. This direct voltage is applied to a d-c integral controller and the output of this controller is remodulated. Often drifts of the detector and modulator of this last system introduce more error than is desirable.


The H - injection was invented many years ago and has since been successfully applied in many machines over the last decades. The challenge to the high intensity machines is how to reduce the injection loss, which is usually the major part of total beam losses in a machine. Painting, both longitudinal and transverse, is an effective way to reduce the space charge e#11;ects and to minimize losses. RF capture of a chopped beam also gives better e#14;ciency than adiabatic capture. To employ a 2nd harmonic rf system to atten the rf bucket shape is another commonly used scheme. To compensate the capacitive space charge impedance by an inductive insert could be a new venture, but which is not discussed at the workshop due to time limitation. The foil physics is well understood. Simulations seem to be able to include all the important e#11;ects in it, including the space charge. The general feeling is that we are in a good position concerning H - injection studies. Although there remains a number of design issues, the knowledge, experiences and tools in our hand should be able to address each of them properly.


The invention discloses a composite bactericide comprising prochloraz. The composite bactericide comprises the following ingredients by weight: 10%-90% of component A and 90%-10% of component B, wherein the component A is prochloraz; and the component B is thioneb, pyraclostrobin or flutriafol. The composite bactericide can be prepared to be emulsion type bactericide and powder/grain type bactericide. The composite bactericide can be used to control diseases of vegetables or fruit trees, such as cucumber anthracnose, tomato anthracnose, pepper anthracnose, fruit tree dry rot, bamboo rust disease, strawberry anthracnose, grape anthracnose, and hickory dry rot.


Once we claim our birthright, we also have to live by our obligations us children of God. We cannot claim to be God's children and act like we belong to the devil.


The aim of our study was to survey consumers' awareness of the serious side effects that may occur with nonprescription drugs. The results showed most of consumers had little knowledge of such serious side effects of non-prescription drugs. As a particular finding, 94% of respondents had never heard of the Stevens-Johnson syndrome. In this regard, the survey found that most people had no desire to buy non-prescription drugs having the potential to cause the Stevens-Johnson syndrome from convenience stores suggesting that safety was a more important consideration than convenience in the purchase of non-prescription drugs.


Effective use of limited network resources is crucial in supporting network-based multimedia applications. A K-metric altruistic Qos routing algorithm is proposed to tackle the issue of network resource overcommitmnent. based on this algorithm, a multimedia dispersion scheme is developed to alleviate the high blocking ratio problem caused by high bandwidth requirement. Our evaluation shows that the proposed scheme is capable of achieving at 30% improvement in terms of reducing the average blocking ratio.


In this paper, an intelligent speed controller for DC motor is designed by combination of the fuzzy logic and Particle Swarm Optimization "PSO" algorithms. First, the speed controller is designed according to fuzzy rules such that the DC drive is fundamentally robust. Then, to improve the DC drive performance, parameters of the fuzzy speed controller are optimized by using the PSO algorithm. Simulation works in MATLAB environment demonstrate that the PSO optimized fuzzy speed controller became very strong, gives very good results and possesses good robustness.


As a most important mineral of hydrothermal deposit,quartz varied systematically in internal structure and composition at different mineralization stages.FTIR diffused reflection is sensitive to the systematic variations.In this study,41 pieces of quartz powder from 1 070 m level are used for FTIR measurement and the spectral parameters for mineralization mapping are exploited.It is indicate that the absorption intensity of 800 cm-1 and 780 cm-1,and the locations of symmetric stretching vibration,are positively correlated to the tectonic stress,which is also reflected in the mineralization mapping.Due to isomorphism displacement in the quartz,the values of 1085 cm half width is correlated with the gold grade distribution of quartz vein.IR crystallization index represents degree of crystallization of quartz.With the decrease of metallogenic temperature,the quartz crystallizes in an ordered way gradually and the IR crystallization index is also decreased.


Predictive influence of explanatory variables has been studied in both univariate and multivariate distributions. In the Bayesian approach, the same problem is considered in absence of multicollinearity in the dataset. The aim of this article is to study the same in the presence of perfect multicollinearity. To do this, we first derived the predictive distributions for full model and reduced model using vague prior density. Then the discrepancies between these predictive distributions are measured by the Kullback–Leibler (K–L) directed measure of divergence to assess the influence of deleted explanatory variables. Finally, distribution of the discrepancies is derived and the test procedure is performed.


A flexible model that can represent Qur'anic concept is required for people to understand the content of the Quran. In this research, we propose a Multi-Relational Latent Syntax-Semantic Analysis Model (SYNTAXLSEM) based on a combination of Arabic Semantic and six multiple relations between words, which are synonym, antonym, hypernym, hyponym, holonym and meronym, to precisely extract Qur'anic concept. The existing literatures focus only on very limited relationships between words which could not extract the in-depth concept of Qur'anic without considering the importance Arabic Semantic. Therefore, the objectives of this research are: (1) to analyse and categorize Quranic words according to Arabic Semantic patterns, (2) to propose a new model for extracting Quranic concept using SYNTAXLSEM, (3) to investigate semantic relationships between Qura'nic words, and (4) to validate the proposed model with Arabic linguistic, and Qura'nic experts. This research will be conducted qualitatively through content analysis approach a new innovative technological technique. It is expected that the model will come out with a precise analysis for extracting Qur'anic concept. This will be very significant in enhancing the overall Quran's understanding among the society in Malaysia and Muslim's world for sustainable society.


This article reflects on the manner in which the well-known South African missiologist David Bosch handles the identity-involvement-dilemma. Bosch maintains that the church is always in a state of crisis. It is argued that, although Bosch is correct in his notion that the church can only be relevant in the world and maintain her identity in Christ by being attentively aware of her status as "alternative community", he does not articulate well enough what the possible risks for congregations engaging in partnerships with secular institutions are. A few of these risks are considered. It is concluded that a relevant missionary model for the Family of Dutch Reformed Churches will have to include partnerships with secular bodies and attend to the development of institutional resources in order to effectively address larger scale challenges such as violence, HIV/AIDS and poverty.


It is necessary to identify the role and limitation of a tsunami protection facility in installing the hardware elements and performing damage-reduction activities necessary to mitigate aftermath of the calamity. This paper examines the probabilities of occurrence of earthquakes of various magnitudes based on the earthquake occurrence frequency, estimates the corresponding tsunami damage, and proposes a method to determine the expected damage reduction,B(H), and expected damage,D(H), when a tsunami protection facility of a given scale,H, is built. With the goal of facilitating an agreement with the local government regarding the scale of the tsunami protection facility, promoting damage reduction measures, and reducing the overall social cost, it also proposes a scheme built on the results of the aforementioned method and the cost,C(H). The present method can also be used to identify residual risks, which will allow concerned parties to set concrete damage reduction targets.


Five currently available fuel cell oxygen analysers were studied with a view to their use in anaesthesia. The accuracy, response time and safety features of these analysers are discussed. Fuel cell analysers appear to be suitable oxygen monitors for routine anaesthetic use.


In this paper,the important significance of the 2001 Kunlunshan large earthquake with M =8.1,the orderly characteristics of the time and space of strong earthquake activity from 1996 to 2001 in western China and the correlation of strong events between western part of China's mainland and Taiwan have been discussed.The trend of M ≥7 events in future in Northern part of Qinghai Xizang block has been estimated by using the method of orderliness analysis.


Macromolecular network rigidity of synthetic membranes is essential for sieving of hot gases. Hyper-cross-linked polyPOSS−imide membranes with tailored intercage spacing are presented. The length and flexibility of their imide bridges enables tuning of gas permeability and selectivity in a broad temperature range. The facile synthesis allows for large-scale production of membranes designed for specific process conditions.


To improve the performance of the optimal pilot sequences over multiple OFDM symbols in fast time-varying channels, this letter proposes a novel channel estimation method using virtual pilot tones in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Assuming that the superimposed virtual pilot tones at the data locations over the specific sub-carriers are transmitted from all transmit antennas, the corresponding virtual received pilot signals at the same locations are obtained from the neighboring real received pilot signals over the same sub-carriers by Wiener filter. Based on the least squares (LS) channel estimation, the channel parameters can be obtained from the combination of the virtual and real received pilot signals over one OFDM symbol. Simulation results show that the proposed channel estimation method greatly outperforms the previous method for the optimal pilot sequences over multiple OFDM symbols in fast time-varying channels, as well as approaches the method for the comb-type optimal pilot sequences in performance.


Caprion Proteomics, Inc. is a leading provider of proteomics biomarker services with over 20 pharmaceutical, biotechnology and diagnostics industry clients in North America, Europe and Japan. An unbiased approach to the identification of biomarker candidates is paired with a rapid tool for biomarker verification and validation in large patient populations. Caprion is now also a strategic partner of Covance, Inc., one of the world's largest and most experienced providers of drug-development services.


Severe damage to a building can trap victims inside and cause human fatalities. One of the problems that emerge during the victims' evacuation process is detecting the number of victims and their location. An indoor localization system can be a solution to this problem. Indoor localization systems can utilize WLAN Access Point (AP) devices, which are generally available in most buildings that provide internet access. Therefore, this research aims to collect fingerprinting data, analyze the accuracy of victims' position using the Euclidean Distance (ED) algorithm, and build an Android mobile application to detect several victims trapped in a building WLAN network, analyze the functionalities and the usability of the application. The fingerprinting method is collected using an Android application designed explicitly for Received Signal Strength (RSS) collecting. This mapping process collects signal data from 1 and 3 sources of AP for every 2 meters in four directions. The training data is used to compare the user's current position with the actual point using the ED algorithm. The use of KNN classification gives a better result than no classification method. Also, the accuracy of point and room prediction using 3 APs is higher than using 1 AP. The accuracy of room prediction is 87% by using 3 APs. The Android application consists of regular user and rescuer applications. Both applications passed the functional testing with the Black Box method and tested for usability using the USE questionnaire method. Based on the result obtained, the application has met all of the usability requirements.


A novel and accurate technique for measuring the internal losses of semiconductor lasers is demonstrated. The technique is based on two measurements: the injection current required for reaching material transparency and the corresponding ripple in the spontaneous emission spectrum. This method, which is independent of the internal quantum efficiency, allows the measurement of individual laser chips rather than an ensemble of chips, and can also be used to determine the loss dependence on wavelength and temperature.


During the past couple of decades, Rafael is developing Electric Propulsion Systems (EPS) and components. Venus is a program to demonstrate superspectral imaging and precise orbit keeping using Electric Propulsion. In the scope of this project, Rafael developed HET thrusters, the HET-300 to suit a small satellite providing sub-kilowatt power. To operate two such thrusters, PPU-600 was developed, which can supply up to 600W continuously to one thruster. A 16 kg fuel tank supplies the Xenon for the mission. All these components were developed, manufactured and qualified. The Venus Propulsion Base Assembly (PBA) was integrated and fire-tested as a whole All-In-One system in a large vacuum chamber. In order to support the mission's demand for high precision orbit maintenance, a dedicated Technological Mission Module (TMM) was developed. Another recent project is MEPS (Microsatellite Electric Propulsion System). This cooperation with ESA and European companies is aimed to produce a novel low power system for microsatellites. In the frame of this project, a low power high efficiency thruster, a heaterless cathode, PMA, and fuel tank will be developed and qualified. Other EPS components are also developed, such as valves based on Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) technologies. Electric Propulsion Systems are taking a major role in Rafael programs and R&D activities. As such, they are supported by intensive activities for tailoring a suitable EP system to a variety of missions and programs. The goal is to meet the demands of commercial satellites at LEO missions and utilize newly developed technologies for Low- Thrust HETs that are required for operational flexibility. All this will be achieved by using All-In-One concept, of propulsion systems assembled on the same Base-Plate or LRU (Line Replacement Unit) to be incorporated as a self-sustained module to the satellite. This approach can dramatically shorten the Satellite design phases and can be used as cost saving driver for the propulsion and AOCS systems.


The graduation thesis estimates trip generation for shopping center Qlandia Kranj. Trip generation is first step in four-step traffic forecast process which is used to estimate traffic volume or the number of trips in the area of interest. The number of trips depends on various factors which are connected to land use, socio-economic characteristics of the people and characteristics of transportation system. The variable with the biggest impact on trip generation is land use. Larger sites and also sites with more urban activity generate more trips.
The chosen method for trip generation estimation is described in Trip Generation Handbook issued by ITE. This method is based on abundance of collected data from sites all across USA and Canada. Trip generation rates and regression equations extracted from this data connect the number of trips to characteristics of site. Rates and equations can be adjusted to correspond to the location of the site. The result of trip generation analysis is the number of trips IN and OUT of the site. Equations and rates for various land uses are published in the ITE handbook. Feature with the biggest impact on the number of trips should be chosen as independent variable. Additional factors affecting trip generation are modal split, internal trips and by-pass trips.
I used the method described in ITE handbook to estimate trip generation of Qlandia Kranj. Independent variable was shopping center's sales area. I compared estimated trip generation data with traffic count performed on the site.


Background The Roche Cobas c Tina-quant C-Reactive Protein (CRP) IV method has shown persistent, significant negative bias compared to other methodologies in the UK NEQAS external quality assurance (EQA) scheme. The aim of this study was to compare CRP concentrations determined by this restandardized 4th generation assay with another commercially available method to assess the extent of any bias and impact on clinical cut-offs. Methods CRP concentrations in 38 anonymized patient serum samples were determined by a particle-enhanced immunoturbidimetric assay on the Roche Cobas c701 module and a latex assay on the Beckman Coulter AU5800 analyser over a concentration range of 1–308 mg/L. Results 97.4% samples analysed by the Roche Tina-quant CRP IV method demonstrated a negative bias compared to the Beckman AU latex method. The mean absolute bias was −4.12 mg/L (range: −19.13–10.93 mg/L; 95% CI: −17.25–9.01 mg/L). The mean relative difference was −15.5% (range: -40–4%; 95% CI: −33.03–1.94%). This bias was seen across the range of samples assayed, including at clinically significant cut-offs of 5 mg/L (−24% bias), 20 mg/L (−5%) and 100 mg/L (−13%). Conclusion The negative bias of the Roche method demonstrated in the EQA scheme appears to reflect genuine differences in patient results, rather than an EQA matrix effect, despite re-standardization of the CRP assay. This report indicates that clinical cut-offs and reference ranges may be method-dependent, which should be reflected in published guidance and interpretation provided by laboratories.


A 20-year-old woman presented with a pelvic tumor that caused abdominal protuberance. Transvaginal ultrasonography revealed a 15 cm mass developed from her uterus. Her cancer antigen 125 (CA125) serum level at presentation was 1,570.9 U/mL and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level was 377 U/L. The suspicion was of a malignant neoplasm, so we undertook a myomectomy. The pathologic diagnosis was a leiomyoma of the uterus. Both the CA125 and LDH serum levels dropped unusually rapidly to normal after the operation. Immunohistochemical staining for CA125 indicated that the leiomyoma was the source of the high level of serum CA125. J Clin Gynecol Obstet. 2015;4(3):275-278 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14740/jcgo344w


While a model and framework of CD in international organizations would provide a comprehensive characteristics of core issues, functional capacities and point of entry (UNDP, 2006), there might be additional requirements for diverse perspectives of capacity's spectrums and demands in different organizations and societies. To further enhance existing methodology for measuring CD and improve capacity assessment framework, an agent-based model is creatively designed to expound the clues of harmonizations between CD and SD, and suggest an integrated solution for SCD.


The convergence of optical and wireless network has led to the trend of future access network . Under the study of Software Defined Radio Access Network(SD-RA) and Soft Frequency Reuse(SFR) system model, this paper presents a new inter-cell interference suppression algorithm of SD-RA network. The paper also summarizes and analyses the difference between the SFR based on coordinate multi-point transmission (CoMP) and SD-RA. The computer simulation results show that the inter-cell interference suppression algorithm can bring about 5dB SINR (Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio) gain.


Purpose: To evaluate the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of patients with remnant gastric cancer (RGC) following distal gastrectomy and to consider the appropriate range of lymph node (LN) dissection for RGC. Materials and Methods: In this study, 179 patients with RGC following distal gastrectomy who underwent total remnant gastrectomy were enrolled. We divided them into two groups: M group (first operation for malignant disease; n =129) and B group (benign disease; n =50). Clinicopathological characteristics, 5-year overall survival rate (5YSR), LN metastatic rate, and "therapeutic value index" (calculated by multiplication of the metastasis rate by the 5YSR in patients with metastasis in the respective nodes) were analyzed. Result: M group patients were older than B group patients ( P =0.002) and had a lower ratio of men ( P =0.033). For patients undergoing gastrectomy using Billroth I, there were significantly more patients in the M group compared with the B group (78.3% vs. 42.0%, P <0.001). The median intervals between the first and second operations were 86 (3–530) and 276.5 (14–408) months for the M and B group, respectively ( P <0.001). The M group's mean tumor diameter was smaller ( P =0.025), the rate of early cancer was higher ( P =0.014), and the LN metastatic rate was lower (20.2% vs. 46.0%, P <0.001) than the B group. The 5YSR for the patients in the M and B group were 55.5% and 60.5%, respectively ( P =0.862). The LN metastasis rate in the No. 1–7 LN stations, excluding No. 2 and 4sa, in the B group, tended to be higher than that in the M group. The therapeutic value index of No. 1, 2, 4sa, and 11p LN stations in the M group and No. 1, 2, 3, 4sa, 4sb, 10, 11p, 11d, and mesojejunum LN stations in the B group were lower than that of the other stations. Conclusion: In addition to the lymph nodes that were not dissected in the first surgery, No. 10, 11, and mesojejunum LN dissection, especially for the B group, may contribute to improving their prognosis.


Sustained growth in the short break market has enabled hotel companies to develop nationally recognised brands such as Thistle Hotels′ "Highlife Breaks". Success in the serviced accommodation sector of this market critically depends on effective retail brand distribution and the responsiveness of managers in meeting consumer expectations. Some of the challenges for managers arising from a consumer research project undertaken by Highlife Breaks are considered.


Objective
To observe the effect of hydrocolloid dressings with instant ice compress on the healing process, postoperative pain and efficacy of patients with acne scar treated by 2940 nm erbium pixel laser.

Methods
We selected 60 patients with acne scar from November 2012 to June 2014 treated by the erbium pixel laser. They were randomly divided into two groups: hydrocolloid dressings with ice compress after treatment were used in observation group (n=37)and postoperative wound dry were kept in control group (n=23); pain, duration of burning, erythema duration, efficacy, decrustation time, postoperative complications were evaluated and quantitatively analyzed.

Results
Compared with the control group, the application of hydrocolloid dressings with ice compress group (observation group) received less postoperative pain; postoperative VAS pain score was (5.81±0.64) in observation group and (6.09±0.69) in control group; duration of burning was shorter: (1.86±0.75) h in observation group and (3.65±0.93) h in control group; duration of erythema was shorter: (2.27±0.73) d in observation group and (3.52±0.79) d in control group; decrustation time was shorter: (5.76±1.06) d in observation group and (8.09±0.95) d in control group; postoperative complications were reduced: (5.4%, 2/37) in the observation group and (30.4%, 7/23) in the control group, with statistically significant difference (all P<0.05). The differences were not statistically significant in the intraoperative VAS score and the curative effect.

Conclusions
The application of hydrocolloid dressing with instant ice compress after erbium pixel laser in the treatment of acne scar can effectively reduce postoperative pain and burning sensation, shorten the duration of erythema and crusting time after operation. It also reduces the incidence of complications.

Key words:
Hydrocolloid dressings; Ice compress; 2940 nm erbium pixel laser; Acne


Electrons in semiconductor nanostructures such as quantum wells can exhibit a highly nonlinear response to far-infrared radiation of sufficient intensity, such as can be supplied by the free-electron lasers (FELs) at UCSB. Several different physical mechanisms can cause nonlinear behavior in nanostructures. Experimental results at UCSB demonstrate that transport, absorption, and harmonic generation can be used as probes of nonlinear response. In the future, it may be possible to use the UCSB-FELs to observe completely new nonlinear phenomena, such as non-perturbative quantum resonances in quantum wells driven by intense far-infrared radiation.


Smart health management and monitoring is an important IoT application. HealthCare Applications of today's age are very crucial and sensitive. Energy is an essential factor, particularly in the crowd sensing domain, where it is difficult to maintain the sensing infrastructure. The storage and processing of data is highly expensive since it is associated with computational resource requirements. Handling a vast amount of unwanted data requires more energy, and it also involves enormous processing time. Existing Scheduling techniques utilize the classification and optimization algorithm. Thus it takes more processing time to perform the scheduling. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based fuzzy technique is proposed for IoT data scheduling to optimize the system's resources such as memory storage, CPU processing time, and energy consumption. Further, the proposed technique is analyzed and compared with other framework.


The study looked at the disturbance of uric acid metabolism in 217 patients with acute surgical pathology of the abdominal cavity. It is noted that the level of xanthinoxidase in all groups was high, with the highest levels of the enzyme in the patient with a perforating ulcer of the duodenum and patients with acute comissural ileus.


In this paper, a quasi-static technique based on a simple transmission line model is used for studying a planar artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) surface. The results of this quasi-static model are verified with previously published results. This quasi-static solution is used as a fast efficient technique to obtain the effects of the different parameters on the center frequency and the operating bandwidth of a planar AMC surface. These parameters include the patch width, the gap width between the patches, the relative permittivity of the substrate and the substrate thickness


ii To my parents for introducing me to the beauty of the world and to Slade Hovick for keeping it beautiful. iii Jewelry is anything that interacts with the body.


By use of Kawabata Evaluation System(KES),YG541B Fabric Crease Recovery Property Tester,YG811Fabric Drape Tester and Y561Fabric Air Permeability Tester,the style and wearing characteristics of Tencel ramie fabrics were studied and compared with fabrics of Tencel,ramie,polyester ramie and cotton.The results provided a scientific basis for making Ten-cel ramie fabrics.


In this work we present novel axes-based visualizations that can be used to explore and analyze multivariate time series data. We propose different types of interactive axes, which in turn can be used to compile novel 3D axes arrangements. The proposed axesbased visualizations utilize an exposed central time axis around which axes representing time-dependent attributes are arranged. Each depending attribute is visually associated with the time axis by means of different types of drawings.


Heterogeneous doping through nanostructuring has been demonstrated to greatly enhance the transport and mass storage properties of halides and Li-ion conductors by decoupling of charge-compensating species. In this study, we explore the potential of heterogeneous doping of ionically conducting oxides through first-principles and thermodynamic calculations of a model system consisting of acceptor-doped SrTiO3 and BaZrO3. We show that the two dominating defects, vO•• and OHO•, are thermodynamically favored in BaZrO3 compared to SrTiO3 by 0.64 and 0.56 eV, respectively, in turn leading to an electrostatic potential barrier as large as 0.64 V (relative to BaZrO3) at 800 K. vO••, OHO• and electron holes as such accumulate on the BaZrO3 side of the interface, leading to a charge-depletion layer in SrTiO3 which thus acts as a heterogeneous acceptor for BaZrO3. These interface effects may drastically enhance the charge-carrier concentration of weakly doped ionic systems, which in turn may lead to novel nanostruct...


In a heterogeneous graph-based recommender system, relationships among various entities are used to predict the rating or preference that a user would give to an item. By modeling user's selection behavior as a path in the heterogeneous graph, we can capture each user's unique selection behaviors as a set of paths with specific types of nodes and edges. Since these paths capture selection behaviors unique to each user, these can then be used to perform personalized profiling and recommendation for each user. In this paper, we introduce PathMining, an algorithm which constructs personalized user profile and make recommendations based on Monte Carlo sampling of graph traversal. PathMining predicts preferable items by emulating user's selection processes. The performance and potential value of our method is validated by using HetRec 2011 dataset. Traditionally, recommendation has been considered as a problem of finding an utility function that best predicts a user's unknown ratings given the user's known ratings as found in UserItem rating matrix (Adomavicius and Tuzhilin 2005). In the past, most recommender systems, based on this problem formulation, focused on increasing recommendation accuracy by minimizing differences between the predicted recommendations and the known ratings in the matrix as exemplified by the Netflix prize (Bennett and Lanning 2007). However, with the observation that decrease in the errors in the matrix alone does not necessarily increase the quality of the recommendations, the current trend is to incorporate other external types of information into the problem. A heterogeneous graph-based recommender system is an approach to integrate user ratings with other types of information following their semantic relationships, and represent them as a single graph. The types of entities in a graph are denoted as a node or an edge. Examples of nodes and edges for a movie rating system may be (e.g., USER, MOVIE,ACTOR,DIRECTOR,TAG, :::) and edges (e.g., USER liked ! MOVIE,MOVIE directedBy


Abstract : The NASA sponsored Rotor Burst Protection program has produced the first high speed photographic sequence of an intentionally failed rotor within a containment device. This technical achievement has provided a means to study the fragment-containment system kinematics and material performance associated with disk and blade failures. The results of the first twenty-one tests provide data that can assist in establishing basic guidelines for the design of containment systems. Experiments providing information relative to the complex motion of disk and blade fragments for a failed rotor, and the effects of radial clearance, stress concentration, and material properties are reported. The theoretical derivation and related curves for the energy distribution of fragments from a rotating flat disk provide the total, translational, and rotational kinetic energy per fragment for combinations of fragment included angle and radius ratio are presented. A survey of uncontained failures occurring in U.S. Commercial and Naval aviation experience is reported. Test equipment and techniques are discussed. (Author)


Aneurysmal dilatation and progressive enlargement of one of the sinuses of Valsalva, most often occurs on the site of right coronary sinus and normally goes undetected during life until its rupture. Rarely, the aneurysm presents with evidence of obstruction of the right ventricular outflow tract, aortic insufficiency, conduction abnormalities, or coronary artery compression in the absence of rupture. The biggest size in the literature of aneurysm was reported as 8 cm. In this case report, we present successful surgical repair of 10 cm large sinus of Valsalva aneurysm with Bentall procedure.


A case of oculoauricular vertebral dysplasia or Goldenhar syndrome is reported in association with sensorineural deafness and unilateral involvement of the ophthalmic division of the trigeminal nerve. The literature on oculoauricular vertebral dysplasia is reviewed and the genetic transmission, associated anomalies, and differential diagnosis are discussed.


We propose the concept of a differential Fourier Transform Interferometer dedicated to measurements of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect from clusters of galaxies. This design can be first tested as a frontend for existing instrumentation at the focal plane large-aperture ground-based telescopes, then possibly implemented into a novel instrumnent coupled to a space-borne telescope. Such an application was presented in the Phase A study of the SAGACE satellite, pending for approval from the Italian Space Agency. Work is in progress to assess the effective performance of the instrument, while providing a baseline strategy for both ground-based observations and space-based surveys. An instrument/strategy/data processing pipeline simulator is under development to provide information and instrument design guidelines.


OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effect of introducing a robotic program on cost and patient outcome. METHODS: This was a prospective evaluation of clinical outcome and cost after introducing a robotics program for the treatment of endometrial cancer and a retrospective comparison to the entire historical cohort. RESULTS: Consecutive patients with endometrial cancer who underwent robotic surgery (n=143) were compared with all consecutive patients who underwent surgery (n=160) before robotics. The rate of minimally invasive surgery increased from 17% performed by laparoscopy to 98% performed by robotics in 2 years. The patient characteristics were comparable in both eras, except for a higher body mass index in the robotics era (median 29.8 compared with 27.6; P<.005). Patients undergoing robotics had longer operating times (233 compared with 206 minutes), but fewer adverse events (13% compared with 42%; P<.001), lower estimated median blood loss (50 compared with 200 mL; P<.001), and shorter median hospital stay (1 compared with 5 days; P<.001). The overall hospital costs were significantly lower for robotics compared with the historical group (Can$7,644 compared with Can$10,368 [Canadian dollars]; P<.001) even when acquisition and maintenance cost were included (Can$8,370 compared with Can$10,368; P=.001). Within 2 years after surgery, the short-term recurrence rate appeared lower in the robotics group compared with the historic cohort (11 recurrences compared with 19 recurrences; P<.001). CONCLUSION: Introduction of robotics for endometrial cancer surgery increased the proportion of patients benefitting from minimally invasive surgery, improved short-term outcomes, and resulted in lower hospital costs. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II


Lysosomes are the major intracellular place for digestion and proteolysis of material ingested by endocytosis, as well as for autophagocytosis. In order to obtain further data about the lysosomal function and structure, five monoclonal antibodies generated against rat-hepatocyte lysosomal integral membrane proteins (LIMPs) were used as probes to ascertain the distribution of corresponding proteins in normal rat kidney(NRK) cells with immunofluorescence technique; also, NH4C1 was used to dilate the profiles of the lysosomes in NRK cells. The result indicated: (1) lysosomal integral membrane proteins are composed of many different proteins in different concentration; (2) all the LIMPs are expressed on the organelle surface; (3) NH4Cl can be used to dilate the profiles of lysosomes, this will be favourable to studying lysosomes.


Seven Uropodina species are listed from Venezuela. Four of them are new to science (Tetrasejaspis muranyii sp. n., Cyllibula (Wagenaaria) pocsi sp. n., Uropoda csuzdii sp. n., Rotundabaloghia mahunkana sp. n.) and the other three are known species (Cyllibula (Wagenaaria) altasimilis (HIRSCHMANN 1977), Tetrasejaspis dinychoides SELLNICK 1941, Clausiadinychus pulcherrimus HUŢU 1991). With 22 figures.


The aim of this paper is to investigate the ability of a vertical structure JFET to operate in an inverter leg without any internal or external diode. The JFET is characterized to show the reverse conduction capability while the gate-to-source voltage is lower than the threshold voltage. An inverter leg is tested at 540V/5A and 50 kHz. A specific test board is implemented to assess a safe operation over a period of time.


This study aims to describe the effect of academic supervision on the performance of rayon 4 elementary school teachers in Rimau Island sub-district. This study uses a quantitative approach with a survey. The technique of data collection uses a questionnaire with a Likert scale. The sample used is a saturated sampling technique or also called a census, the population is sampled in the study the number of samples that the author took as many as 34, where the total population is equal to the number of samples of all teachers of Rayon 4 Elementary School District of Rimau Island. Processing data using simple linear regression and multiple linear regression to find out the effect together. Data collected using questionnaires made percentage. The data collected is tabulated. The results of the study show that the supervision of the principal has a positive effect on the performance of teachers at the Rayon 4 Elementary School in Pulau Rimau District.


This paper explores the validity of the two-stage estimation procedure for sparse linear models in high-dimensional settings with possibly many endogenous regressors. In particular, the number of endogenous regressors in the main equation and the instruments in the first-stage equations can grow with and exceed the sample size n. The analysis concerns the exact sparsity case, i.e., the maximum number of non-zero components in the vectors of parameters in the first-stage equations, k1, and the number of non-zero components in the vector of parameters in the second-stage equation, k2, are allowed to grow with n but slowly compared to n. I consider the high-dimensional version of the two-stage least square estimator where one obtains the fitted regressors from the first-stage regression by a least square estimator with l_1-regularization (the Lasso or Dantzig selector) when the first-stage regression concerns a large number of instruments relative to n, and then construct a similar estimator using these fitted regressors in the second-stage regression. The main theoretical results of this paper are non-asymptotic bounds from which I establish sufficient scaling conditions on the sample size for estimation consistency in l_2-norm and variable-selection consistency. A technical issue regarding the so-called "restricted eigenvalue (RE) condition" for estimation consistency and the "mutual incoherence (MI) condition" for selection consistency arises in the two-stage estimation from allowing the number of regressors in the main equation to exceed n and this paper provides analysis to verify these RE and MI conditions. Depending on the underlying assumptions, the upper bounds on the l_2-error and the sample size required to obtain these consistency results differ by factors involving k1 and/or k2. Simulations are conducted to gain insight on the finite sample performance.


The conventional sheet metal forming technique known as Deep Drawing was used to investigate the formability of self-reinforced thermoplastic sheets. The materials studied included uniaxially roll-drawn oriented polypropylene (OPP), cross-rolled biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP), and cross-ply laminated OPP (LOPP). OPP exhibits poor room temperature formability as determined by its Limiting Drawing Ratio (LDR). Its formability is improved at elevated temperatures, but samples suffer from non-uniform material flow, temperature sensitivity during forming, and a loss of mechanical properties due to the relaxation of orientation caused by the need for forming temperatures above the normal melting point. Although BOPP attains only moderate Improvements in mechanical properties compared to the machine direction of OPP, it exhibits much better room temperature formability. This difference in drawability between uniaxial and biaxial orientation states is a consequence of the difference in planar anisotropy between these two materials. LOPP has the potential of producing a material with superior performance compared to BOPP while still possessing the desirable formability of BOPP. The formed parts, however, undergo cracking in the outer ply parallel to the orientation direction as a consequence of the OPP small elongation to break in the transverse direction. In addition to forming problems, ordered polypropylene exhibits large shrinkage stresses at elevated temperatures. This may preclude its use in applications requiring a high level of dimensional stability. Classical plasticity theory for metals was appropriately modified to model the radial drawing stress for planar isotropic thermoplastic sheet materials.


The KNbO_3:Fe self-pumped phase conjugation in a ring cavity with two additional reflected mirrors is presented in this paper. During the build-up of phase conjugate light the time evolution of different light beams with energy transfer was experimentally demonstrated. The self-pumped phase conjugation reflectivity R as a function of the incident angle α, the light beam intersecting angle 2θ for ring cavity and incident light intensity I_4 was measured. Under the optimal condition α=23° and 20=20°, the maximum phase conjugation reflectivity was obtained to be R=36%.


This cable (10) optical fibers (14) comprises at least one tube (12) wherein are housed the optical fibers (14). The optical fibers (14) extend longitudinally in the helical tube (12). According to the method of the invention, the tube (12) is supplied to the cable manufacturing die (10) by unwinding said tube (12) of the storage reel (24) while the storage reel (24) is immobilized, so that it is imparted to the tube (12) a longitudinal twist imposing on the optical fibers (14) containing a helical path of pitch substantially equal to the length of a tube coil (12) wound on the storage reel (24).


Alliances between construction companies have become popular because of their importance as an alternative in global competition. Construction companies complement skills, experience, and resources with their partners to successfully complete a construction project through the formation of alliances. Alliances provide several advantages for the participants, but are subject to several risks too. The quality of inter-company relations determines how well an alliance performs. In this study, the effect of the similarity/difference between the organisational cultures of partnering companies on the quality of inter-company relations is examined through a questionnaire survey. The results of the study suggest that similarities in the organisational culture of the partners have a significant and direct impact on the quality of inter-company relations. It also has a significant and direct impact on the organisational structure of an alliance, which in turn affects inter-company relations. The findings reveal that allied companies maintain better relations when the organisational structure of the alliance is properly designed.


Both detailed and summarized data are presented for $sup 137$Cs and for $sup 90$Sr which resulted from a study of the deposition of fallout radionuclides into a Utah dairy farm. In addition, mathematical models and statistical methods (including nonlinear least-squares techniques) were used to obtain estimates of key parameters for a compartmental model of the dynamics of $sup 137$Cs transfers in the dairy system. Both the results of laboratory studies and field observations were used to derive the estimates and to construct functional relationships for the model. Two computer models were used to further analyze and evaluate consistency of the fallout-alfalfa-milk sequence of data. The results of this study are compared with two similar investigations (in Colorado and Michigan) and are used to examine earlier analyses of the general system studied. Extensive data tabulations are also presented. (auth)


The article discusses the issues of apartment building management, analyzes the concept of common property and opinions of landlords, examines the rights of apartment building management bodies (general meetings of landlords), councils of apartment buildings, as well as studies controversial aspects of law enforcement practices. The research is based on the analysis of the law enforcement practices, including materials of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, personal experience, observations of activities of the councils of apartment buildings. The relevance of the issue is due to the lack of conditions for enforcing legal rules, implementing specific legal mechanisms, negative law enforcement practices, numerous legal proceedings and interpretations provided by higher judicial bodies. The work is independent and original. It is aimed at summarizing the current law enforcement practices. The study is carried out at the junction of constitutional, civil, and housing branches of law. The main emphasis is on the analysis of civil law norms governing the property rights and housing relations. The works by civil scientists (M.M. Braginsky, V. V. Vitryansky [1], O.S. Ioffe [2], E.A. Sukhanov [3]) are used as a methodological basis. The author's previous work deals with the issues of apartment building management from the labor law's perspective [4]. It seems interesting to analyze the rights of apartment building management bodies and develop recommendations for improving the apartment building management legislation.


Several methods have been proposed for the storage of geometric properties in Geographic Information Systems, but many are based on the storage of metric data (coordinates) and analytical geometry. Because of the well-known limitations of implementations of the algebra of computer real numbers, such as incidence and inclusion during affine transformations. We propose an approach in which topological relations are separately recorded and independent of metric positions. The method is based on the use of simplices, which are the simplest polyhedrons of each dimension. The zero- dimensional simplex is the point, the one-dimensional one line, etc. In order to allow for non-straight lines as connections between points, we actually use cells, which are the homeomorphic image of simplices. In order to store topological relations, we use two completeness principles: Completeness of incidence and completeness of inclusion. We can show that in such a geometric configuration topology is invariant to affine transformations, independently of the method selected for recording metric information. For formal treatment we form a multi-sorted algebra (abstract data types). The axioms for this algebra must be selected such that the above-mentioned principles are maintained as invariants. We rely on an arbitrary method to learn about the topological relations initially. This "oracle" may use the calculation of a distance and a threshold, query the user or decide randomly, but it cannot influence the consistancy of the resulting geometry, as it is consulted only if the same information was not previously available and thus cannot lead to an inconsistent situation. Reasonable performance is expected, as this method imposes a 'neighborhood' structure on the data. All operations use and change only data of objects in immediate proximity. Databases suitable for handling spatial data should permit clustering of data by proximity.


Preface THREE TERM CONTROLLERS PID Controllers: An Overview of Classical Theory Introduction to Control The Magic of Integral Control PID Controllers Classical PID Controller Design Integrator Windup PID Controllers for Delay-Free LTI Systems Introduction Stabilizing Set Signature Formulas Computation of the PID Stabilizing Set PID Design with Performance Requirements PID Controllers for Systems with Time Delay Introduction Characteristic Equations for Delay Systems The Pade Approximation and Its Limitations The Hermite-Biehler Theorem for Quasipolynomials Stability of Systems with a Single Delay PID Stabilization of First-Order Systems with Time Delay PID Stabilization of Arbitrary LTI Systems with a Single Time Delay Proofs of Lemmas 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5 Proofs of Lemmas 3.7 and 3.9 An Example of Computing the Stabilizing Set Digital PID Controller Design Introduction Preliminaries Tchebyshev Representation and Root Clustering Root Counting Formulas Digital PI, PD, and PID Controllers Computation of the Stabilizing Set Stabilization with PID Controllers First-Order Controllers for LTI Systems Root Invariant Regions An Example Robust Stabilization by First-Order Controllers Hinfinity Design with First-Order Controllers First-Order Discrete-Time Controllers Controller Synthesis Free of Analytical Models Introduction Mathematical Preliminaries Phase, Signature, Poles, Zeros, and Bode Plots PID Synthesis for Delay-Free Continuous-Time Systems PID Synthesis for Systems with Delay PID Synthesis for Performance An Illustrative Example: PID Synthesis Model-Free Synthesis for First-Order Controllers Model-Free Synthesis of First-Order Controllers for Performance Data-Based Design vs. Model-Based Design Data-Robust Design via Interval Linear Programming Computer-Aided Design Data-Driven Synthesis of Three Term Digital Controllers Introduction Notation and Preliminaries PID Controllers for Discrete-Time Systems Data-Based Design: Impulse Response Data First-Order Controllers for Discrete-Time Systems Computer-Aided Design ROBUST PARAMETRIC CONTROL Stability Theory for Polynomials Introduction The Boundary Crossing Theorem The Hermite-Biehler Theorem Schur Stability Test Hurwitz Stability Test Stability of a Line Segment Introduction Bounded Phase Conditions Segment Lemma Schur Segment Lemma via Tchebyshev Representation Some Fundamental Phase Relations Convex Directions The Vertex Lemma Stability Margin Computation Introduction The Parametric Stability Margin Stability Margin Computation The Mapping Theorem Stability Margins of Multilinear Interval Systems Robust Stability of Interval Matrices Robustness Using a Lyapunov Approach Stability of a Polytope Introduction Stability of Polytopic Families The Edge Theorem Stability of Interval Polynomials Stability of Interval Systems Polynomic Interval Families Robust Control Design Introduction Interval Control Systems Frequency Domain Properties Nyquist, Bode, and Nichols Envelopes Extremal Stability Margins Robust Parametric Classical Design Robustness under Mixed Perturbations Robust Small Gain Theorem Robust Performance The Absolute Stability Problem Characterization of the SPR Property The Robust Absolute Stability Problem OPTIMAL AND ROBUST CONTROL The Linear Quadratic Regulator An Optimal Control Problem The Finite Time LQR Problem The Infinite Horizon LQR Problem Solution of the Algebraic Riccati Equation The LQR as an Output Zeroing Problem Return Difference Relations Guaranteed Stability Margins for the LQR Eigenvalues of the Optimal Closed Loop System Optimal Dynamic Compensators Servomechanisms and Regulators SISO Hinfinity AND l1 OPTIMAL CONTROL Introduction The Small Gain Theorem L Stability and Robustness via the Small Gain Theorem YJBK Parametrization of All Stabilizing Compensators (Scalar Case) Control Problems in the Hinfinity Framework Hinfinity Optimal Control: SISO Case l1 Optimal Control: SISO Case Hinfinity Optimal Multivariable Control Hinfinity Optimal Control Using Hankel Theory The State Space Solution of Hinfinity Optimal Control Appendix A: Signal Spaces Vector Spaces and Norms Metric Spaces Equivalent Norms and Convergence Relations between Normed Spaces Appendix B: Norms for Linear Systems Induced Norms for Linear Maps Properties of Fourier and Laplace Transforms Lp/lp Norms of Convolutions of Signals Induced Norms of Convolution Maps EPILOGUE Robustness and Fragility Feedback, Robustness, and Fragility Examples Discussion References Index Exercises, Notes, and References appear at the end of each chapter.


Introduction: The technique of dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) T1-weighted MRI provides a widespread method to determine kinetic parameters of human tissues [1, 2]. The principle of this method is the analysis of the time-variant signal intensities of the DCE data. But for field strength above 1.5 T B1 inhomogeneities produce considerable intensity variations in the abdominal region which strongly affect the estimation of the kinetic parameters. The aim of this work was to investigate the influence of B1 inhomogeneities on the kinetic parameters K trans and Ve and the potential improvement of the data using the measured flip angle distribution for the correction of these inhomogeneities. Methods: Using a DCE scan and a proton density weighted reference scan the temporal T1 relaxation can be calculated with the method recommended by Hittmair [3]. The time-dependent contrast agent concentration C(t) follows from equation (2) using a relaxivity r1 of 3.7 L mmol -1 s. In order to correct the data with respect to the B1 inhomogeneitis a dedicated STEAM sequence [4] was used which measures the actual flip angle distribution. Formula (3) describes the Tofts-model which was used for the estimation of the kinetic parameters K and Ve. CT(t) is the time-dependent tracer concentration in the tissue and CA(τ) represents the AIF and is the timedependent tracer concentration in arterial whole blood. Hct represents the hematocrit, Ve is the volume of extravascular extracellular space per unit volume of tissue and K is the volume transfer constant between blood plasma and Ve. This model was fitted to the dynamic concentration data in order to obtain values for the two free parameters K and Ve. For the statistical analysis of the kinetic parameters the mean value, the deviation of the mean values using two comparable AIFs (left and right arteria iliaca communis) and the coefficient of variation (CV) described in formula (3) are calculated for different regions of interest in the left and right musculus gluteus maximus. All results were calculated without and with the correction of the B1 inhomogeneities and were checked against each other. The measurements were performed for a group of 9 persons using a 3.0 T MRI scanner (Magnetom Tim Trio, Siemens Medical, Germany).


Based on the degradation mechanism of municipal solid waste in bioreactor landfill, this paper analyzes the transform trend of leachate and discusses its treatment scheme. At bioreactor landfill, all leachate should be recirculated in the initial stage and then some of it could be treated off-site in the later stage, depending on specific cases. The leachate treatment technology should be selected after overall understanding of leachate quantity and quality, and it should give priority to physico-chemical methods.


ABSTRACT Random deployment is a preferable deployment strategy for the hostile environment or large-scale open environments such as forest surveillance, earthquake observation, battlefield monitoring and wildlife reservoir. In random deployment, sensor nodes are dropped at random in the region of interest by using the aerial vehicle which may fail to ensure optimal area coverage. To optimise the area coverage, the sensor nodes should be relocated in optimal locations in the sensing field. In this piece of work, a particle swarm optimisation based deployment strategy has been proposed to relocate the mobile sensor nodes in optimal locations to ensure optimal area coverage with connectivity constraint. In this algorithm, the fitness function is formulated by using the notion of information coverage. The goal of this work is to optimise the information coverage by a limited number of sensor nodes with minimum energy consumption. Simulation results verify that the desired area coverage is achieved by the fewer number of sensor nodes when information coverage is used for fitness calculation as compare to physical coverage.


The method and objective of the analysis of equilibrium dysfunction based on the indices of gravitudinal fluctuations as well as the expression of the body sway in mathematical values have contributed in the diagnosis of the location of disturbance and the classification of diseases.The power spectrum analysis of deviation is one of the analytical methods which have gained much popularity in practice in recent years.We have recently conducted a power spectrum analysis of body sway velocity. It was not possible to analyze the directional component of a body sway by this method, but observation of sways in terms of velocity was possible. Formerly, it was difficult to analyse the high frequency of the body sway in terms of the power spectrum : however, by converting the body sway into the velocity power spectrum, the analysis of the high frequency body sway could be easily be performed.We used this method for the analysis of 19 cases of spinocerebellar degeneration, seven cases of Parkinson's disease, 22 cases of hemiplegia, and eight cases of Meniere's disease.For basic data, tetanic stimulation of lower limb muscles was given by connecting plate electrodes to the tibial nerves bilaterally below the knees to induce body movements.In this experiment, a peak was observed which coincided with the loaded frequency in the sway velocity power spectrum. It was discovered also in this experiment that the velocity component of body sway in the normal person was a noise which was inversely proportional to the Feurier's frequency, which is said to be Schottky effect (by Johnson 1925, 1/f noise).When various neurological diseases was analysed using this method, a distinct finding was observed at higher frequencies, i.e. a deviation in the slope of the spectrum from that of the 1/f noise.How a method like this can be utilized for the analysis of body movements was discussed.